Rongrong, Don't Cry-Tonight I'll Grant You the Nine-Colored Divine Marrow!

With the Peerless Dragon Snake and their granddaughter gone, the Rocky Shoal fell silent once more.

The Dragon Emperor's Hegemony within Su Chen naturally subsided, and his Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring quietly vanished.

He turned toward Zhu Zhuqing, who had long been itching to act beside him, his voice gentle again. "Those capering clowns have retreated. Go ahead. With me here, you can absorb the ring without worry."

"Yes!!"

Zhu Zhuqing nodded firmly. The short blade in her hand sliced through the air and plunged cleanly and precisely into the Ghost Tiger's fatal weak point at its throat.

As the enormous beast gave one last faint shudder, a dense purple Thousand-Year Soul Ring, wreathed in a rich shadowy halo, slowly condensed and rose above its corpse.

Zhu Zhuqing immediately sat cross-legged. Following the breathing method Su Chen had taught her, she drew the exceptional sixteen-hundred-year Soul Ring into her body.

Su Chen stood beside her and turned his right palm slightly upward. A strand of pure, gentle origin dragon qi descended slowly like welcome rain, protecting the meridians around her heart.

After roughly half an incense stick's time, the somewhat chaotic shadow currents around Zhu Zhuqing settled completely.

Dark-gold patterns faintly emerged along her fair, slender arms, and a powerful aura that had broken through the barrier of her realm rippled from her body!!

Two yellow rings and one purple ring-three dazzling Soul Rings shone together beneath the girl's feet!!

A level thirty-one Agility-Attack Battle Soul Elder-she had done it!

Zhu Zhuqing slowly opened her eyes, rose, and nestled into Su Chen's arms.

"Young master... my third Soul Skill, Netherworld Shadow Clone, and Shadow Slash have both undergone a complete transformation. Everything I have achieved today is thanks to you."

Su Chen gently stroked her silky black hair. Feeling the girl's wholehearted reliance on him as she lay in his arms, he smiled gently. "Very good. Soul Elder is only the beginning."

Night fell, and all was still.

Xiao Wu and Zhu Zhuqing, who had just finished absorbing her Soul Ring, slept soundly in the tent farther inside the camp.

Su Chen sat cross-legged on a blue stone beside the spring pool, his plain white, soft robe stirring gently in the night breeze.

He had not entered meditation. The Ancestral Dragon Hegemony Body Art circulated steadily within him in rhythm with his breathing. His eyes were half closed, while the delusion-breaking divine pupils in his sea of consciousness constantly monitored fluctuations of soul power within ten li.

A series of faint, uneven footsteps passed through the thin mist and stopped a few paces away.

Su Chen opened his eyes, his purple-gold double pupils giving off a gentle glimmer in the night.

Ning Rongrong stood beside the spring in a thin, pale-pink nightdress, with only a loose silk robe draped over it.

The night breeze swept up mist from the pool and tousled the black hair spilling over her shoulders. Beneath the moonlight, her fair, delicate profile looked especially forlorn.

Her eyes were slightly red. Clearly, she had just been crying secretly in her tent.

"Why aren't you resting?" Su Chen asked calmly without getting up.

At the sound of his steady, resonant voice, Ning Rongrong trembled slightly.

Biting her lower lip, she slowly approached the stone and sat a few inches from Su Chen, curling her legs up.

She rested her smooth chin lightly on her knees. Starlight shimmering in the spring reflected in her eyes, and her voice was as faint as a mosquito's hum, carrying an anguish she could not conceal.

"Brother Su Chen... am I completely useless??"

Su Chen turned toward the girl beside him. He did not interrupt, merely listened quietly.

"Today, I watched Zhu Zhuqing break through her limits under your protection, absorb a sixteen-hundred-year Ghost Tiger Soul Ring, and become a Soul Elder..." Ning Rongrong's slender fingers clenched the hem of her robe. At last, she could no longer hold back her tears. They slid down and fell onto the blue stone, leaving wet marks. "Sister Xiao Wu is also at the peak of level twenty-nine, and she can unleash terrifying killing power at any moment. Only I... I'm just a support-type Soul Master."

"Even if the world praises me as the greatest support under heaven, on a real battlefield of life and death, I can only hide behind you all." Ning Rongrong gave a self-mocking smile.

"And besides... the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is flawed. Seven Treasure Glazed Tile users are trapped at level seventy-nine Soul Saint for their entire lives!! Father has spent his whole life trying and still can't break this curse. Grandpa Sword and Grandpa Bone have exhausted the sect's resources, yet even they are helpless. I used to act willfully because the sect spoiled me, thinking I was so impressive. Only after leaving did I understand that, before truly powerful people, my Martial Soul is nothing more than an exquisite cage that could collapse at any moment."

