A Soul Elder Slays a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, a Soul Tool Shocks Douluo I, and Mu Sheng Plans to Create a Wisdom Soul Ring!
Deep in the hollow, a snake-shaped Soul Beast as black as night lay coiled among the dead trees. It was a good seven or eight zhang long.
Dark purple markings shimmered across its body. Its triangular head lifted slightly, its slit pupils fixing on them with an eerie stare. Its forked tongue flicked in and out, and a low hiss rumbled in its throat.
The Soul Power fluctuations of a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast spread like a tide, pressing the surrounding vegetation flat.
The force of its presence drove Huo Yuhao half a step back. The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm yelled in his head:
"A Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, a genuine Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast! Yuhao, stand back!"
Mu Sheng turned to Tang Ya. "Want me to beat it to within an inch of its life for you? You can land the finishing blow and save your strength to absorb the Soul Ring."
"No!"
Tang Ya raised a hand, fighting spirit burning in her red eyes.
"Brother Sheng, I want to try it myself! I want to see just how strong I've become."
People in both the Douluo I world and the Douluo II anime world erupted when they heard her.
"A Soul Elder fighting a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast? Tang Ya has some nerve!"
"Courage is a good thing, but she's seriously overestimating herself! A Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast could slap her into a meat patty!"
"I respect her for having the guts, but she'd better not be crying and screaming for help later."
In the Sea God Pavilion, Tang Ya stared at her other self on the sky screen, who dared to challenge a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast alone as a Soul Elder. She had to admit she couldn't match that courage.
On the sky screen, even Qian Renxue couldn't help speaking up. "Are you sure you want to fight a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast as a Soul Elder?"
Tang Ya nodded as if it were only natural, then gave Qian Renxue a puzzled look.
"Why are you so shocked? You're a Soul King. Don't you kill Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts whenever you please?"
Qian Renxue stared. "Huh? Really? Can Soul Kings kill Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts whenever they please?"
Tang Ya was even more puzzled than she was.
"Why not? Isn't it perfectly normal for Soul Kings to kill Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts? When Brother Sheng and I were at Shrek, the Soul King seniors went out to hunt Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts all the time."
Qian Renxue opened her mouth, but for a moment she had no idea how to respond.
A Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast was as strong as a human somewhere between a Soul King and a Soul Emperor. In theory, a Soul King had a chance of winning against one, but killing them "whenever you please"... wasn't that making it sound a little too easy?
The people of the Douluo I world were in an uproar too.
"Since when could Soul Kings kill Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts whenever they pleased? Is there something wrong with what I know?"
"A Soul King against a Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast? Normally it's a thirty-seventy split, right? The Soul Beast kills me three times with ease, and before I know it, it's the seventh day after my death! How does she make it sound like chopping melons and slicing vegetables?"
"Are the Soul Masters ten thousand years later all this fierce?"
On the sky screen, Mu Sheng saw Tang Ya's determined expression and nodded.
"All right. With me here, nothing will go wrong."
Tang Ya grinned. Her pink combat outfit pulled taut as she sprang forward.
The Shadow Vine Snake sensed a human approaching and jerked its head up. Dark purple Soul Power gathered in its mouth, and a corrosive blast of shadow breath shot straight at her.
Tang Ya dodged sideways. The shadow breath grazed her shoulder and slammed into the ground, corroding a charred black crater into it.
Without slowing, she released her Dark Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul. Purple-black blades spread wildly along the ground, covering more than half the battlefield in the blink of an eye.
First Soul Skill, Shadow Entanglement.
Purple-black blades burst from the ground and wound around the Shadow Vine Snake's body like living things.
The vine snake twisted, trying to break free, but the blades had been strengthened by darkness-attribute Soul Power. They coiled tighter and tighter, squeezing its scales until they creaked.
Second Soul Skill, Poison of Corrosion.
Purple-black venom seeped from the surface of the blades wrapped around the vine snake, trickling through the gaps between its scales.
The Shadow Vine Snake let out a piercing hiss of pain. Its tail lashed wildly, whipping the surrounding dead trees to splinters.
Third Soul Skill, Shadow Cage.
Tang Ya brought her hands together. Dark Blue Silver Grass surged up from every direction at once, weaving into a cage so tight it left no gaps and trapping the Shadow Vine Snake inside.
