Chapter 7: The First Purple Ring
The forest ambience did not welcome them.
It simply stood there, vast and dim beneath the late afternoon sky, its outer trees leaning close enough together to turn the path ahead into a mouth of shadow. Damp earth, old bark, crushed leaves, and the faint musk of unseen beasts drifted on the air. Somewhere deeper inside, something gave a low, rasping cry and then fell silent.
Renyu stood beside She Long and looked into the dark.
This was his first time this close to a true soul beast hunting ground.
The palace had always seemed dangerous in a human way—silk over knives, smiles over schemes, poison folded into etiquette. The forest was different. Simpler. It had no need to pretend it wanted to kill the weak and only the strong will thrive.
She Long tied the horses where the tree line thinned and checked the surrounding ground once with a glance.
"We will go on foot from here," he said.
Renyu nodded.
The old Title Douluo looked down at him once, measuring his breathing, posture, the steadiness of his eyes.
"No heroics act, make sure to keep your wit on you. Sharpen your sense. Your sight, your hearing and your smell. No one knows what hidden danger will appear." he said.
"Yes."
Renyu almost asked whether he meant from himself or from other soul masters. But She Long was already moving, and the answer was probably both.
So Renyu followed.
The first stretch of forest was deceptively ordinary. Moss-covered roots. Low ferns. Broken shafts of light. Birdcalls from branches high above. Yet once Renyu began paying attention the way Qian Renxue had trained him to, the signs multiplied. Claw marks on bark. Droppings half-hidden beneath leaves. A snapped sapling that had not broken in the direction of the wind. Tracks near a muddy patch where no deer or boar should have passed.
The deeper they went, the quieter it became.
Not just silence.
It more like a suppression.
As though every lesser creature had learned to hold its breath when stronger being prowled nearby.
She Long never hurried. He moved at the speed of absolute confidence, neither sneaking nor stomping, a pace that said he feared nothing the outer region could offer. He spoke only when necessary.
"Do not waste attention looking everywhere," he said at one point. "Pick a patterns. The ground. The lower trunks. The airflow. Watch them and hear them."
Renyu adjusted his focus.
Ground. Trunks. Air.
Almost immediately, the forest became easier to read.
He found tracks once—wide, clawed, fresh enough that the damp soil had not yet rebounded. She Long only glanced at them and shook his head.
"Too young," he said. "Eight hundred at most."
Not enough, then.
They passed a torn carcass not long after, half-eaten and dragged into brush. Renyu kept his face still. She Long did not even pause.
"This is a predator territory," the Douluo said. "Good."
"Good?"
"We want something strong enough to survive a thousand years. Those don't grow in safe ground. Most of the spirit beast that has territory can be said to be quite strong."
That was informative.
Twilight thickened under the branches. Renyu had just begun to wonder whether they would camp and continue at dawn when She Long abruptly stopped and raised one hand.
Renyu froze at once.
Ahead, through the black lattice of tree trunks, came a slow scraping sound.
Not just the sound of feet.
It include the weight of that fall.
Something heavy was dragging or grinding against wood.
Then another sound followed it—wet, rhythmic, rough as sand over stone.
Breathing.
She Long voice dropped to almost nothing. "Stay behind me."
He stepped forward without releasing any visible aura. Yet the air around him changed all the same. Renyu felt it with his skin before he properly understood it, the quiet pressure of a Title Douluo no longer bothering to hide every edge.
The thing ahead became visible in pieces.
A massive body, low and thick through the shoulders. Dark scales matted with old mud. A ridged back like layered stone. Its head was broad, wedge-shaped, and ugly in the way true killing animals often were—efficient rather than impressive. Two yellow eyes shone through the dim undergrowth, and every breath hissed faintly through half-bared fangs.
Renyu pulse jumped.
It was larger than any tiger he had ever seen in either life.
She Long watched it for a moment and said, "Ironscale Ridge Panther. Around eleven hundred years, perhaps a little more." Then he look felt the surrounding. "No strong beast near here except for this one"
The beast gaze had already fixed on them.
Renyu did not move.
The panther forepaw shifted once. Slow. Testing. Its muscles bunched under the scales with unsettling smoothness.
"She Long," Renyu whispered before he could stop himself.
The old Douluo did not look back. "This panther will be perfect if what Young Master said to be true."
That was all.
The panther lunged.
It crossed the gap with terrifying speed, the heavy body moving far faster than its size should have allowed. One moment it was coiled in brush, the next it was a blur of scale and fangs and killing weight.
She Long raised one hand.
A spear appeared in it as though the space itself had hardened into metal.
Snake Lance.
No flourish. No drawn-out declaration. Just manifestation and motion in one breath.
The first clash sounded like steel striking armor plate.
The panther twisted mid-leap, claws screeching against the lance shaft instead of reaching Renyu. She Long did not retreat a single step. The spear flicked once—almost lazily—and a line of dark blood opened along the beast shoulder.
This is the different between a Title Douluo and a beast of only a thousand years old.
The panther hit the ground, spun, and came again.
This time Renyu saw more clearly.
It was fast. Violently fast. Not only in straight-line bursts, but in the way its entire body seemed to built for sudden directional change. Scales armored the shoulders and spine, but the belly moved more flexibly. Dense forelimbs. Strong neck. A predator meant to crash through resistance instead of avoiding it.
A good beast ring for a direct combat and maybe an extend combat.
