Chapter 3. Second ring
At the moment when Elder Mu and I started experimenting with the hundred‑year whale glue and managed to pick a suitable way to heat this treasure, we realized that I had greatly underestimated whale glue.
Even after taking a hundred‑year portion, I felt hot energy wash through my body, which very quickly began to heat up; my cultivation at that moment helped only insofar as it allowed this energy to spread faster through my body. But it was obvious: if I had taken thousand‑year glue right away, my body would very likely either not have endured it at all, or survived only by a hair's breadth.
As a result, even though by that time I had only reached rank 15, my body in combination with my daily self‑torture was no weaker than that of rank‑21 masters. This was actually a huge leap, as each spirit ring strengthens the body, and the older the ring, the stronger the effect. And if my first ring hadn't come from such a rare beast as the dark‑golden Dreadclaw Bear but from an ordinary one, I would very likely have truly ruined my future.
After the first intake of hundred‑year glue, I had to revise both my training plan and my plans for taking whale glue. First, my opponents were now already Spirit Grandmasters, who simply weren't allowed to use their second ring in order to level the playing field, while I, so as not to accidentally chop off someone's limbs, still had to fight without using my rings, and so they once again started defeating me consistently. And during strength training, the additional weight was noticeably increased. At the same time, in order to prepare my body for taking thousand‑year whale glue, for several months I took the hundred‑year one once a week. The effect grew weaker each time, but by the time it completely stopped giving me any benefit, I was, purely physically, on par with rank‑25s.
I also managed to resolve the dilemma with my inability to understand how to change the nature of spirit energy in order to create micro‑explosions and many other, including dangerous, things. As it turned out, my problem wasn't in control. When Mu Ye saw that at my level I was able to compress spirit energy into a liquid droplet outside my body, he clearly barely restrained himself from cursing at length, and then explained the trick. It was all about the quality of spirit energy. For manipulations like igniting fire and the like, you need to reach at least rank 30, and the higher you go, the easier it becomes. High‑level spirit masters can even kill weaker spirit masters with nothing but their spirit pressure, simply crushing them.
"Young Lady, are you sure it's worth it? Even now, though your body can't compare to a 30th rank, you could still absorb a thousand‑year ring—albeit one of the weakest."
"Don't worry, Elder. Now, after all this preparation, I don't believe there'll be any problems," I declared decisively, standing in my underwear in front of a tub completely filled with ice.
Why so much ice? Because the life energy in whale glue really heats the body up strongly, and if things more or less worked out with the hundred‑year one, the thousand‑year was more complicated. Just like with spirit beasts, going from a hundred years to a thousand and then to ten thousand doesn't follow an additive principle but a multiplicative one once you cross a threshold. So there is many times more energy in thousand‑year glue.
"Very well, since you've already decided, I'll begin at once," the old man sighed. Then, using his spiritual power to keep in the air a solid cube of whale glue, he lit a flame beneath it.
What had until then been incredibly hard began to melt rapidly, but Elder Mu's will kept it from flowing apart. This continued until the entire cube turned into a viscous liquid, like honey, shining with golden light.
"Be careful, My Lady," the old man said in parting, and I, without thinking twice, immediately swallowed the liquid he held out and then jumped into the tub.
At first, my skin felt the cold from contact with the ice, and at the same time it was as if molten metal were poured down my throat. It was unbelievably painful, but it was already too late to retreat. As soon as the whale glue descended farther down my throat, it was as if an explosion went off inside me: uncontrolled life energy flooded my body, immediately starting to destroy my internal organs, while at the same time healing them again. My body turned an incredibly bright red from the heat, and the ice around me rapidly melted, raising steam. For the first couple of seconds I couldn't even think at all from the pain, but when I felt more ice cascading down on me from above, I still managed to pull myself together and, mobilizing my spirit energy, merged it with the raging energy of the whale glue and began to guide it along my meridians. Each cycle of this torment resembled the work of a mad blacksmith: the energy heated and almost shattered my spirit channels to pieces, and the incredible life force of the thousand‑year glue immediately fused them back together. With each such blow, the walls of my meridians lost their fragility. If before they resembled thin crystal tubes, now they were being forged into flexible, indestructible vessels capable of withstanding the onslaught of a true river of spirit power.
