Shrek-style training

Once training began, Ye Qing understood why Mu En had told him to take some time to relax properly.

Spiritual power could not exactly be called a manifestation of a Soul Master's will, but it was still tied to it.

A Soul Master with strong spiritual power did not necessarily have strong willpower, but a Soul Master with strong willpower certainly would not have weak spiritual power.

Spiritual power could be improved by tempering one's will. When absorbing a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring and resisting a Soul Beast's Soul Shock, one likewise needed a resilient mind and an unyielding will.

And so, Ye Qing's journey of torment began.

Only by enduring the bitterest hardships could one become an ox or a horse.

The more hardship you could endure, the more of a beast of burden you became.

That saying was perfectly embodied in Ye Qing.

At first, Mu En merely had Ye Feng pressure Ye Qing with Soul Power every day, making him exercise, eat, and meditate under that pressure from morning to night.

It felt as though some homo were staring at him from behind every second of every day, making his scalp prickle and his hair stand on end.

Once Ye Qing adapted to the Soul Power pressure, Mu En began turning up the intensity. First came endurance-or, to put it plainly, taking a beating. He had Ye Feng form a whip out of darkness-attribute Soul Power and lash Ye Qing with it.

What was more, Ye Qing had to heal the wounds left by the whip himself using the Wings of Light.

The further this process progressed, the harder it became to endure.

Not only did Ye Qing have to bear the almost numbing pain coursing through his entire body, but he also had to squeeze out every last bit of his Soul Power to make the healing work more effectively on himself.

This training actually reminded Ye Qing of how, over in Battle Through the Heavens, Yao Chen had also whipped Xiao Yan to improve his physical strength and willpower while teaching him the Eight Extremes Collapse.

Xiao Yan had Foundation-Building Spiritual Liquid, and Ye Qing naturally had medicinal baths made from a mixture of various spiritual medicines.

There were also the various treasures Mu En used on him to improve his spiritual power whenever his mind was exhausted to its limit. Those spiritual-power-enhancing treasures had undoubtedly all been pulled out of the Sea God Pavilion Elders' pockets.

Compared with Soul Power pressure, this method actually brought Ye Qing greater improvements.

His Soul Power cultivation was indeed slower than before. After all, he did not have nearly as much time to cultivate. Every day, once he was utterly exhausted, he passed out and soaked in a medicinal bath, leaving him no chance to meditate at all.

His spiritual power and physical strength, however, improved at a tremendous pace.

Mu En had his own considerations in doing this.

Ye Qing had reached rank twenty-five before he was even eight years old. His cultivation speed already surpassed that of 99.99 percent of Soul Masters. Rapid Soul Power cultivation alone would not produce such good results.

How much water a wooden barrel could hold depended entirely on its shortest stave.

Moreover, once Ye Qing reached the Soul Elder level, his Ultimate Attribute would drastically slow his cultivation. Raising his spiritual power and the strength of his meridians now would also make him more efficient when the time came to compress his Soul Power.

With the Golden Tree and medicinal baths, his cultivation could only slow down so much anyway. It was better to have him focus on completing his current training regimen first.

And Ye Qing's cultivation speed really had not slowed down that much.

Even though he had little time each day to meditate and cultivate, and even though the Wings of Light, Light-Breaking Demon, and Light Spirit were three deadweights dragging down his cultivation speed, Ye Qing could still advance one rank every four or five months.

He could still reach the Soul Elder level at around ten years old.

At the Shrek Outer Court, anyone who reached the Soul Elder level by the admission age of twelve was already a genius Soul Master, one in ten thousand. Ye Qing could become a Soul Elder two years earlier still. Even among Huo Yuhao's cohort, that cultivation speed would have been explosive.

Of course, this training could not possibly continue all the way until he broke through to Soul Elder.

The beating regimen was most effective only during the first few months. After that, its results would keep diminishing, making it necessary to switch to other training methods.

And since the more hardship one endured, the more of a beast of burden one became, Ye Qing's training naturally could not be so simple.

The third training regimen, following the training to withstand blows, consisted of high-altitude falls and deep-water pressure resistance.

He was forbidden from using the Wings of Light during the high-altitude falls, while during deep-water pressure training, he was not allowed to surface until he had exhausted his Soul Power.

For Ye Qing, who had been somewhat afraid of heights in his previous life, high-altitude falls were the ultimate torment. That feeling of weightlessness as he kept plummeting-especially the stretch from several thousand meters down to several hundred-made every fall feel like a trip through the gates of hell.

The process of overcoming his fear actually improved Ye Qing's spiritual power two or three times more effectively than the training to withstand blows.

Ye Feng threw Ye Qing from the sky toward the ground dozens of times, forcibly curing his fear of heights.

Only when Ye Qing could wait expressionlessly for Ye Feng to catch him, and the high-altitude falls no longer had any effect, did he move on to the next stage: deep-water pressure resistance.

The deepest part of Sea God Lake was over two hundred meters deep. Every day, Ye Qing had to rely on internally circulating his Soul Power to spend an entire day on the lakebed. The sensation of lake water squeezing him from every direction was hardly any better than falling from high in the sky.

At a depth of two hundred meters, virtually no light could reach the lakebed.

Not only did Ye Qing have to withstand the relentless pressure, but he also had to endure the pitch-black lakebed and the loneliness of feeling cut off from the world.

The deep-water pressure training also greatly improved Ye Qing's control over his Soul Power. After all, he had to circulate his Soul Power internally to keep himself from suffocating to death. If he wanted to stay underwater longer, his fine control over Soul Power certainly could not be lacking.

Once the entire training regimen was over, Ye Qing could clearly feel that his spiritual power had improved tremendously.

Of course.

He simply did not know whether that improvement in spiritual power was the result of the training or those heavenly treasures.

Or perhaps both.

Either way, his spiritual power had improved enormously-that was a fact. In just half a year, Ye Qing felt that his spiritual power had at least doubled, while his physical strength and the resilience of his meridians had also improved tremendously compared with before.

At this point, he had only recently broken through to rank twenty-six, and he still had quite a way to go before reaching rank twenty-seven.

Meanwhile, Bei Bei, who was utterly fixated on catching up to Ye Qing, finally broke through to rank twenty.

Ever since Ye Qing began cultivating his Martial Soul and overtook him by several ranks in one go, then pulled a full seven ranks ahead after becoming a Soul Grandmaster, Bei Bei's refusal to admit defeat had driven him to chase after Ye Qing like mad.

The boy had even stopped going out to play with Zhang Lexuan. Every time she returned from classes at the Outer Court, all she saw was Bei Bei's little figure hard at work cultivating.

Along with that one line...

"I have to catch up to that brat Ye Qing! Aaaaaaaaaah..." (stinky)

Because he devoted more time to cultivation, coupled with his refusal to lose to Ye Qing, Bei Bei actually managed to absorb a thousand-year soul ring as his Second Soul Ring.