Chapter 1343: Soul Ranks and Mysteries

There had been one final change to Phei’s soul that was perhaps stranger than everything else because, until Anarctica, he had not even known it was something the System measured.

His Soul Rank had finally been revealed.

[Host’s Soul Rank:Primordial]

Phei had stared at that notification for an embarrassingly long time when it first appeared. Soul Energy was one thing. Soul Essence, Soul Realms and the strength of a person’s will were things he had gradually learned about through experience, but an actual hierarchy of the soul itself had never been shown to him before.

Naturally, the first thing he had done was demand the ranking:

[Soul Rank Classification, lowest to highest:Mortal Soul, Spirit Soul, Earth Soul, Heaven Soul, Sacred Soul, Divine Soul, Sovereign Soul, Eternal Soul, Ancient Soul, Primordial Soul, Origin Soul, Genesis Soul, Progenitor Soul, Cosmic Soul, Boundless Soul, Originless Soul.]

That should have answered his question, except it somehow created several more. His soul was Primordial Rank. The Astral Wraith he had just enslaved possessed only a Sacred Soul despite standing on the threshold of the God Stage, which already made Phei’s own Rank difficult enough to explain.

Then there was Sienna, whose soul belonged to the Ancient Rank despite being the reincarnation of the Nether Goddess herself.

Phei had spent some time staring at that comparison when he first learned it because, somehow, his Soul Rank stood above Sienna’s. He had absolutely no fucking idea why. Perhaps it had something to do with the strange origin of his soul. The Void might have influenced it, or the answer could be buried somewhere inside whatever absurd sequence of events had resulted in Phei becoming what he was; after all even the Endless Void called him its Master, didn’t it?

Considering how many unanswered mysteries had accumulated around him by now, he had gradually developed the extremely useful cultivation technique known as giving up and dealing with it later.

He had grown numb to mysteries, hadn’t he?

As long as his soul remained his, continued becoming stronger and did not suddenly decide to reveal the meaning of his existence while he was trying to eat breakfast, Phei could wait.

What bothered him far more was what came above Primordial.

His Soul Rank might tower over the Astral Wraith’s Sacred Soul and even stand above Sienna’s Ancient Soul, but Origin, Genesis and Progenitor still existed beyond his.

Beings such as Danton and the Original Progenitors possessed souls that stood terrifyingly far above his own, and that made the Omni-Primordial Path considerably harder to understand.

The System expected Phei to eventually enslave Original Progenitors, yet enslavement through his Marks was not some shallow restraint wrapped around flesh or cultivation. It reached into the soul itself, bound that existence to him and, in the case of souls he pulled into his Soul Realm, expected that soul to remain there beneath his control.

That was where the problem became difficult to ignore.

The Astral Wraith made sense. Its cultivation had stood absurdly above Phei’s, but its Sacred Soul was vastly inferior to his Primordial Soul. His Soul Realm possessing enough depth to contain it was strange, but hardly impossible once Soul Rank entered the equation.

A Progenitor was the exact opposite.

A Progenitor Soul stood three entire classifications above his own.

Its very foundation would be superior to his Primordial Soul before cultivation, experience or whatever other horrors such an ancient existence possessed were even considered. Yet the Omni-Primordial Path still expected Phei to enslave beings like that, bind their souls beneath

The Soul Rank revelation had not been the only strange thing his soul awakened either. One particular ability had become so natural to him over the past year that he almost forgot just how absurdly important it had been when he first received it.

The old notifications surfaced again.

[Ding! Host’s Soul has bonded deeply with the Void! Host’s Soul Realm has undergone a vast evolution! New Soul Ability Awakened!]

[Ability: Cosmic Dragon Bond!]

Phei’s eyes drifted toward the Dragon Lady resting nearby.

Yeah.

That one had mattered.

Cosmic Dragon Bond was the reason his little sister was sitting here at all.

When Phei first discovered her buried beneath ancient ice in the abyss, her Dragon Essence; her very life force, Dragon Core and Heart Scale had already been drained for centuries. The prison surrounding her was covered in feeding tendrils, her soul had been weakened almost to collapse and tearing her out openly would have brought everything inside the abyss down upon them before Phei could free even half of her body.

Cosmic Dragon Bond ability had bound their souls together deeply enough that when either bonded Dragon became trapped within unavoidable life-and-death danger, the endangered one could pull upon the other through the bond and escape physically toward them as long as some path remained through either bonded existence.

Phei had used exactly that loophole.

Instead of breaking her prison while surrounded by enemies, he had temporarily left her behind, used True Void Steps until he was an impossible distance away from the abyss and then reached backward through Cosmic Dragon Bond.

The memory still made him smile.

Her soul had pulled against his, the Void between them had buckled, space itself had screamed beneath the strain, and then a Dragon large enough to steal most of the horizon had abruptly appeared above Phei before crashing into the frozen plain.

He had stolen her directly out from beneath the Zone Lord.

The ability had done more than provide an absurd emergency escape, though. Soul and some fetal wounds could be shared through the bond, allowing one Dragon to shoulder part of what threatened the other’s soul, and that had helped Phei stabilize her after centuries of spiritual damage and the violent removal of those feeding tendrils.

It was also the reason he could feel her emotions, pain and condition so clearly even now and can understand her without words.

There was the strangest part—

Cosmic Dragon Bond could recognize matching powers between the bonded Dragons and upgrade the weaker one to the stronger one.

He glanced at her again.

Without Cosmic Dragon Bond, the story of the past year might have ended before it properly began. She could still have been buried beneath that ancient ice, slowly being consumed by the Zone Lord until her Core, Heart Scale and soul finally gave out, or maybe even dead now.

Instead, Phei had stolen her.

Now she was his little sister.

One of his absurd soul abilities had managed to create considerably more good than problems.

The day Sienna’s elixir transformed him had brought far more obvious changes too.

His cultivation had already taken an enormous leap into Mortal Sovereign after Anarctica, but the elixir had helped him consolidate although it was also a Realm he did not remain in for particularly long once his year inside the Primordial Frozen Zone truly began or even taste how powerful he really was as a Mortal Sovereign. Relentless battles, meditation, the Frozen Zone’s dense Essence, constant refinement and months of pushing himself against increasingly stronger enemies had eventually carried his spiritual and energy cultivation all the way into Sky Sovereign.

Phei still had not touched those World Transcendent cores to use them for his own cultivation.

Every single one remained stored away.

That realization alone was enough to make him wonder what would happen once he eventually sat down and genuinely refined those resources of that level instead of saving them for emergencies or casually feeding them to his little sister so she could vaporize people with Dragon breath.

His Body Cultivation had also developed along a very different path, and that particular story really began back inside Sienna’s elixir bath when his flesh first started drinking in the World Essence and undergoing changes far beyond ordinary strengthening. At the time Phei had barely understood what was happening and had mostly endured the transformation, but once he entered the Frozen Zone he had finally begun tempering his body deliberately.

His little sister had helped considerably with that.

The Dragon Lady knew places throughout the Primordial Frozen Zone that even powerful creatures avoided lingering within, which apparently made them excellent training grounds according to Dragon logic.

There were regions where the cold did unnatural things to flesh, valleys filled with such immense pressure that ancient ice itself remained compressed beneath it, storms carrying frozen Essence sharp enough to tear through weaker cultivators and other wonderful locations Phei would once have considered environmental disasters rather than convenient places to exercise.

He trained and tempered his body inside them all and the most forbidden of them, fought within them and repeatedly returned after recovering until environments that once damaged him became places where he could stand without much concern.