After returning home, Jiang Ziliu let out a long breath.
But the relieved expressions on his parents' faces made him realize that they knew he had gone into the wilderness.
He could not help sighing, yet he did not know what to say. He could only work harder to improve himself, so that he could gain the power to decide his own fate sooner.
Only then did he begin carefully examining the Soul Crystals he had obtained.
This time, Jiang Ziliu had obtained five Soul Crystals in total. The smallest was only the size of a soybean, while the largest was half the size of a fist.
Every one of them was an extraordinary treasure, worth at least 100 million yuan.
The largest one might be of even higher quality; even a fortune of 100 billion yuan might not necessarily buy it.
Once treasures reached a certain level, ordinary currency could no longer buy them.
Only spirit crystals of at least A grade qualified for an exchange of equal value with such treasures.
And even the lowest D- grade spirit crystals were worth over 100 yuan each!
Jiang Ziliu decided to use the smallest Soul Crystal.
It was not that he did not want to use a high-grade Soul Crystal, but that he could not. His soul strength could not withstand the impact of the highly potent soul power within one.
His current soul strength was only 14.1, leaving him utterly unable to withstand the power of a Soul Crystal of too high a grade.
Of course, part of the reason was that his resources were limited. He lacked fine medicinal ingredients to slow and temper a high-grade Soul Crystal's immense power.
When those great and powerful families awakened Contract Marks ahead of time, they tempered powerful Soul Crystals with special medicines and resources of extremely high quality, processing the release and absorption of their power.
Jiang Ziliu did not have the wealth to buy the corresponding high-grade resources and medicines.
Although he had collected some medicinal ingredients during this trip into the wilderness, none were of particularly high grades.
He could only select some D- and C-grade ingredients to prepare a usable gel medicine suited to the power of the smallest, low-quality Soul Crystal.
Soul Crystals were likewise not absorbed by taking them orally.
Swallowing one was possible, but only if the beast tamer could withstand the violent and powerful soul power it released.
Eating was the simplest method, but it was often the most dangerous and least reliable way to use treasures.
He first applied the prepared gel medicine between his eyebrows.
Then he stuck the smallest Soul Crystal in its center.
The medicine gently drew out the Soul Crystal's power, guiding it into his body through the point between his eyebrows to nourish his soul, making it tougher and more active.
At this moment, Jiang Ziliu's soul could observe and manipulate things with greater precision, and it was more active as well.
This allowed him to observe the extremely tiny Hidden Soul Stars concealed near the nine Soul Stars on the same plane.
These special existences, normally impossible to observe, now appeared in his soul's field of vision.
What Jiang Ziliu needed to do next was use his soul power to control his dark energy and light up and awaken these Hidden Soul Stars.
He began.
A point of light flickered, and the first Hidden Soul Star successfully awakened!
After its activation, the first Hidden Soul Star became a smaller, shining Soul Star.
It spontaneously formed an interconnected binary-star dark energy Lesser Celestial Circuit system with the first primary Soul Star he had awakened.
Dark energy began flowing in a loop between the first awakened primary Soul Star and this Hidden Soul Star.
After passing through the Hidden Soul Star, the dark energy diminished in quantity, but its quality rose!
The quality of his dark energy had risen by one small level!
Jiang Ziliu felt some fatigue in his soul, but it was not particularly noticeable. This meant that he still had the capacity to light up more Hidden Soul Stars today.
Following the first step, Jiang Ziliu successfully awakened the second Hidden Soul Star.
The second Hidden Soul Star formed the same connection with the second awakened primary Soul Star, along with the same binary-star energy Lesser Celestial Circuit structure.
The quality of his dark energy improved further.
Every additional Hidden Soul Star he awakened would create another binary-star dark energy Lesser Celestial Circuit, improving the quality of his dark energy further from its existing foundation.
Next, Jiang Ziliu successfully awakened the third Hidden Soul Star, bringing the third binary-star dark energy Lesser Celestial Circuit into existence.
Only at this point did Jiang Ziliu feel his soul become extremely exhausted.
In this state, it was no longer suitable to continue awakening Hidden Soul Stars.
Jiang Ziliu then put away the Soul Crystal and medicine, hid them safely, and went to sleep.
Sleeping was his best way to restore his soul.
Before that, he had also wrapped the other four Soul Crystals together in a kind of gel and hidden them.
This gel was made from the hide of a seemingly useless feline exotic beast, but it could block odors, presences, and energy fluctuations.
