Five Years Later, Talismans Evolve

The holidays passed at an easy pace.

Lin Xuan rose before dawn every day and practiced his punches in the clearing behind the village.

He ran through the Inch Force Tang San had taught him and the Leg Technique Xiao Wu had taught him, one routine after another. His fists struck his homemade wooden post with a steady series of dull thuds.

On the third day, Xiao Wu started coming along too.

"Practicing alone is boring. I'll spar with you."

That was what she said, but every time Xiao Wu stepped in, she fought for real. Each kick was fiercer than the last.

Still, sparring with her did Lin Xuan a lot of good. She had no fixed pattern, and her pace shifted without warning, putting his reflexes to the test.

Tang San joined them now and then.

The three took turns fighting in the clearing, then went to Old Jack's for a free meal.

Old Jack was delighted. He kept replacing his kitchen pot with a bigger one.

"You three can really eat."

With a mouthful of flatbread, Xiao Wu mumbled back:

"That's because your cooking is so good, Grandpa Jack."

Old Jack grinned from ear to ear at the praise and went back to the kitchen to add more firewood.

Six or seven days passed like that.

The three said goodbye to Village Chief Jack and returned to Notting Academy.

The old man stood at the village entrance for a long while. Only when the three figures vanished around the hillside did he turn back.

Time flew. Five years passed.

Life at Notting Academy was dull and orderly.

Classes, martial arts practice, cultivation, drawing talismans. The occasional squabble with Xiao Wu, the occasional spar with Tang San.

Lin Xuan spent those five years following a straight path.

But by the end of it, the results were impressive.

At twelve, in his final semester at Notting Academy, Lin Xuan's Soul Power reached level thirty-five.

At a junior academy like Notting Academy, that was enough to make him its undisputed strongest fighter.

Not one person in the academy, lecturers included, had a higher Soul Power level.

Yu Xiaogang did not count, of course. He had not even passed level thirty.

Lin Xuan knew perfectly well that his progress was not due to talent alone.

He had practiced with the Clear Mind Talisman for over five years, and its effects had grown stronger along with his Soul Power.

What was more, its ability to refine Spiritual Power had far exceeded his original expectations.

His growing Spiritual Power fed back into his Soul Power cultivation, creating a cycle: the stronger his Soul Power, the more precisely he could draw talismans; the more he drew, the faster his Spiritual Power grew; and the stronger his Spiritual Power, the more efficiently he cultivated.

Over five years, that cycle repeated countless times, finally pushing him to level thirty-five.

He had obtained his second Soul Ring in his third year.

For that hunt, Lin Xuan went alone to Wind Valley, southeast of Soul Hunting Forest. He lured an eight-hundred-and-twenty-year-old Wind Falcon into a prepared ambush with a Fireball Talisman.

He had stuck thirty-seven Fireball Talismans to the rock walls on both sides of Wind Valley and covered them with loose stones. The instant the Wind Falcon chased the bait into the passage, all thirty-seven talismans exploded at once.

The Wind Falcon never even had time to scream.

It had been quite a sight.

His second Soul Ring unlocked the wind element. The Primal Beginning Talisman Scripture unlocked three talismans: the Wind Blade Talisman, Wind Control Talisman, and Wind Guard Talisman.

He obtained his third Soul Ring early last year.

His target was a two-thousand-year-old Ice Thorn Beast. This time, he used even more talismans: sixty-three Fireball Talismans and fifty-two Wind Blade Talismans.

The Ice Thorn Beast was much harder to deal with than the Wind Falcon. Tough-skinned and heavily armored, it lost only one layer of its icy shell to the Fireball Talismans' explosions.

But the Wind Blade Talismans struck right behind them. The blades slipped through the cracks left by the blasts and sliced the beast to pieces.

A purple third Soul Ring. Two thousand years old.

Once he unlocked the ice element, Lin Xuan's talisman arsenal truly came into its own.

Fire, wind, and ice—three branches working side by side.

What was more, after he passed level thirty, the Fireball Talisman from his first Soul Ring had evolved on its own into the Great Fireball Talisman.

Its fireball had once been the size of a palm. Now it launched a mass of flame half a person's height, with several times the impact and burning range.

The Wind Blade Talisman had also evolved into the Rending Wind Talisman. Its cutting power was on another level.

But Lin Xuan still used only support talismans in front of others.

The Clear Mind Talisman, Blazing Fire Talisman, Gale Talisman, and Frost Lock Talisman.

The Frost Lock Talisman was especially useful. Not only could it add ice-element attacks to an ally's arsenal, it could also release ice chains to bind enemies.

Support and control in one—an extremely powerful combination!

His elemental enhancements had now reached forty percent.

And when he supported a Soul Master who used the matching element, the effect was even stronger.

Of course, support had never been Lin Xuan's strongest hand.

That was his attack talismans.

Over the past five years, he had lifted the floor tile beneath his bed more times than he could count.

Lin Xuan could not be bothered to count the ordinary Fireball Talismans he had stashed beneath it. He estimated there were seven or eight thousand.

Fortunately, when Lin Xuan passed level thirty, Dean Reck gave him a Storage Soul Tool. Otherwise, he would not have known where to put so many Fireball Talismans and Great Fireball Talismans.

Now Lin Xuan spent his time drawing Great Fireball Talismans. He had already stored over a thousand of them.

Tang San had not been idle either.

Over the five years, he cultivated under Yu Xiaogang's guidance while finding time to forge hidden weapons at the Blacksmith Shop.

Dividing his attention slowed his cultivation somewhat. Even so, Tang San had reached level thirty-one a few days ago and obtained his third Soul Ring.

A level-thirty-one Soul Elder at twelve years old.

Of course, Tang San also owed that achievement to Lin Xuan's Clear Mind Talismans.

Tang San had been teaching Lin Xuan martial arts all along, after all, and Lin Xuan was not stingy.

Still, Lin Xuan sometimes found himself pondering one thing.

In the original story, Tang San's third Soul Ring had come from a Man Faced Demon Spider and brought him the Eight Spider Lances as an added boon.

But now his third Soul Ring came from a fifteen-hundred-year-old Nether Spider. There were no Eight Spider Lances. His third soul skill was still Spider Web Restraint, but it was considerably weaker.

An opportunity like that came down to timing and luck.

Change the timeline, and there was no telling what would happen.

Lin Xuan did not dwell on it, though. Whether Tang San had the Eight Spider Lances made little difference to him.

Xiao Wu's progress, on the other hand, surprised him.

She had never been particularly diligent about cultivating. If she could lie down, she would not sit; if she could sit, she would not stand.

But her foundation as a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast was exceptional, and Lin Xuan had given her a Clear Mind Talisman every day for the past five years without fail.

Despite an attitude toward cultivation that could only be called lazy, she had reached level thirty-three as a Soul Elder on the strength of the Clear Mind Talisman's effects.

Xiao Wu herself did not care much. With Lin Xuan's talismans enhancing her, her actual fighting strength far exceeded her level.

As for Yu Xiaogang...

In those five years, Lin Xuan could count on one hand the number of times Yu Xiaogang had appeared before him.

Lin Xuan was only too happy to be left alone.

Yu Xiaogang's restraint came from Tang Hao's instructions. Tang Hao had told him to win Lin Xuan over.

Yu Xiaogang naturally did not dare be too forceful.

But Yu Xiaogang believed that once Tang San, Xiao Wu, and Lin Xuan went to Shrek Academy together, Lin Xuan would eventually become his disciple after seeing what Yu Xiaogang could teach him!