Chapter 65: Harvesting the Fifth Ring

After Zhou Huan and the other person practiced for two days inside the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, Zhou Huan completely stabilized his soul power after the breakthrough.

Once Zhou Huan had stabilized his soul power, he woke Dugu Bo up; Zhou Huan intended to obtain his fifth Soul Ring now.

Afterwards, he would spend some time completing the condensation of his Soul Core, along with his newly devised plan—the Extreme Power of the Five Elements attribute.

As long as he completed these two plans, Zhou Heng would be able to possess the Extreme Five Elements attribute.

By then, he would not even be afraid if a Seven-Ring Soul Saint were to attack him.

After Dugu Bo was woken up by Zhou Heng and learned that Zhou Heng needed to obtain his fifth Soul Ring, he did not care about the discomfort of having his cultivation interrupted; he took Zhou Heng, drove the carriage, and spent six days arriving at the Star Dou Great Forest.

After arriving at the Star Dou Great Forest, Dugu Bo took Zhou Heng all the way into the depths of the Mixed Zone, where ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts could be seen from time to time, and Spirit Beasts over fifty thousand years old were not exactly rare either.

After Zhou Heng and Dugu Bo arrived here, they began to carefully scout the surrounding Spirit Beasts.

Before coming, Zhou Heng had already selected the Spirit Beast he needed; it was a type of Spirit Beast known as the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant.

Earth-Splitting Gold Ants under ten thousand years of age are only the size of a palm and usually appear in groups, but after reaching ten thousand years of cultivation, the size of an Earth-Splitting Gold Ant increases explosively to over one meter, and they appear alone, becoming solitary Spirit Beasts.

From then on, for every ten thousand years of cultivation, their size increases by one meter.

The main reason Zhou Heng chose the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant is that once an Earth-Splitting Gold Ant reaches fifty thousand years, its ability to control the Earth Element is improved to a massive degree, and it becomes capable of changing the landscape of an entire region, worthy of being called a monster-like existence.

To both Spirit Beasts and humans, an Earth-Splitting Gold Ant over ten thousand years old is a scourge; it constantly destroys the surrounding environment and does not repair the destroyed environment, which is truly detestable.

And what Zhou Heng needs is the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's ability to control Earth Element soul power; once he subdues the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant.

With his Five Elements attributes complete, and after tempering his five internal organs to perfection, he will be able to condense a Soul Core and completely solve the problem of his insufficient soul power.

Currently, all four of his Soul Rings are ten-thousand-year Soul Rings, and the consumption of soul power is not just a little high; he must condense a Soul Core to be able to bear the consumption of four ten-thousand-year Soul Rings.

Furthermore, he will not just have ten-thousand-year Soul Rings in the future; even hundred-thousand-year Soul Rings are possible.

Zhou Heng was taken by Dugu Bo and began searching in the depths of the Mixed Zone of the Star Dou Great Forest.

Spirit Beasts like the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant are still quite rare after ten thousand years, so the two of them still needed to search extensively.

The two of them searched in the Mixed Zone for a full eight days before they found an Earth-Splitting Gold Ant with over ten thousand years of cultivation, which made Dugu Bo and Zhou Heng overjoyed.

The two of them had stayed in the Mixed Zone for eight days, and these eight days had caused them both to suffer quite a bit.

At night, ten-thousand-year Spirit Beasts often charged at their camp, making it impossible for them to sleep well; moreover, there were Spirit Beast mosquitoes that came to suck their blood, making them incredibly irritable.

Now that they had finally found a Spirit Beast that met their expected goal, how could Zhou Heng and Dugu Bo not be overjoyed?

Following the tracks they discovered, the two pursued the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant all the way, and finally, at the boundary between the Mixed Zone and the Core Zone, the two found their target for this time: it was a sixty-four-thousand-year-old Earth-Splitting Gold Ant.

When Dugu Bo saw this Earth-Splitting Gold Ant, this Earth-Splitting Gold Ant also saw the two of them.

This Earth-Splitting Gold Ant was about six meters long and two meters tall; its body was completely covered in an earth-yellow carapace, and the carapace shimmered with a metallic luster, with many black-iron colored patterns, looking indestructible.

The Earth-Splitting Gold Ant let out a wild roar and charged toward Dugu Bo; as it charged, its body carried an earth-yellow glow, and the ground for several thousand meters around began to fluctuate continuously.

One after another, earth spikes appeared, coming to kill Dugu Bo and his companion.

Dugu Bo waved his hand to push Zhou Heng several hundred meters away, letting Zhou Heng leave the core of the battlefield to prevent Zhou Heng from being caught in the crossfire of his battle with the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant.

After Zhou Heng left the core area of the battle, he manipulated the Water Element to gather into a ball of water.

Zhou Heng stood on the water ball, manipulating it to fly into the sky, lifting Zhou Heng up to fly in the air together.

Zhou Heng watched the battle between Dugu Bo and the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant from several hundred meters away.

Dugu Bo used his soul power to lift his own body, and countless toxins were manipulated by Dugu Bo, diffusing toward the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant.