This world had all kinds of tamed beasts.
Among them were tamed beasts with treasure-hunting abilities, and some of their beast tamers often turned into treasure thieves.
Later, other beast tamers grew wiser too, using special methods to hide their treasures and taking particular precautions against beast tamers with treasure-hunting beasts.
Jiang Ziliu had also found a way to hide the Soul Crystals: this special gel.
He also used a specially made lead box for another layer of protection.
Lead, a special substance, could also block dark energy and soul signals quite effectively, making it a good material for hiding treasures.
Only after a night of deep sleep did Jiang Ziliu recover.
Soul Crystals were expensive, and naturally, their effects were not limited to activating the soul and improving the depth of its microscopic observation.
They also strengthened a beast tamer's soul during this process!
Jiang Ziliu: Class: Nine-Star Gray Rock Rank beast tamer Lifespan: 16 (147) Vital status: healthy Soul strength: 27.8 Life tier: Gray Rock Grade life-form Dark energy level: 9.2 Personal skills: Probability Judgment (innate skill): can judge the probability of a specified outcome at any time Feedback skills: Life Aura Concealment (SSS grade) Electromagnetic Manipulation (SSS+) Tamed beasts: six-star Black Iron Grade Azurite Rock Man, five-star Black Iron Grade Mutated Lightning Snake Tamed beast skills: Azurite Rock Man: Life Aura Concealment (SSS grade), Rock and Earth Evasion (C+ grade), Rock and Earth Concealment (C- grade), Mutated Spirituality (D+), Rock and Earth Sneak Stab (D+), Saber Mastery (D-), Earth Space Evasion (unawakened) Mutated Lightning Snake: Electromagnetic Manipulation (SSS+ grade), Electric Current Attack (C- grade), Lightning Divine Speed (D+ grade), Mutated Spirituality (C- grade) Tamed beast ranks: Azurite Rock Man: six-star Black Iron Mutated Lightning Snake: three-star Black Iron Tamed beast status: Azurite Rock Man was healthy, with 90% favorability toward his beast tamer. Mutated Lightning Snake was healthy, with 88% favorability toward his beast tamer.
The Soul Crystal's improvement to his soul was very clear. Jiang Ziliu's soul strength had almost doubled!
His soul strength stat had reached 27.8!
After all, exotic beasts capable of producing Soul Crystals were at least Silver Rank. Most were powerful exotic beasts of Gold Rank, or even higher.
The fact that the Soul Crystals they produced doubled a Gray Rock Grade beast tamer's soul strength was already the result of a weakened effect.
The increase in his soul strength at this moment was not merely an improvement in quality, but also an increase in quantity.
Clearly, there was a reason Soul Crystals were so expensive.
A saying circulated among beast tamers: raising tamed beasts was easy, but improving the soul was hard!
With resources, tamed beasts could improve rapidly, but a person's soul strength was not so easy to raise.
Resources that improved the soul were even scarcer.
Moreover, if someone's will was too weak, even soul-related resources could not strengthen their soul, and a mishap could even damage it.
After his soul strength increased, Jiang Ziliu felt that his intelligence, speed of thought, and memory had also improved greatly.
Now, even without wearing the mysterious leaf-shaped metal disc, he could achieve the same learning results.
Of course, wearing it produced even better results.
He had not felt his soul improve yesterday because his soul power had been in a special activated state.
Moreover, his soul power had also been used to awaken Hidden Soul Stars. In that exhausted state, it was difficult to feel any obvious improvement.
After his soul strength increased, Jiang Ziliu began to faintly exude the oppressive presence that high-level beast tamers exerted over lower-level life-forms.
The soul presence of a powerful beast tamer alone could suppress low-level beast tamers so thoroughly that they struggled to resist. This was a manifestation of soul strength reaching a certain level.
Judging by the stat panel, his other attributes had all improved, but his dark energy level had fallen instead.
In fact, this was the result of an improvement in his dark energy's quality, but it was also a process of compressing dark energy.
It would take some time for the quantity of his dark energy to return to its previous level, unless he was in an environment with a relatively high concentration of dark energy, where it could recover rapidly.
For example, the base's public dark energy chamber was not only used to enhance students' talents.
Ordinarily, this facility was open to all beast tamers for a fee, precisely so they could quickly restore their dark energy levels.
Over the past few months, Jiang Ziliu had focused mainly on studying, so he had not specifically trained his tamed beasts to raise their ranks.
