Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 2

Book 2: Academy of Monster

Chapter 8: Monstrous Teacher

Shrek Academy occupied an extremely large area. Large areas of vacant land separated the buildings from one another. After Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had exited the dormitory, Wang Dong continued until he stood ﬁrmly within one of the empty spaces outside the dormitory, then turned around and beckoned Huo Yuhao towards him by curling his ﬁnger.

Huo Yuhao’s heart was still burning with fury, but he didn’t immediately rush towards Wang Dong in anger. After undergoing a life-and-death experience in the Great Star Dou Forest, he’d learned one thing at the very least, which was to stay calm no matter what.

That old man who’d been leaning on the chair at the dormitory’s entrance raised his head slightly. A gleam of curiosity ﬂashed through his faint yellow eyes as he gazed at Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong with interest.

A faint golden light ﬂashed through Huo Yuhao’s eyes, and a white soul ring subsequently rose from his feet, activating his Spirit Eyes.

Seeing his “ten year soul ring” Wang Dong let out a soft laugh. “I’m very curious as to how you managed to enter this school. You dare to challenge me with just this bit of skill? I won’t even have to use my martial soul to deal with you.”

As he spoke, the tip of Wang Dong’s left foot tapped the ground. His body was like an arrow as he charged towards Huo Yuhao. Not only was he fast, but appeared as if there was also an abnormal agility hidden inside his movement. He arrived before Huo Yuhao in the blink of an eye, and raised his right leg to kick him in the chest.

With this raise of Wang Dong’s leg, only Huo Yuhao was able to make out that Wang Dong had a pair of legs that exceeded the proportion of a normal person’s. Before he realized it, the leg had already arrived in front of him.

In that instant, Huo Yuhao moved. He rapidly took one step to the right whilst simultaneously using his left hand to push Wang Dong’s foot away.

“Hmm?” Wang Dong clearly hadn’t expected Huo Yuhao to be able to dodge his swift kick. He drew back the right leg he’d used to step out with in a ﬂash, and dodged Huo Yuhao’s left

hand. At the same time, he shot out another kick lightning-like speed, this time aimed towards Huo Yuhao's neck.

It was as if Huo Yuhao could foresee Wang Dong’s actions. When Wang Dong shot his leg out, Huo Yuhao simultaneously lowered his body and crouched down. In the next instant, his body bounced back up, and his right shoulder just happened to collide with the lower portion of Wang Dong’s thigh.

Both of their movements were very quick. From an outsider’s point of view, it looked like Wang Dong had purposely sent his leg upwards such that Huo Yuhao could use his shoulder to push it up further.

It had to be said that Wang Dong’s body was extremely strong. A normal person would’ve had their center of balance destabilized after having their thigh pushed up like that. However, Wang Dong’s right leg was instead actually raised up over him, as he did a split. His left leg was still ﬁrmly planted on the ground.

Huo Yuhao felt a burst of both softness and elasticity from the shoulder he’d used to bump into Wang Dong’s thigh with. He didn’t let Wang Dong regain the upper hand as he rapidly

charged forwards, immediately ramming into Wang Dong in an attempt to take advantage of him while he was still standing on one leg.

Facing Huo Yuhao, who’d been dogging his heels till this point, Wang Dong made an astonishing movement. His right leg was still raised up in the air as he shockingly continued to move it upwards behind him, along with the upper half of his body. At the same time, his left leg shot out towards Huo Yuhao. In that moment, the width at which his legs were spread out had already completely exceeded the limits that normal people were capable of imagining.

Although Huo Yuhao had relied on his Spirit Eyes’ spiritual detection skill to accurately ascertain Wang Dong's previous attacks, he’d already moved. Thus, he wasn't able to withdraw even though he’d sensed Wang Dong's movements.

One was bound to have a certain amount of advantage over their opponent when they could anticipate their opponent’s movements. When Huo Yuhao saw that Wang Dong’s left leg had sprung up towards his chin, both of Huo Yuhao’s hands simultaneously made a downwards pressing motion, colliding with his left leg.

“Bang——” Wang Dong’s strength was exceptional. His leg carried a powerful vibration that was difﬁcult to describe. Huo Yuhao felt a burst of numbness from both of his palms, causing him to subconsciously activate the Mysterious Jade Hands technique. Despite him doing so, he still ended up staggering back in retreat.

Wang Dong’s right leg that had fallen backwards only touched the ground lightly before his left leg that had been lifted up landed on the ground again, causing his whole body to ﬂip over once again. Wang Dong’s right leg resembled a whip as it went straight down towards Huo Yuhao’s shoulder with a whooshing sound. He was evidently infuriated that Huo Yuhao had previously pushed his thigh up.

Huo Yuhao, who was in the process of retreating, reacted the instant Wang Dong’s right leg touched the ground, bouncing backwards. Huo Yuhao’s footsteps suddenly became quick, and with a sway of his ﬁgure, he rapidly headed towards Wang Dong’s left side, getting out of the way of her strike.

“Bang——” Wang Dong’s right leg that had whipped downwards hit the ground ferociously. He actually left a shallow footprint on the hard stone ground. Following closely after that, his whole body became like a windmill as he

charged towards Huo Yuhao. Both of his legs were like two maces as he unleashed an attack akin to like howling winds and torrential rains in Huo Yuhao’s direction.

Despite the surprise he’d received after going through their previous confrontation, Huo Yuhao had calmed down at this moment. He activated his Spiritual Detection ability in an area around him, and calmly determined every single one of Wang Dong’s attacks in advance. Under Wang Dong’s ﬁerce attacks, the Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks that he knew very little about was like a small boat that was battered on the left and right, yet refused to capsize.

Wang Dong was also becoming more and more apprehensive as he fought with Huo Yuhao. He could clearly sense that Huo Yuhao’s strength was far worse than his own. Regardless of whether it was his speed or strength, all of them were completely inferior to his own. However, his attacks still weren’t able to land on Huo Yuhao. Huo Yuhao wasn’t quick, yet he was always able to clearly discern his movements beforehand, and was thereby able to effectively evade his attacks. Wang Dong had already attempted to make a feint, but had still been unable to deceive his opponent.

Not only was Wang Dong arrogant, he was extremely stubborn too. Since they’d agreed to not use their martial soul, he deﬁnitely wouldn’t use his. He could only continue to intensify his attacks, not believing that Huo Yuhao could continue to persevere.

Indeed, Huo Yuhao had already reached the point of being unable to persevere for much longer. Not only were the attacks from Wang Dong’s legs powerful to the point that he almost couldn’t withstand them, but the speed at which he attacked was also unusually fast. He could only barely contend against Wang Dong while relying on his Spiritual Detection, under the condition that he was fully concentrated on the ﬁght. However, as time passed, the disparity between the basic structures of their bodies gradually appeared.

Huo Yuhao had lived an arduous life since his childhood, and was malnourished. As such, the nourishment that the Mysterious Heaven Technique had provided to his body with had also just begun. Compared to Wang Dong, who had deep- rooted fundamentals, he was far worse in terms of his body’s development. Even though he’d utilised his martial soul, and even though Wang Dong still hadn’t, the nourishment that his soulforce provided was solely in regards to his internals. After they’d fought for a long time, it was inevitable that minute mistakes would emerge on Huo Yuhao’s end. Both of Wang

Dong’s legs had only accurately swept at his side a few times, but his body was already experiencing a scorching pain. The Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks that he knew very little about had also started to become messy, and he became more and more passive.

This won’t do. If things continue on in this manner, I’ll deﬁnitely lose. Huo Yuhao retreated as fast as he could, as soon, he wouldn’t be able to keep avoiding Wang Dong’s attacks.

Suddenly, he raised his head without notice. Since this movement was quite large, Wang Dong also subconsciously looked at his face. He clearly saw a hint of purple ﬂashed through both of Huo Yuhao’s eyes. Immediately following this, Wang Dong felt like his brain had been pricked by a needle and, with a sharp pain, his mind momentarily became blank.

How could Huo Yuhao let this kind of opportunity slip by? He suddenly pounced forwards with a large stride forwards. He leapt up, and both of his arms wrapped tightly around both of Wang Dong’s arms. Both of his legs then wound themselves around Wang Dong’s waist, forcibly knocking him to the ground.

Wang Dong had always used his legs when commencing his attacks. At this moment, Huo Yuhao was quite anxious. With his legs wrapped around Wang Dong's waist, how could he exert any force? As long as he continued to subdue Wang Dong, everything would be ﬁne. Huo Yuhao could only subdue him and hope that everything would be ﬁne.

The stabbing pain in his brain caused Wang Dong to tightly furrow his eyebrows. However, that only lasted for a couple seconds before he became clear-headed once again. Nevertheless, Huo Yuhao had already knocked his body to the ground. His waist was tightly locked between Huo Yuhao’s legs, and his arms were also bound by Huo Yuhao. The distance that separated their faces was no more than an inch, and they could hear each other’s breathing.

Huo Yuhao panted ﬁercely as he let out a low growl, “Are you going to surrender or not?”

“Surrender my ass! Let me go!” Wang Dong ﬂew into a rage and forcefully struggled against Huo Yuhao’s grip. However, Huo Yuhao was using all of his strength to restrain him, and had even incorporated his soulforce. Under the circumstances, and considering that he couldn’t use his martial soul, escaping wasn’t easy for him at all.

“Are you still not admitting your loss? If I’d used a blade earlier, you’d already be dead.” Huo Yuhao didn’t show any weaknesses at all as he let out a low roar. At that moment, while his body was in close contact to Wang Dong’s, he found out that Wang Dong’s body wasn’t only extremely soft, but was also quite elastic. Furthermore, it even had a sort of gentle feeling to it. His body was also unexpectedly releasing a faintly fresh aroma that smelled extremely nice.

After hearing his words, Wang Dong was stunned. His resistance against Huo Yuhao’s grip instantly decreased. He was right! the stabbing pain in his head and his previous

dizziness hadn’t lasted long earlier, but since the two of them had been so close, Huo Yuhao would have deﬁnitely had enough time to hurt him if he’d wanted to.

“I’ve lost. Quickly get off me.” Wang Dong said angrily. His eyes were ﬁlled with a look of hate and denial.

However, Huo Yuhao didn’t release him. Instead, he coldly replied, “The ﬁve conditions that you previously set aren’t something that I’m unwilling to do, however, I’m not doing it because of your threats, but because of the respect I have for a roommate. I know that you’re stronger than me, and that I deﬁnitely wouldn’t be your match if we were both to use our martial souls. However, remember this: If you dare to humiliate me again, then even if I’m beaten to death by you, I’ll deﬁnitely make sure you pay the price.”

When he saw Huo Yuhao’s increasing viciousness, which got to the point that felt like he was looking into the eyes of a blood-thirsty soul beast, the hate in Wang Dong’s eyes dissipated. What replaced it was a slightly dismayed look. In the ﬁeld of strength, Huo Yuhao was clearly a lot weaker than him, but in the ﬁeld of imposingness, he’d completely lost.

Huo Yuhao slowly released Wang Dong and stood up. While facing Wang Dong, he retreated a few steps. Then, he turned around, and headed back towards their dorm room.

Wang Dong sat dazedly on the ground for a while, before ﬁnally standing up again. Then, he slowly walked towards their dorm room as well. When he arrived at the dorm’s main entrance, the voice of an old man echoed out, “You have indeed lost. Not just in battle, but even your heart has lost.”

“Why?” Wang Dong suddenly turned around to gaze at the old man. With an unresigned look on his face, he replied, “I’m clearly stronger than him. If I were to really ﬁght against him, he wouldn’t have even been able to touch me. In which way did he achieve victory over me?”

The old man pointed towards his own heart, “On the basis of this. He has a fearless heart, while you lack one. Not being afraid of death isn’t something that just anyone can do.”

Wang Dong was stunned. After a while, he bowed deeply towards the old man. “Grandpa, thank you for your advice.” After speaking, he walked towards the dorm room with large strides.

Upon his return to the dorm room, Wang Dong saw Huo Yuhao, who’d already begun to meditate on his wooden bed. He wanted to say something, but in the end, he held it in. After letting out a snort, he made his bed.

Compared to Huo Yuhao’s poverty-stricken conditions, Wang Dong’s bed was set up with a thick fur mattress that had been made from the fur of some unknown soul beast. It looked thick and soft. Furthermore, he even had a soft quilt. His luggage had already ﬁlled the wardrobe beside him, but there were still many things left out on his table. Wang Dong seemed to be too lazy to ﬁnish unpacking, instead pulling the quilt over his head to sleep with feeling of injustice.

Over the following two days, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong minded their own business, and did their own things without bothering one another. The thing that astonished Wang Dong the most was that Huo Yuhao seemed to be in a cultivation state at all times, except for when he was eating. He could faintly sense the strength of Huo Yuhao’s soulforce, but the more he sensed it, the more incredulous he felt. Just by relying on his strength, how was able to beat me?

The admission period for new students ﬁnally ended, and the freshmen dormitory also became lively. Although the rooms weren’t big, they could still ﬁt two people in them. It was very noisy outside, but the sound-prooﬁng abilities of the dorm rooms were very good.

Huo Yuhao had been cultivating incessantly during these past few days. His previous ﬁght with Wang Dong had inspired him quite a bit. The reason that he’d previously been able to overcome his opponent, and was able to achieve victory, was because he’d relied on the skill that the Skydream Iceworm had given him after awakening.

Iceworms truly weren’t very strong soul beasts; the four soul skills that the million-year Skydream Iceworm had bestowed on Huo Yuhao weren’t very strong either. They were, respectively: Spiritual Detection, Spiritual Sharing, Spiritual Interference, and Spirit Shock.

Huo Yuhao was relatively more skilled with the ﬁrst two skills, and had already veriﬁed their impressiveness with Bei Bei. On the other hand, Spiritual Interference was a domain- type skill that could interfere with all living creatures inside a ﬁfteen metre radius of Huo Yuhao, who would produce spiritual undulations. However, the strength of its interference

wasn’t high. With his current level of cultivation, the most he could do was make people turn absent-minded for a moment. Furthermore, he wasn’t even able to maintain the skill for a full three seconds; the soulforce consumption was much higher than his previous two skills.

Spirit Shock was the only skill among the four that had even a tiny bit of attack power. Since it was a single-target skill, the strength of its attack was slightly stronger than the domain- type Spiritual Interference. However, it wasn’t much stronger than it either. The reason that Huo Yuhao had been able to overcome Wang Dong and achieve victory in that ﬁght was because he’d combined Spirit Shock with his Purple Demon Eyes. The combined effect of the two was even better than he’d imagined. Naturally, this was also because Wang Dong hadn’t been able to put up any defenses due to the sudden nature of the attack. If he’d made any preparations, the strength of his Spirit Shock would’ve been heavily reduced.

However, no matter what way you put it, Huo Yuhao ﬁnally had the basic requirements to become a control-type soul master by relying with these four spiritual-type skills. However, his eldest senior brother had previously told him that new students wouldn’t be separated into departments during their ﬁrst year. Everything could be done after he’d survived their ﬁrst year.

“Oi, class starts today. Are you still going to sit there like a fool?” Wang Dong’s voice roused Huo Yuhao from his pondering state. He’d just returned from his breakfast, and was planning to cultivate for a while.

“Class is starting?” Huo Yuhao asked subconsciously. This was their ﬁrst conversation after their ﬁght.

Wang Dong didn’t even look at him as he indifferently replied, “There’s still an hour left.”

“Oh.” After Huo Yuhao responded, he shut his eyes and began to meditate. After his hard work during these few days, his familiarity with the Mysterious Heaven Technique had increased a bit. An hour was enough for him to circulate the Mysterious Heaven Technique through an entire cycle, which would allow his soulforce to improve by a small step.

Wang Dong didn’t even listen to his reply. When he turned back to look at Huo Yuhao, he discovered that he’d actually started to meditate again, causing him to involuntarily murmur to himself, “Truly a lunatic.” When he ﬁnished speaking, he left the dorm room without even looking back.

During these past two days, he’d never seen Huo Yuhao lie down to sleep.

The large gates of the white teaching area were opened wide, and the new students who were now wearing white-coloured school uniforms walked inside in single ﬁle. Everyone’s clothing had the symbol of a small green monster on their left breast pocket, which was the symbol of Shrek Academy.

Students from different year groups had uniforms of different colours; they had uniforms that were the same colour as their teaching areas.

As Huo Yuhao rushed towards the new student’s teaching area, he was just in time to hear the ringing of the bell. He rapidly rushed inside and saw the sign for Class 1 on the ﬁrst room to the left on the ﬁrst ﬂoor, causing him to immediately dash inside without any hesitation.

At that moment, the spacious classroom had already been ﬁlled with people. Because Huo Yuhao arrived at the last moment, the number of seats left for him to choose from were very little. He barely managed to ﬁnd a seat with great difﬁculty. His deskmate was a relatively pretty young lady. However, this young lady’s appearance was somewhat similar to Wang Dong’s when he’d ﬁrst met him. She had a haughty look on her face when she raised her head, and didn’t even spare him a glance.

Huo Yuhao only managed to observe the surrounding situation after he’d sat down. The classroom was very large— there were a full hundred people who were in the same class as him. Following the idea that there were roughly a thousand freshman students, there should be roughly ten freshman classes or so.

He quickly found Wang Dong, simply because Wang Dong’s looks were too outstanding. The people sitting around him were actually all girls, and none of them were weaker than the female student that sat beside Huo Yuhao in terms of appearance.

At that moment, a person walked in the classroom’s door. It was an old lady with wrinkled skin and shriveled hair. Her grizzled hair had been rolled into a bun, and she wore set of white robes. Furthermore, her body’s ﬁgure was average in size. The most unusual thing about her were her extremely bright eyes, which seemed to radiate light from her black pupils.

Huo Yuhao’s martial soul was his Spirit Eyes. As a result of this, he was especially sensitive to the eyes of others. He could sense a strong level of spiritual suppression from this old woman’s eyes.

Even though the old woman was very old, her back was ramrod straight as she walked towards the speaking platform. There was no doubt about it; she was deﬁnitely the teacher of this freshman class.

When they saw the teacher enter, the previously disorderly class immediately quieted down, and their gazes all gathered on the speaking platform.

The old woman’s gaze calmly swept across the crowd from left to right, immediately causing everyone to feel her gaze

raking over them, which in turn caused a formless pressure to appear in their hearts.

“I am Zhou Yi, and am the teacher in charge of your class. I’m not sure how many of you will be able to keep up with me for the following year, but I have to tell you something: in my class, trash can’t pass my assessments. I want to cultivate monsters, not idiots.”

Teacher Zhou’s voice had a kind of extremely unpleasant rasp to it; it resembled a broken gong.

When they heard her words, an extremely angry look appeared on the faces of many students. They had passed the entrance assessment that enabled them to become students of Shrek Academy, and had been carefully selected from various countries on the continent. Amongst their peers, the word ‘elite’ could absolutely be used to describe them. However, they had turned into ‘trash’ and ‘idiots’ under the words of this Teacher Zhou.

However, Huo Yuhao was extremely calm. When he saw this Teacher Zhou, he recalled the words of his eldest senior

brother and Teacher Xiao Ya. This Teacher Zhou was very strict, and had a bad temper, but she truly had ability.

“Those who’ve gotten into a ﬁght during these past few days of enrollment, stand up.” Zhou Yi’s following sentence stunned the entire class once again.

They’d just been enrolled, who would have the free time to start a ﬁght in the academy? Even if they had fought, who’d admit to it?

As the entire class remained silent, only a single person stood up. It was Huo Yuhao. He didn’t stand up because he was honest, but because he faintly sensed that this Teacher Zhou wasn’t a person who’d play her cards according to common sense.

Seeing Huo Yuhao stand up, Wang Dong let out a ‘humph’.

Not willing to be outdone, he also stood up.

Of the entire class of a hundred students, only two had stood up. They immediately became ‘cranes in a ﬂock of chickens’ as they became the focus of the entire class’s attention.

“Only two?” Zhou Yi raised her eyebrows. “Truly a group of trash. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that not daring to provoke others is a sign of mediocrity? Other than these two, everyone else go outside and run a hundred laps around Shrek Plaza. Anyone who can’t ﬁnish these one hundred laps will be directly expelled.”

Once she spoke, the whole class ﬂew into an uproar. This was only their ﬁrst day of school, and class hadn’t even begun yet. Who could accept the fact that they were actually being punished for not ﬁghting?

One of the students immediately stood up. “Teacher, I refuse to accept this. Why do we have to be punished for not ﬁghting?”

Zhou Yi indifferently replied, “Because I said so. If you’re not willing to accept this, you can screw off. As a teacher, I have the authority to expel any student I want. I’ll give you one minute. If I don’t see all of you running around Shrek Plaza within that minute, all of you will be expelled.”

As she spoke, a terrifying aura was suddenly released from her body. The powerful soulforce undulations caused every single student to be choked by the pressure. Following that, soul rings started to rise from Zhou Yi’s feet.

Two yellow, two purple, and two black soul rings burst forth with a strong aura that was hard to describe. This Teacher Zhou was actually a Soul Emperor-level expert, and furthermore, she had two ten thousand year soul rings. If she wanted to take care of the hundred students in front of her, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it would be as easy as turning her palm over.

These students were only freshmen, after all. Under the strong pressure, just who would dare to resist? All of them dejectedly walked out the door. Zhou Yi withdrew her soul rings after releasing them, and her eyes followed the students out of the classroom as she gazed at them expressionlessly.

“I’ll give you a reminder: you only have two hours. After two hours, the people who haven’t ﬁnished the hundred laps will be considered to be unqualiﬁed. This is your ﬁrst test after entering the academy, and those unqualiﬁed will be expelled.”

When they heard her words, the students’ movements immediately sped up. They quickly ran to the ﬁeld after leaving the classroom.

Wang Dong was slightly astonished as he glanced at Huo Yuhao. At that moment, only the two of them were left in the class. Zhou Yi’s expression seemed to have become much warmer as she beckoned towards them.

Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao walked towards her together.

Looking at the two of them, Zhou Yi nodded her head in a satisﬁed manner. Then, she said, “Not bad, at least two of you have some guts. Tell me, who did you ﬁght with, and why did you ﬁght with them?”

Wang Dong was just about to speak, but Huo Yuhao interjected, “Reporting to the teacher, we are roommates. We had a small conﬂict due to our opposing views.”

Zhou Yi seemed to be very interested as she said, “Oh? You’re even roommates. Fighting is good, but ﬁghting between

roommates is the best kind of ﬁghting. You’ll have competition this way, and you’ll also be able to improve together.”

As they stood in front of Zhou Yi, both Huo Yuhao or Wang Dong felt their backs become cool as their backs become covered in cold sweat. Just now, this Teacher Zhou had simply been too domineering. Furthermore, she really didn’t play her cards according to common sense! Her way of thinking was entirely different from an ordinary person’s. She was truly deserving of the title that Bei Bei had called her by, the ‘Monstrous Teacher’.

A trace of a smile that was even uglier than one’s crying face appeared on Zhou Yi’s face. Her aged face even seemed to twitch. “Fighting is a good thing, but I don’t really like ﬁghting amongst my own students. Remember, you should ﬁght with students from other classes if you want to start a ﬁght. Our Shrek Academy’s rules have always been relaxed, and this is for the sake of developing individuality within our students. Thus, we’ve always turned a blind eye towards the issue of ﬁghting. However, there are certain limits to this, which I’ll tell you about. Students from higher year groups aren’t allowed to provoke or attack students from lower year groups. If we ﬁnd out that someone has done this, the punishment is immediate expulsion. However, students from lower year groups can challenge older students, but this requires the presence of a

teacher, to ensure the fact that older students aren’t simply bullying the younger students. As for students of the same year group, you can ﬁght as you wish. As long as you don’t cause any fatal wounds, the school won’t interfere at all. Honestly, ﬁghting is an exceptionally good way of increasing your strength.”

“If you can reach your second year, you can go to the Soul Duelling Arena to ﬁght. If you win a lot, the school will even reward you. However for now, you two can go run outside with the others.”

Wang Dong was stunned. “Teacher, didn’t you say that we had guts?”

Zhou Yi still had a smile on her face. “But I never said that you wouldn’t need to run! School has only just started, yet you’ve already fought with your roommate. You two really have future prospects. Thus, since you two have so many future prospects, the difﬁculty of your test should be harder than that of the other’s. Moreover, you two of you should share both delight and hardship with your fellow students. The amount of time you two have to ﬁnish those one hundred laps will be the same as the others. Look, a moment has already passed while you two weren’t being careful!”

Wang Dong still wanted to say something, but he was pulled away by Huo Yuhao, who didn’t hesitate to turn around and run outside.

Although Wang Dong felt somewhat depressed, he still followed Huo Yuhao out to run. “What’d you pull me away for? This ‘Teacher Zhou’ is truly a lunatic.”

Huo Yuhao unhappily replied, “Can you beat her in a verbal battle? Can you beat her in a ﬁght? If you can’t do either of these things, and you still want to stay in Shrek Academy, then

you’ll have to follow her orders. Quickly run, I believe that her earlier words about expelling anyone who’s unable to ﬁnish a hundred laps aren’t false at all.”

Shrek Plaza was right outside the freshman school building. It wasn’t considered too big; a single lap was roughly three hundred metres or so. To normal people, running a hundred laps around the plaza was deﬁnitely not a simple task. However, to these young students who had the foundation of a soul master, it wasn’t actually that hard. As long as they ran seriously, they’d manage to ﬁnish running their hundred laps within two hours.

After Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had joined the ‘great army’ of running, many sounds of schadenfreude immediately echoed out. However, the two people didn’t even bother to care about them. They were already behind by ﬁfteen minutes, so they had to make the most of every minute that they had.

Whilst running, Wang Dong suddenly asked Huo Yuhao, “What skill did you use to beat me that day? I still haven’t been able to ﬁgure it out. Could it be that your martial soul is a spiritual-type martial soul?”

Huo Yuhao nodded.

Wang Dong was stunned, “It’s really a spiritual-type martial soul! No wonder I couldn’t see what your martial soul was after you’d used your soul ring. At least my loss can’t be considered too much of an injustice.”

