Douluo: Emerald Poison Emperor

The Titan Giant Ape excels in strength, followed by defense. Therefore, a martial soul like the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda will naturally generate spirit skills based on these two attributes.

The highest priority is increasing strength. If there is already a spirit ability that enhances strength, then it will prioritize enhancing defense. If both strength and defense are covered, the next attributes would be attack power and resistance to abnormal conditions.

However, no matter how attributes are prioritized, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, even if it derives abilities like speed enhancement or mental power enhancement from a strength-based soul beast such as the Titan Giant Ape, will never gain the Titan Giant Ape's offensive or defensive capabilities.

The soul ring of the Titan Giant Ape has no essential difference from the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda compared to ordinary soul rings. The only effect is that it slightly reduces the consumption of spirit abilities.

If it absorbs the soul ring of a rule-based soul beast, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda will only gain attribute enhancements based on the soul beast's strongest basic ability but will not acquire any rule-based skills, not even a trace.

Typically, martial souls are influenced by soul rings, undergoing either positive or negative growth to some extent.

But the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda does not change at all. It is so stable that not only can the soul ring not alter it, but the Pagoda even forcibly alters the soul ring itself.

Ideas like attaching strength-type soul rings to reinforce the Pagoda and turn it into something akin to the Tower King are impossible in this world. If such a path were viable, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect would have already pursued it.

The reality is that even if you attach seven 90,000-year-old strength-type soul rings to the Pagoda, it still wouldn't become sturdier. As for 100,000-year soul rings, Chen Ming hadn't encountered such a thing yet, so he dared not make definitive claims.

Chen Ming opened his eyes, his gaze tinged with shock and helplessness. He had initially hoped to find a way to modify the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda without requiring immortal herbs, but after seeing it firsthand, he realized he was still lacking.

"Your sect's Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul truly deserves its reputation as the strongest support-type martial soul in the world. It is both powerful and extraordinarily stable."

The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda is solid, stable, and limited to seven slots. Its special nature determines its exceptional support capabilities, but that same nature also limits the martial soul's potential.

It's like a unique system that is already complete but lacks further development—a version that hasn't kept up with updates.

This was something Chen Ming found hard to understand. In his perception, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda seemed to have a fixed ceiling, utterly unlike anything that should exist in the Douluo Continent.

The maximum limit for the rules of the Douluo Continent is level 99. As long as a martial soul has no inherent flaws, theoretically, all martial souls can be cultivated to level 99.

But the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda appeared excessively unique to Chen Ming, so much so that it didn't seem like a martial soul that naturally formed in the Douluo Continent. Instead, it felt like something from another world that had been assimilated into the Douluo Continent.

Chen Ming understood that within the Douluo Universe, the Douluo Continent could already be considered a rare high-energy planet. Some planets and dimensions couldn't even compare to the Douluo World's limits. In some other worlds, level 79 might already be the maximum.

While this might sound like invoking quantum mechanics when faced with uncertainty, the Douluo Continent truly did seem to allow for such phenomena.

After all, one of the Douluo Continent's defining characteristics is its compatibility: "I don't have it, but I can accommodate it."

Examples of Compatibility in the Douluo Series:

In Douluo 1, it accommodated internal energy and hidden weapons, which could still be explained.

In Douluo 2, it accommodated magic, Electrolux introduced the soul beast spirit system and even created the Death God martial soul that couldn't attach soul rings, which was barely acceptable since Electrolux was at least a god-level powerhouse, making it reasonable for him to bend the rules.

In Douluo 3, it accommodated demons and the Abyssal World, introducing Fallen Angel and Demon martial souls.

By Douluo 4, it even accommodated alien planets, going so far as to assimilate hybrid elf bloodlines into Elf martial souls.

Additionally, Chen Ming's third soul ring, the Netherworld Scorpion, had been forcibly assimilated into the Douluo World, with foreign rules within the soul ring.

Moreover, various godly trials from other worlds allowed gods to recruit people from the Douluo World to serve as substitutes. This demonstrated that outsiders from different worlds entering and being assimilated by the Douluo World was not an uncommon occurrence.

This led Chen Ming to suspect that the origins of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda might also lie in some foreign entity that accidentally entered the Douluo World.

Perhaps it originated from someone whose life-bound weapon was the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, and their descendants developed the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul through assimilation.

 Or perhaps an actual Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda fell into the Douluo World, and its fragments gave rise to the first generation of Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda spirit masters.

After all, "Seven Treasures" and "Glazed Tile Pagoda" are separate concepts.

The term "Seven Treasures" originates from Buddhism, but the Douluo Continent has no concept of the Seven Treasures. The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda isn't something like a trident where the name fits the world's context. It could have simply been called the Glazed Tile Pagoda. The person who first named it the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda likely didn't choose the name randomly. In any case, the issues surrounding the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda were far more profound than Chen Ming initially imagined—it wasn't merely a martial soul defect.

If it were just a defect, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect would have long since found a way to fix the martial soul.

Otherwise, it wouldn't be the case that even in the Douluo 4 timeline, thousands of years later, with people leaving the planet and being able to artificially create 100,000-year soul beast souls, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda was still awkwardly stuck at level 79.

In a sense, a problem with no defect is far worse than one with a defect. Software bugs can be fixed, but some programs run on a strange combination of bugs. Problems you can't identify are far worse than ones you can.

To turn the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda into the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda, Chen Ming estimated that he would need to add two additional layers to the existing seven as a starting point. Then, through slow refinement, the Seven-Plus-Two Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda could merge into a true Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda.

However, creating the crucial additional two layers was beyond Chen Ming's current technical capabilities.

He would either need to continue advancing his strength and understanding or use the lives of hundreds of Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda soul masters as experiments. For now, there was no other way.

Hearing the word "stable," Ning Fengzhi's expression shifted to one of slight surprise.

Stability was indeed a hallmark of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. Over countless generations of intermarriage with other martial souls, not a single mutated Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda had ever appeared.

There had never been an extra layer, a missing layer, or any new attribute. The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda had remained unchanged since its inception as if mixed bloodlines did not affect it.

Ning Fengzhi retracted his martial soul and asked Chen Ming, "Aside from this, did you discover any other issues?"

"The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul is complete and without defects. The inability of Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda soul masters to break through to the Title Douluo level is not due to a flaw in the martial soul but something far more complex. It is precisely because the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda has no flaws and is so stable that its soul masters cannot break through. This martial soul's upper limit was set at level 79 from the moment of its creation."

Ning Fengzhi fell silent. To be honest, he would have preferred Chen Ming to say the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda had a flaw preventing breakthroughs rather than hearing that its perfection was the issue.

Flaws can be fixed, but altering a complete artifact is an immensely challenging task.

"Is there a way to change the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda?" Ning Fengzhi asked, holding onto a sliver of hope.

To put it bluntly, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect had worked on this issue for thousands of years, and all they had accomplished was becoming slightly wealthier. They had researched this for so many generations that they'd lost count, yet the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda was still the same as ever.

If even one percent of each generation's efforts had improved the Pagoda, the problem would have been solved millennia ago.

"There is a way, but it is very, very, very difficult."

Despite Chen Ming emphasizing "very difficult" three times, Ning Fengzhi's expression didn't worsen. Instead, he looked relieved.

"Difficult is good. Difficult means there's a solution."

"Chen Ming, what method is required? If you can solve the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda's problem, I will personally betroth Rongrong to you. If you wish for your descendants to become the Sect Master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, then they will. If not, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect will forever remain your strongest ally."

PS: Oy oy oy, majikayo? That escalated quickly.