Yu Chen did not stand on ceremony regarding the promise of the five academies to open their core inheritances to him. He understood well that the accumulation and collision of knowledge served as vital fuel for his own advancement. While most of the inheritances—such as the unique high-level soul skills and meditation methods of each academy—offered only limited value as mere references to broaden his horizons, given that he already possessed the top-tier inheritance of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Family and the Power of the Thunder God, one unique secret technique from the Blazing Fire Academy caught his intense interest: Ring Fusion.
After carefully perusing the Detailed Explanation of Ring Fusion Secret Technique, brilliant lights flickered in Yu Chen's eyes, and his mind suddenly cleared.
So that's how it is! The awakening of Xu Sanshi's Black Tortoise Bloodline in the original story likely had an inseparable connection to this Ring Fusion secret technique! He deduced, combining his vague memories from his past life with the manual in his hands. It is highly probable that Xu Sanshi learned the Ring Fusion technique first, but this technique has extremely high requirements for the practitioner. In his state at the time, it was difficult to execute under normal circumstances, requiring lengthy preparation time and yielding a low success rate. Yet, it was this arduous process of attempting Ring Fusion that, to some extent, stimulated or guided the dormant Black Tortoise Bloodline within him, causing it to resonate and ultimately awaken! The bloodline awakening brought about a comprehensive surge in his basic attributes, especially the growth of his Spiritual Power and his deep control over his Martial Soul Origin, which in turn allowed him to use the Ring Fusion technique fluidly!
The principle behind this Ring Fusion technique was exquisite yet harsh. Its core lay in using Spiritual Power far exceeding one's current Soul Power Level as a control hub to forcibly "fuse" the soul power origin of one or more of one's own soul rings into another, causing it to "sublimate" in a short period and erupt with terrifying power far beyond its original age level!
However, there existed a crucial, hidden requirement that was easily overlooked: the soul beasts corresponding to the soul rings involved in the fusion must possess a certain "connection" or "commonality"! This connection could be the same species, a high degree of compatibility in attributes, or even a predator-prey relationship. If the attributes of the soul rings conflicted or were completely unrelated, the result of a forced fusion would most likely be soul ring conflict and a backlash against the user.
Yet, even if the condition of soul ring connection was met, the greatest threshold still stood before the vast majority of soul masters: Spiritual Power!
The requirement for Spiritual Power in Ring Fusion was outrageously high. It did not demand a massive total volume of Spiritual Power, but rather that its "quality" and "precision of control" must far exceed the user's current Soul Power Level (surpassing soul masters of the same level who did not focus on Spiritual Power during normal cultivation)! In other words, it required the soul master to possess "off-the-charts" Spiritual Power.
This created an awkward situation: in a soul master world generally lacking systematic methods for training Spiritual Power, the growth of a soul master's Spiritual Power mainly relied on the passive boost from increasing Soul Power and the tempering of soul shocks during the absorption of soul rings. For those soul masters with "ordinary" quality Martial Souls, their Soul Power progress was relatively slow. If they were born with relatively strong Spiritual Power (though far inferior to a monster like Yu Yuanchen, who possessed the accumulation of two lifetimes), it was possible for their Spiritual Power level to temporarily "exceed the charts" at a certain stage, allowing them to luckily learn Ring Fusion. This was why, in the original work, some soul masters whose Martial Souls did not seem top-tier were able to master this technique.
But what about disciples of sects with top-tier Martial Souls? Their Martial Souls were powerful, and their Soul Power progressed rapidly, often reaching high levels at a young age. However, the growth of their Spiritual Power could not keep pace with the surge of their Soul Power. Even if a sect occasionally produced a prodigy born with strong Spiritual Power who learned Ring Fusion early on, as their cultivation level rose rapidly, their Soul Power level would soon catch up to or even exceed the "off-the-charts" margin of their Spiritual Power, causing the Ring Fusion technique they could originally use to become unusable in the later stages due to "relatively insufficient" Spiritual Power! This was truly a helpless paradox.
"No wonder... no wonder neither the Elephant Armored Sect nor even my Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Family has ever heard of anyone proficient in this technique," Yu Chen realized. "It is not that the secret technique is not powerful, but that there is a fundamental contradiction between the cultivation conditions and the growth pattern of top-tier Martial Souls."
But for Yu Yuanchen, none of this was a problem at all!
His Spiritual Power, due to the superposition of two lifetimes of souls, had a growth base and potential that far exceeded ordinary people. Even more terrifying was that this superposition was not a simple one-plus-one, but rather, under some mysterious rules, produced a geometric growth effect similar to "multiplication"! This ensured that his Spiritual Power, whether in "total volume," "quality," or "growth speed," was always slightly ahead of his Soul Power Level, barely meeting the extremely harsh "off-the-charts" requirement of the Ring Fusion technique!
"This technique is practically tailor-made for me!" Yu Chen felt invigorated. If he could master Ring Fusion, he could fuse the power of low-age soul rings into high-age ones at critical moments. If he could obtain a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Ring in the future, he could temporarily fuse the power of all his previous soul rings into it... the eruptive power would be unimaginable! Moreover, he might be able to use this to temporarily awaken his Thunder Sacred Dragon Bloodline. At that time, his strength might be enough to go head-to-head with a Soul Douluo without being defeated, which would be another powerful trump card for him.
However, he did not start practicing immediately. While Ring Fusion was good, finding the opportunity to solve the bottleneck of his liver tempering was more urgent. He shelved the practice of the Ring Fusion technique for the time being and began to read through a large number of records in the five academies' libraries regarding various lightning-attribute soul beasts, plant-type soul beasts, and investigation reports on some famous dangerous places and secret areas on the continent. He was not interested in the secret foundations of the academies themselves, but rather the public or semi-public information brought back from all over the continent by generations of explorers or academy seniors.
