Kong Ming'an lowered his eyes slightly, and strands of blue spirit power threads extended upwards from his fingertips, wrapping and Binding the pure white spirit ring in his palm, making it appear dreamlike and ethereal.
Meng Hongchen was somewhat stunned.
A spirit ring... could it be directly touched? Or was it in a state of being pulled and bound by spirit power? How did she remember that this was the method for absorbing a spirit ring!
As she was feeling bewildered, Kong Ming'an slowly spoke.
"Meng, what do you think a spirit ring is?"
"A spirit ring?"
Meng Hongchen came back to her senses, somewhat puzzled as to why Kong Ming'an would ask her such a question.
However, seeing his serious expression, she hesitated for a moment, then answered with the standard textbook definition:
"A spirit ring is a special energy entity that appears after a Spirit Master hunts a Spirit Beast. When a Spirit Master's cultivation reaches a Bottleneck, absorbing a spirit ring allows them to Breakthrough the Bottleneck."
"And after a spirit ring is absorbed, it grants the Spirit Master a unique Spirit Ability. The control of spirit power will be related to one's own Spirit and the Spirit Beast from which the spirit ring dropped..."
"Mm."
Kong Ming'an nodded slightly, not denying it, but continued to ask:
"Then, besides attaching a spirit ring to Breakthrough a Bottleneck and gain Spirit Abilities, Meng, do you know of any other uses for the spirit ring itself?"
Meng Hongchen was asked another question that stumped her, but she instinctively shook her head, her silver-white long hair swaying with the movement:
"Ah? A spirit ring... isn't it just for absorbing and gaining Spirit Abilities?"
In her understanding... or rather, in the understanding of most Spirit Masters, a spirit ring was the ladder of advancement and the source of power for a Spirit Master. Attaching, absorbing, and using Spirit Abilities were natural and right.
Kong Ming'an shook his head slightly, his gaze still fixed on the spirit ring in his palm, his eyes flickering slightly, as if admiring a precise work of art:
"Among the many pieces of information I've collected, there are quite a few peculiar methods for using spirit rings."
"Ancient records state that ten thousand years ago, a protective Elder of the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect mastered a method called 'Ring Embedding,' which allowed him to embed a spirit ring onto his own Spirit, gaining a doubled boost."
"The Tianhun Empire's Dark Underworld Sect, whose inherited Spirit possesses a special Divine Beast Bloodline talent, can temporarily combine and fuse spirit rings, allowing a Spirit Ancestor to temporarily possess a ten-thousand-year spirit ring, greatly increasing their power."
"There is also a technique called 'spirit ring fusion,' which can fuse the power of spirit rings with different attributes into a single attribute, boosting oneself or others, doubling its power..."
His pace of speech was calm, listing these spirit ring application techniques that had only briefly appeared in the long river of Douluo Continent history and were now almost lost.
Every name, every technique, seemed to open a sealed door of power.
Meng Hongchen's ice-blue eyes widened slightly, her gaze filled with shock.
So, a spirit ring could be used like this?
Kong Ming'an didn't give Meng Hongchen much time to process.
Holding up the spirit ring, the blue spirit power wrapped around the spirit ring in his right palm suddenly transformed into fine needles, instantly piercing into the seemingly stable energy structure within the spirit ring!
"Buzz—!"
The pure white spirit ring suddenly flared with light, becoming extremely dazzling and unstable. The previously gentle energy fluctuations instantly turned violent!
A dangerous aura approached, and Miss Meng instinctively took a step back, only to see him calmly toss the spirit ring in his hand into a transparent isolation box made of high-strength explosion-proof Spirit tool glass.
And almost as soon as the spirit ring fell into the box and the box was sealed—
Boom!!!
A dull but powerful explosion boomed inside the isolation box!
Blinding white light, accompanied by chaotic energy currents, instantly filled the entire small space.
The Spirit tool array patterns on the glass walls instantly lit up to their extreme, flickering frantically, barely managing to confine this destructive Energy within, without a single trace escaping.
The light slowly receded, and inside the isolation box, only wisps of chaotic Energy remained, while the Soft Bones Rabbit's spirit ring had vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.
"This... what is this?!"
"This is 'Ring Explosion.'"
Kong Ming'an withdrew his hand, his tone as calm as if he had just crushed a bubble.
"It's a technique that instantly and violently detonates and releases the massive Energy accumulated within a spirit ring, which is used to support Spirit Abilities and spirit power amplification."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the residual energy currents in the isolation box, and continued:
"The power of the explosion just now was roughly equivalent to the power of a Level 3 fixed-load Spirit tool bomb exploding."
"In a certain Sect, they use the Energy detonated during 'Ring Explosion' as a means to temporarily boost themselves and enhance their combat power, and from this, they have developed various combat methods."
Meng Hongchen was listening more intently than ever before.
If at first she was only interested because she heard some "secrets," now, after witnessing it firsthand, she was completely sure that Ming'an's words were not just to satisfy her curiosity, but truly had some results!
Blinking her eyes, the clever Miss Meng quickly found the key point. Slightly nervous, she raised her hand like a well-behaved student.
Kong Ming'an saw Miss Meng's little thought and chuckled:
"Want to learn 'Ring Explosion'?"
Miss Meng nodded.
"No."
"Ugh..."
Miss Meng showed a disappointed expression, but quickly comforted herself mentally.
Teaching is a favor, not teaching is one's duty... However, while the logic was sound, Miss Meng was inevitably a little disappointed.
The item was put out to tempt people, the fragrance had wafted over, but then it wasn't given to eat? Was it purely for temptation?
"It's not that I won't teach you, it's that there's no need."
"No need?"
"That's right." Kong Ming'an's eyes were calm, but he reached out and grabbed another Soft Bones Rabbit, twisting its neck to the right.
A pure white spirit ring appeared, and Kong Ming'an casually grabbed it, looking down at it as he slowly spoke:
"Simple 'Ring Explosion' is merely the crudest use of a spirit ring's Energy."
"I ask, since Energy can be detonated and guided to amplify combat, can it also be used to carry out some extreme Cultivate impact, breaking through a Bottleneck, with the massive Energy instantly released by 'Ring Explosion'?"
"For example, a Spirit Grandmaster breaking through to a Spirit Elder, a Spirit Emperor breaking through to a Spirit Saint, or even a Spirit Douluo breaking through to a Titled Douluo?"
"Or, is there some method to constrain and shape the energy burst of 'Ring Explosion,' making it a controllable, normalized offensive or defensive means?"
"For example, with my method just now, the power of a ten-year Spirit Ring Explosion can be compared to a Level 3 fixed-load Spirit tool bomb. What if it were a thousand-year, ten-thousand-year, or even a hundred-thousand-year spirit ring?"
"You should know that when a Spirit Master performs 'Ring Explosion,' the spirit ring will recover over time, which means it's possible to achieve unlimited use of a Level 9 fixed-load Spirit tool bomb."
"And not every time you use it, you half-kill yourself before even making a move."
"Even..."
Under Meng Hongchen's gaze, Kong Ming'an's lips curled slightly, and his voice had, at some point, become tinged with an almost frenzied desire for exploration.
"...Is it possible to completely destroy the structure of a spirit ring, erase the Spirit Ability information and Spirit Beast imprint it contains, and only retain its purest Energy Origin... 'Then, attempt to self-attach a brand new spirit ring, thereby achieving 'self-editing and reconstruction of the spirit ring.'"