"This..."
The scene struck Luo Fanchen as distinctly familiar. The last time the little loach pulled this... was the last time it pulled this.
The Pontiff and the Holy Maiden both froze — they'd been ready to leave, and no one expected Luo Fanchen's martial soul to lunge into motion on its own.
Watching the little loach gulp the soul ring down, Bai Yingyue cried out in alarm:
"No!"
"Little Senior Brother, rein in your martial soul, NOW — if it fuses that two-hundred-year ring, your whole talent is wasted!!!"
"Too late." Di Weiyang sighed. The little loach had swallowed too fast — even SHE hadn't reacted in time.
So Luo Fanchen would be stuck with a two-hundred-year first ring after all.
"WHOOSH!"
Single-colored light flared across the little loach's whole body.
The glow deepened and swelled — and its body expanded with it, scales multiplying across its hide, its very station climbing.
Bai Yingyue faltered. "That's... that's not what fusing a soul ring looks like either."
Di Weiyang's phoenix eyes fixed on it.
"BOOM!"
The loach's body doubled outright — from forearm-length to a good meter and more.
It looked far more imposing now: not a little loach anymore but a small azure-scaled serpent, its body sheathed in TWO colors of light where before there had been one.
Luo Fanchen felt the little serpent's joy pulsing plainly through the bond, and understanding rose with it.
It's longer. And stronger.
Though you're a treacherous little brother, you know that? Feasting away without offering your master a single bite.
Bai Yingyue was reeling. "Little Senior Brother's martial soul really CAN keep evolving — and at this speed? This FAST?"
"Interesting." Di Weiyang's lips curved as she inclined her head. "That such a martial soul exists under heaven. One wonders where its evolution ends."
"Junior Sister, what were you saying just now?" Luo Fanchen had been wholly absorbed in the loach's rank-up.
"AIYA!" Regret filled Yingyue's pretty face. "A soul that can evolve without limit — do you understand what that potential is WORTH? And its first ring is a measly two hundred years. What a waste!"
Luo Fanchen swept his senses inward, then shook his head. "No — there's no ring in there. I can't sense the one you're talking about at all."
"How can there be NO ring?!"
Yingyue stamped one booted foot and demonstrated in person: behind her rose a cold violet moon, frost pouring off it, the temperature plunging all around.
Luo Fanchen's hands and feet went icy. That soul was no joke — she was visibly suppressing its aura, and it STILL chilled him to the bone.
"SWISH-SWISH!"
Yellow, yellow, purple, purple — four rings of light surfaced from within the violet moon, pulsing up and down.
"See?" she said. "This is my Rank Nine top-grade martial soul, the Grand Yin Netherglow — with four rings fused."
Luo Fanchen copied the motion, driving soul power out. The azure-scaled serpent swam coils through the empty air — and not one ring appeared.
He said it with certainty: "Definitely nothing. That ring must have been digested as feed."
Bai Yingyue let out a shriek:
"IMPOSSIBLE! Rings attach to martial souls — that they can't be absorbed as personal power is one of the settled laws of the world!!!"
Di Weiyang spoke. "Fanchen's martial soul indeed carries no fused ring. There is no trace of the Iron-Backed Gray Wolf's ring anywhere inside it."
"It really just... ATE a soul ring as food?" Yingyue's eyes were pure disbelief.
"Monsters are born precisely to break common knowledge. You are the Holy Maiden — compose yourself." Di Weiyang couldn't help shaking her head.
This girl was far too bouncy. Truly nothing like a Holy Maiden.
"But..."
Yingyue turned — and there stood Luo Fanchen, steady as an old dog, and she felt her sanity fraying at the edges.
She wanted to grab him by the collar and howl into his face.
HEY! HEY!!
Do you have ANY idea how deviant that martial soul of yours is?! Word of this gets out and people will die of shock!
Once anyone else fused their rings, every beast they slew afterward was pointless —
they could only watch ring after ring dissolve back into heaven and earth. But THIS soul? Zero waste.
Hoovering up everything in reach, refusing nothing, growing stronger at a speed the naked eye could track.
And it likely didn't end there. With a Holy Maiden's trained eye, Bai Yingyue could see it plainly: the soul was consuming energy in order to EVOLVE.
So once it evolved to its ultimate form... would it start feeding all that devoured power back to its master, accelerating HIS cultivation?
Other powers could only cultivate by drawing spiritual qi. One channel. One road.
Luo Fanchen could draw qi — AND run a martial soul that gorged itself on soul rings.
"Hisss—"
At the thought, Bai Yingyue sucked in a breath of cold air and stared at her handsome little Senior Brother the way one stares at a monster.
Heaven help us all.
Luo Fanchen, for his part, wasn't thinking anything so grand. He withdrew the soul and picked the two bundles up off the ground.
The azure lotus was still stirring — utterly indifferent to the little loach's beloved wolf, but hungering, ravenous, for something inside the bundle.
He decided not to open it here regardless. If yet another spectacle erupted, he genuinely had no explanation left to offer.
When he looked up, he found Yingyue and Di Weiyang both silent, brows drawn, staring at the same spot.
He followed their gaze.
His pupils shrank.
The Iron-Backed Gray Wolf — so ferocious minutes ago — now lay like a dried corpse, as if every drop of blood and essence had been drained from it, withered to husk and bone.
Holy hell.
Luo Fanchen's heart skipped.
