Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 3

Book 3: Fusion of Martial Souls

Chapter 15: Three Months

The red-shirted woman was precisely the ﬁre-type Soul Emperor that had nearly brought a calamity upon Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong. If she really was as old as she looked, her talent had already reached a level that couldn’t be described with the words ‘extremely startling’ anymore.

Throughout the entire history of the Douluo Continent, even when the ﬁrst soul masters had appeared, a twenty-year-old Soul Emperor could rank amongst the top in terms of talent; so much so that they could even be compared to Shrek Academy’s ﬁrst generation Shrek’s Seven Monsters.

The aged voice belonged to the white-clothed elder who’d brought her back. When she heard his question, the red- shirted girl, who was named Xiaotao, blankly shook her head. “I don’t remember anything except for a patch of red appearing in front of me. After that, I felt something life-threatening. I tried to resist, but after that, I woke up here ”

The white-clothed elder furrowed his brow and walked up to her. He spoke in a low voice, “Why didn’t you tell me that you couldn’t suppress the evil ﬁre within your body? Aren’t you

aware that you almost caused a calamity? Two students from the outer courtyard almost died to your evil ﬁre.”

Xiaotao was dazed. “I... I didn’t know that it would be this serious. I thought that I could control it. But….”

The white-clothed elder let out a long sigh before saying, “The longer you suppress it, the stronger it’ll be when it erupts. Xiaotao, from now on, postpone your cultivation. Even if you’re the most outstanding genius Shrek Academy has had in the past several hundred years, you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of the school. If the evil ﬁre destroys your consciousness in the future, your teacher will regret it for the rest of his life.”

Xiaotao stubbornly replied, “No, teacher. I want to cultivate. I guarantee that it won’t happen again in the future. I can even feel that the evilness and heat from the evil ﬁre have been suppressed. There deﬁnitely won’t be any problems in the near future. It’s just… what kind of power was actually able to suppress my Evil Phoenix Fire?”

The white-clothed elder spoke with a thoughtful tone, “It’s an extreme, peak-level ice-type energy. Its purity far exceeds

that of your Evil Phoenix Fire, and somewhat resembles the Absolute Frost Breath of the Ancient Ice Dragons. It’s completely suppressed the Evil Phoenix Fire’s effects on your body—far more than any of the methods we’ve used.”

Xiaotao asked with a doubtful tone, “However, it’s simply impossible for it to be an Ancient Ice Dragon! Much less in our academy! Could it be someone who’s inﬁltrated the academy?”

The white-clothed elder shook his head and said, “I’ve already sent some people to investigate. I originally thought that it might have been some people from their families who’d been sent to protect them, but after I investigated them, I discovered that that was impossible. They’re called Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao. Huo Yuhao is a special student from the Tang Sect, so I asked Bei Bei about him. He and Tang Ya met him in the Great Star Dou Forest, then brought him back with them. His talent is ordinary; he’s even an orphan. There’s no way that an expert would follow him around and protect him. On the other hand, Wang Dong has quite a large background. However, his background isn’t specialised in ice-type martial souls. As for the academy itself, I’ve asked around several times. There are many students and teachers with ice-type martial souls, but a peak-level ice-type martial soul like this has never been spotted amongst any of them before. It’s truly strange.”

Xiao Tao replied, “Teacher, forget about it. You don’t need to continue investigating it.”

The white-clothed elder spoke, “This matter concerns your future, how could I not be worried? If I can at least ﬁnd the person who possesses this ice-type martial soul, and if he turns out to be male, I’ll let you be a couple with him. That way, you’ll be able to neutralise the negative effects brought about by the Evil Phoenix Fire within your body. That’s the only way that you can truly soar into the heavens in the future. However right now, you’re completely restricted. Not only has your cultivation speed decreased, even your life’s at risk.”

Xiaotao’s charming face went red. “I don’t want to get married, much less to a person I don’t like for the sake of his martial soul!”

The white-clothed elder sighed. “The problem is, your evil ﬁre can’t be restrained!”

Xiaotao humphed and replied, “I’ll restrain it. I don’t want to marry anyone!”

The white-clothed elder said angrily, “Ma Xiaotao, if you continue to be this unruly, I won’t recognise you as a disciple anymore.”

When Ma Xiaotao saw that the white-clothed elder was angry, she immediately began to behave. She proceeded to speak in an aggrieved tone, “But, teacher I….”

The white-clothed elder rubbed her head. “Foolish girl. Your emotions can be cultivated, but you only have one life to live, let alone how much talent you have. No matter what, teacher will make sure that you ﬁnd a good partner.”

……

“Nannan, I brought some roasted ﬁsh from that kid from yesterday. Don’t worry, I didn’t use any violent methods to obtain it. I queued up and bought it.” Xu Sanshi spoke with a polite tone as he stood in front of Jiang Nannan, who’d planned to walk to the canteen.

Jiang Nannan shook her head, “No need, thank you.”

Xu Sanshi probingly asked, “Do you think I was too violent yesterday? Actually, I’m not normally like that. It’s just that, because of you, I… Nannan, I know that you still hold a grudge against me because of what happened that time. But, couldn’t our reunion at Shrek Academy be considered a sort of destiny?

I really like you! I promise to be faithful to you until I die.”

Jiang Nannan coldly replied, “I remember telling you that we’d take what we needed, then walk our separate ways after meeting that time. There’s no chance that anything will happen between the two of us. Xu Sanshi, you’re a high and lofty noble, why do you have to bother a little woman like me? I can’t even give you anything. Please don’t interfere with my life in the future. If you continue, I’ll report it to the school. Also, please don’t bully other students because of me.”

When she ﬁnished speaking, she turned around to walk away. However, she was blocked by Xu Sanshi, who angrily said, “Me, bully other students? Don’t you know how badly that Bei Bei bullied me? The person roasting ﬁsh yesterday was his junior brother, which he then used as an excuse to swindle me out of two Mysterious Water Pills! Tang Ya even shot a Dragon Beard Needle into my waist, thus I have a huge bruise there now! Just what’s wrong with me? You’re not even willing to give me a chance.”

Jiang Nannan coldly replied, “You went to a place like that at such a young age, so what’s can be so ‘good’ about you?” When she ﬁnished speaking, she turned around and left. This time, she directly jumped up, her three yellow soul rings immediately lighting up. Her ears seemed to faintly elongate and prick up, while her body appeared to become even more slender. She pushed off the ground with her legs, and appeared ten metres away, before rapidly running away without turning back.

As he gazed at her shrinking back, Xu Sanshi fell into a daze for a while. Afterwards, he ﬁercely bit off some of the roasted ﬁsh that he was holding. “Xu Sanshi, you’re such a loser. What’s so amazing about this? I’ll eat it myself. Eh? This roasted ﬁsh tastes quite delicious.”

“Huo Yuhao, I didn’t think that the quality of your roasted ﬁsh would be so high. How about this. After I treat you to dinner, you can treat me to some roasted ﬁsh. How does that sound?” Wang Dong spoke with an excited expression as he recalled the delicious fragrance of the roasted ﬁsh he’d just eaten.

Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but laugh. “You couldn’t possibly want to eat roasted ﬁsh every night, could you? Even if it’s as tasty as you say it is, you’ll still get tired of it if you eat it too much.”

Wang Dong replied, “No worries, I don’t care. Let’s talk about that when I’ve managed to satisfy my cravings. It’s settled; I want to eat four roasted ﬁsh tomorrow night! Two ﬁshes just weren’t enough to satisfy me! Besides, did you see how many people were in line today? I think that you should sell a few more ﬁsh, it doesn’t waste too much time anyway. If you don’t, we’ll ﬁnish eating them before you’ve even started selling them!”

By this time, the two had already packed up and returned to their dormitory. Before returning to their rooms, they decided to head to the canteen to get some dinner.

“Wang Dong, since my eldest senior brother gave me another Mysterious Water Pill, do you think that I should eat it or the Soul Advancement Pill ﬁrst?” Huo Yuhao took out the two pills and asked Wang Dong. Wang Dong was clearly more knowledgeable than him in the ﬁeld of medicinal pills. After receiving the two pills, Huo Yuhao was truly feeling somewhat impatient. If he added the medicinal properties of the two pills to his own cultivation, he wouldn’t be behind the other students in their class anymore.

Wang Dong thought for a while, before replying, “I’d recommend that you not be so eager to take these two pills; at least, for the time being.”

“Why?” Huo Yuhao asked with a puzzled expression.

Wang Dong replied, “Think about it. You just used a Mysterious Water Pill yesterday. A lot of your body’s impurities have already been ﬂushed out. The medicinal efﬁcacy of the Mysterious Water Pill will stay in your body for a period of

time, but will be dissolved as you continue to meditate. If you take any other medicine right now, even though it’ll still have some partial effects, you’ll waste some of its medicinal power. The Mysterious Water Pill and the Soul Advancement Pill can both be described with the words ‘Heavenly Treasure’. Since you have such precious pills, you should naturally make full use of them. I suggest that you cultivate for around ten days or so; wait until your body has managed to fully absorb the effects of the ﬁrst Mysterious Water Pill before you use the second one. You’ll be able to improve your physique by a step, while increasing your soulforce at the same time. Once you’ve ﬁnished absorbing the medicinal effects of the Mysterious Water Pills, both your physique and passageways will have had a rather large improvement. If you then use the Soul Advancement Pill—since your body will be free of obstructions

—you’ll naturally be able to obtain the greatest amount of beneﬁts possible.”

Huo Yuhao felt that Wang Dong’s analysis was extremely reasonable. “Thanks, I’m lucky that you told me about all of this now. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known how to use them effectively. What about you? Are you going to eat your’s today?”

Wang Dong nodded his head and said, “I’m already at rank twenty one; my physique and passageways are in extremely

good condition. It’s naturally perfect for me to absorb the Soul Advancement Pill as soon as possible. When I eat it, I’ll be able to dissolve its medicinal power in a single night. Hehe, I’ll be at rank twenty two tomorrow, or possibly even rank twenty three! Didn’t senior Xiao Ya say that she’d let me enter the

Tang Sect if I rank ﬁrst in the freshmen's assessment? After eating this Soul Advancement Pill, I’m even more certain that I’ll be able to achieve ﬁrst place. Alright, I’m going to start now. You should go and cultivate by yourself.”

After he’d ﬁnished speaking, he took out the walnut-sized Soul Advancement Pill and popped it into his mouth. He bit into it softly, causing an extremely strong fragrance to immediately gush out of the pill. Wang Dong inhaled softly, then immediately began to suck a green liquid out from the pill. He didn’t even waste the pill’s outer shell; he popped it into his mouth and chewed it a few times before swallowing it.

At that moment, the dorm became suffused with a natural fragrance that resembled a cluster of ten thousand ﬂowers. Huo Yuhao’s mind felt refreshed, while all thirty-six thousand of his pores seemed to open up accordingly, causing a hard-to- describe stimulation to spread through his entire body. He didn’t dare to waste any time, hurriedly sitting on the ground in a cross-legged position to take advantage of the fact that his

soulforce had been adjusted to an optimum state for cultivation.

After the baptism of the Mysterious Water Pill, cultivation was simply a form of pleasure for Huo Yuhao. He quickly entered a meditative state, then began to circulate the Mysterious Heaven Technique without any obstructions. It permeated throughout his body while simultaneously increasing his soulforce slowly, albeit at a very stable rate.

A faint jade light gradually started to emerge from Wang Dong’s body, followed by the strong refreshing aura that was circulating throughout the room. Some of it was absorbed by Huo Yuhao, but even more of it was inhaled by Wang Dong as he practiced his breathing exercises. Under the stimulation of the Soul Advancement Pill, his soulforce had begun to increase at a startling rate.

……

After the twists and turns that had occurred to him two days ago, Huo Yuhao’s school life started to calm down. Not only that, but he’d gradually begun to gain some fame. Practically

all of the students and teachers who’d tried his roasted ﬁsh had unceasingly praised it.

Huo Yuhao increased the number of ﬁsh he sold from twenty to thirty, but he was still far from satisfying the desires of the students and teachers. However, he wasn’t willing to make any more, as he still needed most of his time for cultivation.

For the sake of a single roasted ﬁsh, many students would rush out of the school once class ended. Moreover, because of the high demand for his roasted ﬁsh, he had no choice but to impose a limit of one ﬁsh per person. However, although the demand for his roasted ﬁsh was as high as it was, Huo Yuhao never increased his price, causing him to receive unanimous positive reviews from the students. Furthermore, he even made several new friends.

The number one beauty of the outer courtyard, Jiang Nannan, still ended up eating one of his roasted ﬁsh in the end, though she queued up by herself in order to buy it. However, the more interesting thing was that, even though Xu Sanshi wasn’t able to please Jiang Nannan with the roasted ﬁsh, he also liked its taste. Hence, he became one of Huo Yuhao’s most faithful customers.

In the blink of an eye, the ﬁrst three months of school had passed. Under Zhou Yi’s teaching, which was strict to the point of being perverted, Class 1 could be said to have completely transformed. However, the upper echelon of the academy was slightly astonished by the fact that there were actually between sixty and seventy students left from the three month baptism of Class 1, which Zhou Yi had been in charge of. This was leagues apart from the school’s one-third estimate.

If one were to ask who’d changed the most in all of Class 1 during these three months, the answer would undoubtedly be Huo Yuhao.

When he entered the academy, his soulforce had merely been rank eleven. In addition to that, he’d just obtained his soul ring. His strength had been absolutely dead last when ranked in the academy, without any suspense at all.

However, after these three months, Huo Yuhao had

completely changed. Furthermore, not one person had

challenged him for his position as class monitor since he’d taken up the role.

It wasn’t because Huo Yuhao had used his strength to astonish everyone, or that no one could beat him. Instead, it was because his vigor had sparked the admiration of the students in Class 1. This was the main reason that two-thirds of the class was able to persevere in Class 1, even under Zhou Yi’s strict teaching.

Huo Yuhao was truly too hard working. Practically all of the teachers who taught Class 1 knew of his existence. No matter when the class was, nor what lesson was going on, there would always be a pair of eyes focused on the teacher for the duration of the entire lesson; the owner entirely focused on listening to the teacher’s explanation.

Neither talent nor his strength were that great. However, he was always the most attentive person in the class.

Zhou Yi’s level of strictness was second to none in the academy, but not even she was able to ﬁnd any faults with Huo Yuhao. Her long and cruel physical training was considered torment to students of the same age as him, yet not only had he persisted till the very end of every single training session, he even trained more at night.

This was something that Zhou Yi had discovered one night, purely by chance. It just so happened that she needed to go and do something that day. By the time she returned to the academy, it was already late at night. When she’d walked past Shrek Plaza, she’d discovered—to her astonishment—a ﬁgure slowly running around the running track. Moreover, the soft clanging of metal had even been ringing out.

When she focused, she was able to see the ﬁgure of a shirtless, sweat-drenched person. The chainmail on his body had already been soaked with sweat, and every step he took

was extremely heavy. Zhou Yi was even able to see the line of sweat that the ﬁgure had left behind on the ground.

The ﬁgure, which wasn’t very tall,yet had both steady and persistent footsteps, was precisely Huo Yuhao. Zhou Yi had been deeply stunned by his actions; he was actually giving himself extra training in the middle of the night!

Zhou Yi had called out to Huo Yuhao in order to ask him what he was doing, to which Huo Yuhao had simply replied, “Teacher, I have poor talent; I have to work slightly harder than the others. And, if I meditate after going through physical training, it seems to speed up a bit.”

Zhou Yi somewhat suspected that Huo Yuhao had known that she was going out that day, which was why he’d purposefully put on a show for her. However, she dismissed this thought not long after she’d thought of it as, no matter if it was windy or rainy, a stealthy ﬁgure would always appear in Shrek Plaza. His running sessions would last over four hours and, in addition to that, his chainmail had gradually split in two.

When everything was said and done, this was still a school. Even though Huo Yuhao didn’t tell anyone, his actions were still found out by his classmates. There were even a few students who tried to train with Huo Yuhao, but none of them were able to last longer than three days. They already had high-intensity classes during the daytime; if they continued to train late at night, it would no longer be simple physical

training. This was practically torturing one’s own body!

However, Huo Yuhao still managed to persevere with this torture to his own body. He made the impossible possible. His level of vigor received both the acknowledgement and admiration of every the students in their class. Furthermore, Huo Yuhao managed to forcefully persevere for an entire three months despite Zhou Yi’s harsh requirements, allowing him to become one of the sixty-seven freshmen left in Class 1 .

‘Hard work can make up for one’s deﬁciencies.’ These are very simple words, but how many people can truly make them a reality?

And yet, Huo Yuhao had done it. Thus, he’d reaped the beneﬁts of his hard work. Make no mistake, the main reason for his cultivation increasing by such a large amount within such a short period was still because of the two Mysterious

Water Pills and the Soul Advancement Pill. However, he hadn’t just increased his soulforce. He’d had a comprehensive improvement. It didn’t matter if it was his knowledge, or his various skills; he’d ‘shed his mortal body and bones’ during the past three months.

He’d originally been slightly shorter than Wang Dong, but his height was now roughly the same as Wang Dong’s. His body had also become much more rugged. He didn’t have any exaggerated muscles, but if he were to expose his upper body, you would clearly be able to see that it had become well- proportioned. Every single one of his muscles seemed to be ﬁlled with an abundant amount of power.

Most importantly, Huo Yuhao’s physique had undergone a heaven-defying change during the past three months. This sort of change was due to both internal and external factors; it absolutely wasn’t just caused by the two Mysterious Water Pills.

Since he’d obtained a special understanding of the Mysterious Heaven Technique, Huo Yuhao made sure to report it to Tang Ya and Bei Bei. However, the two of them weren’t able to replicate the passageway-nourishing energy that he’d found.

The reason that Huo Yuhao had trained his body late into the night was because the nourishing effect of the Mysterious Heaven Technique would appear whenever his stamina and soulforce were completely exhausted. The intangible changes that were caused by the nourishing effect he felt every time it occurred caused his passageways to expand slightly, but the feeling gradually grew weaker as time passed. However, his cultivation speed was increased by an enormous amount as a result.