Huo Yuhao felt slightly helpless as he replied, “You’re too arrogant. If you’d also used your martial soul, I would’ve deﬁnitely had no chance at all. I can sense that your soulforce is much stronger than mine.”

Wang Dong was slightly pleased as he said, “That’s obvious. Amongst this year’s freshmen, the number of students who can compare with me in terms of strength are as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns. You merely have a single ten year soul ring, thus you’re naturally not my opponent.”

Huo Yuhao disliked Wang Dong’s arrogant appearance. “Don’t forget that you just lost to that ‘ten year soul ring’.”

“Ugh…” Wang Dong unhappily replied, “I get it, let’s not talk about this anymore. Seeing that you protected me in front of

that perverted teacher, I’ll consider the previous matter settled. In the future, I’ll take care of you. If anyone wants to bully you, I’ll protect you.”

Huo Yuhao was left speechless. “I don’t need your protection.” After saying this, he sped up his pace and ran forward.

Wang Dong followed Huo Yuhao as he sped up. The physical ﬁtness of his body was much better than Huo Yuhao’s, so keeping up with his increase in speed was effortless to him.

Wang Dong was slightly dissatisﬁed as he said, “You’re too unreasonable!”

Huo Yuhao glared at him and replied, “If you’d treat me as a student on equal terms, you wouldn’t have to have this kind of feeling.”

Wang Dong curled his lip. “Since I was young, there’s never been someone the same age as me who was able to make me treat them as an equal.”

Huo Yuhao humphed, and stopped looking at him. “When words get sour, adding extra words is meaningless.”

Wang Dong also stopped talking. He suddenly sped up, overtaking Huo Yuhao as he used an astonishing speed to run around Shrek Plaza.

It had to be said that even though Wang Dong was arrogant, his cultivation truly stood out from the masses. Furthermore, his physical ﬁtness was extremely strong. Once he’d sped up, there was no one from Class 1 who could actually catch up to him.

At that moment, Zhou Yi had already arrived beside Shrek Plaza. She simply stood there as she calmly watched the students run. Her gaze was quickly attracted to Wang Dong, and her gaze changed slightly before returning to normal.

Time quickly passed. As the number of completed laps increased, the breathing of the running students gradually became rougher. The physical ﬁtness and cultivation level of the students was revealed at this moment. Zhou Yi had never said that they were prohibited from using the assistance of soulforce, so everyone had started using soulforce to recover

their physical strength in order to continue their long-distance running.

There were more than ten people running at the very front of the group; their speed wasn’t slow at all. Of the group, the leader was Wang Dong. Although he’d come out late, he’d managed to catch up to the people who had the most laps completed within an hour. He’d even overtaken them. Just looking at his appearance, he didn’t seem to have used up much energy; his speed hadn’t decreased at all the entire time.

After the people at the front of the class, there was a large group of students. There were at least seventy students within this group, and they all ran at a relatively even speed. Running didn’t seem to be too exhausting for them. Looking at their speed, it wouldn’t be a problem for them to complete a hundred laps within their two allotted hours.

Behind them were still more than ten students who’d been left behind in the back. Huo Yuhao was amongst this group. For the sake of catching up to the students in front, Huo Yuhao had used a very quick speed to start running as soon as he’d started. However, the drain on his physical strength had started increasing as soon as he ﬁnished running twenty or so laps. Not only was he the last person in the class, the number

of laps that he’d run was even fewer than the others, due to him having started ﬁfteen minutes later.

More than half of the total time had already passed when Zhou Yi’s voice suddenly echoed out in everyone’s ears, “Speed up and use my location as the ﬁnishing point.”

In the middle of her speaking, Wang Dong had swept past her with a “swoosh”, becoming the ﬁrst person to complete the hundred laps.

After using an extremely fast speed to ﬁnish the hundred laps, Wang Dong’s handsome face had also turned rosy. He panted slightly as he slowed his pace, and he ﬁnally stopped after he’d walked another lap around the plaza.

Gradually, more and more students began to complete their hundred laps after Wang Dong. At this moment, there were still ﬁfteen minutes left until the two hours were up.

After Wang Dong stopped, his gaze quickly landed on Huo Yuhao, who was running at the back. He couldn’t help but

furrow his brow as he muttered to himself, “How did I lose to him...?”

Huo Yuhao’s speed had already become much slower than his starting speed. His school uniform was soaked with sweat, and since his martial soul was a spiritual-type martial soul, the help that his soulforce provided to his body was smaller than normal. If it weren’t for him cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique, he would’ve been in an even worse state.

If Huo Yuhao had had the full two hours to complete the hundred laps, he could’ve still persevered and completed them, albeit with much difﬁculty. However, after Zhou Yi delaying him earlier, it was just too difﬁcult for him. Deliberately increasing his speed had substantially drained his physical strength. At this moment, he was three laps behind the students next to him, and was still twenty laps away from the hundred laps. Running twenty laps within ﬁfteen minutes was something that was nearly impossible for him.

Chapter 9: Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess

“No, I must persevere. I can’t get disqualiﬁed.” Huo Yuhao clenched his teeth tightly and sped up his footsteps again. For the sake of clearing up his tired mind, he even activated his soulforce and released a Spirit Shock that was aimed towards himself. The intense pain in his mind also stimulated his bodily functions, and sure enough, his speed increased by a bit once again, allowing him to overtake the few people at the very back of the group.

Zhou Yi quietly stood there. She didn’t pay attention to the students who’d already ﬁnished their laps. Instead, her gaze fell upon the students who hadn’t completed their laps.

Out of these students, the one who had the most tired expression was Huo Yuhao. His uniform, which had already been soaked with sweat, wasn’t something that could be faked! However, he clenched his teeth tightly as he strenuously persevered.

Time rapidly passed, and Huo Yuhao persevered for another eight laps. At this moment, there was only ﬁve minutes left until the end of the two hours. Along with Huo Yuhao, there

were seven other people who hadn’t ﬁnished running. However, they seemed to only have three to ﬁve laps left. Furthermore, they’d already started to use all of their strength to increase their speed. There was still a chance that they’d ﬁnish on time. However, Huo Yuhao still needed to twelve more laps!

At that moment, a ﬁgure suddenly rushed out from the middle of Shrek Plaza. It landed behind Huo Yuhao, and caught up to him in just a few steps. Following that, a scene which stunned everyone present appeared.

A pair of blue butterﬂy wings suddenly spread out from the back of the person that was chasing after Huo Yuhao. The tips of each wing unceasingly changed between deep blue, azure, and light blue, while the surface of each wing was similar to a bright, V-shaped halo that had been embedded within the blue sky that in turn brought light to the human realm. Its shape and colour were incomparably and ﬂawlessly beautiful.

“Ah—” When such a gorgeous pair of wings suddenly appeared, the shock that it brought to everyone was simply too great. Practically all of the students, regardless of whether they were boys or girls, let out a cry.

That pair of wings was simply too beautiful. Its surface resembled white spouts surging from the azure ocean. The patterns on it, as well as its colour, were extremely magniﬁcent. When it was azure, the entire surface of the wing resembled a bright halo embedded within the blue sky. It

occasionally turned deep blue, azure, and then light blue. The white patterns of light on both wings were like pearls that had been embedded within them; they had a bright luster that was extremely enchanting.

Although the wings were only an illusory shadow, it caused everyone present to have a stunned and dazzled feeling under their illumination. Even Zhou Yi, who was a teacher, felt the same.

After the ﬁgure had released its butterﬂy wings, it stuck to Huo Yuhao from behind. It hugged Huo Yuhao underneath his armpits, and the wings on its back suddenly began to ﬂap. Just like that, it actually brought them both into the sky.

Huo Yuhao was also shocked. He unconsciously turned around to see who it was, allowing him to see Wang Dong’s handsome face.

“You…”

“You what? Why haven’t you circulated your soulforce to make your body lighter?” Wang Dong ﬂapped his pair of beautiful wings as he spoke, causing them to suddenly speed up. He then took Huo Yuhao with him as he ﬂew around Shrek Plaza at high speed.

Huo Yuhao was also stunned by the pair of wings on Wang Dong’s back. Too beautiful, they were really too beautiful! Was this his martial soul? Huo Yuhao could even sense the V- shaped patterns on Wang Dong’s wings absorbing the warmth of the sunlight. Without mentioning this, just a martial soul that had the ability to ﬂy was already a considerably strong existence. Furthermore, there was a saying in the natural world: beautiful martial souls were always stronger!

A trace of satisfaction was apparent inside of Zhou Yi’s astonishment as she spoke to herself, “Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess? The continent’s most beautiful butterﬂy martial soul? Good, very good. At least not all of them have disappointed me.”

Wang Dong’s ﬂying speed was very fast. With his speed, completing twelve laps within ﬁve minutes wasn’t an impossible task anymore. When the two simultaneously landed after ﬁnishing Huo Yuhao’s last lap, they couldn’t help but stumble. Huo Yuhao hurriedly turned around and supported Wang Dong. However, he also fell backwards, causing Wang Dong to fall on top of him.

Although Wang Dong’s cultivation couldn’t be considered weak amongst his peers, he was still a child! After over three thousand metres whilst carrying Huo Yuhao, his soulforce had been slightly overdrafted. Once he landed, the pair of dazzling wings on his back were withdrawn into his body. His expression had also become pale.

Huo Yuhao was crushed under Wang Dong’s body, but the trace of a smile still appeared on his face. “Thanks. I crushed you last time, and you crushed me back this time.”

Wang Dong crawled back up with a look of revulsion on his face. “You stinking brat, do you think I want to be on top of you?”

Huo Yuhao wasn’t angered by what Wang Dong said as he crawled up along with him. Whilst panting heavily, he gave Wang Dong a thumbs-up.

Wang Dong was stunned for a moment. Then, he nodded his head and gave him a thumbs-up in reply. Following that, the two people couldn’t help but smile. Their previous grudges had also completely disappeared at this moment.

All of the students had completed a hundred laps within the stipulated time. They were now standing in the middle of Shrek Plaza, resting.

Zhou Yi expressionlessly turned towards the students as she indifferently said, “The people whose names I call, step forward. Cheng Cheng, Qiu Jianrao, Tang Dao, Shangguan Chentian, Lin Zeyu, Zhuge Yun, Tai Long, Tang Ling, and Yun Xiaopiao.”

A total of nine students were called out by her. The students had clearly never expected Zhou Yi to be able to actually call out the names of nine students, even though they hadn’t given any self-introductions.

The students who were called out slowly stepped forward.

Zhou Yi indifferently said, “You nine can go pack your luggage and leave the academy. From this moment forth, you’re no longer students of Shrek Academy.”

“Ah?” The nine students who were still tired from running were immediately astonished, while the other students erupted into an uproar.

“Teacher, why?” The tall youth named Tai Long stepped forward with an angry look on his face. Out of the students who’d completed their hundred laps, he’d been in the ﬁrst group of people; he was one of the ﬁrst people that had ﬁnished.

Zhou Yi coldly replied, “Shrek Academy doesn’t need students who’re full of tricks. If we cultivate a person like you, who has strength but not a good and upright attitude, the only thing you’ll bring to any country is catastrophe, not help. Tai Long, say it yourself, did you run the full hundred laps just now?”

“I naturally ran enough.” Tai Long protested.

Zhou Yi laughed. “You ran enough? If my memory serves me right, when everyone started running, you unhurriedly walked two laps due to the fact that I hadn’t arrived at Shrek Plaza yet. You only started to catch up when the leading group were on their ﬁfth laps. Because of this, you didn’t run a full one hundred laps, but ninety-seven. I believe that I’m not the only person who saw your laziness in the beginning.”

“I…” Tai Long’s face immediately turned bright red. He never thought that Zhou Yi, who hadn’t come out to the ﬁeld at the beginning, would be able to reveal his crafty tricks as if she’d seen them personally. “But, just because I ran a few laps less... you can’t expel me because of this!”

Zhou Yi snorted disdainfully. “I’ve already explained the reason why I’m expelling you. You’re not suitable to be called a student of Shrek Academy. Pack your bags and screw off.”

“You…” Tai Lang was completely ﬂabbergasted. In reality, running a hundred laps or so wasn’t a problem at all for him, with his strength. His cultivation was even ranked amongst the best of all the students in Class 1. However, he’d never expected that he’d be eliminated like this.

Zhou Yi looked towards the other students and spoke indifferently, “Although I have a bad temper, I deﬁnitely keep my promises. The nine people who I called out all cheated whilst running, and did not complete their hundred laps. If you’re unhappy with it, you can go and report me to the education administration. But for now, you can leave.”

“Teacher Zhou, I refuse to accept this. He didn’t run a hundred laps just now; he only managed to ﬁnish with someone else’s help. Why isn’t he being eliminated?” Another eliminated student named Lin Zeyu spoke furiously whilst pointing towards Huo Yuhao.

Zhou Yi laughed, “You refuse to accept it? ‘He’ is named Huo Yuhao. And if ‘he’ hadn’t ﬁnished running a hundred laps, he’d be amongst you right now. I will not change what I’ve said. He

ﬁnished a hundred laps. I never said that helping others was forbidden. Wang Dong helped him, something that he did voluntarily. If someone willingly helped you whilst you were running, that would’ve been ﬁne too. But did anyone help you? I don’t look at the process, only at the results. And the results were: Huo Yuhao completed a hundred laps, while you did not. Quickly screw off. If you make me any angrier, I’ll waste your martial souls.”

Under Zhou Yi’s powerful might, the nine students who’d been called out could do nothing but dejectedly walk away. They obviously weren’t going to pack their luggage, but were instead going straight towards the educational administration to lodge a complaint. This was only the ﬁrst day of school! How could they accept this?

The sweat on Huo Yuhao’s body increased as he personally watched Zhou Yi impartially expel the nine students. It would’ve been weird if he didn’t feel nervous. If it weren’t for Wang Dong’s help, he would’ve been with those people! When he thought about this, he couldn’t help but shoot a grateful glance towards Wang Dong.

The remaining students’ expressions had completely changed; they didn’t even dare to breathe heavily whilst

looking at Zhou Yi. It had only been two hours, yet Zhou Yi had already established her absolute authority over Class 1.

“Go back to the dorms and change your clothes. After that, come back to the classroom for class. I’ll give you ﬁfteen minutes.” As soon as she’d ﬁnished speaking, Zhou Yi turned around and headed back towards the classroom.

No one dared to waste any time this time around. They loudly dispersed, as practically all of them sprinted back to their dorm rooms.

“That old woman is too ﬁerce.” Wang Dong spoke as as hurriedly ran back towards the dorms with Huo Yuhao.

Huo Yuhao turned and said, “Thanks. If it weren’t for you, I’m afraid that…”

Wang Dong snorted and said, “Don’t thank me. If it weren’t for our ﬁght, you could’ve done it on your own. You can go in and change ﬁrst, I’m not really that sweaty.”

Huo Yuhao was stunned. “You don’t want to change together to save time?”

Wang Dong replied, “Did you forget about the ﬁve rules I told you the other day? I don’t like seeing the bodies of other people, it gives me goosebumps. Hurry up.”

Huo Yuhao didn’t bother responding. He hurriedly returned to their room and took off his sweat-soaked shirt. He then used a clean cloth to wipe his body down, before changing into another set of the school uniform. He’d have to wait until after class before he could clean his dirty body.

When he left the room, it was Wang Dong’s turn to change his clothes. At that moment, Huo Yuhao was still somewhat out of breath. The pair of wings that had appeared on Wang Dong’s back subconsciously appeared in his mind again.

Too beautiful, they had truly been too beautiful! Just what was that martial soul? Perhaps the others might not have noticed anything, but Huo Yuhao had. When Wang Dong had released his martial soul, his soul rings had also appeared. He’d unexpectedly had two of them. The thing that astonished him even more than that however, was that Wang Dong actually

had both a yellow and a purple soul ring. In other words, his second soul ring was a thousand year one. This had already surpassed the common sense of normal soul masters.

No wonder he was so arrogant, he truly had the means to do so! When he compared his strength to Wang Dong’s, he truly was far too weak.

As he pondered about this, Wang Dong came out of their room after changing into a new set of clothes. The two of them didn’t dare to waste any time; they returned to the classroom as fast as they could.

Zhou Yi had given them ﬁfteen minutes to change, but in reality, even the slowest person didn’t take ten minutes. All of the students had already seated themselves in an orderly fashion inside of the classroom. Their eyes were still ﬁlled with fear when they looked at the nine empty seats.

Everyone present had heard the phrase ‘Shrek Academy is hard to enter, but easy to leave.’ However, they only felt a strong sense of danger after it happened right in front of them. No one dared to even think of cheating anymore.

When the ﬁfteenth minute arrived, Zhou Yi walked into the classroom just on time. When she saw that the ninety-one students were all present, she nodded her head. She then said, “We’ll start class now. On the whole, your test earlier has made me satisﬁed. A majority of you were able to complete the simple running test. Huo Yuhao, stand up.”

“Teacher Zhou.” Huo Yuhao rapidly stood up; his back was ramrod straight.

Zhou Yi coldly said, “Announce your soul rank.”

“Yes. My soulforce is at the eleventh rank.” Huo Yuhao spoke respectfully. Ever since Zhou Yi had called out their names earlier, he knew that in reality, this Teacher Zhou completely understood them, even though she seemed unreasonable. Perhaps he wouldn’t even be able to conceal his cultivation from her.

After hearing the words ‘eleventh rank’, a suspicious expression appeared on all of the students in the class. Wang Dong even directly covered his eyes with his hands.

Embarrassing, this was too embarrassing to him. With his level of cultivation, he’d actually lost to a person at the eleventh rank. Wait, how could he only be at the eleventh rank of soulforce? Didn’t enrolling at Shrek Academy have a basic requirement that students had to be at the ﬁfteenth rank? When he thought about this, Wang Dong couldn’t help but raise his head to look at Huo Yuhao with a ﬂabbergasted expression.

“Correct, his soul power is only at the eleventh rank. I know, you all are very curious as to why he could pass the school’s assessment and was able to become a freshman. I’ll only answer this question once, no one can ask him about it in the future unless he’s eliminated. He’s a student who was specially invited by the academy. When he entered the academy, he didn’t need to pass any tests. However, this is the only exception we make for specially invited students. If he’s unable to complete the studying assignments that the academy sets, he’ll also be eliminated. Okay Huo Yuhao, sit down.”

“Thank you, teacher.” As Huo Yuhao sat back down, he couldn’t help but feel astonished. Teacher Zhou’s words were clearly meant to protect him! By clearly explaining the situation of his enrollment, even with his insufﬁcient soul rank, no one would ask about it in the future.

Zhou Yi didn’t seem to care about the students’ reactions to this. She turned around and wrote two big words on the blackboard: ‘ATTACK’ and ‘DEFENSE’.

After writing the two words out on the blackboard, she turned back to face the students once again. “I know that a majority of you are very unhappy because of the punishment I gave to you earlier, as well as the expulsion of those nine people. Only, you don’t dare to show it because of my pressure. I have no need to give you any explanations. People who are perceptive will naturally understand my reasoning in the future. As for the idiots who can’t understand, it’s ﬁne for them to not understand. We will now start class.”

“You should all recognise the two words that I’ve just written on the blackboard. ‘Attack’, and ‘Defense’. For our ﬁrst class today, I’ll talk to you about the attacking and defending techniques that soul masters use. Since ancient times, we soul masters have been split into many different systems based off of our innate martial souls, such as the Power Attack System, the Agility Attack System, the Auxiliary System, the Food System, the Control System, the Defense System, and so on. Some soul masters develop their abilities towards an extreme of one system, while others develop their abilities equally in multiple. The various number of methods to cultivate is by no means an isolated path. Wang Dong, answer this question: Of

the various systems that soul masters fall into, which is the best at attacking, and which should lean towards defense and auxiliary, or support?”

This question couldn’t be any easier for him. Wang Dong stood up and unhesitantly replied, “Naturally, assault, agility, and control system soul masters are inclined towards attacking, while auxiliary, food, and defense system soul masters are inclined towards defense.”

Zhou Yi spoke with no trace of politeness, “That was a stupid answer.”

Wang Dong was left blank. “Teacher Zhou, my answer-”

“Sit down.” Zhou Yi interrupted him, as she waved her hand in his direction, causing a strong burst of soulforce to hold back the words he was about to say. Then, it forced him to sit back down.

“If this were four thousand years ago—before the Sun Moon Continent had collided with our Douluo Continent—Wang Dong’s answer would’ve been correct. However, as of now, his answer couldn’t be any more incorrect. Huo Yuhao, tell me, why is this so?”

Huo Yuhao instantly thought to himself that Teacher Zhou really had a grudge against him and Wang Dong today. Fortunately, they hadn’t been expelled despite this. After some lightning-quick thinking, he came to an answer. He stood up and said, “Because of soul tools.”

The strictness present on Zhou Yi’s face ﬁnally became a bit gentler. “You aren’t considered that stupid; it’s no wonder that you were able to become a specially invited student. Correct. It’s exactly because of soul tools that the line between attack and defense has become blurred. This is also the topic that I want to talk about today. Sit down.”

“I believe that everyone very clear knows that the development of soul tools has been quite rapid during these recent few thousand years. That year, the Sun Moon Continent brought many precious materials with them, as well as the basic manufacturing techniques for soul tools. After a few thousand years of development, the quality of our manufactured soul tools has steadily become better, while their strength has in turn become steadily stronger. This has created a situation where even food system soul masters can have an attack power that’s equal to, or even surpasses, the attack of assault system soul masters—if they possess a sufﬁciently strong soul tool. Contrastingly, if agility system

soul masters have a soul tool with a strong defensive capability, they can temporarily play the role of a defense system soul masters.”

“It could be said that the appearance of soul tools has enormously changed both the direction and current situation of soul masters’ cultivation. In reality, the usage of soul rings have been weakened. As long as you have sufﬁcient soulforce, you can rely on soul tools to make up for the deﬁciency in your soul rings. This has caused many people to neglect the usage of soul rings, thereby creating the current situation in which the soul masters of the four great empires are cultivating with the sole aim of achieving a high amount of soulforce.”

“This sort of cultivation method is undoubtedly effective in the short-term; especially for soul masters below the ﬁftieth rank, where the effects of soul tools are extremely obvious. However, what I want to make clear to you is that our Shrek Academy doesn’t cultivate this kind of soul master. And that’s because, after surpassing the ﬁftieth rank, they’re all trash.”

“You don’t understand, right? Let me give an example. You’re a tool soul master that’s cultivated to the ﬁftieth rank, while I’m an agility system soul master who’s also cultivated to the ﬁftieth rank. However, you have a soul tool that’s strong

enough to threaten my life, while I don’t have one at all. Who wins the ﬁght?”

“The answer is very simple. I’ll deﬁnitely win. Why? Because with my speed, you basically won’t have the slightest chance of hitting me with your soul tool. Even if you have a peak-level soul tool, I can still rely on my speed to grind down your soulforce. The stronger the soul tool, the higher the drain on your soulforce. Because of this, although soul masters of the defense, auxiliary, and food systems can rely on soul tools to possess the attack power of a assault system soul masters, they still won’t have the combat strength of a real assault system soul master. You must remember this very clearly. Because of this, although soul tools can enormously strengthen defense, auxiliary, and food system soul masters, you’ll always be killed ﬁrst on the battleﬁeld if your body isn’t strong enough. Your opponents won’t let you off just based on the fact that you’re not an offensive soul master. On the contrary, people bully the weak. Your attack power might be very strong by relying on a soul tool, but your other aspects will be very weak in turn. What would your enemies choose to do in that case?”

“Likewise, if I’m extremely ﬁt, my combat strength will be very strong in and of itself. Thus, having possession of a strong soul tool at the same time would be like adding wings to a tiger. This is a true expert.”

“The line separating attack and defense has been blurred; nowadays, anybody within a team of soul masters can ﬁll the role of an attacker. However, only by raising your physical ﬁtness can you increase your chance of surviving on the battleﬁeld by a large degree. Unless soul tools develop to the point where they can completely replace your body, the level of both your physical ﬁtness and your soul rings will still be the most important thing in your futures.”

Zhou Yi didn’t know this, but ten thousand years from now, soul tools would actually develop to the degree where they could actually replace one’s entire body, like she’d just said.

“During the next three months, most of my training for you will be focused on training your physical ﬁtness. No matter who you are, what origins you have or how talented you are, if you can’t pass my test three months from now, you’ll end up just like those nine people. You can screw off.”

“Today’s morning class will end here. I recommend that you eat a proper lunch. Your training will start this afternoon. Huo Yuhao, follow me to the ofﬁce for a bit.”

After speaking, Zhou Yi turned around and walked away without pausing. The lunch bell hadn’t even rung yet.

The class remained silent until Zhou Yi had walked out of the classroom. A majority of the people there were immersed in what Zhou Yi had said. Although this Teacher Zhou didn’t follow the rules of common sense, they had no choice but to agree that her words made a lot of sense.

Huo Yuhao stood up and followed Zhou Yi out. Besides the ofﬁce buildings that were located behind the purple and black teaching buildings, there was also a simplistic ofﬁce located within every school building.

Huo Yuhao followed Zhou Yi to the ofﬁce, which was close to the classroom. Zhou Yi motioned for him to shut the door, while she proceeded to sit behind an ofﬁce desk. Although she looked old, her movements didn’t appear elderly at all.

“Huo Yuhao, I don’t like to beat around the bush. Wang Dong’s martial soul astonished me a lot, but your martial soul has caused me to become very curious. Even with my experience, I was unable to sense what your martial soul was.

Now, I want to know what exactly it is.” Zhou Yi’s power was undoubtedly manifested in her words.

There was naturally no need for him to conceal his martial soul from his teacher. Huo Yuhao replied, “My martial soul is the Spirit Eyes, a spiritual-type martial soul.”

When she heard Huo Yuhao’s words, Zhou Yi was visibly astonished. A trace of delight ﬂashed through her bright eyes, which were inconsistent with her extremely aged face. “A body soul that has a spiritual attribute? Eyes?”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head.

Zhou Yi’s eyes furrowed slightly, as if she were deep in thought. After a short period of time, she asked Huo Yuhao, “Can you tell me what your ﬁrst soul skill is?”

