Join my Patreon to stay 30 chapters ahead of the Webnovel releases:
https://patreon.com/ZeroMoney
You can also read on my website:
tlmasters.xyz
I'd really appreciate your support. Every membership helps keep me motivated to continue translating and releasing chapters consistently.
*****
The restriction that "Heartsteel" cannot deal damage exceeding a limit based on his maximum health was, for him, no restriction at all.
If he only possessed the Heartsteel soul skill, and if Ye Lan relied on the 100,000-year-old Blue Silver Grass to gain vitality, his growth would be linear. Even if he could use Heartsteel to kill the Blue Silver Grass, he would at most obtain 10% of its vitality. While the cumulative amount would eventually become terrifying, it would still be subject to diminishing marginal returns as he killed more of them.
But Heartsteel wasn't his only trick.
When he originally chose "Life Sharing," it was with the hope that he would one day obtain "Heartsteel." If he could pair the two, his growth would be nothing short of monstrous.
The power of "Life Sharing" linked the lives of all living entities into a single entity; any damage taken would only deduct from the "Total Shared Health Pool." Consequently, Heartsteel's damage—equivalent to 3% of maximum health—could never exhaust this total pool. Furthermore, he possessed recovery skills like "Blue Silver Sublimation."
Thus, he could use Heartsteel without limit.
After condensing the "Perfect Yin-Yang Balanced Dual Soul Cores," his soul power was virtually inexhaustible. Even if he ran low, a brief moment of meditation was enough to fully replenish his reserves.
The synergy between "Life Sharing" and "Heartsteel" was simple: every time Heartsteel was triggered, he would gain 0.3% of his total health! It might not sound like much, but this was exponential growth.
Trigger Heartsteel 100 times: Health increases by 35%!!
Trigger Heartsteel 1,000 times: Health increases 20-fold!!!
Trigger Heartsteel 2,000 times: Health increases 400-fold!!!
Trigger Heartsteel 10,000 times: Health increases 10 trillion-fold!!!!
As Ye Lan calculated the exponential progression of Heartsteel, his scalp went numb.
The combination of "Life Sharing" and "Heartsteel" was arguably the most terrifying synergy in existence. These two skills alone granted him an explosive, exponential leap in strength. Without Life Sharing, even if he triggered Heartsteel on every creature in the "Abyssal Plane," he would only gain 0.3% of that plane's total vitality. While impressive, it paled in comparison to the "exponential explosion" he now commanded!
After admiring the sheer power of Heartsteel, Ye Lan decisively selected "Divine Unfathomability." At this point, he no longer lacked any numerical stats. In truth, even without Heartsteel, he wouldn't have been lacking; the combination of "Void Thought" and "Lord of Douluo" was already formidable.
Soul Skill Selection (4/4)
Ye Lan took a moment to organize his latest soul skill choices: Divine Unfathomability, Polarization, Kunpeng Divine Body, and Heartsteel.
Divine Unfathomability: Provided him with absolute immunity to all debuffs.
Polarization: Killing living beings would enhance his other soul rings and soul skill effects.
Kunpeng Divine Body: Changed his physical scaling from three-dimensional growth to direct enhancement. While originally intended to boost combat power, its most practical aspect turned out to be "Void Spirit."
Without "Void Spirit," he would never dare to use Heartsteel so recklessly. The consequences would be catastrophic—his physical growth might eventually become so immense that he would literally crush the Douluo Star.
Having sorted his skills, Ye Lan exited the interface and immersed himself in absorbing the soul power of the Million-Year Deep Sea Demon Whale King. His level climbed steadily.
Rank 92! Rank 93! Rank 94! Rank 95!
By the time he reached Rank 95, the whale's soul power was finally exhausted. Before this absorption, Ye Lan was a Rank 90 Spirit Douluo. Now, the base health of his Blue Silver Grass had exploded by another 7.6 times!
