Chapter 192: Soul Bone Skill! Spiritual Confusion
The blinding purple-gold radiance flooding the main hall began to recede, drawing back into Liu Yuan's body like a receding tide. The violent spiritual fluctuations that had been tearing through the air settled into a heavy, oppressive calm.
Liu Yuan slowly opened his eyes. The world snapped into terrifyingly sharp focus, his vision clearer and more piercing than ever before.
Deep within his Double Pupils, complex purple-gold patterns swirled, so dense and deep they seemed to devour the ambient light. He rolled his shoulders, a subconscious movement, and froze. A strange sensation bloomed across his shoulder blades—an extension of his very flesh and bloodline, pulsing with a steady, rhythmic heartbeat.
Turning his head, his gaze fell upon a pair of massive wings unfurling behind him. Spanning over four meters from tip to tip, the feathers appeared to be forged from pure, flawless amethyst. A rare flicker of genuine surprise broke through his usual calm facade.
"Master... these wings..." He reached back, his fingertips brushing against the cold, crystalline surface of the amethyst feathers. Instead of dead crystal, he felt a terrifyingly dense concentration of spiritual power thrumming beneath his touch.
"You brat, you really hit the jackpot this time!" Du Busi's booming laughter echoed through the hall. The old Super Douluo leaped down from his boulder, circling his disciple with eyes gleaming with predatory appreciation. "This is an External Soul Bone! That old fox Yan Shaozhe clearly handed over a spiritual-type torso bone, but who would have thought your spiritual foundation was so monstrous? It forced a mutation during the fusion process, birthing these wings!"
Du Busi stopped, pointing a calloused finger at the crystalline appendages. "External Soul Bones do not occupy any of the six standard soul bone slots. Better yet, they evolve alongside your cultivation. In terms of sheer value, this thing rivals a genuine hundred-thousand-year soul bone!"
Liu Yuan absorbed the information, his mind racing. He had only absorbed the bone to stabilize his foundation and extract maximum practical value from Shrek's forced compensation. To reap an External Soul Bone was an unexpected, yet highly welcome, variable.
With a mere thought, he channeled a thread of soul power into his back.
The giant amethyst wings trembled violently before snapping open with a crisp, crystalline chime. Guided by his will, the wings gave a single, effortless flap. A faint, distorted ripple of spiritual power washed over the hall.
Liu Yuan's feet left the stone floor. Without relying on his martial soul or any external propulsion, he hovered silently in mid-air. The control was absolute, as natural as breathing, as if these wings had been a part of his anatomy since birth.
"How does it feel?" Long Aotian asked from the sidelines, his eyes tracking the purple-gold light with intense curiosity.
"Flawless." Liu Yuan descended, his boots touching the ground without a sound. The massive wings folded obediently behind him, draping over his shoulders like a magnificent, jagged amethyst cloak. "It doesn't just grant me unassisted flight. It acts as a massive amplifier for my spiritual power."
Du Busi nodded, his impatience bleeding through. "Most External Soul Bones come with innate soul skills. Sense it, boy. What kind of slaughtering trick did those wings give you?"
Liu Yuan closed his eyes, turning his spiritual sense inward.
At the very root of the amethyst wings, where they fused with his spine, two clusters of brilliant, volatile light lay dormant. He opened his eyes, a cold, predatory arc lifting the corners of his mouth.
"A skill?" Liu Yuan mused, his voice smooth and dangerously calm. "Sect Master, senior brothers... a spiritual-type ability of this nature cannot be done justice with mere words. It would be far more efficient if you experienced it firsthand."
Du Busi paused, blinking in surprise before throwing his head back in a roar of laughter. "Bold! Good! Come then, let this old man see what kind of venom this new toy of yours packs!"
Chen Lü and Wang Yanfeng stepped forward, their interest piqued. Long Aotian shifted his weight, dropping into a loose combat stance. Both he and Liu Yuan were currently at Rank 59; he wanted to measure exactly how vast the gap in their spiritual methods had become.
"Spiritual Confusion."
Liu Yuan's voice was a whisper. Instantly, the amethyst wings flared. A soft, eerie purple-gold halo erupted from his back, expanding at the speed of thought.
The spiritual ripple was instantaneous, sweeping across the vast expanse of the main hall in a heartbeat. In that singular fraction of a second, everyone caught in its radius—from the monstrously powerful Du Busi to the newly advanced Long Aotian—was struck by a violent, nauseating wave of vertigo that pierced straight into their cerebral cortex.
"What the—" Long Aotian choked out a startled gasp.
Instinctively, he tried to step to the left to open up distance. Instead, his right leg jerked uncontrollably to the right. His center of gravity shattered, and the chief disciple of the Body Sect nearly face-planted onto the hard stone floor.
Beside him, Chen Lü attempted to raise his left hand to rub his aching temples. Instead, his right arm shot upward with terrifying speed, nearly backhanding himself across the jaw.
"What kind of sorcery is this?" Wang Yanfeng staggered, shaking his head as the grand hall spun wildly around him. His eyes clearly registered Liu Yuan standing directly in front of him, yet his nervous system screamed that the threat was directly behind his back.
Left became right. Up became down. Forward was backward. Their physical senses and conscious intent were violently decoupled. The elite powerhouses of the Body Sect swayed and stumbled like drunkards, a scene that was simultaneously comical and deeply horrifying in its implications.
