Chapter 647: Soul Barrier (Second update,)

Soul Barrier: A top-tier special secret technique that uses a special method to condense a soul barrier to protect one's own soul; unless the soul barrier is shattered, the soul will not suffer any damage. Note: The strength of the soul barrier depends on the Monster Tamer's realm.

Li Zhangsheng did not expect that this would be another top-tier special secret technique, and one used for protecting the soul at that.

This secret technique might seem of little use, but at a critical moment, it could save your life. Back when Li Zhangsheng faced Di Zhiyi's Possession, if he had possessed the Soul Barrier secret technique at the time, the difficulty would likely have dropped by more than a grade; after all, just breaking through the soul barrier would have cost Di Zhiyi a significant amount of time and energy.

Furthermore, before the soul barrier is shattered, Li Zhangsheng's soul can bite Di Zhiyi's soul at will—what a massive advantage that is.

Simply put, if he had a soul barrier, combined with the Original Light and the Heart-Clearing and Spirit-Calming Bell, even if facing a Possession attempt by an Emperor Rank in their prime, Li Zhangsheng would be confident in finishing the opponent off.

As both are top-tier secret techniques, the Soul Barrier secret technique involves the mysteries of the soul, and its complexity is naturally far above that of the Heavenly Vision Secret Technique, which is also a top-tier secret technique.

It was for this reason that Li Zhangsheng did not immediately condense the Soul Barrier secret technique imprint, but instead closed his eyes to study it slowly, not letting any detail slip by.

More than an hour later, Li Zhangsheng finally opened his eyes, preparing to condense the Soul Barrier secret technique imprint.

Crackle, pop—

Half an hour later, a sound like popping beans echoed in the room, and the hundreds of runes revolving around Li Zhangsheng all shattered and vanished.

This was already Li Zhangsheng's ninth attempt, yet he had failed to succeed.

The complexity of the Soul Barrier secret technique was indeed far above other top-tier secret techniques.

As both are top-tier secret techniques concerning the soul, the Soul Grafting Secret Technique is actually much simpler by comparison.

Whew—

Li Zhangsheng let out a light breath and closed his eyes again, simultaneously recovering his Mental Power and striving to recall the process just now to identify where he fell short.

The Soul Barrier secret technique is composed of over seven hundred runes in total, and some of the seal techniques are quite complex; even though Li Zhangsheng has become a Pseudo-King, he still felt the difficulty.

Of these nine failures, most were because he did not condense all the runes within the allotted time, while the rest were due to mistakes in his hand seal techniques, causing all his previous efforts to be wasted.

Not long after, Li Zhangsheng opened his eyes again, put away the Superior Soul Crystal in his hand, and began to condense the Soul Barrier secret technique imprint once more.

Nine consecutive failures had accumulated quite a bit of experience for him, which made his hand speed increasingly skillful; like a butterfly flitting through flowers, he pinched out one complex hand seal after another.

Li Zhangsheng's hand speed reached the extreme, with wisps of Mental Power lingering around his ten fingertips, manifesting mysterious and unfathomable runes that revolved continuously around him.

Unlike the previous nine times, this time Li Zhangsheng smoothly completed the entire process, and the seven hundred-plus runes floated and sank around him according to a certain rule.

"Condense!"

Under Li Zhangsheng's control, these runes began to combine rapidly in a specific order.

Within the span of a few breaths, a tangible Soul Barrier secret technique imprint finally took shape.

Li Zhangsheng finally let out a sigh of relief. Under the control of his Mental Power, the secret technique imprint turned into a streak of light, instantly rushing into his Yintang acupoint and vanishing.

Hum, hum—

The moment the secret technique imprint entered his Consciousness Sea, a humming sound echoed in the void, setting off a profound and invisible ripple; this feeling was much more intense than before.

Clearly, even among top-tier secret techniques, there are distinctions of superiority and inferiority.

Deep within the Consciousness Sea, the Soul Barrier secret technique imprint landed in a place even deeper than the Heavenly Vision Secret Technique before it finally came to a stop.

After recovering his Mental Power, Li Zhangsheng immediately activated the Soul Barrier secret technique imprint.

In an instant, an invisible ripple appeared, followed by a rapid decline in Li Zhangsheng's Mental Power.

Not until it had dropped by one-third did this Mental Power combine in an extremely complex way, turning into an invisible barrier that surrounded Li Zhangsheng's soul.

In this way, Li Zhangsheng had all-around protection for both his body and soul; he was practically a hexagonal Warrior.

Once activated, it will be maintained continuously unless the soul barrier is broken.

Taking advantage of the fact that it was not yet dawn, Li Zhangsheng began to communicate with the Seven Killings star in the sky, falling into a state of cultivation.

Time flies like an arrow; three months passed in the blink of an eye, and there were only three days left until the National Tournament.

During these three-plus months, even though the Yuanling Academy was on winter break, Li Zhangsheng spent most of his time in seclusion.

However, this did not mean he did not go home; the Teleportation Array was right there, and he would occasionally take the time to return to the clan.

During this period, the clan's strength was growing steadily; gratifyingly, with Li Zhangsheng's help, Li Haoqiong officially advanced to the Sixth Rank not long ago.

It is believed that before long, the Li Clan will be able to become a Famous Clan, and once that day comes, the help provided to Li Zhangsheng will also be greatly strengthened.

The strength of Li Xinming, Li Wenbo, and He Yan was also rising steadily, though they were still a considerable distance from the Sixth Rank.