When Huo Yuhao took the second Mysterious Water Pill, his cultivation speed became seven times faster than it’d been at the start. At the same time, the impurities within his body were one step closer to being entirely expelled. After the past three months of cultivation, his body’s passageways been broadened unceasingly, and had become much more durable. As of now, his cultivation speed was ten times faster than at the start! This was an astonishing increase in cultivation speed!

When Huo Yuhao has used the second Mysterious Water Pill, his soulforce had increased by a full rank, bringing him to straight to the peak of the thirteenth rank from the peak of the twelfth rank. After he’d used a period of time to adjust his body’s condition, he’d taken the Soul Advancement Pill. Sure

enough, the resulting increase in soulforce brought about by it was even more impressive: Huo Yuhao’s soulforce rose three consecutive ranks, before ﬁnally smashing through the fourth’s bottleneck, resulting in his soulforce reaching the seventeenth rank.

Now, Huo Yuhao’s cultivation had reached the average level of the other students in his class. The most praise-worthy thing about this, was that he’d relied on his own cultivation to do so. During these past three months, his soulforce had continued to increase; he’d reached the peak of the seventeenth rank, and was close to breaking through to the eighteenth tank. This was still due to the fact that he’d had to stabilise his foundation after using medicine for his previous breakthroughs. It could deﬁnitely be said that his current degree of talent was no longer that of the trash-like degree he’d had when he’d just entered Shrek Academy.

“We’ll stop today’s physical training here.” As Zhou Yi stood behind the teaching platform, her aged face remained indifferent. However, as long as her class was still going on, practically every single student would sit perfectly straight; no one would dare to make any sort of strange movements.

“As of today, three months have passed since you started school. You’re all about to face your ﬁrst assessment since entering Shrek Academy. If you pass this examination, you’ll formally become ﬁrst-year students, and will truly become students of Shrek Academy. If nothing unexpected happens, you’ll be able to continue cultivating within the academy until your ﬁrst year graduation exam at the very least. The

assessment will begin tomorrow, so I’d ﬁrst like to discuss the main points of the assessment.”

It was rare for Zhou Yi’s voice to be as soft as it was. As she swept her gaze across the sixty-seven students beneath her, she was actually extremely pleased with them. Perhaps the quality of this batch of students might not be stronger than the previous batch of students, but after three months of teaching, their willpower absolutely surpassed any previous year’s group that Zhou Yi had taught. To Zhou Yi, this was deﬁnitely an unexpected surprise. As the class monitor, Huo Yuhao had played the role of an extremely important role model.

“Huo Yuhao.”

“Present.” Huo Yuhao instantly stood up and respectfully replied.

After three months, Huo Yuhao’s respect for Zhou Yi absolutely came from his heart, and it wasn’t because of her strength. Although Zhou Yi frequently came up with some strange ways to teach, and had even tormented them to the point of them wanting to die, it had to be said that her teaching abilities were extraordinarily strong. Furthermore, these strange things that she’d done had had a much greater effect on them than they could’ve imagined. Because of this, not only had the students of Class 1 had a great change in their psychological state, but the ones who were left after the last three months had an aura as ﬁrm as a boulder around them.

Huo Yuhao had observed the students from the other classes, but he hadn’t been able to sense the same sort of temperament from them. It was just as Bei Bei had said: Even though Zhou Yi was a very strict teacher, one would deﬁnitely become an outstanding student, or even a true expert in the future, so long as that person could persevere through her classes.

Zhou Yi beckoned towards Huo Yuhao, causing him to hurriedly walk towards the teaching platform and take a stack of papers from her. He didn’t need Zhou Yi to tell him what to do, as he quickly handed them out to every single student in the class.

Zhou Yi said, “After the freshmen assessment ends, your classes will be in line with your abilities. Write down the direction you wish for your future cultivation to go, and give it back to me later.”

The direction she was referring to was organized as such: Assault, Defense, Control, and Auxiliary. These were the four types of soul masters. During the ﬁrst three months of teaching, everyone would be together in the same class.

However, once the true freshman classes had started, everyone had to be separated. After all, the difference in cultivation paths between soul masters from different categories was extremely large.

After Huo Yuhao had returned to his seat, he was the ﬁrst one to write down which direction he was going to follow. He naturally wrote down the words ‘Control System Soul Master’, before signing the bottom of the page with his own name. However, he didn’t notice that Wang Dong, who was sitting next to him, had glanced at the contents of his page before writing down his own.

Zhou Yi said, “You’re all students that I’ve taught. Even though you’ll be split into different classes after this assessment, I hope you brats won’t forget the things that I’ve taught you. Hand your papers back to me after class. Now then, I’ll go over the main points of the freshman assessment.”

As she was speaking, Zhou Yi turned around and walked back to the blackboard. She then drew a few lines, and proceeded to write the word ‘Battle’ in the middle of the blackboard.

“Battle. That’s right, you’ll have to ﬁght in the freshmen assessment. Furthermore, it’s a battle that everyone has to participate in. I know, the tool soul masters amongst you lot, and especially the auxiliary and food system ones, will ﬁnd this very strange. ‘Why do you have to participate in the ﬁght as

well?’ Well, you didn’t hear me wrongly. You all have to appear on the battleﬁeld too, just like the battle soul masters. Even though Shrek Academy educates all types of talented soul masters, your ability on the battleﬁeld is still the most important thing. I told you all this once before, on the day that school started. Ever since the appearance of soul tools, the line dividing the types of soul masters has begun to blur. Even if you’re an auxiliary or food system tool soul master, you’ll still be able to explode with an extremely strong combat power by relying on soul tools. However, where will your combat instincts come from? Don’t tell me that a soul master can just be given a soul tool, and will then be magically able to survive by dim-wittedly standing around on the battleﬁeld? Obviously not. Your combat instincts have honed from real battles. Because of this, all of you will have to undergo this combat assessment.”

“Of course, the academy naturally won’t allow auxiliary system tool soul masters to ﬁght with assault system battle soul masters, that’s just too unfair to you lot. As such, the freshmen assessment will be conducted using a form of team battles. However, there won’t be too many people in a team.

Ultimately, the academy has decided that this year, there will be three people per team. This is a rather high number for people at your age to attempt to synergize well with. When you’re making your groups, you can only have one assault system soul master at most, while your other two team

members can be chosen as you wish. We’ll ﬁrst put students who are in the same dorm room together into teams, and let you make the rest of your teams as you wish. As for people who aren’t able to join a team, we’ll draw lots to decide your teams. If you wait a moment, I’ll give you a rather rational plan to create your own teams.”

“The freshmen assessment will be conducted with every single student from the entire year participating, as the number of students who’ve joined Shrek Academy year is quite large. This time, there’ll be a total of almost three hundred teams of students participating in the freshman assessment, but only half of them will be able to remain in the academy, which also means that only the top one hundred and ﬁfty teams will pass. This ranking will be based off of how many points you accumulate in your battles.”

“Your matches will be organized via lot drawing, with every team having to ﬁght in at least ten matches. Finally, a ranking will be created based off of the number of matches you’ve won. Of them, the top sixty-four will have a knockout round, with

the top four teams in each getting a different prize. The prize for the champion will be extremely precious.”

Every student in the room was listening with rapt attention. To them, the freshman assessment was the key that decided whether or not they could stay in the academy. If they were eliminated, they could only return and choose another sub- ﬁrst ranked college. If they did, they might not be able to ever become a pinnacle expert on the Douluo Continent. They’d already worked hard for three months; nobody wished to get eliminated at this point in their studies.

Zhou Yi indifferently said, “Our class currently has sixty- seven people, thus we can make twenty-two teams, with one person remaining. I’ll divide all of you up according to your martial souls, and after doing some careful analysis, I’ll help you make your teams. If anyone isn’t satisﬁed, you can change your teammates after returning to your dorm. However, if no one disagrees when we register tomorrow morning, then you’ll have to strictly follow my arrangements. If you do, I think you’re all pretty clear on what’ll happen.”

“Song Qinghan.” Zhou Yi said in a low voice.

“Present.” A somewhat small student quickly stood up. He’d never been too conspicuous within the class, so he clearly hadn’t thought that Zhou Yi would call him out ﬁrst.

Zhou Yi said, “Every teacher in charge of a freshman class can propose that a student directly pass the assessment. The person that I’m choosing is you. After observing you for a while, I believe that you’re the most suitable to join the Soul Engineering Institution and continue cultivating. Do you have any problems with that? Right now, you have two choices. You can either join to the Soul Engineering Institution, or you can pack your bags.”

Overbearing, she was truly too overbearing. Every single student within the class simultaneously looked over at Song Qinghan.

“I’m willing to go to the Soul Engineering Institution. Thank you, Teacher Zhou.” Song Qinghan didn’t resist Zhou Yi’s overbearingness at all, excitedly jumping up and down. The reason that he’d came to Shrek Academy had been to enter the Soul Engineering Institution in the ﬁrst place!

Zhou Yi gestured for him to sit back down. “Next, we’ll be splitting you into teams. The ﬁrst team is Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, and Xiao Xiao.”

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong practically stood up at the same time. They’d originally been willing to form a team anyway, but when they heard Zhou Yi personally group them together, they looked at each other and were able to see the happiness reﬂected in each other’s eyes.

The other person who stood up with them was a female student who sat in the front row. She wasn’t tall. In fact she was quite small, just like Song Qinghan. She didn’t particularly stand out in the class, either. Her various abilities seemed to rank amongst the middle of the class.

The little girl wasn’t especially beautiful, but she had a delicate and pretty look, and could at least be appreciated. Her face had a hint of bashfulness when she turned around. However, her gaze directly went right past Huo Yuhao and landed on Wang Dong’s increasingly handsome face. Her face reddened, before she turned back around and lowered her head.

“For the second team, we’ll have Zi Hao, Ma Qingshuang, and Leng Leng.”

“For the third team, ….”

Zhou Yi looked and sounded very overbearing, but after she’d ﬁnished announcing the division of the teams, every student in the class seemed to have been relieved of a heavy burden.

As Huo Yuhao coolly observed the class, he couldn’t help but let out an inward sigh of admiration. Even if Teacher Zhou normally had a cold expression on her face, and was very strict, in reality, she thoroughly understood every single one of her students. These groups had clearly been thoroughly thought out by her.

Chapter 16: Freshman Examination

“Alright, that’s that. If you have any suggestions, you’d best bring them up quickly. I’ll give you a day to think about it. The other classes are also splitting up into teams, but they deﬁnitely won’t be as quick as you lot. Let them dawdle around and waste more of their time. When you return that piece of paper to me, you can be dismissed. When you get back, make sure to have a good rest. Nobody’s allowed to go around and start a mess. The freshman assessment will start tomorrow, and my goal is for all twenty-two of your teams to pass. If anyone gets eliminated, they won’t just have to pack their bags and leave. I’ll make sure to give you some memories that you’ll never forget.”

When the students of Class 1 saw Zhou Yi’s gaze, which had suddenly become heavy, they couldn’t help but ﬁercely shiver. There was no question about what sort of memories Zhou Yi would leave behind; they would probably be a nightmare for them.

The entirety of Class 1 suddenly ﬁlled with a murderous look for a moment. Even if it was just for the sake of not being abused by Teacher Zhou, they wanted to do their best to pass the assessment!

“Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, Xiao Xiao, you three stay behind for a bit.”

When the other students handed over the white pieces of paper that had their future direction of cultivation written on it, they left the classroom to walk back to their dorms. The only people left behind in the classroom was Huo Yuhao’s group of three. At this time, the other classes were still enthusiastically explaining the division of teams for the freshman assessment.

“Alright, give it to me. What’re you hiding Wang Dong?” Zhou Yi took the three pieces of paper from Huo Yuhao’s group. Wang Dong immediately lowered his head and quietly took a few steps back, hiding behind Huo Yuhao.

As Zhou Yi looked at the three pieces of paper in front of her, the corners of her eyes twitched. Afterwards, she raised her head and looked towards Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, and Xiao Xiao.

When Zhou Yi looked at them with that sharp gaze of hers, the three of them felt as if their bodies had been impaled.

"Alright! You three, let’s see what you’ve got." She picked up one of the sheets of paper, then slammed it down onto the table.

"Alright!"

“Bang!” Huo Yuhao’s team of three simultaneously shivered.

“Control System.” Zhou Yi said coldly.

Afterwards, she took the second piece of paper and slapped it heavily onto the table.

“Control System!” Her voice had clearly gotten louder by quite a bit. Huo Yuhao was somewhat astonished as he looked at Wang Dong beside him. There was no doubt about it, this second piece of paper belonged to him!

“Bang—!” Zhou Yi’s last slap nearly crushed the teaching platform. “And Control System.”

“Ah?” This time, it was Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s turn to be astonished. The two cast their gaze towards Xiao Xiao, who currently had her head lowered and was ﬁddling with the corner of her shirt. From their ﬁrst impression of her, Xiao Xiao should’ve been an auxiliary system tool soul master! How

had she turned into a control system soul master?

The corner of Zhou Yi’s mouth twitched following the twitching of her eye. “Are you three brats doing this on purpose? Although the freshman assessment limits each team to having a single assault system soul master, it also states that you can’t all have the same cultivation direction. You three are really good, eh? You’ve all decided to be control system soul masters. Are you doing this on purpose? If it weren’t for the fact that the competition was starting tomorrow, I would’ve made you run ten hours in a row to clear your minds. Huo Yuhao, you can be the ﬁrst to tell me what’s going on. What’s gotten into you? That spiritual-type martial soul of yours is extremely suitable as an auxiliary-type! What’s the meaning behind you becoming a control system soul master?”

Huo Yuhao hastily replied, “Teacher Zhou, I’ve always hoped that I could become a control system soul master. My Spiritual Detection can survey the entire state of the battleﬁeld, and in addition to that, some of the future soul rings that my Spirit

Eyes absorb will deﬁnitely have a few attack-type soul skills. Because of that, I don’t want to become a simple auxiliary-type soul master. Being a control-type soul master should be more suitable for my future growth.”

Zhou Yi slowly nodded her head and said, “You have a point; control system soul masters have better future prospects than auxiliary-type ones. The choice that you’ve made isn’t exactly wrong. I’ll consider you to have passed. Wang Dong, why are you hiding? Come on out. Even though Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao wrote down the words ‘control system’, they’re still a bit reasonable. But what about you? You, an assault system soul master, writing down the words ‘control system’... are you deliberately looking for trouble?”

“Uh….” Wang Dong carefully took a step back from behind Huo Yuhao and spoke with a self-mocking smile on his face, “Teacher Zhou, please don’t be angry. Honestly, I don’t think that it’s completely impossible for me to become a control system soul master with my strength. Right, I want to rely on my attack power to control the entire battleﬁeld. Isn’t that a type of ‘control’? Furthermore, I can ﬂy and launch long-range attacks. It’s shouldn’t be impossible for me to control the battleﬁeld this way, right?”

“You…” Zhou Yi was almost angered to the point of laughing. Her eyes contained profundities as she stared at him. “Don’t think that I don’t know your real reasoning. You just don’t want to be split up with Huo Yuhao. I’ll just call you foolish for that. You clearly have the highest cultivation in the entire

class, yet you’re barely enough to be called a genius. You’re smart, yet how you can be stupid to be point of being a drooling idiot? Just when have you ever seen an assault system and control system soul master split up? You’re right, they’ll be in different classes. However, assault system and control system soul masters are always together! You idiot! Change it for me right now!”

As soon as she ﬁnished speaking, she threw the piece of paper in her hand back towards Wang Dong.

“Cough, cough…” Although he’d been scolded and called an idiot, Wang Dong still seemed excited. He quickly changed the words ‘control system’ to ‘assault system’, before respectfully handing the paper back to Zhou Yi.

“Humph!” Zhou Yi snorted angrily. She directed her gaze towards Xiao Xiao last. “What about you, Xiao Xiao? If I’m not mistaken, your martial soul is the extremely rare Soulcrush Cauldron, which can be considered a top-ranked martial soul.

The main effect of the Soulcrush Cauldron is to assist someone else; why did you put down the words ‘control system’?”

Xiao Xiao glanced at Wang Dong and spoke in a soft voice, “Teacher Zhou, my Soulcrush Cauldron is a bit different from an ordinary Soulcrush Cauldron. It can both attack and assist others. I’m even barely able to use it for defense. It can be considered a mutated Soulcrush Cauldron. It’s known as a Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron.”

Zhou Yi was stunned for a moment. “Xiao Xiao, don’t tell me you don’t know that if your cultivation direction is too messy, it’ll be disadvantageous towards your future development? I suggest that you lean towards one direction, and develop from there. Even if it’s a mutated martial soul, you’ll still have to have an direction when you’re adding soul rings.”

Xiao Xiao nodded her head and said, “I know, that’s why the main abilities I’ve chosen for my Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron are attacking and defensive ones.”

Zhou Yi furrowed her brow and said, “That’s also unrelated to control!” It could be seen that she was being extremely patient towards Xiao Xiao.

Xiao Xiao said in a meek voice, “But, I have another martial soul. It can manage both support and control.”

“Ah?” At this moment, it wasn’t just Zhou Yi who was astonished; even Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had widened their eyes. Wang Dong’s shock was especially great. He’d always thought that he was an absolutely unrivalled ﬁgure within Class 1. He never thought that there’d actually be someone like her hidden within the class.

“Twin martial souls?” Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong said at practically the same time.

Xiao Xiao lowered her head shyly.

The look in Zhou Yi’s eyes ﬂickered a few times. This was the ﬁrst time that a situation like this had occurred in Class 1, which exceeded her control. After thinking to herself for a moment, she said, “Fine, be a control system soul master if that’s your wish. It’ll also be easier for the three of you to work together in the future. Even though the freshman assessment is only your ﬁrst examination within Shrek Academy, it’s very important for your future cultivation path. The only way for you to have a chance to appear in the academy’s cultivation honor roll is for you to obtain a good ranking in the freshman assessment. Being in this class, I’m optimistic about the chances that you three have. I don’t even need to mention Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao; you two alone have talents and strengths that far exceed those of the other students. As for you, Huo Yuhao, even though you have an ordinary amount of strength and talent, you have a level of willpower that ordinary people aren’t able to even strive for, as well as an extraordinary spiritual-type martial soul. Without even taking Xiao Xiao’s second martial soul into account, you three already complement each other to a certain extent. I’ll give you a mission. In the freshman assessment, you only have one target: Become the champions! If you don’t return as the champions, then so be it for Xiao Xiao. However you two, on the other hand, will have to continue following me as you cultivate.”