The Pontiff wouldn't decide he was some fiend-path abomination and strangle him in the cradle... would she? Never mind that his past life's scripts ALWAYS played that scene — honestly, watching from a bystander's view, even HE felt a chill and a faint urge to exterminate himself.
He watched the two women very, very carefully.
The Holy Maiden came bouncing over on those fair booted legs, smiling sweet as sugar:
"Little Senior Brother, I almost forgot — your martial soul absorbs blood-essence too, not just rings."
"...Yes," Luo Fanchen nodded, tension easing a notch. He'd genuinely braced for his little junior sister to declare she'd punish him in the name of the moon.
But sharp as he was, he'd caught it: a flicker of something unnatural crossing her lovely eyes just now.
"We move."
Di Weiyang's expression remained a ten-thousand-year iceberg, unmoved in the slightest, as she started deeper into the forest.
"Come on, little Senior Brother~" Yingyue waved.
Luo Fanchen truly hadn't expected it: even after THAT, the Pontiff asked nothing. Not one question. Trust, given whole.
***
"Rustle-rustle!"
Deep in the jungle, Luo Fanchen stood off against a mantis half the height of a man. He had never in his life imagined a mantis could GROW that big.
Its twin scythe-arms glittered like cut diamond — beautiful, and murderous.
At a distance, Bai Yingyue fretted. "Teacher, throwing little Senior Brother straight at a four-hundred-year Diamond Mantis — isn't that too cruel?"
"That's not how you taught ME."
Di Weiyang said evenly:
"An inferior teacher teaches at random, and ruins her students."
"An ordinary teacher teaches by the book, and produces the mediocre."
"Your teacher teaches each according to their nature — and so raises great vessels."
"You two differ in talent. Naturally you differ in training."
Yingyue nodded — but the worry didn't leave her face.
She understood the theory, thank you. But one day past awakening against a four-hundred-year soul beast was still too much to ask!
Especially since no one had taught him a single proper soul master combat technique yet.
She refused to believe her teacher had FORGOTTEN such a thing. It was deliberate. She just couldn't see the purpose.
"SHWICK!"
Luo Fanchen slipped the strike and darted aside, teeth bared with pain.
That HURT!
The beast was vicious — it had opened four or five gashes on him at least, though he'd kept them all away from anything vital.
He had zero doubt: put the Iron-Backed Gray Wolf in this clearing, and the Diamond Mantis would cleave it in half with one scythe.
He'd tried directing the little loach to attack — clearly it couldn't drain the living. Worse, the experiment exposed a fatal flaw:
splitting his focus to control the loach slowed his own body — a horizontal sweep had very nearly cut him in two at the waist.
The mantis came on again. Luo Fanchen gritted his teeth and met it — and summoned the azure lotus.
The six petals spun, fragrance flooding out; a thread of azure light flew and struck him — and his wounds sealed over in an instant.
"BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!"
With healing THIS potent, he switched strategies on the spot: pure berserker trade — wound for wound — hammering the Diamond Mantis's belly, its head, anything soft.
At a distance, Bai Yingyue watched the mantis's aura sink lower while Luo Fanchen only hit harder, and her rosy little mouth simply would not close.
"He's... he's actually going to TAKE it?"
"A four-hundred-year Diamond Mantis! He hasn't even learned real soul-control combat technique yet!!!"
"And that lotus's healing is flatly deviant — isn't that supposed to be top-tier SUPPORT-soul-master material?"
"CRUNCH!"
A great crack rolled out — Luo Fanchen's fist drove the mantis's entire head into the soil. A clean burst — and then he kept hammering it anyway.
As if terrified it might respawn.
Bai Yingyue pressed her cherry lips shut and never said the word "support" again.
Devastatingly handsome, sure — and every time he actually fought, he was violence in human skin, a fierce-beast wearing a boy's face. He had exactly nothing in common with those frail back-line healers.
"Huff... huff—"
Luo Fanchen rose, breathing hard, clothes in bloody ribbons — and not one wound under them.
The price: driving the lotus had burned through more than half his soul power.
"Whoosh!"
A bright-yellow soul ring surfaced over the Diamond Mantis's carcass.
The little loach shot in, jaws open — ring and threads of blood-essence streamed down its throat.
Luo Fanchen laughed and cursed it in the same breath:
"Useless in the fight, first on the scene for the loot!"
"BOOM!"
The loach's body swelled — evolving yet again.
One meter stretched to one-point-three; its girth reached fist-thick; azure scales glinted with eerie light.
The two-colored radiance around it deepened further still.
Luo Fanchen watched closely. By rights a four-hundred-year beast should have fed it far more growth than the two-hundred-year wolf.
It hadn't. Each stage was clearly costlier than the last — though the pace was still ferocious by any sane measure.
At the end, the mantis's carcass shriveled hollow, its diamond scythes dulling to plain gray stone.
"WHOOSH!"
The loach had barely settled when the azure lotus flew out on its own.
It hovered above one of the two bundles, spinning round and round.
"Now what's THIS about?"
Bai Yingyue was beyond shocked. The loach being special was one thing — what was wrong with the LOTUS now?
Even Di Weiyang's cold face showed open surprise.
Luo Fanchen had no words.
Two unfilial sons. TWO! Not one of them lets their father live in peace.
I know you're starving, but could you not hold it in until we're somewhere PRIVATE?
...Forget it.
He could feel it through the bond — the souls acted on pure instinct toward their host's benefit, no sapience in it. There was nothing to scold.
He walked over, done with hiding — and opened the bundle the azure lotus had been pining for...