Douluo: Brains Over Bloodline

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Xu Yuan's current Devouring Power had reached a state of perfection.

At first, he based his technique on the Five Elements, utilizing their interactions within the human body's organs to transform and derive a devouring attribute.

His first breakthrough came during an epiphany in the Sea God Pavilion, where he grasped the concept of "devouring" and integrated it into the Devouring Heaven and Earth Method. He then continuously refined and improved it.

During the battle against the Demon Plane's vanguard forces on the Sea God Island, with the help of the Golden Ancient Tree, he fully unleashed the devouring effect of the Life Metal embedded within him, merging it with the Devouring Heaven and Earth Method.

Even after losing the support of the Golden Ancient Tree, he continued to explore that state and eventually achieved perfect replication.

At this point, his abilities in devouring could be considered at their peak.

However, the Abyss was a special place, and Xu Yuan hadn't yet attempted to devour its energy. For now, he humbly assumed that he couldn't perfectly absorb the Abyss's power.

To ensure the success of all future plans, he needed to first investigate the Abyss.

If the Devouring Heaven and Earth Method was already sufficient to devour the Abyss's energy, he would focus on developing his digestion capabilities and building a bridge between himself and the Golden Ancient Tree to prepare for the future.

If it wasn't enough, he would continue to deepen his Devouring Power and study the Abyss's energy, striving to enhance his ability to a level capable of digesting the Abyss's energy.

In truth, Xu Yuan still had confidence in his current mastery of the Devouring Heaven and Earth Method.

This trip to the Blood God Legion was also intended to take advantage of the environment there to cultivate and quickly raise his soul power level.

While the Demon Plane could also provide him with energy to devour, the results were vastly different. The Demon Plane was purely an energy-based plane, and its creatures naturally transformed into energy upon death, making it convenient to devour with nearly 100% efficiency. On the other hand, Douluo Star was a material-based plane, where corpses remained after death, making devouring both troublesome and inefficient.

In fact, during his time in the Demon Plane, Xu Yuan rarely indulged in devouring demon corpses.

The only exception was during the opening of the Demon Gate, when the Golden Ancient Tree helped decompose the corpses, turning them directly into energy. Xu Yuan simply activated the Devouring Heaven and Earth Method to absorb it, allowing him to indulge in devouring.

"With my current abilities, devouring the energy of Abyss creatures should be enough to rapidly raise my soul power to Level 89. After that, forming my second soul core will allow me to break through to Level 90," Xu Yuan thought to himself.

The problem lay in entering the Blood God Legion.

The Blood God Legion was highly mysterious and exclusive—it wasn't something anyone could casually join.

If Xu Yuan wanted to enter, he'd need someone to arrange it for him.

Shrek Academy certainly had the qualifications to do so, but it would attract too much attention. Especially now, with Shrek under constant scrutiny, even if they disguised his identity, someone would likely uncover his true identity before he reached the Blood God Legion.

If anything went wrong in the process, it would waste precious time.

It would be better to let Xu Shengqun handle it.

Not to mention, the Spirit Pagoda's influence extended far and wide, making it much easier to resolve identity-related issues compared to Shrek.

Particularly, securing a researcher position focused on studying the devouring of Abyss energy would save Xu Yuan a lot of trouble, allowing him to quickly come into contact with Abyss creatures once he arrived at the Blood God Legion.

"Secure management rights over part of the Research Institute?" Xu Shengqun muttered to himself.

He stroked his chin, frowning as he calculated the likelihood of success.

"Just a portion is enough—as long as it can reasonably arrange the identity I need," Xu Yuan emphasized.

"That should be doable. I thought you were asking me to dig up files on your father in the Research Institute's system," Xu Shengqun said. "Still, it'll take some time—you might have to wait a few months."

"It's fine, no rush. I'll be training my spirit power at home for two months anyway, and I'll need to travel north afterward, which will take some additional time. Altogether, it'll probably be about half a year."

"Half a year?" Xu Shengqun nodded decisively. "No problem. Actually, three or four months should be enough to see results."

Currently, Xu Shengqun's conditions weren't bad at all.

Keep in mind, Xu Shengqun was relatively young. Having already broken through to the Limit Douluo level, he had no problem advancing further to near-godhood. Moreover, he had Xu Yuan under his wing—a potential future god-level craftsman—and a set of four-word battle armor was practically guaranteed.

Additionally, his position was crucial—he was a Spirit Envoy, representing the interests of the Spirit Envoys.

Though Spirit Envoys seemed to hold high positions, in reality, they could easily be replaced within the Spirit Pagoda. For example, if Qiangu Dongfeng's grandson wanted to gain experience, some unlucky Spirit Envoy would be demoted to a nominal position, retaining their title but losing most of their authority.

In the future, it would be difficult for them to influence the overall direction of the Spirit Pagoda.

Who wouldn't want real power?

Among the Spirit Envoys, having a Limit Douluo like Xu Shengqun form an alliance with three others would create a significant faction, securing Xu Shengqun's status while ensuring the others wouldn't lose their positions.

Moreover, the upper echelons' cooperative faction needed a new representative to counter the hegemonic faction backed by Qiangu Dongfeng.

With all these factors combined, Xu Shengqun wasn't aiming to seize the Tower Master position just yet, but he certainly had the capability to compete for it.

With this capability, gaining control over a portion of the power would be relatively easy.

The challenge lay in securing partial control over the Research Institute, which would require careful planning.

After finally voicing the thoughts that had weighed on his mind for so long, Xu Yuan felt a sense of relief.

In truth, he already had a tacit ally—Yun Ming.

However, neither side had engaged in any direct communication. They were both silently walking the same path, paving the way for their own futures without explicitly agreeing on anything.

"I'm opposing the Sea God."

For now, Xu Yuan had only explicitly told Xu Shengqun this, and he had gained Xu Shengqun's support.

With his pent-up emotions released, the bottleneck in his spiritual power also loosened slightly.

In the next two months, he planned to train in the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform.

If everything went smoothly, he would break through the mid-to-high threshold of the Spirit Abyss Realm and quickly approach 20,000 points of spiritual power.

"The only issue now is that the spiritual energy quality in the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform isn't sufficient, making it inefficient for enhancing ten-thousand-year soul rings."

The Spirit Ascension Platform had a flaw—it couldn't upgrade thousand-year soul spirits to ten-thousand-year ones. However, it could still affect soul spirits that were already at the ten-thousand-year level.

The problem was that the technology in the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform was limited. When its spiritual energy was absorbed by ten-thousand-year soul rings, the enhancement effect was poor—less than one-tenth of what it provided for lower-level soul rings.

To achieve proportional enhancement, he would need to go to the Advanced Spirit Ascension Platform.

But since Xu Yuan had returned to Tianhai City, he wasn't unprepared.

"Hopefully, my idea is correct."

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