The thought came automatically.
Even knowing ring type no longer mattered, part of him still measured beasts by what they represented.
She Long spear thrust again.
The forest did not seem to understand what had happened. One instant the lance was held near his side, then next it had struck three times. The first drove the panther back. The second shattered scales along its left flank. The third pinned one forepaw to the earth before the beast ripped free in a frenzy of pain and flying dirt.
Renyu felt the pressure of released soul power then—brief, concentrated, like standing too close to a cliff edge in a storm.
He did not see spirit rings around She Long.
He did not need to.
The difference in level was grotesque.
The panther knew it too.
Its next roar shook leaves loose from the branches, and dark gray light rippled over its scales, thickening them. The ground beneath its paws cracked as it launched again, this time not at the Douluo center, but around him—angling for the smaller target behind.
Renyu body moved before fear grip his body, a reaction instill into his body during training.
He summoned the red crystal.
Crimson light flashed into his palm.
The world seemed to sharpen for half a heartbeat—not enough to make him faster than the beast, but enough to make its movement easier to read. There a difference to the body between a person that summon martial soul and not summon. By summoning it, his body stat increase a little.
The panther shoulders dipped. Right side leading. Weight committed.
Then a spear of light passed between them. Not metaphorical light.
Actual pale-gold force from She Long thrust, compressed so tightly it screamed through the air.
It hit the panther broadside and hurled the beast into a tree thick enough that three men could not have circled it with joined arms. The trunk exploded in bark and splinters. The panther crashed down, rolled once, and still tried to rise but fail.
She Long was already there.
The lance tip stopped at the beast throat.
"Now," he said without looking back. "If you want it, come here."
Renyu breath was uneven, but his mind had snapped clear.
He ran forward.
The panther still lived, barely. Blood darkened its scales. One hind leg dragged uselessly. Yet the eyes remained full of violence, locked on him with the raw hatred of a beast that knew it had been brought down but had not surrendered.
'Fierce', Renyu thought.
If he could not face that gaze now, he had no business reaching for a thousand-year first ring.
He stopped a few steps away.
She Long voice was flat. "Make sure to make the final strike. Cleanly."
Renyu drew the short dagger Qian Renxue had insisted he carry even if he rarely used it outside training.
For one absurd instant he was aware of everything at once, the smell of blood, the heat of the beast breath, the red crystal still hovering above his hand, the old Title Douluo beside him, and the simple fact that this was the dividing line between theory and reality.
Then he drove the blade in where She Long indicated.
The panther convulsed once.
Twice.
Stillness.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a deep purple halo rose slowly from the corpse.
Renyu heart slammed against his ribs.
Purple.
His first ring.
His impossible first ring.
Even having prepared for it, even having argued for it, even having spent years shaping his body toward this exact gamble, the sight still felt unreal.
She Long withdrew his lance and finally looked at him directly.
"Sit."
Renyu obeyed at once, crossing his legs before the corpse while the ring hovered above it like condensed dusk.
"Last chance," She Long said. "Once you begin, I will not stop it unless I judge you will fail."
Renyu nodded.
He summoned the breathing pattern Qian Renxue had drilled into him, the same one he had practiced until it could steady him faster than words. In. Hold. Release. Guide the soul power. Maintain the core.
Then he reached for the ring.
The instant it touched him, pain exploded through his body.
Not sharp pain.
The weight of the pressure it press to his body.
A crushing, ancient weight that slammed into his meridians, bones, muscles, and soul all at once, as if the thousand years force inside that ring objected violently to being forced into something as small and young as him.
Renyu nearly coughed blood on the first breath.
He held it back through sheer spite.
The purple ring dragged downward. His soul power rose to meet it. The red crystal burst out before him on its own, shining like a fresh wound in the dark.
The pressure doubled.
Somewhere beyond it, he dimly heard She Long say something, but the words were swallowed by the roar in his blood.
Hold.
His body trembled.
The whale glue had strengthened him. The training had hardened him. But none of that made this easy. It only made it possible.
The thousand-year force tried to break him anyway.
Renyu gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. Sweat ran cold down his spine. His meridians felt flayed raw. Yet beneath all of it, the crystal remained—red, fixed, ruthless in its own way—drawing the invading power inward and forcing it down predetermined paths.
Not random.
Not chaotic.
It guided.
That realization gave him just enough clarity to endure the next wave.
He must refine this spirit ring.
Time lost meaning after that.
There was only pressure and will.
Only the sense of the purple force grinding through him while the red crystal drank it, shaped it, and forced it toward one of the sealed spaces he had sensed earlier.
A lock.
A key.
Something inside the crystal trembled— and then it opened.
Renyu eyes snapped open.
The forest scenery rushed back in fragments, night gathering under branches, the corpse already cooling, She Long standing nearby with spear in hand and gaze unreadable.
The purple ring now circled behind him.
Slowly.
Steadily.
His first spirit ring had been fused into his body, into his martial spirit.
Purple.
Across from him, the red crystal hovered once more above his palm, and from somewhere deep inside it came the faintest impression of something newly awakened.
Not a full answer.
Not yet.
But enough to tell him that the gamble had succeeded.
She Long looked at the ring once, then at the six-year-old child sitting beneath it, and for the first time since entering the forest, the old Title Douluo expression showed something very close to genuine surprise.
Renyu let out one long, shaking breath.
He had done it.