Breakthrough to Soul Ancestor! Hunting Souls in Thunder Canyon!

A night of meditation.

The room was saturated with lightning elemental energy, so dense it was nearly tangible. Fine blue sparks occasionally burst in the air, crackling sharply.

Huang Yun sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, a layer of flowing milky-white lightning arcs coiling around him. With every breath, his Soul Power surged and ebbed like the tide.

The barrier between level thirty-nine and level forty within him hummed and trembled beneath the relentless impacts of his Soul Power.

Each impact left a crack in the barrier. Soul Power seeped through those cracks into the uncharted territory of meridians beyond, steadily advancing bit by bit.

Finally, as the first pale light of dawn appeared on the horizon, the barrier shattered with a boom.

Like floodwaters bursting through a dam, Soul Power poured into brand-new meridian pathways, and a sense of utter clarity spread through every limb and bone.

Huang Yun abruptly opened his eyes. A flicker of blue-white lightning flashed deep within his pupils before vanishing.

He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air and clenched his fist, feeling the surging Soul Power within him was more than twice as abundant as before.

Level forty.

Since awakening his Martial Soul at the age of six, he had spent six years traveling the continent while cultivating, forcing his way step by step to where he was today.

Without a renowned teacher's guidance or medicinal resources, he had relied solely on talent and life-risking combat training.

Now, at twelve years old, he was a level-forty Soul Ancestor.

Across all of Douluo Continent, even among the geniuses Spirit Hall had cultivated with every resource at its disposal, this pace would unquestionably rank among the top three.

But breaking through to level forty was only the first step. What came next was even more important.

Obtaining his fourth Spirit Ring.

Huang Yun got out of bed and stretched his body. His bones crackled all over, and he felt as though his entire body had become lighter.

He went downstairs and had a hearty breakfast from a roadside stall: three bowls of meat porridge and five large meat buns. After filling his stomach, he returned to his room, packed his things, pushed open the window, and leaped out. Blue wings spread from his back as he transformed into a streak of light shooting into the sky.

His destination: the Star Dou Great Forest.

Thunder Canyon.

The Star Dou Great Forest lay slightly south of the continent's center. Vast in scale, it stretched across the territories of several kingdoms.

It contained countless varieties of Soul Beasts, clearly divided by age from ten-year to hundred-thousand-year levels. It was the preferred place for Soul Masters across the continent to hunt Spirit Rings.

During his years traveling the continent, Huang Yun had hunted his first three Spirit Rings all by himself. He was already thoroughly familiar with the terrain and Soul Beast distribution of the Star Dou Great Forest.

He flew at high speed for roughly an hour. Below him, towns and farmland gradually gave way to endless primeval forest, its canopy spreading toward the horizon like a green sea with no end in sight.

Huang Yun folded his wings, descended, and plunged into the dense woods at the outer edge of the Star Dou Great Forest.

He did not linger in the outskirts and darted directly toward the depths.

The Lightning Falcon was hardly any slower in the forest than it was in the air. Huang Yun's figure flickered between the treetops, and every branch he used for leverage merely quivered before returning to normal, as though no one had ever passed through.

The farther inward he went, the older and more powerful the Soul Beasts became.

The outer regions were mostly inhabited by low-level ten-year and hundred-year Soul Beasts. Farther in lay the territories of Millennium Soul Beasts, while the mixed zone was an active area for Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts.

Huang Yun had a clear target this time. He wanted a Ten-Thousand-Year flying lightning-element Soul Beast for his fourth Spirit Ring.

Absorbing Spirit Rings beyond his level was already routine for him.

A five-hundred-year first Spirit Ring, a one-thousand-year second Spirit Ring, a five-thousand-year third Spirit Ring—using a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring for his fourth was nothing worth making a fuss over.

With the quality of his current Soul Power and the strength of his body, he could more than withstand the pressure of a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring.

He was not afraid of the mental assault of resentment, either. Having lived two lives, his Mental Power and soul were inherently powerful.

But he had strict requirements for the type of Soul Beast. It had to be flying, and it had to be lightning-element.

He knew full well that absorbing the Spirit Ring of a flying Soul Beast would provide passive boosts to his basic attributes, the most direct one being a permanent increase in flight speed!

And lightning-element flying Soul Beasts already stood above their peers in speed. After absorbing one, the speed boost would be even more terrifying.

What he sought was the fastest one in Thunder Canyon.

The place he was heading to was called Thunder Canyon.

It was a special area in the eastern part of the Star Dou Great Forest's mixed zone, blanketed in Thunderclouds year-round. The rocks and trees in the canyon had been struck by lightning for so long that they had taken on a scorched-black color.

A great number of lightning-attribute Soul Beasts lived there, from Lightning Lizards to Thunderstripe Leopards, and even the Millennium Thunder Drakes said to appear occasionally. For Huang Yun, whose Martial Soul was the lightning-attribute Lightning Falcon Wuhun, it was the ideal hunting ground.

He spent more than half an hour crossing the outskirts of the mixed zone before finally stopping at the edge of a rift where the terrain suddenly dropped away.

He had reached Thunder Canyon.

Viewed from above, the canyon resembled a massive scar across the earth. Its cliffs on both sides were sheer as though carved by blades, while a layer of gray Thundercloud mist filled the bottom.

Blue-white lightning occasionally erupted from deep within the canyon, illuminating the valley floor for an instant before swiftly fading. Only rolling thunder remained, crashing back and forth between the stone walls.

Huang Yun crouched on the rocky cliff at the canyon's edge, his sharp gaze sweeping over the sky below and the valley floor.

The range of activity for flying Soul Beasts was not limited to the canyon floor. More often, they darted through the Thundercloud layer above the canyon.

He waited for about the time it took to burn an incense stick when an extremely fast blue shadow suddenly flashed within the Thunderclouds.

It was as swift as lightning. With several flickers through the clouds, it crossed half the canyon.

Huang Yun's eyes narrowed at once. Even with his speed and eyesight, he could barely catch that shadow's trajectory. Ordinary Soul Masters likely would not even see an afterimage.

Good stuff.

Huang Yun did not act rashly. Instead, he continued to observe.

The blue shadow darted back and forth through the Thunderclouds several times before finally revealing its true form during a dive.

It was a Thundercloud Lightning Falcon, one size larger than Huang Yun's Lightning Falcon Wuhun possession form. Its wingspan stretched seven or eight meters wide, and its body was covered in blue-black feathers edged with dense white lightning arcs.

Its flight was incomparably fluid. Every beat of its wings left a curved trail of lightning in the air, and it was so fast that the naked eye could barely keep up.

Huang Yun silently estimated that this Thundercloud Lightning Falcon was at least twenty thousand to thirty thousand years old. It was also a top predator among lightning-element flying Soul Beasts, crushing the vast majority of Soul Beasts at the same level in speed.

That was the one.

He licked his lips, rapidly calculating a plan to kill it.

The Thundercloud Lightning Falcon flew at extraordinary speed and moved within the Thundercloud layer, where it had an open field of vision. Ordinary ambush tactics would be difficult to make work.

The only way to hit it was to be faster than it.

Fortunately, speed was what Huang Yun had in greatest abundance.