"Kid."
Hearing a familiar shout, Lu Yuan turned around and saw that it was indeed Chrysanthemum Douluo Yue Guan.
"Chrys... Chrysanthemum Douluo."
Lu Yuan bowed and cupped his hands to greet Chrysanthemum Douluo.
"Lu Yuan, I thought you weren't coming."
"Chrysanthemum Douluo is joking. As the number one power on the continent, the Spirit Hall Academy is also the strongest academy on the continent, so it's my honor to join here. Lu Yuan was just delayed for a moment because of something on the way."
"Hmph, slick-tongued."
Chrysanthemum Douluo reached his hand out toward Lu Yuan. Lu Yuan shuddered all over, too late to react before Chrysanthemum Douluo had already placed his hand on his shoulder.
Crap!
This Yue Guan, he isn't going to do something to me, is he? In broad daylight, I'm still just a child.
Lu Yuan closed his eyes tightly, then suddenly felt a rush of comfort throughout his body, as if some foreign substance had been expelled.
"This is..."
Lu Yuan opened his eyes again and found that Chrysanthemum Douluo had already pulled his hand back.
"What are you thinking? I merely took back my own soul power, afraid it would affect your cultivation."
After hearing what Chrysanthemum Douluo said, Lu Yuan felt himself up and down and found that the strange soul power inside his body had indeed vanished.
Then Chrysanthemum Douluo walked past Lu Yuan and casually dropped a sentence.
"Follow me."
Lu Yuan wore a face full of question marks. Follow you where?
Noticing that Lu Yuan hadn't moved, Chrysanthemum Douluo turned his head back.
"Didn't you hear me? Walk with me. His Holiness the Pope wants to see you."
What? Bibi Dong wants to see me?!
"Oh-oh!"
Lu Yuan acknowledged, following Chrysanthemum Douluo away from the New Student Ceremony Hall and arriving at a place resembling a conference room.
Upon entering, he saw Bibi Dong, and beside her was a black figure, masked, who should be Chrysanthemum Douluo's good partner, Ghost Douluo Gui Mei.
"You are Lu Yuan?"
Bibi Dong parted her delicate lips, and Lu Yuan was startled. How had his name reached Bibi Dong's ears?
At this moment, a flash of inspiration crossed Lu Yuan's mind, recalling how back then the three men from the Nuoding City Spirit Hall Branch stood before him to block the angry Lord Xiao,
as well as how Chrysanthemum Douluo would actually condescend to come to Nuoding City to invite a genius like him to join the Spirit Hall Academy.
I... I couldn't have caught Bibi Dong's attention long ago, could I?
Lu Yuan muttered inwardly. Come to think of it, he had been detected by a certain blind God of Kings of Spirit Hall as having an external martial soul and innate level 0.5 soul power.
No matter how you looked at it, this was a carbon copy of Yu Xiaogang.
As long as Su Yuntao reported the situation of his awakened martial soul upward, an external martial soul-one of only two such examples on the entire continent-truly had the potential, by virtue of its rarity, to spread to Spirit City and even into Bibi Dong's field of vision.
"Yes."
"Oh, you actually admit it?" Bibi Dong's pretty brows furrowed slightly.
"Release your martial soul, and by the way, release your soul rings."
This...
Lu Yuan did as he was told; after all, his strength was worlds apart compared to Bibi Dong's.
"Meow."
After Meowmeow came out, it curiously observed the surrounding situation, wondering what good place Lu Yuan had brought it to this time.
Yet when Meowmeow saw Lu Yuan's nervous expression, its eyes filled with confusion. Then, catching sight of Bibi Dong, it suddenly let out a startled cry.
"Meow!" (Master, such a scary woman, meow.)
Meowmeow stretched its body in terror and shrieked, then bolted behind Lu Yuan, observing the situation with cowardly cat behavior.
At Lu Yuan's feet, two rings of yellow soul rings appeared.
Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo were shocked, but Bibi Dong's lips curved upward.
