In the Zhou Mansion of Tiandou City, an experiment was underway. In a secret underground chamber, Huo Yuhao, Zhou Qi, and Xue Di were gathered, along with a ragged middle-aged man.
This middle-aged man sat cross-legged on the ground, with five jet-black soul rings coiled around his body.
Xue Di and Zhou Qi stared intently at the middle-aged man, while Huo Yuhao waved his hand, continuously injecting streams of pure white energy into the middle-aged man's fifth soul ring.
As time passed, the color of the middle-aged man's fifth soul ring began to change, from black to deep black, then from deep black to black with red, and finally to bright red.
When the black soul ring transformed into red, Huo Yuhao finally stopped. If others had witnessed this scene, they would have been utterly astonished. No one on the continent had ever heard of anyone being able to increase the age of their soul rings; if one had to name one, it would only be a legendary god.
A short while later, the middle-aged man opened his eyes. He immediately knelt down before Huo Yuhao, on both knees, and cried out, "Thank you for your reward, sir! I am willing to serve you faithfully!"
"No need for formalities. You've taken the risk yourself. Tell me how you feel,"
Huo Yuhao said indifferently. These past few months, he hadn't just focused on cultivation. He, Xue Di, and Tian Meng had been researching spirit rings. Xue Di knew how to condense spirit rings, while Tian Meng had a way to increase the age of spirit rings.
Huo Yuhao himself might not care about these things, but others in the spirit master world would certainly be very interested. If Huo Yuhao wanted his power to grow rapidly, he had to come up with something different, something that could attract people.
These three, working together, had actually made some discoveries. Spirit masters could condense spirit rings themselves, just like Huo Yuhao had condensed his fifth spirit ring using the energy of the Seven-Colored Exquisite Core.
Why hadn't anyone researched this before? Firstly, they didn't know where to start. Everyone knew that killing spirit beasts would yield spirit rings, but how spirit rings were formed was a complete mystery to them.
Many 100,000-year-old transformed soul beasts were unaware of this, merely following their instincts. However, they could only condense the first six soul rings, as condensing soul rings consumed their source power.
A 100,000-year cultivation level could only support them in condensing the first six soul rings; after that, without source power, they could only hunt soul beasts like human soul masters to obtain soul rings.
This problem was finally solved with the participation of two powerful figures, Xue Di and Tian Meng. Tian Meng, in particular, was willing to transform herself into a living soul ring just to survive, demonstrating her extraordinary and unique understanding of the power of the soul master system.
Through research, they discovered that the most crucial factor was energy. Soul masters typically absorbed soul rings from sources stronger than themselves.
For example, a level 30 great soul master would absorb a third soul ring around 1,700 years old, but soul beasts of the same level were inherently stronger than soul masters, let alone soul masters who hadn't yet acquired their third soul ring.
In other words, even if soul masters had methods to condense soul rings independently, their own soul power was insufficient to condense soul rings, at least far from the optimal age for them.
However, Huo Yuhao solved this problem. He lacked many things, but he didn't lack soul power. With the Bright Realm, a soul core comparable to a nascent small world, his soul power was virtually inexhaustible.
Furthermore, Huo Yuhao had used an array to classify the spiritual energy within the Bright Realm into different levels. Ordinary spiritual energy was only slightly stronger than a normal person's soul power; while cultivation with this energy was slightly better than outside, it didn't offer any particularly significant effects. This was named Black Iron Spiritual Energy.
Silver Spiritual Energy, on the other hand, was much better. If the purity of the outside world's energy was ten, then the purity of Silver Spiritual Energy was fifteen.
First-grade spiritual energy was the highest quality, and it would be a special benefit for the higher-ups after Huo Yuhao established his power, used to cultivate genius soul masters. It wasn't that Huo Yuhao wanted to create a hierarchy of spiritual energy; rather, resources were limited. First-grade soul power was extremely pure, extracted from vast amounts of spiritual energy.