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “Teacher Zhou, even if we become the champions, I’ll still be willing to follow you.”

Zhou Yi was stunned. “You foolish brat, don’t you also think that I’m extremely strict? I know what they call me in private. You don’t have to lie to me to make me happy.”

Huo Yuhao shook his head before saying seriously, “No, Teacher Zhou. I truly am willing to follow you and continue learning from you. Even though you’re a bit ﬁerce, I can still learn many more useful things from you if I do. I’ve occasionally observed the students from other classes; their growth hasn’t been nearly as large as our class’s—at least during these past three months.”

Zhou Yi’s face ﬁnally revealed the trace of a smile. Although her aged face didn’t look even remotely pretty when she smiled, this was the ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao had felt a sense of warmth from her body.

“Alright, you three can go back and rest. Remember, you three deﬁnitely have to become the champions of the freshman assessment. Also, I can at least tell you three this: Shrek Academy has an enormous amount of wealth. Out of all the

assessments the academy holds, the champions of the freshman assessment and the champions of the outer courtyard’s graduation assessment receive the most generous rewards. As for what those rewards actually are…well, you’ll naturally ﬁnd out when you become the champions of the freshman assessment. Head back and make sure that you’re in top condition. I believe in your strength.”

“Yes.” They all answered her simultaneously, before proceeding to leave the classroom together.

Once they’d left, Xiao Xiao looked as if she’d ﬁnally drummed up enough courage to ask something. “Wang Dong, can I talk to you for a bit?”

However, Wang Dong waved his hand and replied, “There’s no need. Right now, I have to go back and prepare for tomorrow’s competition. You can show us how amazing your twin martial souls are when the assessment starts, Xiao Xiao.” After he ﬁnished speaking, he grabbed Huo Yuhao’s shoulder and left.

When he saw the disappointment in Xiao Xiao’s eyes, Huo Yuhao smiled at her, causing Xiao Xiao to forcefully return the

smile. They were still young, so the somewhat hazy feeling that they had towards the opposite sex often was solely based on the other party’s appearance. Although Wang Dong’s rejection had caused her to be slightly disappointed, she didn’t think much more about it. She only thought inwardly to herself, “What’s so amazing about you? Just wait till the assessment starts. When it starts you’ll see just how amazing my abilities are, humph!” Her arrogance had always been hidden within the deep recesses of her heart.

“You didn’t have to be so obvious when you rejected her, did you?” Huo Yuhao teased Wang Dong.

During the past three months, the two had become very familiar with each other. To Huo Yuhao, their intense life of cultivating had only been another way to temper his body. However, his mind had experienced an unprecedented amount of relaxation. At least here, every single student within the academy was equal; he didn’t feel anything that resembled the class division that he’d previously felt when he was in the Duke’s Mansion. As his mind had relaxed, his personality had begun to turn much more cheerful. He was no longer that reticent and shy youth that he’d been when he’d just arrived.

Wang Dong curled his lip and boastfully stated, “There are several girls who’ve liked me. Don’t tell me that I should accept all of them?” After he said this, he switched to a sagely tone of voice. “We’re still young, thus we should be focusing everything on our studies. How can we have other thoughts

like this? Huo Yuhao, your mentality truly is unhealthy.”

“I….” Huo Yuhao couldn’t beat him in an argument. “You win!”

Wang Dong laughed cunningly and said, “Let’s go. Since we’ve been let out early today, you roast some ﬁsh for me to eat. We’ll be formally registering for the assessment tomorrow, so I’m guessing that the assessment will only start the day after. It seems that our time to show off has ﬁnally come.”

Huo Yuhao snapped back, “You eat roasted ﬁsh everyday! Will you ever get tired of it? Not only that, but the exam is the day after tomorrow! Shouldn’t you polish your skills before the battle?”

Wang Dong humphed. “You brain-dead idiot. You only know how to cultivate. Aren’t you scared of becoming an idiot that only knows how to cultivate?”

Huo Yuhao chuckled and said, “As they say, the clumsy bird leaves early to reach the forest ﬁrst. Since I’m untalented, the only thing that I can do to compensate for my weaknesses is work hard. I’m sure you know that the main reason my soulforce was able to reach the seventeenth rank was because of the pills we took. I honestly think that I wouldn’t have a very high chance of passing the assessment with another group. Teacher Zhou’s clearly taking care of me by putting me in the same group as you and Xiao Xiao. If I don’t work even harder, wouldn’t I simply be letting her kindness go to waste?”

Wang Dong curled his lips and said, “Your talent might be nothing much, but your martial soul is still quite good. Don’t worry, with myself—a genius—here, don’t talk about a few freshmen, even some second year students might not be able to beat me. When the time comes, you only need to activate your Spiritual Detection Sharing and watch me do my job from the back. With me leading our group, becoming champions will be as simple as just stretching our hands out and grabbing it.”

Huo Yuhao reminded him, “Our Shrek Academy is till the number one academy in the world. It’s always been ﬁlled with hidden dragons and crouching tigers; you can’t be too careless. However, I think that Xiao Xiao’s quite strong as well. When the time comes, you two absolutely have to work together.”

He had four amazing spiritual-type soul skills, but Wang Dong only knew of his combined Spiritual Detection Sharing. As for his hand-to-hand combat skills, although he had a slight foundation in the Tang Sect’s secret techniques, simply relying on them and the strength of his martial soul wouldn’t be enough for a fair ﬁght. It just just as Wang Dong had said— during the upcoming assessment, his greatest use would truly be his Spiritual Detection Sharing.

Even though Wang Dong could beat Huo Yuhao in a war of words, he couldn’t change how stubborn he was. When the two of them returned to their dorm room, they ended up meditating and cultivating. However, Huo Yuhao promised Wang Dong that he’d roast a few extra ﬁsh for him after the assessment.

Huo Yuhao’s seventeenth ranked soulforce could already condense into a white stream inside Huo Yuhao’s body. As it travelled throughout his body, following the circulation path of the Mysterious Heaven Technique, it seemed to pierce through his entire body, warming up his passageways. Not only was it comfortable, it also brought about an obvious improvement in Huo Yuhao’s cultivation.

After three months of bitter cultivation, Huo Yuhao was able to faintly sense that his passageways had expanded by a large amount. This was due, in part, to the subtle effects of the Mysterious Water Pill, as well as to the nourishing effect of the Mysterious Heaven Technique that he’d discovered by chance.

Furthermore, his passageways were extremely elastic and

durable now. In terms of physiques, Huo Yuhao was no longer inferior to anyone of the same age as him. However, the fact that he’d stepped onto the right path rather late was undeniable. It wasn’t very likely that he’d catch up to Wang Dong. Hence, he could only choose to improve alongsideh Wang Dong.

With his current cultivation speed, Huo Yuhao was conﬁdent that he could break into the twentieth rank by the time he graduated as a ﬁrst-year student, thereby obtaining a second soul ring. According to his brother Skydream, his strength would rapidly soar when he obtained his second soul ring, especially when his ice-type martial soul truly had its own abilities.

Huo Yuhao looked forward to that moment very much. When that happened, he’d deﬁnitely be able to help Wang Dong a lot more when they fought side-by-side.

Time always passed extremely the fastest during meditation; evening soon arrived. Like yesterday, Huo Yuhao walked over to the canteen to clean his ﬁsh before he headed towards the academy’s entrance.

The ﬂow of people at the academy’s entrance had clearly been reduced. Perhaps it was due to the upcoming freshman assessment, but a majority of the freshmen felt a sense of urgency, causing them to bitterly cultivate inside of their dorm rooms.

However, Huo Yuhao’s business wasn’t affected by this at all. When he arrived, a queue had already formed, with the person in front being, amazingly, Xu Sanshi.

“Ding—” Xu Sanshi handed Huo Yuhao a silver soul coin and said, “No need to hand me any change; just make sure to give me a big ﬁsh.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled and replied, “Big brother Xu, nothing can stop you, can it?”

The previous rift between the two had already closed. After beginning to see each other every day, they’d long become familiar with each other. After he became familiar with Xu Sanshi, Huo Yuhao discovered that, even though he wasn’t as gentle as Bei Bei, and even though he had a bit of a violent temper and a ﬁery disposition, he was still extremely sincere with his friendships.

Xu Sanshi laughed mischievously. “Who was the one that made me like what you roast? If I don’t at least get a bite of this every night, my dinner won’t taste delicious at all. I’ve eaten many roasted ﬁsh in the past, but not a single person was able

to control the ﬁre as well as you do. Even Jiang Nannan has praised your roasting technique. Right, I’ve heard that the freshman assessment’s about to start?”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head a few times and replied, “Yeah!”

Xu Sanshi said, “Then you have to work hard. You can’t get eliminated! If you do, I won’t be able to eat anymore roasted ﬁsh.” Even now, he still didn’t know that Huo Yuhao had been behind Bei Bei’s victory during their match. He only knew that Huo Yuhao’s talent was ordinary, but that he could roast ﬁsh extremely well. Actually, Huo Yuhao’s fame in Shrek Academy for his roasted ﬁsh was deﬁnitely greater than fame for his strength.

“Little Xu.” At this moment, a crisp voice suddenly rang out. When Xu Sanshi heard this voice, he immediately began to shiver. Huo Yuhao even saw a few hints of fear, but even more than that, helplessness, appear within his eyes.

The other diners that had queued up behind Xu Sanshi instantly quieted down.

A girl walked out from the academy’s entrance with slow steps, causing the crowd to open up a path for her in a very natural manner, so much so that they didn’t even dane to look at her; they all lowered their heads as she passed. Her appearance clearly exceeded that of Jiang Nannan’s appearance last time.

When Huo Yuhao raised his head to see who the girl was, he discovered that the newcomer was a red-clothed woman. Her body was slender and well-proportioned, with the ﬁrst thing that most people would notice when looking at her being her slightly exaggerated peaks that were ﬁrm, towering, and lustful...

Her waist was extremely slim, with that slimness continuing all the way down to her thighs, where it suddenly arced out. Her legs were perfectly straight and round, while at the same time a strong aura of youthfulness that was emanated by her assaulted one’s senses.

However, her facial features couldn’t clearly be seen; she wore a red veil over her face. However, one could tell that she was deﬁnitely a beauty from just her eyes alone. Her faintly- pink eyes could easily make one feel as if his soul had been swept away. Fortunately, her gaze was extremely cold, which

slightly suppressed the glow of rapture in her eyes that was capable of penetrating into one’s bones.

Xu Sanshi clearly seemed to recognise her. After summoning up some courage, he turned around. However, he didn’t look directly into her eyes; he lowered his head slightly instead, and replied, “Sister Xiaotao.”

At this moment, Huo Yuhao was even more astonished. Xu Sanshi was an untameable person with quite a ﬁery disposition, who had an even higher status than Bei Bei in the outer courtyard due to him being a ﬁfth year student. Because of his great talent, many sixth year students were somewhat reverent of him; even teachers wouldn’t cause him to act like this! Just who was this red-clothed girl? After looking at the girl closely, both Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong felt as if she looked slightly familiar for some reason.

The red-clothed girl looked over at Huo Yuhao’s oven, then slowly walked up to Xu Sanshi and said, “Little Xu, you’ve come to eat roasted ﬁsh?”

Xu Sanshi nodded his head and said, “Yeah! Huo Yuhao’s roasted ﬁsh tastes extraordinary. It’s really tasty.”

A slight trace of curiosity appeared on the red-clothed girl’s eyes, and she said to Huo Yuhao, “Let me try one.” She wasn’t the type of fairy that wouldn’t eat the food of ‘common mortals’. Practically all of her days were spent cultivating, so she was naturally excited when she found something new.

Huo Yuhao subconsciously replied, “I’m sorry, I only sell thirty ﬁsh a day. Thirty people have already queued up today, so please come earlier on tomorrow.”

These exact words had been uttered by him countless times before. However, when his voice rang out this time, practically everyone standing in the queue simultaneously raised their heads to look at him with terriﬁed expressions; even Xu Sanshi wasn’t an exception.

Following that, the people who’d been queued behind Xu Sanshi loudly dispersed and walked away as fast as they could, causing Huo Yuhao to become even more astonished.

The red-clothed girl smiled and said, “Okay, there’s no one left in the queue now. I think that I should be able to eat one now, right?”

Xu Sanshi continuously made a few gestures to Huo Yuhao with his eyes. Huo Yuhao wasn’t someone who didn’t understand how things worked. After nodding his head, he continued to roast his ﬁsh seriously.

However, Wang Dong who was at his side was somewhat indignant. “Who are you? Why did you disturb our business?”

The red-clothed girl raised her right hand, exposing her tender hand. On it, there was a large blood-like crimson ruby that was absolutely beautiful. The ruby ﬂashed, causing a single gold soul coin to appear in her hand. She then passed it to Wang Dong and said, “I’ll take all of today’s roasted ﬁsh.”

Wang Dong wasn’t polite at all as he took the gold soul coin. Afterwards, he didn’t utter another word. Although this red- clothed girl was threatening to the point of scaring so many people away, she didn’t look unreasonable. Furthermore, he felt that something was wrong; a few traces of fear towards this red-clothed girl had actually appeared in his heart.

However, Huo Yuhao honestly replied, “I don’t need this much money. My roasted ﬁsh only cost ﬁve copper soul coins

apiece.”

The red-clothed girl seemed as if she wasn’t willing to talk with him anymore. She indifferently said, “Just take it as a deposit. Just don’t ask me for money if I want to eat here in the future.”

“Okay.” Huo Yuhao nodded and replied whilst simultaneously continuing to carefully roast ﬁsh.

The red-clothed girl originally looked as if she’d come to ﬁnd Xu Sanshi, but she didn’t even seem to care about Xu Sanshi now. Instead, she was now focusing on Huo Yuhao as he roasted ﬁsh.

After a short period of time, she let out a soft cry of surprise. “Your ﬁre-controlling technique is this perfect?! Do you have a ﬁre-type martial soul?” She herself was an expert in the ﬁeld of ﬁre, so she was naturally able to see that Huo Yuhao’s ﬁre- control while he was roasting the ﬁsh had reached the apex of precision.

Huo Yuhao simply shook his head.

After a short period of time, he ﬁnished roasting the ﬁrst four ﬁsh. Since nobody else was coming today, Huo Yuhao simply passed two to the red-clothed girl and two to Xu Sanshi. In reality, he didn’t just buy thirty mackerels everyday; any extra ﬁsh were naturally left to Tang Ya and Wang Dong.

When Xu Sanshi had ﬁrst seen the red-clothed girl, he had clearly been somewhat distressed. He wasn’t even as passionate as he normally was whilst eating his roasted ﬁsh. On the other hand, the red-clothed girl slowly raised her veil, revealing her absolutely beautiful face, as she slowly began to eat the roasted ﬁsh.

Her movements were extremely graceful as she carefully ate the ﬁsh. However, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong were stunned by the mysterious disappearance of the ﬁsh bones from her hand after she’d ﬁnished eating the ﬁsh. She’d clearly used her hands to eat the ﬁsh, yet there weren’t any oil stains on her hand at all.

Just what power was this? Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong glanced at each other, both seeing the shock reﬂected in each other’s eyes.

The two pieces of roasted ﬁsh were quickly ﬁnished by her. When she ﬁnished, the red-clothed girl nodded at Huo Yuhao and said, “Your roasted ﬁsh are very tasty. They seem to have been seriously made. Now then, let me see your martial soul.”

Her words had an irrefusable tone to them. Ever since the evil ﬁre in her body had been suppressed by that mysterious ice element, she hadn’t disturbed by her martial soul’s overbearing demonism for a full three months. However, that icy aura had gradually been reﬁned by her martial soul’s phoenix ﬂames as time passed, causing a backlash to gradually appear. The reason that she was looking for Xu Sanshi was because of his Mysterious Underworld Turtle, which was currently the best water-type martial soul in the academy. If she borrowed a certain amount of his strength, she could suppress the evil ﬁre in her body. To Xu Sanshi, this process was just like tempering iron into steel—it only brought beneﬁts. However, it was extremely painful. That was why Xu Sanshi had immediately had a bitter expression when he saw her. Furthermore, this wasn’t the ﬁrst time that she’d tormented him like this.

Huo Yuhao eyebrows furrowed slightly, while Wang Dong had an indignant look on his face. However, he was stopped by Huo Yuhao’s raised hand. He slowly raised his head and looked towards the red-clothed girl. After that, a faint golden light emerged in his eyes. As that happened, a sheen of purple rippled through his deep blue eyes.

Of all the secret techniques he’d learned from the Tang Sect, Huo Yuhao’s greatest improvement lay in the Purple Demon

Eyes. Whenever he absorbed the purple qi that rose from the east every morning, his Spirit Eyes would naturally generate a siphoning effect. For him, a single day’s worth of cultivating the Purple Demon Eyes was better than ten days worth of cultivation for Bei Bei and Tang Ya. Because of this, his Purple

Demon Eyes had improved extremely quick.

The red-clothed girl raised her long eyebrows slightly when she sensed Huo Yuhao’s mysterious Spiritual Detection Sharing.

Following the increase in his cultivation, the strength of Huo Yuhao’s soul ring had gradually begun to increase, as per the Skydream Iceworm’s words. The strength of his tolerance would determine how much strength his ﬁrst soul ring could manifest.

In the beginning, although his ﬁrst soul ring contained four soul skills within it, their effects had only been equivalent to that of a four hundred year soul ring. However, his ﬁrst soul ring now possessed the power of a soul ring that was around six hundred years, with the maximum range of his Spiritual Detection and his Spiritual Interference now reaching a diameter of ﬁfty metres. Furthermore, the effects of these skills were even more detailed than they had previously been.