"This little ghost, he actually became a Soul Grandmaster at the age of eight?!" Ghost Douluo also rarely revealed an expression of astonishment.
Spending just over two years to elevate one's soul power by more than ten ranks-placed in the tens of thousands of years of the Douluo Continent's history, it was something only a handful of rumored legendary figures could achieve.
Unexpectedly, today the three Douluo had the fortune to witness it.
Bibi Dong's voice was alluring and seductive as she continued speaking to Lu Yuan.
"Then tell me, how is it that at the age of eight, your soul power has already been cultivated to the twentieth-odd rank? Furthermore, your first and second soul rings are actually Purple Soul Rings!"
What!
The moment Bibi Dong's words left her mouth, Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo beside her stared at Lu Yuan with shocked and skeptical eyes.
Until Bibi Dong's gaze turned red, the scenery around them growing as bright red as a blood prison, forcing the effectiveness of Lu Yuan's domain to weaken so that the true purple color of his first and second soul rings was finally revealed.
His Holiness the Pope actually released the Slaughter Domain! And moreover, how are this kid's first and second soul rings both genuine Thousand-Year Soul Rings? They aren't disguised after all? Ghost Douluo thought to himself.
Oh no, I miscalculated!
At this moment, the most nervous person in his heart was still Lu Yuan.
As a rare genius soul master of the past thousand years who had trained through Slaughter City, Bibi Dong had long possessed her own domain, the Slaughter Domain, and naturally could tell more easily than other Titled Douluo that Lu Yuan had used a domain to wrap around himself, concealing his strength and soul rings.
Yet the gap between Lu Yuan and Bibi Dong was vast; when Bibi Dong's Slaughter Domain collided with Lu Yuan's Shining Tournament Domain, even though she hadn't used her full strength, it still forced Lu Yuan's domain to weaken, thereby exposing his two rings of Thousand-Year Soul Rings.
And as noble Titled Douluo, facing this peerless situation, Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo were enough to have their jaws drop.
That kid, merely a year has passed, and he has already grown into a Soul Grandmaster? How is his cultivation speed not dropping instead increasing? No wonder-such a genius, Her Holiness the Pope must have possessed discerning eyes to discover him early on, which is why she commanded me to invite this kid to join the Spirit Hall Academy.
Chrysanthemum Douluo pondered inwardly, sizing up Lu Yuan's expression with growing amusement.
Lu Yuan, however, was having a hard time. His entire body grew rigid as he looked into Bibi Dong's eyes.
She looked gentle and amiable on the surface, but her heart was filled with greed and ruthlessness.
Others might not know, but didn't Lu Yuan? Bibi Dong at this time had long since turned into a madwoman.
Ever since Bibi Dong was violated by the Secret Chamber Douluo Qian Xunji, and then locked in a sunless basement for ten months until giving birth to Qian Renxue, she had already gone mad from that moment on.
Bibi Dong had become deranged to the point where, as a mother who had just given birth, she was vicious enough to attempt to murder her own biological Qian Renxue.
If not for the Secret Chamber Douluo using Yu Xiaogang's life as a threat, I'm afraid many plots in the original work would have changed.
Although the Rakshasa God might have been at work behind the scenes, it also reflected to a certain extent the abnormality of Bibi Dong's mental state. Later on, she went to Slaughter City and completely transformed into her complete form.
Lu Yuan knew that this female creature currently sitting on the grand chair had the ultimate goal of becoming the Rakshasa God, destroying the Douluo Continent, and then flying up to the Divine Realm happily alongside Yu Xiaogang.
If he wasn't careful, she really might carve out Lu Yuan's heart.
"Your Holiness the Pope, my martial soul Meowmeow is an external martial soul. It can assist me in my cultivation, allowing my cultivation speed to double."
"Even if your cultivation speed doubles, it still wouldn't reach this extent. Speak, what other matters are you hiding from this pope? If you confess honestly, perhaps this pope can still spare your little life."
Lu Yuan hurriedly explained, but Bibi Dong pressed on relentlessly, determined to ferret out every secret all over Lu Yuan's body today.