Leaving Ah Yin behind with her quietly aggrieved feelings, Chen Ming dusted himself off and departed from Heaven Dou Imperial Academy, making his way back to Dugu Bo's mansion within Heaven Dou City.
After returning for the first time in a while, Chen Ming glanced at Xiao Wu and found that she was full of resentment.
"Are you trying to force Xiao Wu to death? How long has it been since you let me go outside? I've stayed in this mansion for years. Even Dugu Bo doesn't know the layout of this place better than I do now."
"Don't you know rabbits die if they get too lonely? Are you trying to use such a despicable method to imprison me until I die of old age?"
Xiao Wu kept crying and complaining about Chen Ming's coldness and heartlessness.
Three years.
A full three years.
Ever since she was brought here from Nuoding City Junior Spirit Master Academy, Xiao Wu had lived in Dugu Bo's residence for three whole years.
Who knew how she had gotten through these three years?
Every day, she shut herself in and cultivated.
When she opened her eyes, it was either memorizing books or training.
After training came cultivation.
After cultivation came medicinal baths.
After medicinal baths came sleep.
Day after day, it was like flipping through the same calendar over and over again.
Xiao Wu admitted that this place had indeed helped her a lot. Her cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds during this time, bringing her closer and closer to her goal of revenge.
But not going outside for several years? That was something she truly could not accept.
She did not dare run, nor did she want to run.
But she really did want to go outside.
She really wanted to take a look outside!
For three years, it had been nothing but cultivation.
If she was not cultivating by herself, then she was being guided in cultivation.
Xiao Wu had almost forgotten what the air of freedom smelled like.
She had almost forgotten how cute the little snacks from the street stalls were.
Without waiting for Chen Ming to say a word, Xiao Wu threw herself onto his legs and began wailing at full volume. No matter how Chen Ming tried to shake her off or talk to her, Xiao Wu pretended not to hear a single word. She just cried.
"All right, all right. Since you've behaved properly for so long, how about I give you a gift?"
Without waiting to see if Xiao Wu was listening, Chen Ming directly produced the castrated Version 1.0 soul tool gun he had manufactured.
"This thing can pierce through a Spirit King's protective Spirit Power and Spirit Abilities, then directly kill that Spirit King. With a sneak attack, killing a Spirit Emperor or even a Spirit Saint is possible. This is a powerful weapon I made with great difficulty."
"What thing can pierce a Spirit King's protective Spirit Power and kill a Spirit King?" Xiao Wu raised her head and looked at Chen Ming with doubtful eyes.
"I'm a Spirit Beast, but I'm not a stupid rabbit. How could it kill a Spirit King so easily? Even a ten-thousand-year Spirit Beast can't easily kill a Spirit King."
Although she said that, because Chen Ming had never lied before, Xiao Wu still quickly took the thing from his hand.
Then she pointed the muzzle at her own head and looked inside with one eye, as if she wanted to see what was hidden in it.
"This is a soul tool. Technology left behind from the ancient era…"
"Wait, Attack-type soul tools still exist?" Xiao Wu held the thing and seemed to remember something, speaking casually.
"What do you mean, 'still exist'? ou know about these things?" Only then did Chen Ming remember that although Xiao Wu looked rather silly, she was still a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast.
And among hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts, she was the kind that had always been curious about the human world.
She had not only existed before Qian Renxue became a god. She had already existed before that ancient human era was forgotten.
There might be some secrets unknown to the human world that she knew a little about.
"I'm not too sure either. It was just a very, very long time ago, humans still had the technology to make soul tools. The soul tools from that time were especially… I don't know how to describe them. They just didn't seem much like things from Douluo Continent."
"In short, a very, very, very long time ago, there was a group of humans who mastered powerful soul tool technology. They once shocked the Spirit Beast race quite a bit. But later, that group of humans disappeared. As time passed, the soul tool technology was also lost…"
"Oh, right. I remember my father once told me about it. That was something from when he was young. At that time, he had only just reached the ten-thousand-year level."
"Apparently, humans back then didn't seem to have Martial Souls. Or rather, some humans didn't have Martial Souls…"
"I only heard it as a bedtime story before…"
Xiao Wu frowned and slowly recalled the bedtime stories from her childhood, telling Chen Ming what her father had experienced when he was young.
Xiao Wu's father had been a true fierce beast.
At the very least, he had two hundred thousand years of cultivation. He was also a divine beast with pure Jade Rabbit bloodline.
The powerful bloodline inside Xiao Wu was inherited from her father.
Because rabbit-type Spirit Beasts were usually not of high quality, it was very possible that among all rabbits in the world, Xiao Wu's father had been the strongest one.
The things the Jade Rabbit Emperor spoke of were very likely things that had truly happened.
But that time was far too distant.
So distant that, by normal logic, humans should still have been in the tribal era, perhaps not even having entered slave society.
"Humans without Martial Souls?" Chen Ming looked at the soul tool in Xiao Wu's hand and frowned slightly.
Humans without Martial Souls did exist in the Douluo world, but they were extremely rare mutations in inheritance, almost like a congenital illness.
A group of humans without Martial Souls, plus things that did not seem to belong to Douluo Continent…
Could soul tool technology have been left behind by aliens or people from another world?
Although that sounded ridiculous, it was not impossible.
After all, the Douluo world was like a giant sieve.
Beings from other worlds often came to Douluo, either actively or passively.
For example, to the Spirit Masters of the Douluo Dalu 3 era, the spirit soul technology they took for granted was actually the inheritance left behind in the Douluo world by the otherworldly expert Electrolux.
So it would not be strange if the source of soul tools came from another world or another planet.
This might also explain why soul tool technology was lost. Because this thing itself might not have been suited to the Douluo world at first.
It may have been otherworldly technology that slowly became localized.
On top of that, in that ancient human era, humans were still ignorant and had no real chance to receive higher education.
Even if the outsiders were willing to teach, the humans who could learn and research it would have been a tiny minority.
It was very normal for the inheritance to be cut off with time.
"Do you know where that group of humans went later?"
"I don't know. I only heard it as a bedtime story. . But if I had to guess — they probably left the Douluo continent?"
"I heard my father say that there is something in the world called the proud sea. It is a huge stretch of water, much bigger than a lake, and much, much larger. Maybe that group of people ran to some island on that lake to hide."
Xiao Wu racked her brain but couldn't recall whether her father had ever said anything more on the matter. In the end, she could only offer an uncertain answer.
"Xiao Wu, it turns out your father was quite the well-traveled explorer." Chen Ming reached out and rubbed Xiao Wu's head with a smile.
"Of course. My father was a very great being. It was said that his footprints once covered the entire Douluo Continent."
"My mother was brought back to the Star Dou Forest by him from a remote forest."
"He was a great hero."
"It's just that when he went to explore the core area of the Star Dou Forest in the end, he never came back…"
"Mother said he seemed to have been eaten by a very smelly big bear…"
"If Father had still been there, then back then, my mother wouldn't have…" Xiao Wu trailed off there, and her eyes went red.
With the fierce beast-level strength of the Jade Rabbit Emperor, plus a family of hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts, protecting Xiao Wu's mother, a transformed hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast, from Spirit Hall would not have been difficult.
Even if they could not win, at the very least, they could have escaped.
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