At the Gray Rock Grade life tier, opening nine Soul Stars was not the limit!
An ancient biography in the school's collection recorded this secret.
This information should have been highly confidential, but no one had noticed that an old, worn biography contained such a secret.
Had anyone known, this biography would certainly have been destroyed.
With a little thought, Jiang Ziliu understood that the greater reason this information was restricted was that the powerful upper classes needed to maintain their enormous advantage on the path of beast taming.
If humanity had not faced the threat of exotic beasts and numerous alien races and needed more strength, they would even have monopolized the path of beast taming outright, cutting off any room for those at the bottom to rise.
This was the result of human instinct and self-interest.
Yet the tremendous external threat from exotic beasts and alien races meant that humanity's upper classes were destined to need the strength of the entire population.
Only when humanity as a whole was strong could it resist outside enemies, and only then could its upper classes preserve their interests and lives.
Otherwise, the moment Earth's humanity suffered total defeat, they would lose not only their status, wealth, and power, but would even struggle to preserve their own lives.
Alien races might need lower-class human slaves, but they would never allow those in the upper classes, who had the ability to resist, to exist.
Exotic beasts would simply wipe out all of humanity.
These circumstances forced humanity to seek strength for everyone, requiring a sweeping tide in which all of humanity grew powerful.
Besides, the awakening of all humanity was an innate ability bestowed by the universe itself, making it difficult to completely prevent other lower-class humans from rising.
Nevertheless, certain secrets concerning the foundations of strength were still sealed off by the upper classes!
They were doing their utmost to maintain their lasting advantages in every respect.
Fortunately, the world was always full of loopholes. This worn old book had recorded that secret without anyone discovering it, handing a windfall to Jiang Ziliu, who was obsessed with books.
Human Soul Stars numbered nine within each major rank, together forming a Soul Domain.
What most people did not know, however, was that another layer of extremely tiny Soul Stars existed within this Soul Domain.
The nine Soul Stars were the main stars.
Those tiny Soul Stars, almost impossible to detect, were secret secondary Soul Stars, also known as Hidden Soul Stars.
There were also nine Hidden Soul Stars in each major realm.
Main Soul Stars determined how much dark energy the soul contained.
Once opened and lit, Hidden Soul Stars did not store dark energy, but could purify it and improve its quality.
Every Hidden Soul Star opened meant that a person's dark energy could rise one small step in quality!
With all nine Hidden Soul Stars fully opened, that person's dark energy would be five times the quality of other beast tamers at the same rank!
Such a beast tamer possessed tremendous combat strength. Without relying on his tamed beasts, he alone could take on an exotic beast one major rank above him.
Hidden Soul Stars also had another important function: directly strengthening the soul, making greater use of dark energy to improve both the quality and quantity of a beast tamer's soul.
With all nine Hidden Soul Stars fully opened, a beast tamer's soul strength would increase substantially, allowing them to contract one more tamed beast.
One more tamed beast meant another powerful source of combat strength!
The importance of this advantage spoke for itself!
But even without fully opening every Hidden Soul Star, a beast tamer could contract their next tamed beast earlier in the next stage.
Once this accumulated to a certain point, that person would have increasingly more tamed beasts than others.
The greater the heights that person reached, the more exotic beasts they would possess!
For beast tamers, the strength of their tamed beasts mattered, but their numbers mattered just as much!
Increasing a beast tamer's soul strength was far more difficult than improving the tamed beasts themselves!
Yet Soul Stars could increase soul strength. That alone was enough to demonstrate the importance of opening Hidden Soul Stars.
Important though it was, opening a Hidden Soul Star was not so easy.
Either one needed exceptional talent, at least above S-rank, to sense Hidden Soul Stars independently under the guidance of a secret method and open them using the corresponding secret method.
Or one had to use special, precious resources to force the Hidden Soul Stars open!
The former depended on talent; the latter depended entirely on resources!
Jiang Ziliu had found a way, but his talent was insufficient. If he wanted to open his Hidden Soul Stars, he could only rely on resources!
After finding this book, Jiang Ziliu immediately stole it from the library.
He had discovered that it was the only surviving copy and had found its way into the special class's library by accident.
Otherwise, those above would have banned it long ago.
The reason he took it away was precisely that he did not want anyone else discovering this secret.
If others discovered it too, the secret of Hidden Soul Stars recorded in this book would leak out.
The upper classes would very likely ban it, and might even take action against those who had read it.
If they discovered that Jiang Ziliu had read this book and had even opened his Hidden Soul Stars, they would more likely make him disappear without a sound than treat him as a genius.
One must never underestimate others' determination and methods when protecting their advantages, interests, and status.
Thus, it was better to nip the storm in the bud before it could rise.
If he truly wanted to change anything, he would have to wait until his own strength was sufficient to absolutely suppress every opposing force.
Then, even if he merely expressed a stance, people would come to his door to help him achieve his goal.
However big a stir he caused now, their most likely response would simply be to snuff him out and put everything to rest.
If a book went missing, he would at most have to pay some compensation.
Jiang Ziliu hid the book, but not in his own home. He did not want to bring danger to his family.
Jiang Ziliu was already at Nine-Star Gray Rock Rank. If he wanted to open his Hidden Soul Stars, he could only resolve the problem through resources.
But the solution mentioned in this book involved soul crystals!
With soul crystals as the main ingredient, supplemented by other materials, one could instantly and harmlessly increase a person's soul activity and improve the soul's mental control, allowing a beast tamer to directly observe the even tinier Hidden Soul Stars, then manipulate their own dark energy to light them and open them step by step.
Soul crystals were the core material and resource for opening Hidden Soul Stars.
Soul crystals were also the core material for awakening the Contract Mark early and becoming a beast tamer ahead of others.
After all, growing and raising tamed beasts took time, and an advantage in time would translate into an advantage in combat strength for a beast tamer earlier on.
But where did soul crystals come from?
Soul crystals came from certain exotic beasts at Silver Rank, Gold Rank, and even ranks above Gold.
The physiques of these exotic beasts were already extremely powerful, their strength so great that it nourished and strengthened their souls in return, until their souls formed core soul crystals.
Powerful human beast tamers and members of alien races would also produce soul crystals after death.
For soul crystals were, in essence, high-quality soul power, and were actually a higher-order state of Soul Stars.
The soul power contained within soul crystals was exceptionally pure and highly conducive to absorption.
One could say that soul crystals were a super-strategic resource, like rare earths or nuclear fuel in Jiang Ziliu's previous life.
Throughout the Human Alliance, soul crystals were subject to extremely strict controls, under an absolute policy of allocation by the upper classes.
Yet after countless years, this system had become all but an empty shell. As long as they were not discovered, soul crystal transactions could proceed in a private frenzy.
But soul crystals were extremely expensive. Even the cheapest cost one hundred million yuan!
Jiang Ziliu now needed to find a way to obtain soul crystals, but not by buying them.
He had already reached the limit of Nine-Star Gray Rock Rank. If he did not find a solution, the next time his tamed beast's continuous growth triggered feedback, he might automatically advance to Black Iron Grade.
Then he would miss his chance to open his Hidden Soul Stars.
As for how to obtain a resource like soul crystals, he set his sights on the Probability Judgment skill.
He had already found some ingenious ways to use Probability Judgment.