A One-Star Dou Zhe normally lacked the strength to venture out for training, so Su Yun had fitted himself with several Fixed Soul Cannon Shells, ready to fire at any moment.
There was nothing he could do about it. After all, he was only a One-Star Dou Zhe, and he was terribly afraid of being bullied.
Fortunately, the journey could just about be called safe, and nothing unexpected happened.
After arriving in Qingshan Town, he made some simple inquiries about where the Myriad Medicine Pavilion gathered herbs. Once he ruled out the places they could not possibly visit, the cave was not difficult to find.
With a careful aerial search using his Flying Soul Tool, Su Yun entered the cave after only a few days.
He did not encounter the Rock Snake, though. Presumably, he had arrived so ridiculously early in the timeline that the rank-one magical beast had yet to come here.
He walked deeper into the cave and opened its door using Xiao Yi Xian's method from the original novel. Soon, a skeleton, three stone boxes, and a pile of medicinal herbs and gold coins appeared before him.
With a sweep of his hand, Su Yun first stowed the pile of gold coins in his Storage Soul Tool, clearing out the cave.
Then Su Yun took out the offerings and three sticks of incense he had prepared in advance and bowed three times to the skeleton.
"Thank you, Senior. There isn't much I can do for you, and I don't know whether people here observe these customs, but I suppose they probably do."
With that, Su Yun walked toward the skeleton, ready to retrieve the Purifying Lotus Demon Flame map fragment and the keys.
Just then, however, the ground before Su Yun shifted, and a stone box suddenly appeared.
The stone box was unlocked and simply sat there quietly.
Su Yun opened it. Inside were a Storage Ring and a message carved into stone.
My name is Ye Fan, a member of the Ye Family, one of the Pill Tower's Five Great Families in the Central Plains. I unfortunately perished while traveling for training.
Whoever comes after me, if you have the ability in the future and the Ye Family faces peril, please do this old man the favor of lending them a hand.
If not, then let it be. Offering this old man a stick of incense is already good enough.
Also, one of the three stone boxes contains the Seven-Colored Poison Scripture. It is lethally poisonous, killing on contact. This old man used it as a precaution against those with crooked intentions.
As for the keys to those three stone boxes, they lie among this old man's bones, along with a map I could not understand.
"Those with crooked intentions?"
Su Yun thought about it. Not offering so much as a stick of incense, yet taking things from someone's bones-crooked intentions aside, that certainly was not a decent way to handle things.
He bowed three more times to the remains, then took everything from the other two stone boxes. The Seven-Colored Poison Scripture could not be touched, so he left it behind.
I'll give it to Xiao Yi Xian once I've made the preparations on my end.
Before leaving, Su Yun looked at the gold coins in his Soul Tool, then at Ye Fan's remains. After some thought, he put Ye Fan's body away and bought a coffin in Qingshan Town.
Su Yun did not know much about the customs of the Dou Qi Continent, but since Ye Fan himself considered having incense offered to him a good thing, Su Yun simply applied the customs and culture of his previous life.
Someone who wanted others to offer him incense after his death would most likely also wish for fallen leaves to return to their roots.
He did not yet have the strength to go to the Central Plains, but once he was strong enough and traveled there, he could stop by the Ye Family and return Ye Fan to his roots.
After finishing all this, Su Yun bought a tier-three Pulse-Protecting Pill and returned to the Douluo Continent.
Su Yun had actually wanted to buy a tier-four one at first, but while commonly used pills made by tier-four alchemists were manageable, those that were rarely used could not be bought on short notice.
Unless he commissioned an alchemist to make one. Everything else was manageable, but securing a favor from an alchemist was asking a little too much of a One-Star Dou Zhe like him, so Su Yun could only settle for a tier-three pill.
After returning to the Douluo Continent, Su Yun did not immediately fuse with the Purple Cloud Wings. He remembered just how much Xiao Yan had suffered when fusing with them.
