Are you kidding?

"No matter what, I'll set a small goal first: become a Limit Douluo five years before Huo Yuhao!"

Su Yu threw himself back into a packed cultivation schedule.

And once he truly uncovered the secret behind the Inner Landscape's tenfold cultivation speed, his soul power advanced a thousand miles a day.

His soul power, already at rank 16, shot upward as though riding a rocket.

In just a month and a half, Su Yu broke through to rank 20.

When he told Du Busi the news, Du Busi was astonished. He clearly had not expected Su Yu to raise his soul power by four ranks in a mere month and a half.

"The last time I asked about your soul power level, you were only rank 16. And now, just a month and a half later, you're rank 20?"

Du Busi's shock could not have been greater.

He had no idea how to describe Su Yu.

Su Yu said, "Sect Master, that's how things stand. My cultivation speed seems to be just a tiny bit faster than that of normal Soul Masters."

He raised his right hand and pinched his thumb and index finger together, indicating that his cultivation speed was only a tiny bit faster.

Du Busi fell silent.

Was this really just a tiny bit?

Even a genius among Soul Masters would need at least a year and a half to break through from rank 16 to rank 20.

Anyone who could achieve that breakthrough within a year was already a peerless genius.

Back when Long Aotian went from rank 16 to rank 20, he had only barely managed to keep it under a year.

"You haven't used some secret art that squeezes out your potential, have you?"

Du Busi knew Su Yu probably had no access to such secret arts, but he still examined him carefully.

He feared Su Yu might have strayed down the wrong path while exploring cultivation methods on his own.

But the truth was that there was nothing wrong with Su Yu at all.

His cultivation speed had a perfectly traceable basis.

So by the time Du Busi finished his examination, he was already in a daze.

"Not only is there nothing wrong with your foundation, it's exceptionally solid. So solid it makes my scalp tingle."

Du Busi felt that the quality of Su Yu's soul power was already comparable to a Soul Ancestor's.

"This is absurd. It's only been a little over a month since I brought you back from soul hunting. Are we really going soul hunting again already?"

Su Yu interjected, "Sect Master, we'll have to wait a little longer. My physical condition and spiritual power probably still can't withstand a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring."

At those words, Du Busi said nothing more and stood silently for a long time.

With cultivation speed like this, Su Yu still wanted to attempt absorbing a soul ring beyond his normal limit.

Was he even human?

"You cultivate so quickly. Do you really still need to pursue absorbing soul rings beyond your normal limit?" Du Busi could not help asking.

At this point, he actually felt Su Yu could forgo absorbing soul rings beyond his normal limit.

"You have three Martial Souls anyway. Once you finish adding soul rings to your first Martial Soul, build up your physical condition. Once you have that foundation, improve it further and push the soul ring configurations of your remaining two Martial Souls to the absolute maximum. Wouldn't that be better?"

"I want to refine what's already excellent. If I don't first make full use of my current physical capacity, the feedback I get from the soul ring will be very small. That would only lower my ceiling for no reason."

Su Yu was not persuaded by Du Busi's theory.

If a normal Soul Master's physical condition was 10, then after absorbing a soul ring that required 10 or more points of physical capacity, his physical condition would naturally rise to 13 or even 14.

That was the natural result of the feedback received during soul ring absorption.

But if he absorbed a soul ring that required 15 points of physical capacity, the gain from that feedback might reach 6 or even 7 points.

Of course, this required the Soul Master to find a way to raise his physical condition from 10 to 15 himself, while the resulting benefit amounted to only two or three extra points.

But it was entirely worth it.

Because the gains from a soul ring's feedback were always free.

Given Su Yu's three Martial Souls, tempering his body was a process he would inevitably have to undergo. That being the case, he would inevitably go through the process of raising his physical condition from 10 to 15.

Even if he absorbed a soul ring directly and then had a physical condition of 14, he would still have to cultivate it from 14 to 19.

Those five points of physical condition had to be gained either way. The only difference was whether he gained them before or after absorbing the soul ring.

Of course, the conclusion drawn from all this data rested on the premise that these increases followed a linear, or at least nearly linear, relationship.

If the difficulty of improving physical condition before and after absorbing a soul ring was factored in, the conclusion would be different.

But for Su Yu, that was not something he needed to worry about.

At least, aiming for a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring as his second soul ring did not mean an exponential increase in difficulty for him.

Du Busi also expressed his inability to understand Su Yu's twisted logic.

What did he mean by lowering his ceiling for no reason?

Still, since Su Yu insisted on continuing to aim for a ten-thousand-year second ring, Du Busi did not keep pushing him to give up.

Du Busi had been involved in the idea of aiming for a ten-thousand-year second ring from the beginning.

His attempt to persuade Su Yu to abandon it had only been a sudden thought.

Now that he saw Su Yu's resolve, Du Busi quickly switched sides again.

Fine, let him go for it.

"About how much longer will you need?"

Su Yu thought for a moment, then held up one finger.

"A year? That works. Delaying a year for a ten-thousand-year second ring isn't a major problem. But you can't take this long every time you get a soul ring in the future." Du Busi nodded, murmuring under his breath.

But Su Yu said, "One month. I feel that in another month, I'll be confident I can withstand both the soul power impact and the Soul Shock from a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring."

"How long?"

Du Busi did not even process it at first.

He was still trying to work out how long the unit of time called a month was.

"One month!"

Su Yu repeated himself.

"Are you kidding?"

Du Busi immediately reached out to examine Su Yu's physical condition.

He had examined Su Yu the last time he condensed his bloodline power, and knew that Su Yu's physical condition had improved dramatically then.

But that had involved condensing bloodline power, on top of the second awakenings of his three Martial Souls beforehand. A major improvement was perfectly normal.

Yet when he examined him again this time, Du Busi discovered that Su Yu's physical condition had actually made another enormous leap.

What had happened in between?

It seemed to have been nothing more than deep meditation and consuming the various nourishing foods prepared by the sect.

Du Busi grew utterly serious.

He looked solemnly at Su Yu and asked, enunciating every word, "Little Su, think carefully. Exactly what changes have you experienced during meditation?"

He had become genuinely interested in Su Yu's special meditative state.

Su Yu said, "I suppose all the mysteries of the human body lay before my eyes."

He did not actually reveal everything about the Inner Landscape.

Mainly because there was no point in telling anyone about something like this.

Su Yu even suspected that the existence of the Inner Landscape was merely a psychological phenomenon.

Because he held that understanding, the Inner Landscape existed.

For other Soul Masters, different understandings might lead to entirely different scenes when they entered their corresponding special states.

So Su Yu only gave a broad summary of the Inner Landscape.