Dugu Bo's shock: a Ten Thousand Year First Soul Ring, a Seven-Ring Soul Sage-where did this monster come from??

The hoarse, withered voice sounded like two shards of bone scraping together, stabbing painfully at their eardrums.

But the moment he finished speaking, Dugu Bo's cold, sinister gaze abruptly froze. His eyes passed over An Jing and settled on the air behind him.

His own granddaughter, Dugu Yan, had her graceful body tightly imprisoned by invisible currents of air. Like a humiliated marionette, she hung suspended in midair, dragged along at the white-haired young man's whim!

Boom!

In an instant, Dugu Bo became a volcano set ablaze. Towering fury erupted from him alongside an incredibly dense cloud of jade phosphorous poison!

"Yanyan?!"

"Insolent brat! You dared abduct my own granddaughter, then had the arrogance to drag her all the way onto my turf!"

Dugu Bo's eyes instantly turned a terrifying crimson. His figure became a shrill, dark-green afterimage, crossing hundreds of meters in almost the blink of an eye before crashing down just over ten paces in front of the three of them!

Thud!

As the earth shook, nine dazzling soul rings rose in rhythmic succession beneath Dugu Bo's feet!

Two yellow, two purple, five black!

It was the most orthodox, awe-inspiring optimal soul ring configuration!

Behind him, an enormous phantom dozens of meters tall reared up, its body covered in icy emerald scales and its fangs fully bared.

Overwhelming pressure mingled with a savage, blood-reeking wind and poured down in every direction, like Mount Tai crashing onto their heads.

Zhu Zhuqing felt every bone in her body straining beneath the terrifying weight. She could barely breathe!

"Grandpa! Save me, Grandpa!!"

Seeing the mighty spectacle of Dugu Bo unleashing all nine rings, Dugu Yan seized upon it like her only lifeline and began screaming tearfully from midair:

"This bastard seriously injured Yu Tianheng in the city, then imprisoned me right in the street and flew here with me dangling behind him!

"He doesn't respect you at all! He even had the arrogance to say he'd raze this place and make you kneel and beg him!

"Grandpa, kill him! Tear him into ten thousand pieces!!"

Dugu Yan gritted her teeth, her eyes filled with viciousness and the delight of impending revenge as she glared down at An Jing.

She admitted that An Jing's methods were bizarre and unfathomable, and that he had done many things that defied common sense.

Unfortunately for him, before absolute strength, every petty trick became utterly laughable.

She wanted to see with her own eyes whether this supremely arrogant fellow could maintain that breezy, lofty expression in front of her grandfather!

"A pleasure to meet you, Dugu Bo."

Confronted with the towering malevolence and enormous serpent phantom, enough to shatter an ordinary soul master's very soul,

An Jing did not so much as blink. His hands remained casually tucked into his coat pockets, his expression calm.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I'm An Jing, an unknown independent cultivator.

"I've long heard that the Jade Phosphorous Douluo possesses this uniquely blessed spiritual land, so I've come to take a few immortal herbs for my use.

"As for your granddaughter,

"I haven't harmed a hair on her head from beginning to end. I merely troubled her to act as my guide for the journey."

Before his words had fully faded, An Jing shifted his gaze slightly, and the invisible air currents binding Dugu Yan as firmly as iron abruptly dispersed.

Dugu Yan suddenly felt her body lighten. Freed of her burden, she dropped from midair and stumbled several steps before Dugu Bo swept out a gust of poisonous wind to catch her securely behind him.

"Good, good, good! An independent cultivator with no backing whatsoever, yet you dared brazenly abduct my granddaughter and covet the Divine Medicine Forbidden Land right under my nose!"

Dugu Bo laughed in extreme fury. The dark-green wrinkles on his face twisted violently with rage, and his five shriveled fingers clenched as his voice turned bone-chillingly cold:

"If those wild boasts are all the last words you have, then you can be on your way to the grave!"

Buzz!

With a piercing shriek, the first bright-yellow soul ring beneath Dugu Bo's feet erupted in a dazzling, fierce light!

"First soul skill, Jade Phosphor Purple Poison!"

Roar!

