Myriad Forms Dragon Scale Armor

[After returning from Soul Hunting, you rested quietly in the treehouse for several days.]

[The twenty-two-thousand-year-old lightning-attribute lesser dragon Soul Ring had ultimately been a little too much for you. Residual, violent lightning power lay dormant in the crevices of your meridians.]

[Whenever you circulated your Soul Power, these hidden currents of lightning suddenly darted about like concealed thorns, causing bouts of sluggishness and burning pain.]

[Ah Yin used her Blue Silver Domain to draw upon the ancestral land's vitality, turning it into emerald mist that flowed like gentle streams. Night after night, it lingered around you, gradually soothing the residual, seething lightning in your meridians and nourishing the damaged channels.]

[Once your meridians had completely settled and your Soul Power flowed smoothly again, you began reviewing the entire hunt for the Dark Thunder Scale Armor Dragon-]

[Your current Soul Skill system leaned toward ranged control and wearing opponents down through maneuvering, lacking head-on offensive power and bodily protection. Once a powerful enemy broke through your defenses and closed in, you could easily be forced onto the back foot, constrained at every turn.]

[With this in mind, you calmed your thoughts and turned your attention to your newly acquired fourth Soul Skill, beginning to study it in earnest.]

[Your fourth Soul Skill, "Blue Silver Armor Attachment," could greatly enhance physical defense and elemental resistance, but it could only cover the surfaces of Blue Silver Grass vines, not directly protect your body.]

[When attacked, you had to weave a barrier of Blue Silver Grass to protect yourself, which not only consumed more Soul Power but also slowed your response a fraction.]

[In actual combat, the slightest mistake could leave your life hanging by a thread.]

[Meanwhile, your third Soul Skill, "Myriad Forms Mimicry," could precisely adjust the attributes of every part of the Blue Silver Grass, shaping it into anything without a fixed form.]

[Since that was the case, a thought surfaced in your mind-]

[If you combined the two, using Blue Silver Grass vines as the framework and resistant dragon scales as the surface, could you weave a complete suit of armor directly onto your body to make up for your weakness in close-range defense?]

[With your mind made up, you hesitated no longer.]

[You stood and summoned your Martial Soul. The third Soul Ring beneath your feet flickered.]

[Third Soul Skill-Myriad Forms Mimicry.]

[Blue Silver Grass climbed your arm like a living creature, winding around it in layers, its blades interweaving and its vines coiling.]

[In mere moments, a pale blue vine bracer took shape, the blades along its edges drawing together seamlessly, as though naturally formed.]

[Immediately afterward, your fourth Soul Ring lit up.]

[Fourth Soul Skill-Blue Silver Armor Attachment.]

[A dense layer of interspersed red and blue scales covered the bracer, with an inky-black base and golden-red markings, gleaming with a cold, hard metallic luster in the sunlight.]

[You moved your arm. The joints flexed freely, without the slightest resistance, as though the bracer had always been part of your body.]

[You then used Blue Silver Grass to mimic a spearhead, mustered your full strength, and stabbed fiercely at the bracer-]

[A clear "ting" rang out.]

[The spearhead slid obliquely off the scales, leaving only a faint white mark on their surface. The vines beneath the scales dented slightly to dissipate the force, then sprang back into shape, completely unharmed.]

[A little pleased, you pressed on with your development.]

[Shoulder guards, a breastplate, arm guards, leg guards, battle boots... piece after piece took shape in your hands.]

[You repeatedly fine-tuned the attributes of every blade and the thickness of the scales. You dismantled them, then forged them anew, seeking the ideal balance between lightness and flexibility and ultimate protection.]

[Half a day later, a complete suit of armor covered your entire body. Pale golden vine tendrils hung from both sides of the helmet, dragon scales overlapped like fish scales across the breastplate, and the battle boots encased your legs up to the knees. Even the joints of your fingers were inset with fine scales.]

[You excitedly sought out Ah Yin to show her your new achievement.]

["Ah Yin, this is my new Self-Created Soul Skill. What do you think?"]

[Blue-gold light flowed between the scales like moonlight spilling across the earth, giving the armor an imposing presence.]

