"What's the problem?"
At Bai Yingyue's cry, Luo Fanchen turned, puzzled — and looked.
His pupils snapped tight. A jolt went through him.
The little loach's slender one-point-eight-meter body was ballooning grotesquely — a balloon pumped past its last breath, one heartbeat from bursting.
The two-colored soul-light on its hide guttered and flared, its aura in total chaos.
Luo Fanchen's scalp crawled.
Little brother — that's not EVOLVING, that's deciding life isn't worth living and going out as a firework.
And taking your big brother with you, apparently?!
Di Weiyang's voice came from behind, heavy:
"Trouble. Your martial soul has swallowed too much blood-essence and too many rings. It cannot digest the load."
Luo Fanchen glanced at the entire freeze-dried bull lying there and his mouth twitched. Gluttony is one thing — but nobody eats himself fat in ONE bite.
A snake swallowing an elephant. Pure, textbook suicide.
But the true fault registered fast: the little loach had no sapience — 'moderation' could not exist for it. Restraint was the MASTER's job, and the master had been asleep at the wheel.
"Teacher — what does Senior Brother DO about this?" Yingyue's teeth pressed white into her lip.
Di Weiyang's face didn't flicker; the judgment came calm and cold. "No outsider can touch another's martial soul. He resolves it himself, or no one does."
"The only method: use his own body to shoulder the absorption load — and the danger transfers with it."
"If he lacks the stomach to risk his flesh for it — then he can only stand aside and let the soul live or die on its own."
"Understood."
Luo Fanchen heard it through — and was already moving.
Resolve flashed hard in his eyes as he slapped both palms onto that swelling body. The little loach was his rise, his capital, his SOUL. Standing aside was never on the table.
Torrents of rioting blood-essence and soul power came flooding through his palms into his meridians.
The loach's distended body shrank back from the brink. The detonation was defused — and now LUO FANCHEN's body began to bloat, his soul power churning into chaos.
"Khh."
He grunted; blood traced from the corner of his mouth. Foreign blood-essence rampaged through his sinews; excess soul power tore along his meridians.
Yingyue's fingers knotted together. "Teacher — can he... can he HOLD?"
Di Weiyang's red lips parted.
"No matter. I am here."
Relief flooded the girl. If Teacher says it's fine, it's fine.
"But..."
"...didn't you JUST say outsiders can't help?"
The phoenix eyes slanted at her, wintry. "You appear to have a surplus of words."
Yingyue dared not push it, lips pressing into a soft sulk.
Then she caught the look in her teacher's eyes as they rested on Luo Fanchen — appraisal, appreciation — and understood. Teacher was USING the crisis. This was a test.
Di Weiyang said, "Unshaken in danger. Decisive in action. Yingyue — learn your senior brother's steadiness and his nerve."
"I'm only a billion percent chattier with my OWN people, that's all," she protested, pouting like the little girl she half was.
Luo Fanchen was reaching his limit — one crack from collapse. Di Weiyang shifted her weight to intervene.
"HUMMM!"
The azure lotus surfaced on its own — unbidden, guarding its master.
Wave upon wave of fragrant healing light poured over Luo Fanchen.
Sinew and meridian, swollen to splitting, knitted back at speed.
The blood-essence tore his fibers — and soaked into them as they healed. Break, mend, break, mend: with every cycle, his body came back STRONGER.
The soul power flooding his channels ran the same alchemy — under the lotus's obscene healing, instead of bursting his meridians it was WIDENING them.
The scales tipped. Catastrophe turned over and showed its other face: fortune.
Yingyue's face bloomed with relief.
Di Weiyang was quietly startled. She had been one motion from stepping in — and he'd carried himself across the pass alone.
Worth a second look. Worth several.
Any ordinary cultivator would have died nine deaths in ten. That much foreign energy is not digested by will alone.
"BOOM!"
The little loach's aura climbed. Its body stretched from one-point-eight meters to a full two; its station ratcheted upward again — and through the two-colored radiance on its hide, a THIRD color bloomed.
Three colors now. Mightier by the hour.
Yingyue saw where this was pointing and blurted, "Teacher — Senior Brother's soul isn't going to turn into a DRAGON, is it?"
"Mm." Di Weiyang inclined her head. "The dragon-might it breathes is uncommonly pure. I suspect 'a dragon' understates it."
"Eh?"
"I fear... it means to become a TRUE dragon."
"How is that possible?"
Yingyue shook her head hard.
"The world crawls with mongrel dragon souls — but the TRUE dragon martial soul belongs to exactly one lineage: the Azure Dragon Empire's imperial inheritance, the Primordial Azure Dragon."
"Senior Brother carries no imperial blood. From where does a true dragon soul COME?"
"That, your teacher does not know."
"His soul has barely begun its evolution — the dragon-might within is drawn but not loosed, scarcely showing. When the day comes that it bares its full edge, it will split the sky. It may even shake the Primordial Azure Dragon from its seat as the first dragon-soul under heaven."
Yingyue's red lips parted, shock ringing through her. She knew precisely how her teacher hoarded words like gold.
THIS many sentences in a row meant the soul's potential outran even her wildest guess.
"BOOM!"
Blood-essence detonated outward from Luo Fanchen's whole body. His soul power ran thicker, denser than an hour ago; his opening eyes were lit from inside.
"Well WELL, little Senior Brother — quite the harvest, by the look of you."
Yingyue came bouncing over on those fair legs, all youth and spring — then tilted her head. "Hey. You lucked into fortune through calamity. Why the FROWN?"
He hesitated.
"It's strange. My soul power and blood-essence have both risen enormously — so why isn't there the slightest sign of a breakthrough?"
"Aiya." She rolled her eyes at him. "SILLY. We covered this: no soul ring, no breakthrough. Ever."
