The only unfortunate thing was that there was no whale rubber that was more than a thousand years old.
The piece Lin Yuan had consumed previously had only been a hundred years old.
According to his mother, perhaps because it was simply too rare, whale rubber with an age of more than a thousand years almost never made its way to Nuoding City.
Even if some did make it here, they couldn’t afford it.
That stuff had already been driven up to an astronomical price of more than a thousand gold soul coins.
This made Lin Yuan even more certain that there were other transmigrators in this world.
At the same time, after continuously using the Palm Heaven Bottle to collect green liquid and improve the quality of his martial soul for eleven consecutive months, Lin Yuan’s Lone Bamboo martial soul had undergone a major transformation.
It had originally been dark green with faint dark patterns on its surface.
Now, it had become a deep emerald green, with fine bamboo patterns covering its entire body and shimmering with a metallic luster.
This was a characteristic unique to 1,000-year-old Lone Bamboo.
Moreover, judging from its physical characteristics, Lin Yuan estimated that its age had reached at least 3,000 years.
This happened to correspond with the thirty-some drops of green liquid he had collected.
And that was despite the influence of the rainy weather.
If the weather had been better, the quality of his martial soul could have improved even further.
Even so, the change had greatly increased Lin Yuan’s cultivation speed.
Before his martial soul evolved to 1,000-year quality, he had spent a full three and a half months reaching rank 4.
But after it evolved to 1,000-year quality, he only needed around two months to reach rank 5.
His cultivation speed had increased by more than half.
The Lone Bamboo was now as hard as iron.
The benefits this martial soul evolution had brought Lin Yuan were obvious.
During the following six months, although his soul power no longer increased as dramatically as before, Lin Yuan still maintained a cultivation speed of roughly one rank every two months.
He had now reached rank 8.
Based on his calculations, it would take at most another three to five months to reach rank 10.
It was time to start thinking about obtaining his first soul ring.
Because of this, Lin Yuan came up with the idea of returning to Bamboo Ridge to cultivate more Lone Bamboo.
He had also deliberately saved one drop of green liquid instead of using it.
If he was lucky and there wasn’t much rain during the one-month vacation, he could collect another three or four drops of green liquid.
Then, once he reached rank 10, he could collect one more drop in advance and use all of them to cultivate Lone Bamboo to more than 600 years.
A first soul ring of over 600 years wasn’t bad at all.
Before that, however, he still needed to get Lin Tian out of the way.
If that guy also went to Bamboo Ridge, it would be difficult for him to make any moves.
With that in mind, Lin Yuan headed toward Dormitory Seven.
Before he even entered, he heard Tang San’s voice.
“Xiao Wu, tomorrow is the start of vacation.
Are you going home?”
Lin Yuan walked to the doorway and saw Lin Tian sitting cross-legged on his bed, his Lotus martial soul hovering in his hand while blue flames surrounded his body.
Perhaps because of the cultivation technique he practiced, Lin Tian was always surrounded by blue flames whenever he cultivated.
Therefore, to conceal his secret, Lin Tian would release his martial soul every time he cultivated.
They had also released their martial souls and were sitting cross-legged on their beds, cultivating.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Meanwhile, Tang San was packing his luggage.
As for Xiao Wu, when she heard Tang San’s question, she wasn’t as lively as usual.
She simply leaned against her bed with a somewhat lonely expression.
“I’m not going home.
I’ll just stay at the academy.”
“You’re not going home?” Tang San asked.
Xiao Wu’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Lin Tian, are you going home?”
“Hm?”
Lin Tian emerged from his cultivation state.
Perhaps because he now had his martial soul as a support, he no longer needed to find a secluded room and cultivate in isolation like he had in his previous life, where he had to avoid being disturbed for fear of cultivation deviation.
As for how he knew that Xiao Wu was a transformed soul beast, that was something he had learned in his life before his previous life.
(Double Transmigration)
Xiao Wu looked at him expectantly.
“Yeah.