If not for this lifesaving external cold that was diverting a critical portion of the heat, my flesh would probably have burned away even before the glue's healing properties had a chance to take effect.
Once my meridians had expanded and strengthened enough, I allowed the rampaging energy to concentrate on the rest of my body. Life energy surged into my blood, bones, and internal organs. It felt as if millions of red‑hot needles had been pushed under my skin. My muscles spasmed involuntarily, tearing and immediately knitting back together again, becoming denser and more elastic. My bones hummed as their structure changed.
A hoarse groan escaped through my clenched teeth. I felt the deepest corners of my body squeezed free of hidden waste and impurities—which immediately evaporated under the high temperature. Unlike the hundred‑year whale glue, here my body was undergoing a fundamental reconstruction.
I don't know how many hours or minutes this torture lasted—time lost all meaning. But gradually, the wild rage of the thousand‑year whale glue began to calm. Explosions of energy gave way to a powerful but even pulsation. And the remaining energy headed in a rather unexpected direction—to the dense cloud of spirit energy that had so far been unable to take shape; it rapidly soaked into it, and then, when that energy finally ran out, I felt I needed only a light push—and I would be able to release my second spirit.
My body stopped radiating heat, and I was quietly sitting in a tub now filled with warm water.
I slowly opened my eyes and noted that my vision had become markedly sharper; I could make out every droplet of condensation on the wooden walls of the room. The elder stood nearby, soaked with steam, and in his eyes as he looked at me I could see relief and a slight reverence.
I moved my hand slightly and heard the quiet crackle of my renewed joints. My body had become much sturdier than I'd expected, and my meridians had expanded and strengthened so greatly that I was sure my cultivation speed would increase greatly from this point on. Still, first I needed to deal with another matter.
"Elder Mu, would you happen to have a spirit awakening set?"
"What?" My question clearly threw him off.
"I feel that there's something else inside me that needs a push to awaken," I explained calmly as I stepped out of the tub.
"That's impossible. Wait here, My Lady, I'll return at once!"
"Hey, don't rush! At least let me get dressed first," I hurried to stop him.
"Ahem. You are right, My Lady; this old man will wait for you outside."
As soon as Mu Ye left, I sighed, grabbed a towel, and began drying myself off, at the same time pondering how it had come to this, that in this world I had to engage in self‑torture. And what was worse—I knew perfectly well that for the sake of this feeling of having my strength multiply, I would, without a shadow of a doubt, go through the same pain again.
"This must be how people become masochists," I sighed as I put on dry clothes, before finally leaving the bathroom and seeing the agitated old man, who had already laid out on the floor the stones used for spirit awakening.
"Come now, My Lady, hurry," Mu Ye urged me, and to be honest, I was impatient myself. The second spirit had given me no rest since the day I underwent my awakening. The very thought that I hadn't been able to fully awaken my second spirit simply because I had sensed my meridians too late would have poisoned my mind with regret for the rest of my life.
I stepped into the circle, and the elder began the awakening ceremony. It felt almost the same as the first time, with a few differences: I seemed to hear the sound of glass shattering when what had once felt like a little cloud first formed a sphere and then that sphere cracked. A violet mist began to emanate from me, soon gathering above my head.
First, black metal, dark as obsidian, appeared. It braided itself into graceful, elegant branches that gently closed together to form a circlet, and at the point where the branches merged, a violet sapphire formed in a brief flash, its center looking like a cat's eye.