Another reason was that the moment his tamed beasts' ranks rose, feedback would immediately push him directly into the Black Iron Grade beast tamer level.
This was not something he wanted to see. He still wanted to delay this step until after awakening his Hidden Soul Stars.
After checking his condition, Jiang Ziliu began awakening more Hidden Soul Stars.
On the second day, he awakened another three Hidden Soul Stars. The quality of his dark energy rose further, while its quantity declined further.
On the third day, he awakened the final three Hidden Soul Stars, fully awakening them all.
By this point, the smallest Soul Crystal he had been using was completely depleted. Its entire structure lost its core power and dissolved into specks of light.
Jiang Ziliu discovered that each Hidden Soul Star appeared in correspondence with a primary Soul Star.
There was not one more, nor one fewer.
They were soul formations that inherently existed in correspondence within the human body. It was simply easy for people to discover Soul Stars, but difficult to discover Hidden Soul Stars.
Each Soul Star and Hidden Soul Star formed a hidden Lesser Celestial Circuit system between them.
Once all his dark energy had been thoroughly improved through these Lesser Celestial Circuits, its quality would be no weaker than that of high-level or even peak Black Iron Grade beast tamers.
Hidden Soul Stars were the most important special foundation that beast tamers had to establish!
With all nine Hidden Soul Stars awakened and the Soul Crystal completely consumed, Jiang Ziliu's soul had also improved greatly, bringing new changes to his stat panel.
Jiang Ziliu: Class: Nine-Star Gray Rock Rank beast tamer Lifespan: 16 (149) Vital status: healthy Soul strength: 100.1 Life tier: Gray Rock Grade life-form Dark energy level: 6.2 Personal skills: Probability Judgment (innate skill): can judge the probability of a specified outcome at any time Feedback skills: Life Aura Concealment (SSS grade) Electromagnetic Manipulation (SSS+) ... (Other information unchanged)
Jiang Ziliu's soul strength had soared straight to the 100.1 level!
This was the combined effect of the Soul Crystal's power and the Hidden Soul Stars strengthening his soul.
Soul strength at the 100 level was already the standard possessed only by Bronze Rank beast tamers.
Generally speaking, for a Gray Rock Grade beast tamer to advance to Black Iron Grade, their soul strength had to reach the 10 level.
For a Black Iron Grade beast tamer to advance to Bronze Rank, they had to cross the soul strength threshold of 100.
Otherwise, no matter how powerful their tamed beasts were, the beast tamer's rank would remain stuck there, and could even shackle the advancement of their tamed beasts' life tiers in turn.
Now, Jiang Ziliu possessed the qualifications to advance straight to a Bronze Rank beast tamer!
His soul strength stat of 100 also made his life pressure very powerful, creating a strong sense of oppression for ordinary people and Gray Rock Grade beast tamers.
Fortunately, Jiang Ziliu quickly activated Life Aura Concealment, his SSS-grade concealment skill, and concealed his soul presence down to the normal level of three-star Gray Rock Grade.
An SSS-grade concealment skill truly was impressive. It could conceal his life aura, his dark energy, and even his soul presence!
This skill fully demonstrated how right he had been to choose the Azurite Rock Man as his first tamed beast!
A stat of 100 was another kind of benchmark as well.
For example, when Bronze Rank beast tamers' tamed beasts all died or fell into slumber, their soul stats would drop directly because of feedback, and they could no longer unleash the life pressure they had originally possessed as powerful individuals.
His parents were like this.
The death of a tamed beast caused a permanent drop in the soul strength stat, constituting actual damage to the soul.
When all the tamed beasts fell into slumber, it was hidden soul damage instead, a kind of damage from which recovery was possible.
But injuries that could make tamed beasts fall directly into slumber within the Beast-Taming Space generally damaged their very roots. The resources and wealth needed for a true recovery were beyond anything ordinary beast tamers could afford.
Thus, their extraordinary powers had also fallen into complete "slumber," reducing them to a special kind of ordinary person in this world.
Now, Jiang Ziliu's dark energy quantity level had fallen to 6.2.
His dark energy had been further compressed into an improvement in quality.
Once he restored the quantity of his dark energy, he could continue raising his tamed beasts and prepare to advance to the next level, becoming a Black Iron Grade beast tamer!
Moreover, with his soul strength raised to 100, just as the information he had obtained recorded, he now met the requirements to contract a third tamed beast!