Chapter 144: Defects and Perfection

Furthermore, unlike the incompleteness imagined before, the essence of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is not incomplete, but rather extremely complete, and possesses a stability vastly different from other martial souls—it could even be said to be stable to a fault.

Within Ning Fengzhi's Soul Rings, Zhou Heng can sense various powerful laws contained within.

However, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda itself is unable to unleash these laws, and can only carry the most basic and powerful portions of them within the pagoda body, forming purely augmentation-type soul skills.

Simply put, if a Spirit Master with a standard pagoda-type martial soul were to absorb the Soul Ring of a Super Spirit Beast like the Tai Tan Giant Ape, the pagoda body would inevitably be transformed by the Tai Tan Giant Ape's Soul Ring, gaining some characteristics similar to the Tai Tan Giant Ape.

Those leaning toward the Power Attack System might gain the Tai Tan Giant Ape's power-attack abilities; those leaning toward defense might gain the defensive and earth-attribute soul skills displayed by the Tai Tan Giant Ape itself; and those leaning toward control would gain the Tai Tan Giant Ape's ability to control gravity.

But the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is different; this martial soul is too stable.

Even the Tai Tan Giant Ape's Soul Ring cannot transform the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda; it can only follow the existing structure of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda to form soul skills.

The Tai Tan Giant Ape is most proficient in strength, followed by defense, so a martial soul like the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda will naturally generate soul skills based on these two attributes.

The highest priority is augmenting strength; if there is already a strength-augmenting soul skill, then it will settle for the next best thing and gain the ability to augment defense.

If both strength and defense are present, then the next in line are attack power and resistance to status effects.

But no matter how the priority goes, even if the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda were to derive speed augmentation or mental power augmentation from a strength-type Spirit Beast like the Tai Tan Giant Ape, it would never gain the Tai Tan Giant Ape's own attack or defensive abilities.

To the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, the Tai Tan Giant Ape's Soul Ring is not fundamentally different from an ordinary Soul Ring.

It only makes the consumption of the soul skill slightly smaller.

If it were to absorb the Soul Ring of a rule-type Spirit Beast, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda would only gain corresponding augmentations based on the best basic attributes displayed by that Spirit Beast, and would not gain even a tiny bit of any rule-type skill.

Ordinary martial souls are changed by Soul Rings, undergoing small-scale growth that is either benign or malignant.

But the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda does not, because it is too stable—stable to the point that not only can the Soul Ring not change it, but the Soul Ring is even forcibly changed by it.

The idea of attaching strength-type Soul Rings to reinforce the pagoda body to play the role of a Pagoda-holding Heavenly King is simply impossible to succeed in this world.

Because the Soul Ring will not perform any transformation on the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda.

If it were possible to follow such a path, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect would have done so long ago.

The fact is that even if seven 90,000-year strength-type Soul Rings were attached, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda would not become any sturdier.

As for Ten Thousand Year Soul Rings, Zhou Heng has seen them too, so he dares not speak too definitively.

Zhou Heng opens his eyes, his expression carrying a hint of shock and a hint of helplessness.

He had originally wanted to see if he could transform the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda without an Immortal Herb, but only after seeing the real thing did he realize he was still lacking a bit of the necessary skill.

"Your sect's Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul is truly worthy of being the world's number one Support System martial soul. It is truly powerful and stable."

The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is sturdy and stable, and only has seven slots.

Its own uniqueness determines its powerful support capabilities, but its own uniqueness also limits the martial soul's upper limit.

It is like a special system that is already complete in itself, but lacks higher-level development; it belongs to a version that has not kept up with updates.

This matter makes Zhou Heng somewhat unable to understand; in his perception, the upper limit of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda seems to be fixed.

It is completely unlike something that should exist in the Douluo Continent.

The upper limit for carrying laws in the Douluo Continent is level 99; as long as a martial soul has no defects in its essence, then theoretically all martial souls can be cultivated to level 99.

In Zhou Heng's view, the appearance of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is excessively special.

So special that it does not even look like a martial soul formed within the Douluo Continent itself, but rather like something that was assimilated into a martial soul by the Douluo Continent for various reasons.

Zhou Heng knows that in the Douluo Universe, the Douluo Continent can already be considered a very rare high-energy planet.

The upper limits of some planets and planes are actually not even as high as the Douluo World.

It is very possible that in other worlds, level 79 is already the world's upper limit.

Although this is somewhat like "when in doubt, blame quantum mechanics," the problem is that such a thing could actually happen in the Douluo Continent.

After all, a major characteristic of the Douluo Continent is: I don't have it, but I can make it compatible.

The first Douluo work was compatible with internal energy and hidden weapons, which was barely passable.

The second Douluo work was compatible with magic; Electrolux created a Soul Spirit system and a Necromancer Saint martial soul that cannot have Soul Rings attached, and one can barely say that since Electrolux is at least a god-level powerhouse, breaking a few rules is normal.

And the third Douluo work was compatible with demons and the Abyss World, appearing with Fallen Angels and Demon Martial Souls.

The fourth Douluo work simply, damn it, could even be compatible with outer planets, and even assimilated the half-elf bloodline of a mixed-blood into an Elf Martial Soul.

For another example, there are the God Trials of various otherworldly deities; it seems that any god can casually pull people from the Douluo World to fill a position.

This proves that in the Douluo World, the intrusion of otherworldly outsiders and the assimilation of outsiders is not a very fresh thing.

This forces Zhou Heng to suspect: could the original source of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda also be an otherworldly existence that flowed into the Douluo World due to an accident?

Perhaps it was a person whose life-bound weapon was a Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, and their descendants had the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul assimilated out of them?

Or perhaps a Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda simply smashed down from another world, and then the fragments of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda transformed the very first Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda Spirit Masters?

After all, how to put it—the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, the "Seven Treasures" and the "Glazed Tile Pagoda" are separate.

But the concept of "Seven Treasures" is a Buddhist concept; the Douluo Continent does not have the concept of "Seven Treasures" at all, and the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is not something like a Trident; in fact, it could just be called a Glazed Tile Pagoda. The person who first named it the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda probably didn't just pick such a name simply.

Anyway, the problems with the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda are much greater than Chen Ming imagined; it is no longer a matter of the so-called martial soul having defects.

It can even be said that if the martial soul only had defects, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect would have long ago found a way to complete the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have reached the Douluo Continent timeline of the fourth work, tens of thousands of years after the original, where everyone has flown off the planet and can artificially manufacture Ten Thousand Year Soul Spirits, yet the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is still awkwardly stuck at level 79.

In a sense, the problem of having no defects is much bigger than having defects.

If a program has a bug, it can be fixed, but some programs run strangely precisely because of a series of big and small bugs.

A problem where you cannot find the problem is much greater than a problem where you can find the problem.