"It really worked…" the elder muttered, stunned, staring at the diadem resting on my head. Meanwhile, I more or less understood what my second spirit did. To put it simply, it was a mental‑type spirit which, without rings, currently gave only passive protection to my mind and, as befitted spirits of that type, enhanced my intellect—or, in the terminology of this world, expanded my spiritual sea.
"It seems, Elder Mu, that my chances of becoming a god just went up," I smirked.
Since this spirit had no name, the elder and I decided to call it the Eye of the Netherworld because of the resemblance of the central gem to a cat's eye.
From that day on, for a while I thought the rules of the game had completely changed for me. My body was no weaker than that of peak Spirit Elders (31–40), my cultivation speed, thanks to the widened channels, felt like it had doubled, and my reaction speed had increased so much that battles with two‑ring Spirit Masters became nothing more than a game. The elder, so as not to attract unnecessary attention from the imperial family, canceled sparring matches and focused on training, and just so that I wouldn't let my honed instincts dull, he would occasionally bring his disciple, who had reached the Spirit King stage (51–60), to spar with me (beat the spirit out of me). Thus, even before I turned seven, I reached rank 20—and that's when the problems began. I hadn't planned to obtain my second ring immediately upon reaching rank 20 anyway, but I hadn't realized how hard training would become once you stopped seeing progress from your efforts. And on top of that, once a month I began training spirit fusion.
Dai Mubai now had a different attendant, who pushed him to build a relationship with me, and although I tried to be at least polite towards him, which reassured those around us, there was absolutely no progress in spirit fusion techniques. And essentially, there couldn't be any. Even if he truly wanted to always be by my side and fell sincerely in love, the problem was on my side. For me, someone who had been a man in my previous life, the very idea of becoming someone's woman was revolting. I would rather remain a virgin my entire life than allow such a thing. At the same time, I felt a somewhat irrational resentment toward that boy, because due to my victory over him I couldn't get any help in obtaining my second ring. And I definitely wasn't planning to wait until I turned ten.
Perhaps because of this, to Dai Mubai the situation began to seem increasingly hopeless, and when there were only six months left until my eighth birthday, and he turned eleven, he ran away.
There was no great uproar about it, but everyone who needed to know did know—just as they knew that the emperor hadn't stopped paying him his monthly stipend, which in fact was a rather decent amount that allowed him to deny himself nothing. I received the same stipend. At times it all seemed unreal, but in this world there really were analogues of debit cards that could be used to pay for everything necessary. And I, as a duke's daughter, had a black card with a balance of more than a hundred thousand gold coins. I also kept a cash reserve in my storage ring—after all, in backwater towns and villages, you couldn't pay by card.
In general, it was clear that the emperor was quite satisfied with a scenario in which his younger son had fled in search of better conditions for his development. And considering that assassination attempts suddenly began to be made on me, it seemed they quite wanted to nudge me to follow after him, and didn't even hesitate to tell me exactly where the prince had fled. Though the alternative that these were real assassination attempts that had failed due to underestimating me couldn't be ruled out either.
However, I definitely couldn't run away without a second ring. And since no one could help me obtain it, I had few options left. On one hand, I could try to go alone to the Great Star Dou Forest, the largest and one of the most dangerous habitats of spirit beasts on the continent, to search by myself for a thousand‑year Soft‑Boned Rabbit, but that would be simply too dangerous without an escort. Besides, a Soft‑Boned Rabbit is also hard to catch due to its teleportation ability, and if its charm couldn't break through my mental defenses, fighting it alone would still be no easy task. On top of that, in a huge forest, finding the specific beast you need on your own without being attacked by others is easier said than done. So I had to accept a change in my ring plans.
When I turned eight, even though others weren't allowed to help me, as the prince's fiancée I still had the right to enter the royal preserve to obtain a ring. And though there were few of them, there were still thousand‑year beasts suitable for me which, while far from the true limit of what my body could absorb, weren't much worse than my original plan. And in addition, they were significantly less dangerous due to living in captivity with dulled instincts.