"That's exactly why Teacher says break through WHEN it's time — dawdling costs you cultivation."
"A soul master breaks through fastest between sixteen and twenty-five. Camping at one level to chase a higher-year ring later is a losing trade."
"Understood." He absorbed it with such grave, meticulous attention that Yingyue suddenly felt shy about lecturing.
"Anyway — with your sinews tempered and meridians widened like this, the ring-year ceiling you can survive just climbed ANOTHER bracket, probably."
Di Weiyang spoke. "Fanchen. Consolidate your cultivation carefully tonight. Tomorrow we hunt your first soul ring in earnest."
He flexed his fists, took stock of the power brimming in his body, and said with confidence:
"Teacher — I think I can break the four-hundred-year ceiling on the first ring. In this state, fusing something past five hundred years shouldn't be hard."
And that was the moment Bai Yingyue realized: somewhere along the way, without ceremony, her bargain-bin little Senior Brother had ALREADY broken past the limits of an ordinary human body.
No — past the limits of GENIUSES at the first ring.
The Holy Maiden felt an unfamiliar taste rise in her throat: defeat. It was crushing. WHAT kind of monster had that little mountain village belched into the world?
Was she not genius enough?
No!
He was simply too deviant to measure against.
One soul that evolved by devouring blood and rings. One soul that GREW by drinking Origin Stones. Not a single normal thing between them.
Even Holy Son Huang Yan had never pressed down on her chest like this.
Di Weiyang said:
"Fanchen. You are still too conservative. Even the six-hundred-year historical record — you may as well try breaking THAT."
"Six hundred?"
Yingyue's eyes went still.
In ordinary powers, a three-hundred-year first ring made you a genius. Only in the very apex factions did four hundred mark the true elect.
A SIX-hundred-year first ring...
Even she hadn't dared imagine it, back then. Neither had the self-anointed peerless Huang Yan.
History held exactly one such case — one freak of special fortune.
And now her little junior... senior brother was going to stroll out and challenge the historical record, just like that? The unreality washed over her, and she pinched herself.
Luo Fanchen smiled wryly:
"Teacher, my actual worry is that this soul of mine throws another tantrum and EATS the ring — then there's nothing left to fuse."
Di Weiyang's face turned genuinely stern:
"Then hear this: you must now LEARN to govern your martial soul. No more letting it gorge at will on blood and rings."
"You saw it today yourself. Devouring makes it strong quickly — and too much of anything curdles. It very nearly ended you both."
"Feed it to a point; then STOP, and let it digest. Never let the soul's growth outrun your control of it — or one day it will not answer you at all."
"Everything within your grasp. Soul power level is the root of all of it."
Luo Fanchen nodded — no lesson had ever needed less selling. In the moment he'd felt the soul about to blow, he had been well and truly terrified.
"We rest here tonight," said Di Weiyang.
"Eh?"
"HERE here?"
He scanned the surroundings. The jungle had gone full dark; leaves hissed overhead; somewhere far off, something unknown made a sound that had no business existing.
Yingyue piped up sweetly:
"What's wrong? A master AND a junior sister — two certified great beauties — camping at your side isn't enough? Still pining for that plank bed back in the village?"
He grinned. "Teacher is certainly a great beauty. As for you, Junior Sister..."
"Would you like to test whether this fist ends your life?" She raised one pink knuckle, crinkling her nose.
"I only meant the ACCOMMODATIONS are humble—" Privately he'd assumed a Pontiff and a Holy Maiden lived on brocade and jade plates.
She read him and waved it off. "Teacher and I aren't NEARLY so delicate. Where cultivation goes, home goes."
"A little fairy smells just as sweet sleeping rough, for your information."
"Enough, Yingyue." Di Weiyang said. "Go hunt some game. Let your senior brother taste something fresh."
"EH?"
Her little face collapsed. "That used to be my job because there was no one else! We HAVE a senior brother now — must I still be the labor?"
"Your senior brother is consolidating his cultivation." A beat. "Also — light the campfire before you hunt."
Bai Yingyue took it like a lightning strike. She was furious now, because the evidence of lost favor was mounting by the minute.
Teacher. You don't love me anymore, DO you!
A new favorite walks in, and the old beloved disciple is just... discarded?
Having written, directed, and starred in the entire inner drama, she stamped off on those snow-white legs, pert hips swinging, and shot Luo Fanchen one scorching sidelong glare.
"What USE are you as a senior brother anyway?!"
"HMPH!"
"I'm abandoning you both — don't even DREAM of my return!"
***
Night proper.
The campfire crackled and spat between the trees — and the Holy Maiden delivered the full-service package.
Pert bottom perched on her heels, she crouched at the spit, tending the roast — brushing oil, dusting spices.
The spices, naturally, came out of the Pontiff's storage treasure.
The smell of the meat bloomed fast enough to make a saint's mouth water.
The Pontiff had deliberately let a few threads of her presence loose into the night; no soul beast within miles would so much as breathe in their direction.
Luo Fanchen sat quietly stunned.
The Holy Maiden of his imagination never touched dishwater. THIS Holy Maiden's technique would shame a master pit-cook.
Salty or sweet on demand — and she could COOK. What was the total inventory of top-shelf girls on this continent, exactly?
Compared to certain little fairies of his past life... tsk.
He shook his head, folded his legs before the meat was even done, and — per the Pontiff's instruction — sank into consolidating his cultivation.
Partway through, his ear twitched.
Bai Yingyue was easing away from the roast, steps deliberately soft, clearly hoping not to disturb him — off to the Pontiff at the clearing's edge for a whispered conference.
But Luo Fanchen's body was no longer an ordinary one. Even at mosquito-wing volume, the whispers found his ears — every accidental word of them...