"What? Another wager?"
"And the opponent is only a Soul King?"
Back at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, Xiao Wu looked at Gu Ping'an as though he had found money lying on the ground.
Every so often, she tilted her head to glance at She Long beside them.
Gu Ping'an had won him from Spirit Hall, too.
She Long silently rose and walked away. He had no idea how he ought to feel, or what expression he ought to wear.
He should have been happy to have a former colleague joining him at work.
Yet the thought of another former colleague being used as a stake left him with complicated feelings.
Only Shui Bing'er looked utterly bewildered, as though she were living in a dream.
Since when could Titled Douluos, the mighty figures of the Soul Master World, be used as stakes in a wager?
She had never even heard of such a thing before, let alone dared to imagine it.
"All right! Don't disturb me. I'm going to absorb a Soul Bone and see whether I can reach rank fifty before the duel."
Gu Ping'an rose and went to the edge of the pool at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, where the Blue Silver Grass grew most densely.
Sitting among the Blue Silver Grass gave him a profound sense of peace, as though he had returned to a home that belonged to him alone.
He placed the Head Soul Bone before him, drawing on it with both Soul Power and Spiritual Power.
Energy circulated, and the energy within the Soul Bone flowed continuously into Gu Ping'an's body.
The sun and moon took their turns, and time slipped quietly by.
As dawn broke, a shaft of pale golden light shone down. Guided by his Soul Power and Spiritual Power, the Soul Bone slowly sank into Gu Ping'an's body, merging with his head.
"Rank fifty!"
Facing the golden morning light spilling down from the sky, Gu Ping'an slowly extended his hand, as though he wanted to catch it in his palm.
His Spiritual Power had increased enormously, and he felt that his control over the Blue Silver Grass had become much more effortless.
He simply had no idea what realm his Spiritual Power had reached. He knew little about what the various levels of Spiritual Power could accomplish.
Keep going!
Gu Ping'an took out metal- and water-attribute resources and began using Blue Silver Grass to devour the energy within them.
The duel was scheduled for a month later.
He intended to maximize his metal and water attributes within that month, so that once he won the match, he could immediately use the resources he won to elevate those attributes.
Afterward, he would work on securing the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm, trying to persuade him to sacrifice himself as his fifth Soul Ring and grant him a second Martial Soul slot.
"What are you doing?"
When he finished cultivating, he found Xiao Wu standing right in front of him with her neck stretched out.
"Your clones are back."
"They caught a big scorpion and a treant."
The two groups of clones sent to the Far North and the Star Dou Great Forest had returned.
The big scorpion was probably an Ice Jade Scorpion, the Soul Beast he had instructed his clones to prepare for Shui Bing'er.
As for the treant, he had never heard of it.
He rose and walked outside.
A translucent ice-crystal scorpion, emerald green from head to tail, came into view.
It looked like a sculpted work of art.
Turning to the other side, he saw a Soul Beast with a humanoid body made of wood, tightly bound in coil upon coil of Blue Silver Grass.
Branches covered its shoulders and head.
"Ping'an, what kind of Soul Beast is this? Why have I never seen one?" Xiao Wu circled the treant curiously.
At Xiao Wu's question, Shui Bing'er shifted her gaze from the Ice Jade Scorpion to the treant, then finally to Gu Ping'an.
She wanted to hear him explain what kind of Soul Beast it was.
"I don't know!"
Uncertainty and surprise appeared on Gu Ping'an's face.
A treant Soul Beast?
He had never seen it in either the library of Nuoding City's Spirit Hall or Yu Xiaogang's book collection.
Still... as long as it was an ultimate wood-attribute Soul Beast, that was enough.
"Blue Silver Devour!"
The Blue Silver Emperor Martial Soul extended from Gu Ping'an's palm, wrapping the treant Soul Beast anew even though it was already enveloped in his clones' Blue Silver Grass.
The treant Soul Beast's life essence flowed along the Blue Silver Grass into his body.
Like a drop of water falling into a pan of boiling oil, the Soul Power throughout his body seethed and became extraordinarily active, as though it had come alive.
"Something's wrong!"
Gu Ping'an's eyes abruptly widened.
His wood-attribute Soul Power was indeed evolving toward ultimate wood.
But another power within him was rising alongside it.
"Ping'an, you're glowing green."