Fusing with the wings of a Black Flame Purple Cloud Eagle was no trivial matter. In Douluo I, its worldbuilding might have allowed a risk-free fusion, but this was Douluo II.
During Douluo II, to let Huo Yuhao reasonably fuse with the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear's Soul Bone without saddling him with a moral burden, Tang Jia San Shao scrapped both the Douluo I setting that External Soul Bones came along with Soul Rings and the setting that Soul Bone fusion had no prerequisites.
Thus, whether it was a Soul Bone from Douluo II or the Purple Cloud Wings from Battle Through the Heavens, fusion was no trivial matter. One careless mistake could cost him his life.
So Su Yun waited for the Thousand-Year mental-type Soul Beast he wanted to be delivered.
Only after fusing with a Thousand-Year mental-type Soul Ring and undergoing a qualitative change in both Soul Power and spiritual power could Su Yun say he had complete confidence in fusing with the Black Flame Purple Cloud Eagle's Purple Cloud Wings without suffering a backlash.
Several days later, a bound Big-Headed Spirit Ape around thirteen hundred years old was delivered to Su Yun.
The normal absorption limit for a first Soul Ring was 423 years. Su Yun had eaten some Whale Rubber, which could raise that limit slightly, so reaching five hundred years should not be much of a problem.
With the nourishment his body received from Dou Qi after he became a Dou Zhe, Su Yun's first Soul Ring absorption limit should exceed the average person's second Soul Ring absorption limit.
Adding the Pulse-Protecting Pill, Su Yun estimated that the age of the Soul Ring he could absorb should be no lower than that of an average person's third Soul Ring.
Still, mental-type Soul Beasts were indeed rather scarce, and Su Yun truly had no need to take risks.
He could use resources from both Douluo and Battle Through the Heavens. Why take a risk for a few hundred extra years on his first Soul Ring?
Especially since his first Soul Ring was already a Thousand-Year one. Those few hundred years would not even take it from one thousand to two thousand, making it all the more unnecessary.
He ended the Big-Headed Spirit Ape's life with a single stroke, and a pale purple Soul Ring floated out of the Soul Beast's body. Su Yun watched it curiously for a while before taking out the Pulse-Protecting Pill and beginning to fuse with the Thousand-Year Soul Ring.
The facts proved Su Yun's thinking correct. With Dou Qi helping temper his body and the Pulse-Protecting Pill temporarily increasing the strain his meridians could withstand, Su Yun's estimate had even been conservative.
Never mind a thirteen-hundred-year Soul Beast-even a two-thousand-year Soul Beast was something Su Yun could have attempted.
Su Yun did not mind, though. Not only were two-thousand-year mental-type Soul Beasts difficult to find in the era of Douluo II, but he had not previously known the upper limit of what his body could withstand. Given that, a good result was enough.
He took a crystal ball from his Soul Tool and injected a trace of Soul Power into it. The number fourteen appeared, indicating that Su Yun's Soul Power was at rank fourteen.
"With innate rank-three talent, and most of the Foundation Establishment Spirit Liquid's medicinal potency going toward cultivating Dou Qi, I shouldn't have accumulated much Soul Power, even though it's been some time since I reached rank ten. Rank eleven would probably have been pretty good."
"A Soul Ring over a thousand years old only raised my Soul Power by three ranks?"
Su Yun frowned, thinking of how Tang San had reached rank thirteen with a Soul Ring just over four hundred years old. But then he recalled that Tang San had reached his bottleneck long before that and had actually continued cultivating for a long time afterward, and he felt reassured.
Su Yun swallowed a Soul Ascension Pill, pushing his Soul Power from rank fourteen all the way to rank seventeen in one go.
At this point, he was eight and a half years old, with rank-seventeen Soul Power, a Thousand-Year first Soul Ring, and an External Soul Bone soon to come. Su Yun would soon have a place among the geniuses.