"My Lady, are you sure about this? Even if you waited until you were ten, upon obtaining a ring your level would instantly jump to 30 because of your accumulation, and going alone against a thousand‑year beast… you're taking an incredible risk," Elder Mu said anxiously, trying to dissuade me.
"Elder… no, Grandpa Mu," I corrected myself—after all, this old man had by this time become even closer to me than my blood father in this world. "I know that at first you helped me in the hope of a better future for the Star Luo Empire. And perhaps I won't become an empress in the future, but I swear that for the sake of everything you've done for me, I will make sure our empire prospers. And to do that, I first need to become stronger."
"And if something does happen to me, then here." I took a small notebook from my ring, in which I had written down all the theories I'd been able to confirm so far, as well as a still unconfirmed theory about spirit cores. In theory, this alone, if people were born with sensitivity to spirit energy at even half my level, should be enough for the empire to cultivate more Titled Douluo instead of relying almost entirely on the spirit fusion ability of the imperial family. "Even if nothing happens, I still ask you not to spread the information from there until after the continental‑wide tournament in six years."
"Young Lady, do you intend to participate at that time?" the old man asked as he accepted my notes, his hands beginning to tremble.
"That's right. The battle between me and my sister will happen sooner or later, and isn't a tournament the best place for that?"
"So that's how it is. You're leaving, then."
"That's right."
"Please, allow this old man to go with you and protect you," Mu Ye suddenly knelt.
I stepped forward and firmly caught his elbows, not letting his knees touch the floor.
"Grandpa, you mustn't," my voice remained steady and quiet, but it carried absolute firmness. "Stand up."
I smoothly but insistently forced him to straighten. My face stayed calm, but inside I felt the weight of knowing this man was ready to humiliate himself for my sake.
"What you're asking is impossible," I said frankly, looking him straight in the eyes. "If you go with me, the emperor may completely lose his mind, deciding that his order has been disobeyed."
Elder Mu looked at me with pain in his eyes. In them I saw a deep fear for my life—a fear I had never seen in my own father's gaze, and the face of my living mother I had almost forgotten.
"You're stepping onto a path where a single misstep will cost you your life, Zhuqing," he replied dully, calling me by my name for the first time and dropping all formality. "How can I just stand here and watch my granddaughter walk toward death?"
"Because you believe in me," I replied, and a smile involuntarily crept onto my face.
I released his arms and, stepping half a pace back, folded my hands in front of me. Then I bowed slowly, deeply, and respectfully—the way juniors bow only to the most revered elders of their family.
"In my clan, blood ties mean only the threat of a knife in the back from your own kin," I said without raising my head. "You gave me care and support I never knew in my own home. You became more of a family to me than my birth father and mother ever were. I will never forget this bond."
I straightened, looking warmly at the old man who had accompanied me since my spirit awakening and knew more of my secrets than anyone else.
"I only hope you'll be prepared for the fact that instead of an empress I may simply become this empire's guardian, because Dai Mubai offers far too little hope. And I don't want to spill my own blood."
The old man's gaze dropped to the notes in his hands. His fingers stopped trembling and gripped the cover tightly. He didn't need my tears or loud promises; he knew my character too well not to understand that my decision was final and my words sincere.
Taking a deep breath, Mu Ye nodded.
"This old man will prepare for your return, Zhuqing. I'll be waiting for you at the tournament. Don't disappoint me."
"I won't," I replied simply.
Turning around, I headed toward the entrance to the imperial preserve. We had said enough.
When I reached the entrance to the preserve, two guards stopped me.
"Access to this area is forbidden," one of the guards announced, and they immediately summoned their spirits. Both were Spirit Ancestors (41–50).
"I am the second daughter of Duke Zhu, Zhu Zhuqing, and I have the right to enter in order to obtain my second ring," I said, taking out my badge of rank: a pendant with the emblem of a Hell Civet.
