Youshen completely ignored his crestfallen old classmate standing before him, rubbing his chin with a thoughtful look on his face.
He realized that his output was completely overkill for Jiang Liu.
If he hadn't pulled his punches just now, Jiang Liu probably would have been bedridden for half a month straight from that Starlight Avatar explosion.
At full power, the might would likely be no less than the maximum output of an ordinary Power Attack Spirit King.
That didn't mean Youshen's Soul Power had reached level 50, or that his Soul Power intensity was at the Spirit King level.
Before he acquired his fifth spirit ring, his Soul Power would always remain at the Spirit Ancestor level.
Below Title Douluo, the gap in Soul Power intensity among spirit masters of the same rank was not particularly large.
For instance, Jiang Liu was at level 43; his Soul Power intensity was indeed inferior to Youshen's, but it was hard to say if the gap even reached ten percent—it was more a difference in total Soul Power volume.
Youshen leaned toward Agile Attack spirit masters, while Jiang Liu leaned toward Defense-type spirit masters.
Such a slight gap in Soul Power was clearly insufficient to achieve a crushing defeat.
This was the cumulative result of Soul Power rank, Soul Power manipulation skill, spirit abilities, the application of spirit abilities, and the age of the spirit rings.
At the Spirit Ancestor stage, Youshen's hard strength could already rival spirit masters with the absolute peak of top-tier spirits.
Even when compared among Spirit Ancestors across the entire continent, he belonged to the top 1% bracket. He had already pulled far, far ahead of his former genius classmates.
"You bastard, I haven't seen you in a while, and you're getting more and more monstrous. How on earth do you cultivate... aren't you supposed to be a researcher?"
While Youshen was lost in thought, Jiang Liu finally recovered his breath, pulling himself up from the ground covered in dust, and looked at Youshen speechlessly.
Youshen said indifferently, "It's nothing. I'm just taking advantage of a temporary edge at this stage. Having an extra ten-thousand-year spirit ring at the Spirit Ancestor stage is indeed a bit like fish in a barrel when dealing with someone in their early forties. By the time we reach the Spirit Emperor or Spirit Saint stages, what's a ten-thousand-year spirit ring that's barely over ten thousand years old? It basically won't give much of an advantage anymore. Anyway, there's no way I could instantly kill you by then."
Unlike Ye Han, Youshen did not trust Jiang Liu deeply, and he had no intention of telling him about the second evolution of his martial soul, so he brushed it off with the excuse of the ten-thousand-year spirit ring.
Bibi Dong's grip over Spirit Hall was tightening by the day, and it was hard to guarantee whether these old classmates had become her informants.
"Is that so? No, no matter how you look at it, that's still a ten-thousand-year spirit ring! How come it sounds like complete trash when it comes out of your mouth... And what do you mean by saying it won't matter much once we're Spirit Emperors or Spirit Saints? Do you have any idea how few Spirit Saints we even have registered in Spirit Hall? Oh, forget it. Why am I even bothering to talk about this with a big shot like you?"
Jiang Liu grumbled, his tone tinged with a fair amount of dejection.
Youshen wasn't surprised.
No matter what, Jiang Liu had once been regarded as a genius by his peers in class, whereas the former Youshen had been seen by most classmates as nothing more than someone who lacked the talent to match his name.
And now, their respective strengths and statuses could be said to have completely reversed.
In a sense, Youshen wasn't actually lying.
In Youshen's martial soul grading system, the higher the score, the more enormous the gap between each numerical point became in the later stages.
This truly reflected the reality of the martial soul gaps between different grades in the real world.
At the Spirit Master and Great Spirit Master stages, lower-grade spirit masters often managed to reverse-kill higher-grade spirit masters by relying on spirit abilities, combat techniques, and attribute suppression.
Advanced-grade spirits could still strut around and show off their superiority in front of top-tier spirits.
Super Spirits, however, completely crushed slightly weaker top-tier spirits.
The gap in pure combat capability at the same rank wasn't even all that important.
The true disparity in martial soul grades lay in breaking through realms.
To break through to Spirit Saint, the quality of one's martial soul had to reach at least the advanced grade.
And to break through to Title Douluo, it was utterly impossible without a top-tier spirit.
These facts were plainly written in the records kept within Spirit Hall's libraries.
Advanced-grade spirit masters like Jiang Liu didn't even need to give much thought to spirit ring ages or the selection of spirit beasts; as long as they absorbed reasonably decent spirit rings and made sure their Soul Power rank didn't fall behind, advancing to Spirit Emperor posed no difficulty, and becoming a Spirit Saint was quite feasible as long as their resources kept pace.
