New-era "Soul Tools"

Time flew like an arrow, and soon two years had passed.

After defeating Zhang Ping, Leng Xiyue became the Arena's top-ranked student across all grades. Although the fighting prowess she displayed was astonishing, even that could not withstand Spirit Hall Academy's wonderfully "simple and honest" culture: challengers came in an endless stream.

Leng Xiyue kept things straightforward: each challenge cost two hundred Gold Soul Coins, and no payment meant no fight. That was an enormous sum for commoners, who generally lacked the courage to challenge her anyway, but it was trivial to the children of nobles. These people lacked neither money nor resources; what they lacked was experience fighting a genius their own age. Some even challenged her every day. Over two years, together with the allowance Bibi Dong gave her, she had accumulated nearly four hundred thousand, while her Arena record had reached a terrifying thousand wins and zero losses.

No one found this suspicious. After all, the strength of her martial soul was plain to see. Hers was classified as a ninth-tier martial soul-what was so strange about defeating opponents above her level? Besides, an opportunity to fight a super martial soul was incredibly rare. Once they missed it, it would be gone.

Thus, even after Xie Yue, Hu Liena, Yan, and Zhang Ping broke through level twenty and advanced to their third year, plenty of newly promoted second-year students still challenged her. To cast a long line and catch a big fish, Leng Xiyue held back a little, always leaving them with the illusion that they had come just a hair's breadth from beating her.

Besides earning money, Leng Xiyue used these opportunities to hone her reflexes. Those geniuses were hardly poor fighters, and she gained a great deal from battling them. By now, her reactions could finally keep pace with her speed, so she no longer ended up being chased around and pummeled whenever her first strike failed to land.

Her psionic energy level, however, had only risen once in those two years. Each increase now required soul beasts with a combined ten thousand years of cultivation, or spirit herbs of equivalent age. Even that single level had been thanks to her dear pope master, who gave her not only money each week but also a spirit herb with nearly a hundred years' potency. These herbs were cultivated in dedicated spirit fields and had only grown for about ten years, but the increase they provided to Leng Xiyue's psionic energy cultivation was a genuine hundred years.

It was not as though Leng Xiyue had never considered squeezing a few more out of her, but Bibi Dong worried that taking too many herbs would damage her body, or that she would grow dependent on them and lose her drive to improve. Her restrictions were therefore extremely strict. Once, when Leng Xiyue bought spirit herbs herself and took them, Bibi Dong found out and docked her allowance for two weeks.

While her unusual combat abilities could be explained by the strength of her martial soul, the fact that she could level up simply by taking herbs was an absolute secret.

Although she now had money, secretly procuring some spirit herbs for herself would still require a battle of wits with her dear master.

Over those two years, Leng Xiyue also spent money commissioning a large batch of parts from blacksmith shops. By the standards of soul master craftsmanship, firearm components were not complicated. Once assembled, all the costs added up to just five Gold Soul Coins per gun. The most expensive part was the firing mechanism, made from a metal that reacted with soul power. That tiny mechanism alone cost three Gold Soul Coins.

Leng Xiyue stockpiled fifty thousand guns in one go. It seemed like a massive order, but with the individual components distributed among Spirit City's finest blacksmith shops, it was hardly anything extraordinary for their level of metalworking.

Bullets were even easier to manufacture. She had not found the ingredients for gunpowder in Spirit City, while Soul Power Bullets required her to find people to infuse them. Using her influence, Leng Xiyue recruited a group of students and had them fill her bullet tips with soul power under the pretext of practicing their control. This fine-control training proved quite effective. Plenty of them not only worked for her for free, but even volunteered all sorts of benefits to express their gratitude.

Even Xie Yue and the others became hooked, making a few whenever they had spare time. After all that prolonged sweet-talking, Leng Xiyue's stockpile of Soul Power Bullets was already considerable, enough to keep selling for a very long time.

The task of assembling the firearms was left to the Forge. Turning separate parts into a complete gun took it only a few seconds. Since the Forge had nothing else to do anyway, she simply handed the whole job over to it, having it carve some attractive patterns along the way to make the guns look nicer. At least it was serving some purpose.

Now she had both guns and bullets. Everything was ready; all that remained was to establish a trade guild and start selling.

Leng Xiyue knew she was no business expert, so she sought out Zhang Ping, who was more knowledgeable in that area. By now, Zhang Ping was fairly close with Xie Yue and the others, and she greatly admired Leng Xiyue's strength. Her defeat had merely meant her skills were inferior; there was nothing worth holding a grudge over. After gathering for a few meals, they had gradually become friends.

Zhang Ping's mother was a wealthy merchant, and her father also oversaw affairs in that field. Growing up immersed in it, she had learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of the business, even if she was not particularly interested.

First and foremost, opening a trade guild in Spirit City required backing. Without some powerful figure supporting you, there was simply no chance of gaining a foothold there. If you could not settle that issue, you could forget about everything that came afterward.

And so, Leng Xiyue returned to the Papal Hall with her assembled weapon, ready to give her dear master a proper sales pitch.

"Master, look at this. It's a brand-new soul tool I developed through painstaking research."

Bibi Dong seemed very busy lately, but when she heard that Leng Xiyue needed her, she still made time to take a look.

"This is... a soul tool?" Bibi Dong took the strange weapon Leng Xiyao handed her, which looked like a fire poker, and carefully examined it. Yet it gave off almost no soul power fluctuations, and nothing about it seemed like a soul tool.

"Of course it is," Leng Xiyue declared confidently. "It might look ordinary, but it's actually very powerful. If you don't believe me, Master, find somewhere I can demonstrate it for you."

Only when she heard about its power did Bibi Dong realize that the thing was actually a weapon. Her interest was immediately piqued; she, too, wanted to know what her disciple had been tinkering with lately.

Its structure was somewhat complicated, and it had no blade, so it was clearly a ranged weapon. Aside from soul masters, Spirit Hall's primary means of ranged attack was currently bows and crossbows. Increasing their power required continually improving their materials, which made them expensive.

Thus, even if this weapon was far weaker than bows and crossbows, its apparently modest production cost meant it might still be an option for standard-issue weaponry.

At that thought, Bibi Dong called out, "Yue Guan."

A figure suddenly appeared, bowed to Bibi Dong, and asked with the utmost respect, "Your Holiness, what are your instructions?"

Leng Xiyue looked at the man before her, whose appearance could only be described as alluringly flamboyant. His look was so distinctive that she probably would have recognized him instantly even if Bibi Dong had not called his name. Who else could it be but that old eunuch, Chrysanthemum Douluo?