As the former Angel God, Qian Renxue could be said to have handled absorbing Soul Rings with practiced ease.
Normally, absorbing a Soul Ring took about two hours. With Qian Renxue personally handling it, this yellow Soul Ring rapidly merged into the Shadow Doll Puppet's body. From the looks of it, absorption would be complete in under three minutes.
Qian Renxue opened her eyes, exhaled a breath of stale air, and glanced at Jing Shanshan.
"You... can even do that?"
While she had been absorbing the Soul Ring just now, the enhancement effects on her had actually remained. As such, absorbing a Soul Ring around two hundred years old was more than manageable. She even thought challenging a five-hundred-year Soul Ring would be no problem.
Something so outrageous had actually worked!
Everyone who had tried this before had, without exception, failed to absorb the Soul Ring-or, if their luck was bad, exploded and died on the spot.
Jing Shanshan answered Qian Renxue absentmindedly.
"This king is not sure. Perhaps it is because of our relationship. You concentrate all your attention on enduring the impact of Soul Power alone. I do not need to, so I can do other things."
Judging by the current situation, it was just as Jing Shanshan had said. Qian Renxue put her doubts aside and waited for him to finish thinking.
While Qian Renxue had been absorbing the Soul Ring, Jing Shanshan had observed carefully, both every external change in the Soul Ring and the internal changes as it entered the Shadow Doll Puppet's body.
This process had undoubtedly given him tremendous inspiration. He already had some ideas about King-Given Soul Rings, but needed to go through this several more times to verify them.
"Qian Renxue, Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts that have taken human form can indeed obtain Soul Rings without absorbing those of other Soul Beasts, correct?"
Jing Shanshan had read this piece of information in Spirit Hall's central library.
"Yes..."
After giving that reply, Qian Renxue deliberately drew out the ending, making it somewhat suggestive.
Jing Shanshan's gaze instantly turned serious. He looked at Qian Renxue for quite a while before speaking slowly.
"All right. From the sound of it, you know where there is a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast that meets those conditions."
Qian Renxue's golden eyes immediately lit up, but Jing Shanshan's next words snuffed out the thought she had entertained.
"But there is no need. As for scheming to lead this king into doing something, because it is you, this king will forgive you once. Remember! This is the first and last time. This king despises such people most.
"If you want something, work hard for this king, and this king will naturally reward you!"
Jing Shanshan's words were a verdict. He had no intention whatsoever of letting Qian Renxue continue!
After waiting a while and seeing nothing unusual, Jing Shanshan willed it, and Qian Renxue's body dissolved into golden motes of light that dispersed into the air.
At the same time, a yellow Soul Ring appeared beside Jing Shanshan.
"Only after the Shadow Doll Puppet is recalled can the Soul Ring it absorbed be fed back to the main body. So that is how it works. No wonder no Soul Ring appeared no matter how I tried summoning it just now.
"The Shadow Doll Puppet used the Angel Martial Soul to absorb a Soul Ring, but the result counts as the Gate of Babylon absorbing one?"
Jing Shanshan needed to understand this Shadow Doll Puppet better.
Perhaps he would need to use this Martial Soul frequently for a long time to come.
He raised a hand and rubbed between his brows. After recalling the Shadow Doll Puppet, waves of fatigue began battering his mind.
It seemed that once the Shadow Doll Puppet was recalled, all its accumulated fatigue was fed back to Jing Shanshan.
"Haha, this really is interesting!"
Jing Shanshan laughed a dry, hearty laugh. It echoed among the treetops on the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest, carrying a measure of satisfied lightness.
Very soon, his laughter abruptly stopped.
A fine crack suddenly split the surface of the yellow Soul Ring. Then a second and a third appeared in succession, until the entire yellow Soul Ring burst apart from the middle. Its fragments became countless pale-yellow specks of starlight before disappearing completely into the air.
His Soul Ring... was gone?
Jing Shanshan immediately suppressed his doubts and found a roughly three-hundred-year-old Rock-Breathing Tortoise nearby.
Golden ripples filled the air around the Rock-Breathing Tortoise. In the blink of an eye, it fell to the ground as a cold corpse, yielding a warm Soul Ring.