Part of the ﬁrst seal that the Skydream Iceworm's had made within Huo Yuhao’s body had already been unlocked. As long as Huo Yuhao continued to make breakthroughs in his cultivation, the Skydream Iceworm's powerful origin energy would automatically increase the strength of his ﬁrst soul ring. This was something that other soul masters couldn't even dare to dream about. His ﬁrst soul ring would only continue to grow more terrifying as his cultivation level rose.

The Skydream Iceworm couldn’t give Huo Yuhao an instant power boost, but it had given him an astonishingly bright future.

Huo Yuhao kept his Spiritual Detection Sharing active for about ten seconds, before withdrawing it. After a few moments of what seemed to be shock, the red-clothed girl nodded towards Huo Yuhao. She then gazed deeply at the single white soul ring that rose up from his feet and said, “That’s the strongest ten year soul ring I’ve ever seen.”

Huo Yuhao replied in a very natural manner, “It’s still only a ten year soul ring.”

The red-clothed girl laughed softly and said, “I’m Ma Xiaotao, nice to meet you. If I have the chance, I’ll come back again to eat your roasted ﬁsh. Little Xu, let’s go.”

Xu Sanshi had a pained expression as he said, “Sister Xiaotao, can you please be a bit more gentle today?”

Ma Xiaotao gave him an indifferent glance, causing him to immediately correct himself, “I don’t have any problems, none at all.” As he spoke, he hurriedly walked in front of Ma Xiaotao and gestured for her to continue.

Only after the two had entered the academy did Wang Dong mutter, “Her name’s really tacky ”

Huo Yuhao said in response, “Can a name prove anything?

Don’t you think that she seemed a bit familiar?”

Wang Dong was suddenly startled. “She couldn’t be that person we met at the lake last time, could she? She was also wearing red clothes… could she be a disciple of the inner courtyard?”

Huo Yuhao shrugged his shoulders in response, expressing his doubt.

A group of people came rushing back and queued at his stall as soon as Ma Xiaotao and Xu Sanshi had left. The person in front, who happened to be a fourth year student, overheard the conversation between the two. He immediately whispered, “Junior classmen, you need to quiet down a bit. You can’t just talk about disciples from the inner courtyard like that, especially senior Xiaotao.”

Huo Yuhao asked in astonishment, “She’s really from the inner courtyard?”

The upperclassman replied, “Obviously. Within Shrek Academy, red-clothed students are all seniors from the inner courtyard. I don’t know how many people there are in the inner courtyard, but seniors from the inner courtyard rarely come out. There’s also a ranking system in the inner courtyard, causing the competition there to be extremely intense. Despite how intense it is, senior Xiaotao is one of the top ten ranked students inside of the inner courtyard. Her strength is deﬁnitely not something that we can compare to. Senior Xu Sanshi seems to have a very good relationship with senior Xiaotao, thus he might get a recommendation from

senior Xiaotao to the inner courtyard in the future, if he’s lucky.”

Wang Dong asked with curiousity, “You need a recommendation to enter the inner courtyard?”

The upperclassman replied, “That’s obvious! Well, I’m not entirely clear about the speciﬁc procedures one must follow to enter the inner courtyard. Supposedly, every single student from the outer courtyard that wants to enter the inner courtyard must obtain a recommendation from a student from the inner courtyard.”

Huo Yuhao was able to ﬁnish selling the rest of his ﬁsh without a hitch. By the time he was about to sell the last of them, Bei Bei and Tang Ya arrived side-by-side. Huo Yuhao took out the ﬁsh that he’d saved for them beforehand to treat them to a few roasted ﬁsh.

“Junior brother, the freshman assessment is about to start. I’ve just got obtained accurate info: You’ll be registering in the morning, while the assessment will start in the afternoon. You have to prepare well.” Bei Bei’s demeanor was still as gentle as before.

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “I’ll deﬁnitely work hard to pass the assessment.”

Bei Bei laughed, while Tang Ya said, “Little Yuhao, even if I’m your teacher, I can’t just eat this many of your roasted ﬁsh for free. I’ll give you something nice. You can use it when the time arises.” As she spoke, she handed something that resembled a pouch to Huo Yuhao. “When you get back back to your dorm room, store what’s inside in your Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges. Make sure to be careful when you’re using it. Don’t hit any vital points. Also, you’ll need to start learning how to reﬁne soul tools after the assessment. At that time, I’ll teach you a few more secret techniques.”

“Thank you, Teacher Xiao Ya.” Huo Yuhao received the pouch, roughly able to guess what was inside.

Wang Dong had a curious look on his face. He proceeded to ask, “Teacher Xiao Ya, I don’t think that you can use soul tools during the freshman assessment, right?”

Tang Ya unhappily replied, “What soul tools? Don’t you know what the Tang Sect is famous for?”

When Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong returned to their dorm room and opened the pouch, they were shocked. It was ﬁlled with hidden weapons. There were throwing knives, throwing needles, Bone Piercing Needles, as well as a dozen plus other types of hidden weapons. Furthermore, there were over a

hundred of each of them. It was basically a warehouse for hidden weapons.

It was extremely obvious that Tang Ya had prepared these hidden weapons for Huo Yuhao since his martial soul had no way to attack. During these past three months, Huo Yuhao had slightly improved in his understanding of the secret techniques of the Tang Sect, and had even started to skim through the Hidden Weapon Hundred Separations. He was extremely bright and studious, which resulted in him mastering a few techniques. He didn’t have any problems using hidden weapons in a basic fashion. To these new students with only one or two soul rings, these hidden weapons were still a large threat.

As Wang Dong gazed at Huo Yuhao’s hidden weapons, he couldn’t help but curl his lips and say, “Your Teacher Xiao Ya is clearly looking down on me. With me there, there won’t even be a need for you to make a move.”

@Chapter 17: First Time Cooperating; Two People Control the Battleﬁeld

Huo Yuhao was somewhat speechless as he said, “Arrogance causes setbacks; at least be a bit more low-proﬁle.”

Wang Dong snorted. “Do you think that I can actually have a low-proﬁle with my martial soul?”

“Uh…” Right! Wang Dong’s Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess was an existence that would always stun everyone whenever it appeared. For him to have a low-proﬁle wouldn’t be easy.

A wordless night passed as the two cultivated in silence. The next morning, the two walked over to their school building after eating breakfast. When they entered class, they felt a fervent atmosphere envelop them.

Everyone had gathered in their respective groups of three, and were whispering to one another.

Xiao Xiao had arrived before the two of them, and thus was already waiting for them. When she saw them enter the classroom, she hurriedly waved towards them.

When Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had reacher her, Xiao Xiao said, “The assessment is going to formally begin this afternoon. Let’s discuss some tactics.”

Wang Dong unperturbedly said, “There’s nothing for us to discuss. Let’s just go and ﬁght.”

Xiao Xiao softly shook her head and said, “It’s not that easy. I’ve heard that every single class has a few especially outstanding students who’ve in turn formed elite teams that are gunning for the champion spot. They won’t be easy to deal with. We have to be well-coordinated to have a chance against them.”

Wang Dong still wanted to retort, but was cut off by Huo Yuhao. “Wang Dong, act properly. If you don’t, I’ll have to ask Teacher Zhou to change our teams.”

It wasn’t clear whether or not Xiao Xiao still held a grudge against Wang Dong rejecting her yesterday, but she immediately echoed Huo Yuhao, “That’s right! Too much over- conﬁdence is simply arrogance.”

Wang Dong humphed, but no longer spoke.

Huo Yuhao put his hand on Wang Dong’s shoulder and said, “Alright, don’t be angry. If we work together, won’t it be even easier for us to defeat our enemies during the assessment? Let’s discuss the abilities that we specialise in.”

Even though they’d been classmates for three months, they’d still only studied together. Cultivation was something that they’d done individually, thus nobody really knew much about anyone else’s martial souls.

Huo Yuhao continued, “I’ll start ﬁrst. I have a spiritual-type martial soul. I can use a skill known as Spiritual Detection Sharing, which can let you detect any movements within a ﬁfty metre diameter in a fairly detailed manner. At the same time, it can also predict an opponent’s movements to a certain extent.”

Wang Dong said, “I’m an assault system soul master. Short- range and long-range attacks are both okay for me. I’m also able to ﬂy.” Although he was somewhat arrogant, he truly had the qualiﬁcations to act as such. Regardless of whether it was his cultivation, his martial soul, or his soul skills, he was an

outstanding existence among his peers. The simple fact that his second soul ring was a thousand year one was something that perhaps no one else in the academy could outshine.

Xiao Xiao nodded and said, “My main martial soul is the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron. It can both attack and defend, and can control the battleﬁeld to a certain extent. It can also intimidate my enemies by ramming into them, which will cause them to feel dizzy, while getting hurt at the same time. My second martial soul is a ﬂute—the Nine Phoenix Flute. It focuses on auxiliary and control-type abilities. Currently, my second martial soul only has a hundred year soul ring. It can slow down the speed of our enemies during combat.”

Wang Dong was slightly amazed as he asked, “Your auxiliary- type martial soul doesn’t boost yourself?”

Xiao Xiao had a proud smile on her face as she replied, “Nope. Sometimes, weakening an enemy is better than boosting one’s self. When the time comes, you’ll see what I

mean. However, it isn’t that easy for me to use my second martial soul, so it’s better if we hide a bit of our strength and take it slow.”

Both Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong suddenly realized something—Xiao Xiao might be even stronger than they thought.

What they didn’t know was that, when Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao worked together to control the battleﬁeld, they would explode out with a frightening amount of control.

“Thump, thump, thump.” Three rapping sounds rang out. When the class heard that, it immediately became so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Zhou Yi stood at the entrance to the classroom, her right hand just coming back down to her side. The rapping sound had been from her rapping on the door to the classroom.

Zhou Yi still maintained her ice-cold composure as she slowly walked up to the platform. “I’ve already reported the list of teams that are partaking in the competition later. The

competition will formally start this afternoon. It will use a round-robin system, and you won’t meet each other during the ten matches that you’ll be competing in, only teams from other classes. I only have one line of advice for you: If anyone tries to stop you from passing the assessment, beat the shit out of them. That’s it, you can all disperse. We’ll gather at the assessment area this afternoon.” When Zhou Yi had ﬁnished speaking, she hard-headedly turned around and walked away.

Wang Dong spoke in a low voice to Huo Yuhao. “Don’t you think that old lady Zhou is becoming cooler and cooler?”

Huo Yuhao glanced at him and said, “This isn’t being cool; she’s being completely domineering.”

Xiao Xiao walked over and giggled. “Teacher Zhou’s just giving off a strong presence. Let’s go and ﬁnd a place to train together for a while. If we don’t, how will we coordinate later?’

Without waiting for Wang Dong to speak, Huo Yuhao immediately nodded his head in agreement. “Student Wang Dong, if you ever want to eat roasted ﬁsh next time, I have to request that you to listen to every command of the current

class monitor during the freshman assessment. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Urgh…” Wang Dong looked at Huo Yuhao’s resolute gaze, then said with an indignant expression on his face, “Huo Yuhao, you’re really taking advantage of my fear.”

Huo Yuhao calmly replied, “You can choose not to eat them.”

Wang Dong hesitated for a moment, but still relented in the end. “I surrender. I’ll listen to you. However, you’re in charge of the hygiene in the dorm room from now on.”

Huo Yuhao had a look of disdain on his face as he said, “Have you cleaned the room at all during these past three months?”

“This…” Wang Dong felt speechless as he said, “You’re a ﬁerce one, aren’t you?”

Xiao Xiao seemed to be standing completely on Huo Yuhao’s side as she giggled. “Laziness is a type of sin.”

Wang Dong suddenly blurted out a few words, causing the young Xiao Xiao to immediately blush. “Xiao Xiao, the target of your affection really changes fast!”

“You—!” Xiao Xiao pointed her ﬁnger at Wang Dong with a look of anger on her face. She even looked as if she had been wronged.

“Okay, okay. Didn’t we say that we were going to train? Let’s hurry up and do so. I think that we should head outside the academy. There are tons of trees outside the academy, thus we won’t be easily disturbed by the others.”

Wang Dong stuck his tongue out at Xiao Xiao, then turned around to leave. Only after Huo Yuhao had given Xiao Xiao a few words of consolation, did she become happy. Afterwards, the two chased after Wang Dong, following the lakeside path as they left the academy.

Looking for a quiet place outside Shrek Academy couldn’t be any easier for them. Although there were several roads, there was a large amount of vegetation that covered both sides of the main road. Some of it was naturally grown, while some of it had been planted by hand.

After the three had found a relatively ﬂat area in the forest, Wang Dong asked, “How’re we going to train? Are we just going to use our soul skills once?”

Xiao Xiao immediately refuted him, “How would that be useful? You naturally need to have a ﬁght for training to be the most effective. You’re an assault system soul master, so you can be on one side, while the class monitor and I will be on the other side. Let’s have a match.”

“You two against me?” Wang Dong raised his right hand, wagging his foreﬁnger as he said, “That won’t do. With just the two of you, you won’t have a chance against me!”

Xiao Xiao gave an opposingly cold smile. “How will we know if we don’t try? However, you’re an assault system soul master, so you can’t be right next to us when the battle starts. Let’s spread out a bit. Let’s say… thirty metres.”

As Huo Yuhao listened to the two’s argument, he gradually discovered how clever Xiao Xiao was. His Spiritual Detection Sharing had a ﬁfty metre diameter, thus for Xiao Xiao to ask for Wang Dong to start off thirty metres away was equivalent to having him enter the range of his Spiritual Detection the instant he made a move.

Wang Dong agreed without any hesitation at all.

Xiao Xiao then said, “You can ﬂy, but we can’t. This is a training session, so you’d better not ﬂy away once you start losing.”

Wang Dong replied in a very casual manner. “I won’t leave the ground by more than ﬁve metres. Then, I’ll be heading

over. You can shout ‘start’ when you guys are ready.” When he’d ﬁnished speaking, he began to walk away.

Xiao Xiao immediately turned towards Huo Yuhao and said, “Class monitor, let’s kite this fool. It’ll be ﬁne if you just use your Spiritual Detection Sharing to support me. Let’s make that arrogant guy eat a loss.”

If this had been before Huo Yuhao had come to Shrek Academy, he deﬁnitely wouldn’t have known what ‘kiting’ was. However, he was extremely clear about what it was now—it was a tactic that relied on retreating as one fought.

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “Alright, I’ll help you.” He also wanted to see just how strong Xiao Xiao and Wang Dong were. During the past three months, he hadn’t ever been able to see exactly how strong Wang Dong truly was when he used his martial soul to ﬁght. However, he understood that even though Wang Dong was slightly more arrogant than others, he was just being self-conﬁdent, not arrogant. This was because self- conﬁdence came from strength.

The distance between the two sides quickly grew larger. Wang Dong lazily leaned against a large tree and gazed at the

two that were thirty metres away from him—he’d even increased the distance between them a bit. He raised his arm and waved at Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao, indicating that he was ready.

Xiao Xiao and Huo Yuhao stood next to each other. Xiao Xiao had a petite body, and was rather short compared to the rest of the class. She even had the title of ‘pocket-sized beauty’. She glanced at Huo Yuhao and nodded. “Class monitor, please assist me.”

“Okay.”

Only then did Xiao Xiao turn around and shout towards Wang Dong, “Start!” As soon as she spoke, she released her martial soul.

Two yellow lights simultaneously lit up as soon as they rose from Xiao Xiao’s feet; she was actually a Soul Grandmaster! When Huo Yuhao saw this, he inwardly blushed from shame.

The two shining soul rings rose from Xiao Xiao’s feet, but nothing seemed to happen to her body. However, a black

shadow rapidly condensed above her head, clearly forming a three-legged cauldron that had two handles and a diameter of around one metre. This was Xiao Xiao’s main martial soul, the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron.

Huo Yuhao activated his Spiritual Detection Sharing at the same time, causing a white soul ring to rise up from his feet. The onlooking Xiao Xiao couldn’t help but ﬁnd it somewhat weak. She thought to herself, “No wonder the class monitor cultivates as hard as he does; his talent’s really lacking!”

However, Xiao Xiao was quickly shocked by the mysterious scene that Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing showed her.

Everything within a twenty-ﬁve metre diameter of them instantly became three-dimensional ﬁgures within her mind. She basically didn’t even have to think about them either— information about them rapidly appeared inside of her mind. She could even clearly sense the existence of every single strand of grass and bit of vegetation within the area that was surrounding them. Furthermore, besides the three- dimensional panoramic view that she’d suddenly received, she felt as if she suddenly had an extra brain that could help her process the new information that she was receiving.

As Xiao Xiao glanced at Huo Yuhao, astonished, Wang Dong had already begun to make his move.

Although Wang Dong seemed to be looking down on Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao on the surface, he wasn’t being careless at all. He’d personally experienced Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing, so he was fully aware of the fact that it could predict an opponent’s movements.

A dazzling pair of blue wings instantly spread out from his back, causing Wang Dong’s body to also be covered in an exotic colour that seemed to constantly change between blue and purple. Furthermore, a few golden balls of light appeared on his enormous pair of wings and lit up, forming a ‘V’. As his two soul rings rose up from his feet, one yellow and one purple, his Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess was fully released.

With a ﬂash, Wang Dong rushed out at high speed. The balls of light on his wings began to emit soulforce, which caused his speed to instantly reach an extreme level.

This wasn’t a soul skill, but an innate skill that belonged to his Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess. From this alone, it could be seen

how strong his martial soul was.

Wang Dong’s sudden increase in speed caused him to instantly cross a distance of ten or so metres; he had already nearly arrived in front of Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao. The result of an assault system soul master approaching two control system soul masters who had no means of engaging him in close-combat could be imagined. Their defeat seemed to be inevitable.

When Wang Dong was only twenty-ﬁve metres away from Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao, a digital representation of his movements instantly appeared in Xiao Xiao’s brain. This included the trajectory of his movements, the minute changes in his body, the smallest changes in his martial soul… even the rotation of Wang Dong’s soulforce within his meridians could be faintly examined by Xiao Xiao.