Teachers inquiring about their student’s martial souls was very common, but a soul skill was the most important ability of a soul master, as well as their most important secret. Even with Zhou Yi’s might, she’d still used an inquiring tone.

Someone else might’ve hesitated for a moment, but Huo Yuhao didn’t have this problem. His ﬁrst soul ring had four skills, so only exposing two of them was still quite easy for him.

Without directly answering Zhou Yi, Huo Yuhao’s ﬁrst pure white soul ring slowly rose from his feet. Following that, his pupils were covered in a faintly golden layer. Immediately afterwards, Zhou Yi felt a spiritual undulation emerge before her eyes.

Zhou Yi was naturally different from Bei Bei and Tang Ya; she was a Soul Emperor expert. Although she wasn’t a spiritual-type soul master, she still naturally had a strong level of spiritual power due to her cultivation. If she wanted to reject Huo Yuhao’s spiritual skill, from someone who was only at the eleventh rank, it couldn’t be any easier for her. However, she clearly wouldn’t reject it right now; she immediately chose to accept it.

Once she accepted it, Zhou Yi’s pupils instantly expanded.

Spiritual Detection Sharing immediately appeared within Zhou Yi’s sense of vision, causing everything around her to become much clearer. This clear sense of reality made it seem as if one was walking out from a dense fog. Everything became clear and orderly, so much so that she was able to completely

describe everything using numbers. The precise predictions, almost as if they were coming from a second, separate brain, unceasingly changed along with her line of sight.

After roughly a minute, Huo Yuhao deactivated his skill, and stood conscientiously in front of Zhou Yi.

Zhou Yi stood still in a daze for a while, before murmuring to herself, “What a miraculous skill. No wonder the Tang Sect chose you as their specially invited student. With this skill alone, that girl Tang Ya has deﬁnitely chosen the right person. I was wondering why that girl, who was extremely smart even though she had ordinary talent, would choose a person who only had a cultivation level of the eleventh rank, and an ordinary level physical ﬁtness. To think that he actually had this secret...”

“Huo Yuhao, follow me.” Whilst speaking, Zhou Yi quickly stood up and took Huo Yuhao with her. She then led him out of the ofﬁce with quick steps.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao was confused. He could sense that Zhou Yi’s frame of mind had had a huge change after learning about his martial soul and soul skill, but he wasn’t

clear about whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Furthermore, he didn’t know where Zhou Yi was taking him, nor what she wanted him to do there.

After leaving the freshman school building, Zhou Yi led Huo Yuhao straight towards the back of the academy, which was to the west. After walking a short distance, Zhou Yi furrowed her brows slightly and said, “This is too slow. I’ll take you with me.” Mid-sentence, she ﬂashed towards Huo Yuhao and grabbed his shoulder with her right hand. The next moment, Huo Yuhao felt like he was soaring through the clouds.

The scenery around him rapidly changed, while a formless barrier seemed to have appeared around him—seemingly to protect him. Only, his surroundings had become blurry.

Zhou Yi was undoubtedly the strongest soul master that Huo Yuhao had ever seen. Just what sort of speed was this!? He hurriedly released his Spiritual Detection. Only after he’d done this was he able to faintly distinguish the direction they were headed in.

After heading westward for quite a while, Zhou Yi changed directions and headed to the north. Huo Yuhao began to feel

that they’d left the outer courtyard’s Martial Soul Institute, and that they’d entered the outer courtyard’s Soul Engineering Institute.

Even with her level of speed, Zhou Yi only halted after a few minutes had passed. They’d arrived before an enormous building.

The school buildings that Huo Yuhao had previously seen had already been quite big, but they were still outshone by the grey, rectangular building in front of them. The total surface area of this building might even be able to compare with the Martial Soul Institution’s dorms.

The grey building looked extremely massive. It wasn’t just made of bricks either; its surface had many metallic glints on it. A low, rumbling sound echoed unceasingly from the building, and the ground beneath Huo Yuhao’s feet was even vibrating slightly.

A signboard to the side of the building told him what this place was: “Soul Tool Testing Area”.

Huo Yuhao was ﬁlled with doubt. Why would Teacher Zhou bring him to the Soul Tool Testing Area? What did she want to do?

Zhou Yi naturally didn’t explain anything to him. After loosening her grip on Huo Yuhao’s shoulder, she walked towards the entrance of the Soul Tool Testing Area.

Once they’d entered, Huo Yuhao discovered that everything inside the Soul Tool Testing Area was made of metal. Furthermore, he’d never seen the type of metal that had apparently been used to construct everything; it was a somewhat dark brown colour.

After entering, they were greeted by a long horizontal corridor. It looked similar to the corridors from the Martial Soul Institute’s dorms, but there were only doors located on one side of the corridor, and they were all thirty metres apart from one another. The signs on the doors had words like ‘Testing Area One, Testing Area Two...’ along with other words to the same effect.

Zhou Yi seemed to have come here often, as she was already familiar with everything. She took Huo Yuhao with her as she

headed northward through a corridor, before stopping at the end of it, in front of a door that had the sign ‘Testing Area 20’ on it.

Zhou Yi turned her wrist over, and a hexagonal silver command medallion appeared in her hand. She then pressed it to the door that said ‘Testing Area 20’.

A magical scene appeared before Huo Yuhao’s eyes; The door split open, revealing a gap that was perfectly ﬁtted to her command medallion. Huo Yuhao thought he sensed a temporary ﬂuctuation of soulforce before the command medallion was released from the gap. Following that, the door to Testing Area 20 opened horizontally, a grating sound echoing out.

When the door had opened a bit, Huo Yuhao discovered, to his astonishment, that the door was made entirely of metal, and was actually two feet thick. There were smooth rails at the bottom and top of the door, which allowed it to slowly open.

After the door opened had fully, Zhou Yi waved her hand towards Huo Yuhao, and walked in before him.

“Boom—” Once Huo Yuhao entered, he was startled by a loud sound. A strong vibration, mixed together with a stream of air, smashed directly into his face, causing his school uniform to ﬂutter.

Zhou Yi seemed to see this as a common occurrence, and continued to walk inside.

After entering Testing Area 20, Huo Yuhao discovered that this place was a completely different world. There were massive metal plates that divided the world into separate areas that were akin to metal boxes. Under Zhou Yi’s guidance, they quickly arrived at the largest area within the world. It was an empty ﬁeld that was roughly two thousand square metres in size, while its height was around ten metres tall. There were currently a few people that stood along the edges of the ﬁeld, who seemed to be ﬁddling with strange things in their hands.

“Fan Yu.” Zhou Yi shouted loudly, causing the group of people beside the ﬁeld to immediately look towards her, in which there was a tall, middle-aged man, who furrowed his brows slightly, then walked towards Zhou Yi and Huo Yuhao with large strides.

The middle-aged man was roughly 1.8 metres tall, and his shoulders were extremely wide. He wore a simple cloth shirt that exposed his thick and sturdy shoulders, in turn revealing his granite-like muscles. There were distinct lines on his face, and he had a deep gaze. As he stood there, he gave off the feeling of a mountain that had stood there for time immemorial.

“Zhou Yi, why have you come?” Clearly, this middle-aged man was the Fan Yu that Zhou Yi had called out to.

“Do you still remember the words that you said to me last time?” Zhou Yi seemed to be slightly excited as she spoke.

A helpless smile appeared on Fan Yu’s face as he replied, “I’ve talked to you about a lot of things. How am I to know what thing you’re referring to? If it’s not important, head back ﬁrst. I still have to conduct a few tests here.”

Chapter 10: First Experience with Soul Tools

Teacher Zhou Yi was incomparably domineering when she was in front of her students, but she seemed to have completely lost that tyranny when she was in front of this middle-aged man named Fan Yu. She amiably said, “I’m referring to what you brought up last time; the matter regarding spiritual-type soul masters using soul tools.”

When he heard what she said, Fan Yu’s eyes couldn’t help but light up. His gaze subconsciously fell on Huo Yuhao, who was standing to the side. “He has a spiritual-type martial soul?”

Zhou Yi nodded her head and said, “Correct. His name is Huo Yuhao, and he’s a new student. He has a spiritual-type body soul.”

After seriously looking over Huo Yuhao, Fan Yu shook his head and said, “This won’t do. His body and soul force are both too weak. I’m afraid that he won’t even be able to control one of the weakest soul tools. Furthermore, his talent is similar to the current state of his body; it’s too far away from what I need.”

Zhou Yi humphed and replied, “Are you looking down on my foresight? True, Huo Yuhao is still weak right now, but his soul skill is extraordinary. It’s the most practical spiritual-type skill that I’ve ever seen. Huo Yuhao, let him experience it for a moment.”

“Oh.” As a student, Huo Yuhao could only participate as a spectator right now. He immediately activated his Spiritual Detection Sharing and used it on the middle-aged man.

Following that, Huo Yuhao was so startled that he almost lost focus. When his Spiritual Detection Sharing came into contact with the middle-aged man, the latter slightly furrowed his brow. In that instant, Huo Yuhao felt as if there was a terrifying beast in front of him that had suddenly opened its maw—as if it wanted to swallow him in one gulp.

This feeling even caused the sleeping Skydream Iceworm to wake up. A refreshing feeling appeared in his spiritual sea, causing Huo Yuhao’s astonishment and horror to disappear.

The terrifying aura that was emanating from Fan Yu’s body disappeared after only appearing for an instant. As soon as it

did, he allowed Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing to link with him.

“Eeeh!” After a short moment, Fan Yu discovered the subtleties contained within Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing. Great waves immediately rose inside of his originally peaceful eyes.

“There’s actually a spiritual-type skill like this? How could a skill like this come from a ten year soul beast?” Fan Yu looked at the white soul ring ﬂoating below Huo Yuhao’s body with a puzzled look. In addition to the puzzled look on his face, he also had a surprised look.

Huo Yuhao naturally wouldn’t mention the Skydream Iceworm, so the Wind Baboon became his excuse once again.

“A ten year Wind Baboon?” Fan Yu and Zhou Yi were both speechless.

Zhou Yi gazed at Fan Yu and said, “Could this be a mutated soul skill?”

Fan Yu nodded his head and said, “There’s a chance. This little guy’s martial soul is a body soul, and a spiritual-type one at that. His existence in and of itself is a mutation. Furthermore, the soul beast that he chose for a soul ring is an existence that’s completely incompatible with him. This must’ve triggered an extremely rare soul skill mutation. The fact that a spiritual-type martial soul didn’t suffer a backlash from absorbing a wind-type soul ring is already a miracle, but I didn’t think that a mutation like this would appear. I’m afraid that this is a miracle that would be completely impossible to reproduce.”

“Caitou, come here.” Fan Yu beckoned towards the group of people standing next to the wall. A youth immediately rushed over.

When he saw the youth, Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but be startled. From his face, he didn’t look to be much look older than Bei Bei. However, he was extremely tall—over two metres tall. His shoulders were even wider than Fan Yu’s, while his naked upper body exposed his tanned muscles. There wasn’t any hair on his head, and he was much more tanned than an ordinary person. He had a simple and honest appearance.

“Teacher.” The youth bowed respectfully towards Fan Yu.

Fan Yu pointed at Huo Yuhao and said, “Go and ﬁre a round of the stationary soul cannon. Let this kid support you, and try to hit a moving target.”

“Yes.” The tanned youth didn’t ask any questions. He smiled simple-mindedly at Huo Yuhao and said, “Little brother, follow me.”

Zhou Yi said, “Huo Yuhao, just use that skill of yours to support him.”

“Yes.” Huo Yuhao now somewhat understood why Zhou Yi had brought him here. He hurriedly chased after the tanned youth.

“Nice to meet you, little brother. My name’s He Caitou, but everyone simply calls me Caitou. Thus, you can just call me Caitou.” The tanned youth gave Huo Yuhao another simple- minded smile.

Huo Yuhao replied, “Nice to meet you, big brother He. I’m Huo Yuhao.”

When he said the three words ‘Big brother He’, He Caitou became stunned for a moment. After he’d recovered, he gave Huo Yuhao a big thumbs up and said, “Little brother, you’re not bad.”

Even future historians wouldn’t know that the friendship between ‘Eyes of the Asura’ Huo Yuhao and ‘Origin of Destruction’ He Caitou had actually started from a simple sentence like this.

When the two had arrived at the edge of the testing ﬁeld. He Caitou tapped the black belt on his waist, causing a light to ﬂash, and an item that was extremely strange-looking—in Huo Yuhao’s opinion—appeared in his hand.

It was a roughly 1.5 metre-long tube made of black metal. Its cross-sectional diameter was around 15 centimetres, while its ‘tail’ was slightly thicker. It had many mysterious patterns carved on it.

He Caitou held it in an extremely proﬁcient manner. After pressing the back of the metal tube with his right hand twice, a cover immediately came off, revealing a hole that was

approximately twenty centimetres long and ten centimetres wide.

He quickly tapped his waist with his left hand once again, causing a shuttle-shaped piece of metal to appear in his hand. He carefully placed it into the exposed hole in the metal tube, before carefully putting the cover back on. When he raised his right hand, the metal tube landed on his right shoulder.

He Caitou, who’d previously given off an extremely simple feeling, suddenly had a large change in temperament when he raised the metal tube to his shoulder. Huo Yuhao’s martial soul was a spiritual-type one, thus his keen level of awareness caused him to feel a strong sense of danger from He Caitou all of a sudden.

“Huo Yuhao, let’s start.” He Caitou’s voice echoed out.

A golden light ﬂickered through Huo Yuhao’s eyes, and his Spiritual Detection Sharing accurately landed on He Caitou’s body. He Caitou’s eyes exuded a trace of astonishment, and he excitedly shouted into the distance, “Moving target, ﬁre.”

There seemed to be someone controlling the targets from the other side. With a ‘swoosh’, a disk-shaped object shot out from a corner in the distance, and was headed directly towards Huo Yuhao and He Caitou.

At that moment, a strong undulation of soulforce instantly exploded from He Caitou’s body. Three soul rings—two yellow and one purple—all simultaneously ﬂashed, and the metal tube on his shoulder seemed to tremble slightly. A strong halo of black light began to revolve around the surface of the metal tube, and He Caitou’s body gently moved. The metal tube was now aimed at the round disk ﬂying towards them at high speed.

“Bang—” A violent explosion echoed out, and the metal tube instantly released a dazzling black light. The huge amount of turbulence that suddenly appeared caused Huo Yuhao to stumble and almost fall down.

However, the black light didn’t hit the ﬂying round disk. Instead, it brushed past it, and ﬂew into the distance. After it had traversed a hundred or so metres, it collided ﬁercely with a metal plate in the distance, causing a violent explosion to erupt. An enormous stream of air rebounded straight towards

them, causing He Caitou to quickly move to protect Huo Yuhao behind him.

The air current lasted a few seconds before it gradually calmed down. On the other hand, the round disk didn’t ﬂy out of the testing area, but rather landed near them.

He Caitou had a gloomy expression as he said, “It still isn’t working.”

Fan Yu and Zhou Yi had already walked over. Zhou Yi’s expression was slightly ugly, while Fan Yu looked as if he’d thought of something. He quickly asked Huo Yuhao, “Huo Yuhao, how large is the range of your Spiritual Detection?”

Huo Yuhao answered, “It has a diameter of thirty metres or so.”

Fan Yu suddenly understood what had happened as he said, “So that’s the case…. No wonder this happened. After all, this is still only a soul skill from a ten year soul ring. For it to have such profound detection capabilities within a ﬁxed range is already relatively amazing. We can’t ask for too much either. Only, this is rather unfortunate.”

Huo Yuhao suddenly said, “Teacher Fan Yu, the range of my Spiritual Detection will increase as my soul rank increases.”

Fan Yu was stunned. “That’s impossible. How could a soul skill evolve?”

Huo Yuhao said with a serious countenance, “It’s really true. This skill’s range has already increased by one metre since I obtained it. Furthermore, I don’t have complete control over it right now. Perhaps in the future I’ll be able to reduce its omnipresent range and instead increase its range in only a single direction.”

Huo Yuhao was already acutely aware as to why Zhou Yi had brought him here, as well as what she’d said during the following conversation. This could be an opportunity for him, although he wasn’t clear on what this opportunity was. However, assuming that it was an opportunity he couldn’t give up on, he decided to tell the truth.

Fan Yu glanced at Zhou Yi, who nodded slightly back at him.

Fan Yu replied, “Fine. If the range of your Spiritual Detection Sharing is able to reach a hundred metres in one direction, come ﬁnd me. When that happens, I’ll teach you how to make soul tools.”

“Yes. Thank you, teacher.” Huo Yuhao hurriedly bowed in respect.

Fan Yu waved his hand and said, “Caitou, go over and explain to him what a stationary soul tool is.”

“Sure.” He Caitou had an extremely good impression of Huo Yuhao. He beckoned to him as he walked over to the side.

As he watched their ﬁgures gradually fade into the distance, Fan Yu quietly asked Zhou Yi, “What do you think of this kid? His mutated soul skill is honestly incredibly strong; there’s no doubt about his abilities in a team. Am I asking too much from him? If we want him to be able to support a stationary soul tool, we’ll need it to be able to reach at least distance of a hundred metres—and that’s at the very least. However… I dare to say that, if the range of his Spiritual Detection Sharing is able to reach a thousand metres in a single direction, he’ll become the most terrifying support-type soul master on the continent.”

Zhou Yi said, “I’ve just met this kid, so I can’t say much about him. However, you should’ve seen it. Although his cultivation

isn’t strong, and even though his physique is rather weak, his temperament is much more mature than that of his peers. If it were anyone else, they deﬁnitely wouldn’t have said what he just said. I’ll help you watch over him. However, if he can’t pass the tests I give him, I’ll still expel him. Rules can’t be

broken.”

Fan Yu thought to himself for a second, then said, “Help me observe him a bit more. Even if he can’t pass the Martial Soul Institute’s tests, I can still specially invite him to the Soul Engineering Institution as long as his Spiritual Detection Sharing is able to continue improving. I’ve already devoted ten years of my life to researching stationary soul tools. After combining that with the experiences of my predecessors, I ﬁnally managed to develop the most terrifying kind of soul tool. Currently, all I lack are users for it.”

Zhou Yi sighed lightly and said, “You shouldn’t be too stubborn either. In addition to the lack of users for it, there’s also another fatal ﬂaw; its manufacturing cost is extremely high. You of all people should know that. It’s destined not to be used in a large-scale manner.”

Fan Yu unyieldingly replied, “Soul tools are powerful weapons meant for a small number of especially outstanding

soul masters in the ﬁrst place. When I conducted my research on stationary soul tools, I never even thought of spreading them out into the community of common soul masters. As long as an extremely small number of soul masters are able to use them, stationary soul tools will become our academy’s true ace in the hole!”

----

“Big brother He, what exactly are stationary soul tools?” Huo Yuhao had a curious look on his face as he asked He Caitou.

He Caitou chuckled and replied, “There are many different types of soul tools. However, I can’t tell you about all of them in the short period of time we have. For starters, there are two main types of soul tools: short range soul tools and long range soul tools.Of these, short range soul tools are similar to the weapons that we normally use; they’re weapons that will explode with even more power when you pour soulforce into them. When you compare them to long range soul tools, they’re slightly stronger. On the other hand, long range soul tools are a type of soul tool that unleash long range attacks by pouring soulforce into them. The stronger the soul tool, the more soulforce required. This means that soul masters with stronger levels of cultivation can use higher quality soul tools.

“On the other hand, a stationary soul tool is a special type of soul tool that my teacher created based off of the accumulated wisdom of our predecessors. It can ﬁre long range attacks, but doesn’t require too much soulforce to use. You saw how I used it earlier. Simply put, it splits the soul tool into two parts, where the soul tool component is only used to ﬁre and detonate a projectile. Earlier, I used the stationary soul cannon to ﬁre a cannon shell. The biggest advantage of a stationary soul tool lies in the fact that it uses very little soulforce, and that it doesn’t require an excessively high level of cultivation to use. Its ﬂaw lies in the fact that it’s very hard to aim it—especially when you’re aiming at a moving targetm which is even harder to hit. But when it’s used against a ﬁxed target, it’s very powerful. However, the manufacturing process of the cannon shells is very troublesome, and requires many precious materials. Normally, teacher never lets me ﬁre it without reason. Teacher said that a stationary soul tool can strengthen a soul master’s attack power by tenfold... in theory. However, the strength of a stationary soul tool also has its limits. After all, it’s affected by the materials used to make it. The number of users for these stationary soul tools is fated to be an extremely small number of soul masters who are suited to use them.”

He Caitou’s explanation couldn’t be said to be wonderful; it was even a bit unclear at some points. However, this was the

ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao had opened the great door of soul tools. This ﬁnally allowed him to have a preliminary amount of knowledge regarding soul tools. He faintly understood that Teacher Fan Yu deﬁnitely had a great deal of accomplishments within the ﬁeld of soul tools. Teacher Xiao Ya had told him that

he’d have to study soul tools in the future. If he could become Teacher Fan Yu’s disciple, that would clearly be the best option available to him.

“Huo Yuhao, let’s go.” At that moment, Zhou Yi’s voice echoed out.

Huo Yuhao said to He Caitou. “Big brother He, I’ll be going ﬁrst. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

He Caitou chuckled and replied, “You’re a new student, work hard. It’ll be good if you’re able to become my junior brother in the future. Teacher doesn’t normally let me leave this place. It’s too boring.”

After leaving the Soul Tool Testing Area, Zhou Yi took Huo Yuhao straight back to the dorms. “Huo Yuhao, you heard what Teacher Fan Yu said earlier. I can only tell you that he’s the number one master at creating soul tools in the academy. If

you’re able to become his disciple, you’ll have an endless future. However, you’ll ﬁrst need to be able to stay within the academy. Go on, go eat lunch.”

After watching Zhou Yi leave, Huo Yuhao went straight to the canteen. The students from the other classes had already ﬁnished their classes, so the entrance to the canteen was ﬁlled with several people both entering and leaving the canteen.

Suddenly, a ﬁgure appeared blocked his way, scaring Huo Yuhao. When he raised his head to see who the ﬁgure was, he realised that it was actually Tang Ya.

“Teacher Xiao Ya?”

Tang Ya had a somewhat mysterious smile on her face as she pulled Huo Yuhao over to the side and whispered to him, “Little Yuhao, you don’t have any money, right?”

Huo Yuhao nodded. “That’s right! Eldest senior brother told me that there were some jobs that I could take for the academy if I needed some though. I was planning to see what was available after class.”

His yearly tuition was ten gold coins. At the same time, there were daily expenses that he’d need to spend money on. Although he was willing to spend all of his energy cultivating, he still needed to stay alive.

Tang Ya giggled and said, “You’re a disciple of my Tang Sect, so as your teacher, it’s only right that I take care of you. I’ve thought of a way for you to make money. I know the auntie who’s responsible for buying food for the canteen; I’ll help you ask her to buy twenty ﬁsh everyday. Afterwards, I’ll help you set up a grill outside, along with help you obtain some charcoal. I’ve also prepared some other ingredients. It should be ﬁne if you just sell roasted ﬁsh by the academy’s entrance after school. With your cooking skill, you’ll deﬁnitely be able to sell them off. These ﬁshes normally cost around one copper coin, but after you’ve ﬁnished roasting them, selling them for ﬁve copper coins won’t be a problem at all! If we do it this way, won’t you be able to make some money?”

Huo Yuhao’s eyes lit up. “Teacher Xiao Ya, that’s a pretty good plan. I have my Spirit Eyes, thus I’m able to very accurately control the ﬁre. Why don’t we try this out tonight?”

Tang Ya nodded her head repeatedly. Afterwards, she revealed her true intentions. “About that... since I’ll have helped you buy all of these things, you’ll have to give me priority when you’re selling the roasted ﬁsh. Don’t worry, I’ll still buy them from you. As for your future ingredients, you’ll have to buy them yourself.”

Ever since she’d eaten Huo Yuhao’s roasted ﬁsh that day, she’d constantly thought about it. After ﬁnishing her exams yesterday, she’d ﬁnally thought of this method that would beneﬁt them both. Naturally, she’d hid this from Bei Bei.

When he saw Tang Ya’s greedy expression, Huo Yuhao ﬁnally understood her motive behind doing this. He gave her a knowing smile and said, “Fine. Teacher Xiao Ya, why don’t we meet here tonight?”

“Yes, yes. I’ll go back ﬁrst. Right, I have to tell you a piece of good news! Bei Bei and I have both been promoted to Year 4!” Tang Ya waved to him goodbye, and excitedly ran away.

After grabbing a simple lunch, Huo Yuhao returned to the dorms. Wang Dong wasn’t there, and no one seemed to know where he’d gone. Zhou Yi still wanted to drill them in the afternoon, so Huo Yuhao took advantage of their afternoon break to enter a meditative state. As he cultivated, he simultaneously recovered his physical strength.

Huo Yuhao’s was surprised when he cultivated. After the extremely taxing run that morning, he discovered that the growth was slightly greater than normal. Although it was only

a strand more, he was still quite satisﬁed. He inwardly thought to himself, it seems like tempering my body to the limit boosts the growth of my soulforce. On the other hand, the physical ﬁtness level of his body was originally very normal, so he should’ve tempered his body anyway. This was killing two birds with one stone!

When Huo Yuhao woke up from his meditation, he was stunned in that the instant that he opened his eyes, he discovered Wang Dong—who was sitting on the opposite bed— looking at him with a brilliant gaze.

“You’ve returned? We should go to class now.” Whilst speaking, Huo Yuhao jumped off the bed and began to put his shoes on. After what had happened that morning, their relationship had already warmed up.

Wang Dong spoke in a low voice, “Huo Yuhao, I’ve always found your martial soul strange. You’ve seen my martial soul now, so can you tell me what your martial soul is?”

Huo Yuhao ﬁnished putting on his shoes, then stood up and said, “My eyes are my martial soul. I call them Spirit Eyes. They’re a spiritual-type martial soul. I know why you’re

bafﬂed. My ﬁrst soul skill is called Spiritual Detection. The reason why you were unable to hit me that day was because I used Spiritual Detection to predict your every move.”

