Chapter 63 · It's not that I'm trying to say...

Lost in meditation, Chen Ming subconsciously flicked the tail behind him, feeling that his external spirit bone was now easily nine to ten times stronger than before.

As his consciousness sank inward, the growth of the external spirit bone manifested clearly in his mind.

Because the further evolution of his external spirit bone relied on absorbing Dugu Bo's origin, there were traces of Dugu Bo's laws embedded within it.

Through these laws and Dugu Bo's origin, Chen Ming could craft a custom spirit ability derived from Dugu Bo for his own external spirit bone.

"Why does this make it sound like Dugu Bo is turning into a spirit beast?" Chen Ming muttered internally, though his actions did not pause for a second.

What a joke. Crafting a spirit ability from scratch by hand was an utterly overpowered capability. Even with his golden finger, normal progression dictated that he wouldn't qualify to custom-build a spirit ability until roughly the Soul Saint stage.

It was only because he had absorbed Dugu Bo's origin and the laws within his martial soul this time that he was granted the chance to enjoy this privilege prematurely.

The exact strength of the spirit ability was secondary; whether he could successfully fashion one at all didn't even matter. What truly mattered was the process itself, which would bring a tremendous improvement to his future cultivation and his exploration of the golden finger.

This mass of Dugu Bo's origin spirit power primarily consisted of the Green Phosphor Snake's deadly poison, followed by a special attribute of spirit power with an extremely high quality.

This surge of spirit power seemed venomous at first glance, yet not quite entirely so. Regardless, its quality was exceedingly high, firmly occupying a substantial portion of this mass of origin spirit power, second only to the Green Phosphor Snake Emperor's origin itself.

Considering that the Green Phosphor Snake Emperor's origin actually accumulated and grew bit by bit alongside Dugu Bo's cultivation as a Titled Douluo, the quality of this special spirit power might even be slightly higher than that of the Snake Emperor.

"This is the one."

Chen Ming gritted his teeth, choosing this specific portion of the origin as the core to engrave a spirit ability onto his external spirit bone.

"I don't lack area-of-effect attacks; what I lack right now is a single-target burst spirit ability. Poison Cloud is hard to apply effectively in a short time against spirit masters of a higher tier than myself, and Poison Explosion packs too much power—if I can't control it properly, I'll literally blow myself up."

"When walking out in the world, one always needs a spirit ability that works under any circumstances. Even Blue Silver Entanglement is better than no Blue Silver Entanglement."

"As for range, it needs to be usable at both long and short distances, with a short wind-up and fierce explosive power."

"Then..." Chen Ming recalled the blazing display of the Special Beam Cannon from Dragon Ball, and an idea formed in his mind.

"The manifestation of the spirit ability will be a concentrated beam of spirit power attack, guaranteeing ultimate single-target output."

"However, it shouldn't be too extreme to the point where it can only be fired once. There are plenty of skills in the Douluo Continent like Invincible Golden Body and Teleportation, making it very easy to counter. Therefore, it needs to be adjusted into two modes: low-consumption rapid-fire and full-consumption one-time burst."

The process of manually crafting a spirit ability was hard to describe in words. At the very beginning, Chen Ming was the one actively carving it.

Yet later on, once the rough outline of the spirit ability had been sketched out, Chen Ming shifted into a passive role, forced to obediently engrave the laws surging from heaven and earth onto his external spirit bone. By the end, he had no clear idea what specific capabilities the spirit ability possessed anymore.

Finally, after an unknown passage of time, this spirit ability, hand-crafted by Chen Ming and acknowledged by heaven and earth, was finally complete.

"Hyper Beam?"

"The effect is... gathering spirit power into the scorpion tail, and then transforming it through the tip of the tail to be fired as a beam. The target struck by the spirit power beam will be petrified, and the petrified target can then be shattered by the beam."

"Isn't this a variant of Dugu Bo's eighth spirit ability? Could it be that what I absorbed just now was the origin of Medusa, the Queen of Snakes?"

Chen Ming thought about it, unable to resist a silent internal complaint.

"And here I thought that was the origin of the spirit beast Dugu Bo hunted for his ninth spirit ring, but it turns out it was his eighth spirit ability."

"Should I say that Medusa's quality is shockingly high, or that Dugu Bo's ninth spirit ring was just too pitifully weak?"

"Any ninth spirit ring with a passable age and quality wouldn't be overshadowed by Medusa's eighth spirit ability. Even if Dugu Bo also possessed a head spirit bone originating from Medusa."

"This spirit ability feels a bit like a tasteless chicken rib—petrification is petrification, destruction is destruction, combining the two makes it a bit awkward."

"Still, this spirit ability is quite interesting."

"The Medusa origin extracted from Dugu Bo's origin used Dugu Bo's spirit power as material, yet the resulting spirit ability has not a single shred to do with poison, nor does it require poison-attribute spirit power to drive it; instead, it relies purely on the mutation of attribute-free spirit power."

"It seems the research value might be quite high..."

Chen Ming thought to himself, but he was in no immediate rush.

At this moment, he had already digested roughly seven or eight-tenths of everything he had gained during this treatment of Dugu Bo, and there was nothing that demanded his immediate attention.

There was plenty of time in the future, and there was still the Sunset Forest's Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well—an even more valuable asset—waiting for him. There was no need to plunge headfirst into this problem right now and force an answer.

Besides, although this spirit ability originated from Queen Medusa, it came even more directly from Dugu Bo. When the time came, he could simply study Dugu Bo or have Dugu Bo catch a Queen of Medusa for him to study. Wouldn't that be far better than researching it all by himself?

Chen Ming opened his eyes to find Dugu Bo standing right before him, so tense he was practically holding his breath.

"Grandpa Dugu, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing, little friend Chen Ming... No, Little Ming. How do you feel? Did you get hurt just now?"

Dugu Bo's face was full of kindness, and the look he gave Chen Ming was akin to watching his own granddaughter. Even though Chen Ming showed no outward issues and appeared full of vitality, Dugu Bo still asked with deep concern.

"I'm fine. While calming your spirit power just now, I also digested a portion of Grandpa Dugu's poison. I'm a poison-attribute spirit master, and this tiny fraction of poison is a tremendous boost to me. I feel fantastic right now."

"Ah?" Hearing this, Dugu Bo panicked.

What he panicked about wasn't the fact that Chen Ming had absorbed a bit of his own spirit power just a moment ago, but rather the fear that the uncontrollable poison within his own body might leave behind hidden dangers for Chen Ming as well.

"Little Ming, even I can't control that poison. What if it enters your body and leaves behind a disaster? Let me check you over right now."

"I'm really fine," Chen Ming said, stretching out his tail.

"Look at this, Grandpa. I'm truly fine. When I absorbed my second spirit ring, I also obtained an external spirit bone for my tail from that emerald scorpion. I just used the external spirit bone to absorb the remaining poison directly. Now, the age of my external spirit bone has even increased to over ten thousand years."

At this moment, Dugu Bo no longer wanted to question why the poison that had plagued him for decades could apparently be resolved so casually by any random method. Seeing that Chen Ming was completely unharmed, he finally let out a breath of relief.