[Ah Yin's spiritual form condensed into a phantom from her true body and slowly circled you, a look of wonder rippling through her azure eyes.]

["What beautiful armor! How did you do it?"]

[You enthusiastically explained the principles to her-how you used mimicry to shape it, how you attached armor and covered it with scales...]

[Ah Yin listened quietly to the end, then stared blankly for a while before asking softly, with a hint of hesitation, "Isn't this... just using two Soul Skills together?"]

[Your expression stiffened. You dismissed the armor and sank into thought.]

[Indeed, this was merely layering techniques, still a long way from a true Self-Created Soul Skill.]

[A true Self-Created Soul Skill should be like "All Things Revive," thoroughly integrating the origin powers of the Martial Soul and Soul Skills to develop an entirely new ability, rather than simply piecing functions together.]

[You settled your mind and began contemplating it anew.]

[You began tracing the underlying logic of the Soul Master cultivation system-]

[Adding a Soul Ring was, in essence, fixing a certain characteristic of a Soul Beast within a Martial Soul, infusing the Martial Soul with a new attribute or strengthening its existing foundation.]

[Soul Skills were merely the concrete manifestations and applications of these attributes in actual combat.]

[Then what had each of your four Soul Rings granted you?]

[The first Soul Skill, "Life Enhancement," was life. The second, "Essence Devouring Absorption," was devouring. The third, "Myriad Forms Mimicry," was transformation. The fourth, "Blue Silver Armor Attachment," was defense and resistance.]

[You tried stripping these attributes from the Soul Rings bit by bit, sensing their essential qualities, then separating, restructuring, and fusing them...]

[However, progress proved far more difficult than you had expected.]

[The power of life was gentle and accommodating, nourishing all things like spring rain. It tried to harmonize everything, only to be treated as nourishment and ravenously consumed by the domineering power of devouring.]

[The power of devouring was fierce and unrestrained, like a gluttonous beast's enormous maw. The more it swallowed, the wilder it grew, churning the entire current of Soul Power into a violent, unruly state.]

[The power of transformation was elusive, like fluff drifting in the wind. No sooner had it combined with the scales than it twisted and distorted their fixed structure.]

[The power of the scales, meanwhile, was too rigid and stagnant. Its forceful restraints instead smothered the lively vitality of transformation.]

[The four powers eroded and dissolved one another within your meridians, tangling out of alignment into an utter mess.]

[You tried again and again, only to fail each time, as though trapped in an insoluble deadlock.]

[Your meridians ached faintly from the repeated imbalances in your Soul Power, sometimes as though fierce flames were burning your body, sometimes as though freezing ice had sealed your channels. Even your Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul began trembling unstably-]

[The Blue Silver Grass in your palm withered and curled one moment, grew wildly and spread the next, then hardened like iron, then softened into mush like mud.]

[Ah Yin had remained quietly beside you all along and soon noticed that something was wrong.]

[She did not interrupt your development aloud, merely sending over a wisp of vitality in silence-]

[A vine quietly reached toward you, its leaves gently covering your wrist. A warm, pure current of life force slipped into your channels, soothing your agitated meridians and disordered Soul Power little by little.]

[You opened your eyes and met her worried gaze, smiling somewhat dejectedly. "It seems... it isn't as simple as I imagined."]

[Ah Yin withdrew the vine. Her spiritual form gently sat down close beside you, looking up at your tightly furrowed brow. Her voice was as soft as the night breeze brushing grass blades. "Don't rush. You simply haven't found the opportunity for them to merge yet."]

[Seeing that you were still frowning, she extended a fingertip and lightly touched the space between your knitted brows with her insubstantial form, saying warmly, "Don't lose heart."]

[After a pause, her voice softened further. "Before Blue Silver Grass breaks through the soil, it must spend a long time taking root in the darkness; before a long vine climbs, it must feel its way through tangled growth a thousand times."]

["With your intelligence, if you keep slowly exploring and understanding them, you'll surely find a way to make these powers merge."]

[She gently held your hand, which was trembling slightly from the backlash of your Soul Power. Blue-gold motes flowed between your joined palms as she added softly, "Although I don't understand these intricate methods, I can stay with you all the while and help soothe some of the backlash from your Soul Power."]