Isn’t your home fairly close to the academy?
How about I go home with you?”
Hearing this, the corners of Lin Tian’s mouth couldn’t help curling upward slightly.
Tang San, meanwhile, abruptly stopped packing his luggage.
His entire expression seemed to fall.
Over the past year, both Lin Tian and Tang San had already become good friends with Xiao Wu.
Although Xiao Wu was still young, and everything they had experienced together had only been ordinary daily affairs, she was nowhere near the point of developing romantic feelings for either of them.
She genuinely regarded both of them as good friends.
The relationship between Tang San and Lin Tian, however, was rather subtle.
They weren’t enemies, and their relationship wasn’t particularly bad either.
But there always seemed to be something separating them.
If their relationship had to be summed up in one sentence, they were friends of a friend.
Both possessed innate full soul power.
After obtaining his soul ring, Lin Tian’s soul power had immediately risen to rank 14, one rank higher than Tang San’s.
His soul skill was also far more powerful than Tang San’s Blue Silver Entanglement.
Over the following eleven months, Lin Tian had reached rank 19, increasing by a full five ranks.
Tang San, on the other hand, had only reached rank 17, increasing by four ranks.
The gap between their soul power levels had widened once again.
If that were all, it wouldn’t have mattered much.
After all, Yu Xiaogang had repeatedly brainwashed Tang San, telling him that Lin Tian only had one martial soul, so a temporary gap meant nothing.
Tang San possessed twin martial souls.
Once he became a Titled Douluo in the future and attached nine 10,000-year soul rings, or even 100,000-year soul rings, to his second martial soul, he would instantly surpass Lin Tian.
But Tang San had discovered several times that Yu Xiaogang had secretly approached Lin Tian and tried to take him as a disciple, only to be rejected.
Even that could have been overlooked.
What Tang San found hardest to accept was that whenever he sparred with Lin Tian and Xiao Wu, he had never once defeated Lin Tian.
Not even when he teamed up with Xiao Wu.
Not even when he used his concealed weapons and threw stones at Lin Tian.
He had never won.
At the same time, Lin Tian was handsome, articulate, and had time to accompany Xiao Wu when she went shopping.
By comparison, Tang San looked ordinary.
He had to work as a blacksmith and listen to Yu Xiaogang’s lectures, leaving him with no time to accompany Xiao Wu shopping.
As a result, Xiao Wu naturally became closer to Lin Tian than to Tang San.
All of this stirred a deep sense of jealousy in Tang San.
Even though he knew Lin Tian wasn’t a “bad person,” and even though the two had never had any real conflict, Tang San was still jealous of him.
Now that he saw Xiao Wu wanting to go to Lin Tian’s home, his feelings only became more complicated.
Lin Tian smiled wryly.
“My home is more than fifty li from Nuoding Academy.
It would take an entire day to walk through the mountains.
Are you sure you want to go?”
He was trying to make Xiao Wu back down.
There was no other choice.
Tang Hao was watching from the shadows.
If Lin Tian dared to take Xiao Wu away, wouldn’t Tang Hao strike first and capture her?
That man had once wanted to obtain a 100,000-year soul ring.
Even though he knew Ah Yin was a 100,000-year transformed soul beast, he had still taken the immature Ah Yin around under the noses of Spirit Hall.
In the end, he had caused Ah Yin to sacrifice herself.
He was absolutely capable of doing something like that.
But Xiao Wu’s eyes lit up instead.
“Your home is in the mountains?”
“More or less.”
Lin Tian smiled.
“Then I want to go with you.”
She had lived in the Star Dou Great Forest since she was little.
Going into the mountains was practically like returning home to her.
Besides, she didn’t really have anywhere else to go.
“This…”
Lin Tian was speechless.
Although he felt helpless, he was even more delighted.
He was happy that Xiao Wu was willing to return to Bamboo Ridge with him instead of going back to Holy Soul Village with Tang San.
The problem was…
Tang San still had Tang Hao standing behind him.
End of Chapter