Besides this, although no clan members advanced to the Fifth Rank during this time, the number of people in the Second and Third Rank echelons almost doubled, and two more Fourth Rank Clan Elders were added; the clan's strength was rising rapidly.

Now, with Li Haoqiong becoming a Sixth-Rank Expert, the clan's influence is expanding wildly, and some local powers have begun to voluntarily attach themselves to the Li Clan and "pay tribute" in order to obtain the Li Clan's protection.

In the Number One Courtyard, Li Zhangsheng let out a sigh of relief. He opened the Jade Gourd in his hand and poured all the Three Lights Divine Water he had just fused into it.

Not long ago, Li Zhangsheng received another batch of materials from First Prince Dou Yuande's list, which included a bottle of Starlight Divine Water, which finally allowed him to refine the second batch of Three Lights Divine Water.

This time, Li Zhangsheng fused a total of ten drops of Three Lights Divine Water, which, added to the four drops remaining from before, totaled 14 drops.

As long as he collects the Kui Water Essence, Li Zhangsheng can upgrade the Sixth-Rank Star Palace Lotus Platform to the Seventh Rank; he believes his cultivation speed will be able to increase significantly once more.

During this period, First Prince Dou Yuande, Ning Bizhen, the Li Clan, and the Starry Sky Auction House all collected some necessary materials for him, such as the remaining ingredients for refining the Longevity Pill, Star Fruit, Star Essence, and so on.

Among them, the materials for refining the Longevity Pill were already complete. After everything was ready, Kailan started the furnace to refine the pills a few days ago. Because the Longevity Pill is quite difficult to refine, Kailan's success rate was very low, and in the end, two Longevity Pills were refined from ten sets of materials, a success rate of only twenty percent.

This was an unavoidable matter; the difficulty of refining the Longevity Pill is comparable to top-tier Alchemical Pills, and for Kailan to be able to refine two pills is already considered excellent.

Although the success rate of the Longevity Pill was very low, after the refining process, Kailan's alchemy level improved by a notch, and the success rate for refining high-level Alchemical Pills increased once again; this can be considered a gain to offset the loss.

Over the three-plus months, a total of 13 Star Fruits and one portion of Star Essence were collected.

The collection went quite smoothly at first, but shortly after the Winter Auction ended, Third Prince Dou Yuanbin and the Langya Liu Clan also joined the ranks of the buyers and increased the acquisition price.

Under vicious competition, the prices of Star Fruit and Star Essence naturally rose with the tide, and the difficulty of acquisition could be said to have increased exponentially.

Regarding this, Li Zhangsheng had no other way but to compete using their own means.

If Li Zhangsheng were still at the Fifth Rank, he might have taken some extreme measures, but he is already a Pseudo-King now, so he naturally laughed it off, because what Dou Yuanbin and Liu Xuguang were doing was all in vain.

However, with the help of this batch of Star Fruits and Star Essence, it saved Li Zhangsheng a month of effort, and at the same time, he successfully condensed the Seven Killings and Army Breaker Star Apertures; he believes that before long, the Kill-Break-Wolf Monster Taming Art will be able to reach perfection.

Compared to Li Zhangsheng, Ning Bizhen had already taken a step ahead and brought the Kill-Break-Wolf Monster Taming Art to perfection, and was currently practicing the Big Dipper Monster Taming Art instead.

Aside from daily cultivation, Li Zhangsheng's days were very fulfilling; he kept his work arranged to the brim, and every day he was either studying the Artifact Refining Canon or researching how to extract the time power from the Time Dragon Scale.

The former allowed Li Zhangsheng's artifact refining level to continuously improve, having completely made up for the flaws in the Nine Heavens Golden Palace Treasure Refining Art, becoming a true Refining Master.

As for extracting the power of time from the Time Dragon Scale, through constant research, Li Zhangsheng finally had some clues, but it would still take some time to fully develop it.

Li Zhangsheng's Demon Pets had also made significant progress; for instance, Aixi, Kailan, Roundy, and the Crowned Blazing Bird could only be said to have made slight progress at the Demon King rank, as their advancement speed had slowed down significantly after reaching the Demon King rank.

Except for the Bright Heavy-Pupil Bird, the Red Dragon, the Gold Dragon, and the Chi Dragon, the rest of his Demon Pets had successively reached the Lord 9th Rank level.

However, Li Zhangsheng did not let them break through; he prepared to wait until the cooldown period of the Emperor Flowing Plasma from the Taiyin Token had passed before having them break through all at once.

Although the Emperor Flowing Plasma could only slightly increase their breakthrough probability, even a 5% increase was not a small number, as Li Zhangsheng had quite a few Demon Pets urgently needing to break through.

Most importantly, Adai, Baitian, and Heiye had not fully recovered since their last failed breakthrough, but according to Li Zhangsheng's estimation, they would likely fully recover before the Emperor Flowing Plasma's cooldown ended.

This might also be the limitation of Half-Step Epic Demon Pets; although the breakthrough probability would not decrease, their recovery cycle was far inferior to that of Top-Grade Demon Pets.

According to the books, Top-Grade Demon Pets could attempt to break through again in about one or two months, while the recovery cycle of Half-Step Epic Demon Pets was nearly double that.

However, these were not problems; Li Zhangsheng could fully afford to wait, and besides, with his current strength, almost no one in the National Tournament was his match.

After packing his things, Li Zhangsheng left Number One Courtyard, preparing to head to the Tiantai Sect with Ning Bizhen, because the Tiantai Sect happened to have the things he needed.

(End of this chapter)