Wang Dong suddenly understood what had happened. “So that’s the case... I didn’t think that you actually had a body spirit. Let’s go, we can’t be late. Earlier, I went and asked around. I discovered that Teacher Zhou has the nickname ‘Perverted Grandma’. The number of students expelled by her every year is supposedly equivalent to that of ten other teachers. We really have bad luck, having a teacher like her in charge of our class.”

Huo Yuhao shook his head and smiled. “You can’t think about it that way. Teacher Zhou is indeed strict, but as long as we demand the same level of strictness from ourselves, meeting her demands won’t be that hard. Right, I’ve seen your martial soul, but I don’t know its name. I also saw that you had a yellow and a purple soul rings; how did you manage to get a thousand year soul ring for your second soul ring?”

Wang Dong laughed mischievously and said, “Being able to use a thousand year soul ring as my second soul ring is a secret; I can’t tell you how. On the other hand, my martial soul is the Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess. It’s the most beautiful butterﬂy on

the continent, but it’s already on the verge of being extinct. Having it as my martial soul is even rarer than your body soul. You’ll see its power in the future. Right, what did Teacher Zhou take you to do earlier?”

The two had already left their dorm and were headed towards the teaching buildings as they spoke to each other. It wasn’t just them; none of the students in Class 1 dared to be late.

Huo Yuhao didn’t conceal the fact that Teacher Zhou had brought him to see Teacher Fan Yu; there was no need to hide something like this from him. Thus, he told Wang Dong everything that had happened.

“What? You can even share your Spiritual Detection? Quickly, let me see.” After all, everyone here was only eleven or twelve years old. Due to his curiosity, Wang Dong excitedly asked for Huo Yuhao to share his Spiritual Detection with him.

Huo Yuhao felt helpless, and had no choice but to activate his Spiritual Detection Sharing and let Wang Dong experience it for a moment.

Due to everything within the surrounding thirty metres suddenly becoming clear, as well as the data-like feedback, Wang Dong immediately turned slightly blank. It was akin to the feeling a blind man would get when he was suddenly able to see the world clearly. This feeling of shock would appear in every soul master who shared Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection for the ﬁrst time.

Furthermore, as Huo Yuhao continuously used his Spiritual Detection Sharing, his proﬁciency in it would gradually increased. As he allowed Wang Dong to experience it, he couldn’t help but think of Fan Yu’s words. He subconsciously attempted to extend his Spiritual Detection in one direction, then did his best to cover a slightly larger area with his Spiritual Detection.

Under the current situation where he was focusing his energy in one direction, Huo Yuhao didn’t know that the faint golden colour in his eyes had clearly become stronger, and that the spiritual undulations he was releasing had gotten much stronger as well. The originally omni-directional Spiritual Detection slowly contracted, and began to extend towards the front.

Wang Dong also felt the changes in Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection. He discovered that the three-dimensional scenes to his left and right had disappeared, and that only the three- dimensional image in front of him remained. Furthermore, the range of this image was slowly increasing.

To Huo Yuhao, just a few seconds of doing this felt like it took longer than when he’d released his Spiritual Detection for a quarter of an hour in the past. He felt his soulforce being converted into spiritual energy at an astonishing pace as it ﬂowed out of his body. It was only a moment, but waves of exhaustion had already invaded him.

His body swayed, and he only managed to stand upright by grabbing onto Wang Dong’s arm. His Spiritual Detection Sharing had also accordingly ended.

“Huo Yuhao, what happened?” Wang Dong hurriedly supported him.

Huo Yuhao complexion had turned pale, and an overﬂowing amount of cold sweat had covered his forehead. He seemed to have an extremely weak expression.

Huo Yuhao waved towards Wang Dong to indicate that he was ﬁne. “It was just that it became quite a large drain on my spiritual energy. Wang Dong, when you were looking straight ahead earlier, how far did my Spiritual Detection reach?”

After Wang Dong took a moment to recall what had happened, he said, “I wasn’t paying too much attention, but it seemed to be about ﬁfty to sixty metres. However, I noticed that I wasn’t able to see anything with Spiritual Detection in the other directions. The distance nearly doubled in the front, but that was it.”

When he heard what Wang Dong had said, Huo Yuhao’s spirits immediately rose, so much so that even his exhaustion decreased by a large amount. “That’s great! It actually works if I do it like this. However, the drain on my spiritual energy is a bit too much.”

When he tried to focus the range of his Spiritual Detection in one direction and extend it, the drain on his spiritual energy was almost ten times the normal cost. This was why his spiritual energy had become overdrawn in such a short period of time. However, Huo Yuhao believed that the reason behind the large drain of spiritual energy was because this was the ﬁrst time that he’d tried doing this. He believed that he’d get

better at it if he practiced more in the future.

Teacher Fan Yu had said that he could become his disciple once the range of his Spiritual Detection was able to reach a hundred metres in any single direction.

After seeing the terrifying might of soul tools, as well as hearing Caitou’s introduction to them, he was ﬁlled with interest towards these mysterious existences.

First-year Class 1. All ninety-one students were already seated in-class ten minutes before the afternoon bell had rung. Furthermore, there was an unusual silence amongst the classroom. None of the students dared to cause any noise. This is probably why it was said: ‘It’s not a bad thing for a teacher to be strict sometimes, since making students study seriously has many advantages.’

Since they didn’t have assigned seats, Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao sat together. The two who were only eleven years old were unexpectedly deep in thought. Huo Yuhao was naturally pondering both his successes and failures when he’d changed the direction of his Spiritual Detection. No one knew what Wang Dong was thinking about.

As Zhou Yi slowly walked into the classroom, the atmosphere within Class 1 turned solemn. Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong also awakened from their pondering. Although not much time had passed, Huo Yuhao had already recovered a great deal of his spiritual energy and soulforce, mostly because he didn’t have that much soulforce to begin with. At the very least, he didn’t feel weak anymore.

“Everyone, stand up and gather in the plaza.” Unexpectedly, Zhou Yi said this immediately after entering the classroom, before instantly turning around to leave.

No one dared to waste any time. A crowd of students rapidly left the classroom and followed Zhou Yi in an orderly, quiet manner to Shrek Plaza.

They didn’t notice that Zhou Yi unexpectedly had a smile hidden within her eyes. This teacher, who was strict to the point of being somewhat perverted, was currently thinking that there were deﬁnitely some advantages to teaching new students. At least these new students were less unruly, which made them easier to control. They weren’t like those students from the third year or higher, who were more arrogant and rebellious since they already had certain accomplishments.

A pile of iron chains had been piled up on Shrek Plaza at some unknown time. Under Zhou Yi’s command, the students arranged them neatly.

“Wang Dong.” Zhou Yi called out.

“Present.” Wang Dong took a step forward.

Zhou Yi spoke to the students, “I’ve ﬂipped through your entrance test results, and I’ve added them to the test that we performed this morning. Currently, out of all of you, Wang Dong has the highest level of cultivation. Because of this, I hereby declare that he’ll be the class monitor of Class 1 from now on. The class monitor position is a volatile one, and

whoever has the strength to beat him may do so and replace him as the new class monitor. Do you all understand?”

“We understand.” The gazes from a few male students who had a high amount of self-conﬁdence in their strength immediately turned sharp, while the gazes from the female students seemed to become much warmer as they looked at Wang Dong.

Zhou Yi pointed towards the iron chains in front of her. “These are suits of chainmail specialised in strengthening your physical ﬁtness. Every single one of you will take one. After you’ve put them on, start running around around the plaza. You’ll keep running from now until the bell signalling the end of class rings. You can use your soulforce, but you can’t use any soul skills. Your rank will be based on the number of laps that you’ve completed at the end of class, and the person in last place will be expelled from Class 1.”

“There’s something I need to emphasise. In my class, eliminations won’t just happen during exam periods; they can happen at any time. Today, ninety-one people will become ninety people. Start running.”

After she ﬁnished speaking, she ﬂicked her toe, and a full set of chainmail made out of thick iron chains ﬂew towards Wang Dong. Wang Dong hurriedly caught it and put it on.

As soon as he got the chainmail on, he couldn’t help but slightly change his expression. This chainmail weighed at least 15 kilograms!

When the students heard that the person in last place would be eliminated, how could they dare to waste any time? They all ran up and grabbed a set of chainmail. The male students were slightly better off, while a majority of the female students turned pale after putting the heavy chainmail on.

Zhou Yi coldly said, “I know that a lot of you want to say that this is unfair because there’s an innate gap between the bodies of men and women. That the physical ﬁtness levels of tool, beast, and battle soul masters are different. However, I want to tell you that I treat everyone equally in my class. Think about it! If you were on the battleﬁeld, would your enemy spare you simply because you’re a girl or a tool master? Start now. Run.”

No matter how much they wanted to curse at Zhou Yi, none of the students dared to speak a word of protest. With Wang

Dong leading, they collectively ran towards the edge of the ﬁeld, and started running with heavy chainmail on their bodies.

Nobody wanted to be eliminated. Once they started running, the vigor with which they ran was completely different compared to that morning.

Wang Dong took the lead and ran in front. No matter whether it was his martial soul or his soulforce, he was ﬁgure that excelled within the group of students. Although he was wearing a suit of chainmail, his speed didn’t decrease in the slightest.

The few male students who wanted to compete with him also charged forward, closely following him.

Huo Yuhao didn’t speed up. He was very clear about his body’s situation. Zhou Yi had said that they had to run until the bell rung, yet the afternoon class was nearly four hours long. It had just started! The most reasonable target that he’d formulated for himself was to persevere and to simply run until the the bell rang; not to compete with the others.

Thus, his speed was clearly much slower than the others when he started. Huo Yuhao looked on as everyone overtook him one by one, but he didn’t become impatient. His steps were slightly slower, but they were stable and uniform as he ran forward.

After only two laps, Huo Yuhao was dead last. Even the female students had overtaken him. However, he didn’t take it to heart.

When he reached his fourth lap, the person in ﬁrst place— Wang Dong—had already lapped him once. When Wang Dong passed him, he even gave him a ﬂabbergasted look.

However, Huo Yuhao didn’t take it to heart, and smiled at him in reply.

Zhou Yi expressionlessly stood in the middle of the plaza as she watched the students run. No one knew what she was thinking.

Chapter 11: The Weakest Class Monitor

By the time the sweat-drenched Huo Yuhao had ﬁnished his tenth lap, the person in ﬁrst place—Wang Dong—had already lapped him three times. The other students had already lapped him at least one time. Many people had even cast disdainful gazes at him. After all, they all knew that Huo Yuhao deﬁnitely had the weakest cultivation amongst them.

However, the running speed of the students in front had already started to slow down. As time passed, the effects of the chainmail started to become more obvious. Even Wang Dong had a face full of sweat.

The few male students who’d followed Wang Dong from the start had started to fall behind. Some had even been overtaken by the students behind them.

Drops of sweat seeped into the running track. After around an hour had passed, a female student who had a weaker body collapsed to the ground. She struggled to get up, but she couldn’t do anything.

Wang Dong happened to be running next to her when this happened. He helped her up and sent her an inquiring gaze. However, that female student shook her head and sat down on the plaza, unwilling to get back up. She didn’t even have the energy to speak.

With the ﬁrst, the second was bound to happen. Perhaps it was because they had the cushion of Huo Yuhao, who was dead last. Although the students persevered, in the end, their willpower didn’t seem to be too strong.

The burden of carrying the heavy chainmail whilst running was truly enormous. This was especially true since everyone had started running at full speed, which had quickly depleted their soulforce. On the other hand, withstanding the weight of the chainmail with their bodies alone was truly something strenuous at their age.

When two hours had passed, half of the students had collapsed to the ground. From the beginning to the end, Zhou Yi had stood there with an expressionless face. She hadn’t urged them to continue either.

Huo Yuhao was also reaching his limit. Although he’d decided to run with a constant speed, which meant that the drain on his physical strength was the lowest, his soulforce was still the weakest amongst the people present, and his physical strength wasn’t that much different either. Being able to persevere until now was already quite difﬁcult for him. If you looked at it from the viewpoint of the number of laps that he’d completed, he was no longer the last, due to the fact that he’d managed to persevere for a longer time than some.

When everything in front of him started to turn black, he suddenly felt that there seemed to be a lump of ﬁre within his stomach that was burning. He was extremely parched, and the stickiness he felt from the sweat all over his body was hard to bear. As the heavy chainmail ground against his skin through his school uniform, bursts of scorching pain passed unceasingly through his body.

Not good, I can’t hold on any longer. A voice continuously echoed out in Huo Yuhao’s mind. He activated his soulforce and poured it into his Spirit Eyes with much difﬁculty.

A refreshing feeling spread out from his Spirit Eyes, causing him to sober up a little.

This won’t do, I can’t collapse like this. I will deﬁnitely persevere. As he looked at the many students running in front of him, he thought about the increase in cultivation speed that he’d experienced that afternoon after the extremely large drain to his soulforce. Huo Yuhao suddenly bit his tongue, rousing himself to continue running.

At this moment, he suddenly felt a comfortable, warm feeling spread out from his lower abdomen. Although his soulforce had already almost been exhausted, the warm feeling ﬂowed slowly through his limbs and bones, causing his aching muscles to feel slightly alleviated.

This is...

The power of the Mysterious Heaven Technique?

Huo Yuhao quickly recognised the source of the warm current. After cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique, it would gather in his lower abdomen at the very end. Although the time he’d spent cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique so far was still short, he still had a foundation of soulforce, after all. After converting his previous soulforce into the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s, he could be considered to

have completed the ﬁrst layer of the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

Both his eldest senior brother and the Skydream Iceworm had said that the Mysterious Heaven Technique was very suitable for him, since it could nourish his passageways. Was it ﬁnally displaying its effects?

As he pondered the matter, Huo Yuhao’s consciousness very naturally followed the passageways of the Mysterious Heaven Technique, and felt it out for a moment. He didn’t sense any obstructions, and the warm feeling within his lower abdomen wandered around his passageways, following his consciousness.

Huo Yuhao saw that it was a weak trace of the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s soulforce. Only, it would slowly spread into his passageways as it travelled, which was also the reason behind the warm feeling.

The thing that astonished him even more was that his passageways were actually absorbing these strands of soulforce at an extremely rapid pace. This was also the source of the

comfortable feeling he’d felt earlier, which had in turn relieved his weariness.

Huo Yuhao’s natural physique wasn’t that good, but he was still quite smart. The fact that the Mysterious Heaven Technique could be absorbed by him when his body reached its limit signiﬁed that he could also circulate it while moving, not just when he was meditating. The circulation of the Mysterious Heaven Technique under these circumstances was slightly different than when he was normally cultivating. The speed at which his soulforce increased in strength wasn’t high, but its integration with his body was much more intimate.

With this discovery, Huo Yuhao hurriedly concentrated whilst simultaneously slowing his steps. He quietly started to circulate the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

The Tang Sect’s Mysterious Heaven Technique had been brought over from another world by the ﬁrst generation Tang sect master, Tang San. From a certain standpoint, it wasn’t a technique that belonged to the Douluo Continent, but was deﬁnitely a top notch technique. It had extremely large beneﬁts towards the nourishment of one’s body.

Due to an accident, Huo Yuhao had actually created a method of circulating the Mysterious Heaven Technique without entering a state of meditation. When it was circulated like this, the main effect of the Mysterious Heaven Technique would be to nourish one’s body by using soulforce to nourish the passageways.

Due to the progressive recovery that resulted from the circulation process of the Mysterious Heaven Technique, a miraculous cyclical state had formed within his body. This could be considered cultivation while moving.

Huo Yuhao didn’t know it, but even the ﬁrst generation sect master of the Tang Sect, Tang San, hadn’t managed to achieve this. The reason behind this was simply because he’d had richly endowed advantages. Huo Yuhao’s cultivation, on the other hand, was still weak, which was the reason why his body was able to reach such a state, where it was at its limit. Furthermore, both his spiritual energy being very strong, combined with his possession of a spiritual-type martial soul, made it so that he could sense and manipulate the miraculous energy.

The Tang Sect had birthed many experts, but none of them had possessed the conditions that the current Huo Yuhao had.

After they became strong, they wouldn’t easily reach their limits, and they wouldn’t carefully sense the warm feeling that appeared in their dantians. It could be said that an evolution of the Mysterious Heaven Technique had appeared in Huo Yuhao’s body.

With the harmonization of this warm feeling, Huo Yuhao’s body, which had originally reached its limit, was relieved of its exhaustion by a certain amount. Not only did this strengthen his willpower, it also made him pour more of his spiritual energy into guiding this warm feeling.

The warm feeling circulated around his body, following the circulation path of the Mysterious Heaven Technique. When it completed an entire cycle, the strand would be almost fully drained. However, it was also at the moment that the cycle was completed that the warm feeling would be slightly strengthened once again, and would continue to move forward.

Huo Yuhao’s body was getting more and more exhausted, but he was getting more and more excited. The Mysterious Heaven Technique’s nourishment of his passageways under his current state was exactly what he needed the most right now! His thin passageways, which he’d previously needed extreme care to

handle, became more elastic under the nourishment of the warm feeling, and even widened slightly. The unprecedented lack of obstruction within the areas that the warm feeling passed through told Huo Yuhao that he was doing the right thing.

The number of students who’d collapsed within Shrek Plaza was gradually increasing. Even the students who’d been running at the very front were starting to gradually be unable to persevere. The sounds of chainmail smashing into the ground occasionally echoed out from time to time.

When Wang Dong lapped Huo Yuhao once again, every step he took was taken with great difﬁculty. However, to his astonishment, he saw that Huo Yuhao’s eyes were lightly shut; they were only open enough to expose a small crack that faintly exuded a golden light. His steps were taken very slowly compared to Wang Dong’s, but he was still advancing steadily. Many of the students who had higher cultivation levels than him had already collapsed, but he was still bitterly persevering. He even left a trail of sweat with every step he took.

“If you can’t do it, don’t force yourself.” Wang Dong spoke in a low voice before continuing onwards. The number of laps that he’d run so far exceeded everyone else by a large margin. However, the his body was reaching its limit.

Another hour passed, with the time left until the bell rang getting closer and closer. There were only nine students left that were still running around Shrek Plaza. However, the person who’d been considered the ‘bottom cushion’ from the start, Huo Yuhao, was one of them.

Zhou Yi had been paying attention to Huo Yuhao the entire time. She’d already been astonished when only two hours had passed. Based on Huo Yuhao’s physical strength and soulforce, he should’ve reached his limit at two hours, no matter what the circumstances. However, he’d still managed to persevere.

Although running at a constant speed did give some small beneﬁts, his cultivation and physical condition were both right there!

Could a person’s willpower really be strong to this extent?

Furthermore, he was still so young.

“Putong, putong…” Two more students collapsed, and when they did, they created a domino effect. A few students collapsed in succession following the duo, one of them just happening to bump into Wang Dong, who was next to him.

Wang Dong stumbled, his already aching legs unable to persist any longer. As he fell down, his thoughts about persevering also collapsed. However, he’d run the greatest number of laps within the class; there was no one left who could exceed the number of laps that he’d run.

There were still three people that were still running, one of which was Huo Yuhao.

After ﬁve minutes, the other two students also collapsed. The last person still running was actually Huo Yuhao, the weakest person of Class 1. Although his steps were weak, and his running speed wasn’t that quick, he’d still managed to persevere, even when everyone else had collapsed. This caused astonishment to appear on many students faces when they looked at him.

It was true that Huo Yuhao had already reached his limit, and it was also true that the warm feeling caused by the Mysterious Heaven Technique could nourish his body and relieve his weariness to a certain extent. However, in the end, it didn’t make him stronger!

He’d reached his limit again and again, but had clenched his teeth and endured it every single time. Huo Yuhao understood that he was the weakest amongst the students of 1, so he had to commit 200%, or even 300% of their hard work if he wanted to remain at Shrek Academy. And at this moment, tempering his body by reaching his limits could both help widen his passageways, and increase his soulforce. No matter what, he did his best to persist for every single moment.

Persevere...persevere! Huo Yuhao inwardly shouted to himself nonstop. At that moment, he didn’t even any soulforce left that he could pour into his Spirit Eyes to stimulate himself and sober up his mind.

Gradually, he himself began to sound out the ‘chant’ that he was using to support himself.

“Mother, mother….” This was all for the sake of his mother’s last wishes; for the sake of being able to retrieve his mother’s remains from that place one day... for the sake of washing away his mother’s humiliation and avenging her... no matter what, he had to persevere.

“Thud, thud...” Huo Yuhao’s footsteps were extremely heavy. His legs and body were trembling uncontrollably. However, he didn’t fall down. Under such difﬁcult conditions, he still repeated the machine-like motions of raising his leg, putting it down, raising it back up, and putting it back down once again.

The disdainful look that the students, who’d now fallen, had been looking at him with gradually disappeared. The power that a role model provided was mighty. They started to pull

themselves back up, one by one, before blankly staring at Huo Yuhao’s ﬁgure as he persevered.

After being stunned for a brief moment, Wang Dong was the ﬁrst to continue running after Huo Yuhao. However, he didn’t overtake him this time around.

With Wang Dong leading, a second, and then a third person gradually began to start following him. Gradually, all of the students from Class 1 clenched their teeth and raised their legs

—which were already stiff to the point that they felt dead—to continue running.

Zhou Yi was moved. Of all the time she’d been teaching, it was extremely rare that she’d be moved by the performances of her students. However this time, she’d truly been moved. This was because of Huo Yuhao, and in turn was also because of the ninety students who’d climbed back up to follow him. This was no longer a simple exercise that could temper their bodies— this was a tempering of their minds! Zhou Yi could visibly see their determination within their exhausted facial expressions.

The results of this class were far, far greater than what she’d imagined.

“Ding ring ring—”

The bell that signalled the end of the class ﬁnally rang.

Hua la, hua la. It was truly the collapse of a row of dominoes this time. The ear-piercing bell instantly caused a large number of people to collapse.

The sounds of collision caused by their chainmail and the ground caused a series of sounds to echo out, and knocked a cloud of dust into the air.

Huo Yuhao, who’d been at the very front, ﬁnally collapsed. The bell caused him to ﬁnally let go of all of the stubborness and perseverance within his heart. However, he didn’t fall directly to the ground. As he fell, Wang Dong, who was right behind him, caught him by his chainmail. As soon as he did, the two of them rolled to the ground together. The two simultaneously gasped for air together.

As he looked towards the sky, Huo Yuhao’s vision turned dark for a period of time. However, the passageways within his

body had become comfortably warm, and felt indescribably comfortable. The soulforce within his body had been exhausted, and his physical strength had already been overdrawn way before that. And yet, his passageways still made him feel very comfortable. He had the premonition that, in all aspects, his cultivation would have a large improvement after this.

Wang Dong lay beside Huo Yuhao. Both his cultivation and the condition of his body were much stronger than Huo Yuhao’s, so even though he was extremely exhausted, he wasn’t like Huo Yuhao, who couldn’t budge at all.

“I really don’t know what power made it so that you could endure all the way until now. You’re a Soul Master with only a ten year soul ring, but you were able to persevere longer than a Soul Grandmaster like me. You’re truly a freak.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled twice. He didn’t even have the energy to speak anymore.

Zhou Yi slowly took a deep breath, then beckoned towards the distance. A white-clothed male arrived as if he was ﬂoating on air. He arrived by Zhou Yi’s side with what seemed to be a

few light steps. After nodding towards her, he turned towards the students.

His dazzling soul rings rose up from his feet one by one. There were two yellow ones, two purple ones, and three black ones. He actually had seven soul rings.

Soul Sage! This was actually a Soul Sage-ranked expert, who was above the seventieth rank! He was already approaching the peak of soul masters! Furthermore, he only looked to be around thirty years old. Only, the vicissitudes visible within his eyes didn’t match his youthful outer appearance.

He raised his hands, and a gentle shade of green—a leaf— suddenly began to grow from his palms. His seventh soul ring ﬂashed brightly as it revolved around him, but the students were only able to see his body ﬂash once before it unexpectedly disappeared. The green leaf grew wildly, and in the blink of an eye, the leaf unexpectedly turned into an enormous tree that was extremely tall.

A cool breeze seemed to blow past them. Then, dark green leaves began to ﬂy out from the enormous canopy of the enormous tree. Exactly ninety-one leaves landed lightly on the

bodies of the students from Class 1; not one more, and not one less.

Every single present felt an incomparably refreshing feeling. The refreshing feeling instantly spread throughout their bodies, and no matter whether it was their aching muscles or the wounds that had been incurred by the chainmail grating against their skin, they were all recovering at an astonishing speed. Furthermore, their physical strength was gradually recovering a drop at a time. Only their soulforce was completely empty; it wasn’t left completely unaffected by the dark green leaf.

Wang Dong had the highest cultivation amongst everyone present, and was also the ﬁrst person to recover. He ﬂipped over and sat up before looking at the extremely tall tree with a burning gaze. He took a deep breath of the cool air. “This... this is one of the pinnacle existences amongst plant-type martial souls: The Tree of Life! It’s a seventieth ranked martial soul with a Soul Avatar! Teacher Zhou actually found a plant- type soul master above the seventieth rank to heal us and help us recover.”

The dark green light shrouded the area. After releasing ninety-one tree leaves, the enormous tree rapidly shrunk and transformed back into the white-clothed male in the blink of

an eye. Afterwards, he nodded at Zhou Yi, who bowed respectfully towards him. That male left in the same way he’d arrived—like a gust of wind. From the start to end, he hadn’t said a word to Zhou Yi at all.

The students crawled up one after another. Although they were still exhausted, they felt an indescribable pleasure from their bodies breaking through their limits.

Huo Yuhao had also recovered from his half-dazed state. After receiving nourishment from that godly soul skill, a refreshing feeling washed over his muscles and caused their exhaustion to disappear without a trace. Furthermore, the passageways within his body were still immersed in the comfortably warm feeling that the Mysterious Heaven Technique had created. It was almost as if he was feeling the comfortableness provided by both cold and hot at the same time. He’d never felt such a comfortable feeling in his life before.