For example, it took fifty cubic meters of ordinary spiritual energy to extract one cubic meter of first-grade spiritual energy.
In Huo Yuhao's plan, black iron soul power was meant to attract people to join the Bright Realm. These people didn't need to join a sect; they were simply being exploited by Huo Yuhao, but they didn't actually lose anything, since joining a sect would impose restrictions.
However, if they weren't satisfied with black iron spiritual energy and wanted silver spiritual energy, that was fine too—they just needed to join a sect.
This was Huo Yuhao's trap. Once they smelled the aroma, they were sure to fall for it. Even if they only used black iron spiritual energy, Huo Yuhao would still be the biggest beneficiary, a guaranteed profit.
Besides these three types of spiritual energy, there was another, most refined spiritual energy: the Bright Realm's primordial power. This energy was pure and flawless, containing no impurities, and was what Huo Yuhao used for his daily cultivation.
Huo Yuhao had no intention of making this power public, nor did he intend to share it with anyone except his master and his woman, as it was indeed extremely rare.
First-class spiritual energy was sufficient for condensing a soul ring, though primordial power would be even better.
This ragged middle-aged man was actually a death row inmate from the Heavenly Soul Empire named Pang Yu. Zhou Qi had used his connections and money to get him released. Not only death row inmates, but also slaves bought from the slave market—all of these people were used for soul ring experiments.
Some succeeded, but many failed; in the earliest days, some even exploded and died while absorbing soul rings.
Therefore, Huo Yuhao instructed them to find the most wicked people, not out of any saintly compassion, but simply for psychological comfort.
Of course, not all death row inmates were bad; some were wrongly accused, or ordinary commoners who had offended nobles.
Pang Yu was one such example. Once, a prince was traveling with his wife and children, and because he was a fraction too slow to dodge, his wife was accidentally killed by a soldier.
Seeing that someone had died, the other party simply charged Pang Yu with assaulting a prince's carriage, and the middle-aged man was imprisoned that very day, where he remained for over twenty years.
They managed to turn a young man not yet twenty into a middle-aged man, until Zhou Qi recently bought him out.
After learning about his situation, Zhou Qi specifically arranged for him to be released later, because the longer he stayed, the more experience he would gain, and the lower the risk of the experiment.
Not only Soul Masters, but Huo Yuhao also captured many Soul Beasts in the early stages of the experiment, most of which are now dead.
When Pang Yu first emerged, he was a level 40 Soul Venerable. His next two Soul Rings were condensed by Huo Yuhao for him to absorb. And that wasn't all; Huo Yuhao also upgraded Pang Yu's first three Soul Rings. With these upgrades and over twenty years of accumulation, Pang Yu leaped directly to level 57 Soul King.
....
Fully Completed English PDF of this fan-fic on my Patreon shop if you want to support and own the full fan-fic in one go. Just grab the PDF and binge the entire story from start to finish!
Brothers My Lovely Brothers ! I've uploaded some High Quality english translated fanfic on my Patreon shop! recently Feel free to check it out—if you're interested, you can grab a copy and support me there.
Here are a few titles of recently uploaded fanfics:
" Sign-In Douluo: Starting as a Slime "
" Douluo: I Can Copy Everything "
" Douluo: My Martial Soul Is the Xuanyuan Xiayu Sword"
" Douluo: The Transmigrator Judgment System"
" Douluo: The Power of Support "
" Douluo: Transmigrated as the Second Young Miss of Spirit Hall "
" Douluo Dalu 3: Legend of the White Fox "
" Douluo: Master of Body Techniques "
" Douluo: The Holy Emperor Dragon King"
" Douluo: Ranking the Top Ten Peerless Goddesses at the Start "
" Douluo: Transmigrated as Huo Yuhao "
" Douluo: My Wife Qian Renxue Gave Birth to the Seven Calabash Brothers "
many more up to 110+ are available.
Your support means a lot—thanks in advance, legends!
Patreon.com/UIGOD
(End of Chapter)