Douluo: Brains Over Bloodline

Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform

Xu Yuan stood beside the corpse of a nine-thousand-year-old Phantom Panther, observing the purple glow emanating from its body.

His essence, energy, and spirit had already taken control of the surrounding space, while his Dreamscape merged with the platform's domain, perfectly freezing everything in place.

With a mere thought, the spiritual energy that should have dissipated 90% within a second after the soul beast's death—and then infused into the soul master's body—was completely restrained. Instead of fading, it remained suspended in midair.

"Thankfully, with my abilities, I can forcibly retain all the spiritual energy. This way, even though the quality of the spiritual energy here is inefficient for enhancing ten-thousand-year soul rings, I can compensate for it. The only downside is that I'll need Uncle's cooperation."

The Spirit Ascension Platform couldn't upgrade thousand-year soul spirits to ten-thousand-year ones due to technological limitations. This seemed to involve an essential condition unique to ten-thousand-year soul rings that current technology couldn't artificially supplement.

However, the fundamental principle behind enhancing soul ring years remained the same. The Spirit Ascension Platform could still increase the duration of ten-thousand-year soul rings.

But at this level, the quality of spiritual energy began to matter.

Currently, only the Advanced Spirit Ascension Platform at the Spirit Pagoda headquarters could maintain a normal 10:1 conversion ratio, meaning that killing a ten-thousand-year soul beast could add a total of one thousand years to a soul ring.

In the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform, there were also ten-thousand-year soul beasts. Killing them could achieve the same effect, but each platform typically had only one or two such beasts, acting as guardians. After they were killed, the incident had to be reported to headquarters, and the efficiency of recreating them was extremely low, making timely replenishment difficult.

As for killing thousand-year soul beasts, the spiritual energy obtained could add about a hundred years to a soul ring. However, the quality of this spiritual energy was too low to effectively enhance ten-thousand-year soul rings, resulting in over 90% of it being wasted. Ultimately, it would only add about ten years to the soul ring.

This meant that the entire process suffered a 99% loss.

This was an enormous waste.

The "quality" of spiritual energy didn't refer to its concentration but rather the proportion of its fusion with the forces of heaven and earth. In other words, 90% of it was completely lost—a true waste that wasn't due to systemic issues but rather a fundamental inefficiency.

Though 90% might seem small, it was nine times the actual gain!

Now, by relying on his own method to fully absorb the spiritual energy without any dissipation, Xu Yuan could theoretically gain around 900 years from killing a nine-thousand-year-old Phantom Panther.

However, he ended up wasting 8,100 years of spiritual energy entirely.

This wasn't reclaimed by the Spirit Ascension Platform—it simply failed to fulfill its intended purpose.

Although the efficiency of killing soul beasts remained consistent, in terms of the results Xu Yuan needed, there was no real change. To increase the duration of sixteen soul rings from ten thousand to twenty thousand years each, he would need at least 200,000 to 300,000 years of enhancement.

And this required the Spirit Ascension Platform to consume 2 to 3 million years of spiritual energy!

This was the total amount of spiritual energy drained from the platform, with only 200,000 to 300,000 years actually reaching Xu Yuan.

Two to three million years of spiritual energy was far beyond what Xu Shengqun could afford.

So, although Xu Yuan could absorb all this spiritual energy and convert it at a low efficiency, he held back.

What he needed to do now was transform these low-quality spiritual energies into high-quality ones within the Spirit Ascension Platform, thereby achieving higher efficiency.

"In fact, the additional component of ten-thousand-year soul rings should be related to willpower, and I happen to have a deep understanding of willpower."

At this moment, Xu Yuan switched to his Heavenly Origin Brush martial soul and looked at his fifth soul ring, smiling.

His essence, energy, and spirit permeated the surrounding space, merging into the purple glow. The ambient elemental energy of heaven and earth quickly converged, following Xu Yuan's essence and fusing into the glow. Soon, the purple light turned black.

"It works!"

Xu Yuan's face lit up with joy.

This meant that his Spirit Ascension process would become much easier.

Not only could he replicate the effects of the Advanced Spirit Ascension Platform within the Intermediate one, but he could also simplify and refine this technique into a technological breakthrough to hand over to his uncle as leverage in his bid for the position of Tower Master.

Yes, Gu Yue might already have results.

But according to Xu Yuan's knowledge, Gu Yue's method involved creating an entirely new Beast Platform. Only by entering the Beast Platform could one absorb the dispersed energy of soul beasts to enhance and ascend ten-thousand-year soul rings.

However, Xu Yuan's technique was different. His method could be integrated into the existing Advanced Spirit Ascension Platform technology.

Optimizing the existing Spirit Ascension Platform was undoubtedly more cost-effective than building an entirely new Beast Platform.

Moreover, Gu Yue's Beast Platform had potential risks.

Of course, Xu Yuan wasn't entirely certain about ascending ten-thousand-year soul spirits yet.

But he was already fairly confident.

Willpower—that was the key to ten-thousand-year soul rings.

The reason ordinary spiritual energy was so inefficient at converting into ten-thousand-year soul ring durations was because the wasted portion was used to nurture the willpower of the ten-thousand-year soul ring, ensuring that the soul spirit's willpower grew proportionally with its duration.

What Xu Yuan did was replace this process with the forces of heaven and earth and his own essence, energy, and spirit, avoiding the loss of spiritual energy.

"In fact, this spiritual energy is the most crucial part. I wonder where it came from," Xu Yuan muttered.

Even his 'Seal' character rune, which was constantly nurtured by the forces of heaven and earth, had a limited daily maximum efficiency for enhancing soul ring durations. Yet this spiritual energy could enhance durations as long as there was enough energy—practically a game-breaking bug.

"Once Uncle secures the position of Tower Master, I must investigate this thoroughly. This spiritual energy is definitely connected to the divine realm."

That much was obvious.

After devouring the black glow before him, Xu Yuan felt the changes in his soul rings and smiled with satisfaction.

"Five soul rings, each gaining nearly two thousand years."

In truth, Xu Yuan couldn't sense the exact duration of normal soul rings, nor could he provide precise data on their enhancements. But he had abnormal soul rings.

The soul ring formed from the 'Seal' character rune served as a benchmark, providing him with relatively accurate data on soul ring duration changes.

At this moment, Xu Yuan's advantage in the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform became apparent.

Without any loss of spiritual energy or interference from the platform's mechanisms, he could kill soul beasts of any age and directly enhance his soul rings by that many years!

The only loophole was that the spiritual energy he completely absorbed using the Seven Forbidden Techniques bypassed the platform's system, meaning the system wouldn't detect the soul beast's death.

If the system didn't detect its death, it wouldn't replenish it.

Over time, Xu Yuan would truly exterminate all the soul beasts in the Intermediate Spirit Ascension Platform.

But this posed no problem for Xu Yuan.

With Xu Shengqun backing him, Xu Yuan could simply have his uncle blindly increase the total number of soul beasts in the platform.

The system didn't detect it?

No problem—just intervene manually.

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