He supported himself as he crawled back up. His entire body was covered in sweat, but his Spirit Eyes became increasingly bright. He subconsciously activated his soulforce and circulated it according to the Mysterious Heaven Technique. He found that he could actually still do it, and that the

intangible changes within his body had nourished his passageways. Furthermore, since it wasn’t being consumed anymore, there was still that little bit of the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s internal energy left over that was able to return back to his dantian and complete a full cycle before it circulated again.

Zhou Yi gazed at all the students who were slowly crawling up and indifferently said, “I have to say, you all have given me an answer that astonished me quite a bit. Today, nobody will be eliminated.”

Once she said this, the students couldn’t help but immediately let out a cheer, especially the few who’d run the least number of laps, who felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted from their minds.

Zhou Yi then proceeded to say “You all need to thank Huo Yuhao. Originally, I was prepared to give you all a punishment. The task that I gave you all was for you to run until the bell rang, and then we’d count the number of laps each of you ran. However, other than Huo Yuhao, none of you managed to run from the start to the end. However, since you were able to actually develop a sense of competition because of him, you don’t have to have a punishment. Wang Dong, step forward.”

“Teacher.” Wang Dong took a step forward.

Zhou Yi indifferently said, “As the class monitor of Class 1, you only cared about yourself—you didn’t set a good example for the others. From now on, you’re stripped of your position of class monitor, which will be taken over by Huo Yuhao. Until the next physical class, Huo Yuhao will be the class monitor of Class 1. If anyone wants to challenge him, you’re in charge of accepting them.”

When he heard what she said, Wang Dong was slightly stunned.

Zhou Yi continued in a cold voice, “What? Do you have any problems with this?”

Only then did Wang Dong sober up. He shook his head and said, “I have none. Teacher Zhou, I’m willing to concede.”

Zhou Yi nodded and said, “Disperse. Take your set of chainmail with you. Tomorrow, another teacher will be having a class on theory with you all. I suggest that you meditate well

as you digest the improvements and the signiﬁcance of today’s physical class. My next class will be in the afternoon, the day after next. At that time, I hope that I won’t see any trash.”

“Yes.” The students all simultaneously agreed. However, they didn’t randomly disperse afterwards. Instead, they collectively charged towards Huo Yuhao and suddenly threw him into the sky.

To these youths, excitement and happiness was something extremely straightforward. Because of Huo Yuhao, nobody was eliminated, and they had even been able to avoid their punishment. Thus, at least during this moment, Huo Yuhao was their hero.

Furthermore, after the difﬁcult and painful class, Teacher Zhou had found that miraculous plant-type Soul Sage to heal all of them and help them recover, which made them understand the strength of a high-ranked soul master. After the pain in their bodies had disappeared, their ill will towards Teacher Zhou had, imperceptibly, decreased by a large amount.

The students continued to be rowdy for another ten minutes or so, all the way until the students from other classes had

ﬁnished their classes too. Only then did they stop and start heading back to their individual dorms to clean themselves up. Their current appearances were truly too haggard.

The ninety-one students didn’t know this, but it was precisely because of this lesson that a collective pride had begun to gradually appear within the ninety-one of them. It had only been a single day since the class had been established, and most of them still didn’t know each other’s names, but a collective sense of pride had already appeared. This was undoubtedly because of Teacher Zhou’s teaching methods. Combined with a certain amount of luck that Huo Yuhao’s performance at the end had brought, First-year Class 1 had managed to get a step ahead of the other classes.

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong directly returned to their dorm whilst wearing their chainmail. They had to use the bathrooms at the two ends of the corridors, so Wang Dong let Huo Yuhao clean up ﬁrst, while he instead took a basin of water and cleaned himself up in the dorm room.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao’s mind was still immersed in a special state of understanding towards the Mysterious Heaven Technique. He didn’t think much of it, and went to shower instead. However, the circulation of the Mysterious Heaven

Technique within his body hadn’t stopped since he’d started circulating it in the new manner that he discovered. He discovered that the warm stream that had been unceasingly generated had already started to become weaker and weaker.

Why? Is it because my physical strength has recovered? Huo Yuhao was greatly puzzled. After he ﬁnished cleaning himself up, he faintly guessed the reason as to why it had happened. That warm feeling seemed to only appear when both his soulforce and his body were nearly exhausted. And right now, since his body had already recovered by a large amount, and his soulforce was also slowly recovering, that warm ﬂow wouldn’t be produced anymore.

If I’d known earlier, it would’ve been better for me to not recover. Huo Yuhao was somewhat helpless as he thought to himself. If that was the case, perhaps his passageways might’ve been able to obtain even more beneﬁts.

However, Teacher left the chainmail for us. I can try it out by myself later. Once he thought of this, he couldn’t help but feel excited.

“Huo Yuhao.” At this moment, a shout that woke him up from his excitement echoed out.

Huo Yuhao inwardly chastised himself. How could he have forgotten about her? He hurriedly shouted from the corridor, “Teacher Xiao Ya, I’ll be right out.” Then, he rapidly ran back to his dorm room, planning to put on his other school uniform before going out.

Because he was in a rush, he didn’t bother knocking on the door when he got there. He pushed the door open and entered, but when he entered, he was ﬂabbergasted...

What he saw was a white… rear view.

As Huo Yuhao’s gaze traced his round, narrow shoulders, the contours of a soft arc appeared by his waist. He had a pair of straight and thin legs which were more delicate than an ordinary person’s. Due to his age, none of his features were exaggerated. However, his fair skin, which still had droplets of water dripping from it, appeared crystal clear. The assault to Huo Yuhao’s vision was simply too strong.

“AHH—” A slightly scream echoed out. Following that, the patch of white in front of Huo Yuhao’s eyes became a patch of dazzling blue.

A pair of enormous wings suddenly spread out, and what immediately followed that was a V-shape made of golden haloes that suddenly brightened. The sapphire blue wings subsequently turned a blueish-violet. A strong undulation of soulforce immediately rushed out, as if it wanted to devour him.

Fortunately, the wave-like soulforce still stopped in the end.

“What are you doing? Why didn’t you knock?” Wang Dong’s anger-ﬁlled voice echoed out. The blue light vanished, and when Huo Yuhao looked again, he’d already put on a set of school clothes. He’d suddenly charged over, but hadn’t made a move against Huo Yuhao in the end. This was because Huo Yuhao, who had just cleaned himself up, was only wearing his boxers now; his entire body was clean. However, when one compared the colour of his skin to Wang Dong’s, it wasn’t just a difference of colour. Huo Yuhao’s skin ﬂickered with a

healthy copper colour, but it was far inferior to Wang Dong’s enchanting white skin...

“I… someone outside called for me. I was in a hurry, sorry!” Huo Yuhao didn’t know why, but his heartbeat had turned especially quick. He hurriedly ran to his bed and grabbed his clean school uniform before turning around and quickly running outside.

Wang Dong stood there blankly, not stopping Huo Yuhao. Only when Huo Yuhao had shut the door and run off did he come back to his senses. Flashes of both red and white appeared on his face, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

After hurriedly running out of the dorm room, Huo Yuhao’s mind calmed down a bit. However, that white patch still lingered in his mind. Especially those buttocks, which already stuck out a bit...

What am I thinking about! Huo Yuhao felt some self-disdain towards himself. He hurriedly shifted his thoughts towards the Mysterious Heaven Technique,

His ear suddenly hurt, and he let out a pained cry.

Tang Ya’s playful voice sounded out, “You still know how to cry out? I’ve been waiting here for a long time.”

Huo Yuhao miserably said, “Teacher Xiao Ya, please let go. We just had a physical class that made me sweat a lot, so wouldn’t I ﬁrst return to my dorm to clean up before I came?”

Only then did Tang Ya let go of him. As she looked at Huo Yuhao’s slightly pale face, her eyebrows furrowed. She said, “Is that perverted grandma Zhou Yi making things hard for you guys? You have to be a bit more careful, as she’s always been widely known as an iron mask. You’ll lose a layer of skin, if not die, if you offend her. How is it? Is your body still ﬁne? If you’re not ﬁne, then so be it. We can talk tomorrow.”

Huo Yuhao hurriedly shook his head and said, “Teacher Xiao Ya, I’m ﬁne. Let’s go.” Today’s physical training had brought him take one step closer to realising that he needed nutrients, and a large amount of nutrients at that. That warm feeling created by the Mysterious Heaven Technique had disappeared, but it caused an intense surge of hunger to rise up from his body. If he had no money, what could he buy to eat?

Tang Ya giggled and said, “Then you can roast twenty ﬁsh. I’ve prepared them for you. It won’t take too much of your time, but it’ll deﬁnitely take less than you working for the academy.”

“Teacher Xiao Ya, then where are we going to sell them?” Huo Yuhao asked.

Clearly. Tang Ya had already thought about it thoroughly. “At the academy’s entrance! Our Shrek Academy’s entrance is the eastern gate of Shrek City, and there has always been many peddlers outside. Furthermore, there’s no lack of academy students who do business there. With your skill in roasting ﬁsh, we won’t need to be afraid of not selling any if we go there. Even if we’re unable to sell them, we can just eat them for ourselves.”

Huo Yuhao followed Tang Ya all the way until they reached the gate. When they stepped outside, Huo Yuhao was astonished. As of now, there were no longer any students here to enroll. Instead, both sides of the eastern gate’s main road were swarming with peddlers. The peddlers were selling everything that could possibly be imagined, and their goods looked like glittering jewels. Out of the goods that were on

display, the large variety of food was the greatest. Moreover, the sounds of hawkers doing their job never stopped. Clearly, the reason that they’d gathered here was for the sake of doing business with the students of Shrek Academy.

Tang Ya was clearly slightly impatient. In an area that wasn’t too far from the city gates, she took out the stuff that she’d prepared. She even took up a bit of the main road.

She was clearly completely prepared. She had a metal grill that had been specially made by a smith, metal stands, various seasonings, as well as mackerels that had already been cleaned. She’d even brought a small table for the sake of setting all of her stuff down.

As Huo Yuhao helped her set up the grill, he couldn’t help but ﬁnd it funny. Teacher Xiao Ya’s resistance towards delicious food was really low!

Tang Ya also took out the charcoal and put it on the ﬂoor before saying, “Okay, my job is done. Everything else is up to you. I’m gonna go buy some other stuff to eat, just remember that two of these ﬁsh are mine. Just sell them for ﬁve copper

coins. In the future, if you want to buy ingredients, just ﬁnd your canteen’s Aunty Lin.”

After saying this, she excitedly ran off.

Huo Yuhao checked the amount ingredients that he had before he prepared the mackerels. The number of ingredients that he had was truly large, and Tang Ya was quite considerate. She’d even brought him some purple basil. Huo Yuhao tore up the purple basil, then stirred it together with some of the other ingredients. After the ingredients were ready, he stuffed them into the belly of the mackerels, then used a bamboo stick to skewer them one-by-one.

Today’s physical class had made him understand many things, so he was anxious to go back and cultivate. Naturally, he didn’t want to waste too much time here.

Simply lighting a ﬁre was as easy as a walk in the park for him, so after a moment’s work, the oven already had a few bright red pieces of burning coal inside of it. The oven was quite big, and was able to hold four ﬁsh at once. Thus, he roasted the ﬁsh directly.

It had to be said that Huo Yuhao’s level of skill with roasting ﬁsh was truly unrivalled. Not long after he’d started, a strong fragrance had already diffused outwards from his makeshift stall. This was better than any other form of advertisement. Not even mentioning the students from the academy, even the surrounding peddlers couldn’t help but cast a few curious gazes at him.

A male student who was wearing a yellow school uniform walked over and asked, “Little brother, how much are you selling these roasted ﬁsh for?”

Huo Yuhao answered with a very polite tone, “Senior, the roasted ﬁshes are ﬁve copper coins each.”

That student was very straightforward. “It smells quite good. Let me try one.” While he spoke, he handed ﬁve copper soul coins to Huo Yuhao.

This was Huo Yuhao’s ﬁrst successful transaction, so he couldn’t help but feel excited. After receiving the copper coins, he became even more serious while roasting the ﬁsh, so much so that he even roused some of the soulforce he’d just

recovered in order to use his Spiritual Detection to better control the heat.

With the ﬁrst customer, there would naturally be more people who’d come over. Only, this was the ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao had appeared here. His ﬁsh smelled quite good, and nobody knew how they tasted. Practically all of the people who came over were students from Shrek Academy who’d just been dismissed for the day.

When Huo Yuhao passed the roasted mackerel over to the yellow-shirted student, everyone else couldn’t help but look at him in expectation.

Chapter 12: Xu Sanshi and Jiang Nannan

The mackerel, which had turned a golden brown, still had oil dripping off it, and a strong aroma gushed unceasingly from its belly. When the man’s bit into the roasted ﬁsh, a light crackling sound came from it. The roasted ﬁsh’s skin had actually been roasted until it was crispy, but it wasn’t burnt at all. However, what lay underneath the crispy layer of the skin was the fresh, tender, succulent meat of the ﬁsh, which was packed with ﬂavour.

It was only a single bite, but that yellow-shirted student’s eyes widened in shock. He didn’t even stop to praise it. Instead, he ate the entire ﬁsh almost as fast as he could.

The other nearby students, who’d been observing Huo Yuhao from the sidelines, immediately understood what had happened. The other three mackerels that Huo Yuhao had roasted so far were instantly bought, and his total sales revenue directly increased to twenty copper soul coins, which was equivalent to two silver soul coins.

These four roasted ﬁsh caused Huo Yuhao to gain an ‘exceptional’ reputation in a very short period of time. This

was the academy’s entrance, so the number of people that passed him was extremely great. His small booth quickly became surrounded by a nearly-impenetrable crowd.

“Too tasty, that was really too tasty.” The yellow-shirted student who’d bought the ﬁrst roasted ﬁsh managed to squeeze back in, albeit with much difﬁculty. “Junior brother, give me three more roasted ﬁsh. I’ll have my dinner here tonight.”

A purple-clothed student who was one year older than him coldly responded, “Go to the back of the line.”

Huo Yuhao didn’t think that his roasted ﬁsh would sell so well. He spoke apologetically to the students surrounding the oven, “Fellow classmates and seniors, it’s my ﬁrst day doing business, thus I can only sell eighteen roasted ﬁsh. I sold four ﬁsh earlier, but I still have fourteen left. Following the principle of ‘ﬁrst come, ﬁrst serve’, those who aren’t lined up should come back tomorrow.”

As he spoke, he put away the money that he’d so far into the Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges. After selling eighteen ﬁsh, he’d made nine silver soul coins. If he deducted the costs of production, what was left was enough for him to both eat his

ﬁll and save some. Huo Yuhao wasn’t greedy; he understand that the most important for him right now was to cultivate. Having enough money to survive was good enough.

Skewers of roasted ﬁsh came out of the grill one after another as Huo Yuhao continued to roast the ﬁsh with extreme seriousness. He didn’t decrease their quality due to the number of people. Every single person who chose to buy one of his roasted ﬁsh was incomparably satisﬁed, with some people even choosing to order ﬁsh for tomorrow in advance. After some consideration, Huo Yuhao still decided to stick with a queue model. After all, the taste of hot food was the greatest when it had just ﬁnished cooking. If someone were to eat it any later, its ﬂavour would’ve diminished.

At this moment, a few female students wearing purple school uniforms walked out of the gate to Shrek Academy. Her appearance immediately attracted countless gazes.

She only looked to be about fourteen or ﬁfteen, and her ﬁgure was slender and well proportioned. Her golden hair was draped behind her shoulders like a waterfall, and her skin was snow-white. Her eyes were akin to clear water, and when she looked around, she had an elegant temperament. Her face resembled jade, a crescent halo, as well as snow around a

ﬂowering tree. She had a gentle beauty, a charming voice, a lovable appearance, and an extraordinary beauty that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Her beauty, that seemed as if it could cause the downfall of a country, seemed to dull the colours of everything else around her.

“Sister Nan, something smells good. What’s that smell?” A student beside the exceedingly beautiful young lady asked curiously. Her looks were also extraordinary, but unfortunately, how could ﬁreﬂies next to the moon emit any radiance?

The exceedingly beautiful young lady had clearly also smelled the aroma. All of the girls couldn’t help but cast their gazes towards Huo Yuhao’s booth.

Perhaps the beauty of that young lady was too imposing, but the students who’d originally been in line in front of Huo Yuhao’s booth actually opened up a path for her. She, and the other female students she was with, walked towards the oven. Only, when the exceedingly beautiful young lady saw everyone taking the initiative to open a path for her, she wasn’t arrogant at all. Instead, she carried an extremely warm smile and nodded her head towards them in thanks. All of the students who saw her smile had ﬂushed faces ﬁlled with excitement.

When Huo Yuhao saw the exceedingly beautiful young lady, he blanked out. Previously, the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen had been was Tang Ya, but not only was the purple- clothed female student in front of him not inferior to Tang Ya, she even had both a gentle and warm temperament. When you added that to her somewhat melancholic expression, she had a beautiful and moving appearance. Compared to her, Tang Ya

was a lively and cheerful, easy-go-lucky girl. As for their appearances, it simply depended on one’s preference.

“Junior brother, how much are you selling these roasted ﬁsh for?” The exceedingly beautiful young lady asked quietly.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao had just sold the last of the eighteen roasted ﬁsh he’d had. The last two remaining ﬁsh on the grill were for Tang Ya.

“Senior sister, they’re ﬁve copper soul coins each.”

The exceedingly beautiful young lady furrowed her brow, then said, “This is a bit expensive. If we consider how much it costs for the ingredients, plus the work you’ve put in, three

copper soul coins—at most—should be ﬁne. You’ll still make a proﬁt.”

Huo Yuhao was stunned. He hadn’t thought that a young lady as beautiful as her would actually haggle with him. None of his previous customers had done this.

“I’m sorry, but my roasted ﬁsh are sold at a ﬁxed priced. Furthermore, I’ve already sold all of my ﬁsh for the day.” Huo Yuhao spoke with a ﬂat tone. Tang Ya was the one who’d set the price, so he wouldn’t change it easily. Moreover, this income was very important to him, and was just enough for him as-is.

The exceedingly beautiful young lady was stunned for a moment, then apologetically said, “I’m sorry, I was just making a casual calculation. If there’s a chance in the future, I’ll try your roasted ﬁsh.” As she said this, she turned around and walked away from Huo Yuhao’s temporary booth.

Huo Yuhao clearly sensed that the surrounding atmosphere had become somewhat abnormal. Many of the students that had previously been looking fervently at him were now glaring at him.

“Brat, you dare not to sell it?” A deep voice full of anger suddenly rang out, immediately followed by a golden light that shot towards Huo Yuhao’s booth.

“Ding—” The golden light accurately struck his grill. In fact, it actually embedded itself in it. Impressively, it was a golden soul coin. Following that, a ﬁgure walked towards Huo Yuhao’s booth with large strides, until he quickly arrived in front of it. As soon as he arrived, he stretched his hand out to grab the two roasted ﬁsh.

Because roasting ﬁsh required precise control over the heat, Huo Yuhao had kept his Spirit Eyes activated this whole time. When that deep voice rang out, he’d sensed an enormous pressure arrive. Thus, he’d subconsciously released his Spiritual Detection.

Although the hand that reached towards the roasted ﬁsh was very quick, Huo Yuhao managed to predict the movements of the other party via his Spiritual Detection, allowing him to grab the two skewers of roasted ﬁsh before retreating backwards a few steps. He’d set these ﬁsh aside especially for Tang Ya. How could he let other people take them?

The person who’d tried to grab the roasted ﬁsh actually grabbed a few pieces of charcoal from the oven instead of the ﬁsh in his hurry.

At that moment, Huo Yuhao was able to clearly see the appearance of the newcomer.

He was wearing a black school uniform; he was actually a sixth-year student. He looked to be around Bei Bei’s age, and had a tall ﬁgure that was comparable to He Caitou’s. He had bushy eyebrows, as well as eyes that resembled that of a tiger’s. He also had a straight nose, a square-shaped mouth, along with a grand appearance. His fair skin had already been suffused with a few shades of red due to his anger, while his face, which still seemed to contain some baby fat, was quite imposing.

“Brat, are you courting death?” The black-shirted youth roared angrily. He actually crushed the coals he’d grabbed within his hands, causing sparks to ﬂy everywhere. However, he didn’t seem to have been burnt by them at all. He swept his right leg out, kicking Huo Yuhao’s grill to one side. At the same time, he stepped forward and used his large hands to grab Huo Yuhao by the shirt.

Using his Spiritual Detection, Huo Yuhao realised that this black-shirted youth wasn’t just being overbearing. His ‘simple’ grab actually contained countless variations in it, and although Huo Yuhao was able to make out some weaknesses in it, his cultivation was too weak to make use of them. Thus, he wasn’t able to dodge, and was thus grabbed by the shirt by the black- shirted youth.

“Hey.” The black-shirted youth raised his right hand, lifting Huo Yuhao into the air. At the same time, he forcefully snatched the two skewers of roasted ﬁsh from Huo Yuhao.

The entire process, from the time that the black-shirted youth had appeared to him making his move, happened

incomparably quickly—to the extent that the surrounding people were only just realising what had just happened.

Two voices echoed out at practically the same time.

“What are you doing?”

“Stay your hand.”

The former was the exceedingly beautiful young lady, who currently had a startled and angry expression. The latter had already charged over with as fast as lightning and had used his palm in an attempt to directly knock the black-shirted youth away.

Clearly, the black-shirted youth hadn’t thought that someone would make a move against him. Thus, he wasn’t able to protect himself in time. He was using one hand to hold Huo Yuhao, while using another to hold onto the roasted ﬁsh. If he wanted to defend himself from his opponent’s attack, he would had to forfeit one of the two.

He chose to let go of Huo Yuhao. With a ﬂick of his wrist, Huo Yuhao was sent ﬂying horizontally. He then lowered his right hand to collide with the incoming hand.

“Pa—” The two people simultaneously trembled, then both took a step back. In this clash, neither of them had managed to take the upper hand.

The newcomer wasn’t some random person; it was Huo Yuhao’s eldest senior brother, Bei Bei.

Huo Yuhao, who’d been ﬂung into the air, spun around in the air twice. However, an attractive ﬁgure appeared below him and used her hands to catch and lower him steadily to the ground.

The person who helped Huo Yuhao was naturally Tang Ya. At this moment, her originally small and charming face was ﬁlled with rage.

“Xu Sanshi, you dare to bully one of my men? I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.” As she said that, Tang Ya raised her hand, causing a golden light to ﬂy directly towards Xu Sanshi.

The black-shirted youth waved his right hand, causing a sharp black light to ﬂash as he attempted to sweep away the golden light. However, an astonishing scene occurred: The golden light suddenly brightened, unexpectedly burrowing its way through that strong black soulforce, before burying itself and disappearing inside of the black-shirted youth.

The black-shirted youth’s body trembled violently, and his gaze suddenly froze. Afterwards, his tiger-like eyes ﬂared with anger, and his three soul rings instantly rose up from his legs— there were two yellow rings and one purple ring. His originally pale skin immediately darkened as his muscles expanded, and his entire body seemed to swell up. The most peculiar thing was that a tortoiseshell shield—which had a diameter of around one metre—had appeared in his right hand.

Huo Yuhao activated his Spiritual Detection, allowing him to sense that the martial soul released by the black-shirted youth had a level of grandeur that wasn’t any weaker than the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon that Bei Bei possessed.

“Tang Ya, don’t think that I can’t do anything to you just because you have Bei Bei protecting you.” As the black-shirted youth let out a low roar, his eyes lit up with anger.

Tang Ya laughed coldly. “Come! Did you think that I’d be afraid of trash like you?”

Bei Bei indifferently said, “Xu Sanshi, you’ve bullied my junior brother. You’ll have to give me an explanation for today’s matter. If not, we’ll go to the Soul Dueling Arena and settle it with an ofﬁcial ﬁght.”

Xu Sanshi trembled slightly as he pointed at Huo Yuhao and asked, “He’s your junior brother?”

Bei Bei expressionlessly nodded his head.

Xu Sanshi coldly said, “So what? He didn’t give Jiang Nannan any face, nor did he didn’t give me any face either. It was just two skewers of roasted ﬁsh, and I already paid for them.”

Tang Ya angrily said, “Those were the ﬁsh that Huo Yuhao had saved for me. Bei Bei, why are you still listening to his bullshit? Beat him up! Beat him up until he can’t move anymore. I’ll give you a kiss later.”

Bei Bei’s face, which he’d originally been carefully controlling, ﬁnally twitched when he heard Tang Ya’s impish words, who seemed to want to see the world burn right now.

Xu Sanshi curled his lip and said to Bei Bei, “Your Tang Ya’s still so berserk, I see. I haven’t compared notes with you in a long time; why don’t we immediately go to the Soul Dueling Arena? Let’s go!”

As he was speaking, he turned around and walked away without pausing at all. With a few steps he arrived in front of the exceedingly beautiful lady named Jiang Nannang. His previously angry expression actually turned tender the instant he arrived, and he passed the two skewers of roasted ﬁsh to her. He then spoke in a gentle voice. “Nannan, you can eat ﬁrst. I’ll be back later.”

However, Jiang Nannan wasn’t grateful at all. She was always very kind towards everyone else, but she was as cold as ice towards Xu Sanshi. She proceeded to speak in a cold voice, “Xu Sanshi, I’ve told you before. There’s no possibility of anything happening between us. Please stop bothering me in the future.” Once she’d ﬁnished saying this, she turned around and walked away.

A burst of embarrassment appeared on Xu Sanshi’s face. He suddenly straightened his body and stared angrily at the crowd, who’d in-turn been watching the show. “What’re you looking at? Go away. Bei Bei, let’s go.” After saying this, he walked towards the academy. The roasted ﬁsh in his hand were thrown towards Huo Yuhao.

Tang Ya stood in front of Huo Yuhao and raised her hand to catch the ﬁsh. Her movements were very smooth and gentle, yet she seemed to have caught the ﬁsh in a very natural manner. She bluntly took a bite out of one, while she used her hand to pull Huo Yuhao with her as she ate. “Let’s go watch something fun.”

