Soon, she returned with two plates of pastries and set them on the table.
"These are delicious," Ye Lingling said.
"Thank you." Xuan Ming sat down, picked up a pastry from a plate, and stuffed it straight into his mouth.
Watching Xuan Ming wolf down the food, Dugu Yan wore a very strange expression.
How long had he been starving?
Did her grandfather not even feed him?
"..."
In the brief moment Dugu Yan's attention wandered, both plates of pastries on the table disappeared into Xuan Ming's stomach.
Dugu Yan and Ye Lingling were both dumbfounded by his eating speed, which could only be described as terrifying.
"Is there any more?" Xuan Ming asked, a little embarrassed.
"...Yes." Still reeling from her shock, Ye Lingling ran to the kitchen again and returned with two more plates of pastries.
"Thank you." Xuan Ming threw himself into eating again.
Watching the two plates of pastries visibly disappear once more, Dugu Yan and Ye Lingling inexplicably felt a little creeped out.
Wait, where did all that food go?
Even the two of them together couldn't eat that much!
"Are you... still hungry?" Dugu Yan asked.
Xuan Ming nodded.
"Is there any more?" Dugu Yan looked at Ye Lingling.
"There's none left at home. The next delivery won't arrive until tomorrow. If we want more, we'll have to go out and buy it," Ye Lingling said.
"Get him something else to tide him over. I'll go buy some food." With that, Dugu Yan turned and ran off.
Ye Lingling hesitated. "There's still half a chicken left from this morning in the kitchen. How about... I heat it up for you?"
"Thank you. Sorry for the trouble."
A long while later, Dugu Yan hurried back with roast chicken, roast fish, roast duck, and several large plates of vegetables from a restaurant.
Worried it wouldn't be enough, she had bought enough for five people.
"Eat slowly. Don't choke. If it's not enough, I'll go buy more."
Watching Xuan Ming wolf it down just as he had before, Dugu Yan and Ye Lingling were growing numb.
Was he human?
Hearing the commotion, Ye Lan opened her door again and came out.
Watching Xuan Ming's outrageous eating speed in the pavilion, something seemed to occur to Ye Lan. She walked over and placed her hand on his shoulder again.
"This..." Ye Lan's expression went through quite a few changes.
"Grandma Lan, is he all right?" Dugu Yan asked, a little worried.
"He's fine." Ye Lan withdrew her hand.
"He's just too hungry."
"Too hungry?" Dugu Yan looked utterly bewildered.
Wait, how much had he eaten already?
And he was still hungry?
"Did your grandfather tell you anything?" Ye Lan asked.
"No. He dumped him on me and left, saying he had something urgent to attend to," Dugu Yan said.
"What's wrong?"
"His body is a little strange." Ye Lan thought for a moment.
"It isn't like a human's."
Dugu Yan froze. "Not human? Then he can't be..."
"That isn't what I meant," Ye Lan said.
"Perhaps it's an effect of his martial soul mutation. His body... is very strange."
His body's meridians and the circulation of his Soul Power were clearly no different from a human's, yet a more careful examination revealed enormous differences!
It seemed the same, yet wasn't!
If she had to describe it... a humanoid Soul Beast!
That was the only way to put it!
Something seemed to occur to Ye Lan, and she shifted her gaze to the two dragons on Xuan Ming's back.
Could his martial soul mutation have left this child in a constant state of Martial Soul Possession?
For Beast Martial Soul masters, there was an enormous difference between their bodies with and without Martial Soul Possession.
But true Martial Soul Possession was only possible after reaching level thirty. The more powerful the Beast Martial Soul, the more terrifying the boost its Martial Soul Possession provided.
This child's physical strength was exceedingly strange. Clearly, his martial soul mutation wasn't as simple as two peculiar black dragons growing from his back. His entire body had mutated!
Chapter 17: Black Dragons Devour Their Master?
A little while later, the entire dinner for five that Dugu Yan had bought once again ended up in Xuan Ming's stomach.
"Have you... had enough?" Dugu Yan asked uncertainly.
"Yes, thank you." Xuan Ming was a little embarrassed, but the hunger had truly been unbearable.
This was the first time he had eaten his fill since his Martial Soul Awakening.
"Don't be embarrassed. If it's not enough, I'll go buy more," Dugu Yan said.
"I really have had enough," Xuan Ming said.
"That's good..." Dugu Yan studied Xuan Ming's body with great curiosity.
How had a child this small eaten so much?
"What is it?" Xuan Ming asked.
"I was wondering where you stored all that food you ate." Dugu Yan pinched her chin, looking thoughtful.
Without exaggeration, the chicken, duck, fish, and meat she had bought weighed almost as much as Xuan Ming himself!
Where had all that food gone?
"Some Soul Beasts can eat several times their own body weight in food. After one meal, they can go several months, or even a year, without eating anything else," Ye Lan said.
