As vitality gradually wanes and Soul Power grows increasingly majestic, the number of Spirit Rings constraining the martial soul increases, and the martial soul becomes progressively more stable.
Much like the biological evolution in nature, evolution is a benign mutation, and as biological genes gradually tend toward stability through evolution, the probability of sudden mutations decreases further.
That is to say, as a Spirit Master's rank increases and the martial soul becomes more stable, the difficulty of leveraging the martial soul to undergo evolution grows greater and greater.
Analyzed from this perspective, absorbing Spirit Rings beyond the age limit, especially when doing so during the early initial Spirit Rings, can indeed allow the progress of martial soul evolution to be greatly enhanced compared to normal age limits.
However, martial soul evolution is by no means a simple matter of "piling up quantity."
How does a Spirit Master absorbing a Spirit Ring enhance the inherent power of the martial soul, thereby causing the martial soul to undergo a "mutation"?
Let us first examine what changes a Spirit Ring brings to a Spirit Master: Spirit Skills, enhancements to physical fitness, Soul Power, and Spiritual Power, as well as the inherent power of the martial soul.
Among these, physical fitness, Soul Power, and Spiritual Power can also be collectively referred to as the enhancement of the three elements of essence, energy, and spirit.
Spirit Skills are set aside for the moment.
The essence of a martial soul is the world's gift and miracle brought about by the unity of essence, energy, and spirit.
Therefore, this aspect will passively promote the strengthening of the martial soul's power.
However, for the martial soul to mutate, this aspect is merely a supplementary bonus; to avoid excessive word count that strays from the core theme, it will also not be scrutinized in detail for now.
Excluding these two items, what remains is the direct, overt enhancement to the inherent power of the martial soul.
Among these, the first consideration is the absorption rate.
The level of the absorption rate depends primarily on the compatibility between the martial soul and the Spirit Beast.
For example, if a Blue Silver Grass martial soul absorbs a Soft Bone Rabbit Spirit Ring, this compatibility will by no means be very high, and then perhaps less than ten percent of the energy will directly promote the enhancement of the martial soul's essence.
This leads to the second step... which aspect of the Blue Silver Grass martial soul's essence did this portion of energy enhance? Probably only the aspect of "vitality."
Blue Silver Grass is a very simple martial soul, and its inherent martial soul attributes are roughly centered around items such as "plant growth and sowing," "(the martial soul's own) vitality," "(the martial soul's own) toughness," and "(primarily mutual perception between Blue Silver Grass)."
With the ultimate evolution of Blue Silver Grass, the "Blue Silver Emperor," as the cultivation direction, what is most important is obviously "plant growth and sowing" and "perception," followed by "vitality," and toughness comes last.
Yet absorbing a Soft Bone Rabbit Spirit Ring inherently possessed only a ten percent efficiency, and this ten percent of the energy clearly offered little enhancement to the two most important aspects.
If absorbing a Spirit Ring has the goal of allowing the martial soul to evolve, this was clearly a failed absorption.
By this point, there is enough here for everyone to see the three major keys of absorbing a Spirit Ring for martial soul evolution.
First, the stability of the martial soul.
The martial soul must not be overly stable and needs to possess a certain degree of plasticity.
Summarized, this means the fewer Spirit Rings the better, the lower the Soul Power the better, the fewer Spirit Bones, and the younger the age the better.
Second, the quantity of inherent energy.
The higher the Spirit Ring age limit, the more inherent energy there is.
The higher the compatibility of the Spirit Ring, the greater the enhancement rate of the martial soul's essence per unit of energy.
Third, the type of inherent energy.
Different martial souls have different evolution conditions.
The simpler the martial soul, the fewer types of inherent power it has; conversely, the more complex, the more it has.
Only by performing targeted enhancements on one or several types of inherent power can one reach the critical point of martial soul mutation.
And right now, in the process of absorbing this first Spirit Ring, Youshen felt as though he had truly returned to the period when he originally absorbed his first Spirit Ring.