Xiao Xiao didn’t look ﬂustered at all. Huo Yuhao’s soul ring, which was only a ten year soul ring, had already surprised her immensely. As she watched Wang Dong approach them, she decided to make a move too.

She pointed her right hand towards Wang Dong, causing the one-metre wide cauldron above her to charge forwards. It didn’t head straight towards Wang Dong, but towards the only path that he could take. Furthermore, she similarly used an innate skill that belonged to her martial soul: she delayed the

use of her soul skill.

Wang Dong was put into an extremely difﬁcult position due to the position of the enormous black cauldron, as it was currently ﬂying directly towards the only path that he could take. This was deﬁnitely a clever application of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing, no doubt. If not for Huo Yuhao’s help, Xiao Xiao would have had to rely on her eyesight and the ﬂuctuations in Wang Dong’s soulforce to make a judgement, which deﬁnitely wouldn’t have been as accurate as right now.

In this moment of helplessness, Wang Dong suddenly contracted his left wing. This allowed his body to twist slightly in midair, slightly changing his trajectory. However, he became even more depressed when the black cauldron instantly shifted, allowing it to continue blocking him.

Foresight.

Xiao Xiao subconsciously turned to glance at the golden-eyed Huo Yuhao. With his Spiritual Detection Sharing, she didn’t even need to look at Wang Dong. She only needed to follow the instructions of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing to continue her attacks. This couldn’t be any easier for her.

However, Wang Dong wouldn’t simply admit defeat; he continued to ﬂap his wings as he soared through the air, increasing his speed by several times. Despite this, Huo Yuhao was still able to sense the rotation of his soulforce via his Spiritual Detection, thus he was able to consistently predict his movements. For him to attempt to avoid Xiao Xiao’s Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron while it was under her control clearly wasn’t realistic.

Wang Dong felt depressed. He couldn’t help but shout, “Huo Yuhao, you’re inhumane! Fine, I won’t dodge—I’ll force my way in!”

His ﬁrst soul ring suddenly lit up as he spoke, while the golden light in Huo Yuhao’s eyes suddenly lit up as well. With his Spiritual Detection, he could clearly sense that the soulforce within Wang Dong’s body was rotating in an explosive manner, surging madly into his front pair of wings.

On the other hand, his rear wings had been spread out for the sole sake of maintaining his balance.

His front pair of wings turned completely azure, the golden patterns on them releasing a golden light that spread outward, instantly forming a three-inch wide sharp golden edge on his front wings.

The look on Xiao Xiao’s face changed slightly. Via Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing, she could clearly sense the astonishing destructive power that was currently contained within Wang Dong’s wings after he used this soul skill.

Wang Dong simultaneously raised his hands, grabbing the inner part of his front wings. With a sudden pull, his front pair of wings immediately unfurled, resembling two guillotines with golden edges. He then twisted his body, causing his right wing to slash towards the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron. It was just as he’d said: If a soft method wouldn’t work, he’d have to use a hard one!

However, he’d still underestimated the level of coordination that Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao shared, who were both working together to control the battleﬁeld. Xiao Xiao didn’t have her

Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron forcefully take the hit that Wang Dong has sent at it, instead choosing to have it two metres. This allowed it to perfectly dodge the slash made by Wang Dong’s right wing, before suddenly ramming into his wing.

A loud ‘bang’ rang out from their collision, and Wang Dong’s body was sent ﬂying several tens of metres away. On the other hand, Xiao Xiao’s Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron remained hovering in midair.

Wang Dong truly felt depressed by this. His strength absolutely exceeded Xiao Xiao’s, but he hadn’t been able to display any of it whilst facing the combined forces of Xiao Xiao and Huo Yuhao. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. This time, he decided to retreat instead of advancing. With a ﬂash, he moved more than twenty-ﬁve metres away from Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao, naturally meaning that he’d escaped the range of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing.

“Hehe, Huo Yuhao, I want see how you’ll detect the my body’s condition now. This brother has long-range attacks too.” As he spoke, his second soul ring lit up.

Huo Yuhao smiled slightly and said, “Have you forgotten? I can also manipulate the direction of my Spiritual Detection. As of right now, I can send it out around a hundred metres. If your attack can lock onto us from over a hundred metres away, you can try using it. And even if it can, there’ll still be enough time for me to help Xiao Xiao take it on when your attack enters the range of my Spiritual Detection, unless the strength of your attack can shatter Xiao Xiao’s Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron. And besides that, you shouldn’t forget that Xiao Xiao still has her second martial soul.”

Wang Dong was stunned. Right! Even though his second soul skill was a thousand year one, and was relatively strong compared, its might would still be greatly reduced after it had crossed a hundred metres. Besides, Huo Yuhao truly would have enough time to help Xiao Xiao take it on. However, he still wasn’t willing to concede to them. “My long-range attack is an AoE attack. Even if you can detect it, it won’t be of any use.”

Xiao Xiao smiled. “Wang Dong, don’t be so proud of yourself. Don’t forget, I still have multiple soul skills that I haven’t used. Would you like to know what soul skills my Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron has? To be honest, you might not be my match, even if this were a one-on-one ﬁght. As for your long- range attack, it might have an extraordinary amount of

strength, but all the class monitor and I need is enough time to dodge it. Just wait and see.”

Whilst speaking, she pointed at the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron with her right hand, causing it to suddenly tremble slightly. Immediately after that, it unexpectedly split into three smaller cauldrons that surrounded her and Huo Yuhao, forming a tripartite formation. At the same time, Xiao Xiao’s ﬁrst soul ring lit up.

A loud rumbling echoed out as the ten square metres of air above the two of them twisted due to a violent vibration.

The three cauldrons then merged back into one and quietly landed in front of Xiao Xiao.

Huo Yuhao’s and Wang Dong’s expressions changed. What a strong martial soul! When the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron had split into three parts, that was an innate skill that belonged to it. However, that tremor was deﬁnitely its attack. Huo Yuhao had clearly been able to sense the terrifying might of that tremor via his Spiritual Sense.

Wang Dong quickly regained his composure. “I get it, I won’t ﬁght anymore. If the two of you team up, it’s true that I can’t beat you. But Xiao Xiao, in the future, you’ll deﬁnitely learn that you’re not my match in a one-on-one ﬁght. On the other hand, if two people around the same level of cultivation ﬁght against one another, the side that has Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection will deﬁnitely win. That skill of his doesn’t give anyone a way out at all. You’ll be left in a passive state throughout the entire battle, unless someone with an

exceedingly high cultivation uses absolute power to crush him.”

Although Xiao Xiao wasn’t willing to accept Wang Dong saying that he could beat her in a one-on-one ﬁght, she had to acknowledge what else he’d said. She nodded and said, “Yeah! With the class monitor’s Spiritual Detection, ﬁghting is as simple as just using my soul skills. Class monitor, your soul skill is super strong. It feels great teaming up with you! I even underestimated your ten year soul ring, sorry!” Xiao Xiao was a girl who had a very straightforward attitude; she said whatever she was thinking about without beating around the bush. Due to this, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong immediately had a favourable opinion of her.

Huo Yuhao extended his right hand horizontally towards Xiao Xiao, who responded with a sweet smile, before placing

her right hand on top of his. Finally, Wang Dong walked over and placed his right hand on the very top.

Huo Yuhao then said, “From now on, we’re comrades on the same team. As for the freshmen examination, we want to be champions.”

“We want to be champions!” The three simultaneously shouted. At this moment, the relationship between them had deepened further. The happiest person of the three was naturally Xiao Xiao; she ﬁnally felt as if Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had sincerely accepted her as one of their friends. Because of this, it was always said that, between soul masters, speaking with one’s ﬁsts was always the simplest, most direct, and most effective way to do things.

Shrek Academy’s assessment area was located at the north- central part of the Martial Soul Department, and was adjacent to the Soul Duelling Area. However, the Examination Area was much larger than the Soul Duelling Area. To the outer courtyard students, this was a paradise for outstanding students, where they could display their abilities, but was a nightmare for weaker students. There would always be a large number of students expelled after failing their assessment

every year. A large majority of the assessments would be held in this Examination Area.

The Examination Area was oval-shaped. Unlike the Soul Duelling Area, which was enclosed, the Examination Area was basically an open ﬁeld. It was only encircled by short walls, while inside it was separated into many small areas by partitions. These partitions could be moved at any time to alter the size of the Examination Area.

The Examination Area would always be divided the most whenever the freshman assessment happened. It wasn’t just because of the large number of new students, but also because there was still a limit to the destructive power and attack range that new students had. Because of this, they didn’t need too large of an area to allow them to fully display their abilities.

The Examination Area was roughly twenty-thousand square metres large, but was currently separated into ﬁfty areas. Every single partitioned area was around four hundred square metres in size, and was a twenty by twenty metre square. This was already sufﬁcient for new students, who generally only had one or two soul rings.

After the intense division of groups in the morning, the assessment formally started in the afternoon. Because this was the ﬁrst day of the assessment, all of the teams could leave after ﬁnishing only one match. This was done for the sake of letting the new students adapt, at least somewhat, to the schedule. The academy had stationed a teacher in each of the ﬁfty areas in order to complete the registration process for the assessment. The lot drawing for today’s matches had already been done that afternoon, and the academy did all they could to ensure that no teams from the same class would meet each other during the ten-match round robin tournament.

Other than Class 1, which only had twenty-two teams, the other classes generally had at least thirty teams. Unless there were students that had performed extremely poorly during their ﬁrst three months at Shrek Academy, teachers in charge of the freshmen classes would generally always give them a chance to take the freshman assessment.

There were a total of three hundred and ten teams participating in the freshmen assessment, which meant a total of nine hundred and thirty people. Out of these three hundred and ten teams of students, only a hundred and ﬁfty of them would be able to remain and formally become ﬁrst-year students to continue studying. The rest of the teams would be eliminated.

Whilst studying in Shrek Academy, the competition was undoubtedly ﬁerce and cruel. However, this also resulted in students working even harder under this intense atmosphere, allowing them to stimulate even more of their potential. This had, in turn, allowed Shrek Academy to survive ten thousand years without becoming weak at all.

There were a total of ﬁfty arenas for the freshmen assessment, which meant that every single arena would have six or seven teams within it. It wasn’t just today; they would also compete with other teams from the same arena tomorrow, up until they’d ﬁnished competing with all the teams in the same arena as them. Afterwards, the winners would be redistributed into new groups, allowing them to ﬁnish their ten-round competition.

Huo Yuhao’s team of three was assigned to the 33rd arena. After the three ate lunch, they returned to their respective dorm rooms in order to meditate for a while, then met back up when it was time to. The arenas with the Examination Area were extremely easy to look for, since each arena was quite obviously labeled. They managed to ﬁnd which arena they were supposed to be in quite quickly.

The students from the other classes who were also meant to be in the area had already arrived. Some of them looked nervous, while some of them seemed eager to begin. All of them were only kids, around eleven or twelve years old, so they couldn’t really conceal their thoughts. When they looked at each other, their eyes clearly exposed the hostility they had for one another. After all, only half of them would continue to remain within Shrek Academy. Even though the freshmen

assessment only had a total of ten rounds, every single round would affect their future.

“New students, please pay attention. New students, please pay attention. Please immediately enter the Examination Area to participate in the freshmen assessment. There are still ten minutes left for you to enter. Any students that are late will automatically forfeit their assessment.”

The booming voice from the loudspeaker rang throughout the entire academy; it was loud enough to travel through every nook and corner of the academy. At this moment, most students’ expressions became quite serious. Everyone’s ﬁrst match was about to begin; they’d be lying if they said that they weren’t nervous.

Huo Yuhao unconsciously clenched his ﬁsts, then felt the Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges on his waist for reassurance. The freshman assessment prohibited the usage of soul tools, but hidden weapons were still classiﬁed as ordinary weapons, which weren’t prohibited. Soul masters would rarely use any weapons, unless they were soul tools. However, as a disciple of the Tang Sect, Huo Yuhao was clearly an exception to this rule.

Wang Dong placed his left hand on Huo Yuhao’s shoulder and leaned towards him. “Don’t be nervous, this will be trivial to us.”

Xiao Xiao didn’t call Wang Dong out for being arrogant this time. Instead, she nodded towards Huo Yuhao. Although Wang Dong hadn’t been able to show off his full power when the three of them had fought earlier, she had still been able to see that his cultivation wasn’t any lower than that hers, based on the resolute words he spoke at the very end. Combined with the class monitor’s mystical Spiritual Detection Sharing, there were an extremely small number of students within their age group who could be their opponents.

Huo Yuhao whispered, “We’ll be the champions.”

Xiao Xiao and Wang Dong simultaneously nodded. The three then placed their palms above each other’s once again. Although they were young, they knew one thing: Although simply passing the assessment might not be that hard for them, if they wanted to become champions of the assessment, teamwork would be key. Because of that, even Wang Dong restrained his pride.

The freshmen assessment was extremely important, so the academy’s announcement wasn’t really that useful. All of the freshmen had already arrived at their designated arenas in order to make preparations for the upcoming assessment.

A teacher that looked to be around forty walked into the 33rd Area. He looked like an extremely average person; he didn’t give off any sort of threatening aura. He had a smile on his face, as well as an extremely friendly appearance. As such, he was as different as heaven and earth when compared to Zhou Yi. After counting the number of people present, he smiled slightly. “Very good. We have a total of six teams participating in the freshmen assessment today, and it seems that you’re all present. Allow me to introduce myself ﬁrst. I’m Wang Yan, and I’ll be your proctor for the next two days.

“Greetings, Teacher Wang.” The students hurriedly bowed in respect.

Wang Yan chuckled. “No need to be so polite. I’ve always treated everyone as a friend while I’m teaching, and from now until the end of our time together, you’ll all be my little friends. As such, I don’t wish to see anyone get hurt. Although this assessment determines whether or not you can continue to study in Shrek Academy, I have to remind you that this is still

only an assessment. You absolutely mustn’t hurt your opponents too badly. If that happens, I'm afraid I'll have to ask him to leave and report the incident to the Academy.”

He spoke with a very gentle tone and downplayed the entire matter. Although he didn’t mention the consequences for crippling one’s opponent, every single student that was able to enter Shrek Academy was a child prodigy. They naturally understood the implications behind his words, and nodded to express their understanding.

Wang Yan smiled. “Since that’s the case, we can start now. If we end earlier, you can go back early to train for tomorrow. A slight sense of urgency is deﬁnitely a good thing for you youngsters.”

As he spoke, he took out a sheet of paper and glanced over it. Afterwards, he raised his head and said, “For the ﬁrst match of the ﬁrst round of the freshmen assessment—Class 1: Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, Xiao Xiao. Class 3: Ouyang Junyi, Chen Junfeng, Zhao Haochen. The six of you can enter the battleﬁeld and take your sides. When I announce the start of the battle, you can release your martial souls. Enter.”

There were six teams of students, thus three matches would be held within the 33rd arena today. However, Huo Yuhao never thought that they would be the ﬁrst team to go out. The three of them glanced at each other, then quickly walked towards the northwestern corner of the arena.

The three of them positioned themselves quite carefully. Wang Dong stood in front, while Xiao Xiao stood behind him. Huo Yuhao, on the other hand, stood behind both of them, in the the corner of the arena. As for the the other team of three, they naturally chose to stand at the southeastern corner of the arena.

The three students from Class 3 were all boys—they even looked quite handsome. The tallest person of the three was Ouyang Junyi, who was also the most handsome of the three. Although there was still a gap between him and Wang Dong, his body looked much sturdier than Wang Dong’s. The person next to him, Chen Junfeng, was extremely slender, even though he wasn’t that tall. Finally, Zhao Haochen was a little fatty who had a plump stomach, as well as a straightforward smile on his face.

Seeing that both parties were in position, Wang Yan nodded. “Start the assessment.”

The two parties instantly released their martial souls. Although Huo Yuhao was standing in the corner, with his meticulous control, he was able to prevent his Spiritual Detection Sharing from covering what was behind him. Instead, he merely covered the arena in front of him with his Spiritual Detection Sharing. Xiao Xiao also released her Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron, causing an enormous black cauldron to rapidly form in midair.

Wang Dong’s movements were even more direct. With a ﬂash, he charged straight into the air, his pair of dazzling blue and purple wings already unfurled. A brilliant golden pattern traced them. No matter whether it was his opponents, or their proctor Wang Yan, they were all astonished by his beautiful pair of wings. His wings were simply too beautiful! It was even to the extent that Xiao Xiao and Huo Yuhao’s limelight was completely overshadowed.

Their three opponents had already made their preparations; they had released their martial souls the instant the battle had started.

Chapter 18: The 33rd Arena—3v3

Zhao Haochen, who was standing at the very back of his team, shouted, “Come quickly, my drumsticks!” The ripples of a yellow soul ring appeared from beneath his feet and rose up, causing two sparkling yellow lights to appear in his hands. Two braised chicken drumsticks suddenly appeared in his hands, which he quickly passed to the two people in front of him.

While releasing their martial souls, Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng rapidly grabbed the drumsticks from Zhao Haochen and forcefully took large bites from them.

A food system martial soul? This was Huo Yuhao’s ﬁrst time seeing a food system martial soul; he didn’t have any idea what the drumsticks that Zhao Haochen had summoned could do. Even though Zhao Haochen only had a single soul ring, it was still a hundred year one, so it’s strengthening effects were presumably good. However, Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng’s respective appearances whilst eating the drumsticks that had been summoned were somewhat odd, to the extent that Xiao Xiao couldn’t help but laugh. The Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron still remained hovering above her head without any intention of making a move at all.

Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng made their moves at the same time. Of the two, one of them had a beast martial soul, while the other had a tool martial soul. However they were both agility system soul masters.

Ouyang Junyi’s martial soul was the Sword-beak Hummingbird. When he released his martial soul, a sharp stinger rapidly appeared on his right forearm. His martial soul was a bird-type one, but he didn’t have wings due to his current cultivation level. This alone demonstrated the gap between his and Wang Dong’s martial souls. Wang Dong’s Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess innately had wings, which was the sign of a peak-level beast martial soul.

