While Ye Qing cultivated on a tree branch, Bei Bei, who was inside the Sea God Pavilion, also regained consciousness under a strand of Mu En's light soul power.
The moment he woke, Bei Bei instinctively clutched the back of his head. Traces of that intense pain still lingered, leaving his vision a little hazy.
"Ye Qing has no fighting honor! He actually launched a sneak attack!" Bei Bei muttered as he rubbed his head.
"Who's going to announce an attack to you in battle? A loss is a loss." Mu En smiled helplessly.
Only after hearing Mu En's words did Bei Bei realize he was now in the Sea God Pavilion. He looked at Mu En and said defiantly, "So what if I lost? I refuse to believe I'll keep losing to him. One day, I'll surpass him!"
Had he been a college student, a beating like that probably would have made him give up and coast along.
But Bei Bei was still at that stubborn, headstrong age. What Mu En feared had not happened, either. A fierce drive to strive still burned in his heart.
"Hehe, that's right. As long as you persevere in your efforts, success will come eventually." Mu En smiled gently and reached out to pat Bei Bei's head.
"You're both geniuses who rarely appear in this world. With Ye Qing as your target to chase, even if you ultimately can't keep pace with him, when you turn and look back, you'll already have left your other peers far behind."
"Failure isn't frightening. What's frightening is losing the drive to move forward after failing, and never taking another step."
On the Douluo Continent, eight really was no longer that young. Bei Bei understood the gist of Mu En's words and nodded firmly at him. "I understand, Great Ancestor. I won't give up. You have to have faith in me, too! We both have innate full soul power. I'm no worse than Ye Qing!"
Even among those with innate full soul power, there are differences...
Mu En sighed inwardly, but kept an encouraging smile on his face.
After experiencing the helplessness of being defeated by Ye Qing in an instant, Bei Bei did not sink into despair. He resolutely followed through on what he had told Mu En, throwing himself into cultivation with even greater determination than before.
To catch up with Ye Qing, he gave up almost all his playtime and devoted himself wholeheartedly to cultivation.
With Shrek Academy's abundant resources as well, the gap between Ye Qing's and Bei Bei's soul power did indeed gradually shrink.
There was no helping it.
Quite apart from the fact that Ye Qing could not spend all his time cultivating the way Bei Bei could, his Wings of Light external soul bone, his Light-Breaking Right Arm Bone whose age was slowly increasing, and the Light Spirit born alongside him were all voracious consumers of soul power.
Even though he likewise had no shortage of resources, his cultivation speed truly could no longer match what it had been.
Ye Qing felt as though he had entered the soul power compression stage that came after rank thirty ahead of time. His soul power clearly grew stronger every day, yet it took ages for his rank to rise by just one.
There was truly nothing he could do.
Two years later.
At ten years old, Bei Bei had successfully advanced at a rate of one rank every three months, surging from rank twenty-two to rank thirty like a blade splitting bamboo.
Ye Qing was a little slower, needing nearly five months to advance one rank. His cultivation had originally been three ranks higher than Bei Bei's, yet they broke through to the Soul Elder stage at almost the same time.
Bei Bei advanced one rank every three months.
Ye Qing, meanwhile, needed over four months, nearly five, to advance one rank.
Besides those three voracious consumers of soul power, another major reason was that Ye Qing could not devote himself solely to cultivation as Bei Bei did. His dual ultimate attributes might also have played a part.
Even a single ultimate attribute greatly slowed cultivation. Who knew whether cultivating with two ultimate attributes would be even more difficult?
No one with dual ultimate attributes had ever appeared in history, either. Ye Qing did not have even one example he could use as a reference.
Of course, his slow cultivation speed brought improvements in other areas.
A year earlier, Mu En had approved Ye Qing's entry into the Fear Demon Dragon Training Room to temper his spiritual power. After a year and a half of various training methods, his spiritual power at that point had already come extremely close to a Soul King's, rendering ordinary training methods useless.
That was why Mu En had switched him directly to the more effective Fear Demon Dragon Training Room.
As for why he had not sent Ye Qing into the Fear Demon Dragon Training Room right from the start, the reason was simple.
The spiritual pressure of a training room formed from one thousand and one Fear Demon Dragon Skulls was hardly something a child who had yet to mature could withstand. Never mind training him; the spiritual fluctuations might have battered him into an idiot outright.
Only once Ye Qing's spiritual power approached the Soul King level did Mu En begin letting him enter the Fear Demon Dragon Training Room.
Besides tempering his spiritual power under the Fear Demon Dragons' spiritual pressure every day, Ye Qing also supplemented his training with numerous treasures that enhanced spiritual power.
Over a full year, Ye Qing's spiritual power rose from close to a Soul King's to the level of an ordinary Soul Emperor's. The scale of that growth left even Mu En somewhat speechless. After testing his physical strength as well, the final conclusion was this.
For his third soul ring, Ye Qing could absorb a twenty-thousand-year soul ring.
That age was even two thousand years higher than an ordinary Soul Emperor's sixth soul ring. Even a Soul Emperor's limit was only a twenty-thousand-year soul ring.
And this was merely Ye Qing's third soul ring.
"What kind of monster have we raised?" That was the question shared by every Senior Elder in the Sea God Pavilion.
Could a Soul Master really exceed the standard soul ring configuration by so much?
An ordinary Soul Master could absorb, at most, a thousand-year soul ring for their third soul ring. The age of Ye Qing's third soul ring was a full twenty times that of an ordinary Soul Elder's.
Bei Bei, by contrast, was a different story.
Although he had likewise reached the Soul Elder level, and his second soul ring was also a purple thousand-year soul ring, testing showed that he could withstand an age of only around four thousand years for his third soul ring.
Compared with Ye Qing's twenty-two thousand years, that really was rather insignificant.
"Mu En, what kind of Soul Beast should we choose for Qing'er's third soul ring?" Inside the Sea God Pavilion, Ye Feng respectfully posed the question to Mu En.
When it came to raising Soul Masters with the light attribute, Ye Feng could not catch up to Mu En even on horseback. Consulting Mu En about soul ring combinations was certainly the right choice.
But Mu En was also pondering that question at the moment, because top-tier Soul Beasts with the light attribute were truly scarce. Ye Qing's first two soul rings had come from a Light Unicorn and a Light Spirit respectively, both Soul Beasts with top-tier light-attribute bloodlines.
Naturally, his third soul ring could not come from a Soul Beast inferior to those previous two.
At the very least, it could not be too much worse.
Moreover, Ye Qing already had enough support abilities. What he lacked most now was a powerful offensive soul skill distinctive to Power Attack System Soul Masters, narrowing the pool of suitable Soul Beasts even further.
After turning the matter over and over, Mu En finally settled on one particular figure.
"For his third soul ring, we'll choose that one!"
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