"Then where is your escort?" The guard treated my regalia calmly.
"As the emperor ordered, I came alone for my second ring," I replied coldly.
"Good that you remember your place," the guard suddenly smirked. "Follow me, I'll take you to the area where the hundred‑year beasts live."
"No, I need a thousand‑year Hell Civet."
"Come again?"
"I said I need a thousand‑year beast."
"Crazy," the man swore. "If you want to die, that's your business. Come on."
He led me into the preserve until we were almost at its deepest point.
"I'm not going any farther; this is the thousand‑year beast zone. If you change your mind, just head back a bit, and sooner or later you'll find a hundred‑year beast."
"Thank you," I said, and then, summoning my spirit, I moved on, trying to blend into the shadows.
"She's clearly lost her mind over her fiancé's escape," the guard shook his head, watching an eight‑year‑old girl with only a single white ring walk to her certain death.
The Star Luo imperial preserve differed dramatically from the Great Star Dou Forest. There was no oppressive aura of constant struggle for survival here. The spirit beasts were strong but lacked the wild, primal fury and vigilance forged by years of daily battles.
An eight‑year‑old girl, whose hair had been styled to mimic cat ears, with a ribbon behind her imitating a tail, sat on the branch of a centuries‑old oak, fully merged with the shadow of the crown. Her heterochromatic eyes looked down with obvious coldness.
There, sprawled lazily on a huge flat boulder, rested a Hell Civet.
The size of a large leopard, her fur seemed to swallow light. Black mist coiled around her paws, and the long tail hanging off the stone was adorned with three distinct violet rings. Three thousand years. One thousand for each ring—a miracle in itself, that such an old beast existed in this preserve and, most importantly, that its age, though not reaching the absolute limit my body could absorb, was more than enough.
Looking at this beast, I wanted to shout: yet another deus ex machina. Thick, glossy fur. Not a single scar. It was obvious that, growing up in the hothouse conditions of the preserve, this beast had never fought strong opponents.
Easy prey.
I tensed, and in the next instant shot downward like a black arrow. Dozens of meters disappeared in a single moment.
My figure was lit by the white light of my first ring. My claws lengthened, taking on a sinister, dark, dull‑gold sheen.
I aimed straight at the base of the skull to end it quickly.
Unfortunately, this was still a thousand‑year cat‑type beast. The civet's instincts kicked in a split second before impact. The darkness around the beast exploded, and its body twisted unnaturally, literally flowing into its own shadow.
My strike didn't hit its intended target, but in that instant I managed to slash at the beast's hind leg, cutting it halfway through. Flesh and bone couldn't stop my claws. The beast emerged from the tree's shadow ten meters away from me.
The civet crouched on three legs. In her eyes, so similar to mine, confusion and panic from the unfamiliar, burning pain churned.
I provocatively climbed onto the boulder the beast had just fled from, and, arching slightly with seductive feline grace, crooked a finger at her, deliberately releasing my aura to show that my cultivation was much lower.
"Come on, kitty, attack."
The beast hissed. Three illusory clones flared up around it, and all four cats rushed at me from different sides. Despite the injured leg, their speed was incredible; an ordinary Spirit Grandmaster wouldn't even have had time to blink, much less a Spirit Master with a single white ring.
But I could see all its movements. And I didn't hurry to run. This moment reminded me so much of Zhu Min. That boy who, underestimating me twice, suffered instant defeat back when my combat experience was still very modest.
Instead of retreating, I waited for the beast's leap, ignoring the illusions that had no attacking power. Because of the wound, the jump was so clumsy it was almost pitiful. Then I lunged forward, raking my claws along the civet's belly.
A pained wail echoed around us, followed by the heavy thud of a massive body hitting the ground.
Covered in civet blood, I watched as the beast rapidly bled out, some of its innards already on the ground from mid‑flight.
