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A good training environment can really change a person. If it weren't for Meteor and Firefly leading the charge and setting a super competitive pace, with Xu Tianzhen's laid-back personality, he'd probably be stuck at just level 18 soul power right now—and even that would've been considered lucky.
But being around Meteor and the gang, training basically became the main theme of life. They'd try all sorts of crazy methods to improve, and the gravity chamber was just one of many tools they used.
Xu Tianzhen's rapid improvement even caught the attention of Xu Tianran himself. He paid a personal visit and couldn't stop praising the gravity chamber Luan Yu had built. He even brought gifts for Meteor and the others—including Nana—which just shows how smooth and calculated Xu Tianran is when it comes to dealing with people.
Over the past year, Xu Tianran still hadn't completely secured his position as Crown Prince, but he'd already gained support from several ministers and military officers.
Still, he hadn't tried to use his connection with Xu Tianzhen and Meteor to get in touch with Fire Phoenix Douluo. After all, he was only Crown Prince—not the Emperor. The Guardian of the Nation wasn't someone he could mess with just yet.
His father, the Emperor, was still very much alive.
During this time, Luan Yu sold the patent for the gravity chamber to Mingde Hall in exchange for a huge amount of rare metals and cultivation resources. Meng Hongchen and Xiao Hongchen even showed up at Meteor's place to find out more about how effective the gravity chamber was for training.
But when they saw Ye Guyi and Xu Tianzhen had managed to get a thousand-year second soul ring, they both looked super bummed. They sighed and said if only the gravity chamber had come out earlier. Now that they were already Soul Elders with three rings, the basic gravity chamber didn't do much for them anymore.
Keep in mind—they were only ten years old. If things went well, by the time they hit twelve and entered the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineering Academy, they might hit the Soul Ancestor level.
When the next Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Duel Tournament comes around four years from now, they might even compete as backup members with Soul King-level strength.
Meteor had never seen anyone improve as fast as Meng and Xiao Hongchen. Without the boost from thousand-year soul rings, Ye Guyi and Xu Tianzhen couldn't keep up with their soul power growth rate.
Of course, Meteor didn't include himself or Firefly in that comparison—those two were in a league of their own.
The only one who could rival them in cultivation speed was Gu Yue Na. Since she got her thousand-year second soul ring through her own efforts, her natural talent was right behind Meteor and Firefly's.
Last year, when Meteor and the others were seven years old—and also the year the Sun Moon Empire had its major shakeup—the Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Duel Tournament was held in the Heaven Soul Empire.
As expected, the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineering Academy lost to Shrek Academy again and took second place, continuing their long-standing runner-up streak that had lasted for thousands of years.
The next tournament will be in four years, held in the Star Luo Empire. The one after that, in nine years, will take place in the Sun Moon Empire.
There's a good chance that Meteor, Meng Hongchen, and the others will join as backup team members next time, if they join the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineering Academy and win a spot in the selection tournament.
But according to Meng Hongchen, Jing Hongchen—the head of Mingde Hall and principal of the Academy—didn't have much hope of beating Shrek Academy at the next tournament.
Xiao Hongchen didn't believe that for a second.
Jing Hongchen had been keeping an eye on Meteor and the others. His real hope to beat Shrek lay with this younger generation—Meteor and the Hongchen siblings—specifically aiming for the tournament that would be hosted by the Sun Moon Empire nine years from now.
That's because this current class didn't really have many standout students. The only one who stood out was Ma Rulong, who at age fifteen had already reached level five as a Soul Engineer and joined Mingde Hall early on.
But aside from him, the rest weren't anything special. Even if the outside world saw them as geniuses, they didn't meet Jing Hongchen's standards. Beating Shrek would be a real challenge.
From what Meteor remembered, even Tang San—the protagonist of the previous generation—only broke through to Soul Elder level after turning twelve. Meanwhile, Meng and Xiao Hongchen had already done that at age ten. That alone says a lot about their talent. Sure, it's possible they took some kind of cultivation-boosting pills, but Jing Hongchen wouldn't be dumb enough to let them take anything that would harm their foundation or future potential.
That said, it's not necessarily that their talent is greater than Tang San's. The cultivation environment now is totally different from what it was ten thousand years ago. Whether it's the density of spirit energy or the way cultivation resources are used, today's world has huge advantages.
After all, humanity has shrunk the soul beasts' habitats over time, extracting resources from places like the Star Dou Forest—things that were basically unreachable ten thousand years ago.
After selling the gravity chamber to Mingde Hall, Luan Yu stopped developing it further and fully focused on researching a long-distance communication soul device.
Fire Phoenix Douluo also helped out with the research in her spare time. With two level-nine Soul Engineers working together, their project made huge strides.
At the very least, they'd already figured out the transmission medium for information—and even visual images—over long distances: soul power, which is basically the omnipresent spiritual energy of the Douluo Continent.
Choosing the medium was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how to actually use it.
"Maybe we should go talk to our teacher. He's the closest thing there is to a level-ten Soul Engineer. He might have a solution."
Fire Phoenix Douluo paused and then suggested this after thinking it over.
Luan Yu rolled her eyes at her sister. She knew exactly what she was up to.
Fire Phoenix Douluo was very much a pro-war type. Of course she wanted the long-distance communication soul device to be used by the military, exclusively for the Sun Moon Empire's forces.
She had tried convincing Luan Yu to go along with that plan, but Luan Yu was firmly against it. And honestly, Fire Phoenix couldn't do much about it—what was she going to do, beat up her only little sister over this?
Her real goal in suggesting they visit their teacher was to have him take her side. Their teacher was the head of the Royal Worship Hall and had very clear political leanings. If he found out about Luan Yu's research, chances are he'd pressure her to hand it over to the Empire.
And when that happened, even someone as stubborn as Luan Yu might start second-guessing herself.
To be honest, Luan Yu had considered leveraging the power of the Sun Moon Empire to develop the long-distance communication soul device. As long as she could figure out a way to block its signal transmissions, she could give that part to the royal family—allowing the Empire to roll out the communication devices freely.
That way, once other empires began to depend on them, the Sun Moon Empire could just cut off their communications in one sudden move—catching the three other nations completely off guard.
The more she thought about it, the more tempted Luan Yu felt. After all, working on this solo could take decades with no real progress. But if her teacher got involved, he could mobilize all the level-nine Soul Engineers in the Sun Moon Empire. That kind of support would massively speed things up.
"....."