In the Titled Douluo stage, the gap between each rank before Rank 95 is comparable to the jump between entire major realms before the Spirit Sage level. Now, even without relying on the specific soul skills and bones gained as a Titled Douluo, Ye Lan's explosive combat power was already on par with a First-Class God.
Yet, that wasn't the most frightening part. His potential hadn't even peaked. Beyond Rank 95, every level gained would double the base health of his Blue Silver Grass again!
The Limit Douluo stage is further divided into: Demi-God, Peak Demi-God, Quasi-God, Peak Quasi-God, and Extreme Quasi-God. At each sub-stage, his base health would double once more.
Ye Lan didn't know how much stronger a God-King was compared to a First-Class God, but he was confident that even without inheriting a godhood, he could pummel a dual-god-seated Tang San. And that was without even factoring in the Deep Sea Demon Whale King's soul ring, let alone the terrifying synergy between "Life Sharing" and "Heartsteel"!
Ye Lan opened his eyes, his excitement gradually settling into a calm focus.
"Little Sea! Well? What kind of soul skill did you give the Boss to make him this happy?" the Skyreach Ice Worm asked curiously.
"Little Sea? Who's that? I don't know him!" The Deep Sea Demon Whale King replied solemnly. "Little Sky, from now on, you shall address me as the Great Whale King!!"
"I @#@!#... you ungrateful whale! And here I was, pleading for mercy on your behalf!" The Skyreach Ice Worm instantly lost its temper. It hadn't expected this new "underling"—whose place as the Boss's soul ring and bone was already set in stone—to turn on it so quickly.
The Deep Sea Demon Whale King gave a "shark-like" grin and turned eagerly to Ye Lan. "Boss!! How is it? How much did your soul power increase? Are the ring and bone skills strong?!!"
The corner of Ye Lan's mouth curled upward. Watching the Ice Worm's miserable face was quite amusing. He chuckled, "My soul power has reached Rank 95. From the soul bones, I obtained a Million-Year Great Kun Life Torso Bone and a Million-Year Great Peng Agility Bone."
"The effects... they're alright. The Kun Torso Bone gives a flat 100% health boost, and its skills provide 100% increases to Strength, Agility, Health, and Defense. The Peng Agility Bone gives a 100% total Agility boost, with its skills combined providing about a 400% increase to Agility!"
"!!!!!!"
Both the Skyreach Ice Worm and the Deep Sea Demon Whale King were stunned. They weren't shocked by the strength of the soul bones—they were shocked by Ye Lan's attitude. With such terrifying boosts, the Boss just called them "alright"?
Exactly what kind of soul skills had he obtained to make million-year soul bones seem mediocre?
At that moment, two prompts flashed through Ye Lan's mind:
Life God Trial 5: Become a Titled Douluo — Completed.
Destruction God Trial 4: Reach the Spirit Domain realm of mental power — Completed.
Rewards: 20% Affinity with the Goddess of Life, 20% Affinity with the God of Destruction.
Destruction God Trial 5: Obtain a 100,000-year soul ring — Completed.
Reward: 20% Affinity with the God of Destruction.
His affinity with both Life and Destruction had now reached 70%.
Life/Destruction God Trial 6: Kill one million Abyssal monsters. Timing begins upon entering the Abyssal Plane. Rewards (up to 30% affinity) will be based on combat duration and performance.
Ye Lan breathed a sigh of relief. These weren't some bizarre, convoluted trials. Whether it was stopping the "Abyssal Invasion" or his own "Deification" process that required billions of kills, he was going to be slaughtering Abyssal monsters anyway. He loved trials he could complete "on the way."
To Ye Lan, these godhoods had become mere backups. If it weren't for repaying the kindness of the Gods of Life and Destruction—and the opportunity to research the nature of godhood itself—he wouldn't even need them anymore.
Setting aside thoughts of the trials, Ye Lan began to condense the Perfect Yin-Yang Balanced Triple Soul Cores.