"You still have a chance. Make a sacrifice, and you'll have hope not only to go on living but perhaps to surpass the others," I said coldly, looking into the eyes of the beast that refused to die and, it seemed, didn't understand what I wanted from it.
"Is a thousand‑year beast's intellect still too poorly developed?" I frowned. In the animal's eyes, I clearly saw the desire to survive at any cost. With such a will to live, it would be impossible to refuse a sacrifice.
Looking at this civet filled me with reluctance. This was such a good opportunity to get a spirit bone as well. But if the beast still didn't take that step, all that would be left was to finish it off. I came right up to the beast and pressed my claws to its throat. It immediately lifted its head, afraid of being cut, and its fear became almost palpable.
"Become my ring of your own free will, and I promise that in the future I'll give you a new life! No one will ever disturb you again!"
The obvious lack of understanding in the civet's eyes gnawed at my heart with a dull ache of unwillingness. But I couldn't drag it out any longer.
"I'm sorry," I whispered regretfully, and then, bringing my fingers together like a blade, I sharply thrust my hand straight for the animal's skull. Then the unthinkable happened. Time around us seemed to stop, and the civet's body flared from within with a deep, pulsing violet light.
My claws, which had almost touched its fur, met a soft yet absolutely impenetrable barrier. Condensed spirit energy burst outward, forcing me to take a step back. The world around us lost all sound.
The blood that only a second ago had soaked the ground and my clothes began slowly rising into the air as shimmering ruby droplets. The pain and primal fear in the beast's heterochromatic eyes disappeared. Backed into a corner by inescapable death, its self‑preservation instinct, combined with my words, pushed the beast to its only remaining choice.
The flesh of the thousand‑year beast began to disintegrate. Its physical body turned into the purest energy. The black mist that had once simply coiled at its paws now shot upward, enveloping the two of us in a dense, impenetrable cocoon, isolating us from the rest of the preserve.
Above the beast's disintegrating body, a spirit ring began to rapidly condense. It was violet, incredibly dense and saturated.
Three thousand years.
For a twentieth‑rank master who hadn't undergone my preparations, attempting to absorb such a ring would mean only one thing: first, their meridians would be torn to shreds, and then the energy would turn their body into a bloody mist. But this was a Sacrifice. A ritual in which the beast voluntarily suppressed all its fury, all its destructive power, perfectly adapting its energy to its future host's body.
The clump of energy gently descended and passed through me. Instead of unbearable, tearing pain, I felt only a soft, enveloping warmth. The civet's energy carefully expanded my channels, strengthened my flesh, and purified impurities from my blood. My martial spirit burst forth on its own—the Hell Civet behind my back purred in satisfaction, greedily absorbing the kindred energy.
But when the violet light of the ring finally stabilized around my body, it still wasn't over.
Where a moment earlier the civet's broken body had lain, a single object remained hanging in the air. A bluish‑black, almost transparent bone, faintly pulsing with dark gold. Its shape was truly unique—it resembled a pair of elegant cat ears.
An external spirit bone. A truly incredible treasure in this world, whose true value surpassed even ten‑thousand‑year bones, because external spirit bones grow along with their owner's cultivation.
The artifact shot toward me. The bone dissolved in the air as black smoke and sank into the crown of my head—exactly where my hair, under the influence of my spirit, imitated cat ears.
A searing, yet somehow harmless, heat struck my skull. The bones of my skull ached as they restructured, accepting the foreign power. I felt my connection to the world around me change dramatically: my hearing sharpened to a frightening degree. My perception grew many times over; I could hear every careless movement nearby. The physical fusion ended with real cat ears of a Hell Civet, covered in short black fur, now adorning my head.
Time started flowing normally again. The leaves on the trees rustled in a light breeze, and that sound now seemed like a detailed, three‑dimensional symphony of life. Not a drop of blood, not a wisp of fur remained on the ground.
