Chapter 64: The Seven Treasures Glazed Pagoda Is Also a Defective Martial Soul
The meeting did not end with Furina's earlier, soul-stirring address. She paused briefly, her gaze sweeping across the hall like the still surface of a lake, ensuring that everyone had returned from the turbulent currents of thought she had just stirred. Only then did she continue, her voice settling into a calmer, more narrative tone—yet still carrying an undeniable, unshakable authority.
"Now, let us draw our eyes back, for a moment, from those seemingly distant, unreachable vistas. Let us return to the very beginning—to the subjects your report deemed the 'simplest' and 'most foundational': the upper limit of soul ring absorption for soul masters, and the theory of martial soul and soul ring compatibility."
She picked up the report lightly, her fingertip resting upon the corresponding section. "Regarding the upper limit of soul ring absorption, your conclusion is that it 'correlates with physical constitution.' This conclusion is correct—but it's akin to touching only a single scale of a great dragon, without ever glimpsing the whole. It is incomplete. It is, one might even say, one-sided."
Furina's voice was clear and steady, each word seeming to carry weight as it settled into the listeners' hearts. "According to my own understanding and deduction, the limit of soul ring absorption is a complex, comprehensive system. It is simultaneously linked to at least three factors: physical constitution, the strength of one's spiritual power, and... the inherent quality of the martial soul itself."
She began to cite established precedents, supporting her argument with irrefutable examples. "Ten thousand years ago, why was the Sea God Tang San able to effortlessly shatter the age limits decreed by the then-widely-accepted 'Yu Xiaogang Theory' for his third and fourth soul rings? Was it merely because his body was strong? No. Far more crucial was the fact that he cultivated a technique capable of condensing and strengthening spiritual power—the Purple Demon Eye. A powerful spiritual force acts like resilient armor for the soul, allowing one to command soul ring energy far beyond ordinary limits. Furthermore, his martial soul was not the common Bluesilver Grass the world believed it to be, but the yet-unawakened Bluesilver Emperor, bearing the bloodline of a sovereign. The transcendent quality of his martial soul was the true foundation that enabled him to bear all of it."
The topic flowed naturally toward the figure known as "Grandmaster." "Speaking of Yu Xiaogang—"
A note of cool, analytical dissection entered Furina's tone, far removed from simple disparagement. "We must regard his theories objectively. Many of his conclusions were, from the very start, built upon incomplete data and overly idealized extrapolations. He attempted to establish a single, uniform, standardized chart of soul ring age limits for all soul masters—and that, in itself, is the greatest fallacy. The quality of every soul master's martial soul varies by a thousand measures. Physical constitution differs based on innate gifts and acquired training. Spiritual power is the combined result of natural talent and cultivated techniques. With so many variables at play, how could there possibly exist a single 'optimal age limit' that applies universally?"
Her words were like a sharpened blade, piercing straight to the core contradiction. "Theoretically, so long as a soul master's physical strength, spiritual resilience, and martial soul quality are all sufficiently powerful and sufficiently outstanding—then absorbing a hundred-thousand-year soul ring as one's very first is not an absolute impossibility! Yu Xiaogang's theories largely remained paper-bound deductions. They lacked sufficiently broad and deep practical data to support them, and they never touched the deeper strata of the soul master's power system."
She then brought up that most widely circulated of "famous quotes." "And there's his most renowned saying: 'There are no useless martial souls, only useless soul masters.'"
Furina shook her head slightly, a faint, almost mocking curve touching her lips. "If you examine this statement carefully, it is, in fact, self-contradictory. If we follow this logic, then his own martial soul, Luo Sanpao, was not 'useless.' Yet for the first half of his life, he couldn't break through the bottleneck of Soul Elder. Had it not been for the medicinal herbs gifted by his disciple Tang San, he would have spent his remaining years stuck at rank twenty-nine. Does this... not serve as the most perfect confirmation that he himself was the so-called 'useless soul master'? Is this not the most ruthless deconstruction of his own theory?"
Her words grew sharper, laying bare a truth many tacitly understood but dared not voice. "In truth, we all know full well that innate disparities exist between martial souls. Some martial souls, constrained by their own fundamental quality, may never break through rank thirty in their wielder's entire lifetime. Is that because those soul masters didn't strive hard enough? No. It is because their martial souls fundamentally limited them. It is the height of the 'ceiling' that determines they cannot soar. Unless they encounter heaven-defying immortal herbs or find a way to catalyze the essential evolution of their martial soul—the bottleneck remains absolute."
A low murmur rippled through the hall—voices tinged with relief and认同. Furina had given voice to the very confusion they had dimly sensed during their own research, yet had not dared to openly challenge due to the halo surrounding the name of "Grandmaster." Yu Xiaogang's theories, upon closer scrutiny, were riddled with contradictions.
"Thus," Furina summarized, "Yu Xiaogang's Ten Core Competencies theory is saturated with the limitations of its era and riddled with internal contradictions. We should no longer deify him or treat him as an insurmountable authority. Of course, viewed through the lens of history, within the era he lived, proposing a systematic theory at all was no small achievement. Were he placed in our time, he might well make a decent scholar. But he never could have imagined that ten thousand years later, soul master theory would, in so many respects, have stagnated—and in certain areas, even regressed."
Then, she dropped a proposition that made every scholar in the room draw a sharp, collective breath. "Following this line of thought—let us now examine what is today hailed as the 'foremost auxiliary martial soul under heaven': the Seven Treasures Glazed Pagoda." She paused, taking quiet satisfaction in the suddenly wide eyes and expressions of disbelief that sprung up across the hall. "In my view, from a certain, rigorous perspective, it, too, is a 'defective'—one could even say 'flawed'—martial soul."
A deathly stillness fell over the hall. One could have heard a pin drop. To associate the Seven Treasures Glazed Pagoda with the words "defective martial soul," even indirectly—this was a statement that could shake the very foundations of the soul master world.
Furina was entirely unsurprised by their reaction. She countered with a question of her own. "Is it not? Apart from the ancestor Ning Rongrong, who evolved through the Qiluo Tulip ten thousand years ago—in all the millennia since, has the Seven Treasures Glazed Sect ever produced a second Nine Treasures Glazed Pagoda soul master? Their martial soul is shackled by an invisible chain at rank seventy-nine, unable to break through. This in itself is the most powerful proof that their martial soul possesses an innate, congenital defect."
"Perhaps they are content with the empty title of 'Foremost Auxiliary Under Heaven,' but have they ever stopped to consider that in ten thousand years, they have been unable to find, through their own power, a way to break through the limits of their martial soul? Is this not, in its own way, a form of complacency? Hmph. If they continue to barricade themselves behind their walls, refusing to evolve, then one day, an even more powerful auxiliary martial soul will be born—and it will supplant them utterly!"
The scholars present sank into a thick, pensive silence. They found that they simply could not refute her.
From the perspective of martial soul completeness and growth potential—the seventy-nine-rank hard limit of the Seven Treasures Glazed Pagoda was, undeniably, an immense and glaring "defect."