78: Chapter 76 What are Soul Rings?

In the past eight months, the main energy of Lin Yan and Electrolux was still focused on analyzing the spirit ring.

Because of this, coupled with the complexity and difficulty of the Dao characters themselves, his progress in Formations appeared slightly slow, and so far he had only deduced this single Dao character "Ju".

Not long ago, this protracted analysis of the spirit ring finally came to an end.

Lasting nearly ten months, the two goals he initially set—finding a method to increase the age of the spirit ring and recreating the condensation of the spirit ring with strange fire—were now basically completed.

According to the layers of disassembly by Lin Yan and Electrolux, the internal structure of the spirit ring was found to be constructed primarily of three layers and four major elements.

The outermost layer was a shell composed of pure Soul Power, and its function was to act as a cornerstone to support the internal structure.

The middle layer was constructed by the Soul power of the Spirit Beast.

The main function of this layer was to act as a medium, connecting and stimulating the rule fragments at the core, thereby driving the Spirit Ability.

As for the innermost core layer, it was naturally the Soul Skill Rule Space that Lin Yan had once entered when choosing his own Spirit Ability.

This rule space, lying between the illusory and the real, carried the two most core elements that constituted the spirit ring—rule fragments and the Soul imprint of the Spirit Beast!

Needless to say about the rule fragments, when absorbing the spirit ring, the rule fragments left behind due to mutual attraction with the Spirit were the true root of the existence of the Spirit Ability.

The role of the Soul imprint of the Spirit Beast was to anchor and solidify the remaining rule fragments in the Soul Skill Rule Space.

These two were indispensable.

Without rule fragments, a Spirit Ability could not be born, and without the anchoring of the Soul imprint, the rule fragments would directly dissipate after the absorption of the spirit ring was completed.

In addition, there was another point—the rule fragments had "weight".

This was also the fundamental reason why a hundred-thousand-year spirit ring could produce two Spirit abilities, whereas a spirit ring below a hundred thousand years could only accommodate one Spirit Ability.

Once it crossed the threshold of a hundred thousand years, the life level of the Spirit Beast would usher in a qualitative leap.

Corresponding to this, the Soul imprint left behind after its death would be greatly enhanced, and even become strong enough to allow it to simultaneously anchor two rule fragments, thereby forming two Spirit abilities.

This also explained why those spirit rings raised to a hundred thousand years through Acquired methods would not correspondingly give birth to a second Spirit Ability.

Because at that time, within the rule space of the spirit ring, the unanchored rule fragments had completely dissipated.

Even the cleverest housewife could not cook a meal without rice; without extra rule fragments, it was naturally impossible to give birth to a second Spirit Ability again.

After analyzing the composition of the spirit ring clearly, the path to increasing the age of the spirit ring was already exceptionally clear.

It was nothing more than starting from the three elements of Soul Power, Soul power, and the Soul imprint.

As long as these three could achieve synchronous enhancement, the age of the spirit ring would naturally increase accordingly!

Among them, the injection of Soul Power and Soul power was naturally not much of a problem for Electrolux, who had studied Souls all his life.

The real difficulty lay in the strengthening of the Soul imprint.

This point was the root cause that had stuck the two of them for so long.

However, to be more precise, what stumped them was how to strengthen the Soul imprint safely and without any future complications.

If they wanted to strengthen the Soul imprint, they must first face a fundamental question—what on earth was a Soul imprint?

Spending a vast amount of time and energy, after countless comparative experiments and analyses, Lin Yan and Electrolux finally found the answer they wanted.

The essence of the Soul imprint was— "memory" and "existence"!

Among them, "memory" was the foundation, while "existence" was the weighting coefficient that affected its final strength and weakness.

During the process of the spirit ring condensing and forming, the special Law of the Douluo Plane would abstract and condense all the memories of the Spirit Beast into a truly existing imprint.

This was the initial Soul imprint.

After that, heaven and earth would adjust the strength of this imprint with a certain weighting coefficient according to the "existence" weight of the Spirit Beast.

For example, if the initially formed Soul imprint strength was 1, and the weighting coefficient was 1.2, then the finally formed Soul imprint strength would be 1.2.

The most major factor affecting the weight of the Spirit Beast's "existence" was its strength.

The stronger the Spirit Beast, the heavier the weight it occupied between heaven and earth, the stronger its "existence" would be, and naturally the stronger the Soul imprint branded in the end would be.

However, after figuring this out, the research of Lin Yan and Electrolux fell into a deadlock instead.

It was known that the strength of the Soul imprint depended on the "existence" and "memory" of the Spirit Beast, but at the time of the spirit ring's condensation, the hunted Spirit Beast was long dead; how could one add "memory" and "existence" to it again?

If it were a spirit ring endowed by a Spirit Soul, it certainly did not have this trouble.

Because after the Spirit Beast turned into a Spirit Soul, although its form of existence had changed, in essence it was still alive, its consciousness still existed, and its true Spirit was not lost.

In this way, as long as the Spirit Soul's strength continued to improve and memories accumulated constantly, the Soul imprint it endowed in the spirit ring would naturally grow simultaneously.

However, Lin Yan's spirit rings all came from hunting Spirit Beasts, and because their ages were relatively low, what remained within them was only Soul power, not even a remnant Soul.

Obviously, there was no way to take the route of first resurrecting the Spirit Beast and then making it a Spirit Soul.

At this point, on the surface, it seemed to have completely plunged into a dead end all at once.

But the facts were not like that.

Associating it with the original work, where the Holy Spirit Cult could use crude methods like blood sacrifice and devouring to artificially increase the age of the spirit ring, it was not difficult to deduce—wanting to interfere with the Soul imprint through Acquired means was actually not as difficult as imagined.

To figure out the principle behind it, Lin Yan, based on the sporadic descriptions in the original work, began to try to replicate the Holy Spirit Cult's ring-raising method.

And this process was unexpectedly simple; after just a few experiments, Lin Yan successfully replicated it.

Because the Holy Spirit Cult's ring-raising method actually had no technical content to speak of at all.

In essence, they opened a gap on the spirit ring, and then forcibly crammed the Soul and Soul Power of a Spirit Beast or a person into it all at once.

Then, there was no then.

Under the rough scouring of a large amount of Soul Power and Soul power, although the vast majority would be wasted in vain, a small portion would always be spontaneously attracted by the spirit ring and replenished into its first two layers of structure.

As for the "enhancement" of the Soul imprint in the core layer, in Lin Yan's observation, it was even simpler and more violent.

Because after thoroughly figuring out the structure of the spirit ring, Lin Yan could basically achieve casually intruding into the Soul Skill Rule Space of any spirit ring.

Coupled with a batch of Evil Soul Master "volunteers" being willing to make selfless contributions, it allowed him to observe the specific changes inside the spirit ring several times when the ring-raising method was used.

Without spending much effort, Lin Yan completely figured out the principle of the Soul imprint's enhancement during this process.