Chapter 161: Marquis Grade

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"Marquis-tier power..."

Li Ju closed his eyes and concentrated, observing a "core" within his body that emitted a seven-colored radiance yet felt somewhat ethereal.

This core was known as the Protocore, which was the hallmark power of Marquis-tier powerhouses in the Lair World.

In the sword-art cultivation system of the Lair World, the initial Knight and Baronet tiers were purely about physical tempering. Upon reaching the Baron and Viscount tiers, sword practitioners began to control certain elemental forces. When they reached the Earl tier, the elemental forces controlled by sword practitioners further increased until they completely filled their entire bodies.

It could be said that aside from the differing powers mastered during cultivation, the sword-art system did not differ much from the Tri-Element Martial Arts and True Qi Martial Arts in its initial steps. All of them cultivated the physical body first and then the energy.

However, once the sword-art system reached the Marquis tier, it began to develop the hallmark power distinct from other systems: the "Protocore." Because Earl-tier powerhouses in this world had already achieved a state where elemental forces filled their bodies, ancient sword-art powerhouses, in order to further strengthen their own prowess, referenced the life structure of Marquis-tier lair creatures and used special methods to compel Earl-tier powerhouses to compress and condense a massive amount of elemental forces into a Protocore.

The Protocore was, in essence, a highly condensed body of elemental forces.

By using the method of compressing a Protocore, powerhouses of the sword-art system could further absorb more elemental forces and elevate their strength. However, due to the high concentration of elemental forces within their bodies, the physical bodies of Marquis-tier powerhouses also began to acquire the properties of elemental forces, steadily marching toward elementalized physical forms.

The more profound the cultivation of a Marquis-tier powerhouse, the more severe their physical elementalization became. Moreover, not limited to just their physical bodies, the souls of Marquis-tier powerhouses also underwent mutation, infected with elemental properties by the power of the Protocore, and their souls gradually began to merge into a single entity with their elementalized bodies.

At the Marquis tier, the sword-art system also diverged onto a separate path from True Qi Martial Arts and Tri-Element Martial Arts. While True Qi Martial Arts and Tri-Element Martial Arts both shifted to cultivating the soul after finishing the cultivation of energy, the sword-art system went all the way down a single path centered entirely on energy cultivation.

"Unfortunately, my method of forcibly controlling subordinates using powerful Nian Yuan no longer works on Marquis-tier powerhouses."

Li Ju thought to himself as he carefully sensed the power of the Protocore within his body, which had been augmented by the Gem Turtle's lair.

The integration of soul and body endowed every Marquis-tier powerhouse with extremely formidable soul-defense capabilities. A Marquis-tier powerhouse might not be proficient in manipulating soul power, but they would undoubtedly possess extraordinarily powerful soul defenses.

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In terms of total soul power, Marquis-tier powerhouses were certainly inferior to Li Ju, but their formidable soul-defense capabilities prevented Li Ju from using soul manipulation to deal with them.

"The power of a Marquis-tier powerhouse is roughly equivalent to a martial artist in the Lesser Tri-Element realm wielding a divine weapon in Tri-Element Martial Arts, or a Perception-realm martial artist in True Qi Martial Arts."

"Whether in the world of True Qi Martial Arts or Tri-Element Martial Arts, a Marquis-tier powerhouse can be considered a formidable figure in their own right."

Li Ju silently estimated the output capacity of a Marquis-tier powerhouse in his heart.

"Furthermore, backed by the power of the Protocore, Marquis-tier powerhouses have initially shaken off the influence of their lairs."

If an ordinary person gained Viscount-tier or Earl-tier power by refining a Viscount-tier or Earl-tier lair, that power would be lost once they lost control of the lair. However, the controllers of Marquis-tier lairs no longer had to worry about their power vanishing if they lost their lairs.

Once formed, the Protocore possessed the characteristic of permanent existence and would not collapse due to the loss of the lair's empowerment. Although losing the Marquis-tier lair they controlled would certainly cause a drop in their strength, it would not cause them to plummet directly out of the Marquis tier.

However, if anyone wished to exploit this characteristic of the Protocore to mass-produce Marquis-tier powerhouses using a Marquis-tier lair, it was utterly impossible.

Whether the energy required to help a human condense a Protocore was simply too immense, or whether there were some hidden natural rules restricting it, every time a Marquis-tier lair helped someone achieve the Marquis tier, it would lose one hundred years of its lifespan. Given the production rate of Marquis-tier lairs, that lost century of lifespan was enough to give birth to one or two dozen Marquis-tier lair creatures.

To suffer the loss of one or two dozen Marquis-tier lair creatures just to forge a single human Marquis-tier powerhouse—such an unwise act was something few would ever commit.

Even to minimize damage to the lifespan of a Marquis-tier lair, the many Marquis-tier families within the Sea Snake Kingdom generally chose not to replace the controller of a lair. Besides, Marquis-tier powerhouses enjoyed long lifespans, easily living for several hundred years. Therefore, unless an accident befell the lair's controller, one would not see a Marquis family change its lair controller for centuries.

"Still, powerful as Marquis-tier powerhouses are, they are nothing much to me. The most crucial ones are those Duke-tier powerhouses..."

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Recalling the Sword of Yellow Topaz that had abruptly materialized in Ranze's hand that day, Li Ju couldn't help but let his gaze flicker slightly.

Based solely on that display by Ranze, Li Ju had already concluded that Ranze was a Duke-tier powerhouse.

Compared to Marquis-tier powerhouses, the greatest leap for Duke-tier powerhouses was that they possessed a "Domain" uniquely belonging to themselves.

After cultivating the power of the Protocore to its ultimate limit, a Marquis-tier powerhouse could engrave a personal Domain unique to themselves onto their Protocore. There were no rules or requirements for how this Domain should be engraved; the Domain engraved on the Protocore by every individual was entirely different.

How to engrave it depended entirely on a sudden flash of inspiration. A Marquis-tier powerhouse might rack their brains for hundreds of years pondering how to engrave their Domain without success, whereas another might simply listen to a concert in their spare time and suddenly understand how to engrave the Domain upon their Protocore.

The feedback provided by a Duke-tier lair, on the other hand, was to supply the controller with the Domain-engraving blueprint of the lair creatures belonging to the lair they controlled, granting the lair controller the eligibility to engrave a Domain that originally belonged to the lair creatures.

Such a Domain-engraving blueprint derived from lair creatures could only be engraved by the controller of that specific lair. Anyone else who attempted to engrave it would meet no other fate than the shattering of their Protocore and death by bodily explosion.

Duke-tier powerhouses, equipped with Domains, could store certain objects within their Domains, much like carrying a portable storage space, allowing them to freely retrieve stored items from their Domains while in the outside world.

The specific situation was no different from Ranze's performance at that time.

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