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Three months passed quickly, and Zi shu, Chou niu, and Yinhu all obtained their first soul rings, becoming true soul masters. Each received a soul skill most suited to their martial soul's characteristics and development direction.
*Zi shu: Endless Scent Tracking*
Although the current range of this soul skill is limited to about 100 meters, with future cultivation, it is expected to extend up to thousands of miles.
*Chou niu: Hold the Sky*
His left arm has become incredibly powerful, able to compete with strength-type Soul Masters.
*Yinhu: Control*
Her first soul ring came from a nearly 500-year-old Blue Ring Octopus, a sea soul beast. On the mainland, no soul beast's claws could match the flexibility of human fingers, so she had to seek out sea creatures with tentacles.
However, most of the ocean remains off-limits to human soul masters. Even Chrysanthemum Douluo dared not venture too deep. To save time, Yihu didn't insist on a near-thousand-year-old soul ring.
With this soul ring, her right hand became more dexterous and her control more precise. The Blue Ring Octopus's soul ring also enhanced her mental strength. After all, aside from its tentacles, an octopus's brain is its most notable feature.
She named her soul skill "Control," allowing precise manipulation of her fingers. After learning some tricks for externalizing soul power, she could even form five soul power threads. Having studied human anatomy with Xiao Wu for three months, she could potentially control a person by piercing the back of their head with these threads. However, with her current soul power at level eleven, she could only maintain control for about a second.
Aside from her insufficient soul power, her brain wasn't capable of processing the information transmitted through the soul power threads. A mere 500-year-old soul ring was not enough to help her control such complex human organs and tissues.
Tang San, however, believed Yinhu had the potential to become a true control-type soul master. While other control-type masters immobilize their enemies, Yinhu could potentially turn them into her puppets.
Tang San's greatest gain was enhancing the sections on the nose, arms, and hands in "Jade Bone Golden Skin Divine Treasure Technique 2.0."
After sending off the three, the remaining six—Mao Tu, Chen Long, Si She, Wu Ma, Wei Yang, and Xu Gou—arrived in two groups.
*Mao Tu*
A petite and cute female with ears as her martial soul. Tang San recommended she hunt Wind Listening Rabbits to gain the Wind Listening skill, which would enhance her hearing and mental acuity.
*Chen Long*
A tall and sturdy young man with his right leg as his martial soul. Legs are less flexible than hands and primarily support standing, walking, and running, with balance being crucial. For his soul ring, the primary consideration was balance, followed by speed, strength, defense, and reflex enhancement. His soul skill was named "Earth Stomp" by Tang San.
*Si She*
Standing over 1.7 meters tall with a muscular build, Si She is a female who, after awakening her martial soul—her tongue—was deemed to have a useless martial soul despite her innate level one soul power. In an era where combat ability defines a soul master's value, even a tongue martial soul with innate full soul power would be dismissed in small cities.
Si She refused to accept her fate and trained her body rigorously, resulting in an exaggeratedly muscular physique for a woman. At least, she could now challenge ordinary soul masters.
Given that the tongue is related to taste and can stir food, its combat applications are limited. After all, not everyone is like Tao Bai Bai.
To fully utilize the tongue's potential, one must naturally taste various types of food, including—
herbs.
Therefore, the serpent was recommended by Tang San to go to Xiao Wu's place to study herbs together, so that her talents could be best utilized.
Wu Ma, a mature and poised woman with a waist-based martial soul, was found by Tang San to be different from the separate right foot, right hand, and left arm of the Chen Dragon, Yin Tiger, and Chou Ox, including her internal digestive system.
This led to Wu Ma's exceptionally strong digestive capabilities. She even claimed that she could digest substances like soil and rocks, though it would take a longer time. During this process, if she did not consume other normal foods, she would starve to death.
She was also recommended by Tang San to go to Xiao Wu's place. With her waist-based martial soul, she could learn flexible techniques and, with her strong digestive ability, could aid in the research of medicinal effects—allowing drugs to show their effects more quickly.
Wei Yang, who has a physique similar to Wu Ma's, has a hair-based martial soul. However, contrary to Tang San's expectations, she can control each strand of her hair.
That is, she can manipulate her hair to move at will.
Especially when her martial soul is activated, she can control her hair with greater dexterity, as if her hair had transformed into countless arms.
While Xiao Wu needs to use techniques to swing her scorpion-tail braid, Wei Yang directly uses her hair as if it were her arms.
For this reason, Tang San plucked a strand of her hair and discovered that the root was not white but a blood color, with faint white and blood-colored roots inside the hair—so short and fine that they were invisible to the naked eye. Only someone with Tang San's exceptional vision could observe this, as the roots were growing into the hair.
These were nerve tissues!
Consequently, Tang San used his mental energy to conduct a thorough examination of Wei Yang's brain. He found that her brain had many more folds than an average person's and was surrounded by a layer of nerve tissue that extended through the skin into the hair.
Is her martial soul hair?
No!
There is also the layer of nerve tissue around the skull, which could potentially continue developing and lead to secondary and tertiary awakenings, possibly revealing its true form: the brain!
And indeed, it was proven that Wei Yang's brain was very well-developed, with a strong learning ability. Things that others needed to go over ten times to remember, she could remember after just one attempt, and after a few tries, she could master.
However, her current martial soul is hair, which needs to be strengthened in resilience and made finer and denser to accommodate more nerve fibers.
To put it bluntly, for Wei Yang, hair is no longer just an accessory but an extension of the brain's nerve tissues.
Lastly, the martial soul of Xu Gou is the mouth, which includes the cheeks, inner throat, and vocal cords. This makes it well-suited for practicing sound-based techniques. Thus, for the soul rings, Tang San suggested soul beasts that emit sound waves, such as soundwave bats, roaring lions, and dolphins or whales, which can attack and detect using sound waves.
With this, Tang San's preliminary planning for the Twelve Zodiac Steps was complete.
Over the past year, the Spirit Hall had also recruited nearly a hundred individuals with various martial souls from all over. Tang San conducted a comprehensive examination of their martial souls, including some that were small and unique.
It must be said, the variety of martial souls is truly astonishing; any part of the human body can manifest as a martial soul…
(End of Chapter)