"I can finish it within three minutes."
Tang San didn't specify how many moves—it was just a conservative estimate of time.
After all, he didn't know what this woman's martial soul was, and that alone introduced a great deal of uncertainty. A powerful martial soul could massively enhance a soul master's strength in unexpected ways.
However—
This wouldn't be some fair duel like between work-study and noble students. All means were on the table.
So, if Tang San used Tang Sect's hidden weapons and throwing techniques, he was confident he could take her down within three minutes.
No matter what, her soul power hadn't reached the level of a Grand Soul Master.
And even if it had, Tang San still believed he could handle her—especially with his Soul Tool, the Zhuge Divine Crossbow. Unless she was wearing extremely strong soft armor or carried a soul device with defensive properties, he could likely kill her in one hit.
"Hey, aren't you two being a bit outrageous?" the woman snapped, eyes wide in disbelief. "Talking about taking me out right in front of me—are you really just kids?"
As she spoke, she quietly activated her martial soul. A pair of fox ears sprouted from her head, and a fluffy tail appeared behind her.
Martial Soul: Spirit Fox.
A faint yellow soul ring lit up, and her eyes shimmered with a faint pink glow.
First Soul Skill: Charm.
Zhou Qing felt his vision blur for a moment, his gaze turning slightly unfocused. But he immediately bit the tip of his tongue, using the pain to snap out of it and threw a punch.
Thud!
With a pained shriek, the woman's right eye turned black and blue, blood vessels bursting in the whites of her eye.
"I believe in gender equality. Don't expect me to go easy just because you're a woman," Zhou Qing said coldly.
Tang San, having trained in the Purple Demon Eye technique since childhood, had far stronger spiritual power than the woman. Though briefly affected by the charm, he quickly recovered.
What surprised him was that Zhou Qing had struck first nearly blinding her in one eye.
This woman's martial soul is a fox, and her soul skill is charm. Her close-combat skills and physical strength probably aren't strong. Her soul power may be higher than mine, but with hidden weapons, I could definitely finish her in three moves, Tang San calculated mentally.
Xiao Wu was the last to recover from the charm.
"You vile woman! How dare you try to charm Big Sis Xiao Wu? You're asking for it!" she shouted. Then, following Zhou Qing, she punched the woman square in the other eye.
Instantly, Xiao Wu activated her martial soul and unleashed her first soul skill: Waist Bow.
This skill instantly boosted her waist strength by 100% and flexibility by 50%. As a Soul Master, every level of soul power increased the boost by 1%.
Currently, with soul power at level 13, Xiao Wu's waist strength increased by 103%, and flexibility by 53%.
To Zhou Qing, this skill's apparent evolution was likely because the soul power channels it used overlapped with her body's natural meridian paths, rather than being a true fusion of soul ring power and internal soul cultivation paths.
Even a hundred-thousand-year soul beast forming a human body couldn't achieve that—likely due to insufficient understanding of human physiology after transformation.
Still, most body-technique-type soul skills did grow stronger with the soul master's cultivation.
With Waist Bow activated, Xiao Wu's long legs snapped around the woman's neck. Her waist bent like a drawn bow, and then snapped back—
Boom!
The woman shot out like a projectile from the balcony.
Thud!
A dull crash followed.
Zhou Qing and Tang San rushed to the balcony and saw her lying on the ground, limbs twitching. For now, she seemed completely incapacitated.
"She's this weak?" Tang San felt a little embarrassed by his earlier "three-move" estimate. Clearly, one was enough.
Zhou Qing, however, had already confirmed it: this woman was clearly from a civilian background. Her first soul ring was likely a hundred-year ring acquired by sheer luck. She probably never continued formal training after graduating from a soul master academy and had barely participated in any soul combat. Otherwise, her combat abilities wouldn't be this poor.
"That's what you get for trying to charm Big Sis Xiao Wu!" Xiao Wu shouted down at the woman, taunting her from the balcony.
But Zhou Qing just looked deeply at Xiao Wu.
A hundred-thousand-year soul beast, once transformed into human form… truly resets everything about their past, and starts over clean.
In the original work, Xiao Wu's second soul skill was also Charm. But against opponents with stronger spiritual power, it barely worked.
Against Zhao Wuji, she was even backfired on!
A dignified hundred-thousand-year soul beast… and her spiritual power wasn't even stronger than someone below Soul Douluo level? Even Soul Saints or Emperors could resist or counter her?
Sure, Soft Bone Rabbit wasn't a particularly rare soul beast, but once it reached 100,000 years of cultivation, its spiritual power should be on the level of a Title Douluo.
Theoretically, any soul master below that level, unless they had some rare martial soul, should be vulnerable to her charm.
But based on both the original story and her current inability to resist even a low-level Charm skill, Zhou Qing realized:
A soul beast who transforms into a human truly washes clean their cultivation—including their spiritual power.
Those who transformed into humans could still condense their first six soul rings, probably because the 100,000 years of cultivation couldn't be fully cleansed in one go. It needed to be channeled away bit by bit through the soul rings.
From what he observed in Xiao Wu's cultivation habits, she absorbed the world's natural energy to raise her soul power—not drawing it directly from her former beast cultivation.
Considering how soul rings provide soul skills and slightly boost soul power…
A soul ring represents the entire life's cultivation of a soul beast. But most of its energy seems to be used—under the laws of the Douluo Continent—to form the structure of a soul skill, which appears as the ring itself. Only a small fraction of its energy remains to be directly absorbed as power.
Otherwise, if a soul master could absorb the full power of a soul beast's cultivation from a soul ring, their soul power wouldn't just increase by one or two levels.
Also, the energy within a soul ring must be extremely pure.
After all, even the Fallen Ones (who absorb others' soul power) have terribly low efficiency. The reason? Others' soul power is incompatible, and the conversion wastes most of it.
But the Douluo laws let the beast's soul power refine itself into a compatible format soul rings solving the compatibility issue.
Based on that logic, when the original Tang San absorbed the Mandala Snake's soul ring and his power shot to level 13, it likely wasn't just due to his own innate soul power—it was also because the Mandala Snake and Blue Silver Grass had a natural affinity (binding-type martial soul), allowing more of the energy to be retained and refined.
Now, after absorbing the Wolf Howl Grass soul ring, Tang San's power jumped to level 14, largely because his twin martial souls—Blue Silver Grass and Clear Sky Hammer—had deep personal resonance with him. He also cultivated three separate techniques, which led to both martial souls' innate energy converging at his breakthrough to Soul Master and fully manifesting.
As for Zhou Qing his martial soul was his circulatory system.
And its potential was even greater.