Chen Junfeng’s martial soul was a ﬂexible sword, making all three of them one-ringed soul masters. However, they all possessed hundred year soul rings. Ouyang Junyi was the strongest of the three—his cultivation had already reached the nineteenth rank. Chen Junfeng, on the other hand, had reached the eighteenth rank. As for Zhao Haochen, considering the fact that he was a food system soul master, his cultivation speed was relatively slower. Hence, his cultivation had only reached the seventeenth rank.

As soon as the two agility system soul masters of the opposing team ﬁnished their drumsticks, they proceeded to pounce towards Wang Dong like arrows released from a bowstring; their speed was so quick that even Wang Dong was astonished. However, he instantly understood that the

drumsticks they’d just ﬁnished were the cause for their increase their speed!

Zhou Yi wasn’t the only teacher who’d divided her students into teams; other teachers had also done it. With Zhao Haochen supporting Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng, their advantage in terms of speed was undoubtedly unleashed to its fullest potential, allowing them to use speed alone to achieve victory.

Unfortunately for them, Huo Yuhao’s team of three feared speed-type opponents the least, as Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing could subdue them completely.

A faint golden light appeared within Huo Yuhao’s eyes, causing a three-dimensional image of the entire battleﬁeld to appear in Wang Dong’s mind. Although Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng were extremely quick, the trajectory of their movements, the rotation of their soulforce, the direction of

their attacks, and even their ﬂaws appeared simultaneously in Wang Dong’s mind.

Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng were very well-versed towards focusing on a single target, so when Wang Dong charged towards them by himself, it was exactly what they wanted. With a sudden explosion in speed, they were extremely conﬁdent that neither Huo Yuhao nor Xiao Xiao would be able to rescue him in time. Taking care of Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao after defeating Wang Dong could also be considered a form of dividing and conquering.

Besides the sharp stinger on his forearm, Ouyang Junyi’s entire right arm had also been covered in a layer of feathers. His body became extremely lithe, and even though he and Chen Junfeng were both agility system soul masters, he was quicker than Chen Junfeng. The yellow soul ring below his body ﬂashed, causing the stinger on his forearm to instantly turn into several tens of shadows that immediately rushed towards Wang Dong.

Although Chen Junfeng was a bit slower than Ouyang Junyi, this clearly wasn’t the ﬁrst time that they’d teamed up. Before he even arrived, he swung the short-sword he was holding,

causing his ﬁrst soul ring to light up. A sword-beam shot out from his sword towards Wang Dong.

However, before the two even made their moves, the golden pattern imprinted on Wang Dong’s wings had already started to spread as he activated his ﬁrst soul ring as well. His arms merged with his frontal wings, causing his Wing Guillotine skill that Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao had seen before to appear again.

Since he was in midair, Wang Dong was in a much better position than Ouyang Junyi and Chen Junfeng. A hint of arrogance appeared on his face—as if he were loftily looking down on the two of them. As he faced their attacks, Wang Dong swept his left wing out, directly meeting Ouyang Junyi’s Sword-beak Hummingbird. Whilst he was did this, his right wing directly slashed outwards, hitting Chen Junfeng’s sword light ﬁrst, even though it was released second. Wang Dong’s positioning as he unleashed his attacks wasn’t lacking in the least.

“Chi chi chi chi chi…” A series of sounds rang out. To his astonishment, Ouyang Junyi discovered that his Sword-beak Hummingbird’s ﬁrst soul skill—Hummingbird Flash-sting— had only been able to cause a few halos of light to appear on

Wang Dong’s Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess’ front wings. Even with the level of sharpness that his Sword-beak Hummingbird possessed, it had actually been unable to break through the strength of Wang Dong’s wings. Following that, Wang Dong’s enormous wings swept straight towards his face.

Ouyang Junyi could be considered to have at least a little bit of combat experience. He instantly crouched downwards in an attempt to dodge Wang Dong’s hit from below. However, who could’ve guessed that Wang Dong would suddenly swing his wings directly downwards and make it seem as if Ouyang Junyi had speciﬁcally kneeled down in order to be slapped by Wang Dong. With a thump, Ouyang Junyi was slapped face-ﬁrst into the ground. Furthermore, the enormous force that slammed into his back nearly caused him to vomit up some blood.

Chen Junfeng was inferior to Ouyang Junyi in strength as well. When the sword light he’d released collided with the sharp edge of Wang Dong’s Wing Guillotine, Chen Junfeng only saw a ﬂash of gold before his sword light was crushed. Following that, a violent buzz echoed out from his short-sword as it shattered. He only saw a golden blue light ﬂash in front of his eyes before he was sent ﬂying with a speed even greater than the speed he’d had whilst running towards Wang Dong. Afterwards, he collided with Zhao Haochen, who was still

nibbling on a drumstick, causing the two of them to instantly roll head-over-heels over the ground.

Wang Dong spread his wings out in midair, causing blue and violet lights to glitter back and forth across his wings. The golden pattern on his wings slowly vanished as he casually landed, and he maintained the arrogant look on his face that hadn’t disappeared since the battle started.

The onlooking teacher, Wang Yan, had a brilliant look in his eyes, while the faces of the other terms sank after watching the match. The entire 33rd Area was dead silent.

He was too strong; he was a terrifying assault system soul master!

Assault system soul masters could naturally suppress agility system soul masters to a certain extent, but everyone present was a new student! How large could the difference between them be? Wang Dong had actually been able to defeat two agility system soul masters by himself—and this was a food system soul master supporting them!

Although a two-ringed soul master had an enormous advantage over a one-ringed soul master, he had still been able to beat three opponents within mere seconds. From this alone, one could imagine how tyrannical this soul master—who possessed the Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess—was.

Furthermore, there was still another person who also possessed two soul rings just like Wang Dong in their team. This team had two soul masters that were above the twentieth rank! As for Huo Yuhao, he was completely overlooked by everyone present; only Teacher Wang Yan had faintly noticed the golden light that had ﬂickered in his eyes.

In reality, even though there was a signiﬁcant gap between Ouyang Junyi and Huo Yuhao’s team in terms of strength, Wang Dong shouldn’t have been able to achieve victory as quickly as he did just by himself. However, don’t forget that he had the assistance of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing, which was equivalent to a six hundred year soul ring!

Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing wasn’t a single skill after all; it provided assistance equivalent to two six hundred year soul rings. The help that Wang Dong had received from Huo Yuhao vastly exceeded the support that his opponents had received from their food system soul master.

Furthermore, Wang Dong also had a hundred year soul ring as his ﬁrst soul ring, while his soulforce had already reached the twenty-fourth rank; his cultivation tremendously outstripped that of his opponent’s.

After withdrawing his wings, Wang Dong walked back to Xiao Xiao and Huo Yuhao and high-ﬁved them in celebration. Xiao Xiao smiled. “Our class monitor is awesome. Wang Dong, how about you let me enjoy myself next time?” She was

conﬁdent that, if she was the one who’d gone out, she would’ve also been able to defeat her opponents. The more she felt that Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection was magical, the more she found herself entranced by it. Thus, the person she praised wasn’t Wang Dong, but Huo Yuhao.

Wang Dong chortled. “Don’t! Keep your strength hidden. These ten matches are merely appetisers to the three of us. It’s enough for just me to show off. We can’t let the other teams get a feel for our strength.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled. “Wang Dong makes a good point. Xiao Xiao, you’ll be our trump card.”

Xiao Xiao also laughed when she heard their words and nodded in agreement.

“Class 1’s ‘Team Huo Yuhao’ wins their ﬁrst match.” After Wang Yan had announced the results of the match, he noted it down on the previous sheet of paper he’d pulled out.

On the other side, Ouyang Junyi’s team of three had already managed to crawl back to their feet. Wang Dong had been

lenient on them, so they hadn’t suffered any real injuries. However, they had a look of embarrassment on their faces. They didn’t want to remain for even one more second after letting everyone see how easily they’d been defeated. Hence, they quickly ran away.

After Wang Yan had recorded the results of the match, he glanced back towards Huo Yuhao’s team of three. He inwardly thought, I reckon that this is Class 1’s trump card. The students that Teacher Zhou Yi has taught are extraordinary, as expected!

However, he still couldn’t ﬁgure out Huo Yuhao. Unlike the students, he was clearly able to understand the subtleties behind each team when they registered.

The name of this team from Class 1 was ‘Team Huo Yuhao’. In other words, Huo Yuhao was the leader of this team. However, if you looked at it from the perspective of their cultivation levels, Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao both outstripped him. To put it bluntly, with Huo Yuhao’s soul ring that was only of the ten year rank, as well as his cultivation that hadn’t yet broken through to the twentieth rank, he shouldn’t even have the qualiﬁcations to enter Shrek Academy.

Despite all of this, he was the leader of their team. That is to say, this student—who had a ten year soul ring—was the core of this team. Just why was this the case?

Wang Yan was a representative from the moderate faction of Shrek Academy’s theoretical school of thought. He had a large amount of knowledge on theory, while his ability to teach was extremely strong. Even though he was only forty or so years old, he was a highly ranked teacher that was second to none in the outer courtyard.

Obtaining a promotion as a teacher within Shrek Academy was even more difﬁcult than obtaining one as a student. This was extremely obvious, as shown by Zhou Yi only being a middle-ranked teacher. This was naturally related to her terrifying teaching methods. On the other hand, Wang Yan was someone who could become a high-ranked teacher, and was someone who had the qualiﬁcations to teach inner courtyard students. From this, it could clearly be seen how strong he was in the ﬁeld of theoretical knowledge. However, even he couldn’t understand what was going on with Huo Yuhao’s team, so much so that he couldn’t even tell what kind of soul master Huo Yuhao was.

Although they’d ﬁnished their assessment for the day, Huo Yuhao’s team of three didn’t leave. Instead, they stayed behind to observe the other two matches. They waited until the other matches had ﬁnished before bidding farewell to Wang Yan.

Wang Yan didn’t ask Huo Yuhao anything in the end. He believed that he’d deﬁnitely see Huo Yuhao’s abilities in the following matches.

The ﬁrst round of the freshmen assessment quickly ﬁnished. The purpose of today’s assessment was more or less to allow the participating students to adapt to the assessment. However, tomorrow’s assessment would be much more challenging. The students would have to undergo two rounds of assessments in both the morning and the afternoon, totalling four rounds for the day. The third day, on the other hand, would be even more terrifying: All of the teams that were left would have to undergo ﬁve rounds that day, as the duration of the freshmen assessment was only three days long.

This assessment didn’t just train students in combat, but also in their ability to ﬁght a prolonged battle.

When the second day of the assessment started, the students from Class 1 began to feel grateful for Teacher Zhou Yi. Fighting four matches in a single day wasn’t just a problem of soulforce consumption; the drain on their physical strength was extremely serious as well. After undergoing Zhou Yi’s hell- like training, the students from Class 1 clearly had a better ability to endure the physical drain from the constant battling than the students from the other classes.

After the match they’d fought on the ﬁrst day, as well as the observations they’d made afterwards, Huo Yuhao was one- hundred percent certain that there were no opponents in their group capable of threatening them. Other than them, there was only a single student above the twentieth rank of soulforce.

The students from the other teams weren’t idiots either. Being under such intense conditions, they directly forfeited when they faced Huo Yuhao’s team in order to achieve better results later on.

Huo Yuhao’s team was in much better condition compared to the exhausted students of the other teams. Huo Yuhao’s team of three easily managed to achieve victory in all four of their matches, thereby obtaining a perfect result of ﬁve victories in

ﬁve matches. With these results as a ‘safety net’, they’d basically passed the freshmen assessment already. Furthermore, these ﬁve victories caused them to be ﬁlled with conﬁdence.

On the other hand, Wang Yan felt somewhat depressed as the proctor of the 33rd arena. Five matches had passed, yet Huo Yuhao’s team had fought in the exact same way in every match

—Wang Dong would make move on his own, while Huo Yuhao

and Xiao Xiao would simply sit back and watch. The match would end in a short period of time, causing him to remain mystiﬁed as to what abilities Huo Yuhao possessed. As a theory-based teacher, how could he not feel depressed?

“Huo Yuhao, you three come over here for a moment.” When the second day’s matches had concluded, Wang Yan called Huo Yuhao’s team of three over.

“Teacher Wang.” Huo Yuhao walked in front, with Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao ﬂanking him.

As I thought. Wang Yan inwardly thought to himself. This Huo Yuhao truly is the core of their team!

“You three have obtained an excellent result of ﬁve victories in ﬁve matches. You must continue to work hard in your future matches, so that you can participate in the ranking tournament for the top sixty-four teams. However, tomorrow’s ﬁve matches won’t be nearly as easy as today’s were. After today’s matches have concluded, we’ll be drawing lots again, while teams who’ve lost all of their matches will be eliminated.

When we draw lots, we’ll make sure that students from the same class won’t meet each other, but your previous results will also be brought into consideration. Tomorrow, you’ll deﬁnitely remain in the 33rd arena, but there’s a very high chance that you’ll meet a strong team, or even two, that are capable of challenging you.”

Huo Yuhao nodded and replied, “Thank you, Teacher Wang.

We’ll deﬁnitely work hard.”

Wang Yan smiled. “That’s good. Go back and get some rest.” He still held himself back from asking Huo Yuhao about his martial soul, as he still had some pride in himself. He believed that Huo Yuhao wouldn’t be able to hide his martial soul from him once they met a strong opponent.

“How relaxing! Winning against them was as easy as chopping vegetables.” Wang Dong said with excited look on their way back. He was extremely satisﬁed with how they’d done today.

Xiao Xiao said, “It should be my turn to go out tomorrow. Wang Dong, you’ve only used your ﬁrst soul skill so far. If the opponents we meet tomorrow are even stronger than today’s, I’m afraid that you might have to use your second soul skill. However, your second soul skill was created from a thousand year soul ring, so it’s the strongest attack technique we have on our team. We shouldn’t let other people see it easily; we should only use it during the ranking tournament. If we meet any strong opponents tomorrow, I’ll help you out. We should try our best to only use our ﬁrst soul skills. Even if we do meet an extremely strong opponent, I’ll be the one to use their second

soul skill, so that we can keep yours hidden. This way, we’ll have two trump cards. How about it?”

Wang Dong laughed. “Xiao Xiao, you’ve said all this, but it’s really just because your hands are itchy, isn’t it? Fine, we’ll do it your way. I’ve already been satisﬁed, so I’ll let you pleasure yourself for a bit.”

Fortunately, there weren’t any adults walking near them while they were speaking. If there had been, Wang Dong’s words could have been interpreted very differently.

Huo Yuhao chuckled. “Let’s go, I’ll treat you two to some roasted ﬁsh. I ordered some extra yesterday.”

As the three of them left the Examination Area, they bumped into two people. Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong couldn’t help but be stunned when they saw who the people they’d bumped into were.

The people they’d bumped into weren’t random people; it was the red-clothed disciple from the inner courtyard, Ma

Xiaotao, and the person she’d dragged away a few days ago, Xu Sanshi.

Compared to his usual high-spirited self, the current Xu Sanshi had an ashen look on his face, as if all the energy had been drained from his body. He looked listless, and his clothes were crumpled. His current appearance was extremely dispirited.

Ma Xiaotao was still as beautiful as ever, although there was an abnormal ﬂush on her charming face, and the pinkness of her eyes had darkened a bit.

“We’ve found them, right? Sister Xiaotao, can I go now?” Xu Sanshi had a bitter smile on his face as he spoke. After being tormented by an intense amount of pain for a few days, he’d ﬁnally managed to endure the last of it. However, the drain on his energy, physical strength, and soulforce was too severe. Right now, all he wanted to do was return to his room and sleep.

Ma Xiaotao nodded. “Okay, you can go.”

Xu Sanshi glanced at Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong with a look that said ‘you can fend for yourselves’ before he left. His disloyal appearance caused the two to feel nervous. Just why had Ma Xiaotao been looking for them?

Ma Xiaotao indifferently said, “You two, follow me. Junior classmate, you can return by yourself.”

Xiao Xiao was just about to say something, but Huo Yuhao immediately shook his head, indicating that she should leave, and that nothing would happen to them.

Seeing that Ma Xiaotao probably hadn’t come with good intentions, he didn’t want to drag Xiao Xiao into this. Furthermore, this was still the academy; Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong both believed that she wouldn’t do anything to bad to them.

Xiao Xiao felt somewhat unresigned, but she left unwillingly in the end. Following Ma Xiaotao’s lead, the two walked towards the lakeside path. After walking for a little while, they arrived at the lakeside where they’d ﬁrst been attacked by her.

Ma Xiaotao only stopped when she was right in front of the Sea God’s Lake. However, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong both kept their distance from her. Wang Dong had a vigilant look on his face, while Huo Yuhao’s heart was thumping.

“Senior sister Ma, why did you call us over?” Huo Yuhao asked probingly.

With her back to them, Ma Xiaotao said, “You should’ve guessed it by now. You’re right; I was the student who burst out from the inner courtyard—the student who almost harmed you two that time. At the time, I truly had no choice. Now then, I’d ﬁrst like to apologize to you two.”

Wang Dong curled his lips, inwardly thinking, This is apologizing? There’s no sincerity in your actions at all!

The two glanced at each other, then Huo Yuhao said, “Senior sister Ma, let’s let bygones be bygones. The school’s already compensated us anyway.”

Ma Xiaotao suddenly turned around, the shades of pink in her eyes suddenly darkening further. An ineffable pressure

suddenly appeared on Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s bodies.

“In my opinion, this matter isn’t over yet.” Ma Xiaotao growled.

“That day, there should’ve been an ice-type soul master that stopped me. That was what stopped me from harming you two. That person is extremely important to me. Tell me everything you know. Perhaps it was one of your protectors. Either way, I must ﬁnd them.”

Wang Dong had a blank look on his face. “Senior sister Ma, I don’t know what you’re talking about. When you attacked us that day, we both fainted from the high temperatures your body was emitting! We don’t know anything about what happened after that! As for this ice-type soul master you’re talking about, we don’t have any way of knowing who he is."

