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**
For a Beast Soul Master, injuries of this magnitude to the Martial Soul were far more serious than ordinary flesh wounds. Under such circumstances, maintaining Martial Soul Possession meant continuously enduring intense pain.
Yet, if one entered Martial Soul Possession again before the Martial Soul fully recovered or lessened to a light injury, they would still be affected, feeling the same agonizing pain. Therefore, for a Soul Master, recovery didn't just refer to oneself.
More often than not, it referred to their Martial Soul.
Medicinal pills capable of directly healing a Martial Soul's injuries were always far more precious and difficult to refine than those that merely healed a Soul Master's physical body. It could be said that a Martial Soul was as vital to a Soul Master as their very life.
In most battles, a Martial Soul would always sustain damage long before the Soul Master did.
For Beast Martial Soul Masters, if their Martial Soul was severely wounded during combat, it wasn't just a matter of their defense being completely breached and the inner Martial Soul damaged.
It went a step further.
The attack would directly strike the core of the Martial Soul—the source where the Martial Soul and the Soul Master fused during possession. This was precisely the predicament Huyan Li was facing now.
However, as the continuous axe strikes shattered the Martial Soul's outer layers and breached its inner defenses, the severe trauma was now directly shaking Huyan Li's core.
The sheer number of deep wounds forced Huyan Li to share the agonizing spiritual backlash of his damaged Martial Soul, rapidly draining his combat power like a heavily wounded soul beast.
When this happened, the Martial Soul would not only be thoroughly devastated; its power greatly reduced and rendered difficult to heal, but there was also a high probability that the Soul Master would be forced out of their Martial Soul Possession state.
Once forced out, they would find it difficult to manifest their Martial Soul again. This would leave the Soul Master with severe internal injuries, and without the protection of their Martial Soul, they would be easily harmed by enemy attacks.
Under such conditions, having lost the power of their Martial Soul, it would be nigh impossible for the Soul Master to resist their enemy any longer.
On the continent, when a Beast Martial Soul Master died, unless the gap between the two sides was overwhelmingly massive, they were almost always severely wounded in their Martial Soul first.
They would be beaten out of their Martial Soul Possession or have their Martial Soul Avatar shattered before finally being slain by the enemy. In short, the Martial Soul and the Soul Master shared a symbiotic bond of life and death.
This applied to Tool Martial Souls and Plant Martial Souls just as it did to Beast Martial Souls. However, because Beast Martial Souls possessed the Soul Master's body to unleash their power and protect them, they were naturally more prone to sustaining injuries.
Injuries and damage to Tool Martial Souls and Plant Martial Souls were not as common. If these two types of Soul Masters were killed, their Martial Souls might not necessarily be heavily damaged.
Yet, if the battle became too fierce and both sides were sufficiently powerful, it was not impossible for a Plant Martial Soul's core essence to be damaged, or for a Tool Martial Soul to be cracked or even snapped in half.
This would similarly result in a heavily damaged Martial Soul and a severely injured Soul Master.
If a Martial Soul was destroyed, it would inevitably result in the death of the Soul Master. This was an absolute law for any Martial Soul. Even if one was lucky enough to survive by a fluke, they would be reduced to a cripple.
Right now, under Ling Xiao's relentless assault, Huyan Li's Martial Soul form had sustained significant damage. Axe marks of varying depths crisscrossed all over the chest of his Martial Soul body.
His arms were in a similar state.
Shielded beneath his Martial Soul Possession, Huyan Li couldn't help but feel a burning, searing pain, as if he had been hacked multiple times by a physical blade. This kind of sensation was a rare occurrence when sparring with his fellow disciples in the sect.
After all, given his sheer defensive power, very few among the younger generation of the Elephant Armored Sect could ever inflict such injuries upon him.
However, at this moment, because Huyan Li was completely focused on resisting Ling Xiao's attacks, he didn't realize that under the immense pressure brought by Ling Xiao, his mastery over his Diamond Mammoth Martial Soul had significantly improved.
In particular, his utilization of his origin Diamond Force had become much more proficient.