Xiao Wu pulled Shui Bing'er farther away as a mist brimming with vitality radiated from Gu Ping'an's body.
The mist drifted down, settling on the Blue Silver Grass covering the surrounding ground.
In an instant, the Blue Silver Grass, originally about half a meter tall, began growing wildly.
Before long, it had reached a meter in height.
One meter ten, one meter twenty, one meter thirty...
Only when it reached roughly a meter and a half did its growth gradually stop.
"What powerful vitality!"
In the Divine Realm, a woman in a sea-green gown, surrounded by an aura of life, sensed something and traced that sensation to its source.
"Blue Silver Grass?"
"Is this... devouring other lives to complete itself?"
The woman's delicate brows knitted, a hint of disgust entering her expression.
She had little liking for such wicked methods.
"Xiao Lu, what are you looking at?"
A man draped in an enormous purple cloak appeared beside her and followed her perception to investigate.
"A Quasi-Soul King? Seven years old, not even eight. What extraordinary talent."
"The two little girls beside him aren't lacking in talent either..."
"No, this one is a Soul Beast in human form."
The purple-cloaked man paid that little mind, returning his attention to Gu Ping'an.
"It seems our Divine Realm will have another deity before long."
"His methods are rather wicked." The woman called Xiao Lu clearly disliked Gu Ping'an's devouring method.
"The strong prey on the weak. That is a fundamental law of heaven and earth. His methods merely differ from those of most people." The purple-cloaked man took the opposite view.
Inside the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, Gu Ping'an had no idea that two great deities had taken notice of him.
"It's much stronger than before. Both its toughness and vitality have increased severalfold.
"And the Blue Silver Grass seems to have undergone some sort of change."
With a thought, countless strands of Blue Silver Grass formed a wooden man.
Turning into wood!
What should have been a man made of Blue Silver Grass had become a solid wooden man.
The wooden man dispersed, turning back into Blue Silver Grass, which wove and entwined itself into a wooden dragon.
Hashirama Senju?
With some research, could I use Wood Release: Nativity of a World of Trees, or even Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands?
And there's its vitality!
Gu Ping'an could sense that the powerful vitality the Blue Silver Emperor already possessed had evolved to the level of ultimate life.
Why didn't ultimate life require another source of ultimate life energy as a catalyst for its evolution?
Was it because wood and life complemented each other?
Unable to figure it out, he shook his head and stopped dwelling on it.
As long as it did no harm, that was enough.
Withdrawing his Blue Silver Emperor Martial Soul, Gu Ping'an looked at Shui Bing'er beside him.
"Your reserves of Soul Power should already have reached rank thirty.
"You've only remained at rank twenty because you don't have your second Soul Ring."
"This is the Soul Beast I found for your second Soul Ring: a fifteen-hundred-year-old Ice Jade Scorpion."
Gu Ping'an had a clone move the bound Ice Jade Scorpion in front of Shui Bing'er.
"You've absorbed a seventy-thousand-year Head Soul Bone, refined whale rubber, and cultivated the Five Elements Rotation Technique. Absorbing it shouldn't be much of a problem. Go ahead!"
"Mm!"
Shui Bing'er took out a short sword and stabbed it into the Ice Jade Scorpion's head.
Pfft!
The short sword pierced its brain. The Ice Jade Scorpion twitched twice, then quickly went still.
A purple Soul Ring slowly rose.
Shui Bing'er sat cross-legged on the ground and slowly drew the Soul Ring toward herself.
A layer of frost gradually spread outward from where she sat.
Gu Ping'an stepped back twice and observed Shui Bing'er's condition.
Apart from a pained frown at the very beginning, everything afterward went smoothly.
Roughly two hours later, the Soul Ring slowly sank into Shui Bing'er's body.
"She did it. Her second Soul Ring is a thousand-year ring."
Xiao Wu sounded envious. Her own self-condensed second Soul Ring had only reached a little over nine hundred and ninety years.
"That's what comes of being unable to absorb Soul Bones. If you absorbed one, you could condense a thousand-year second Soul Ring."
"Get ready. I'll send a clone to fetch Dugu Yan."
"Then we'll head to Nuoding City."
He had long wanted to strike a blow to little Xiao San's resolve, but his own affairs had kept him occupied.
There was still a month before the duel, so this was the perfect time to deliver Tang San's Soul Bone to him.
Before you continue