Jing Shanshan did nothing else now, merely watching the newly absorbed yellow Soul Ring in silence.
Cracks appeared on the Soul Ring again, and before long, it followed the same path as the previous one.
This proved one thing.
The Shadow Doll Puppet was not what had caused the Soul Rings to shatter and disappear. Something else had brought about this phenomenon.
A sacred presence emerged, and Qian Renxue saw the outside world again. Seeing the Rock-Breathing Tortoise before her, which she had not killed, she waited in puzzlement for Jing Shanshan to speak.
"Not long after absorption, the Soul Ring shattered, even when I did it myself."
"What?!"
Jing Shanshan's latter words directly told Qian Renxue that the Shadow Doll Puppet was not the problem.
She fell silent for a long while, rapidly searching through her store of knowledge, yet could not find a single matching case.
She could only analyze the problem using the few causes summarized by their predecessors.
If it were rejection caused by a conflict in Soul Power, then the Soul Ring could have been passively repelled by his Soul Power the moment absorption began.
Clearly, based on the information she had received, this was unlikely.
With a hundred-year Soul Ring, there was no need to consider the Soul Beast's lingering soul causing trouble.
A mismatch between the Soul Ring and the Martial Soul?
Was that really it?
If so, should she not have felt the rejection between the Soul Ring and Martial Soul the moment she finished absorbing it, followed by damage to her body from that rejection?
"Based on what you have told me, my king, I am sorry, but I cannot think of a reason."
Qian Renxue quickly spoke.
Jing Shanshan was silent for a moment, then looked into the depths of the Star Dou Great Forest.
"What Soul Beast should this king use for the Angel Martial Soul's first Soul Ring?"
Since the Gate of Babylon could not absorb a Martial Soul for now, he would switch to another Martial Soul.
Although the Angel Martial Soul differed slightly from the Six-Winged Angel, that did not prevent Qian Renxue from immediately finding the best answer: a relatively rare Soul Beast with a sacred attribute.
Finding it would take quite some time.
Understanding this, Jing Shanshan confirmed one small point with Qian Renxue.
"You do not know which areas the Soul Beast you mentioned usually appears in, correct?"
"Correct."
Having quickly received Qian Renxue's affirmative answer, Jing Shanshan looked around at the lush green woods. Finally, he sank his consciousness into the Gate of Babylon to see whether it contained a Martial Soul that could help him solve this little problem.
Before long, he used the Shadow Doll Puppet again.
Qian Renxue had not expected to come out again so soon. Before she could express her thanks, she saw Jing Shanshan toss something toward her.
After catching it and examining it closely, she discovered that it was a coin with a smiling face on the front and a mournful face on the back.
"A Martial Soul with a divination effect. Picture that Soul Beast's features and appearance in your mind, in as much detail as possible, then casually toss this coin upward."
Qian Renxue understood and soon casually tossed the coin into the air.
The coin fell to the ground and rolled in one direction, with its smiling face upward as well. That meant there was no problem with this divination's result.
Jing Shanshan immediately summoned the Martial Soul, Vimana.
A radiant "vessel" made of gold and emeralds swiftly emerged from golden ripples and stopped before Jing Shanshan.
Once Jing Shanshan and Qian Renxue had both boarded the Martial Soul, Vimana swiftly flew straight in that direction.
Hundred-Year Soul Beasts rarely entered the areas frequented by thousand-year Soul Beasts. With a direction fixed, Jing Shanshan located his target in under ten minutes.
This time, Qian Renxue did not need to act. Jing Shanshan directly blanketed the area with a Martial Soul's firepower. Within seconds, a yellow Soul Ring rose from the four-hundred-year-old Soul Beast's body.
Jing Shanshan began absorbing its Soul Ring almost without stopping for breath, unwilling to waste any more time.
With his previous two experiences of absorbing Soul Rings, along with personally watching and experiencing how Qian Renxue absorbed them so quickly, it took him less than ten minutes to absorb this roughly four-hundred-year Soul Ring.
Jing Shanshan did not immediately inspect the Soul Ring. He boarded the Martial Soul Vimana again and sped off in one direction.