"A scorpion!" Xuan Zi and the others could not help exclaiming again.
"It was a scorpion with a jade-green body and diamond-like crystals on its shell."
"An Ice Jade Scorpion!" Xuan Zi and the others were well-informed and immediately recognized the scorpion Gu Qingnian described.
"Then I noticed that my clothes had somehow completely disappeared. When I got back afterward, I discovered that a tattoo had appeared on my back at some point." As Gu Qingnian spoke, he lifted the back of his shirt.
Xuan Zi and the others crowded behind Gu Qingnian to inspect his back, leaving him sweating with embarrassment.
"It really is an Ice Jade Scorpion!" Yan Shaozhe exclaimed.
"She left behind a little Soft Bone Rabbit. It seems that hundred-thousand-year Soft Bone Rabbit wandered into the Far North by mistake, or came there for some other reason, and suffered something that left her extremely weak.
"But the Far North is incredibly dangerous, and you happened to arrive just then. So while you were unconscious, she forced that Ice Jade Scorpion to become your soul ring as payment for helping her look after the little Soft Bone Rabbit," Xian Lin'er said after some thought, offering her guess.
The others had reached the same conclusion and nodded. Xuan Zi continued, "Then the terrible pain you said you suffered in your dream must have come from absorbing the soul ring. But that doesn't make sense. With your body so weak, you shouldn't have survived absorbing a ten-thousand-year Ice Jade Scorpion! Could that Soft Bone Rabbit have found some heavenly treasure for you?"
Gu Qingnian nodded. "It was a soul bone-a torso bone. It most likely came from that Ice Jade Scorpion, which was why I managed to absorb it."
"A soul bone!" Everyone erupted in shock. Fine, fine, fine.