Huo Yuhao followed Wang Dong’s lead and nodded his head. No matter what, he couldn’t divulge his secrets regarding the Skydream Iceworm.

Seeing that they didn’t seem to be lying, a trace of hesitation appeared in Ma Xiaotao’s eyes.

The reason that she’d gone looking for the two of them was because, after returning that day, she’d suddenly thought about why they’d felt familiar to her: It was because she’d seen some information regarding Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong in the inner courtyard.

Three months ago, she’d relied on the Skydream Iceworm’s cold energy to suppress the demonic ﬁre within her body, which had let her cultivation speed greatly increase while it was suppressed. When the cold energy vanished, she was only able to rely on Xu Sanshi. However, she discovered that although his Mysterious Underworld Turtle was a peak-ranked martial soul, it was still just a water-type martial soul, not an ice-type martial soul. Hence, the help that it brought her had gradually decreased.

If she wasn’t able to suppress the demonic ﬁre in her body, she’d have to stop cultivating. Moreover, that demonic ﬁre in her body could explode at any time, causing her to lose her consciousness.

After thinking it over for a while, she’d decided to look for Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong. If she was able to ﬁnd the person that had previously used that ice-type martial soul to stop her, her problems could easily be solved.

“You really don’t know?” Ma Xiaotao asked in a low voice.

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong simultaneously shook their heads.

Ma Xiaotao’s expression suddenly changed as she spoke in a chilly voice, “Then don’t blame me for being impolite. If you really don’t know, I’ll have to force him out.” As she spoke, a strong wave of heat was erupted outwards as a volcano-like scarlet ﬂame shot out from Ma Xiaotao’s body.

When the two had been called over by Ma Xiaotao, they’d already felt that something wasn’t right. Hence, they’d maintained their vigilance at all times. After the loss that they’d suffered last time, the two immediately reacted the instant that Ma Xiaotao made her move! They couldn’t just sit and wait for their deaths!

The wings of the Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess instantly shot out from Wang Dong’s back. As they unfurled, they were already ﬁlled with golden patterns; Wang Dong’s Wing Guillotine had instantly been activated.

At the same time, Huo Yuhao released both his Spiritual Detection Sharing and his Spirit Shock.

Although only three months had passed, their cultivations had increased by a large amount. In addition to that, they had a tacit understanding of each other. Hence, when they suddenly released their skills, Wang Dong grabbed Huo Yuhao from behind and quickly ﬂew backwards.

Ma Xiaotao was clearly careless. There was no way that she’d even pay attention to a one and two-ringed soul master! As she released her martial soul, dazzling ﬁre-red feathers covered her entire body. However, Wang Dong had already begun to rapidly ﬂy away with Huo Yuhao in tow.

Following that, Ma Xiaotao saw a purple light ﬂicker in Huo Yuhao’s eyes. In that instant, she felt as if Huo Yuhao’s gaze had become akin to two sharp needles piercing towards her, which made her subconsciously shut her eyes. Furthermore, her brain felt dizzy for a moment.

The strength of Huo Yuhao’s Spirit Shock had increased in power when his Purple Demon Eyes had broken through. Even with her six-ringed level of cultivation, Ma Xiaotao hadn’t been able to take it on directly.

Although it only stopped Ma Xiaotao for a moment, Wang Dong had already managed to charge out of the forest with Huo Yuhao in tow, returning to the lakeside path.

“Head back towards the school buildings!” Huo Yuhao shouted. At the same time, he swung his hand in Ma Xiaotao’s direction, causing a few icy lights to ﬂy directly towards her. They were the hidden weapons that Tang Ya had given him. He’d used the most basic, albeit fastest, throwing technique when he threw them.

An intense stream of air simultaneously erupted from the golden patterns on Wang Dong’s wings, rapidly pushing him into the distance.

But how could Ma Xiaotao be willing to let the two of them escape? She simply ignored Huo Yuhao’s hidden weapons and rushed towards them with a ﬂash. An enormous pair of ﬁery wings unfurled, causing all of the metallic hidden weapons in

front of her to instantly melt into a liquid that fell to the ground. The terrifying heat that was emanated from her was akin to a huge hand trying to smother Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong from behind.

Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection was an extremely strong skill that could reverse the outcome of a battle, but that was only when both parties were at around the same rank. When they were facing an opponent like Ma Xiaotao, it was simply too ﬂimsy a skill. Even if they could accurately predict her movements, what could they do? Even if they knew everything about her, they still couldn’t stop her!

Wang Dong was already doing his utmost to ﬂy as best as he could, but the heatwave swallowed the two of them in what was practically an instant. If one was to look at it with a bird’s- eye view, they would’ve discovered that Ma Xiaotao’s ﬁgure had caught up to the two in basically an instant. Afterwards, her enormous pair of ﬁery wings had expanded, before suddenly folding inward, trapping Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong within them.

Ma Xiaotao grabbed the two of them by their collars. Her terrifying soulforce undulations caused the two of them to immediately lose their ability to resist. Fire surrounded them,

causing them to be entirely unable to see the outside world at all. Even speaking was an impossible task.

Ma Xiaotao silently waited there with a serious look on her face. After half an hour passed, she her brow furrowed. “Was it really a coincidence last time?”

She only had one objective from making a move against the two—to force out the ice-type soul master that had previously suppressed her. However, things weren’t going as she wished. If you looked at the situation from the outside, she’d already swallowed Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong within her ﬂames. However, that soul master still hadn’t appeared.

The ﬁery light withdrew, causing the surrounding ﬂames to fade away. Ma Xiaotao had also regained her composure. She relaxed her grip on Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong, causing them to stumble and fall to the ground.

Ma Xiaotao indifferently said, “Since this is unrelated to you two, so be it. I know that you two won’t accept this, so work hard and cultivate. If you can enter the inner courtyard one day, I’ll give you the chance to challenge me.” When she

ﬁnished speaking, she turned around and left. She completely ignored the two of them, who were ﬁlled with indignation.

“This madwoman!” Wang Dong shouted angrily.

Huo Yuhao climbed to his feet, then pulled Wang Dong up. “Let it go. If you still have the strength to curse at her, use it to cultivate when you get back. She’s not wrong; whose fault is it that we’re not stronger than her? Let’s head back.” Previously, when Ma Xiaotao had been forced back by the Skydream Iceworm’s ﬁnger, Huo Yuhao had seen everything. Because of this, he’d faintly guessed what Ma Xiaotao was talking about.

There was practically no chance of a clear-headed Ma Xiaotao killing them; she just wanted to force the Skydream Iceworm out. However, Huo Yuhao had already deduced her objective, but even if he hadn’t, the Skydream Iceworm still couldn’t even come out! The old man was sleeping soundly; he’d already said that he wouldn’t be able to help Huo Yuhao for another year.

When Xiao Xiao saw the two the day after, she couldn’t help a hint of astonishment from appearing on her charming face. “What happened to you two? Why do the two of you have such

ugly looks on your faces? Did that senior sister from the inner courtyard do something to you?”

Wang Dong answered ﬁrst, “Obviously not. She just wanted to ask us a few question. Don’t worry about it, let’s hurry up and head to the assessment.” He was obviously unwilling to speak about such an embarrassing matter.

Since they were the team that had achieved the best results during the previous ﬁve-round tournament, they were able to remain in the 33rd arena. After lots were redrawn, they were paired with another ﬁve teams in order to continue their assessment.

These students deﬁnitely weren’t ﬁrst-rankers from the other arenas, as such they certainly wouldn’t meet any amazingly strong opponents during their next ﬁve rounds. However, it still wouldn’t be as easy for them as their previous matches.

Teacher Wang Yan glanced at Huo Yuhao’s team of three with a deep look in his eyes, then proceeded to make an announcement, “Alright, everyone’s present. Since Class 1’s ‘Team Huo Yuhao’ was able to obtain the best results in this

arena during their previous ﬁve matches, they’re the seeded team of this arena. As for the order of the matches, the ﬁrst match of the 33rd arena’s sixth round will be: Class 1’s Team Huo Yuhao versus Class 7’s Team Huang Chutian. Begin the assessment.”

When the two sides entered the arena, Huo Yuhao’s team of three was immediately astonished by the fact that there was an identical pair of female students on the opposing team.

The two female students had blue hair, and their small, delicate faces were rosy. They looked extremely cute, and even seemed to be slightly younger than them.

A pair of twins?

A tall and sturdy male student stood in front of the two girls; he was clearly Huang Chutian, their team leader.

“I’m Huang Chutian. The girl on my left is Lan Susu, while the girl on my right is Lan Luoluo. Please advise us.”

“Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong, and Xiao Xiao. Please advise us.” Huo Yuhao replied.

Both parties took their positions. Huo Yuhao’s side followed their original formation, with Wang Dong in front, Xiao Xiao in the middle, and Huo Yuhao in the corner of the arena.

On the other side, Huang Chutian stood in front, while Lan Susu and Lan Luoluo stood behind him. Teams could only have one assault system soul master, and it was extremely obvious that one of the twins couldn’t possibly be their team’s assault system soul master. Hence, it was extremely possible that they were both auxiliary system soul masters, or even both control system soul masters like Huo Yuhao’s team.

Teacher Wang Yan let out a low shout, “Let the assessment begin!”

Both sides quickly released their martial souls. Huang Chutian let out a roar and used both hands to forcefully beat on his chest. He hadn’t even reached the age of twelve, yet he was already 1.5 metres tall. After releasing his martial soul, his stature instantly shot up to 1.8 metres or so, whilst his bulging muscles directly ripped the school uniform that he was

wearing apart, exposing his muscles, which had turned metallic black.

His originally black eyes had turned yellow, and two canine teeth were now protruding from his thickened lips. His four limbs were become thick and solid, while his muscles looked as tough as steel.

Two yellow soul rings simultaneously rose up from his feet.

Impressively, he was an assault system Soul Grandmaster.

The pair of twins behind Huang Chutian also released their martial souls, which, unexpectedly, turned out to be their hair...

Two soul rings unexpectedly also appeared below Lan Luoluo and Lan Susu’s feet, all four yellow. With a swing of their heads, their long, blue hair immediately rose into the air, rapidly spreading out in midair. It quickly reached ten or so metres in length as it ﬂoated in midair.

Chapter 19: Soul Fusion Skill—Empyreal Net

This was an entire team composed of three students above the twentieth rank! Just how had they not obtained ﬁrst in their original area? This was also the ﬁrst team formed by three Soul Grandmasters that Huo Yuhao’s team had met.

Huang Chutian’s team of three were indeed strong, but they’d just so happened to meet an enemy in their original area that had perfectly restrained them. Hence, they’d ended up with four wins and one loss, relegating them to the 33rd Area.

Wang Dong ﬂew out at as soon as the match started. As his beautiful Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess’ wings unfurled, the twin girls in front of him were starstruck; the way they looked at Wang Dong immediately changed.

Huang Chutian let out a low roar and he suddenly took large strides to meet Wang Dong head-on. As his feet landed on the ground, they unexpectedly caused deep ‘boom’s to ring out. When he was only three metres away from Wang Dong, he suddenly leapt towards Wang Dong and smashed his ﬁsts straight towards him.

Wang Dong folded his wings together, forcefully receiving the blow.

“Bang—” Huang Chutian was unexpectedly the one forced back towards the ground. When he landed, he took a few steps back to steady his body.

After steadying himself, he immediately leapt back into the air and headed straight towards Wang Dong again.

At that moment, a large, pitch-black cauldron soundlessly appeared at the summit of Huang Chutian’s leap. He basically looked like he was purposefully trying to smash himself into it.

Huang Chutian was somewhat stunned. He couldn’t borrow any force to change direction midair, thus he couldn’t change the direction of his jump once he was in the air. In a moment of helplessness, he had no choice but to smash the large cauldron away instead.

Strangely, the large cauldron moved 30cm backwards just as his movements changed, allowing it to ‘sidestep’ his ﬁst, before

it instantly charged forwards.

However, Huang Chutian was still relatively strong. By angling his body forwards, he unexpectedly managed to shake the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron.

“Bang—” Huang Chutian was sent ﬂying backwards, while the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron descended from the sky and landed beside Wang Dong. This was the ﬁrst time that Xiao Xiao had made a move during the freshman assessment.

As the proctor of the match, Wang Yan’s eyes lit up. He’d naturally been able to see just how extraordinary Xiao Xiao’s martial soul was, which made him seriously evaluate Xiao Xiao’s ability to grasp key moments in a battle.

Wang Dong turned to Xiao Xiao and smiled. “I was just testing his strength. This guy’s martial soul should be the extremely tough Herculean Ape, no wonder he’s so strong.” After saying this, he leapt back into the air. He toes tapped the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron with his toes on his way back up, and his ﬁrst soul ring lit up.

“Huang Chutian, let’s see whether or not your toughness can withstand my Wing Guillotine.” Extending his wings, he charged towards his opponent.

As Wang Dong ﬂew towards his opponent, Lan Susu and Lan Luoluo stopped looking towards him. Instead, the pair looked at each other, and clasped their hands. An even stronger soulforce undulation immediately erupted from them. Their ten or so metres of blue hair instantly ﬂew into the air, forming a large net in midair that ﬂew towards Wang Dong.

Using a net to confront a butterﬂy was clearly the best method available to them.

Hairnet—this was a soul skill that both of the twins possessed as their ﬁrst soul skill. When the two identical soul skills were used together via the connection between their spirits to form a large blue net that enshrouded Wang Dong, Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection unexpectedly couldn’t sense any gaps in it.

Huang Chutian’s ﬁgure rapidly retreated into the net of hair, which seemed to possess a pair of eyes, as it let him pass through without even touching him,

The situation that Huo Yuhao had been most worried about had occurred—their opponents consisted of a team of one assault system soul master and two control system soul masters. Furthermore, the two control system soul masters had even turned out to be twins, which naturally meant that the connection between the two of them was deeper.

At this moment, the overbearing might of Wang Dong’s Guillotine Wing showed itself. The Hairnet was originally meant to suppress his butterﬂy-type martial soul, but when he waved his Guillotine Wing, its sharp edge emitted a terrifyingly destructive power. Two enormous bluish-golden blades danced about, unexpectedly tearing a hole in the large net. He used the opportunity he’d made to instantly dive down towards Huang Chutian with the aid of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing.

Huang Chutian and the two sisters were astonished; they hadn’t expected the destructive strength of Wang Dong’s Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess to be this great. Moreover, they didn’t understand how Wang Dong could’ve known exactly where Huang Chutian was, despite his vision being blocked by the Hairnet.

Huang Chutian let out a loud roar, his ﬁrst soul ring instantly lighting up. The size of his ﬁsts suddenly doubled, and they shone with a strong metallic luster. After he did this, he met Wang Dong’s Guillotine Wing head-on. While this was happening, the Lan sisters released their Hairnets in an attempt to trap him from behind.

“Dong—” When Wang Dong’s Guillotine Wing slammed into his metallic ﬁsts, a hard sound unexpectedly rang out. Huang Chutian was forced back once again; he stumbled backwards ﬁve or six steps before he steadied himself. Fresh blood dripped off his ﬁsts, which had been cut open.

Huang Chutian’s expression changed. His Herculean Ape was a relatively tyrannical martial soul; it was widely known as one that possessed both extremely tough skin as well as extraordinary strength. However, it had actually been unable to block Wang Dong’s wings. It wasn’t because he was weaker than Wang Dong, but because of how terrifyingly sharp Wang Dong’s Guillotine Wing was. If he hadn’t retreated, his ﬁsts might’ve been seriously injured.

After using a single slash to force Huang Chutian back, Wang Dong’s might had ﬂourished even more. He ﬂapped his rear wings, allowing him to adjust his posture, then proceeded to

rapidly whirl his wings, causing his Guillotine Wing to resemble a spinning top as it tore apart the Hairnet that was approaching him from behind.

Xiao Xiao could naturally sense Wang Dong’s current condition via Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing. Because of this, she didn’t make any other moves with her Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron.

“Roar—” Huang Chutian let out another angry roar. He clasped his hands and raised them above his head, causing his second soul ring o ﬁnally light up. A dense layer of yellow light ﬁlled his body. This time his arms expanded, causing his strong muscles to be ﬁlled with a terrifying strength. The yellow light continued to circulate until it reached his ﬁsts, where it ﬁnally stopped.

“Power Cannon!” Huang Chutian shouted, suddenly sending his ﬁsts smashing towards Wang Dong. A condensed yellow ball of light instantly shot out from his ﬁsts towards Wang Dong. This ball of light unexpectedly had a lock-on ability, as Wang Dong was unable to shake it off after dodging it three times.

As he prepared to use the Guillotine Wing to block the ball of light, the hint of a smile suddenly appeared on Wang Dong’s face. He surprisingly chose to give up on blocking it, instead choosing to ignore the Power Cannon entirely. He turned over and ﬂew downwards, straight towards the Lan sisters, as he continued to tear their Hairnet apart.

The Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron soundlessly appeared behind Wang Dong when he did this, ﬁercely smashing into the Power Cannon. The instant that the two collided, a black halo was diffused from the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron, causing a deafening rumble to echo out in midair.

When the Power Cannon collided with the black halo of light, a large part of it was immediately crippled. Although its explosive force was enough to send the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron ﬂying when it smashed into the cauldron, Huang Chutian’s attack was ﬁnally neutralised. Furthermore, the Lan sisters were currently facing Wang Dong’s all-out attack.

The Lan sisters had clearly underestimated their opponents. Although Huang Chutian was at a disadvantage when ﬁghting Wang Dong, he hadn’t been defeated. However, they’d forgotten that Wang Dong wasn’t by himself! As Wang Dong ﬂew straight towards them whilst tearing apart their Hairnets, they realised that they didn’t have enough time to use their second soul skills anymore, as there needed to be a certain amount of distance between the two parties for its greatest might to be unleashed.

The sisters glanced at each other, a determined look appearing in their eyes. The soul rings on the two girl’s bodies simultaneously disappeared, and they suddenly unclasped their hands. Next, they unexpectedly opened their arms and hugged each other.