"Soul Masters whose Martial Souls correspond to those Soul Beasts can do something similar."
"That's amazing!" This was the first time Dugu Yan had heard of such a thing.
"However, these special traits only emerge after a Soul Master reaches level thirty," Ye Lan said.
The power of a Beast Martial Soul needed sufficient Soul Power to manifest. The stronger the Beast Martial Soul, the higher its Soul Power Level requirement.
Take the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Martial Soul, for example. Starting at level thirty, each Soul Ring a Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Soul Master obtained made another part of their body dragonlike when they used their Martial Soul. At level seventy, they could truly transform into a dragon.
In other words, only at level seventy could a Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Soul Master achieve true Martial Soul Possession, uniting person and soul.
Although other Beast Martial Souls did not undergo changes as obvious as the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Martial Soul's, whether they were Beast Martial Soul masters or Tool Martial Soul masters, the true disparity in the strength of their Martial Souls only became apparent at level seventy.
Before level seventy, a Martial Soul's strength could influence a battle to some extent, but not too greatly.
But once they reached level seventy and unlocked Martial Soul Avatar, the true power of those mighty Martial Souls would emerge.
Even among Martial Soul Avatars, the avatar of a top-tier Beast Martial Soul like the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon could overwhelm most other Beast Martial Souls, or even kill them instantly!
A seven-ring Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Soul Saint would not be at a disadvantage even against most Eight-Ring Soul Douluos.
"But he isn't even a Soul Master yet," Dugu Yan said in confusion.
"Martial soul mutation," Ye Lan said.
"His mutation isn't limited to the parts you can see. The parts you can't see have undergone enormous changes too."
"The vast majority of martial soul mutations are detrimental. This is my first time seeing a case like his."
The two most representative cases of martial soul mutation in the Soul Master World today were Yu Xiaogang, son of Yu Yuanzhen, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan's leader, and Tang Yuehua, daughter of the Clear Sky Sect's previous leader.
"What are your parents' Martial Souls?" Ye Lan asked.
"Dragon-type Martial Souls?"
"My mother has a Black Snake Martial Soul, and my father has a Spear Martial Soul," Xuan Ming said.
"Black Snake?" Ye Lan frowned slightly.
"Dragons and snakes belong to the same family. The odds of a mutation are low, but not nonexistent. However..."
"What is the quality of your mother's Martial Soul?"
"She isn't a Soul Master. I don't know either," Xuan Ming said.
"She isn't a Soul Master?" Ye Lan froze.
"What's wrong?" Dugu Yan asked in confusion.
Ye Lan sighed. "Martial soul mutation always cuts both ways."
"A detrimental mutation from strong to weak may weaken its power, but it also grants certain special abilities as compensation."
"But for a martial soul mutation from weak to strong, the greater the increase in strength, the more troublesome the defects!"
"Some defects are even fatal!"
Dugu Yan froze. "That... isn't necessarily true, is it?"
Ye Lan shook her head. "Perhaps. But I've lived a long life, and I traveled the world in my youth. I've seen quite a few Soul Masters with mutated Martial Souls, and every one of them followed this rule without exception."
"If his mother's Black Snake Martial Soul were powerful enough, his mutated Black Dragon Martial Soul might be a mutation that reverted its Martial Soul bloodline to its ancestral form. But if she isn't even a Soul Master..."
"Hopefully, I'm worrying too much."
Aside from the two dragons on his back making this child look somewhat different from ordinary people, she had yet to discover whether this martial soul mutation had any other defects.
"Then maybe those two dragons on his back that he can't retract are the defect of his martial soul mutation?" Dugu Yan said.
"A defect?" Ye Lan paused.
"Is there anything about your twin dragons that feels wrong to you?"
"Anything wrong..." Xuan Ming looked thoughtful.
"I don't think so."
"Didn't you say they'd even beat you up when they acted up?" Dugu Yan said.
"That counts as a defect, doesn't it?"
Ye Lan froze. "They aren't under your control?"
"They are a little hard to control," Xuan Ming said.
"On the night my Martial Soul first awakened, they nearly bit me to death while I was sleeping."
"But I fought them and won, and then they settled down."
"Bit you to death? Didn't you say they were under your control?" Dugu Yan said.
"They were under my control after that fight," Xuan Ming said.
When they first awakened, the two dragons had indeed been disobedient. But they hadn't deliberately attacked him. They had simply lost control and gone mad, unable to distinguish friend from foe.
After that fight, however, the two dragons had quieted down. External stimuli could still cause problems, such as when Chrysanthemum and Ghost pursued Dugu Bo and he was caught up in it, triggering his Martial Soul's berserk state. He had to restrain the twin dragons with all his might just to barely stabilize them. But at least they no longer attacked him as they had at first. At most, they made mistaken judgments like a cat's tail.
"Then that should be it," Ye Lan said.