The minimum requirement for a triple core is mental power at the "Spirit Domain" realm—the equivalent of a Limit Douluo's mental strength. Upon reaching the Titled Douluo level, his mental power had already surged from Rank 96 to Rank 99.
Compared to dual cores, a triple core wasn't just "one more ring"; it was exponentially more complex. It wasn't just the relationship between two points, but the interplay between three.
Ye Lan currently utilized the "Perfect Yin-Yang Balanced Dual Cores." These were his Life Soul Core and Spirit Soul Core, located in his lower dantian and his upper dantian (the Niwan Palace). The new core would be placed in his middle dantian, also known as the Crimson Palace, located at the Shanzhong point in the chest.
His previous dual cores were already the largest "absorption vortexes" in history—three times larger than standard versions. He didn't need to change the upper or lower vortexes; he only needed to synchronize the rotation frequency of the middle dantian with both the top and bottom.
Because the middle dantian isn't perfectly centered between the other two, the vortexes wouldn't be identical. The middle core had to account for both simultaneously. This was the greatest hurdle of the triple core, yet it was trivial for Ye Lan.
Using his previous success as a blueprint, he calculated the two largest ellipses possible between the three dantians. Utilizing "Spirit Sharing" to construct an internal XYZ coordinate system and managing over 20,000 control frequencies, he calculated hundreds of thousands of coordinates to map out the rotation paths.
Then, he began condensing the Destruction Soul Core in the Crimson Palace. Since Blue Silver Grass lacked the destruction attribute but possessed "Ultimate Lightning," he used the conversion ability of his "Destruction Lungs" to transform Ultimate Lightning into Ultimate Destruction. He compressed and spun the energy until the core finally crystallized!
Finally, he adjusted the rotation speeds of all three dantians to match his calculated ellipses. As the three reached a perfect equilibrium, the first Perfect Yin-Yang Triple Soul Core in history was born!!
With its completion, the quality of Ye Lan's soul power jumped again, his solid-state soul power density doubling once more. Compared to any other soul master, he now held a twofold advantage in raw energy quality.
"As expected of the Boss!!! Watching this triple core condense has made me go numb!!" the Skyreach Ice Worm sighed.
Ye Lan was a miracle incarnate. A perfect dual core was already considered theoretically impossible. Now, he had achieved a triple. Out of billions of humans, only a handful ever become Limit Douluos—the mere threshold for attempting a triple core. Statistically, maybe one in a hundred Limit Douluos might succeed by sheer luck. A soul master with three cores was the definition of a monster.
But the probability of a Perfect Yin-Yang Triple Soul Core? Perhaps one in ten billion.
The Deep Sea Demon Whale King was equally stunned. Though it was new to the concept of soul cores, it noticed something startling: the air around Ye Lan had been scrubbed clean of soul power. If an enemy fought him, they would be unable to draw energy from the environment, forced to rely solely on their internal reserves while Ye Lan violently devoured everything around them.
Sensing their awe, Ye Lan smiled. "This is just the beginning. In a moment, I'll show you what true 'Heaven-Reaching Power' looks like."
"Abyssal Overlord?"
"Dual God-Kings?"
"Dragon God?"
"Creation God?"
"They are but ants."
The Titan Giant Ape, the Ice Worm, and the Whale King stared with mouths agape, wondering what he was planning. Only Xiao Lan looked on with fanatical devotion; its god was the one who stood above all others!!!
"Watch closely!! People of the Blue Silver!! AWAKEN!!!"
Suddenly, a sight occurred that shook the three soul beasts to their cores.
In the distance, the green patches of the Douluo Continent were "Turning Blue" at an incredible speed. The entire connected green landmass was transforming into a sea of azure!
Ye Lan switched his vision to the "Lord of Douluo" perspective. From this height—looking down from outer space—the Douluo Star was no longer a mix of blue oceans and green-brown continents. Instead, the green was being swallowed by countless blue lights, as if the entire planet were undergoing a "Blue-ification," turning into a singular, radiant sapphire sphere.
(End of Chapter)