"Are you sure you want to hunt a Hundred-Thousand-Year Sea Princess for your Eighth Soul Ring?"
As Ming Zhao walked across the ice field, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's worried voice rang out in his Sea of Consciousness.
"The Sea Princess Clan is no easy target. They're followers of the Sea God, and rumor has it they once received his blessing. Their clan leader is said to be no weaker than the Snow Empress. If you go after them, you'll be fine as long as nobody finds out, but once they do, the entire Ice Sea will become your enemy."
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm actually knew very little about the Far North. He was always either eating Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice Marrow or sleeping.
But even he had heard the Sea Princess Clan's name, which showed just how renowned they were in the Far North.
"You're just scared." Ming Zhao's voice was calm, almost cold.
"Who wouldn't be?" The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm bristled, wriggling twice as fast. "Even in my prime, all I could do when I ran into a Sea Princess was run for my life..."
"Who didn't you have to run from?" Ming Zhao cut off the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's muttering.
The latter fell silent for a while, then wriggled into a corner of the Sea of Consciousness and sulked, drawing circles.
"Fine, you're amazing. Just don't drag your brother down with you."
"I value my life a lot more than you do." Ming Zhao kept a straight face and cut off contact with the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm.
The Ice Sea was already visible in the distance.
Ming Zhao had long since made plans for his Soul Rings. His Seventh Soul Ring had come from a ninety-thousand-year Fire Evil Tyrant from the Evil Demon Forest.
The Ghost Bride Martial Soul was not purely mental-type, so a purely Mental Attribute Evil Eye Tyrant was unsuitable for him. A Fire Evil Tyrant with a fire attribute was the best Soul Ring for him to absorb.
If Evil Eye Tyrants with mixed attributes did not have such difficulty breaking through to a hundred thousand years, Ming Zhao would have saved his Seventh Soul Ring slot and absorbed a Fire Evil Tyrant over a hundred thousand years old later.
Unfortunately, there were none of those things at a hundred thousand years.
That was what angered Ming Zhao most.
The Evil Eye Tyrant's racial stats were already very high. On the Douluo Continent, it was a first-rank Soul Beast in the T1 tier. Even if the Fire Evil Tyrant was a little weaker, it was still T1.5 in strength.
Yet that ninety-thousand-year Fire Evil Tyrant had failed to drop a single Soul Bone for him. He would remember that for the rest of his life.
Besides the Fire Evil Tyrant, Ming Zhao also planned to obtain a Soul Ring from an Ice Evil Tyrant or a Water Evil Tyrant and absorb it into his Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul.
Before formally hunting high-tier Soul Beasts, Ming Zhao would gather a great deal of information to keep himself from taking the wrong path due to a lack of knowledge.
The Sea Princess was among those he had researched.
A Mermaid Clan Soul Ring would be an excellent fit for either the Ghost Bride Martial Soul or the Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul.
Overall, it was actually better suited to the Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul. After all, mermaids lived in the water. It did not clash with the Ghost Bride's yin fire attribute, but neither was it a particularly good match.
It could only be said that the strength of the Soul Skill and the stats granted by its age made up the compatibility between the Martial Soul and the Soul Ring.
Once Ming Zhao broke through to the Titled realm, the six-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-year Sea Princess whom the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm feared so much would also become a Soul Ring for his Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul sooner or later.
Ming Zhao had had his eye on them for a long time.
To gather information on the Sea Princess Clan, he had even slaughtered several villages along the Ice Sea coast before he managed to force out secret information passed down through generations of fishermen.
Some of it concerned the Sea Princess.
The mermaid princess Li Ya did not stay in the depths of the Ice Sea all year round. Occasionally, she would wander to the coast with schools of fish and sit on floating ice or icebergs, singing softly. Her lilting song, as pleasing to the ear as a siren's, had given rise to legends of a "sea sprite" passed down for generations in the villages and towns near the coast.
As it happened... there was a pattern to Li Ya's movements. Every few years, she would come to the Ice Sea coast and observe humans with curiosity.
That was not so strange.
If she had not frequently come into contact with humans, that foolish woman would not have been deceived by an Evil Soul Master using the Soul Spirit Method in the original story, only to be forcibly made into a vengeful spirit.
Simple and easy to fool.
Besides that, those fishermen actually had a rough idea of Li Ya's feeding grounds and the routes she traveled through the sea.
It was downright absurd.
Ming Zhao had racked his brains but could not figure out how a group of ants, the strongest of whom was only a Soul King, had managed to learn a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast's range and even draw a rough map of it.
But when he saw that, even with their lives in danger, those fishermen's eyes were still full of longing and admiration for the sea sprite, the mermaid princess, Ming Zhao fell silent for a while before smiling as his doubts melted away.
Damn it.
Those damned furry lovers and love-struck fools.
You... did a great job!
The sea chart showing Li Ya's range, along with the information he had forced out of the fishermen and recorded in his own hand, was stored in his Storage Soul Tool.
Besides the Mermaid Clan, there were also the Evil Spirit Orca Clan, the Demon Soul Great White Shark Clan, the Demon Soul Octopus Clan, and even the Deep Sea Demon Whale...
However, apart from the information on the Mermaid Clan, the details on the other Sea Soul Beasts were all highly incomplete, and there was no way to verify them.
Ming Zhao was also gathering information, openly and secretly, on certain powerful Soul Beasts on land, in places such as the Star Dou Great Forest, the Evil Demon Forest, the Jingyang Mountain Range, and the Ming Dou Great Forest.
He had no faction backing him, nor had he joined the Holy Spirit Cult. No one would hunt Soul Beasts for him to obtain Soul Rings, so he had to rely on himself.
That was how Ming Zhao had hunted down his previous Soul Rings, and those to come would be no exception.
It was just that, as his strength increased, Soul Hunting had become easier and easier.
Ming Zhao stood at the edge of the Ice Sea for a long while, eyes closed as he recalled the information in his head about the mermaid princess Li Ya.
This was not the year Li Ya came ashore.
According to the fishermen, she was most likely foraging in the deep sea four hundred nautical miles away, northwest of the Ice Sea in the ten o'clock direction.
After confirming the information was correct, Ming Zhao opened his eyes. The Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul emerged behind him, and a white Soul Ring, lustrous as jade, appeared at his side.
"Martial Soul Possession-"
The Water Vengeful Spirit spread her arms, embraced Ming Zhao from behind, and merged into his body.
After the Martial Soul Possession, Ming Zhao's fair skin turned even paler. His eyes became black, with no whites visible, while his eye sockets and lips turned the dark purple of smoky makeup. His body also became translucent and indistinct, like a ghost.
His whole appearance was especially eerie, even ugly.
That was also why Ming Zhao had not chosen to cultivate the Water Vengeful Spirit Martial Soul first. Possession by a water ghost affected his looks far too much. After the Ghost Bride Martial Soul Possession, not only were his looks unaffected, but he also became more handsome.
He could only see whether the effect of possession would be a little better after the Water Vengeful Spirit herself was replaced by Li Ya.
Once the possession was complete, Ming Zhao leaped into the Ice Sea and sped through the water like a gray-white ghost, moving at nearly the speed of flight.
The Water Vengeful Spirit was like a fish in water.
The sea was her home ground too.