"Hum!"
In the Star Dou Great Forest Core Zone, the ambient Soul Power was so dense it was almost viscous.
With his hands in his pockets, Xiao Dong strode through the air. His terrifying perception, strengthened by his Brain Martial Soul and Million-Year Tian Meng's origin power, spread into a skyful of spiritual senses that swept wildly through the forest.
Within mere minutes, Xiao Dong's gaze paused on a crack in the trunk of a withered, ten-thousand-year-old giant tree.
There, a strange Soul Beast roughly twenty to thirty feet long lay quietly dormant.
The Soul Beast looked exceedingly peculiar. Its entire body was a mottled, withered yellow, like dried bamboo slips, and it resembled a bizarre booklouse magnified countless times. Across its flattened body, obscure and profound spiritual runes faintly flowed.
A thirty-thousand-year-old spiritual beast-the Thousand-Pattern Spirit Booklouse!
"The Soul Beasts in this world really do come in every imaginable variety. Even a booklouse that feeds on ancient trees' spiritual sap and lingering mental impressions can cultivate to thirty thousand years..."
Xiao Dong clicked his tongue in surprise, but his astonishment lasted only an instant before a cold, satisfied gleam flashed through his eyes.
Now that he possessed the purifying lotus demon flame, he had no need to scour the land for older beasts.
As long as its attributes fit, who cared whether it was thirty thousand or twenty thousand years old? He could slap it dead and absorb it as his fifth Soul Ring first. At worst, he would slaughter a few more Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts afterward and use the demon flame's wondrous, domineering power to forcibly infuse the ring and raise it to a hundred thousand years!
"Boom!"
As that thought flashed through his mind, Xiao Dong hesitated no longer. His figure abruptly moved as he unleashed the Earth-tier movement technique, Three Thousand Lightning Movement, turning into a silver afterimage of wind and thunder. Almost as though he had teleported, he appeared directly above the Thousand-Pattern Spirit Booklouse!
"Die!"
Xiao Dong's gaze was cold as ice. He could not even be bothered to use a martial art or Dou Technique. Relying solely on the mountain-crushing, peak-shattering strength of his Homelander Physique, he threw a simple punch that tore through the air with a shrill sonic boom and slammed viciously into the Thousand-Pattern Spirit Booklouse's flattened body!
"Bam!"
An intensely muffled impact exploded among the ancient trees. Before the booklouse could struggle or utter so much as half a shriek, its hard, flattened shell shattered under that incomparably domineering brute force, sending flesh and blood flying!
A deep black Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring slowly rose from the shattered remains.
Xiao Dong drifted calmly down from the air and swept his sleeve. A wisp of gentle, milky-white purifying lotus demon flame surged from his palm. Like a tyrannical sovereign, it erased and purified every trace of savage malice within the Soul Ring in the blink of an eye.
Opening his mouth wide, Xiao Dong swallowed that thirty-thousand-year-old fifth Soul Ring without the slightest resistance!
"Rumble!"
The instant the fifth Soul Ring entered his body, the vast Soul Power that had stabilized at the very peak of level fifty erupted once more in earth-shattering roars and tremors!
The level-fifty Soul King barrier burst apart like flimsy paper!
Level fifty-one!
Level fifty-two!
Level fifty-three!
The wildly surging fluctuations of Soul Power finally settled firmly at the formidable level of a level-fifty-three Soul King!
In less than half a day, he had raced from a One-Ring Soul Master through four major realms and stepped straight into the ranks of Five-Ring Soul Kings. Such an utterly absurd cultivation speed was beyond anything recorded in all the myths and legends of the Douluo Continent over the past ten thousand years!
"Crack!"
As Xiao Dong's Soul Power fully stabilized, deep within the Mud Pill Palace in his mind, the sixth golden shackle, representing Xiao Yan's realm beyond Dou Ling, burst open with an earth-shaking crack!
The Dou Wang-level Xiao Yan Inheritance had officially awakened!