The Soul Dueling Arena was an extremely important location within Shrek Academy. It was located on the northwestern corner of the Martial Soul Institution, and was close to Shrek Academy. In fact, it wasn’t that far from the Soul Tool Testing Area that Huo Yuhao had visited before. This was a place that many students from all years would frequent. You could carry out various types of competitions within this building, with specialised teachers to act as referees. The referees were responsible for determining the victor of each competition, and were also responsible for protecting the students,

providing assistance students who needed it, healing injured students, and such. Naturally, all of this needed to be paid for.

When carrying out a duel in the Soul Dueling Arena, each party would need to pay a minimum of ten gold soul coins for arena expenses. However, many students never grew bored of these competitions, due to the fact that there were no restrictions whilst competing here. Furthermore, you didn’t need to be afraid of any dangerous situations if you were too heavy-handed, since the teachers who were acting as referees would keep everything under control. At the same time, students who won a match within the Soul Dueling Arena would obtain a certain amount of credits, which would, in turn, increase one’s marks by a certain amount during their annual advancement test.

Past their fourth year, students who wanted to continue on to become ﬁfth-years and sixth-years would need Soul Duelling Credits. A fourth-year student who wanted to become a ﬁfth- year student would need at least ten victories within the Soul Dueling Arena over students from his same year group, while advancing from a ﬁfth-year to a sixth-year required even more credits. Soul Duelling Credits were supposedly even more important when one wanted to enter the inner courtyard after becoming a sixth-year.

All competitions within the Soul Dueling Arena were open to all students, but the entrance fee was one silver soul coin.

What astonished Huo Yuhao the most was the fact that Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi’s duel actually attracted the attention of so many students. An overwhelming majority of the students who‘d been watching the liveliness outside actually chose to go watch the duel, with no care for what year they were.

“Teacher Xiao Ya, the school must make a lot of money!” Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but speak after he heard Tang Ya’s simple introduction of the Soul Dueling Arena.

Tang Ya replied, “It’s something the academy logically deserves. Since the academy is as large as it is, its expenses are naturally just as large. If they hadn’t thought of a way to make money, how would they be able to maintain the academy? However, the taxes the academy levels in Shrek City aren’t little either. In any case, our academy is the continent’s number one academy in terms of prosperity. Right, little Yuhao, the standard of your roasted ﬁsh has improved even more. It’s either that, or the ingredients that I got you are better, since it tastes so good.”

Tang Ya ﬁnished her two skewers of roasted ﬁsh long before they reached the Soul Dueling Arena. Huo Yuhao was already hungry, so he went ahead and bought some dinner when they walked by the canteen. When he and Tang Ya arrived at the Soul Dueling Arena, there were many people ﬂooding into it. As the news of Xu Sanshi and Bei Bei’s duel began to spread like wildﬁre, more and more students streamed towards the Soul Dueling Arena.

Tang Ya paid two silver soul coins and brought Huo Yuhao into the Soul Dueling Arena. The Soul Dueling Arena was hexagonal, and was roughly as big as Shrek Plaza. The centre of the Soul Dueling Arena was a large open area, which was clearly the place where students would duel against one another. Furthermore, it was surrounded by around three thousand chairs that rose progressively upwards.

When they entered, there were already two to three hundred students sitting around the battleﬁeld. Tang Ya and Huo Yuhao had arrived relatively early on, so they managed to obtain seats in the row that was closest to the battleﬁeld. On the other hand, the battleﬁeld in front of them was empty; it was unknown where Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi were.

Tang Ya knew that Huo Yuhao was unfamiliar with the rules for the Soul Dueling Arena. Thus, she decided to explain them to him. “The Soul Dueling Arena is open everyday, from dismissal to midnight. Students who wish to carry out a duel have to ﬁrst pay the fee and register. If both parties are fairly famous students in the academy, the academy will use a soul tool called a ‘megaphone’ to broadcast the event in order to attract more viewers. The academy will then keep half of the ticketing fees, while the winner will keep the other half. Your eldest senior brother’s already made quite a bit of money from

dueling. Furthermore, that Xu Sanshi is a ﬁfth-year student, whereas he’s just become a fourth-year. Since they’re separated by an entire year, it’s considered a challenge that bypasses what year they’re in. Thus, that Xu Sanshi will have to give Bei Bei an additional ten gold soul coins if he loses. Your eldest

senior brother and that Xu Sanshi are both extremely famous students in the outer courtyard—they’re both acclaimed as geniuses. I’m guessing that the number of people who’ll show up to watch will exceed ﬁve hundred.”

Huo Yuhao asked, “Then who was that Jiang Nannan?”

Tang Ya raised her hand and hit Huo Yuhao on the head. “You’ve already learnt bad things at such a young age? You’re already looking at pretty girls? Hmph!”

Huo Yuhao felt his head throb, and didn’t dare to ask again. Instead, he chose to take out his lunchbox and start eating dinner.

When she saw his naive appearance, Tang Ya couldn’t help but laugh. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Jiang Nannan is known as the outer courtyard’s number one beauty. She comes from an ordinary family, and treats everybody kindly. She has countless

fans within the academy. Do you think that she’s prettier than me?”

Huo Yuhao hurriedly shook his head a few times.

Tang Ya was somewhat pleased as she said, “That’s right! I don’t think that she’s stronger than me in any other area either, hmph! That guy, Xu Sanshi, has a very strong mutated martial soul known as the Mysterious Underworld Turtle. It’s a dual-attribute martial soul that possesses both the water and the earth element, and has an extremely strong defense. It’s been called an impenetrable fortress by some. His cultivation is around the same level as Bei Bei’s, and they both have ﬁrst-rate martial souls. Don’t worry, I’ve already vented some anger for you. I threw a Dragon Beard Needle at him, which should be unbearable for him. If he wants to pursue Jiang Nannan, so be it, but it won’t do if he hurts any of my people in the process. Speaking of strange, I’m beginning to think that Jiang Nannan has a problem with her gender orientation. There are an endless number of outstanding male students pursuing her, but she’s never taken a liking to any of them. When she rejects other people, she does it with a gentle tone. However, when she rejects Xu Sanshi, it’s with a rarely-seen coldness. I don’t know if this is because Xu Sanshi took advantage of her in some way. On the other hand, these people who are coming to watch Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi are really innocent! They only know that Bei

Bei and Xu Sanshi are respectively known to possess the outer courtyard’s strongest attack-type martial soul and the outer courtyard’s strongest defense-type martial soul. However, they don’t know that these two know each other. I’m guessing that they’ve colluded to both earn some money—that’s why so

many of them ran over to the Soul Dueling Arena.”

Huo Yuhao spoke with astonishment, “Eldest senior brother and that Xu Sanshi know each other?”

Tang Ya nodded. “Little Yuhao, don’t worry. Even though they know each other, your eldest senior brother will still compete against him ﬁercely. He won’t let Xu Sanshi bully you for no reason.”

Soul Dueling Arena, lobby.

“Bei Bei, your Tang Ya is too vicious. Look at this, just look at this…” Xu Sanshi had a dissatisﬁed expression as he lifted his jacket to show Bei Bei something. A bulge the size of an infant’s ﬁst had already swelled up on the right side of his waist. Only, he continued to release his martial soul, causing the skin surrounding that bulge to seemingly become as hard as metal.

Bei Bei snorted and replied, “Serves you right. Who asked you to bully our junior brother? Less bullshit, give me a Mysterious Water Pill and I’ll remove the Dragon Beard Needle for you. If not, then you can wait till it digs out a piece of your ﬂesh. This Dragon Beard Needle was left behind by the ﬁrst- generation ancestor of the Tang Sect, and was only passed down to the successive sect masters. Xiao Ya was really angry this time.”

Xu Sanshi said, “That brat was actually someone who belonged to your Tang Sect? He doesn’t look like he has any ability at all! Forget about the Mysterious Water Pill, quickly help me! This Dragon Beard Needle is too toxic, it hurts like hell. It’s also specialised in breaking through soulforce. I can’t believe I actually fell into Tang Ya’s trap because of my carelessness. This is really depressing.”

Bei Bei looked towards the sky and replied, “Whatever. If you don’t want to give it to me, don’t give it to me. You hit my junior brother, plus you even wrecked his booth. You can slowly endure this Dragon Beard Needle then. The duel’s going to start soon anyway. I don’t believe that you’ll be able to compete against me with that Dragon Beard Needle in you.”

Xu Sanshi snorted angrily. “Fine, Bei Bei, just wait. You just watch how I take care of you in the Soul Duelling Arena later. I won’t be lenient towards you at all.”

Bei Bei smiled and said, “Do I need you to be lenient towards me?” As he spoke, he extended his right hand towards Xu Sanshi and made a gesture.

Xu Sanshi unwillingly took out a delicate bottle made out of white jade and threw it towards Bei Bei. Bei Bei caught it and said, “Many thanks. Now, withdraw your martial soul, I’ll help you remove the Dragon Beard Needle.”

Only then did Xu Sanshi slowly withdraw his martial soul. Without the restrictive effect of his martial soul, waves of unbearable pain immediately spread from the Dragon Beard Needle into his body. Even with his cultivation level and willpower, Xu Sanshi actually couldn’t stop his body from trembling.

Bei Bei used his right hand to rapidly tap a few points surrounding Xu Sanshi’s wound. Afterwards, he simultaneously moved both of his hands, causing waves of gentle soulforce to unceasingly pour into Xu Sanshi’s cramped

muscles. After a moment’s work, a hair-like golden strand slowly came out from Xu Sanshi’s waist muscles.

Bei Bei pulled it out softly, causing the golden strand to pop out of Xu Sanshi’s body, before quickly shrinking into a golden grain-sized pea. With a ﬂip of his wrist, Bei Bei quickly put it away.

Xu Sanshi let out a long sigh, as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. However, he still had an angry expression. “Bei Bei, you’re taking advantage of me. You know how valuable this Mysterious Water Pill is. How about this? Let’s make a bet. If I win our match later on, you’ll return that Mysterious Water Pill to me.”

Bei Bei simply smiled. “What if you lose?”

Xu Sanshi snorted and said, “I’ll give you one thousand gold soul coins.”

Bei Bei shook his head before saying, “That won’t do. I know that the Mysterious Water Pill isn’t worth only a thousand gold soul coins. I won’t make an unfair bet with you.”

Xu Sanshi angrily retorted, “I only have that much money. If you don’t agree, I’m going to get very angry.”

Bei Bei sighed softly and said, “Do I look like I lack money? Fine, I’ll give you a chance. I know you still have more Mysterious Water Pills. Take another one out and use it as the wager.”

A trace of suspicion appeared in Xu Sanshi’s eyes. “Why do I feel like I’ve fallen into your trap? It seems like you’re sure that you can beat me.”

Bei Bei still kept a warm smile on his face. “You’re the person who wanted to make a bet, not me. You can still choose not to bet. Also, don’t moan and groan when you lose to me later on.”

Xu Sanshi snorted and said, “Me, lose? Although I can’t guarantee that I can beat you, it won’t be easy for you to beat me either. If we were to tie, how would our bet work?”

However, Bei Bei wasn’t fooled by him. “Then we’ll each keep what we already have. Hurry up, stop acting like a sissy.”

Xu Sanshi clenched his teeth and said, “Fine, I’ll bet with you. You bastard. You might not be stronger than me, but you’re extremely crafty. I reckon that I’ve been tricked by you again. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just go suck up to my dad when I get back.”

Bei Bei’s still had a smile on his face. Although Xu Sanshi was trying his best to look for a change in his expression, he wasn’t able to notice anything.

“You! You’re not really stupid, but you’ll immediately turn foolish towards any matter that Jiang Nannan’s involved in. I really don’t know whether you two were some sort of enemies in your previous life. Even though Jiang Nannan is pretty, there are many excellent female students in Shrek Academy. Why do you insist on giving your unrequited love to a ﬂower?”

Xu Sanshi unhappily said, “Don’t be an armchair expert. If you’re so against with it, why don’t you give Tang Ya to me?”

Bei Bei stood up and retorted, “You’d better quickly adjust your body’s condition so that you won’t be unconvinced when you lose later. I’ll go ﬁrst.” He’d already started to walk out as he spoke.

Tang Ya’s predictions were spot on. The number of students that had gathered in the Soul Dueling Area had gradually increased, and currently it exceeded four hundred. It wouldn’t be a problem at all to gather ﬁve hundred students by the time the duel started.

“Huo Yuhao.” A voice that was fuming with anger caused Huo Yuhao to be startled. When he turned around to see who it

was, he saw the tidily dressed Wang Dong aggressively walking towards him.

“Why did you come?” Huo Yuhao asked with a somewhat guilty tone. When he saw Wang Dong, he immediately recalled that white scene...

Wang Dong’s face had both shades of red and white on it. He sat down next to Huo Yuhao and spoke with a low voice, “Tell me, what did you see?”

Huo Yuhao was stunned for a moment. Then he replied, “Ah?

I didn’t see anything!”

Wang Dong snorted angrily. “If you don’t knock next time, I’ll kill you.”

Huo Yuhao knew that he was in the wrong, but he still muttered to himself, “We’re all men...it’s not like you’d suffer a loss if I saw anything.”

“What did you just say?” Wang Dong ﬂew into a rage and raised his hand to grab Huo Yuhao.

A slender palm stretched over and slapped Wang Dong’s hand away. Afterwards, Tang Ya’s voice rang out, “Little Yuhao, you haven’t introduced him to me.”

Only then did Wang Dong notice Tang Ya’s existence. When he saw Tang Ya’s exceedingly beautiful face, he was slightly stunned. However, he quickly regained his composure and snorted, before choosing to ignore Huo Yuhao. At ﬁrst, after Huo Yuhao had run off, Wang Dong had quickly put his clothes on. However, he hadn’t been able to ﬁnd any traces of Huo Yuhao’s existence. He’d wanted to meditate, but wasn’t able to calm himself down at all. At that exact moment, he heard the announcement that was broadcast to the dorms. Thus, he decided to go out and relieve some of his boredom. However, he didn’t think that he’d bump into Huo Yuhao and Tang Ya here.

Huo Yuhao quickly said, “Teacher Xiao Ya, this is my roommate Wang Dong. Wang Dong, this is Tang Ya, one of our senior classmates.” He was only able to give a simple introduction such as this.

Wang Dong nodded towards Tang Ya, who smiled and said, “What a pretty young boy! I like him! Little Yuhao, how about you persuade him to join our Tang Sect?”

When Wang Dong heard the two words ‘Tang Sect’, his body trembled slightly. Astonished, he said, “Both of you are from the Tang Sect?”

Tang Ya nodded her head a few times and said, “Yeah, there’s only three of us left in the Tang Sect. I’m the current sect master of the Tang Sect. How about it, are you astonished? Come, come, the Tang Sect welcomes you.”

Even though Tang Ya was usually a very carefree person, and although she was just casually saying this without thinking the matter through, anyone who thought she was dim-witted would eventually suffer a huge loss under her hand. She’d already seen how unordinary Wang Dong was. His essence was hidden, and his soul force had been condensed. With just a glance you could tell that his cultivation far surpassed Huo Yuhao’s.

However, Tang Ya was surprised when Wang Dong actually nodded at her proposal after a short period of blankness. He

quickly said, “Sure! I’ve already heard about the miraculousness of the Tang Sect’s hidden weapons. Sect master Tang, I wish to join the Tang Sect. Please accept me.”

“Ah? You really want to join the Tang Sect? But our Tang Sect only has three people left.” Tang Ya was extremely shocked. She looked at Wang Dong with a puzzled look.

Wang Dong nodded seriously and said, “I wish to join the Tang Sect and learn how to use hidden weapons.”

Tang Ya’s expression also turned solemn as she said, “I’ll have to think this matter over. I’ll let Huo Yuhao give you my answer later.”

During the short moment of time that they’d been talking, Bei Bei had walked into the arena from the lounge. Some of the students sitting near the arena had already started to shout out his name as he appeared.

“Thunderbolt Bei Bei, Thunderbolt Bei Bei…”

Bei Bei smiled towards the spectating students and waved at them, but his gaze was searching through the viewing platform.

Only when Tang Ya stood up and waved at him did Bei Bei see where they were. Because they were separated by a great distance, the trio probably wouldn’t hear anything if he spoke. Thus, he just gestured a few times at Tang Ya.

The two had been together for quite a while already, so Tang Ya immediately returned a few gestures to show that she understood what he meant, before sitting back down.

“Little Yuhao, what’s the maximum range of your Spiritual Detection Sharing?” Tang Ya whispered into Huo Yuhao’s ear.

Huo Yuhao answered, “If it’s only in one direction, about ﬁfty metres or so.”

Earlier, he’d tested the limit of his Spiritual Detection when it was used in a single direction with Wang Dong. If he released it normally, it had a diameter of thirty metres. This meant that it only a ﬁfteen metre radius. On the other hand, ﬁfty metres

was already more than twice his limit. However, it consumed a large amount of Huo Yuhao’s soul force when he directed it like that.

Tang Ya immediately raised her right hand and made a few hand gestures towards Bei Bei, who nodded back at her.

At this moment, Xu Sanshi also walked into the Soul Dueling Arena. There was a forty-or-so year-old teacher who followed him out.

When they reached the Soul Dueling Arena, Xu Sanshi and Bei Bei both had a cold look of concentration on their faces. This wasn’t their ﬁrst time competing against each other in the Soul Dueling Arena. In the past, they’d both achieved victories over one another, but most of their duels had ended in ties. They’d truly managed to earn a lot of money from this Soul Dueling Competition, thus they naturally couldn’t reveal the fact that they were close friends.

The teacher that was acting as the referee walked to the centre of the arena, then said in a low voice, “Fourth year student ‘Bei Bei’ is challenging ﬁfth year student ‘Xu Sanshi’. If Xu Sanshi loses this match, he will have to pay an additional

ten gold soul coins to Bei Bei. You’ve already made your bets in private. Are you two ready?”

Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi both simultaneously nodded.

Chapter 13: Mysterious Water Pill

“Match, start.” After announcing the start of the match, the referee rapidly retreated. Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi then released their martial souls almost simultaneously.

The Soul Dueling Arena that had previously been clamouring instantly became silent, everyone’s attention now focused on the two people in the arena. As inﬂuential ﬁgures within Shrek Academy’s outer courtyard, every single duel between Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi would shake one to the core. The other students loved it when they fought against each other. Furthermore, there were even many students who privately made bets against one another.

Blue lightning gathered around Bei Bei’s body, and his right arm expanded rapidly. As the blue lightning wreathed his body, his martial soul, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon, was released.

On the other side, Xu Sanshi didn’t show any weaknesses at all. His body expanded once again, causing his uniform to stretch outwards. Following that, the massive tortoiseshell shield appeared in his right hand again as well.

The two began to slowly walk around the outside of the arena as they stared at one another with piercing gazes. The strong soulforce that was being emitted from the two of them

—one blue and one black—increased in strength unceasingly. The differences between the two different types of soulforce could clearly be seen.

On the surface, they looked like they looked like they were evenly matched. Both of them were Soul Elder experts that possessed three soul rings, and both of them were battle-type Soul Elders. From their martial souls, Bei Bei was clearly an assault system Soul Elder, while Xu Sanshi—who possessed a shield—was highly likely to be a defense system Soul Elder.

One of them had the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon that was known as the martial soul with the highest amount of attack power, while the other had a mutated martial soul that had an enormous level of defense, the Mysterious Underworld Turtle. It was hard to say who would win.

Wang Dong seemed to have forgotten about his issue with Huo Yuhao as he silently began to concentrate on the two people in the arena. Huo Yuhao was the same. Their moods

had involuntarily ﬂuctuated towards following the two competing Soul Elders.

After releasing his martial soul, Bei Bei’s gentle temperament instantly turned sharp. On the other hand, Xu Sanshi’s hot temper seemed to have cooled down, and a mountain-like stability had appeared.

When Xu Sanshi reached the area that was closest to Huo Yuhao and the others, Bei Bei suddenly roared, and charged towards Xu Sanshi like a bolt of lightning.

Xu Sanshi was slightly startled. He hadn’t exposed any weaknesses, and this wasn’t a great opportunity for Bei Bei either! When did Bei Bei become so impulsive?

Although Xu Sanshi thought this in his heart, he didn’t dare to be slow at all. He was extremely clear on the explosive power that Bei Bei could release when he attacked.

When Bei Bei was only ﬁve or so metres away from Xu Sanshi, he suddenly leapt upwards and sent his right arm, which was covered with thick scales, towards Xu Sanshi’s head.

Blue lightning wrapped itself around Bei Bei’s draconic claw, signifying that he could release his soul skill at any time.

However, Xu Sanshi remained calm and unhurried. He slightly shifted his right foot back half a step, and slightly crouched down. He placed his shield in front of his body, allowing it to completely protect his body. Meanwhile, pitch- black soulforce surged out from his tortoiseshell shield, faintly forming a black halo of light that both shrouded and protected him.

“Boom—” Bei Bei’s draconic claw collided ferociously against the thick black tortoiseshell shield, causing the two of their bodies to simultaneously shake. Bei Bei rapidly halted his attack and fell back, while Xu Sanshi slid backwards.

Of Xu Sanshi’s three soul rings, his hundred year soul ring suddenly lit up, causing the black light emitted by his tortoiseshell shield to immediately be doubled. A strong black halo spread out from his shield, covering a full ten or so square metres. It was like an enormous hood that pushed outwards. It even emitted rumbling sounds as it was released.

This was Mysterious Underworld Quake, Xu Sanshi’s ﬁrst soul skill.

This was a wide range knockback skill that also had a dizzying effect. If his opponent’s cultivation was inferior to his, they would feel dizzy and be knocked backwards. At the very least, this skill could allow Xu Sanshi to pull some distance from his enemies.

However, Xu Sanshi never expected Bei Bei to be so determined.

When Xu Sanshi released his ﬁrst soul skill, both Bei Bei’s second and third soul rings unexpectedly lit up at the same time.

The ﬁrst to activate was his third ring, which was his thousand year one. As its light expanded outwards, a low rumbling sound suddenly exploded from Bei Bei’s body, causing his entire body to emit strong bluish purple lightning. The scales on his right hand spread rapidly towards his body, encapsulating the right side of his chest within them. Following that, the aura surrounding his body instantly rose.

This was Thunderous Fury.

Following that, his second soul ring ﬂashed, causing many thick electric snakes to instantly burst outwards from Bei Bei’s body.

When Bei Bei combined his second and third soul skills, they managed to negate Xu Sanshi’s Mysterious Underworld Quake. Even if Xu Sanshi was widely recognised for his defense, his Mysterious Underworld Quake wasn’t able to knock Bei Bei away.

A hole was forcibly torn into the black hood formed by Xu Sanshi’s skill. Bei Bei ignored the assaults of the black streams of air and stubbornly forced his way in.

Xu Sanshi was startled, but his movements didn’t slow down in the least. His second and third soul rings also lit up in succession. He was all too familiar with Bei Bei’s power, and was extremely conﬁdent in his own defense. Although he didn’t feel 100% certain that he could defeat Bei Bei, Bei Bei absolutely wouldn’t be able to beat him if he concentrated ﬁrmly on his defense.

However, in the instant that he released his second and third soul skills, he suddenly felt as if his brain had been pierced by a needle. A trace of fuzziness instantly appeared in his consciousness, causing his two soul skills to suddenly turn sluggish for a moment. He’d actually been unable to immediately release them.

Bei Bei’s pouncing body suddenly turned illusory. This was the Tang Sect’s Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks. His body crouched slightly downwards, and his entire body seemed to slide along the ground. He used his right claw to hook onto the bottom of the tortoiseshell shield, whilst simultaneously sliding behind it.

Even if Xu Sanshi wanted to release his soul skills, it was too late. Letting Bei Bei get around his shield like this had already doomed him to tragedy.

Bei Bei used his right foot to stamp directly on Xu Sanshi’s calf, and underneath the strengthening effects of Thunderous Fury, the lightning of Vigorous Thunderbolt instantly surged forth. In the next moment, Xu Sanshi’s body was only able to tremble in its original location. On the other hand, Bei Bei’s enormous draconic arm dug directly into his shoulder. The outcome of the battle had been settled, just like that.

The match had ended even faster than most people had expected, so much so that there were many people who simply hadn't seen what happened. Bei Bei had gone around Xu Sanshi's tortoiseshell armor's defense and then subdued his opponent in order to obtain victory.

“Bei Bei wins.” The referee’s voice rang out, announcing the victor. He didn’t stop Bei Bei from throwing Xu Sanshi to the ground either.

Xu Sanshi’s bodily resistance was indeed extremely strong, which was shown by how his trembling immediately stopped when Bei Bei withdrew his lightning. However, his words were still somewhat scattered. “You, you were cheating.” Although he didn’t know how Bei Bei had cheated, he knew that he deﬁnitely wasn’t the reason for his soul skills being slowed down by half a beat earlier. Furthermore, he’d been fully concentrated on his defense. The fact that Bei Bei had actually been able ﬁnd the weakest spot in his defense in only a single moment was completely outrageous.

“Cheating my ass. If you want to bet with me, you have to accept your loss. Give me the Mysterious Water Pill you owe me.” Bei Bei smiled as he used his draconic claw to pour a bit of his lighting-type soulforce back into Xu Sanshi’s body, causing Xu Sanshi’s tall body to tremble all over once again.

How could Xu Sanshi know that a person in the stands had already fainted solely for the sake of helping Bei Bei beat him?

That’s right; the piercing pain that Xu Sanshi had felt in his brain when he’d wanted to activate his second and third soul skills had come from Huo Yuhao’s Purple Demon Eyes and Spirit Shock. Even though Huo Yuhao’s cultivation wasn’t that high, the instantaneous attack power generated by the combination of the two skills still made Xu Sanshi, whose body had been completely protected by soulforce, suffer a loss.

Huo Yuhao had been roughly thirty metres away from Xu Sanshi, which was perfectly within the range of his Spirit Shock.

Not only that, before releasing these two skills, Huo Yuhao had even used his Spiritual Detection and Spiritual Sharing in order to help Bei Bei ﬁnd a weak point in Xu Sanshi’s defense.

It could be said that this short instant was Huo Yuhao’s best performance since becoming a soul master. He’d consecutively used three soul skills, as well as the Purple Demon Eyes, to forcefully direct the outcome of a match between two evenly matched adversaries.

