In the center of Eastsea City, Yan Qing stopped before a tall, pale blue building.
This was the Spirit Pagoda.
He had come alone this time to test a conjecture.
Could the Spirit Pagoda's Spirit Ascension Platform detect his Martial Souls?
The dozens of missions he had completed at the Blacksmith Association had earned Yan Qing nearly a million federal coins.
A single entry slot for the Spirit Ascension Platform cost five hundred thousand, and even money could not guarantee one.
He was really spending a fortune this time.
Under the guidance of the Spirit Pagoda staff, he smoothly settled into a metal pod.
After he was strapped into complicated instruments and suction cups, the metal pod slowly closed as the staff gave him instructions.
Yan Qing felt a faint tingling sensation, similar to a bioelectric current. Stimulated by the current, his Soul Power began circulating involuntarily.
He did not forget to open his system panel and use the Soul Skills of the Passionate Sword and Ruthless Sword in turn.
If he really went in with nothing but a toilet brush, those five hundred thousand federal coins would go straight down the drain.
Beep, beep, beep!
An urgent alarm sounded. Rather than entering the Star Dou Great Forest as he had imagined, Yan Qing was ejected from the metal pod.
Several staff members immediately hurried over and helped him up.
The East Sea Spirit Pagoda's control room.
"What happened? Ascension pod three reported an error. This is the first time in decades."
"A child entered the Primary Spirit Ascension Platform. He appears to have Twin Martial Souls."
"The strange thing is, his second Martial Soul... only has Soul Skills? There's no Martial Soul."
As expected, Spirit Pagoda technicians soon came to question Yan Qing.
Yan Qing repeated his usual explanation: his Martial Soul was his own eyes, which were difficult for instruments to detect.
After making a brief record, they had Yan Qing enter the metal pod a second time.
Sure enough, just as Yan Qing had imagined, the Spirit Ascension Platform essentially scanned a Soul Master's physical condition and copied it in full into a consciousness projection.
That copying had limitations too. Anything beyond the Spirit Ascension Platform's basic parameters could not be copied.
Tang Wulin's bloodline Soul Rings, for example, could be reproduced inside as Soul Skills.
But matching versions of the eighteen seals inside his body could not be generated.
The same applied to Yan Qing's Passionate Sword and Ruthless Sword. Their actual forms were stored in his system space, so the Spirit Ascension Platform could not scan the Martial Souls at all, yet it could detect their Soul Rings and Soul Skills.
The result was a jumble of conflicting data.
The solution was to manually apply a patch, assigning Yan Qing an eye-type Body Martial Soul in the database, with exactly the same Soul Skills and Soul Rings.
But even after racking their brains, the Spirit Pagoda technicians could not figure out why a pair of eyes had a slashing attack as its second Soul Skill.
The scene before him changed dramatically.
Yan Qing opened his eyes. Trees stretched endlessly, blotting out the sky and sun. He had arrived in the Star Dou Great Forest of ten thousand years ago.
He lowered his head to check his body. A red button was attached to the back of his left hand-the Spirit Ascension Platform's emergency exit mechanism.
Yan Qing tried summoning his toilet brush, and it instantly landed in his hand.
The two white Soul Rings and the Pole Vault and Stilt Walking Soul Skills were all exactly the same.
The Spirit Pagoda's technology truly lived up to its reputation.
His Second Martial Soul, the Passionate Ruthless Sword, had been replaced with eyes. The patch applied outside had taken effect too.
Yan Qing was now eager to find a Soul Beast to test the conjecture in his mind.
But all he could see was boundless forest, without even a shadow of a Soul Beast.
A one-to-one reproduction of the Star Dou Great Forest still left far too much ground to explore.
That did not stump Yan Qing either. His Ten-Year Soul Ring lit up.
Toilet Brush Pole Vault!
The Ten-Year Solitary Bamboo quietly exerted its strength, propelling Yan Qing high into the air.
His field of vision instantly opened up, giving him an unobstructed view into the distance.
Not far away, an Armor-Piercing Beast was wandering quietly.
