"Little Chen, begin."
Ning Bowen and the other four said with great interest.
Chen Junting nodded. When his gaze fell upon Gu Tianchen and Ning Tian, they immediately understood.
"Then let me go first." Gu Tianchen stepped forward first, blocking Ning Tian who was about to speak.
"Alright."
Chen Junting waved his hand grandly, and array patterns outlined themselves one after another. Interweaving with each other, an array landed on the ground before them.
"Old Gu, stand inside the array."
"Okay."
Gu Tianchen was quite calm, stepping directly inside. However, after entering, he cast his gaze upon Chen Junting. He had absolutely no idea how to condense a soul ring.
But before he could ask, Chen Junting spoke first, "Which method do you plan to use for self-condensing your soul ring?" Then, he once again described the four methods of self-condensing soul rings, finally adding, "The first soul beast blood method won't work yet."
There was no other way—space-type soul beasts were too difficult to find.
Gu Tianchen pondered for a moment, then made his decision.
"I'll use the heaven and earth memory method."
"Very well." As soon as Chen Junting's voice fell, the array patterns on the ground changed. "Besides the bloodline tracing method, the other methods of self-condensing soul rings only require the array to function. In a moment, you just need to respond in the state of absorbing a soul ring."
Soon, the array began to emit a faint golden light.
The surrounding heaven and earth origin energy also began to gather at this moment. Gu Tianchen's entire body trembled—he felt a continuous stream of energy surging into his body, just like when absorbing a soul ring.
Realizing this, Gu Tianchen immediately didn't dare to be negligent.
Sitting cross-legged, guarding his mind, circulating the soul power within his body. He clearly felt that the heaven and earth origin energy pouring into his body was rotating like a vortex, as if forming a ring.
Meanwhile, outside.
Not long after the heaven and earth origin energy poured into Gu Tianchen's body, everyone saw a transparent halo spread out from his dantian, slowly rising and stopping three inches above his head.
The soul ring spun round and round, continuously gathering heaven and earth origin energy into it. The originally somewhat illusory transparent halo gradually became solid as time passed, until finally it was like crystal.
"The foundation of the soul ring has been completed."
When the surrounding heaven and earth origin energy no longer poured into the halo, Chen Junting knew the first step of self-condensing the soul ring was complete.
Next was to give the soul ring its true soul.
That was the soul skill.
"Hum—"
In an instant, a low humming sound rang out.
The patterns on the array instantly transformed. They seemed to come alive, like tadpoles swimming within.
When they completely stopped, different brilliance shone.
At this moment, everyone's gazes focused together, and even their spiritual power was unconsciously released, paying attention to the situation around that soul ring, not preparing to miss the slightest trace.
They also wanted to see how this array extracted and inscribed the patterns remembered by heaven and earth.
Whoosh—
Suddenly, the originally stopped transparent soul ring began to rotate again.
Almost everyone paying attention with spiritual power could clearly feel that Gu Tianchen's body was unconsciously emitting spiritual power, communicating with the outside world and acting upon the transparent soul ring.
At this moment, the soul ring gradually began to change.
The transparency gradually disappeared, beginning to turn white.
"This is..."
The observing crowd was suddenly startled, because they hadn't discovered at all how the soul ring changed. They only knew that when Gu Tianchen emitted spiritual power, it was the prelude to the soul ring's transformation. As for the invisible patterns Chen Junting spoke of... they hadn't seen any of them.
"Truly marvelous."
Ning Bowen clicked his tongue in wonder, turning to look at Chen Junting whose expression was calm without the slightest fluctuation, "Can these patterns be recorded somehow? To leave some foundation for the sect in the future."
"Of course."
Chen Junting nodded, "After Old Gu finishes absorbing the soul ring, we can just record the patterns on it."
As they conversed, the soul ring above Gu Tianchen had already transformed from white to black. In just a few more breaths, the black on the soul ring became even deeper. When it reached a certain depth, a hint of red light flickered in and out.
In an instant, it attracted everyone's gaze.
"Almost a hundred thousand years."
A sigh of emotion made Ning Bowen beside him suddenly think of something, so he asked, "Little Chen, for a hundred-thousand-year level self-condensed soul ring, is there one soul skill or two?"
Upon hearing this, Chen Junting immediately gave his answer.
"Except for self-inscribed patterns which can be controlled, the number of soul skills for the other three methods is fixed and unchangeable. Since it's a hundred-thousand-year soul ring, there will inevitably be two hundred-thousand-year soul skills."
At this moment, from Gu Tianchen's spiritual perspective.