[As you gazed into her clear blue eyes, the restless frustration in your heart melted away little by little, like snow thawing in a spring breeze, and gradually settled.]

[You seated yourself again and sorted through your approach to fusion.]

[The root of the difficulty in merging the four powers lay in their opposing attributes.]

[There had long been precedents for this in the Douluo World-many ignorant Soul Masters had rashly absorbed Soul Rings with conflicting attributes, ultimately causing their Martial Souls to collapse and losing all their cultivation.]

[Of course, the most typical example was in the Divine Realm-the Goddess of Life and the Destruction God King could not have offspring because their origin attributes were completely opposed.]

[From this, it seemed that not all different attributes could be forcibly fused through superior technique or tremendous power.]

[Since "forced fusion" was not viable, you could only blaze another trail-find a vessel sufficiently accommodating to contain all four attributes, then use the vessel's essential characteristics to achieve autonomous harmonization and precise control.]

[As the thought flashed through your mind, the first thing you thought of was your own Martial Soul-Blue Silver Grass.]

[This universally acknowledged Trash Martial Soul concealed an immensely powerful characteristic-compatibility with all attributes.]

[It rejected no attribute and suppressed no power, silently accepting everything. It could even enable the manipulation of compound attributes.]

Outside the simulator, Su Yi summoned his Martial Soul. Looking at the pale green Blue Silver Grass that appeared in his palm, he sank into thought.

Perhaps everyone had underestimated Blue Silver Grass.

The inheritance of Martial Souls on the Douluo Continent generally followed a simple rule-

The Martial Soul a child awakened was usually inherited from whichever parent had the stronger bloodline and higher-quality Martial Soul. The weaker parent's Martial Soul was either directly devoured by the stronger one or reduced to recessive genes and hidden away.

This made him think of Tang Wulin during the era of "The Legend of the Dragon King." How many bloodlines had been piled into his body?

The Blue Silver Emperor, Clear Sky Hammer, and Sea God bloodlines from Tang San; the Soft Bone Rabbit and Asura God bloodlines from Xiao Wu; and the externally introduced Golden Dragon King Bloodline and Destruction Godhead.

So many incomparably domineering, mutually conflicting bloodline powers were piled into one body. Any one of them alone would have been enough to produce a top-tier Martial Soul, or even a divine-tier Martial Soul.

Yet what he had awakened was, of all things, a stalk of Blue Silver Grass.

Had the Blue Silver Emperor devoured the other bloodlines? Or had the Blue Silver Bloodline overwhelmed all those divine-tier inheritances?

Clearly, neither was the case. Then there was only one explanation-

The externally introduced Golden Dragon King Bloodline and Destruction Godhead were too domineering. No other Martial Soul could bear that power.

Only Blue Silver Grass possessed an almost bottomless capacity to accommodate it.

It neither rejected, suppressed, nor devoured, merely accepting all those conflicting powers in silence, harmonizing them and allowing them to coexist.

By the era of "Ultimate Douluo," that stinking slacker Tang Xuanyu had gone so far as to use two stalks of mutated Blue Silver Grass to carry the two great bloodlines of the Golden Dragon King and Silver Dragon King respectively.

The left stalk commanded gold, the right stalk controlled silver; a body of Blue Silver bore the Dragon God's Power.

Seen this way, the false strongest bloodline was the Dragon God Bloodline, while the true strongest bloodline was the Blue Silver Bloodline.

[Early the next morning, with a stir of your thoughts, blue-gold Soul Power slowly surged from your body.]

[This time, you no longer merely called upon the power of elemental attributes. Instead, you first sank your consciousness into your Martial Soul Origin, using Blue Silver Grass's unique accommodating nature to let the four powers flow and intertwine along the channels of its stems, slowly merging like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.]

[You used "Life Enhancement" as the root, "Essence Devouring Absorption" as the source, "Myriad Forms Mimicry" as the framework, and "Blue Silver Armor Attachment" as the surface, together forging an indestructible defense around your body.]

[Blue-gold motes appeared out of thin air, like fireflies on a summer night, or an inverted river of stars, drifting in profusion into every part of your body.]

