Could Xu Tianyuan Have Twin Martial Souls?

Ma Rulong still had his hands clenched around Xu Tianyuan's collar.

Three seconds. Xu Tianyuan had given him three seconds.

Unfortunately, he clearly hadn't taken those three seconds seriously.

Instead, he angrily tried to slap Xu Tianyuan.

"Three."

Xu Tianyuan calmly uttered the word.

Ma Rulong froze for a moment, not yet grasping what the countdown meant.

"Two."

"One."

Only then did Ma Rulong realize something was wrong and instinctively try to let go.

Too late.

Xu Tianyuan dropped all pretense of courtesy. He raised his hands, seized both of Ma Rulong's wrists, and bent them sideways.

Crack!

The sound of shattering bones reached everyone's ears with perfect clarity.

"Aah!"

Ma Rulong screamed as agonizing pain exploded through both arms and shot straight to the crown of his head.

His legs buckled, and with a thud, he dropped straight to his knees.

Cold sweat instantly covered his forehead.

He lowered his head and stared blankly at his hands.

Good grief.

Both arms had snapped at the forearms.

His forearms dangled limply, swinging back and forth with his movements. Their shape looked exactly like a plate of chicken wings served at the table-the kind fried so long that even the bones had turned crumbly.

"You..."

Ma Rulong fought through the excruciating pain, about to demand an explanation.

But the instant he raised his head, his vision seemed to go dark.

A small giant had appeared before him.

The small giant stood in front of him, blotting out the sun entirely and casting an enormous shadow that swallowed him whole.

Ma Rulong slowly lifted his head, tilting his neck farther and farther back. Only when it was bent nearly ninety degrees could he just barely make out the small giant's face.

He knew that face very well.

Xu Tianyuan.

Except this Xu Tianyuan stood over two meters tall, with bulging muscles that looked as though someone had stuffed little mountains beneath his skin.

Broad shoulders, a narrow waist, arms thicker than Ma Rulong's thighs, two slabs of chest muscle, and eight abdominal muscles-each looked as though it had been carved with blades and axes.

"Holy shit!"

Ma Rulong was utterly dumbfounded.

He could rack his brains to pieces and still never understand why Xu Tianyuan had grown taller and more muscular in the blink of an eye.

Anyone who didn't know better would have thought the guy had injected growth hormones-the kind that took effect immediately.

"What the hell is this?"

Meng Hongchen, Mi Jia, Xiao Xiafeng, Chen Fei, and Lin Xi were equally dumbstruck.

They stood rooted to the spot, mouths open wide enough to fit an egg, their heads buzzing as though they had witnessed the strangest thing under heaven.

In fact, of everything they had witnessed in their lives, this really was the strangest.

Certain facts about Xu Tianyuan were no secret.

For example, his martial soul was the sun.

And precisely because of that, Meng Hongchen and the others felt their understanding of the world collapse.

If Xu Tianyuan had a beast martial soul, suddenly growing taller would have made sense.

After all, beast martial soul possession did enhance a soul master's body.

Growing taller, getting stronger, sprouting scales or fur-all of that was perfectly normal, spelled out clearly in the textbooks.

But a sun martial soul?

That should have been a variant of a tool martial soul, with some characteristics of an elemental martial soul mixed in. In short, it had absolutely nothing to do with beast martial souls.

Tool martial soul possession did not cause this sort of change in a soul master's body.

That was common knowledge, something even newly enrolled students understood.

Could Xu Tianyuan have twin martial souls?

The thought burst into the minds of Meng Hongchen and the others, leaving them deeply shocked.

But that didn't make sense either.

Those with twin martial souls were, without exception, geniuses rarely seen in this world.

Across the entire Douluo Continent, the people who possessed twin martial souls could be counted on two hands. Every one of them possessed breathtaking talent, and every one was treated like a revered ancestor by the major factions.

Xu Tianyuan had been such a loser before, and now he had suddenly become a genius with twin martial souls?

It made no sense.

It made absolutely no sense.

At that moment, the minds of Meng Hongchen and the others crashed outright, briefly robbing them of the ability to think.

All they could hear were Ma Rulong's screams.

"Aaaah!"

Ma Rulong's vicious side had been fully roused.

Having both hands crippled was worse than death for a soul engineer.

Although he could seek out a healing soul master to repair them or have mechanical arms fitted, his hands would never regain their former dexterity.

And dexterity was precisely what making soul tools required.

In other words, it would be almost impossible for him to reach the highest heights in the field of soul tools in the future.

This was no different from the hatred of having his father killed or his wife stolen.

"Xu Tianyuan, I'll fucking kill you!"

Ma Rulong roared in fury.

Six soul rings slowly rose from beneath his feet and circled his body.

Two yellow, two purple, and two black.

Six full soul rings gleamed coldly in the sunlight.

A Soul Emperor.

Ma Rulong was actually a Six-Ring Soul Emperor.

Xu Tianyuan stood where he was, looking down at him, as unruffled as the surface of an ancient well.

Ma Rulong forcibly straightened his bent arms with soul power. The pain made his entire body tremble, but the savage gleam in his eyes only intensified.

Then a suit of mechanical battle armor covered his body.

The silver-gray armor encased him from neck to ankles. Rows of tiny soul power cores were embedded at the joints, with faint streams of light circulating within them.

Clearly, this was some kind of defensive soul tool, and a high-grade one at that.

"Die!"

Ma Rulong pulled a large saber from his Storage Soul Tool.

The saber was blood-red from end to end and covered in fine patterns. Its blade was a full meter and a half long, with three thumb-sized red crystals embedded along its spine. One glance was enough to tell it was no harmless weapon.

He raised the saber and hacked straight down at Xu Tianyuan, trying to cleave him in two to vent the hatred in his heart.

The blade sliced through the air with a piercing shriek.

"You're too slow."

Xu Tianyuan stood exactly where he was, not moving an inch.

He could clearly see the saber's descending trajectory, every detail perfectly visible from beginning to end.

But he did not dodge.

Instead, he reached out a hand to catch it.

"Arrogant fool!"

Ma Rulong hadn't expected him to dare be so reckless. His resentment intensified, and he pushed the muscles in both hands harder, holding nothing back.

At that moment, every bit of his Soul Emperor-level soul power poured into the blood-red saber.

The blood-red patterns on the blade lit up one by one, as though something within it was awakening.

But just as the saber was about to strike Xu Tianyuan's head...

Xu Tianyuan's right hand seemed to blur out of existence, moving too fast for the naked eye to follow. In the blink of an eye, he stopped the saber.

And he did it by pinching it between two fingers.

His index and middle fingers held the blade firmly between them.

The blood-red saber stopped three inches above Xu Tianyuan's head, unable to descend even a fraction farther.

"What?!"

Ma Rulong looked as though he had seen a ghost, his voice warping with fright.

He desperately increased his output, the muscles in both arms strained to their limit, yet the saber in his hands did not move an inch.