When his eighth soul ring reached ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine years, on the verge of advancing to a hundred-thousand-year soul ring, heaven and earth once again transmitted the same feeling as when the first pattern was inscribed. In his consciousness, different light and shadows flashed by one by one.
Finally, it stopped on a jade-green figure whose martial soul was a large spider. This figure waved two enormous jade-green fore claws, and in the instant they closed together, slashed out a jade-green light blade. In the next second, this light and shadow quietly disappeared.
Transforming into another pattern that wound around.
And when this new pattern was inscribed onto the eighth soul ring that was black with hints of red, the soul ring suddenly emitted a blood-red light, and the pervasive blood-red instantly replaced the remaining residual black.
This also represented—the hundred-thousand-year eighth soul ring, complete!
After a while, Gu Tianchen opened his eyes.
Then immediately, he released his newly obtained eighth soul ring. The blood-red soul ring carried a powerful aura, but within it, there was no longer that fierce and brutal aura of a soul beast.
He looked at his self-condensed soul ring and couldn't help but reveal a satisfied smile. Then enduring his fatigue, he said to Chen Junting, "Old Chen, congratulations! Self-condensing soul rings has truly succeeded."
"Congratulations aren't just for me."
While a smile appeared at the corner of Chen Junting's mouth, Yang Zihan quickly took out a medicinal pill and stuffed it into Gu Tianchen's mouth.
In just a moment, he recovered.
Only then did everyone speak, asking how he felt.
Gu Tianchen naturally didn't hide anything, describing his feelings without reservation, providing reference for those who would come after.
After everyone was satisfied with their questions, they then asked Gu Tianchen what soul skills this eighth soul ring had provided him.
"Since my attack methods are rather lacking, I planned to use the eighth soul ring to make up for this. Therefore, both soul skills are offensive methods. One is Dragon King's Dimension, the other is Space-Tearing Abyss Slash. One crushes spiritual power below divine level within its attack range, the other crushes soul power. After locking onto a target, it can directly attack the enemy's body through space."
After everyone heard this, they nodded repeatedly.
Just as Gu Tianchen himself said, anyway, he wasn't lacking in defensive methods. These two soul skills could not only make up for his lack of offensive methods, but also contained space attributes.
It could be said that this eighth soul ring was satisfactory.
"Little Tian, it's your turn next." Chen Junting looked at Ning Tian, speaking softly, "Which method do you want to choose for self-condensing your soul ring?"
"The bloodline tracing method, is that possible?"
"You want to trace the soul skills of Ancestor Ning Rongrong from ten thousand years ago."
Chen Junting suddenly realized, pondered for a moment.
"...We can only try."
Although Ning Rongrong left no descendants, Ning Tian's lineage had always been the direct descendant of Ning Fengzhi. They should be able to barely connect to traces of Ning Rongrong through Ning Fengzhi's bloodline.
Thinking of this, he immediately began modifying the array patterns, then passed the ritual required for the bloodline tracing method to Ning Tian.
Next, she followed the same method.
As the transparent soul ring appeared, red light suddenly emanated around Ning Tian. Under the red light, countless figures appeared one by one. Without exception, all were Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul soul masters.
However, this was completely useless to Ning Tian.
Until...
"It's Ancestor Ning Rongrong!"
Amid the crowd's exclamations, a woman who appeared to be in her twenties stood alone. The pale yellow long dress she wore outlined her nearly perfect figure. Holding the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda in her hand, she displayed her grace and charm, showing her allure and nobility.
However, compared to the previous light and shadows, she was more illusory. Obviously, with Ning Rongrong not leaving any descendants, Ning Tian's bloodline tracing of Ning Rongrong was being carried out with great difficulty.
"It seems obtaining two soul skills will be somewhat difficult."
Chen Junting pondered for a moment, then outlined another array. And this was precisely the heaven and earth memory method that Gu Tianchen had used.
As time passed, when Ning Tian's soul ring completely reached the level of ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine years, Ning Rongrong's phantom completely dissipated. Seeing this scene, Chen Junting quickly acted to replace it, while using spiritual power to transmit the situation of the changed self-condensing soul ring method into Ning Tian's ear.
"Little Tian, cancel the ritual."
Ning Tian didn't hesitate, immediately changing her hand gesture, and her soul power circulation also returned to the normal route when absorbing a soul ring.
The moment she changed, the red light emanating from her entire body instantly converged, and the light and shadows behind her all dissipated.
After about ten minutes, an invisible pattern in heaven and earth wound toward the soul ring.
An hour later…
A blood-colored soul ring slowly rose.
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