The Earth-Splitting Gold Ant sensed the danger of the poison, and the black-iron colored patterns lit up; as the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant opened and closed its pair of large mandibles, earth-yellow soul power gathered, and a torrent of soul power was spat out from its mandibles toward Dugu Bo.

At the same time, the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant charged toward Dugu Bo while spitting the torrent of soul power.

The speed of this soul power torrent was extremely fast, and Dugu Bo had no time to dodge; he released his fifth soul skill, Snake Python Heavenly Steel Shield, and an ink-green barrier appeared, with patterns like pythons swimming on the surface of the barrier, easily blocking this earth-yellow torrent of soul power.

Just as Dugu Bo was resisting the torrent of soul power, it arrived in front of him and swung its two front limbs, smashing down heavily toward Dugu Bo.

Dugu Bo injected soul power into his fifth Soul Ring again, and the ink-green barrier in front of him thickened rapidly; the two front limbs were blocked by the Snake Python Heavenly Steel Shield.

Dugu Bo moved his body, detached from the Snake Python Heavenly Steel Shield, and arrived on the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's body; his soul power turned into a fist, and he smashed down fiercely.

Although the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's carapace was thick, it could not block Dugu Bo's attack at all; its carapace was shattered by Dugu Bo's punch, exposing the flesh beneath the carapace.

Dugu Bo seized the opportunity to condense venom and dripped it into this flesh.

The Earth-Splitting Gold Ant let out a painful cry and twisted its body, trying to shake Dugu Bo off.

Between these moves and techniques, infinite power was unleashed.

Everything within a radius of several dozen meters—plants, stones, soil, and so on—was smashed to pieces.

Subsequently, whether it was the earth-attribute attack launched by the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant or the poison-attribute attack launched by Dugu Bo, both of their attacks were crushed and ground to powder by the other's soul power, after which they were absorbed by the world and turned into Heaven and Earth Origin Qi.

The more the two fought, the higher the ground beneath their feet became, with a faint tendency to become a small hill.

A pale golden light flickered in Zhou Heng's eyes as he looked at the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant; in Zhou Heng's eyes, the flow of soul power within the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's body was seen clearly.

Although he did not gain the ability to see through the essence of things when he first consumed the Wangchuan Qiushui Dew.

However, by continuously understanding the power of the Wangchuan Qiushui Dew, Zhou Heng had learned this ability to see through the essence of things.

Under the feet of the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant, within the earth, earth-attribute energy was continuously absorbed by the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant, and subsequently, it was converted into earth-attribute soul power within the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's body.

Then, it was used by the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant to deal with Dugu Bo.

However, this sixty-four-thousand-year-old Earth-Splitting Gold Ant was not a particularly difficult existence for Dugu Bo to deal with.

Dugu Bo had now mastered five or six tenths of the Jade Phosphorus Snake Poison, and with his level 94 soul power as a foundation, unless it was a fierce beast that had survived a two-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation, it would absolutely not be Dugu Bo's match.

Although this Earth-Splitting Gold Ant was not weaker than an average hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast, for Dugu Bo, it was just a matter of spending a little time.

Sure enough, after fighting for a period of time, the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant's movements became slower and slower, and it could no longer keep up with the speed of Dugu Bo's attacks and dodges.

Under Dugu Bo's flexible attack style, it was about to be defeated.

Seeing this situation, Zhou Heng drove the water ball beneath his feet and moved a little closer to Dugu Bo's direction.

Ten minutes later, the Earth-Splitting Gold Ant completely exhausted the soul power in its body; even after the energy in the ground entered its body, it had no extra soul power to convert it, so it could only let it slowly leave its body and return to the world.

Seeing this, Zhou Heng hurried to Dugu Bo's side; Dugu Bo patted some dust off his body and said to Zhou Heng, "Hurry up and subdue it, I will protect you, but you must be quick."

"I'm afraid those high-age Spirit Beasts in the Core Zone are about to rush out."

Zhou Heng also knew the stakes involved; his Battle Instrument martial soul flashed in his hand, and as the Battle Instrument martial soul flickered with light, a new form began to take shape within the radiance, signaling that the Battle Instrument martial soul was on the verge of evolving.

With a wave of his hand, Zhou Heng used a golden ribbon of light to draw the Earth-Splitting Golden Ant into his Battle Instrument martial soul.

Zhou Heng immediately sat cross-legged and entered his spiritual world.

Looking at the Earth-Splitting Golden Ant within his spiritual world, Zhou Heng made up his mind to finish the battle quickly.

Consequently, the spiritual forms of his four Spirit Beasts—the Profound Thunder Purple Bamboo, Dream Water Fish, Evergreen Jade Lotus, and Fire Scale Molten Beast—appeared behind him, bestowing their strength upon Zhou Heng.

This caused Zhou Heng's spiritual power to directly suppress the spiritual power of the Earth-Splitting Golden Ant, and the Battle Instrument martial soul successfully subdued the Earth-Splitting Golden Ant.

A black Soul Ring appeared on the outermost layer, and Zhou Heng successfully broke through to level fifty; with the aid of the Earth-Splitting Golden Ant's energy, he took the opportunity to break through to level fifty-three.