Kong Mingan did not immediately answer. He simply lowered his gaze to look closely at the black spirit ring on his wrist. Over the last year, while he had spent most of his time focusing on his cultivation, Electrolux had never stopped his deep research into the true nature of spirit rings.
To understand how spirit rings worked, Electrolux had been very busy. He had sacrificed dozens of Soft Bones Rabbits every single day to study the essence of their rings. Finally, just a few months ago, Electrolux reached a preliminary understanding of how they were actually built.
Kong Mingan took a moment to think about his words carefully. He looked at the Hongchen siblings and then at his grandfather. Finally, his calm voice began to echo through the quiet laboratory.
"A spirit ring comes from a Spirit Beast," he began. "If you take a Spirit Beast and completely pull it apart into its basic parts, you can say it is made of four things: the body, the Soul, the mental force or memory, and the spirit power".
He gestured toward the remains of the Thorny Dragon. "When you kill a Spirit Beast, its body stays behind. The spirit ring that comes out is actually made of the leftover Soul, the memory, and the spirit power".
He paused to make sure they were following him, then used an analogy that would be easier for them to understand. "You can think of a spirit ring like one of the semi-automatic Soul-guided rifles I used to make when I was bored".
"The spirit power that makes up the ring is like the metal casing of the rifle," he explained. "Its only job is to hold the internal parts together, which are the memory and the Soul".
"The memories the Spirit Beast had while it was alive, specifically the parts about how it used its power, naturally turn into what I call Soul Skill Modules. These are like the parts inside a rifle, such as the firing pin, the gas system, and the recoil spring".
"The leftover Soul of the beast acts as the trigger mechanism," he continued. "It is what activates those Soul Skill Modules. It is the literal trigger".
"And finally, the bullet is the spirit power that the Spirit Master puts into the ring".
Kong Mingan stopped for a second to summarize his point. "So, when a Spirit Master uses a Spirit Ability, they put spirit power into the ring. That power pulls the trigger, which is the remnant Soul. The Soul then runs a specific Soul Skill Module, and the ability comes out. This is the truth behind spirit rings and Spirit Abilities".
He called this new idea the spirit ring Tripartite Theory.
Xiao Hongchen felt his head start to itch as if his brain was struggling to grow large enough to understand all this. Meng Hongchen looked dazed. She only half-understood what he was saying, but she could tell it was a very powerful theory. Only Kong Deming had a bright gleam in his eyes. He looked like he had just discovered a whole new continent and was thinking deeply about the possibilities.
Kong Mingan did not stop there. He kept explaining his discovery.
"Imagine a Soft Bones Rabbit that had three Spirit Abilities when it was alive: Teleportation, Paragon Golden Body, and Charm".
"If a normal Spirit Master kills that rabbit and takes its ring, he will usually only get one of those three abilities".
"But that doesn't mean the other two abilities are gone," Kong Mingan said. "They are still there as Soul Skill Modules inside the ring".
"The problem is that the leftover Soul is too weak and broken. It can only lock onto and trigger one of the modules. Once it does that, the ability is set in stone".
"The other modules just sit there. They get mixed up with all the useless memories of the beast and stay dormant deep inside the ring".
He used this to explain other things people knew about the world. "This is why 100,000-year spirit rings always have two abilities. It is because the Soul of a 100,000-year beast is strong enough to pull two triggers at once, even if the Soul is damaged".
Kong Mingan didn't say it out loud, but he realized this also explained why Spirit Souls in the future could give multiple rings and abilities. A complete Soul could naturally control more skills.
Kong Deming was following the logic perfectly now. He asked a question. "So, if a Spirit Beast's Soul is complete enough, can one single spirit ring trigger many Spirit Abilities?".
"Theoretically, yes," Kong Mingan answered. "But it is not usually possible in practice".
"Why not?" his grandfather asked.
"It is because of the carrying capacity of the ring," Kong Mingan said with a smile. "Think of the total space in a spirit ring as being ten parts".
"In a normal ring, the broken Soul of the beast takes up about four parts," he explained. "The useless memory fragments take up another three parts".
"That leaves only three parts of the space for all the Soul Skill Modules combined".
"The one ability that Spirit Masters use every day only uses a tiny bit of that space, maybe only 10% or even less".
"If the beast's Soul is more complete, it takes up even more room. The ring only has so much space, so the Soul has to get rid of memories and skill modules to keep a balance".
He thought to himself about how the Spirit Soul system worked in a similar way, where the Soul took up almost all the capacity, but it distributed skills across different ring positions. He also realized why absorbing Spirit Souls required such high mental force, because the Spirit Master had to handle the pressure of the Soul itself.
Kong Mingan finished his summary with the tone of a dedicated researcher.
"In normal rings, most of the space is wasted on leftover Souls and junk memories. The treasure chest of skill modules is buried and lost".
"I think that is a huge waste of potential," he said firmly. "But in my spirit ring, the beast's Soul was completely cleaned out and erased before I absorbed it".
"Because of that, all the space that the Soul used to take up is now free. I can use my own mind to search for and activate every single skill module hidden inside the ring".
"If I am right, this one 10,000-year ring will give me more than ten different Spirit Abilities. Each module is its own separate power".
"This ring can actually hold a huge number of Spirit Abilities," he concluded. "However, there is one big downside. I have to do everything manually".
Kong Mingan summoned the ring again to show them.
"With a normal ring, you just push spirit power into it, and the leftover Soul does the rest. It is like an idiot-proof machine," he said.
"But for me, if I want to use a power, I have to find the specific module in my mind," he explained. "I have to control exactly how much power I use, what type it is, how far it goes, and how strong it is".
"If I make even one small mistake, the ability won't work, it will be weak, or the power might even explode back at me".
"Most Spirit Masters who are used to the easy way would find this impossible. It is like learning a whole new language. It will take me a lot of time to study and get used to how to use it".