The vine snake thrashed about inside, battering the cage out of shape without breaking it. The venom on the blades kept eating away at its scales, and its dark purple markings began to fade.
Tang Ya seized the moment. With a turn of her wrist, she took something out of her Storage Soul Tool.
It was a black cylinder half a chi long, engraved with fine, intricate patterns, with a small trigger mechanism at the back.
She held the cylinder in one hand and aimed it at the Shadow Vine Snake struggling in the cage, then pressed the trigger with her thumb.
"Pfft!"
With a soft sound, a streak of black light shot from the cylinder, moving so fast its path was almost impossible to see.
The black streak struck precisely between the scales at the Shadow Vine Snake's vulnerable spot, seven cun behind its head, burying itself three fen into its flesh.
The vine snake's entire body went rigid. Most of the strength went out of its struggles at once, and after a couple of twitches, it collapsed limply to the ground. The light in its slit pupils rapidly faded.
One strike had killed it.
Watching from the side, Qian Renxue nearly popped her eyes out. She stared at the black cylinder in Tang Ya's hand, her face full of shock.
"This... what is this? What was that black streak just now?"
In the Douluo I world, the people beneath the sky screen also voiced their confusion.
"What was that? What's that black tube? How did a black streak shoot out when she pressed it?"
"That shot was incredibly accurate! It went straight into its weak spot and killed it in one hit. That was even cleaner than a Soul Skill!"
Tang San listened to the discussions rising and falling around him and sneered inwardly.
What a bunch of bumpkins. They don't even know what that is.
The shape of the thing, the structure of its trigger mechanism, the way it fired-he knew them all too well.
A Hidden Weapon. That's a Tang Sect Hidden Weapon!
Though some details had been altered and some Soul Power-driven mechanisms added, the fundamentals remained unchanged. The cylinder was a Hidden Weapon at heart, one that could be concealed in a sleeve and drawn whenever needed.
He had spent so many years making Hidden Weapons in the Tang Sect in his previous life that he could tell at a glance.
On the sky screen, Tang Ya tucked the cylinder behind her waist and clapped her hands, speaking casually.
"A Soul Tool, a Repeating Armor-Piercing Needle. It's specifically made to pierce the defenses of scaled and armored Soul Beasts. I prepared it especially for this hunt."
"A Soul Tool?" Qian Renxue looked utterly bewildered. "What's that?"
Tang Ya paused and looked Qian Renxue up and down, her expression turning a little strange. "You've forgotten even that? Your amnesia is pretty serious."
She then shook her head, a trace of sympathy in her voice.
"Soul Tools are devices powered by Soul Power. They can compress Soul Power to fire piercing rounds, explosive rounds, and things like that. They take a lot less effort to use than Soul Skills, and they pack quite a punch."
"Shrek has classes specifically for Soul Tools. Every student has to learn the basics. You don't even remember that? How did you lose your memory before?"
Qian Renxue's lips moved, but for a long moment she couldn't say a word.
She was the young mistress of both Spirit Hall and Angel Hall, and she considered herself well-informed, yet she had never even heard of such a thing.
She was suddenly a little glad she had made up the excuse of having amnesia. Otherwise, knowing nothing would have made her look like a bumpkin.
The people of the Douluo I world were in an uproar too.
"Devices powered by Soul Power? And they can fire piercing rounds and explosive rounds? That sounds amazing!"
"That world even has things like that? Why do I get the feeling we're an entire age behind?"
"Shrek even has classes to teach this? Now I want to go to school in that world!"
People in the Douluo II anime world reacted more calmly. After all, Soul Tools were already commonplace in their world, though someone still muttered:
"Bringing a Soul Tool along to hunt Soul Beasts-that was pretty foresighted."
On the sky screen, Tang Ya saw that Qian Renxue had said nothing for a long while. She shrugged and didn't press the matter, turning instead to walk toward the Shadow Vine Snake sprawled on the ground.
She raised her hand, Dark Blue Silver Grass surging in her palm as she prepared to deal the vine snake the final blow and absorb its Soul Ring.
"Wait." Mu Sheng suddenly spoke up and stepped forward.
Tang Ya paused and lowered her hand. "Brother Sheng, what is it?"
Mu Sheng crouched down and looked at the dying Shadow Vine Snake. He reached out and placed a hand on its forehead. "Let me try and see if I can get you a Wisdom Soul Ring."