"Reaching Rank 30 was the biggest hurdle in my life."
Once Yu Xiaogang had named the obstacle, the next step was obvious: find a way to overcome it.
He combed the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect's archives and learned that the rare cases of low‑talent individuals breaking through fate all shared one thing: a Heaven‑Defying opportunity. Those opportunities fell into two categories.
The first was the legendary Spirit Bone. One record told of a child with only Level‑1 Innate Spirit Power who, lost in the Star Dou Great Forest, found a ten‑thousand‑year‑old spirit bone from a fallen Spirit Beast. Absorbing that bone altered the child's Spirit and shattered the shackles on his talent.
The second was the even rarer Heaven‑and‑Earth Treasure. A noble child with Level‑1 Innate Power acquired a Genius plant at auction; consuming it evolved his Spirit and reversed his fate.
Yu Xiaogang treated both stories as near‑myth. Spirit Bones were scarce even among the Upper Three Sects; his father, a Titled Douluo, did not possess a full set. Heaven‑and‑Earth Treasures were rarer still—pure luck. Still, the pattern was clear: both methods changed the Spirit itself, and Spirit evolution changed innate talent.
In short: evolving a Spirit could change one's destiny.
At the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile School, Ning Fengzhi listened with growing excitement. If Spirit evolution could be induced, the implications for every sect were enormous. The Seven Treasure Pagoda had long been the school's pride; if it could be evolved further, the school's support capabilities would skyrocket. Ning imagined Nine Treasure Pagoda and the generations of geniuses it would produce.
Yu Xiaogang's footage had done more than tell a story; it had posed a question the whole continent now wanted answered: how does a Spirit evolve?
Yu Xiaogang began with what he could control. He gathered every recorded case of Spirit evolution and organized them into a table. Patterns emerged.
Category 1: Evolution after absorbing a specific spirit ring — the most common and most promising for his purposes. Category 2: Evolution after reaching a certain Rank. Category 3: Rare Bloodline Awakenings. Category 4: Evolution from inexplicable or singular events.
He discarded the latter three for now. Rank‑based evolution and bloodline awakenings were unpredictable; inexplicable events were useless for planning. The only actionable path was the first: spirit ring absorption.
Yu Xiaogang subdivided that category meticulously. He asked every relevant question: Beast Spirit or Tool Spirit; the attributes of the absorbed spirit rings; the age of those rings; the sequence and number of rings previously held; the species and attributes of the Soul Beasts involved. He cataloged examples until patterns crystallized.
The statistics spoke plainly. Many evolutions followed a clear rule of attribute stacking: a spirit whose early rings shared a dominant attribute would often evolve into a higher form once a later ring completed that attribute set.
The Green Serpent's first five rings were poison‑attribute; the sixth triggered evolution into the Jade Serpent. The Firehound's first three rings were fire; the fourth produced Infernape. The Ice Bird evolved after its fifth ice ring. The Spiky Grass became Spiny Leaf Vine after a sequence of plant‑type rings. The Ground Lizard amassed seven dragon‑type rings before its eighth transformed it into the Crimson Dragon.
From these examples Yu Xiaogang drew a working strategy: ultimate attribute stacking. If a Spirit's early rings could be guided to share a dominant attribute, then acquiring the right subsequent ring might force an evolution.
He refined the plan into practical steps: identify the Spirit type he had, determine which attribute sequence would trigger its evolution, and then seek spirit rings or Soul Beasts that fit that attribute pattern. Where direct acquisition was impossible, he would look for indirect routes—trading, targeted hunts, or leveraging sect resources to obtain specific rings.
The work was painstaking, but it gave him something far more valuable than hope: a method. Not a guarantee, but a map.
Across the Douluo Continent, the heavenly curtain's revelation had shifted the conversation. Destiny was no longer an immutable decree for many; it had become a problem to be studied, measured, and—perhaps—solved.