[Wherever the motes reached, Blue Silver Grass quietly grew. Yet rather than attaching itself to the outside of your body, it resonated strangely with your skin, meridians, and bones, as though the armor had "grown" from within you.]

[The four powers became one, ultimately forming a complete suit of armor that covered your entire body.]

[Its whole surface interwove pale blue and inky black, like the deep sea beneath a starry night. Among the Blue Silver vines at its shoulder guards, specks of silver light flickered like fireflies, especially striking in the darkness.]

[The armor's surface seamlessly fitted Blue Silver vines together with inky-black dragon scales. The vines flowed like living creatures between the scales, their leaf edges gleaming faintly gold. Vines coiled like wings around the shoulder guards, a blue-gold crystal core was embedded in the center of the breastplate, and the waist armor tapered in patterns like leaf veins, its lines long and sharp.]

[The whole suit was light as a feather, resembling both battle armor and formal attire. Every step stirred up tiny blue-gold motes, an indescribable elegance showing through its deadly bearing.]

[This suit of armor offered more than defense.]

[In battle, it could independently absorb the free-floating Soul Power between heaven and earth, slowly repairing its own damage while feeding some of that Soul Power back to you, allowing you to fight longer and longer without tiring.]

[What truly elevated it beyond ordinary armor, however, was its responsive adaptability-you could adjust any attribute of any part in real time according to the battle.]

[Against powerful attacks, you could thicken the shoulder guards; when pursuing, you could lighten the leg guards. To catch an enemy off guard, you could instantly mimic short blades on the backs of your hands and grow barbs from your elbows, leaving your opponent unable to guard against every attack.]

[Ah Yin's spiritual form sat beside you, looking at the armor on your body, wonder reflected in her azure eyes.]

[You smiled and reined in your thoughts, letting the armor disperse into blue-gold motes. "I've named it 'Myriad Forms Dragon Scale Armor'!"]

[Ah Yin reached out and gently closed her insubstantial hand, her fingertips passing through the scattered stardust.]

[She raised her eyes to you. Before the wonder in them had fully faded, a touch of tender warmth joined it. "The armor is beautiful, and the name suits it very well."]

[As the armor dispersed, you swayed slightly, your shoulders sinking a little involuntarily. Your face was somewhat paler than before, and beads of undried sweat still clung to your temples.]

[Days of development had long since overdrawn your spiritual power, and fully condensing the "Myriad Forms Dragon Scale Armor" had consumed most of your Soul Power as well.]

[Fortunately, Ah Yin had been looking after you all along. You clung to lucidity through sheer resolve, so you were not too bedraggled.]

[Seeing you like this, the vines beneath Ah Yin's true body had already quietly broken through the soil. Gently yet irresistibly, they wound around your waist and lifted your entire body.]

[The sudden feeling of weightlessness made you instinctively tense your back, your fingers struggling reflexively a few times.]

["Ah Yin... what are you doing?"]

[Ah Yin did not release you. Instead, she gently bound your hands and feet as well. Her phantom in its blue dress drifted to your side, her voice as warm and soft as grass blades soaked in morning dew, holding undisguised heartache. "All right, all right, stop forcing yourself. Hurry and rest for a while."]

[Before she had finished speaking, the vines wrapped around you slowly extended, interwove, and coiled together, supporting your body as they gradually lowered it. In just a few breaths, they wove themselves into a vine cradle lined with soft, downy grass blades.]

[The vines were warm and smooth, suffused with a faint scent of plants and vitality. The exhaustion from days of exertion seemed to be drawn out little by little.]

[Unable to resist this reassuring warmth, your eyelids gradually grew heavy and your breathing slowly softened. Before long, you fell into a deep sleep.]

[Ah Yin quietly watched your sleeping face, the translucent fingertips of her spiritual form gently brushing the stray hairs damp with a thin sheen of sweat at your temple.]

[Under her will, the cradle rocked gently. The vines made faint rustling sounds with a soft, slow rhythm, as though soothing a soundly sleeping cub.]

[Sunlight passed through the gaps between the Blue Silver Grass leaves, casting dappled patches of light over the two of you. Wherever the wind passed, the plants whispered, as though the entire forest were holding its breath for this tranquil moment.]