The phantoms of two brilliant golden scrolls, radiating vast, ancient pressure, materialized in the center of Xiao Dong's Sea of Consciousness like two towering mountains!
The first scroll unfurled. Vast, domineering hand seals filled the heavens, and an ancient aura spread, faintly carrying the might to shatter the firmament.
High Earth-tier Dou Technique, Emperor Seal Art, first seal: Mountain Splitting Seal!
A closely guarded secret of the Gu Clan, this peerless killing seal could only be cultivated by those with truly supreme talent. With a turn of the hand it summoned clouds, with another it brought rain; its destructive power could make heaven and earth change color!
Immediately afterward, the second scroll burst open. The phantoms of five magnificent giant flame beasts, each possessing its own spiritual nature, threw back their heads and roared. Towering waves of fire swept outward, radiating world-destroying heat that could burn mountains and boil seas!
High Earth-tier Dou Technique, Five-Wheel Separation Flame Art!
"High Earth-tier Dou Techniques..."
Sensing those two supreme arts in his mind, their power increased manyfold, Xiao Dong finally could not stop an intensely fervent grin from spreading across his face. His chest brimmed with exhilaration and satisfaction.
Whether the Mountain Splitting Seal or the Five-Wheel Separation Flame Art, Dou Techniques of this level had completely transcended ordinary martial arts. They were true trump cards with heaven-reaching power!
If he unleashed the Mountain Splitting Seal at full strength in the future, even a Limit Douluo facing him would likely be sent flying by a single seal, vomiting blood with bones broken and tendons snapped!
Yet amid his wild delight, Xiao Dong's brows lifted slightly.
The Five-Wheel Separation Flame Art was undeniably powerful. Gathering five flames into spirits and forming an array could even rival the embryonic form of a Heaven-tier Dou Technique. But its strict prerequisite was that he assemble five different powerful flames!
"Five kinds of flame..."
Xiao Dong's eyes shifted slightly, his gaze casually falling on the remains of the two Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts behind him, which he had been keeping suspended with his spiritual power.
The thirty-thousand-year-old Azure Flame Demon Eagle and the fifty-thousand-year-old Red-Armored Flame Crystal Turtle!
"I can't let the origin beast flames inside these two Ferocious Beasts go to waste."
Xiao Dong gave a cold chuckle and abruptly thrust out his right hand. The purifying lotus demon flame in his palm transformed into two fiery claws that mercilessly plunged deep into the heart channels of the two ten-thousand-year-old carcasses!
"Hiss! Hiss!"
Under the demon flame's domineering power, which forcibly stripped and refined them, two dense core flames of different colors, radiating violent fire-attribute fluctuations, were extracted from the giant beasts' corpses in mere moments!
One was wreathed in azure flames, like a demon bird crying out-the azure flame demon fire!
The other was blood-red, like flowing magma-the earth crystal crimson flame!
Xiao Dong flicked his fingers in succession. The purifying lotus demon flame instantly subdued and tamed both violent ten-thousand-year-old beast flames, drawing them into the meridians within his body.
Together with the purifying lotus demon flame he already possessed, ranked third on the Heavenly Flame Ranking, he had smoothly gathered three of the five flames required for the Five-Wheel Separation Flame Art in mere moments!
Yet after dealing with the beast flames, Xiao Dong's gaze darkened slightly. A huge question he had been suppressing all this time surfaced in his mind once more.
Xiao Yan's inheritance, from Dou Qi to Dou Zhe, Da Dou Shi, Dou Ling, and now Dou Wang, has unlocked Dou Techniques, movement techniques, secret arts, and alchemy step by step. But... where on earth is the supreme cultivation method at the very heart of it all, the Flame Mantra?!
Xiao Dong murmured inwardly, his brows tightly furrowed.
By all rights, a cultivation method was the true foundation of Dou Qi cultivation, yet so far, the inheritance had not yielded a single method for circulating it.
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