At that moment, Ling Yuan slowly raised her head, finally able to take a good look at the young man standing before her.
He was as handsome as ever, his gaze earnest and calm, without the slightest trace of frivolity. At a glance, he looked every bit the gentleman.
Yet it was precisely Qian Juechen's attitude that swiftly smothered the hint of romantic fancy that had just stirred in Ling Yuan's heart.
There I go swooning again, Ling Yuan scolded herself.
He's the Pope of Spirit Hall now, young and powerful. I may be confident enough in my looks, but across the entire continent, there are plenty of women younger and prettier than me.
Even if he is lustful, I probably wouldn't get a turn.
Besides, back when the former Pope, Qian Xunji, was still alive, she had met Qian Juechen's mother.
Ultimately, she belonged to his mother's generation.
And whether he even had a weakness for women was another question entirely.
Bibi Dong's beauty, after all, could once have been called unrivaled across the continent.
If Qian Juechen really were a man obsessed with women, how could he have kept his head whenever he faced Bibi Dong?
He had even chosen to ruthlessly cut that beauty down, killing her with his sword without leaving so much as an intact corpse.
At that thought, a trace of self-mockery rose in Ling Yuan's heart.
"Then it's settled. Starting tomorrow, come to the Papal Palace."
Qian Juechen had no idea that so many thoughts had flashed through Ling Yuan's mind in those brief moments.
He thought the woman before him was the cool, aloof type, while she thought he had no interest in women.
Both of them harbored desires ready to ignite at the slightest spark, yet absurdly, they had managed to sidestep each other entirely.
He removed his large hand from Ling Yuan's delicate shoulder and tucked it behind his back, flexing it a little, reluctant to let the sensation go.
His gaze shifted away from Ling Yuan's deep Mariana Trench, and he turned back toward the desk as though looking for something.
Then he found a token made of an unusual material beside the desk and placed it in Ling Yuan's slender, pale hand.
"This token will let you enter and leave the Papal Palace freely, at any time, without restriction."
Accepting the token, Ling Yuan could not help feeling the warmth of his trust, along with the weight of her responsibility.
She solemnly put it away, then nodded. "I understand. I will not disappoint you, Your Holiness."
Qian Juechen reached out again and patted her shoulder, indicating that she could leave.
Only after Ling Yuan's retreating figure had vanished completely from sight did Qian Juechen's carefully composed face finally break into a smile.
Recalling her beautiful face and voluptuous figure, he could not help humming a little tune.
That afternoon, two figures returned to Spirit Hall one after another. The moment they arrived, they headed together to the Papal Palace to meet the new Pope.
They were none other than Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo, who had hurried back from Death Valley.
When they saw the newly built Papal Palace, and when they saw that someone else now occupied the Papal Throne...
They suddenly felt dazed, almost unable to believe it.
They had only been gone a few days, yet this man had actually ousted Bibi Dong from the Pope's position.
Yue Guan and Gui Mei were practically brothers born to different parents. Over the years, they had long since grown accustomed to facing everything together, and they were famously inseparable within Spirit Hall.
Powerful as they were, they had still worked out their own rules for survival within Spirit Hall.
Whoever became Pope was the person they served.
Their loyalty belonged not to an individual, but to the position.
That was one of the key reasons they had weathered the reigns of several Popes and risen to their current standing within a behemoth like Spirit Hall.
Now Bibi Dong had lost the Pope's position, and even her whereabouts were unknown. No one knew whether she was alive or dead.
As far as the two of them were concerned, she would probably never reclaim that position for the rest of her life.
That being the case, there was naturally no reason to dwell on the past.
From this day forward, their loyalty would belong solely to the new Pope before them.
They entered the Papal Palace together and offered their obeisance to the man seated high upon the Papal Throne.
"Yue Guan and Gui Mei pay their respects to Your Holiness."
Both men dropped to one knee, their bearing utterly proper, their respectful voices echoing through the empty Papal Palace.
Qian Juechen looked down at them and, after a moment, raised his hand slightly.
"Rise."
Yue Guan and Gui Mei stood at the same time, straightening their backs as they waited respectfully in the hall.
Qian Juechen's gaze swept over them. Seeing their attitude, he gave them a warm smile.
"You are both veterans of Spirit Hall, as well as trusted pillars of my father's rule. Now that I have inherited my father's position as Pope, I will still have much need of your support.
"So there is no need for such formality with me."
Qian Juechen treated Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo with exceptional courtesy.
Both Douluos had reached a soul power level of 95, making them unquestionably high-level combatants in any faction on the continent.
But how did things really stand?
If their actual combat strength were put to the test, neither of them had much to show for it.
Take Chrysanthemum Douluo alone: against Chen Xin, who was a higher level, he was practically beaten senseless without any ability to fight back.
Against weaker opponents, he seemed barely able to suppress Dugu Bo, the man known as the measuring stick for Titled Douluo combat strength. Even then, he could only gain a slight advantage, not crush him.
Yue Guan's martial soul was powerful. Across all of Spirit Hall, it should have ranked second only to the Six-Winged Angel martial soul.
The singular velvet sky chrysanthemum was an immortal herb. With proper development, becoming a Super Douluo should have been a certainty, and even reaching the pinnacle of level 99 was not impossible.
Yet once such a top-tier martial soul fell into Yue Guan's hands, he had somehow developed it into a flying-dagger style that scattered petals across the sky.
Weak in head-on combat and poor at stealth and ambushes, he had firmly established himself as the floor of his tier, with bottom-of-the-barrel combat strength.
As for Ghost Douluo, Gui Mei, his strength was slightly better than Yue Guan's.
But Ghost Douluo was an agility-attack type, and his martial soul meant he was inherently unsuited to head-on combat.
As everyone knew, agility-attack types only became more miserable as they progressed. It was a thoroughly bottom-tier specialization.
At higher soul master levels, relying on speed and burst damage to overwhelm opponents of the same level was far from easy for an agility-attack soul master.
Still, his advantage over Yue Guan lay in his skill at concealment, ambushes, and spatial traversal. He was a good choice for a covert bodyguard, or for dirty work such as assassination and intelligence gathering.
Judged solely on individual strength, both men belonged firmly in the utterly hopeless category.
Yet they shared one outrageously powerful trump card.
A chrysanthemum and a little ghost—two martial souls with absolutely nothing to do with each other—somehow possessed a Martial Soul Fusion Skill. And that skill was the Two Extremes Stillness Domain.
That domain alone had made Yue Guan and Gui Mei's names a source of considerable wariness among the continent's many powerful figures.
The effects of the Two Extremes Stillness Domain were truly outrageous.
Once the domain unfolded, it was as though someone had pressed pause on everything within its range.
Soul masters and other targets alike would be forcibly immobilized once caught inside it. Even the soul power within a soul master's body would be suppressed.
That was no longer something a simple difference in soul power levels could easily overcome.
While everyone else was frantically stacking combat power, Uncles Chrysanthemum and Ghost were already playing with mechanics.
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