Before this, because he personally leaned toward the Power Attack System path and favored taking the initiative to attack, and because the Diamond Force was primarily meant to enhance the Martial Soul's defense, he hadn't truly valued its utilization when learning his clan's heritage.
Even though he knew that learning the methods to utilize the Diamond Force would help enhance his own defense and thereby increase his strength, he still preferred to use his raw power to attack proactively, prioritizing offense and reigning supreme through sheer might.
Regrettably, when facing Ling Xiao's Profound Sky Axe, Huyan Li found himself at a disadvantage in both raw strength and offensive power.
To resist Ling Xiao's ferocious attacks, he had no choice but to frequently channel his Diamond Force to reinforce his Martial Soul's defense, preventing the Profound Sky Axe from inflicting even more severe injuries upon him.
The few deeper wounds Huyan Li had sustained earlier—where his defense had been completely breached and his Martial Soul damaged at a deeper level—were all inflicted at the very beginning when he hadn't used the Diamond Force.
After receiving the enhancement of the Diamond Force, the defense of Huyan Li's Diamond Mammoth Martial Soul advanced a step further, finally allowing him to barely resist the attacks of the Profound Sky Axe.
Under this kind of high mental concentration and the frequent activation of his Diamond Force, Huyan Li had unconsciously made considerable progress. It could be considered a pleasant surprise.
As expected, when facing a formidable enemy in the heat of a fierce battle, it was highly conducive to gaining new insights and could even allow one to break through certain bottlenecks in cultivation, resulting in a great surge in progress.
While Huyan Li might still be unaware and oblivious to all these changes, the higher-ups of the Elephant Armored Sect on the high platform, led by Huyan Zhen, saw everything clearly.
After all, Huyan Li had grown up by their side since childhood, and they were the ones who had guided his cultivation step by step.
Furthermore, Huyan Li was not only the direct grandson of the current Sect Master and the most outstanding young disciple of the Huyan Clan, but he was also the one with the highest Martial Soul aptitude among the younger generation of their Elephant Armored Sect.
He was bound to become one of the candidates to inherit the position of Elephant Armored Sect Master in the future, so they naturally paid extremely close attention to him.
Seeing that Huyan Li, who usually rarely practiced the utilization of the Diamond Force, had actually made noticeable progress in its usage under the formidable pressure of his opponent, Celestial Elephant Huyan Zhen couldn't help but nod secretly.
Feeling quite gratified in his heart, Huyan Zhen thought to himself.
'It seems Ah Li not only possesses extraordinary Martial Soul aptitude, but his comprehension is also quite good. He has always preferred to attack forcefully with raw strength, fighting recklessly, and has always disliked the Defense System path.'
'He even wanted to take the Extreme Stream, pure Power Attack System path, and only dropped the idea under my stern reprimand. Originally, I thought he might simply lack natural comprehension for the Diamond Force, making his cultivation twice as hard for half the result, which was why he was unwilling to learn it.'
'Now it seems that is not the case. If Ah Li can put in hard work, seriously study the profound uses of the Diamond Force, and enhance his defensive strength while keeping the Power Attack System as his core, combined with my insights into the Dao of Strength, his future achievements will definitely surpass mine, leading our Elephant Armored Sect even further.'
At this moment, many thoughts crossed Huyan Zhen's mind, and he made up his mind on a certain matter, placing high expectations on Huyan Li.
At the same time, beside Huyan Zhen, the Third Elder of the Elephant Armored Sect, Huyan Heng, revealed a thoughtful expression after noticing Huyan Li's improvement and advancement on the plaza.
He was not only one of the elders of the Elephant Armored Sect, but also the Dean of the Elephant Armor Academy, responsible for all affairs of the academy.
Naturally, he had deep insights into teaching.
Seeing Huyan Li's progress in battle at this moment, he felt gratified but couldn't help but sigh with emotion. Battle was indeed the most effective and direct means for a Soul Master to improve themselves.
Since ancient times, countless Soul Masters had gained tremendously in battle, thereby breaking through their cultivation bottlenecks.
A true powerhouse still had to be born from battle.
Otherwise, relying solely on blind cultivation and solitary study, no matter how high one's cultivation level was or how many ultimate techniques one mastered, they could not be considered a true powerhouse.
**
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