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Back in Soto City, Su Wen had already broken through to rank forty.
At that time, Su Wen was only fourteen years old.
No matter how Grandmaster thought about it, he couldn't guarantee that his disciple, Tang San, would be able to break through to become a Spirit Ancestor at the age of fourteen.
To be precise, he couldn't guarantee that Tang San would be faster than Su Wen.
Back then, Su Wen had broken through as a Spirit Ancestor just as he turned fourteen.
Even between two fourteen-year-olds, there could be a difference of nearly a year.
Tang San, who was currently three months away from turning fourteen, was only at rank thirty-eight. If he could break through to rank thirty-nine before his fourteenth birthday, it would already be considered a success.
As for the threshold between rank thirty-nine and rank forty, judging by Dai Mubai's experience, Tang San would likely be stuck there for at least half a year.
What weighed most heavily on Grandmaster's heart was the fact that Su Wen's Innate Spirit Power was only rank five.
When they were back in Nuoding City, Su Wen was only ten years old when he graduated early, and his spirit power was still far behind Tang San's.
Yet, in just a few short years, Su Wen had undergone an unimaginable qualitative change.
Grandmaster had always been curious, but unfortunately, he had no reason to contact Su Wen, nor did he have the confidence to extract information from Su Wen's mouth.
"Mubai, for these last three months, you should focus on closed-door cultivation to charge toward rank forty.
Xiao San, and the rest of you—all of you must try your best to increase by one rank in these final three months. Especially Xiao San, your spirit power node is very important. If you break through to rank thirty-nine before the tournament and use the high-frequency battles of the competition to temper yourself, you have a chance to break through to Spirit Ancestor using the pressure of the tournament.
This is currently your only path to a rapid breakthrough."
---
Rumble!
Having absorbed a Stone Monster spirit ring before and possessing an understanding of their spirit skills, Su Wen was naturally very familiar with the weaknesses of this type of spirit beast.
Specifically, because he mastered the "Void Traverse" spirit skill, he could attack their weakest points directly through space.
With the combination of the "Spiral Shuriken" and spatial penetration, Su Wen was effectively dealing lethal blows to the Stone Monster continuously.
Meanwhile, Su Wen himself kept his distance, kiting the creature.
The massive rock giant crashed to the ground with a thunderous roar. Surges of spirit power pulsed, and a black spirit ring slowly emerged.
A twenty-thousand-year Stone Monster, deceased!
During the battle just now, Su Wen had quietly shifted the battlefield to this currently secluded area.
He had also set up an illusion in the vicinity, a technique he formed during his travels by combining his manipulation of spatial power with illusionary arts. (For convenience, "Illusionary Realm" will refer to this combination of illusions and spatial power, not a separate small space. The space Su Wen opened to use his fifth spirit skill shall be called the "Phantasm World.")
This Illusionary Realm made it easier to hide his tracks, provided an early warning system, and could buy him enough reaction time.
Su Wen sat cross-legged on the ground.
His third ring exploded.
As the third ring shattered, he circulated the spirit power within his body, guiding the black Stone Monster ring to settle into the vacancy left by his third ring.
Inside the Martial Soul Space, the position of the original third ring wasn't actually empty; the essence of this new ring did not spontaneously merge into Su Wen's body.
Instead, the entire black spirit ring and its essence simultaneously repelled Su Wen, attempting to leave his body.
Su Wen mobilized his mental strength to firmly stabilize the spirit ring at the position of his third ring. Simultaneously, he drew the spirit power from within it into his own body, merging them bit by bit.
This was a major focus of his refinement of the Ring Replacement Method to the level of "Source Merging." Through multiple processes of merging spirit power, he had found several circulation nodes suitable for this purpose.
At this moment, he continuously circulated the two currents of spirit power. As they merged, the repulsion of the spirit ring's essence toward Su Wen began to weaken.
However, it still maintained an indifferent posture.
You already have a third ring, why are you coming to provoke me?
And you've even mingled your spirit power with mine!
This spirit master is such a scumbag!
Su Wen ignored whether the spirit ring's essence acknowledged him or not. After completing the preliminary fusion of spirit power and waiting for the sense of mutual repulsion to drop sharply, he directly and forcibly pulled the spirit ring's essence into his Martial Soul Space.
At the original third ring position, the essence exploded slightly, leaving a partial vacancy. Su Wen shoved the new spirit ring essence into it.
At the same time, he began using the preliminarily merged spirit power to reconstruct the new third ring.
It had to be said that many techniques from "Ring Exploding" were the core of Su Wen's Ring Replacement Method.
As the reconstruction of the third ring was completed, the spirit ring in turn exerted influence on the two essences at the ring position, causing them to gradually merge.
After the Stone Monster died, its corpse began to undergo a change. It glowed, and streaks of spirit power light flowed through it.
The residual spirit power within the Stone Monster's body continuously modified its remains, eventually forming a peculiar rock that emitted strong energy fluctuations.
Having finished absorbing the spirit ring, Su Wen looked at the now-formed special rock with great curiosity. He stowed the rock away, dispelled the Illusionary Realm, and quickly left the depths of the Sunset Forest.
It wasn't until he returned to Heaven Dou City that he took the rock out for careful study.
"The affinity for spirit power is too high!" Su Wen discovered that this rock's capacity to hold spirit power was extremely high in all aspects.
"This thing couldn't possibly give birth to another Stone Monster, could it?" The thought occurred to him inexplicably.
Rather than a byproduct left after death, Su Wen felt this rock was more like a Stone Monster in gestation.
"Is this a characteristic of ten-thousand-year Stone Monsters?"
Stone Monsters were rare, and those at the ten-thousand-year level were even rarer; the spirit master world currently didn't know enough about them.
Su Wen was curious about how the Stone Monster tribe in the Sunset Forest had come to be, and since his third ring was originally a Stone Monster ring, he paid quite a bit of attention to their situation.
Seeing the change in the corpse of the ten-thousand-year Stone Monster now, he realized this might be related to the existence of the tribe.
Of course, the corpse of a ten-thousand-year Stone Monster gestating the next generation was just a form of inheritance.
Moreover, it required a ten-thousand-year-old specimen.
The numbers wouldn't increase this way, so the birth of the Stone Monster tribe certainly wasn't due to this alone.
"Could it be that ten-thousand-year Stone Monsters can gestate this kind of rock on their own?" Su Wen pondered.
This possibility was slim. There were traces of ten-thousand-year Stone Monsters in other places, yet no other place had given birth to a tribe.
Su Wen estimated that the issue likely lay with those three Stone Monsters over fifty thousand years old.
"They likely possess an enhanced version of this trait, thereby mastering the ability to gestate 'offspring'."
---
Hunting the Stone Monster and researching the peculiar rock had only taken a month in total.
With two months remaining, Su Wen returned to the Heaven Dou Imperial Academy and began to inquire about the upcoming tournament.
Looking at it now, his spirit power was already the highest in the entire Heaven Dou Imperial Team, and his strength was indisputably the strongest.
He couldn't exactly remain a lowly substitute, could he?
"Also, Uncle Ning said Rongrong has also broken through to rank forty. As long as she gets another spirit ring, she'll be a Spirit Ancestor."
Two Spirit Ancestor substitutes?
(End of Chapter)