For someone like Youshen, whose martial soul was initially of medium or even low quality, there were far too many things to consider.
Sometimes, even if cultivation resources kept up, they simply found themselves utterly stuck with no way to break through. The advantage of martial soul quality far outweighed the advantage of spirit ring age.
Youshen hadn't deceived Jiang Liu, but the problem was... his martial soul was already a Super Spirit.
"A big shot?"
Faced with Jiang Liu's teasing, Youshen wore a subtle smile. "I heard you're about to go to Soto City to be the vice hall master, right? Give it a few years until you become a Spirit King, and you'll probably be promoted to hall master and Purple-Cloth Deacon. You're the real big shot here. Me? Just a freeloader. How could I ever be considered a big shot?"
If a YellowCloth Deacon still belonged to the grassroots level, a bishop—even just a purple-robed one—already counted as someone holding real power.
"A Purple-Cloth Deacon?"
Jiang Liu shook his head, laughing self-deprecatingly. "With your true caliber, Youshen, your status wouldn't be out of place even if it rivaled a Cardinal. What can achievements like mine possibly amount to?"
"All right, we haven't seen each other in so long, stop bringing up such a downer of a topic. I've arranged with Ye Han for us to go to Spirit City for dinner tonight; that newly opened restaurant actually serves some really good food."
Youshen still possessed a shred of human warmth; he wasn't heartless enough to toss a human tool aside the moment he finished using him.
***
After the dinner gathering concluded, Youshen returned to his residence.
To call it a residence was an understatement; it was actually a luxury estate comparable to a small villa district.
Ever since he published *Why Whale Glue Should Not Be Used* at the age of fifteen, Youshen had never lacked money, achieving what could truly be called financial freedom among spirit masters.
In terms of wealth, he couldn't rival major clans, but he absolutely crushed Flender and compared favorably to a Title Douluo.
Youshen had not taken a wife. Aside from himself, the household consisted of over a dozen slaves bought from the market to handle chores and domestic cleaning, functioning effectively as maids and servants.
"Master, you have returned. The invitations you instructed me to send out have all been dispatched."
As Youshen walked up to the iron picket gate of the main entrance, a tall woman wearing a Western-style maid outfit, standing half a head taller than Youshen himself, had been waiting there for quite some time.
Not to mention her exquisite appearance and graceful figure—after all, she was meticulously handpicked and groomed by Youshen to serve as his head maid and housekeeper—the most striking feature about her was her fox ears and white hair. She was a proper white-fox beast-eared maiden, naturally exuding a special kind of charm.
Recalling Ning Fengzhi's general reaction when he bought the cat girl, this maid had also suffered a severe mutation during her martial soul awakening, leaving her unable to become a spirit master while permanently retaining the beastly traits of her Spirit Avatar Integration.
"Grace, you've done well."
Youshen nodded slightly, offering a calm word of praise.
"I wouldn't dare. This is merely this humble servant's duty."
Even though Youshen's expression remained completely unchanged as he offered his praise, Grace flushed slightly, bowing her head with profound humility as if she had just received an overwhelming amount of favor.
The reverence deeply hidden in her eyes made it seem as though the entity standing before her was the majestic Divine Being in her heart.
For no other reason than this: after purchasing Grace, Youshen had expended a bit of effort to resolve her inability to cultivate.
Today's Grace was already a level-33 Spirit Grandmaster.
Such capability was naturally akin to a Divine Being for Grace, who had originally been born a slave.
In reality, however, the method Youshen used to resolve Grace's problem was not something that could be widely popularized; it was a non-universal method that consumed excessive resources.
The sheer volume of resources spent was enough to cultivate a Spirit Ancestor or even a Spirit King, making it a completely unprofitable venture from a resource standpoint.
Yet this was merely simple numerical calculation; reality could not be equated in such a manner.
Because if Youshen were to invest in a spirit master from scratch all the way to a Spirit King, at best he would harvest that spirit master's gratitude, with no guarantee of true loyalty.
It was entirely different when it came to Grace. For Grace, who worshipped him like a Divine Being, the concept of betrayal simply did not exist.
In secret, Youshen had already cultivated no less than a hundred similar loyal operatives.
Because they were all beings transformed through beast martial soul mutations, they were collectively known as—Spirit Dou Beasts.