Even Du Busi felt a sickening lurch in his stomach. His vision fractured, overlapping in dizzying geometric patterns, his absolute spatial awareness stripped away in a flash.
But he was a Rank 98 Super Douluo. His soul power cultivation stood at the absolute apex of the Douluo Continent.
"Hmph!" Du Busi let out a cold, thunderous snort. A torrential surge of emerald-green soul power detonated from his core. The sheer brute force of his cultivation shattered the spiritual interference invading his mind, forcibly realigning his senses and restoring his clarity.
He stabilized his stance, his eyes widening in genuine shock as he watched Long Aotian and the elders groaning, hopelessly fighting against their own rebellious nervous systems.
"Alright, Liu Yuan, withdraw your technique before these boys snap their own necks trying to walk," Du Busi scolded, though a fierce, proud grin split his face.
Liu Yuan obliged. With a subtle flex of his will, the amethyst wings clamped shut. The suffocating purple-gold domain vanished into thin air.
Long Aotian and the elders instantly collapsed to their knees, panting heavily as their spatial awareness slammed back into place.
Long Aotian rubbed his wrist, flashing a bitter, self-deprecating smile. "Junior Brother, that move is utterly insidious. My mind was perfectly clear, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but my body simply refused the commands. I would rather take a full-force punch to the chest than experience that sensory hell again."
Du Busi stared at the crystalline appendages folded behind his disciple, his eyes burning with tactical calculation. "Spiritual Confusion. A fitting name for a lethal tool. In high-level combat, life and death are decided in the span of a single breath. If you trigger this at the exact moment an opponent channels a lethal soul skill or attempts a desperate evasion... even half a second of sensory inversion is a guaranteed death sentence."
The Sect Master paused, his tone dropping into absolute gravity. "The fact that it is instantaneous makes it virtually unblockable. Liu Yuan, this External Soul Bone has just made you the ultimate nightmare for every melee combatant on this continent."
Liu Yuan fully retracted the wings into his back, the amethyst dissolving into purple light that sank beneath his skin. He nodded, his expression utterly pragmatic. "I calculated the same. As my spiritual power scales upward, the duration and absolute control of the interference will multiply. Extracting this from Shrek's compensation was indeed a highly profitable harvest."
"Alright, enough showing off." Du Busi clapped a heavy hand onto Liu Yuan's shoulder. "Aotian, you have hit Rank 59. Get to the martial field and consolidate your foundation. Liu Yuan, you have just secured a supreme treasure. Return to closed-door cultivation and fuse with it completely. My instincts tell me those hypocrites at Shrek Academy will not swallow this loss quietly for much longer."
"Understood, Master."
Liu Yuan offered a brief nod to the elders. His figure blurred, leaving behind a faint purple afterimage as he vanished from the main hall.
Time flowed mercilessly. In the blink of an eye, two months evaporated.
Throughout this period, the Body Sect was plunged into an unmatched era of high-intensity, militaristic cultivation. using the technical schematics and support extracted from Fan Yu within the Heavenly Soul Empire, the Body Sect's armory underwent a revolution. Core disciples were systematically equipped with custom-forged, high-tier soul tools, bridging their ranged weaknesses and pushing their overall combat metrics to terrifying new heights.
As for Liu Yuan, he had sealed himself deep within the back mountain's Secret Realm, severing all contact with the outside world.
Deep within the cavernous realm, beside a freezing, mist-shrouded pond...
Liu Yuan sat cross-legged on a slab of frost-covered stone. Though his massive amethyst wings were retracted, a faint, rhythmic pulse of purple-gold light traveled up and down his spine, mapping the pathways of his nervous system.
Over these grueling sixty days, he had ruthlessly metabolized every last drop of energy from the hundred-thousand-year torso bone. The External Soul Bone was no longer a foreign attachment; he commanded it with the same effortless precision as his own fingers.
His soul power had surged, slamming into the absolute peak of Rank 59.
Bolstered by the monstrous foundation of a hundred-thousand-year soul bone, the sheer density of the soul power rushing through his meridians had long since eclipsed that of an ordinary Soul Emperor. In terms of raw, compressed energy, he was rapidly encroaching upon the domain of a Soul Sage.
Liu Yuan slowly opened his eyes. Within his Double Pupils, the purple-gold divine light flared to its absolute zenith, piercing through the cavern's gloom.
His aura expanded, heavy and suffocating. The freezing water of the pond rippled violently, unable to withstand the crushing spiritual pressure. Frost melted into steam as the water began to boil and evaporate into thick, swirling mist.
"Accumulate deeply, and the breakthrough follows naturally," Liu Yuan murmured, his voice a low, resonant hum in the empty cavern.
His expression was a mask of cold, deep focus. Deep within his core, he could feel it—the stubborn bottleneck that barred his path to the next realm was fracturing, massive cracks spiderwebbing across its surface.
"The time has come. Today, I shatter the threshold of Rank 60."
Liu Yuan drew in a slow, measured breath and pressed his palms together. The ambient soul power in the cavern violently converged upon him, roaring to life like a slumbering dragon finally opening its eyes to the world.
His eyes narrowed with lethal intent. He knew with absolute certainty that the moment he crossed this chasm and absorbed his sixth soul ring, his combat prowess would undergo a heaven-defying evolution. Shrek Academy's arrogance was living on borrowed time.
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