The scenes before the match—

The few gestures that Bei Bei had made towards Tang Ya had been meant to tell her to ask Huo Yuhao to help out, and the reason that Bei Bei had unleashed his attacks on Xu Sanshi when he hadn’t received any opportunities was because Tang Ya had told him the range of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing.

This victory actually belonged to to the combined efforts of both Bei Bei and Huo Yuhao.

Other than Tang Ya and Bei Bei, who was in the arena, Wang Dong was the only who’d sensed it. When Huo Yuhao had used his soul skill, although he’d deliberately controlled the soul ring that had appeared below his feet so that it didn’t rise upwards, how could he hide the undulations of soulforce released by it from Wang Dong, who was sitting right next to him?

Wang Dong clearly saw a faint-gold colour appear in Huo Yuhao’s eyes, which had almost instantaneously turned much more vibrant in the next moment. Finally, a purple light had ﬂashed through them. Right after that, he’d directly tilted towards him, unconscious.

As Wang Dong subconsciously held onto Huo Yuhao, the match in the arena had already ﬁnished.

“He, what happened to him?” Wang Dong asked with an astonished tone.

Tang Ya was also startled when she saw Huo Yuhao collapse. She hurriedly examined Huo Yuhao’s condition, before letting out a sigh of relief. “He’s simply overdrawn his soulforce, there’s nothing wrong with him. Let’s go.” It was better to

leave the crime scene after doing something bad. Furthermore, Tang Ya was inwardly puzzled. How had the effectiveness of Little Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing been so great? Bei Bei’s original intention had just been to use it to let him take the initiative in the ﬁght!

Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi’s cultivation level were about the same, so the person who was able to seize a decisive opportunity would have the best chance at victory. However, she never thought that he’d actually win the match in one blow.

Huo Yuhao was truly too exhausted. After a full day of physical training, combined with the many times that he’d used his soul skills, the over-exhaustion caused him to fall into a very thorough unconscious state, where he wouldn’t be able to wake up for quite a while. This was also one of his body’s self-defense mechanisms.

Tang Ya and Wang Dong carried Huo Yuhao back to his dorm room together. By the time they reached the dorm, Bei Bei had caught up. After using his soulforce to help Huo Yuhao’s body recover, he took out a porcelain bottle and tumped out a medical pill, which he shoved into Huo Yuhao’s mouth.

“Little brother, please take care of him.” Upperclassmen weren’t allowed to enter the dormitories of lowerclassmen; this was a rule set by Shrek Academy. Thus, Bei Bei could only ask Wang Dong to help him out.

Wang Dong’s gaze was slightly blank. He came from a prestigious family, so he was knowledgeable about many things. Earlier, he had clearly seen the pill that Bei Bei had taken out.

It had been a dark blue pill about the size of a cherry, with many veins of various shades of white on its surface. When he’d taken it out of the porcelain bottle, the pill had even been surrounded by a faint layer of mist. Furthermore, its fresh smell that had lingered in the air was something deeply refreshing to the mind.

Was that a Mysterious Water Pill? No way. Wang Dong was gobsmacked.

It wasn’t only him. Even the old man who was lazily reclining next to the entrance widened his eyes slightly for a moment before he returned to his original state.

Tang Ya asked Wang Dong, “Little cutie, when little Yuhao wakes up, please remind him to go buy some ﬁsh tomorrow. When I get back, I’ll prepare another set of what I gave him earlier today.”

Bei Bei unhappily retorted, “You only know how to eat. You almost harmed my little junior brother today.”

Tang Ya humphed and said, “Don’t give me that. I know that you already had bad intentions towards Xu Sanshi behind his back. That guy’s as dumb as a rock, so sure enough, he was duped by you. You just happened to grab the opportunity.”

Bei Bei innocently said, “If someone wants to give me a present, what else can I do but receive it? All I can say is that our little junior brother’s luck is quite good. Let’s go back and cultivate. I remember a certain someone who said that she’d give me a kiss if I were to beat Xu Sanshi. You should keep your promises.”

Tang Ya stuck her tongue out at him. “I asked you to beat him until he wasn’t even able to take care of himself. Did you do that? If not, go cultivate!”

Wang Dong suddenly said, “Senior Tang Ya, please consider my question for a while. I really want to join the Tang Sect.”

Tang Ya nodded her head and waved at him, while Bei Bei revealed a pondering look on his face. Afterwards, he smiled at Wang Dong before pulling Tang Ya away.

Wang Dong carried Huo Yuhao back to their dorm room and placed him onto his bed. The image of the pill that Bei Bei had fed to Huo Yuhao was still present in his mind. After softly shaking his head and glaring ﬁercely at Huo Yuhao, he muttered to himself, “I’m not scared of getting an eye infection after seeing what I wasn’t supposed to see. Sleeping on a hard bed serves you right.” Whilst speaking, he jumped back onto his own bed and started meditating in a cross-legged position. The physical training that he’d undergone today had also been extremely effective.

Huo Yuhao’s sleep this time around was especially sound. Ever since he’d entered the Tang Sect, he’d been bitterly cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique. This was the ﬁrst time since then that he’d been able to sleep peacefully.

In his dream, he felt as if he was immersed within a relaxing pool. The ensuing feeling of relaxation caused him to let out a moan.

Not long after starting his meditation, Wang Dong opened his eyes once again and looked—astonished—towards Huo Yuhao, who was still lying on his bed. He’d been roused after sensing the strong ﬂuctuations of soulforce in the air.

Sure enough, the strong ﬂuctuations of soulforce he’d felt were being emitted from Huo Yuhao’s body. It was already nighttime, so the faint blue light that was coming from Huo Yuhao’s body was especially noticeable in the dark.

Wang Dong jumped down from his bed and squatted quietly beside Huo Yuhao’s bed to carefully observe him. He discovered that Huo Yuhao’s skin seemed to be rising and falling slightly. Furthermore, as it rose and fell, a few tiny streams of air were being continuously emitted from his pores. These were the ﬂuctuations of soulforce that he’d sensed. Furthermore, the faint blue mist surged unceasingly into his pores before surging back out and, following the passing of time, the colour of the mist gradually turned slightly darker. At the same time, the refreshing smell in the air gradually weakened.

“It’s the Mysterious Water Pill... it’s actually the Mysterious Water Pill that’s worth ten thousand gold. Why would senior Bei Bei casually give him such a precious pill?! Don’t tell me that he gave Huo Yuhao the wrong pill?” Wang Dong spoke to himself with a shocked tone.

After a brief moment of shock, Wang Dong planned to return to his bed and sleep. However, he suddenly thought of something, and somewhat helplessly walked towards Huo Yuhao’s bed. He then waved his ﬁst around and humphed. “Thanks to you, I can’t sleep even when I have a bed. Hmph, just wait.” As he spoke, he rolled up his bedding and put it away in his storage-type soul tool. Afterwards, he quietly left the dorm room. No one knew where he went.

Not long after Wang Dong left, the smell emitted by the mist surrounding Huo Yuhao’s body gradually turned from a sweet smell to a ﬁshy smell, and its colour also darkened even more. Following that, Huo Yuhao’s breathing became increasingly calm.

This time around, Huo Yuhao’s sleep was truly relaxing and peaceful. The thing that ﬁnally woke him up was because of how sticky he felt. Once his consciousness had returned, he couldn’t help but sneeze loudly.

“Holy shit, this smell! What's this smell coming from!?” Huo Yuhao rolled over and sat up. He subconsciously thought that this was Wang Dong doing something crazy to him.

However, when he opened his eyes to look at the bed opposite him, he discovered that it was barren. Wang Dong wasn’t in the room.

It was still dark outside when he woke up, but Huo Yuhao quickly discovered that something seemed to be off. He could see every single bit of detail within the room—almost as if his eyes weren’t affected by the darkness at all.

In the past, although he could’ve achieved this level of vision, it would’ve required the him to both circulate his soulforce and release his Spirit Eyes. But now, he didn’t even need to use his martial soul to reach the same level of vision!

When he looked downwards, he discovered that his uniform had actually turned pitch-black; the stinky smell that he’d complained about was coming from his uniform. Moreover, a layer of pitch-black ﬁlth had also appeared on his skin where the uniform didn’t cover it. He felt as if he’d been dropped into a pile of sludge before being thrown back onto his bed.

“I’m pretty sure that Wang Dong doesn’t hate me this much…” Huo Yuhao was left somewhat speechless as he looked himself over. When he stood up, he noticed that his wooden bed was covered with a dense layer of black ﬁlth.

Just what was this?

The smell that was present on both his body and the bed were truly too unpleasant, so he didn’t bother to carefully ponder what exactly had happened. He jumped off his bed and rushed to open the dorm room’s windows. Immediately afterwards he ran out of his dorm room, and went directly towards the bathroom located at the end of the corridor.

The ﬁlth that was covering his body felt greasy. The time that it took for him to clean his bed and wash his clothes, combined

with cleaning himself, all-in-all, took about an hour of his time.

When he ﬁnally sat back down on his bed, Huo Yuhao had a perplexed expression. Whatever, I won’t overthink it. I’ll ﬁnd out what happened when I ask Wang Dong tomorrow. I’ve slept for most of the night already, which wasted a lot of time I could’ve spent doing other things. I need to hurry up and cultivate.

After thinking this to himself, Huo Yuhao sat down in a cross-legged position and began circulating his soulforce throughout his body, following the circulation paths of the Mysterious Heaven Technique as he cultivated.

Huo Yuhao had only spent three seconds meditating when he suddenly opened his eyes wide in shock. His Spirit Eyes were wide open, but were ﬁlled with an inconceivable look.

“Am... am I dreaming?” Huo Yuhao was somewhat in a daze.

After he recovered, he hurriedly shut his eyes once again.

When another three seconds had passed, he opened his eyes again, only this time his face was full of excitement.

Yes, something that Huo Yuhao didn’t dare to believe had happened. When he’d entered into a meditative state to circulate his soulforce, he felt as if his body was in an unprecedented state. If he was to compare his previous circulation of soulforce to the crawling speed of a snail, then his current speed of circulation was at least as fast as the climbing speed of a spider. His soulforce circulation speed was three to ﬁve times faster and, in addition to that, his soulforce had been strengthened by a large amount. When he circulated it now, it felt much less obstructed.

As he continued to circulate his soulforce, he felt an unprecedented sense of power spread throughout his body—as if all his meridians had been opened. This sort of feeling was simply too wondrous. He also felt the itchy feeling that normally signiﬁed growth in all of his limbs and bones.

Huo Yuhao somewhat impatiently shut his eyes and roused his soulforce so that he could circulate it around his passageways. The facts had proven that he wasn’t dreaming; everything was real. Originally, when he was following the circulation paths of the Mysterious Heaven Technique to

cultivate, he’d need at least an hour to complete a full revolution. Now however, he didn’t even need to use a quarter of that time to ﬁnish a full circulation. Furthermore, the rate at which his soulforce grew was several times greater than before. It was no longer the sort of increase that could be counted with traces; it had evolved into something that could be counted in wisps.

At the same time, as he was cultivating, Huo Yuhao discovered that all of his passageways had become unprecedentedly unobstructed. The areas that had been previously been obstructed, along with the areas which had been extremely thin and fragile, had all been widened and thickened by a large amount. Furthermore, his passageways had a faint kind of elasticity to them; even if they were hit with several soulforce attacks, they still wouldn’t be in any danger.

Could it be that I’ve shed my mortal body and bones in a single night?

He wasn’t even willing to think about what had caused it. He’d never felt such an increase in power in his entire life. It wasn’t easy for him to grasp this sort of feeling, so he wasn’t willing to give it up no matter what. He unceasingly circulated his soulforce throughout his body. As he did so, the circulation

speed of the Mysterious Heaven Technique seemed to faintly increase. Furthermore, as the Mysterious Heaven Technique nourished the passageways in his body, that warm and comfortable feeling started to appear again.

Huo Yuhao didn’t even know how many times he ended up circulating his soulforce, but it was at least until the sky outside gradually brightened. Only when the distant horizon exposed daylight did he wake up from his meditative state.

Even after sitting in a cross-legged position for half the night, his legs didn’t feel numb or stiff at all. He moved slightly until he was by the window. As he gazed towards the purple qi that gradually appeared in the east, his soulforce easily went towards his Spirit Eyes in a very natural manner as he started cultivating the Purple Demon Eyes.

The change that had occurred in his body, as well as the strengthening of his soulforce, made everything seem different for Huo Yuhao. When Huo Yuhao used his Spirit Eyes to look attentively towards the layer of purple qi that had risen from the east to start cultivating the Purple Demon Eyes, he clearly felt as if something in his brain had been cut apart. His Spirit Eyes faintly generated an invisible attractive force that

absorbed the purple qi in the same manner a whale would drink water.

The outside of his eyes became warm, while their interior remained cool. Huo Yuhao only felt his spiritual energy spread out in all four directions, quickly exceeding his original limit, reaching a total diameter of forty metres before stopping. The layer of purple within his eyes had also deepened, and even his skin had a bright and smooth luster to it. His three energies— essence, qi, and spiritual energy—were completely different from yesterday.

As he let out a long sigh to exhale a mouthful of impurities from his body, Huo Yuhao completed his cultivation of the Purple Demon Eyes. Everything around him became increasingly clear. With a thought, Huo Yuhao withdrew his soulforce, and his Spirit Eyes also returned back to their normal state. Only, his pair of deep blue eyes had become even brighter.

He knew that something must’ve happened to his body. If not, he might not have had such a huge increase in his cultivation from a full half a year of cultivation.

Just as Huo Yuhao’s heart was ﬁlling with doubt, the room to the dormitory opened.

Wang Dong stuck his head through the door and sniffed the room a few times. After conﬁrming that the room didn’t smell, he slowly walked in whilst hugging his bedding to his body. He threw the bedding onto his bed and spoke unhappily to Huo Yuhao, who was standing there. “You’re really a good one. You’ve ‘shed your mortal body and bones’, but you made me unable to return home. Hmph. You’re treating me to breakfast today.”

Huo Yuhao looked at Wang Dong with a puzzled expression. “Wang Dong, just what happened to me? Why was I covered with ﬁlth when I woke up? My cultivation has even risen by a large amount. It even feels like I’ve done what you just said; I have a sort of ‘shedding my mortal body and bones’ feeling.”

A simple-looking golden bracelet on Wang Dong’s wrist ﬂashed, causing a round metallic ball to appear in his hand, which he then threw towards Huo Yuhao.

“Let’s see how much your soulforce has increased by. This soul tool of mine can test the soulforce of people from the tenth to the thirtieth rank. Just pour your soulforce into it.”

“Oh.” Huo Yuhao replied. Gripping the metal ball, he slowly poured his soulforce

into it.

The golden ball started to emit a faint layer of yellow light that gradually began to extend outwards. Next, a number appeared on the surface of the metal ball. At ﬁrst, it was ﬁxed at eleven, but it rapidly jumped up to twelve. As the yellow light continued to extend outwards, the ‘twelve’ also started to gradually tremble. However, Huo Yuhao was already using all of his strength at the moment; he wasn’t able to stimulate the number anymore.

Wang Dong’s expression had changed into one of astonishment. “It really is worthy of being called the Mysterious Water Pill! It’s actually increased your soulforce by almost two ranks in a single night. You’re at the peak of the twelfth rank now, only a step away from the thirteenth rank.”

Huo Yuhao’s eyes went wide. “Are you telling the truth?

What is this ‘Mysterious Water Pill’?”

Wang Dong snatched the testing soul tool back from Huo Yuhao and humphed. Then, he said, “My soul tool is extremely accurate when testing people’s soul ranks. Besides, I don’t beneﬁt from lying to you. Speaking of which, you should thank senior Bei Bei. What sort of relationship do you have with him? He actually just casually slipped you a Mysterious Water Pill that’s worth ten thousand gold when you were unconscious. I’m very skeptical as whether or not he gave you the right pill.”

When he saw Huo Yuhao’s puzzled face, Wang Dong went ahead and explained, “The Mysterious Water Pill is an extremely mystical pill. Supposedly, it’s a pill that’s speciﬁc to a certain water-type sect. However, I don’t know which exact sect that is. When the Mysterious Water Pill is being reﬁned, you need to use the blood essence of ten or so water-type soul beasts, as well as several tens of water-type plants. Afterwards,

you’ll also need to mix them in a speciﬁc manner before being able to successfully reﬁne it. Water has a cleansing property, so not only can the Mysterious Water Pill greatly heal you, it can also increase your soulforce by a margin. Furthermore, its medicinal properties are extremely gentle, so a soul master of any rank is capable of absorbing its medicinal efﬁcacy extremely well. As for soul masters below the twentieth rank, it can increase their soulforce by a rank at least. However, its most valuable aspect isn’t this; it’s the fact that it can cleanse your muscles as well as your bone marrow.”

“When we shower normally, we cleanse the ﬁlth off the surface of our bodies. On the other hand, the Mysterious Water Pill cleanses the impurities hidden within our bodies. This Mysterious Water Pill is effective for anyone who takes it. To an extremely talented soul master, it might only be akin to adding ﬂowers to a brocade. However, to a soul master with ordinary talent, it’s basically sending them coal during a blizzard. It can expel the impurities within their bodies, as well as nourish their meridians. The increase in potential for an ordinary soul master caused by the Mysterious Water Pill is equivalent to an increase in his innate soulforce by an entire rank. In other words, if your innate soulforce when your martial soul was awakened was only at the ﬁrst rank, it’ll turn into the second rank after you’ve taken a single Mysterious Water Pill. This is nothing short of a qualitative growth in one’s talent and physique.”

What Wang Dong didn’t know was that his analogy had actually struck the truth. Huo Yuhao’s innate soulforce was actually the ﬁrst rank!

However, Huo Yuhao clearly sensed that the feeling of ‘shedding one’s bones’ he’d felt after taking the Mysterious Water Pill deﬁnitely wasn’t just as simple as a mere one rank increase in his innate soulforce. In fact, his cultivation speed had almost quadrupled! Although he wasn’t comparable to the likes of Wang Dong and Bei Bei, who were genius soul masters, he’d become equivalent to an ordinary soul master at least. Cultivation wouldn’t be as difﬁcult as it had been in the past for him anymore.

“Eldest senior brother….”

Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but want to shed a few tears. It was his eldest senior brother who’d given him the Mysterious Water Pill, something that was worth ten thousand gold! This friendship given to him by Bei Bei was deeply engraved into his heart.

Huo Yuhao’s luck was truly good. Wang Dong’s explanation of the Mysterious Water Pill wasn’t incorrect at all. Under normal circumstances, the increase provided by the Mysterious Water Pill would be just as he’d described.

However, Huo Yuhao had taken the Mysterious Water Pill at the perfect moment. After yesterday’s bitter training, his body had received enough tempering that it broke through its limits. He’d essentially completed a thorough ‘warm up’ before he consumed the Mysterious Water Pill. Furthermore, his comprehension towards the Mysterious Heaven Technique had caused the technique to permeate throughout his passageways, allowing it to reside in a sort of warm, nourishing state.

The overuse of Huo Yuhao’s consciousness had caused him to sink into a comatose state. Due to this, when he absorbed the Mysterious Water Pill, he hadn’t been able to deliberately control the efﬁcacy of the Mysterious Water Pill, allowing it to evenly spread throughout his body. The nourishing effect brought about by the Mysterious Water Pill was completely received by his body.

There was another important point. The Mysterious Water Pill was a water-type medicinal pill, while his second martial soul that had been bestowed to him by the Skydream Iceworm

was an ice-type one. Ice was, in and of itself, another state of water, which caused his absorption of the Mysterious Water Pill to be even more fruitful.

In addition, following the Mysterious Water Pill’s reconstruction of his body, one of the ten balls of Origin Energy that the Skydream Iceworm had sealed within his body had ﬁnally been cracked open by a small amount. A portion of the energy that had spilled out from it had thus fused with his body. Because of this, the increase in his spiritual energy was actually even larger than the increase in his soulforce. This was also the reason why his spiritual awareness had expanded from thirty metres to forty metres.

The Mysterious Water Pill could be said to have caused an all- around upgrade to Huo Yuhao’s body, which was the reason why he’d experienced such a huge change. This would have enormous beneﬁts towards his future cultivation, and even his Purple Demon Eyes had evolved.

The Purple Demon Eyes had four major realms—Surveyance, Totality, Mustard Seed, and Boundlessness. When Huo Yuhao used his Spirit Eyes to cultivate the Purple Demon Eyes, he basically achieved twice the effects while putting in half the work. As the Mysterious Water Pill had increased his soulforce,

it had also simultaneously spurred on the Skydream Iceworm’s Origin Energy. Thus, when he’d previously cultivated the Purple Demon Eyes, the Origin Energy had created a siphoning effect towards the purple qi on the horizon, thereby allowing Huo Yuhao’s Purple Demon Eyes to directly leap into the Totality realm from the Surveyance realm. In terms of cultivation speed for the Purple Demon Eyes, he could even be said to be the fastest person in all of history. He’d even exceeded the founder of the Tang Sect, Tang San.

Huo Yuhao didn’t know this yet, but the advancement of his Purple Demon Eyes had caused a large increase in his ability to control spiritual-type skills. When he activated soul skills in the future, his soulforce consumption would be substantially lessened.

As he looked at Huo Yuhao’s red eyes and slightly blank appearance, Wang Dong patted him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go and get some breakfast. I want to eat double today!”

Huo Yuhao laughed. “Sure. You can even eat quadruple if you want today.”

Wang Dong eyes widened. “You’re the pig here.” Once he spoke, the two couldn’t help but break into laughter. Their embarrassment from last night had disappeared. At such a simple age, the two still had pure hearts.

Chapter 14: Skydream Points

Huo Yuhao didn’t forget to dig out the golden spirit coin from the grill that he’d earned from yesterday’s roasted ﬁsh before following Tang Ya to see Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi compete. When Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong arrived at the dining hall, they secretly felt a little rich and imposing.

The breakfast that they had was especially sumptuous, and greatly replenished their bodies’ needs. They were the earliest to arrive at the dining hall, and even by the time they’d ﬁnished eating, not many students had arrived.

“There’s still a while till we have to be in class. Let’s return to the dorm room.” Huo Yuhao patted his satisﬁed belly and stretched his body for a while with a content look on his face.

Ever since he arrived at Shrek Academy, he’d gradually become cheerful. He ﬁnally had friends here, but even more so, he had Teacher Xiao Ya and his Eldest Senior Brother Bei Bei who both cared about him. This was worlds better compared to the previous kind of atmosphere he’d experienced when he was in the Duke’s mansion, where everything was ice-cold.

Wang Dong replied, “Save it. You’re just gonna go back and cultivate again anyway. Bowstrings that have been stretched too tightly will break, you know. If you need to relax, then you should just relax. Let’s take a walk by Sea God Lake and relax for a while. The Mysterious Water Pill just helped you increase your cultivation by quite a bit; you shouldn’t care about this short moment of relaxation.”

“Alright then.” Huo Yuhao happily agreed. Every since entering the academy a few days ago, he still had yet to visit Sea God Lake. Moreover, it really was almost time for them to head to class. It would be a good idea if he took the chance to take a walk too.

The two left the dining hall and cut through the school building for new students as they headed to the east along the south side of Shrek Plaza. Soon afterwards, they arrived at the alley to the lakeside.

As they passed through the forest next to the alley, Sea God Lake, with its gleaming waves that were reﬂected in the sunlight, and its water that was both clear and crystalline, was presented before their eyes.

A gust of wind that contained a gentle mist mixed with fresh air buffeted them. Even though Sea God Lake was a man-made lake, the water that it held was extremely clear. The azure lake was blue to the point that its surface was both pure and deep, yet so blue that it was also tender, calm, and graceful. A slight ripple that looked like the luminous eyes of a young lady was also full of life that undulated on the surface of the lake and looked like a blue brocade.

The lake reﬂected an inverted image of the blue sky and white clouds, as well as the trees that lined the lakeside.

“So beautiful!” Wang Dong couldn’t help but inhale deeply, physically exerting himself as he stretched his body.

When he stretched his body, his shirt was inevitably pulled up, revealing his perfectly rounded and perky butt. Huo Yuhao absolutely didn’t deliberately focus his attention on it, but an unintentional look was enough to remind him of the shining patch of white that he’d seen yesterday…

He turned his head away, feeling somewhat embarrassed, and looked far out into the distance across Sea God Lake. Sea God Lake occupied an extremely wide area; perhaps it was even

larger than the main Shrek Academy campus that was to the west of Shrek Plaza. There was even a layer of fog atop the water’s surface in the distance.

After Huo Yuhao’s Purple Demon Eyes had evolved, the sight of his Spirit Eyes had substantially increased once again. Even though he hadn’t poured soul power into his Spirit Eyes to activate them, Huo Yuhao could still see far into the distance. He faintly saw what seemed to be houses amidst the mist that rested upon the surface of the lake in the distance. He couldn’t help but think that the inner courtyard was probably at that end of the lake, as he’d associated those houses with Xiao Ya and Bei Bei’s description.

If such an outstanding Soul Master like his eldest senior brother was only able to study in the outer courtyard, then how strong would the upperclassmen from the inner courtyard be!?

“Eh?” At the exact moment that Huo Yuhao was preoccupied with his thoughts, he suddenly saw what appeared to be a red dot appear in the mist above the lake.

“What is it?” Wang Dong asked curiously.

Huo Yuhao pointed in the direction that he was looking. “Look, there seems to be some sort of red dot over there.”

Wang Dong followed where Huo Yuhao’s ﬁnger was pointing, and looked in the direction that he was pointing. However, all he saw was a sea of mist. “Where?” He was questioning Huo Yuhao’s words one moment, when in the next moment, he opened his eyes wide and stared. He’d also seen the so-called red dot that Huo Yuhao had mentioned. However, it wasn’t some red dot. It was clearly a red-coloured ﬁgure that was currently running on the surface of the water at an astonishing speed. In addition to that, looking closely at the ﬁgure, it actually seemed to be rushing in their direction!

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong both exchanged a glance before simultaneously crying out in surprise, “An upperclassman from the inner courtyard?!”