Most of the Soul Spirits placed here were defective, and their temperaments tended toward the primal.
The instant it saw Yan Qing, the Armor-Piercing Beast's first reaction was to attack.
Hard brown armor grew along its back. Yellow light burst from its entire body as it lunged at Yan Qing.
A Hundred-Year Soul Beast!
Yan Qing felt thoroughly reassured.
"Once."
The Armor-Piercing Beast froze in place, then slowly rewound by one second.
"Love-Questioning Slash!"
A keen streak of sword light shot from Yan Qing's eyes like lightning.
This was the second Soul Skill of Yan Qing's Passionate Sword and Ruthless Sword.
It was also the move he had used to secure victory against Tang San's phantom.
A crack opened along the Armor-Piercing Beast's back, then widened until its entire body turned into a streak of light and vanished.
A few motes of light remained in the air, circled once, and entered Yan Qing's body.
This should be the Spirit Ascension Platform's "spirit ascension" power.
Half the motes flowed smoothly into Yan Qing's eyes. The other half hovered around the toilet brush, unable to merge with it.
The Ten-Year Solitary Bamboo actually could not undergo spirit ascension.
What a pity. Yan Qing had originally wanted to find an opportunity later to evolve the Ten-Year Solitary Bamboo into Hundred-Thousand-Year Solitary Bamboo.
Then he could discuss Grandmaster's high hopes for it with it. It seemed this path would not work.
Yan Qing swept through the outer perimeter all night, only withdrawing once he had raised his Second Martial Soul's age to the limit his body could withstand.
Eastsea Academy, the sports field.
The class promotion tournament had reached its second match.
Ye Yingrong, Class Three's homeroom teacher, wore a very grave expression. In the previous promotion match, Wu Changkong's class had won in crushing fashion, without even using their Martial Souls.
Still, she did not think she had no chance of winning. Class Three's trump card was not bad either.
The quadruplets Gu Tianri, Gu Tianyue, Gu Tianming, and Gu Tianpeng lined up across the arena.
They were the ace she had painstakingly prepared.
Yan Qing remembered that they had originally been triplets. Now that he had joined the competition, they had become quadruplets.
If their side fielded five people, would quintuplets jump out?
Still, even decuplets would make no difference.
Class Five-no, they should be Class Four now.
Class Four kept its familiar formation, but this time, even Tang Wulin took a step back.
Yan Qing was actually going to face the quadruplets alone.
A trace of annoyance crept onto Ye Yingrong's face as she spoke to Wu Changkong beside her.
"Teacher Wu, isn't this looking down on our Class Three a little too much?"
Wu Changkong lowered his eyes to glance at her, then looked away, still giving no reply.
In the arena, the four Gu brothers exchanged looks. They were clearly a little surprised too.
"Let him see what we're capable of!"
The eldest, Gu Tianri, roared. Four pairs of wings spread simultaneously, and all four rose into the air.
Flying Martial Souls!
Strictly speaking, Yan Qing's four-person team had no anti-air capabilities.
That was, if his own Pole Vault and Stilt Walking did not count.
Of course, this time there was a better way to deal with them.
Yan Qing walked straight toward the opposite side of the arena and stopped directly beneath the four brothers.
"What is he doing? Is he going to surrender?"
Long Hengxu, watching from the stands, frowned too.
Yan Qing raised his eyes, and two streaks of purple light erupted from their depths.
He had learned two Tang Sect Secret Arts. Besides the Mysterious Jade Hand, the other was the eye technique best suited to his spiritual power.
Yan Qing's spiritual power ranked among the very best of his peers.
After he received the beginner's gift package, it had been forcibly raised another realm.
His spiritual power had gone straight into the Spirit Sea Realm.
Under that burst, all four in the air briefly fell into a daze.
The Gu brothers' Martial Souls were wings, which they had to keep flapping to remain airborne.
In that moment of distraction, all four plummeted together.
Standing directly beneath them, Yan Qing caught and threw them one after another, neatly stacking the four Gu brothers in the center of the arena.
The battle was over in ten seconds, still without using a Martial Soul!