Heaven Dou Royal Academy (I)

The Void Beast King's body went rigid, the light in its eyes rapidly fading. Its enormous body crashed to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

A deep black Soul Ring slowly rose from its body.

Black.

A Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring.

Xiao Wu landed and stared at the black Soul Ring, her eyes full of astonishment. "Brother Lin Chen... it's a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring!"

Lin Chen put away the Heaven-Slaying Sword. His steps were a little unsteady, but he wore a satisfied smile. "A fifteen-thousand-year Void Beast King. A superb spatial-attribute Soul Ring, perfectly suited to what I need for my Third Soul Skill."

He walked over to the Void Beast King's corpse, sat down cross-legged, and took a deep breath.

"Xiao Wu, the rest is up to you. Stand guard for me. I need to devote all my strength to absorbing this Soul Ring."

"Mm!" Xiao Wu nodded firmly, clenched her fists, and stood beside him. "No one's going to disturb you!"

Lin Chen closed his eyes and guided the deep black Soul Ring slowly toward himself.

The instant the Soul Ring touched him, a torrent of unimaginably violent spatial energy surged wildly into his meridians like a flood bursting through a dam. Unlike the Thousand-Year Soul Rings he had absorbed before, the energy contained in a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring was not only immense, but carried an overbearing spatial will, as if it meant to tear his body to pieces from within.

Lin Chen let out a muffled groan, blood seeping from his seven orifices. The Chaos Pearl spun at high speed inside his dantian, sending gray currents surging out to wrap the violent spatial energy in layer after layer, refining and taming it bit by bit.

But the fifteen-thousand-year spatial energy was simply too overbearing, breaking through the Chaos Pearl's restraints again and again. His meridians were torn apart, then repaired by the Power of Chaos, only to be torn apart and repaired once more-every cycle accompanied by pain that pierced his heart and gnawed at his bones.

Lin Chen's consciousness gradually blurred beneath the agony. In a daze, he seemed to see an endless void, stars being born and dying within it, space folding, twisting, shattering, and reassembling...

Those were the spatial memories left behind by the Void Beast King when it was alive.

He gritted his teeth and guided the Chaos Pearl to devour the violent spatial energy bit by bit.

One hour passed.

Two hours.

Three hours.

When the last glow of sunset vanished from the horizon and night fell over the canyon, a terrifying presence suddenly erupted from Lin Chen.

Three Soul Rings rose in succession from beneath his feet-purple, purple, black!

Level thirty-five!

Lin Chen slowly opened his eyes, a silvery-gray spatial gleam flashing deep within his pupils. He raised his right hand, and a thought stirred.

Whoosh-

His figure vanished from where he stood, appearing the next second atop a massive boulder ten zhang away. There had been no visible trajectory or warning, as if he had been standing there all along.

Third Soul Skill-Void Shift!

A short-range spatial-attribute teleportation skill that consumed very little Soul Power. Its current maximum distance was ten zhang per shift, and it could carry one other person along.

During the teleportation, he ignored all damage, toxins, and control effects. As his Soul Power increased, the distance and number of people he could carry would continue to grow. Moreover, when he used his Third Soul Skill, it also produced a spatial tearing attack around him. Though its power was low, it could catch enemies off guard and disrupt them.

"I finally did it..." Lin Chen clenched his fist, feeling the abundant spatial power within him, and a smile touched his lips.

He looked down at the Heaven-Slaying Sword to his left. The dark red patterns on its blade were a little brighter than before, as if it too had drawn something from this battle.

Xiao Wu raced over and threw her arms around his arm. "Brother Lin Chen! You really did it! A Ten Thousand Year Third Soul Ring! You must be the first person on the whole continent!"

"Thanks to you keeping an eye out for the signs before it teleported. Otherwise, this battle wouldn't have been so easy to win."

Xiao Wu grinned and proudly puffed out her chest. "Of course! I'm Sister Xiao Wu of Nuoding Academy!"

Lin Chen laughed, then turned serious. "All right, it's your turn. We'll rest for the night, and tomorrow we'll find you a Third Soul Ring."

Early the next morning, the two left the canyon and set off for Shadow Valley in the Star Dou Great Forest.

"A kind of Soul Beast called the Phantom Rabbit lives in the valley ahead," Lin Chen said as they walked. "They're close relatives of Soft Bone Rabbits. They inherited the Soft Bone Rabbit's agility and explosive power, and have another innate ability as well-they can create phantom clones for a short time to confuse their enemies."

"Phantom Rabbits?" Xiao Wu blinked. "They sound amazing!"

"The strongest among them is a Phantom Rabbit King with seven thousand years of cultivation." Lin Chen looked at her. "A seven-thousand-year Soul Ring is the absolute limit of what you can handle at level thirty. Absorbing it will be very painful, but once you succeed, your Third Soul Skill will be far beyond others at the same level."

Xiao Wu nodded vigorously without the slightest hesitation. "I'm not afraid! If you can absorb a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring, Brother Lin Chen, I can absorb a seven-thousand-year one!"

Lin Chen looked at her determined eyes and smiled in relief.

Shadow Valley was low-lying and shrouded in a thin mist all year round. Vegetation grew thickly within it, and towering ferns blotted out the sky and sun. Sunlight filtered through layers of leaves, casting dappled spots of light.

The moment the two stepped into the valley entrance, they felt a faint, almost imperceptible sense of being watched.

"It's found us," Lin Chen said quietly. The Chaos Pearl glowed faintly, his perception spreading outward like ripples in water. "Northwest, eighty zhang away from us, moving fast."

No sooner had he spoken than a snowy white figure flashed through the mist, moving so fast that only an afterimage remained. Immediately afterward, three more identical figures darted past from different directions, making it impossible to tell real from false.

"Phantom clones." Lin Chen narrowed his eyes. "The real one is hidden among those clones. Xiao Wu, can you tell which one it is?"

Xiao Wu closed her eyes and sensed carefully for a moment, then shook her head. "Their presences are identical. I can't tell them apart."

"Then let's force it to show itself."

Lin Chen stepped forward, and his Second Soul Ring lit up. The force field of Chaos Suppression spread outward with him at its center, enveloping the space within a radius of twenty zhang.

The four phantoms slowed noticeably. Three of them began to twist and warp under the pressure of the chaos force field; only the one on the far left remained solid and stable.

"Found you!"

Lin Chen's figure flickered as he activated Void Shift, instantly appearing in front of the solid phantom. He did not draw his sword. Instead, he reached out with his left hand, fingers spread, and the Power of Chaos condensed into a great gray net that dropped over it.

The Phantom Rabbit King let out a piercing cry and abruptly shrank back, slipping out from under the net at an incredible angle. The moment it landed, it split into five more phantom clones, which scattered and fled in different directions.

"Trying to run?" Lin Chen snorted coldly and drove Chaos Suppression with all his strength. The gray force field expanded to thirty zhang, enveloping all the phantoms.

The phantom clones shattered one after another, until only the real one remained, still struggling desperately. Its speed had been suppressed to less than half its usual level, yet it was still astonishingly fast, leaving winding silver trails through the mist.