I stood in the middle of the glade, feeling incredible lightness. Two rings slowly pulsed around my body, alternating. One dull white. And the second, shining violet—a thousand‑year ring.
"I'll keep my word," I murmured, while an indescribable cocktail of emotions raged inside me. "Your will to live wasn't in vain. From now on, we'll reach this world's summit together."
"Though what am I supposed to do about these ears now?" I reached up and ran my fingers along the thin fur, feeling a light tickle. Then I tried to sense the link inside me that fed these ears with spirit energy. When I found what I was looking for, in the next instant I felt almost blind. Yes, I seemed to see and hear no worse—and even better—than before the Sacrifice, but without these ears the difference was too great.
I closed my eyes and focused, to understand exactly what the bone gave me and at the same time the effects of my second ring. I only absently noted that my rank had jumped to 27.
The Hell Civet Ears, as it turned out, had a purely passive ability that worked when the ears were released. They allowed me to catch and filter all sounds as well as fluctuations of shadows and space within a radius of 100 meters.
As for the ring, it turned out to be another confirmation of the fact that theory without practice is dead. With a hundred‑year ring, others gained a 100% speed increase. I, contrary to expectations, received a somewhat stronger ability in its own way which, however, still wasn't what I had hoped for. My second ring allows me, like a Hell Civet, to travel between shadows, and my speed in the shadow space is many times higher.
"This isn't what I expected, of course, but I don't think I'll be needing the Soft‑Boned Rabbit ring anymore. Looks like I really will need guidance from Yu Xiaogang to choose the ring I want," I sighed heavily and started walking toward the exit of the preserve.
To be honest, before—like many others, and, frankly, even now to some extent—I regarded this great theorist‑master with a certain disdain. Many of his published theories weren't anything supernatural and were essentially just common sense, which everyone taught spirit masters anyway. But what was truly valuable about him, and I was always willing to acknowledge it, was his knowledge of spirit beasts. Even if he'd gotten this knowledge from Spirit Hall rather than acquiring it himself, what mattered was that he truly had it. And I was, perhaps, ready to learn. Because today I had already made a mistake that, while ending in incredible luck, could in future have resulted in a disaster in the form of a useless skill.
Since I planned to escape, I didn't leave the imperial preserve the usual way. Instead, near the exit I sank into the shadows and traveled through them until I was far enough away that the guards wouldn't notice. Only then did I allow myself to appear. Mu Ye still hadn't gone anywhere; judging by the look of it, he'd been waiting for me all this time. I decided to show myself.
Besides, although I had obtained the ring through a Sacrifice, the very fact that, relying solely on my first ring and the physical strength gained from whale glue, I had been able to defeat a thousand‑year beast already showed that my theory about obtaining spirit rings beyond the commonly accepted limit was viable—purely due to how strong the body and meridians became.
Mu Ye stood with his hands clasped behind his back, but from how white his knuckles were, it was clear that he had wound himself up with worry. But when he saw me emerge from the shadow, his anxious face lit with joy.
"Young Lady, did you truly succeed?" the old man asked, as if not believing his eyes, looking at the two rings shining around me—a white one and a violet one.
"Yes, my second ring is a little over three thousand years old," I said. "And although obtaining it was somewhat unusual, I'm sure our method can be replicated for others."
"You are undoubtedly right, Young Lady."
"All right, we already said our goodbyes once," I began, feeling slightly awkward about having to say farewell again, but I still needed to calm the old man. "I left the preserve in such a way that the guards will think I died, so for a while no one should find out where I went, and in about four years, maybe earlier, I'll head to the same academy Dai Mubai went to."
"This old man will tell no one of your plans; however, I still hope you'll continue practicing spirit fusion techniques with your fiancé."
To his words I only silently shook my head, not intending to promise anything on that subject. Then, after saying farewell one more time, I set off on a long journey. I had to cross half of the Star Luo Empire, slip across the border unnoticed, and from there—several more weeks of travel to the city I needed.