The red ﬁgure’s speed was extremely shocking. In just a short period of time, it had already reached the center of the lake. Every time the tips of his toes brieﬂy touched the surface of the lake, he’d create a ripple that spread out across the lake. However, he was also continuously speeding up with the help

of that slight buoyancy from the lake, rapidly ﬂying forwards like a red cloud.

As the ﬁgure got closer, Huo Yuhao was also able to see it even better. The red colour wasn’t only due to the fact that the clothes on its body were red in colour, but even its hair was a blood-red colour. The ﬁgure was slender, yet was emitting a sort of biting ﬁerceness from its whole body, just like a frightening soul beast. The ﬁgure was wearing a mask that was also similarly red in colour; even its eyes were blood-red.

The air surrounding its body seemed to be distorting slightly. The mist would even somewhat dissipate beneath his feet wherever he passed.

“This senior seems to be very strong! Look, he can even run on the surface of the water without releasing his Martial Soul.” Wang Dong said to Huo Yuhao with an excited look on his face, as per his analysis of the situation.

Huo Yuhao’s cultivation wasn’t as good as his, but his perception was far more acute. “Wang Dong, why do I feel that something isn’t right!?”

The red ﬁgure was truly too fast. In the period that they’d been conversing with each other, the ﬁgure had already approached the hundred-metre radius of the shore. A frightening surge of heat engulfed them in that instant. Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had astonished looks enter their eyes at the same time, because they simultaneously felt that an indescribably wild aura had exploded from that senior’s body. It deﬁnitely wasn’t an aura that should appear from a normal person.

With a swish, azure wings had spread out from Wang Dong’s back. He grabbed ahold of Huo Yuhao in an attempt to take ﬂight. However, that red ﬁgure had already gotten close to them in the short span of Wang Dong’s movements.

The terrifying heat burst forth in an instant, causing both Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao to feel as though they’d been enveloped by a sea of ﬁre. The wings on Wang Dong’s back crumpled in an instant, making it so that he could no longer ﬂy. The duo fell to the ground at the same time. All of the vegetation in an area ten metres around the ﬁgure had turned burnt-yellow in an instant.

The difference in their cultivations was really too great. Wang Dong still wanted to try to release his soul skill, but just

as he activated his soulforce, he immediately sustained an attack from that terrifying heat. With a dull groan, he immediately lost consciousness.

Huo Yuhao’s cultivation was inferior to Wang Dong’s, but one mustn’t forget that he still had an ice-type martial soul that had yet to take form.

Once Huo Yuhao was subjected to the intense stimulation from the external heat, his ice-attribute martial soul was immediately awakened. However, his soulforce that was only at the peak of the twelfth rank was thoroughly consumed by the external heat in just a single second. Moreover, that red ﬁgure had already swatted a large hand in his direction.

The temperature of his surroundings was already so frightening. If he really was hit, wouldn’t he die very tragically?

The last thing that Huo Yuhao could do was launch a Spirit Shock. However, the disparity between him and his opponent was too great. His Spirit Shock dissipated in the heat before it could even charge through that layer of strong ﬁre-attribute

aura. At this rate, he was going to vanish in a puff of smoke and ashes under that huge, scorching-hot palm.

It was at this exact moment that the sight before Huo Yuhao’s eyes became a ﬁeld of white, and everything in his surroundings became a blur.

Am I dead? Am I going to die like this? In this moment, when death was approaching, the feeling that he had in his heart wasn’t unwillingness. Everything that had happened had really been too sudden. Hence, he was only at a loss at the moment.

The scene before his eyes suddenly became clear. Huo Yuhao saw a strange scene: He saw himself…

If Wang Dong were still awake now right, he’d have seen an incomparably shocking scene.

In the moment that Huo Yuhao was about to be engulfed by that ﬂaming hand, the colour of his eyes suddenly changed. His dark blue eyes—which had been twinkling with a faint golden light—suddenly became as white as twinkling frost in an instant.

A gust of extraordinarily cold air suddenly spread outwards from Huo Yuhao’s body. He actually managed to forcibly disperse all of the heat coming from the ﬁgure in front of him.

The ﬁery ﬁgure only let out a dull groan before curling up as they collapsed to the ground.

When Huo Yuhao was utilising his Spirit Eyes, the soul ring that rose up from beneath his feet was white. However, at this moment, his normally white soul ring had actually turned an incomparably brilliant golden colour. A glaring golden light sparkled off of it, just like the morning sun was rising up from beneath his feet.

With Huo Yuhao’s body as the core, the area around him— and a hundred metre diameter of him—instantly turned into a world of ice and snow. Even his opponent’s spiritual sea was frozen.

The red ﬁgure seemed to be shivering violently, as the terrifying intimidating aura it let off was continuously condensed by the cold. Huo Yuhao slowly raised his right arm. It wasn’t known when his right hand’s index ﬁnger had turned ice-blue, nor when his eyes had begun to shine with a white light. A gloomy voice immediately rang out.

“You dare to touch the person that this Brother has chosen, and dare to disturb this Brother’s sleep! Go and die!”

Huo Yuhao pointed forwards with his index ﬁnger, causing an icy-blue ray of light to suddenly ﬂash in the sky, headed straight for the red ﬁgure.

The temperature surrounding the red ﬁgure plummeted as a result of the extremely chilling feeling Huo Yuhao was emitting. Perhaps because it felt danger approaching it, the red ﬁgure struggled violently. Closely following that, the loud and clear cry of a phoenix abruptly rang out.

An enormous phoenix ﬂoated up from beneath the ﬁgure, along with six soul rings—two yellow, two purple and two black. Soul Emperor rank!

Among the six soul rings, the second, third, and sixth soul rings all shone at the same time. The ﬂame behind the ﬁgure turned dark red almost instantly. A thread of ﬁre that was as thin as a ﬁnger was spouted from the phoenix’s mouth, colliding with the ice-blue light that had been shot out of Huo Yuhao’s index ﬁnger.

“Chi chi——” A series of strange sounds rang out. The thread of ﬁre collapsed almost instantly. The enormous phoenix

abruptly pounced forwards, using its huge body to shield the red ﬁgure from the front.

The ﬁery red ﬁgure rolled back along with the violent cry of the ﬁre phoenix and, with an icy-blue layer covering them from head to toe, they immediately dropped straight into Sea God Lake in the distance.

Huo Yuhao was just about to pursue and attack them, but halted his steps for a moment. The sound that had previously rung out rang once more. “How annoying, someone else came. Huh, this small guy’s physical ﬁtness has improved very quickly! It seems that I can give him a bit more power already. Alright, I’m ﬂeeing.”

The golden soul ring rapidly dulled back to a white soul ring and disappeared. All of the coldness in Huo Yuhao’s surroundings also disappeared seemingly instantly. The water in the lake rapidly reverted back to its original state. Huo Yuhao’s white eyes that had been emitting a strong chill reverted back to normal. Finally, his body went limp, causing him to fall to the ground in exhaustion.

Sea God Lake had just had frightening soulforce ﬂuctuations a moment ago, but tranquility had already been completely restored. Only Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong were left, collapsed and unconscious by the shore.

In the distance, more than ten silhouettes were headed straight for them from the depths of Sea God Lake at an astonishing speed. It only took a couple seconds for them to arrive at the shore.

“This is bad. Students from the outer courtyard were injured.” A white-clothed old man was the one leading the group. He suddenly strode over in mid-air and, as if he’d just teleported through space, arrived at Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s side. He extended both his hands, and both of their bodies immediately ﬂoated upwards.

“Fortunately, it seems that they’ve only fainted. They haven’t sustained any injuries. Teacher Li, please provide them with some medical treatment.”

“Yes.” Another white-clothed middle-aged person hastily stepped forwards, taking charge of Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong. If Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong were still conscious, they

would’ve immediately recognised this Teacher Li aas the Soul Sage-ranked master who’d utilised his martial soul—The Tree of Life—on them yesterday, and had conducted a full-scale recovery on the entire class.

His soul rings quickly rose up, and hoops of green light revolved around Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s bodies, quietly inﬁltrating their bodies. A miraculous scene appeared: The wilted plants in their surroundings had actually started to rapidly recover at an astonishing speed. One could also faintly see that the large-scale vegetation that surrounded the Sea God Lake was emitting faint green rays of light. These faint green rays of light were surging towards Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s bodies, slowly soaking into them.

“Xiao Tao is over here.”

The crashing sound of water rang out, and a white-clothed person ﬁshed out the ﬁgure clad in red who’d previously fallen into Sea God Lake.

The person clad in red was already drenched from head to toe, revealing a lithe and graceful ﬁgure. Looking at the ﬁgure’s appearance, the person actually seemed to be a woman.

The white-clothed old man went around to her side. He pressed her right hand to his shoulder and could see that rich white soulforce was surging into the woman’s body at an astonishing speed.

“Strange!” The white-clothed old man furrowed his brow, as if there was something that he couldn’t understand.

“Teacher Li, what’s the situation with these two students from the outer courtyard?” He turned his head and asked the teacher who was currently treating Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong.

The person known as Teacher Li said, “It’s nothing serious.

They’ll be waking up very soon.”

The white-clothed old man heaved a sigh of relief and said, “Thank goodness we didn’t make a serious mistake. It seems that Xiao Tao still managed to retain some of her consciousness. Teacher Li, send these two students back and repeatedly warn them to forget what they saw. If they divulge this matter to others, they’ll be expelled. Give them a high grade as compensation. We’re heading back.”

The last three words were directed towards the others. He carried the woman clad in red, and as his silhouette ﬂickered, he turned into a ray of white light as he headed towards the depths of Sea God Lake.

In the moment that Huo Yuhao fainted and fell to the ground, he was no longer able to see anything on the outside with his consciousness. Naturally, he also didn’t know what happened after he fainted either.

“You managed to disturb Elder Brother’s sleep so quickly! How annoying!” The Skydream Iceworm’s voice resounded in Huo Yuhao’s spiritual sea.

Huo Yuhao dazedly asked, “Brother Skydream, you were the one who made that move just now?”

The Skydream Iceworm replied, “Of course it was this brother who did it! If not, you would’ve already become a dried up, baked person! That person’s ﬁre attribute is truly very strong; she actually possesses the blood of a Phoenix Godbeast! If not, this Brother’s ﬁnger would’ve annihilated her. But, no matter. She should’ve lost consciousness already. That ﬂame of

hers seems to be slightly demonic. However, this Brother didn’t eat all that ten thousand year Ice Pith for nothing. Her powers are still far from comparable to mine. Little Yuhao, your cultivation has been very successful. Your physical ﬁtness has increased signiﬁcantly. The ﬁrst seal of the ten seals that I left in your body has already been cracked open.”

“Really?” Huo Yuhao was overjoyed. Ever since he’d come to Shrek Academy, he’d started to understand how insigniﬁcant he was. After meeting so many experts, his thirst for strength had grown even greater. However, due to his poor talent, he could only secretly work even harder. Now, even the Skydream Iceworm had praised him, so how could he not be happy?

The Skydream Iceworm spoke with a very depressed tone. “However, this Brother has used some of his Origin Energy. This is my Origin Consciousness, which can also be considered the intelligence that’s been added onto your soul ring. It’s because of this that I was able to protect your body before using my power. Furthermore, after that attack, your body won’t be able to be possessed by me for at least a year. You’ll have to be extremely careful. If you meet another undefeatable enemy like this one, we’re both ﬁnished. Okay, I won’t tarry on any longer. I’m going to keep sleeping. You have to quickly work harder. Once you’ve gotten a second soul ring, you won’t have to constantly bother this Brother anymore.”

The Skydream Iceworm was always rushed whenever he appeared. Huo Yuhao had originally planned to ask him a few questions regarding the control of his soul skills, but the

Skydream Iceworm already fallen back into a deep sleep, and everything surrounding him had turned dark.

……

Wang Dong was the ﬁrst one to wake up. When he opened his eyes, he saw a white-clothed middle-aged man in front of him. However, before he could speak, Huo Yuhao, who was to his side, let out a mufﬂed groan and slowly opened his eyes.

Because he wasn’t as clear as Huo Yuhao regarding the general situation, Wang Dong’s mind was blank. He angrily said, “Just what’s going on? What was that monster earlier?”

The white-clothed middle-aged man indifferently replied, “You’re both ﬁne now. About the thing that you guys just saw, please forget about it. If you don’t, you’ll be expelled from the academy. I’ll give you two these as compensation. I believe that you’re both smart people.” As he spoke, he threw two green objects towards Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong.

The two subconsciously raised their hands to catch them. At the same time, the white-clothed middle-aged man had already

risen up into the sky, and was ﬂying towards Sea God Lake. “Go to class. Remember, it’s best that you forget everything you just saw.”

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong looked at each other. They were left in a daze for quite a while.

“Huo Yuhao, what do you think’s going on?” Wang Dong asked him in a low voice.

Huo Yuhao shook his head. “I don’t know. It seems like we’ve come across a madman.”

Wang Dong lowered his head to see what the green object in his hand was, and immediately became stunned. Following that, his face became ﬁlled with a happy expression. “Wah, we’ve struck gold! It’s a Soul Advancement Pill! It’s actually a Soul Advancement Pill.”

Huo Yuhao looked towards the green lump in his hand with puzzlement. It was a green pill that was about the size of a walnut, and it was releasing a faint fragrant odor. Its surface was dark-green in colour, and there seemed to be a faint halo

of light circulating within it. It was sparkling and translucent, and was also ﬁlled with an aura of life.

“What’s a Soul Advancement Pill? Is it a type of pill, like the Mysterious Water Pill?”

Wang Dong replied, “Yeah! Furthermore, it’s a pill that’s of the same rank as the Mysterious Water Pill! However, the Mysterious Water Pill is a bit more precious than the Soul Advancement Pill because it has a cleansing effect on one’s muscles and marrow. But, to soul masters above the thirtieth rank, whose muscles and marrow have already been thoroughly cleansed, the Soul Advancement Pill is better than the Mysterious Water Pill. Due to this, the price of the two pills are about the same. You have to take care of it. It’s supposedly extremely hard to reﬁne this sort of pill. I didn’t expect that teacher to give us something so extraordinary as hush money. I’ve decided to forget everything that I saw earlier.”

Huo Yuhao asked impatiently, “Can you speak more clearly?

Just what use does this Soul Advancement Pill have?”

Wang Dong let out a cunning laugh and replied, “I’m not telling! Beg me!” After he ﬁnished his sentence, he turned

around and ran towards the freshmen's school building.

Huo Yuhao was left speechless. After carefully putting the Soul Advancement Pill into his Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges, he chased after Wang Dong. While running, he shouted, “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just ask my eldest senior brother. He deﬁnitely knows what it does. If you tell me now, I’ll treat you to lunch.”

Wang Dong slowed down and waited for him to catch up. “Then, I’ll be eating something tasty.”

Huo Yuhao took out all of his savings and said, “I’m a homeless orphan anyway. These are all of my savings, do whatever you want with them.”

Wang Dong was stunned for a moment. “You... you’re an orphan?”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head.

Wang Dong spoke again, “The reason that you don’t even have any bedding on your bed, isn’t it because you just want to assiduously cultivate? Isn’t it because you’re simply not willing to spend money on some bedding?”

Huo Yuhao replied, “It’s because I feel that having some money left to eat with is more important than buying bedding. The food in the canteen is rather expensive after all.”

Wang Dong unwittingly stopped, causing Huo Yuhao to naturally stop along with him. “What’re you doing? It’s almost time for class. We need to hurry up.”

Wang Dong pursed his lips tightly and stared at Huo Yuhao. Huo Yuhao, who was currently being stared at, felt goosebumps rise on his back. “What’s happened to you? Was your brain fried by that guy earlier?”

Wang Dong inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Huo Yuhao, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you were an orphan. I shouldn’t have bullied you.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled and replied, “Your bullying didn’t work, did it?”

Wang Dong somewhat resentfully slapped his shoulder. “Can you not interrupt me when I’m in the middle of feeling moved? Let’s hurry to class. I’ll pay for your meals from now on.”

Huo Yuhao shook his head and said, “You don’t need to. Teacher Xiao Ya found a way for me to make some money. From now on, I’ll be selling roasted ﬁsh everyday after school. That’ll be enough for me to get my living expenses. I’ll treat you to some roasted ﬁsh later tonight.”

As he spoke, the two walked towards the freshmen's school building. As they walked, Wang Dong explained the use of the Soul Advancement Pill to him.

The main use of the Soul Advancement Pill was to increase one’s soulforce; it was reﬁned from a few heavenly treasures. Soul master could only use a single Soul Advancement Pill during their entire lifetime, and the increase in soulforce one would receive from the pill was roughly equivalent to the soulforce that a soul master at the thirtieth rank needed to advance to the thirty-ﬁrst rank. This was a pill that could raise

one’s soulforce by an entire rank! This was truly something that was hard to come by. However, one’s future cultivation potential would be affected if more than one were taken.

Furthermore, the Soul Advancement Pill and the Mysterious Water Pill were somewhat similar, as their main function was to stimulate a person’s potential to provide more nourishment to the body. Because of this, their medicinal properties were relatively gentle; soul masters that were only above the tenth rank could consume them.

“Then, how large would the increase in my soulforce be if I were to eat it now?” Huo Yuhao asked probingly.

Wang Dong shook his head and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anyone willing to eat it at the twelfth rank. No matter how highly ranked an auction is, this pill is always considered a good thing. Moreover, very few people will choose to sell it. Supposedly, only an extremely small number of plant- type soul masters can reﬁne it, and a year’s supply won’t exceed twenty. This time, we really had some crappy luck. It seems that the school is fair, as even though that fellow threatened our lives, we still got something this good.”

Unlike Wang Dong, who was praising the school for giving them the pill, Huo Yuhao’s mood wasn’t too happy. This was because he clearly knew how he and Wang Dong would’ve been charcoal right now, were it not for the existence of the Skydream Iceworm. Even if they were to receive a pill then, it wouldn’t be of any use to them.

“Then, when is the best time to eat it, in your opinion?”

Wang Dong replied, “Obviously, when we get back to our dorm tonight. You can’t just put a good thing like this away. Furthermore, it’s best to increase your cultivation earlier, so that you can reach rank thirty earlier. If I’d had a third soul ring today, I wouldn’t have been so passive, at the very least. There wouldn’t have been any problems with me ﬂying into the air with you either.”

Huo Yuhao thought about it for a while, before deciding to eat the Soul Advancement Pill once he got back home tonight. The stronger the soulforce he supplied his Mysterious Heaven Skill with, the stronger its nourishing effect would be on his passageways. Hence, increasing his soulforce was naturally a good thing for him. However, he didn’t know how great an increase in soulforce the Soul Advancement Pill would provide. The soulforce needed for one to advance to the thirty-ﬁrst rank from the thirtieth rank could increase his soulforce by two, or even three ranks at the very minimum. If that was the case, his cultivation would end up around the the ﬁfteenth rank, which meant that it’d be in accordance with the minimum cultivation level normally needed to enter Shrek Academy.

When his train of thought reached this point, Huo Yuhao immediately felt a wave of passion surge through his heart. Even though he didn’t feel inferior his classmates, he was still ﬁlled with a sense of danger. With his original level of talent, the ﬁrst round of assessments for freshmen would’ve been extremely hard for him to pass. However, his large increase in cultivation during the past two days had given him some hope. No matter what, he had to stay in Shrek Academy.

Compared to Zhou Yi’s class yesterday, today’s classes were— at least to the students—simply too relaxed. Both their morning and afternoon classes were on theory. The morning class was about the classiﬁcation of martial souls, while the afternoon class was about distinguishing a soul beast’s age.

Since most of the students were familiar with what was being covered in the two classes already, they didn’t pay them much attention. However, Huo Yuhao was different; he listened to the teacher with rapt attention. What he lacked wasn’t just talent and cultivation, but knowledge too.

Sure enough, Wang Dong treated him to a good meal for lunch. Once he’d ﬁnished his afternoon class, Tang Ya came over to him.

“Let’s go, Little Yuhao. I’ve prepared everything for you once again. Don’t worry, Teacher Xiao Ya will stay by your side and protect you today. Let’s see what idiot dares to bully you with me around. Right, your eldest senior brother asked me to give this to you when I saw you. Eat it when you get back to your dorm room tonight.”

Whilst speaking, Tang Ya handed a porcelain bottle to Huo Yuhao.

The onlooking Wang Dong’s eyes immediately widened when he saw this. He’d seen this same porcelain bottle yesterday! It was the same one that Bei Bei had taken a Mysterious Water Pill out of to feed Huo Yuhao before. It was the exact same one!

This... was this a second Mysterious Water Pill?! The Mysterious Water Pill was different from the Soul Advancement Pill; it didn’t have any restrictions on how many times it could be used. However, the ﬁrst pill’s effects would be the best, while those of any pills taken afterwards would progressively decline. After all, there was still a limit to the impurities each person had within their bodies. The increase in soulforce wouldn’t be as great as a Soul Advancement Pill either.

“Teacher Xiao Ya, have you thought about my issue?” Wang Dong asked Tang Ya, a fervent expression on his face.

Tang Ya giggled and replied, “I talked to Bei Bei about it. Bei Bei said that, if you’re able to obtain ﬁrst place in the ﬁrst freshmen assessment, you’ll be qualiﬁed to join our Tang Sect.”

“Fine, it’s a deal.” Wang Dong replied without any hesitation at all. The beneﬁts for joining the Tang Sect were simply too good! Huo Yuhao had just received two Mysterious Water Pills in front of him! Although he knew that his talent was exceptional, and that he didn’t have any use for the Mysterious Water Pill, who knew whether or not the Tang Sect had better things? However, the reason that he wanted to join the Tang Sect wasn’t due to its beneﬁts.

Huo Yuhao accepted the porcelain bottle and put it into his Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges without asking any questions. Afterwards, he followed Tang Ya out of the academy.

Wang Dong hurriedly caught up to them and said, “I’m going too! Huo Yuhao, no matter how you look at it, we’re

roommates. I’ll buy two of your roasted ﬁsh to help your business out a bit.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled. “I’ll treat you.”

Wang Dong shook his head and said, “How can I do that? Friends are friends, business is business. I don’t need you to treat me, I can afford to buy them.” As he spoke, he ﬁshed out a silver soul coin and forcefully shoved it into Huo Yuhao’s hand.

He originally thought that he was helping Huo Yuhao, but when the three of them walked through the academy’s gates, Wang Dong realised that he’d actually taken advantage of Huo Yuhao.

There were more than thirty people waiting outside for Huo Yuhao to roast ﬁsh, of the most eye-catching person of them being Xu Sanshi, who’d lost to Bei Bei yesterday in the Soul Duelling Competition.

Huo Yuhao was stunned for a moment when he saw Xu Sanshi. However, Tang Ya immediately stepped forward

bravely. “What, you’re not able to accept your loss? How about I follow you to the Soul Duelling Area today?”

Xu Sanshi unhappily replied, “You? Save it. I don’t hit women. Stop trying to stir up trouble with me. I’m here today to buy some roasted ﬁsh, not to cause trouble. Can’t you see that I’m ﬁrst in the queue?”

When she heard what he had to say, Tang Ya’s expression ﬁnally relaxed. She asked, “You’re buying it for Jiang Nannan?”

“Yup.” Xu Sanshi nodded his head.

Tang Ya teasingly said, “I couldn’t tell that you were still so infatuated with her. What a pity that that she doesn’t even like you.”

Xu Sanshi angrily said, “Tang Ya, don’t provoke me! Your Bei Bei swindled me yesterday, yet I haven’t even tried to settle my debts with you guys.”

Tang Ya stuck her tongue out, then turned around and said to Huo Yuhao, “Little Yuhao, you should start now. Since someone gave you something good yesterday, you should sell him two roasted ﬁsh today.”

After setting his grill up, Huo Yuhao began to sell his roasted ﬁsh at the entrance to Shrek Academy for the second time. However, he didn’t sell the ﬁrst two roasted ﬁsh to Xu Sanshi, as he didn’t have a favourable opinion of this fellow who’d made a move against him yesterday. Furthermore, Wang Dong had paid him ﬁrst. Hence, the ﬁrst two ﬁsh he roasted went to Wang Dong.

The third and fourth went to Tang Ya.

Only when Xu Sanshi’s expression had turned increasingly dark, did he receive the ﬁfth and sixth roasted ﬁsh. He threw his money towards Huo Yuhao and left.

“Delicious, this is really too delicious! Fish can actually be so fragrant?!” As Wang Dong ate, his eyes glowed. Whilst eating the roasted ﬁsh, his appearance became completely identical to Tang Ya’s. By the time he’d ﬁnished his ﬁsh, both his face and hands were dripping with oil.

As Huo Yuhao continued to sell roasted ﬁsh by the entrance to Shrek Academy, a certain person in a secret room located on the central island of the Sea God Lake gradually woke up from their comatose state.

“Ugh…” The red-shirted woman’s body moved a bit. She subconsciously covered her chest with her right hand and muttered, “I’m too hot, it’s too unbearable... I feel terrible... huh?”

She gradually opened her eyes, however her pupils were now faintly pink in colour; the bloody colour within her eyes had receded. There was also a trace of doubt in her eyes. “That’s strange, why isn’t it hot anymore?”

She suddenly sat up, subconsciously looking down at herself. Her originally sweat-drenched clothes had already dried. She jumped off the bed she’d been laying on and took off the mask covering her face, revealing a somewhat pale, oval-shaped face. She looked to be about twenty or so, with her facial expression being slightly cold. However, it was still unable to conceal her beauty, which was peerless enough that it could move one’s heart. As she stood there, she exposed her exciting ﬁgure which resembled a ripened peach.

“You’re awake.” An aged voice rang out, before letting out a long sigh. “Xiaotao, you almost made a huge mistake this time! I don’t know whether or not it was destiny, but an otherworldly ice-type energy surged into your body, jolting the evil ﬁre within your body. Can you remember anything you

saw after you charged out from Sea God Lake?”

Cerita silat IndoMandarin

Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 2

Chapter 8: Monstrous Teacher

Chapter 9: Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess

Chapter 10: First Experience with Soul Tools

Chapter 11: The Weakest Class Monitor

Chapter 12: Xu Sanshi and Jiang Nannan

Chapter 13: Mysterious Water Pill

Chapter 14: Skydream Points

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