One Year in the Blink of an Eye

Chapter 87 A Year in the Blink of an Eye (4)

You Chen has basically determined that at this stage, continuing to improve his physical attributes will not increase the optimal age of his spirit rings.

Let alone the Soul Emperor level physical strength of the Yuxing character card, it is probably only the Soul King level physical strength that has reached the upper limit of this formula.

In You Chen's speculation, the formula for the limit of the second soul ring is: Spiritual power starting from the Spirit Abyss Realm + Soul King's physical strength + ? Soul power level ≈ the lower limit of the seventh soul ring age limit of the old era Soul Emperor.

That is... a lifespan of about 30,000 years.

A bucket made of three wooden planks is enough to roughly show the upper limit of the water it can hold.

So the problem ultimately comes back to the shortest plank.

With a soul power level of 20, You Chen's current maximum for the second ring is about 20,000 years, which is the best sixth ring age limit in the old era.

You Chen's thoughts naturally shifted to how to break through this level.

Rather, it's more accurate to say that he developed it after using "Inspiration" twice, and named it "Borrowing Soul Power".

Naturally, this was not something You Chen had imagined out of thin air.

But in a world where people are rigid in their thinking, where all Soul Masters follow the rules and never think that their level can exceed the bottleneck level when absorbing Soul Rings, and where there has never been such a need before, where did the reference materials come from?

The answer is—why not just refer to things from other worlds?

In the original work, there is something that is well known to break the conventional understanding of Soul Masters—the "Mysterious Heaven Skill" that allows one to cultivate Soul Power before the awakening of Martial Soul.

To obtain the "Mysterious Heaven Skill" from Tang San would be tantamount to snatching food from a tiger's mouth.

Fortunately, what You Chen needed was not the cultivation method of the Xuan Tian Gong, but only the ability of the Xuan Tian Gong to break the rules of the world to a certain extent.

You Chen was clearly the one who had the most direct contact with the "Mysterious Heaven Skill".

That phrase "making progress together" is no empty talk.

He repeatedly guided and sparred with Tang San like an elder brother, or injected his own soul power into Tang San's body during battle, or forcibly injected soul power into Tang San when he was knocked unconscious under the pretext of nurturing soul power, in order to explore the circulation route and logic of the Xuan Tian Gong.

Without knowing the original full picture of the "Mysterious Heaven Technique," it is extremely difficult to truly gain insights from it in this way, even for a research genius like You Chen.

Fortunately, You Chen possesses a cheat code called "A Flash of Inspiration".

Sufficient time and sample size, extraordinary thinking and innovation, and finally, a "flash of inspiration".

Although the Mysterious Heaven Skill still cannot break through the level restrictions imposed by the Soul Ring, it is already an innovation that transcends its time in this Douluo world.

Through this, You Chen finally completed the initial creation of "Borrowing Soul Power".

The so-called "borrowing of soul power" relies on the fact that "after reaching the bottleneck of the soul ring, one can still continue to accumulate soul power."

Under normal circumstances, even if a Soul Master continues to accumulate Soul Power, the level of Soul Power cannot be directly increased; it will only increase all at once after obtaining the next Soul Ring.

Before this, even the Soul Masters themselves didn't know what level of Soul Power they had accumulated.

The method of borrowing soul power relies on this soul power that cannot be used or observed.

By absorbing a spirit ring, in a state where the bottleneck of spirit power level is partially lifted, the hidden spirit power level is borrowed, thereby "deceiving the rules of the world" and allowing the spirit master to complete the process of absorbing a spirit ring with a higher spirit power level.

In reality, You Chen had instructed some of the beast soldiers not to hunt for soul rings directly after reaching their soul power bottleneck, but to wait for half a year before using the soul power borrowing method to achieve a higher soul ring age.

The feasibility of this method has been preliminarily proven.

However, considering that higher-level Soul Masters accumulate Soul Power more efficiently, whether or not to delay the golden time of cultivation to increase the age of Soul Rings is a matter of pros and cons.

Accumulating one or two more levels won't significantly increase the lifespan, but if you accumulate 10 levels, you can easily reach a thousand years for the first stage, but you'll waste too much cultivation time.

But You Chen... happens to not have this problem.

Therefore, this secret technique can be said to be perfectly suited for Soul Masters like him, or Soul Masters with twin Martial Souls.

The first item in You Chen's research can be summarized as the research on the age of soul rings.

The second item is the development and research of the "Starlight Avatar" soul skill.

After a year, having used up one "Flash of Inspiration", You Chen had basically solved the problem of the duration of "Self-Transformation: Starlight Avatar".

First, there was the fundamental issue of soul power consumption and usage efficiency. After Youchen's optimization, the duration of the effect has increased from several hours to over 18 hours. Energy efficiency has almost tripled.

Following this, by allowing the Starlight Avatar to also use its innate ability of "Starlight Charging," it can absorb starlight energy at night to replenish the energy lost during the day...

Now, as long as there isn't a night of continuous dark clouds, the Starlight Incarnation can basically exist indefinitely.

Even with the help of the innate ability of a martial soul, a permanent avatar... Soul masters in the Douluo Continent would probably feel a shock akin to a dimensional reduction attack if they knew about it.

But You Chen was still not satisfied.

His primary goal in researching this ability was to achieve dual-track operation: while his avatar remained in Nottingham, his true self would travel thousands of miles away to carry out missions on the first mission line.

The existence of a second questline made You Chen less anxious, but that didn't mean he wouldn't plan ahead.

Over the past year, the first questline has only completed one task, which naturally displeases You Chen.

However, the biggest problem with sustainable star avatars so far is the "distance limitation" mentioned earlier.

Even though You Chen's mental power is already so strong, it is still unrealistic to cover thousands of miles, which means that the Starlight Avatar cannot receive the mental power of his main body's signal tower.

Has You Chen's consciousness been removed from the house?

The structure of the starlight incarnation will soon return to its original form and will naturally dissipate within a few hours.

Fortunately, You Chen wasn't entirely without a solution. By further developing the "Distraction Soul Refining Technique," You Chen had come up with a method similar to a communication base station: directly placing one's mind into the avatar to solve the problem of remote control.

Initial progress has been made...

But before trying this new starlight avatar to cover his mission, there is one thing he can do first.

The most talented member of the "Soul Beast" faction, which You Chen personally created, the little guy with the "top-quality martial soul" mentioned earlier, has been stuck at level 40 for a full year.

In this new era where whale glue has been developed for special uses, starting from the fourth ring, Soul Masters can absorb Soul Rings that are over ten thousand years old.

The strongest Soul Beast at present is this little guy with a top-level martial soul that has reached level 40, so You Chen will naturally have to take action this time.

At the same time, this is also a good opportunity to verify whether "borrowing soul power" is still effective for ten-thousand-year-old soul rings.

As for the third and final research project, stay tuned for the next installment.

(There are quite a few settings, abilities, research projects, and mission rewards combined; please let me know if I've missed anything.)

(End of this chapter)