He felt completely no restriction from his original four Spirit Rings, and his Soul Power was likewise restricted by the rules of heaven and earth to the bottleneck of rank 10...
The state of his martial soul seemed to return to that free and restless appearance of his youth twenty years ago...
As for this system-bestowed Spirit Ring, its compatibility goes without saying.
What this brought was precisely power sufficient to leverage the martial soul into mutation.
The only thing Youshen needed to consider was the third point: "the type of energy."
What Youshen was doing was indirectly anchoring the changes in the martial soul's inherent power brought by the Spirit Ring by first anchoring the Spirit Skill. Just as Blue Silver Grass has the guiding beacon of the Blue Silver Emperor.
The Stardust Wyrm likewise has the guiding beacon of the Stardust Dragon.
Compared to tool-type martial souls, the categories of inherent power in a Beast Martial Soul are obviously far more complex.
Not to mention clichés like strength, agility, and endurance.
Aside from these, there are miscellaneous things like body size, scale and skin composition.
These items are basically common elements possessed by all Beast Martial Souls.
Collectively known as "physical attributes."
Only then does one consider elemental attributes as numerous as the stars, such as "earth, fire, water, and wind."
Generally speaking, for "physical attributes," one basically only needs to see whether the Spirit Ring's "compatibility" is sufficient.
As long as the Spirit Ring compatibility is high, basically the martial soul will not grow askew.
To make the martial soul evolve, one still has to look at whether the growth of "elemental attribute" power is correct and sufficient.
The initial form of Youshen's martial soul was named the "Wind Hatchling," which locked him from the very beginning into a cultivation method leaning toward the direction of "Ultimate Wind."
Yet it was not until the "Wind Origin" had grown to roughly rival an advanced-grade spirit, causing the martial soul to evolve into a Stardust Wyrm, that he discovered the deviation in his path.
It is true that the Stardust Dragon is a dragon possessing wind-attribute power, but it is by no means a dragon possessing solely wind attributes.
Its final form is not lacking in light attributes, and the two juvenile form cards of the Stardust Hatchling and Stardust Wyrm are also light-attribute.
Looking again at the effects and signature skills of the Stardust Dragon—the "Shooting Star Sanctuary" with its nullification effect and destruction capability...
All of these plainly demonstrate that the Stardust Dragon is not some martial soul walking the Ultimate Wind route.
Stellar, wind, sacred—these three types of power lie dormant within its body.
This was the conclusion Youshen had summarized.
The first three Spirit Rings had already walked a sufficiently distant path in wind attributes.
Therefore, Youshen deliberately chose a Spirit Beast possessing stellar power for his fourth Spirit Ring.
Yet even so, the Stardust Wyrm had still far from touched the threshold of evolution.
In Youshen's original deductions, he would probably have to wait until he reached the seven-ring Spirit Saint stage for the martial soul to have a chance to further evolve.
By that time, it would likely be the ultimate limit of his entire life.
Yet the system had given him another chance.
What the future would hold, and whether there would ever be another chance to obtain a Spirit Ring from this system, was completely unknown.
Youshen cast caution to the wind, pouring all his hopes into this single Spirit Ring! The Spirit Skill he wished to construct was naturally—【Shooting Star Sanctuary】! The core ability of the Stardust Dragon written on the card face!
If he could completely engrave the signature ability described in the card text of the Stardust Dragon, his martial soul would definitely be able to complete its evolution! And carve out the path leading to the "Stardust Dragon"!
The color of the adaptive Spirit Ring rapidly began to shift.
White, quickly reaching yellow, immediately following turning orange-yellow, and becoming tinged with purple...
An hour passed, and this Spirit Ring had already turned a color as pitch-black as ink.
The fluctuations of Soul Power finally subsided.
A pair of dragon wings abruptly unfolded, and the blown-up gale swept away one piece of furniture after another in the room.
"Hah."
Exhaling lightly, Youshen opened his eyes, the corners of his mouth curving upward.
"First Spirit Skill—Shooting Star Sanctuary! It is done!"