"For ordinary Spirit Masters, consuming it won't lead to immediate absorption. Instead, the medicinal power of the Dragon-Tiger Great Restoration Pill will slowly break down over time, nourishing the body bit by bit as it is gradually refined."
"The effects will spread through the limbs and bones, seeping into muscles and meridians, compensating to a certain extent for innate deficiencies while also strengthening the Martial Soul. At the same time, it grants the user strength and physique comparable to that of a fierce tiger."
"Because it contains a large amount of life force and its properties are gentle and easy to absorb, in theory, this pill can even extend one's lifespan."
Chen Ming was clearly very satisfied with his creation.
"What do you mean by 'ordinary Spirit Masters'? And what do you mean by 'in theory' it can extend lifespan?" Although he had spent several days assisting and acting as a human furnace, Qian Daoliu had absolutely no talent for alchemy. He couldn't understand how combining a few rare ingredients could produce such effects.
"By 'ordinary Spirit Masters,' I mean those below the level of Spirit Saint. As for 'in theory' extending lifespan—it's because this pill supplements life force and blood essence."
"For those already in decline, consuming it can replenish some of their blood essence and restore part of their physical condition. However, that additional life force will be consumed first, and there's a limit to how much it can extend one's life. In the end, the rate of decline will always surpass the rate of replenishment."
"And it has no effect whatsoever on true injuries to the Martial Soul or the soul itself. At best, it would only leave behind a breathing corpse. Oh—and it's also useless against toxins."
It was like those classic math problems about a swimming pool being filled and drained at the same time. This pill was akin to adding fresh water into a pool that was already drying up—temporarily refilling it, even making certain parts appear usable again.
But eventually, the rate at which the water drained would only increase, until it could empty the entire pool in an instant. Still, before that moment arrived, such a pill could indeed delay the complete drying of the pool.
"Then what about Golden Crocodile?" Qian Daoliu immediately thought of the one person in the Spirit Hall closest to the end of his lifespan.
"For my teacher, it would certainly be effective," Chen Ming nodded. "But at most, it would only extend his life by about twenty years."
Chen Ming held a radical theory: Golden Crocodile, the longest-living Titled Douluo currently known, could theoretically only be considered a "loli" in the progression of a Titled Douluo's lifespan.
This wasn't Chen Ming speaking nonsense; the question of how long a Spirit Master lived had always been a paradoxical proposition.
How long should a Titled Douluo's lifespan be in this era?
The answer was that upon reaching the rank of Titled Douluo, one gained an additional hundred years of lifespan, and for each level increase, another hundred years was added. A Limit Douluo could live up to a thousand years. Both the Angel God and the Sea God had gathered faith during this thousand-year span before achieving godhood.
Even Tang Chen had been mentioned as someone who, under normal circumstances, could have lived several hundred years to accumulate faith and walk the path to becoming a god.
It was only because he found that process too slow—and chose instead to take a shortcut for Bo Saixi—that he ultimately met his downfall.
Yet in later eras, it was mentioned that the lifespan limit for God-level powerhouses was 999 years. Although it was difficult to cross that hurdle without true godhood, it showed just how long a Titled Douluo's lifespan could be.
By this standard, even the eldest Golden Crocodile Douluo in Spirit Hall was a mere child among Titled Douluos. Spirit Hall's Level 99 Limit Douluos should have been numerous enough to fill several mahjong tables, and at least half of them should have been Spirit Masters of the Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul.
But the reality was that this theoretical lifespan simply didn't hold up. The two-hundred-year-old Golden Crocodile Douluo was already on the verge of death. Limit Douluos couldn't even survive three hundred years; otherwise, Qian Daoliu's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather should all still be alive.
However, after recently studying various Spirit Master journals, Chen Ming discovered a specific point: actual lifespan can be extended. The theoretical lifespan should be the maximum achievable limit reached through various life-extending means.
In the records of the past three thousand years alone, there was a wood-attribute Limit Douluo who lived for four hundred years. His eventual cause of death was suicide because he felt life was meaningless.
Otherwise, had he fought to stay alive, living another two or three hundred years would have been no problem. This was due both to his attribute and Martial Soul, as well as fortuitous encounters in his youth.
Looking further ahead, the longest-living Limit Douluo managed to live for ten thousand years through various means, surviving from the era of Soul Land III into the era of Soul Land IV, reaching the time when godhood could be attained again.
In other words, purely in theory, the lifespan of a Titled Douluo could stretch from less than three hundred years to a terrifying scale. The difference was a factor of ten or even dozens of times.
This massive discrepancy was almost incomprehensible—it was hard to believe such variance could exist within the same major realm.
Chen Ming wasn't just cultivating and refining medicine for himself now; he was conducting an experiment.
What level should the upper limit of a Titled Douluo's complete origin actually be? What was the difference between a perfected Limit Douluo and the lowest-tier God Officer?
"Four pills, extending life by twenty years in total... that is already quite excellent."
"No, Martial Uncle, you misunderstood," Chen Ming corrected. "It's not twenty years in total—it's twenty years per pill. After all, these were refined using true dragon blood essence and white tiger bone marrow, supplemented with several ten-thousand-year medicinal herbs, and refined with Angel Fire."
In a standard high-fantasy world, if one used these same materials and replaced the flame with True Solar Fire to refine a pill, and the resulting lifespan increase was less than a hundred years, a cultivator would be better off feeding the raw materials to a dog and eating the dog's droppings for a stronger effect.
This was simply a case of the Douluo world being very difficult to describe. This world was "special," plus while these materials had intimidating names, they were somewhat "watered down" in potency.
Otherwise, in any other world, producing such a mediocre pill with ingredients of this level would likely get Chen Ming beaten to death for "defiling the Dao of alchemy."
After all, under normal circumstances, consuming the raw ingredients alone would grant more lifespan than this…
"One pill… twenty years?" Qian Daoliu had never been this shocked in his life.
"Theoretically, the lifespan of Titled Douluo is quite high. In more ancient eras, resources were more abundant, so there were more ways to replenish lifespan. But over time, those materials that could rapidly extend life were gradually exhausted. That's why the lifespan of Titled Douluo has been drastically reduced."
Chen Ming speculated that the reason Titled Douluo in the current era had the shortest lifespans was because they were in a transitional period—where life-extending resources had been depleted, but new replacement techniques had yet to be developed.
However, due to the slow development of the Douluo world, this transitional phase had stretched on for far too long—resulting in a large number of Titled Douluo aging to death while still theoretically in their "prime."
"But… level 98, one pill, twenty years… isn't that a bit…?" Qian Daoliu still found it hard to accept.
"Martial Uncle, aren't you underestimating the lifespan of Spirit Beasts?" Chen Ming sighed helplessly. "For Spirit Beasts of the same level, twenty years isn't even enough time for a nap. Isn't this completely normal?"
With his broader perspective, Chen Ming could only shake his head in quiet exasperation.
...
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