His goal was clear—to find the trail of the Thunderclap Nethervine!
Whether to comprehend the mystery of lightning life force that might exist within it, which could surpass his "Awakening Spring Thunder" artistic conception, or to obtain the soul ring and soul bone containing the Ultimate Thunder and Thunder God Bloodline, the Thunderclap Nethervine was the best choice he could think of at the moment.
Yu Chen had already learned about the Thunderclap Nethervine in the family classics, but the records were sparse, only mentioning it as a legendary lightning-attribute divine object that possessed the Thunder God Bloodline and was difficult to track. Combined with the more extensive collection of the five academies, his understanding of this super soul beast gradually became clear and full in his mind.
The Thunderclap Nethervine was undoubtedly the emperor of lightning-attribute soul beasts! It was born with the Ultimate Thunder attribute, its origin power was superior to the vast majority of lightning-attribute soul beasts in the world, and it carried a trace of the Thunder God Bloodline, giving it a very high status. Moreover, it was unique; in the same era, only one would exist on the entire Douluo Continent. Only after the current one died could the next one be nurtured over long years in a place where Heaven and Earth Origin Qi of lightning gathered.
However, the heavens were impartial. While granting it unparalleled talent and potential, they also imposed the harshest shackles. Its method of increasing cultivation was not simply absorbing Heaven and Earth Origin Qi, but mainly cultivating by "devouring heavenly tribulation lightning"! Every time it triggered and devoured heavenly thunder, it was like dancing on the blade of a knife, a confrontation with the rules of the entire world. Because heavenly tribulation lightning was, in a sense, a manifestation of the power of the Plane Law, devouring heavenly thunder was equivalent to stealing the origin power of the plane! This made it unwelcome to the plane from the moment of its birth, subject to the exclusion and suppression of the entire world.
Precisely because of this, it was almost impossible for the Thunderclap Nethervine to break through the five-thousand-year cultivation limit. In historical records, it seemed that no Thunderclap Nethervine exceeding fifty thousand years had ever appeared. That fifty-thousand-year chasm was likely a truly fatal, hopeless doomsday thunder tribulation for it. Yet, even so, with its cultivation of less than fifty thousand years, relying on the Ultimate Thunder and the Thunder God Bloodline, its true combat power was already no weaker than an ordinary hundred-thousand-year soul beast! In terms of quality, it was undoubtedly the pinnacle of all lightning-attribute soul beasts on the Douluo Continent, bar none!
"Devouring heavenly thunder, stealing the origin of the plane... this is going against the heavens." Yu Yuanchen was shocked, but his determination to find it became even firmer. Such an heaven-defying object must have reached an unfathomable realm in the life force it contained and its control over lightning; it was the key to him tempering his liver and comprehending the life force of lightning!
He buried himself in the sea of books, not letting go of any scrap of information. Combining family records with the scattered information from the five academies, he carried out cross-comparisons and logical reasoning.
After several days of sleepless reading and analysis, several seemingly unrelated pieces of information scattered in the corners of different classics gradually connected in his mind, pointing to a possible direction:
An exploration record from the Godwind Academy regarding a valley in the Star Dou Great Mixed Zone mentioned that a century ago, they had encountered unusually frequent and concentrated lightning storms in that area. The color of the lightning was a rare deep purple, and after the storms, the plants in the valley were not scorched but instead showed an unusual, vibrant vitality.
A mineralogy book from the Blazing Fire Academy recorded that in a certain area near the edge of the core zone of the Star Dou Great Forest, a strange "Thunder-Struck Stone" had been discovered. The lightning energy contained within was not purely destructive; instead, there was a trace of faint life force remaining. According to the appraisal, the cause of its formation was unknown, and it was suspected to be related to some powerful being capable of imbuing lightning with life force.
In an ancient hydrological map note from the Skywater Academy, it was vaguely mentioned that in the upper reaches of a certain underground river in the Star Dou Great Forest, trace amounts of active lightning elements were detected in the water quality for a long time. Unlike the violent nature of ordinary lightning elements, these were more inclined to nourishment.
Even in a report on geological structures from the Boulder Academy, it was mentioned that the geomagnetic field in a certain part of the Star Dou Great Forest was unusually active, and the frequency of the magnetic field fluctuations was different from ordinary lightning areas, carrying a certain unique rhythm.
Viewed individually, these pieces of information might just be curiosities, but when he marked them all on the map of the continent, especially focusing on the vast and mysterious Star Dou Great Forest where soul beasts gathered, Yu Chen discovered that these abnormal locations, although scattered, faintly formed a fan-shaped area pointing to the northwest of the forest, near the edge of the mixed zone and the core zone!
"Star Dou Great Forest... northwest region..." Yu Chen's finger pressed heavily on that location on the map, his eyes flashing with sharp light.
Although it was still just a guess and the range was still quite large, this was the most likely clue he could find regarding the Thunderclap Nethervine at present!
The opportunity to temper his liver, the temptation of an Ultimate Lightning-attribute soul ring, and the mystery of going against the heavens to steal the thunder tribulation all drove him to make a trip there!
He decided that after making some preparations, he would use the excuse of training to leave Elemental City and head deep into the Star Dou Great Forest to find the legendary Thunderclap Nethervine! This would be a journey where opportunity and danger coexisted.
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Translated by: randomtranslator.com
Proofread by: GodKun-Chan