The girl raised her tear-blurred eyes to Su Chen.

"Brother Su Chen, you said you would take me to see the view from the highest point on the continent... I don't want to be a burden to you. And I don't want to spend decades only to watch helplessly as you ascend to godhood while I remain trapped in the mortal dust of level seventy-nine!!"

The girl before him had completely torn away her spoiled, arrogant shell, laying bare the deepest vulnerability and ambition in her heart without reservation. A trace of approval flashed in Su Chen's eyes.

He raised his hand, his long fingertips gently brushing Ning Rongrong's cool cheek and wiping away the glistening trail of tears.

"Who said you could only reach level seventy-nine?"

Su Chen turned his palm upward and lightly beckoned with his fingertips.

Deep within his sea of consciousness, the supreme treasure that had been floating silently was drawn out of system space.

Hum! Above the dim Spirit Spring, violent energy fluctuations suddenly surged through the air!!

A crystalline drop of liquid no larger than a fingernail hovered above Su Chen's palm, its entire surface shimmering with nine-colored chaotic divine radiance.

Within the liquid, nine divine lights-red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, black, and white-intertwined and swirled, faintly forming an intricate, mysterious primordial divine glyph.

Vast, mighty vitality of creation rippled from the drop. The withered plants around the spring pool sprouted fresh branches and buds at a speed visible to the naked eye!!

"This is called the [Nine-Colored Divine Marrow]. It is the ninefold origin of creation nurtured when heaven and earth first came into being."

Su Chen looked at Ning Rongrong, who stood dumbfounded in the divine glow, and spoke with calm composure. "Back then, at the Great Soul Arena in Suotuo City, I used a mere wisp of its aura to drive Sword Dao Chen Xin back. The Seven Treasures are flawed, but this divine marrow can mend the heavens. Swallow it and refine it, and the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda within you can transform completely into the legendary nine treasure glazed tile."

"N-nine treasure glazed tile?"

Ning Rongrong shuddered, her breath stopping altogether!!

The greatest obsession passed down through the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect for tens of thousands of years, the supreme miracle her father and generations of ancestors had dreamed of, now hovered quietly in the palm of the young man before her!!

"Brother Su Chen... this is too precious. I..."

"If you're following me, you should set your sights on godhood." Su Chen cut through her apprehension, his gaze commanding. "I keep no mediocrities at my side, much less anyone whose heart shrinks back. Swallow it. Tonight, I will personally guard you."

Ning Rongrong stared at Su Chen's handsome, resolute face, and the last trace of hesitation in her heart vanished.

She no longer asked about any price, nor did she consider the consequences of failure. She firmly believed that the man before her would never harm her.

The girl tilted her slender, fair, swanlike neck slightly upward. Her cherry lips parted, and she willingly took the hovering drop of [Nine-Colored Divine Marrow] into her mouth.

The divine marrow melted on her tongue, becoming a strange streak of light in which heat and cold intertwined, then slammed violently into every limb and bone of Ning Rongrong's body!

"Aaargh!!"

Before Ning Rongrong could guide its medicinal power with her sect's cultivation method, a piercing scream of agony burst from deep in her throat!

A sudden, disastrous change struck! The Nine-Colored Divine Marrow was a supreme treasure of creation that led directly to godhood, and the power of heaven and earth contained within it was tyrannical to the extreme.

As a support-type Soul Master, Ning Rongrong had neglected tempering her body since childhood, leaving her meridians slender and fragile.

The instant the divine marrow's mighty power erupted, her entire main meridian seemed to suffer vicious blows from nine invisible divine hammers, instantly splitting with weblike cracks.

Boom!! The raging nine-colored energy charged wildly through her body without order, like rivers pouring backward.

Waves of force spilling out of her body tore countless tiny rents in Ning Rongrong's pale-pink nightdress.

Fine beads of blood poured from the pores of her skin, as fair as white jade, staining her entire body into a poignantly beautiful, shocking figure of blood.

More horrifying still, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda Martial Soul, forced out of her body to hover above her head, did not immediately evolve beneath the brutal impact of this divine-level energy. Instead, it began to wail violently.

The crystalline seven-story pagoda's light rapidly dimmed. Huge cracks split its surface at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Her Martial Soul was collapsing, her meridians rupturing inch by inch! This was fatal backlash caused by her body's inability to endure the power!

If left unchecked, in less than three breaths, Ning Rongrong would not only lose her Martial Soul completely-her entire body would be burst apart by the rampaging divine power!

"Rongrong, hold fast to your center and focus your mind within your sea of qi!"

Su Chen's gaze darkened. Without the slightest hesitation, his figure flashed, and he shot straight into the warm pool of the Spirit Spring!