The Jade Phosphorous Serpent Emperor phantom behind him opened its enormous maw. Purple-black poison fog blotted out the sky as it poured forth like billowing signal smoke, sizzling with savage corrosive power as it engulfed An Jing and Zhu Zhuqing from above!

Wherever it passed, even the hard granite dissolved beneath that tyrannical poison, leaving pits and trenches whose bottoms could not be seen!

"Senior, dodge!" A bone-piercing stench struck Zhu Zhuqing head-on. Even the soul power protecting her body began trembling violently, and she could not help crying out.

"Dodge? On my turf, who could possibly dodge?!"

Hiding behind Dugu Bo, Dugu Yan sneered repeatedly, her eyes brimming with the delight of impending revenge:

"This is my grandfather's Titled Douluo-level poison! Even if it's only his first soul skill, anyone below the titled rank who touches the tiniest speck is doomed to die without even their bones remaining! Arrogant bastard, go repent in hell!"

Facing the lethal tide of poison that arrived in a flash, An Jing merely lifted his gaze slightly. A trace of boredom flickered through his clear, azure eyes:

"So this is the jade phosphorous poison renowned across the continent... nothing more than a jumble of disorderly molecular structures, without the slightest beauty."

Before his words faded, a terrifying, invisible surge of air exploded beneath An Jing's feet!

The earth trembled faintly. Vast, magnificent pressure, as terrifying as the firmament of deep space, surged from his body into the heavens!

Then a horrifying sight descended, one that Dugu Bo, his granddaughter, and even Zhu Zhuqing would never forget for the rest of their lives.

There was none of the gradual progression through white, yellow, and purple seen among ordinary soul masters;

The very first ring that rose beneath An Jing's feet shone with a suffocatingly deep black radiance, like an endless night congealed in the abyss!

Then came the second, the third, the fourth...

One ink-black Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring after another slowly appeared.

They circled endlessly, layer upon layer!

Seven black rings in total!

An entirely black configuration!

Level seventy, a Soul Saint?!

"Wh... what?!"

"Th-they're all Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings?!"

Dugu Bo's murky, sinister serpent pupils instantly contracted into needle-thin slits. The vicious grin on his face froze, and his heart felt as though an invisible giant hand had clenched around it!

A First Soul Ring starting at ten thousand years, with all seven rings black as ink-this had already surpassed the limits of humanity's understanding of martial soul rules!

Yet an even greater shock was still to come.

Faced with the skyful of Jade Phosphor Purple Poison rushing to devour him, An Jing did not even reveal his Martial Soul Avatar.

He did not activate a single one of his seven Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings. He merely drew his long, pale right hand lazily from his pocket and casually curled it into a fist toward the rolling tide of poison.

"Halt."

He uttered that single, indifferent word, and space itself seemed to freeze in an instant!

The dense purple fog that had swept toward him like raging waves seemed to strike an impassable wall of absolute dimensional separation. It stopped dead three feet in front of An Jing and hovered in midair, defying the laws of physics!

Then An Jing turned his fingertips slightly, and the invisible vector manipulation law descended in full.

The air was frantically sucked away, and an invisible field of high pressure built up layer upon layer!

Before that incomparably tyrannical control, the roiling purple poison smoke could not disperse in the slightest. Instead, it was forcibly swept backward and gathered together, frantically compressed, squeezed, and condensed amid piercing explosive cracks of microscopic friction!

Barely half a breath later,

The jade phosphorous poison, enough to slaughter hundreds upon thousands of soul masters, had been forcibly compressed into a tiny sphere no larger than a marble. As crystalline and transparent as pure amethyst, it hovered above An Jing's slender fingertips, spinning on its axis.

An Jing gave it a light flick with his fingertip, and the purple bead, packed with lethal deathly energy, drifted casually through the air like an insignificant plaything.

Silence.

Deathly silence spread over the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

Without drawing upon a soul ring's power, he had stripped away Dugu Bo's jade phosphorous poison and compressed it into a pellet with a mere gesture.

Dugu Bo's expression had turned distinctly strange.

He looked at An Jing before him.

Judging by his appearance, he could be no older than sixteen and a little more, at the very most.

Sixteen years old, a level seventy-one Soul Saint, with seven entirely black rings!

Genius was no longer a sufficient word to describe him.

"Boy... just who in the world are you?!"