"Di Tian, why didn't you act? And why wouldn't you let me act?" The woman in purple looked furious. Staring at the blood still scattered across the ground, rage filled her heart.
"My clansmen are already few in number. And this one had the talent to potentially break through to the hundred-thousand-year level. Her child was also a rare mutant breed that might have achieved great things in the future."
"Thousands of years ago, when the White-Armored Holy Dragon was killed, you ignored it. When she begged me to avenge her husband, I couldn't interfere. But now she stayed here with her child and was hunted down again, and you still won't do anything. You even stopped me from helping. Why?!"
The identity of the purple-clothed woman was none other than the future one of the Ten Ferocious Beasts, the leader of the Hell Demon Dragon clan, a rising dragon powerhouse whose bloodline rivaled Di Tian's — the Hell Demon Dragon King, Zi Ji.
The core region of the Star Dou Forest was vast, but Zi Ji happened to be near Di Tian when she sensed the enraged, sorrowful aura of her kin on the verge of self-detonation. She had immediately rushed over.
Unfortunately, she arrived too late. By the time she got there, both Spirit Beasts were already dead. But just as she was about to avenge her clansman, Di Tian stopped her by force, making her watch helplessly as the two humans dismembered the corpses and swaggered away.
How could Zi Ji possibly not be furious?!
"He's from the Spirit Hall. He's someone close to the Angel God's High Priest. If you attack him, leaving aside whether you could even defeat him, even if you did win, it would inevitably attract the Angel God's high priest — perhaps even provoke a divine descent from the Angel God herself…"
"The Angel God from ten thousand years ago was never someone who followed rules. In her heart, there were only humans. Even becoming a god was merely something incidental in the process of protecting humanity. During several major beast tides over the past ten thousand years, she directly descended regardless of whether it violated the rules of the Divine Realm."¹
"If humanity were ever truly pushed to the brink of extinction, the Angel God might even directly return to the Douluo World herself. Even the laws of the Divine Realm could only punish her afterward."
"But before that happened, there's an extremely high possibility she would drag us all down with her and completely exterminate every high-level Spirit Beast in the Star Dou Forest."
"Otherwise, why do you think I didn't intervene not long ago when humans entered the forest core and hunted a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast? Wasn't it because I feared the Angel God — and the aura of the Rakshasa God on that person?"¹
"A mere Soft Bone Rabbit is just a rabbit; when it died, it died. Back then, wasn't the Jade Rabbit Empress eaten by Xiong Jun for attempting to explore the Lake of Life and spy on the Lord's existence? Did you ever see me care? But that Azure Bull Python and Titan Giant Ape are truly..."
Di Tian, the Beast God of the Star Dou Forest, sighed deeply, his eyes filled with gloom.
"Endure. In just a short few tens of thousands of years, the Lord will be able to recover and lead us to counter-attack the Divine Realm. It won't be too late to settle accounts with humanity then."
"Hundreds of thousands of years have already passed; nothing unexpected will happen in these short tens of thousands of years."
"......"
"Yes, a short few tens of thousands of years... nothing unexpected will happen." Hearing Di Tian's "strategically far-sighted" speech, Zi Ji fell silent for a while before nodding.
Although she still felt bitter that her clansmen had been slaughtered while she, their clan leader, could do nothing, Di Tian's explanation at least eased her heart somewhat.
As a member of the younger dragon generation who had never witnessed the glory days of dragonkind, Zi Ji had grown up listening to legends about Di Tian and the Silver Dragon King. She trusted the two of them absolutely.
With Di Tian's status and vision, and with the strength and identity of the Lord Silver Dragon King, everything would turn for the better once those tens of thousands of years passed! The Lord would surely lead them back to the Divine Realm!
It was a good thing Chen Ming didn't know the psychological fluctuations of these few nearby; otherwise, it would have been hard to suppress the curl of his lips even without activating his AI-thinking.
One could only say that the "matching system" of Douluo Continent, the average quality of its people, the average intelligence level, and the world's underlying logic…
Humanity and Spirit Beasts truly were a pair of "smiling tigers" and "double-headed sharks."
...
Although they hadn't managed to obtain a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Bone like he'd joked about before leaving, Golden Crocodile Douluo still felt that casually obtaining a fifty-thousand-year Spirit Bone was already pretty good.
Logically speaking, since Golden Crocodile Douluo had been the one to obtain the Spirit Bone, he had the right to decide how it would be distributed. But honestly, he didn't really want Chen Ming to absorb this Spirit Bone.
Other body parts were fine, but his own hundred-thousand-year Spirit Bone happened to be a right arm bone as well. This fifty-thousand-year Hell Demon Dragon arm bone was indeed powerful, but even with compatibility bonuses, it still couldn't compare to the hundred-thousand-year Darkgold Demon Tiger Spirit Bone.
Originally, Golden Crocodile Douluo's plan had been to use this Spirit Bone through Spirit Hall's internal channels to exchange for the former Pope Qian Xunji's "Mind Condensing Wisdom Skull Bone," allowing Chen Ming to absorb that high-quality sixty-thousand-year Spirit Bone instead.
Although a skull bone is more precious than an arm bone and its age was ten thousand years higher—theoretically making a sixty-thousand-year skull bone worth two normal fifty-thousand-year arm bones—Golden Crocodile Douluo believed that with his reputation and the premium value of a bone from a dragon-type Spirit Beast, he could manage the exchange.
However, after hearing Golden Crocodile Douluo's idea, Chen Ming declined his teacher's kindness, feeling it was better to keep the slot empty for the time being.
After all, for a skull bone, Chen Ming felt he should absorb one that was at least a hundred thousand years old. Ideally, only a skull from a beast-king-level creature would be worthy of him.
A large part of Chen Ming's computational power was tied to his spiritual power. After advancing to the Spirit Elder realm, his processing capacity had already reached a level of 7.0. If he wanted to greatly increase his processing ability without changing his cultivation level, he would need the assistance of a skull bone.
Since skull bones and torso bones normally couldn't be replaced once absorbed, Chen Ming was extremely picky about those two slots.
Golden Crocodile Douluo could only let the matter go, marveling at how high Chen Ming's standards were. Yet he didn't think Chen Ming was arrogant. Given Chen Ming's talent and abilities, Golden Crocodile Douluo felt he absolutely deserved a hundred-thousand-year skull bone.
By the time the two returned to Spirit Hall, it was already the fourth day after the coronation ceremony. News of Chen Ming becoming an honorary elder of Spirit Hall had already spread among the upper ranks.
During this period, the various factions had also learned about Chen Ming's background, which he had never tried to hide. They had even attempted to contact the other three co-compilers of the Douluo Heart Method in hopes of receiving help.
But what could those three actually do?
Ye Renxin's cultivation and comprehension were both limited, and his understanding of the cultivation method wasn't much deeper than anyone else's.
Chrysanthemum Douluo was somewhat better, but he had no way to alter the foundational logic established by Chen Ming. And even if he could temporarily improve the method's efficiency, he still wouldn't want to help outsiders improve their cultivation speed.
As for Dugu Bo?
Dugu Bo had vanished from the world. No one knew where he was now. Rumors claimed someone had seen him enter Spirit Hall before disappearing, but nobody could confirm whether that was true or what exactly he was doing now.
So after failing to obtain help from the other three, the various factions all began trying to modify the Douluo Heart Method for themselves.
However, because cultivation now involved meridians — something still very unfamiliar to the people of the Douluo world — almost everyone found themselves completely lost when trying to practice the Douluo Heart Method.
Several particularly reckless and overconfident fools even suffered cultivation deviation from randomly altering the method, with some of their meridians outright shattering.