Wang Dong was stunned for a moment—what were they trying to do?

The Lan sisters answered his question a moment later. They instantly released an undulation of soulforce that greatly exceeded that of the previous one. The instant that they embraced each other, a blue halo of light was released from their bodies, which encapsulated them and made it impossible to see them clearly. At the same time, their long hair ﬂew into the air and turned a shade of sparkling blue. Their Hairnets were still as thin as before, but the feeling that they gave Wang Dong as they tried to cover him this time was entirely different.

His Guillotine Wing cut into it again, but it wasn’t cut through instantly like it had been before. Wang Dong felt as if he’d smashed into an extremely ﬂexible and durable net; no matter how much he struggled, the net got smaller and smaller around him. The instant that the large net completely covered him, Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing unexpectedly disappeared.

Could Huo Yuhao have stopped the skill? The answer to that was obviously ‘no’. The reason behind Wang Dong’s current

predicament was due to the fact that this soul skill was simply too strong; so much so that its enormous soulforce undulations had allowed it to forcefully block out Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection. No matter how you looked at it, Huo Yuhao was still only a one-ringed soul master after all.

In what seemed to be an instant, Wang Dong had become a dumpling trapped within the net of hair; the sparkling strands of blue hair had surrounded him completely. However, the ‘omnipresent’ strands of hair didn’t simply stop here. Instead, they rapidly ﬂew towards Xiao Xiao and Huo Yuhao to entrap them as well.

“A soul fusion skill?” Xiao Xiao let out a surprised cry. She quickly unleashed an all-out attack with the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron. The large cauldron split into three smaller cauldrons in midair, before smashing into the large web.

This so-called ‘soul fusion skill’ was a combined skill that could be unleashed by two soul masters who had extremely congenial martial souls. Hence, the power of a soul fusion skill far exceeded that of any soul skill of the same rank. It was an existence that was no longer on the same level as other soul skills. On the other hand, a soul fusion skill could only be

unleashed by an extremely small number of soul masters; ﬁnding two compatible soul masters was as difﬁcult as ﬁnding a needle in a haystack.

Huang Chutian was naturally the strongest individual on his team, but their team’s true trump card was the soul fusion skill that the Lan sisters could use!

During their previous matches, they’d made sure to patiently restrain themselves. They went so far as to not use their soul fusion skill, even if it meant losing a match. However, this was the ﬁrst match of the ﬁfth round; they couldn’t afford to lose anymore. Huo Yuhao’s team was Class 1’s seeded team. Likewise, Huang Chutian and the Lan sisters were Class 7’s seeded team; their duty was to gun for the top three spots.

Because of this, the Lan sisters had decided to embrace each other and activate the Empyreal Net only after considering it for a brief moment.

Don’t even mention a two-ringed Soul Grandmaster; even a three-ringed Soul Elder wouldn’t be able to escape from the Empyreal Net if he was all by himself.

When the Empyreal Net swallowed up the three black cauldrons, Xiao Xiao let out a frail cry, causing three simultaneous rumbling sounds to ring out from within the Empyreal Net.

The Empyreal Net unexpectedly shook a little bit. This was the skill that had previously blocked Huang Chutian’s soul skill

—the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron’s ﬁrst soul skill: Cauldron

Quake.

Its activation this time around differed from its previous usage. This time, Cauldron Quake was simultaneously used by all three cauldrons, causing its strength to be fully released.

The secret behind Xiao Xiao’s Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron lay here: when the three cauldrons were fused together, their defensive capabilities were at their greatest. When the three cauldrons were separated, their attacking capabilities and soul skills power were at their greatest.

However, the Empyreal Net was still a soul fusion skill! Although Xiao Xiao’s all-out Cauldron Quake was extremely strong, it paled in signiﬁcance to the Empyreal Net. After a

slight tremble, the Empyreal Net continued to ﬂy towards Xiao Xiao, appearing before her in an instant.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao suddenly shouted, “Wang Dong!”

The Empyreal Net which had already neared Xiao Xiao suddenly stopped, as if it had been intimidated by Huo Yuhao’s voice. A strong bluish-golden light suddenly lit up from within the depths of the Empyreal Net.

Huo Yuhao’s Mental Detection Sharing had been activated the whole time. Although it was currently being blocked by the Empyreal Net, Xiao Xiao still felt the strengthening effect of his Mental Detection Sharing. Suddenly, to her astonishment, the originally wide-range Mental Detection Sharing suddenly narrowed down and pierced straight into the heart of the Emypreal Net in the instant that Huo Yuhao shouted.

Not only that, but Huo Yuhao’s soulforce undulations seemed to be rapidly rising, along with an incomprehensible force that seemed to be mixed in with it. Afterwards, Xiao Xiao felt as if something had swept over her mind, causing a wave of dizziness to overcome her.

Following that, the omnipresent Empyreal Net collapsed, like it had been washed away by the tide.

“Putong——”

As Wang Dong landed, he took a few deep breaths. Evidently he’d been severely drained. On the other hand, the Lan sisters had been left in an even worse condition; they’d already fainted and were lying on the ground.

Huo Yuhao’s face was now extremely pale; he was so tired that he couldn’t even maintain his Mental Detection Sharing. Although he wasn’t as out of breath as Wang Dong, his chest was unceasingly moving up and down.

Wang Yan, who was still overlooking the arena, looked on with an inconceivable look in his eyes.

When the Lan sisters had activated their Empyreal Net, his eyes had already been ﬁlled with astonishment. He’d originally thought that Huo Yuhao’s team was destined to lose, but he never expected the dramatic change that had just occurred.

Just as the Empyreal Net was about to defeat its opponents and obtain victory for Huang Chutian’s team, Huo Yuhao’s team had unexpectedly managed to ﬂip heaven and earth around in an instant.

Wang Yan was depressed by the fact that he’d been unable to see how Huo Yuhao’s team had made their move. This was especially true for Huo Yuhao himself; from his pale expression and his previous yell, it was evident that he’d made a move. Furthermore, it was highly likely that breaking the Empyreal Net was something that he’d achieved by going all-out. However, in what way had he made a move? And, how had he broken a soul fusion skill? Wang Yan just couldn’t see how he’d managed to do it.

However, the battle hadn’t ended yet. Although Huang Chutian had been greatly astonished by the fact that they weren’t able to defeat their opponents, he quickly returned to his senses. He pounced towards Wang Dong, who was the closest to him, and let out a low roar. From his point of view, it must’ve been Wang Dong who’d broken their soul fusion skill. Huo Yuhao merely had a ten year soul ring, so he wouldn’t attract any attention under normal circumstances.

At this moment, Wang Dong was nearly exhausted. As he looked at the approaching Huang Chutian, he forcefully ﬂapped his wings backwards in retreat. He shouted, “Xiao Xiao, I’m counting on you!”

“Leave it to me.” Xiao Xiao humphed, causing the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron that she’d separated to attack the Empyreal Net to re-merge. Although she didn’t have the assistance of Huo Yuhao’s Mental Detection, Huang Chutian’s objective was obvious. The large cauldron shifted horizontally, placing itself in front of Wang Dong’s body in order to block Huang Chutian’s way.

On the other hand, Huo Yuhao immediately sat down in a cross-legged position behind Xiao Xiao, attempting to recover his mental energy via meditation. His earlier move had drained him by a considerable amount. Fortunately, he was no longer the rookie that he’d previously been at the eleventh or twelfth rank; his Purple Demon Eyes had also experienced a qualitative leap, which was why his energy hadn’t been completely depleted. However, that move of his had caused waves of dizziness to ﬁll his mind. Thus, he was no longer able to simultaneously maintain both his Mental Detection and his Mental Sharing; he needed to rest for a while.

For someone to break a soul fusion skill with Huo Yuhao’s strength? That was obviously impossible. He was still only a one-ringed soul master. Although his million year soul ring was strong, he was still far away from being able to use the true might of the Skydream Iceworm.

The reason that he’d been able to destroy the Empyreal Net was a culmination of many factors. Of them, Huo Yuhao had played the most crucial role.

When he’d shouted Wang Dong’s name, the latter had immediately understood him, and had released his second soul skill while the Empyreal Net was unceasingly contracting.

Wang Dong’s second soul skill was naturally unable to destroy a soul fusion skill by itself, but don’t forget that Wang Dong’s second soul skill was from a thousand year soul ring, which meant that its strength was considerably higher than normal. Although it couldn’t destroy the Empyreal Net, it was still able to rapidly increase the Lan sisters’ soulforce consumption.

Following that, it was time for Huo Yuhao’s attack. Since the Empyreal Net blocked his Mental Detection, he’d focused it in one direction. This allowed his strong mental undulations to overcome the Empyreal Net and for it to penetrate through it. However, this was in one direction only.

When he found the Lan sisters, he immediately released his Spirit Shock skill that was also ampliﬁed by his Purple Demon Eyes at full power; the dizziness that Xiao Xiao had felt had been caused by Huo Yuhao’s all-out attack.

The facts showed that Huo Yuhao’s all-out effort had succeeded. The Lan sisters’ soul fusion skill was sufﬁciently strong, but it wasn’t ﬂawless. Its greatest ﬂaw lay in the fact that their cultivation levels were just barely sufﬁcient to utilize it. Hence, they weren’t able to maintain it for a long time. After Wang Dong had drained them with his soul skill, Huo Yuhao’s sudden Spirit Shock had struck their minds. The strong mental

undulations had instantly collapsed their skill, while the large backlash from their soul fusion skill had immediately knocked them out.

Despite this, the Lan sisters had been able to almost completely rid Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong of their combat capabilities. From this, it could be seen just how strong a soul fusion skill was. Huo Yuhao seemed very weak, but he had a million year soul ring!

Huang Chutian’s hands viciously slammed into the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron; this was his ﬁrst soul skill, the Vigorous King Kong ﬁst.

“Boom—” His metallic ﬁsts slammed into a black halo, instantly sending the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron three metres away. However, Huang Chutian stood unmoving in his original spot, his body violently shaking for a moment.

Xiao Xiao’s Cauldron Quake had a strong stunning effect. It wasn’t only capable of hurting her opponents; all enemies within a one metre radius of the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron would be stunned on impact.

Once Huang Chutian was stunned, Xiao Xiao coldly snorted and clasped her hands together, causing the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron to instantly split into three, trapping Huang Chutian in the middle.

The stun effect only lasted a short while. As such, Huang Chutian quickly regained his senses after a short while. This time, he didn’t immediately make a move; he decided to pause for a moment in order to observe the situation in front of him.

The Lan sisters had already fainted, resulting in them losing all of their combat capabilities. On the other hand, Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao seemed to have lost their ﬁghting capabilities as well, but they were still conscious. As a result of this, it wasn’t certain when they’d be able to rejoin the battle. Only a blitzkrieg strategy would give Huang Chutian’s team a chance of obtaining victory in this assessment.

Once he’d ﬁnished thinking about this, Huang Chutian let out a loud roar. He suddenly stamped his feet, causing his body to quickly ascend. Meanwhile, he clasped his hands above his head, his second soul ring lighting up. Power Cannon was activated once again.

Xiao Xiao gestured inwards with her hands, immediately causing the three cauldrons to simultaneously rise upwards and strike inwards. The strength of Huang Chutian’s Power Cannon was extraordinary; as a result, she absolutely couldn’t let him release it.

However, Huang Chutian let out a cunning smile. His body suddenly ﬂipped around in midair, turning his body upside- down before the three cauldrons could converge. He swung his clasped ﬁsts with all his strength, causing a ball of yellow light to immediately shoot towards Xiao Xiao.

When ﬁghting an enemy, one has to consider their own safety. Huang Chutian didn’t believe that Xiao Xiao was willing to go through mutual destruction. As long as she returned her Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron to protect herself, he’d have a chance to approach her. Then, the opportunity to win would present itself to him.

Indeed, Huang Chutian’s plan was extremely clever. If Xiao Xiao wanted to defend herself against his Power Cannon, she’d have to merge her three cauldrons. And if that happened, Huang Chutian would have enough time to approach the trio. No matter who he decided to attack, they’d deﬁnitely have a hard time resisting him.

However, he suddenly felt as if his eyesight had gone bad the instant before he made his move. His Power Cannon had been released, but it had actually been sent out in the wrong direction...

The yellow ball of light was accompanied by an explosive sound as it ﬂew outwards at a tilted angle and blasting the Examination Area’s partitioning walls to smithereens. The students from the neighbouring area, who were currently undergoing their assessment, couldn’t help but look towards their direction with an astonished expression.

And at this moment, the victor of the match between Huo Yuhao’s team and Huang Chutian’s team was decided.

Xiao Xiao’s three cauldrons merged back into one in preparation to protect her. However, after the large, re-merged cauldron had ﬂown back several metres, it swept back and viciously struck Huang Chutian’s body. After Xiao Xiao’s second soul ring lit up, Huang Chutian was enshrouded by a black halo, and was sent ﬂying out of the arena. Wang Yan stretched his arm out to catch him, thus he wasn’t sent ﬂying even further.

That black light unceasingly lingered on his body; it took a full three seconds for Huang Chutian to regain the ability to move.

This was the second soul skill of Xiao Xiao’s Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron: Cauldron Sweep.

When Cauldron Sweep was used against a single opponent, it wouldn’t only hurt them via the collision, it would also sweep them away while simultaneously stunning him. Hence, it could be considered a control-type skill. Relying on these two skills, Xiao Xiao was deﬁnitely worthy of calling herself a control system soul master.

Xiao Xiao naturally hadn’t been able to predict that her opponent’s attack would deviate from its original target. The reason why she changed from a defensive state to an offensive one was because she once more received Huo Yuhao’s assistance.

Only, she didn’t know that Huo Yuhao had simultaneously released three soul skills in that instant, and that these three soul skills had ﬁnally consumed the last of his soulforce.

Of these three skills, the one he’d never before used in a battle was Spiritual Interference, which was an area of effect skill.

Compared to Spirit Shock, Spiritual Interference seemed much weaker. However, don’t forget that it was an area of effect skill. Furthermore, its effects were very subtle when it was activated. As a result of this, enemies would often be unaware that it had affected them. Otherwise, how could Huang Chutian’s locked-on Power Cannon deviate from its target?

Wang Yan said, “Huo Yuhao’s team wins.” While he spoke, he placed Huang Chutian—who was at a loss—back on the ground. Afterwards, he followed him to the Lan sisters and used his soulforce to awaken them.

After the Lan sisters had awakened, they felt a splitting headache; it was as if ten thousand needles were pricking their brains.

Huo Yuhao’s Spirit Shock had become much stronger than before; even the six-ringed Ma Xiaotao had been slightly affected, let alone the two of them. Combined with the backlash from their soul fusion skill, Huang Chutian’s team could be said to have suffered a great loss from this match. Lan Susu and Lan Luoluo deﬁnitely wouldn’t be able to recover their combat strength today. However, they still had four more matches today!

On the other hand, Huo Yuhao’s team was in a much better situation compared to their opponents. Fortunately, they’d obtained a victory. Furthermore, Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao had only been drained of their soulforce; they hadn’t been injured. They could recuperate for two matches’ worth of time, at the very least. However, Xiao Xiao would have to become the main strength of the team during the following matches.

While Wang Dong supported the weak Huo Yuhao as he walked to the side of the arena, Xiao Xiao followed them and suspiciously asked, “Class monitor, why did his attack miss?”

Huo Yuhao smiled bitterly. “Let’s not talk about this right now. We should hurry and meditate to restore our soulforce. Our ﬁrst match has drained us by this much, yet we still have four more matches today. We can only pray that everyone else was drained this much as well.”

After speaking, he immediately sat in a cross-legged position to begin meditating.

It wasn’t just Xiao Xiao who was puzzled; Wang Dong was slightly puzzled as well, but unlike Xiao Xiao, he found it

strange that the Lan sisters’ fusion skill had been broken so easily. If they were only able to maintain their fusion skill for such a short time, was there any point in them using it? The answer was deﬁnitely no. However, they’d still used it, and it had in-turn quickly been shattered by his thousand-year soul skill. Furthermore, they’d even been knocked unconscious. Just what was going on? When he thought about Huo Yuhao’s shout, he felt something wrong in his heart. However, he couldn’t place what was wrong.

There were a total of six teams participating in the assessment, so the second match began immediately after Huo Yuhao’s match had ended.

The later stages of the Freshman Examination had started from the point that the student redistribution happened; this was also the most important period of time for teams to ﬁght for points. Every extra victory represented an extra possibility of staying. As a result, every team present had already begun to give each match their all.

The previous match between Huo Yuhao’s team and Huang Chutian’s team had greatly astonished the other four teams. After asking themselves whether they had that kind of strength, they came to the conclusion that naturally had to do

their utmost while competing with the other teams. The ﬁrst match had basically ended up with both sides receiving damage, so this group’s examination became increasingly complicated.

All three matches in the examination’s ﬁrst round quickly ended, with the results being just as Huo Yuhao had wished for it to be; the other four teams had wasted a considerable amount of energy. After all, they weren’t just drained from today’s matches; they’d used a large amount of energy during the previous day’s four matches as well! They hadn’t recovered enough energy to be in their optimum state to begin with.

As this arena’s seeded team, Huo Yuhao’s trio was the ﬁrst to enter the stage when the second round began. This time, their opponents were three students from Class 4.

After their opponents introduced themselves, they took their places. On Huo Yuhao’s side, their positioning had clearly changed. Xiao Xiao was standing in the front, while Huo Yuhao stood behind her. On the other hand, the assault system Wang Dong stood at the very back. Furthermore, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had already sat down on the ground before Wang Yan had even announced the start of the battle; they were actually meditating in the arena.

This was the task that Huo Yuhao had entrusted to them; they had to do their best to recover all of their depleted soulforce. The possibility of them winning every match in the round-robin tournament only existed if Wang Dong’s cultivation was restored to its optimum state.

“Good luck Xiao Xiao.” Huo Yuhao whispered.

“Don’t worry, class monitor. We can deﬁnitely do this.”

Following Wang Yan’s announcement, the assessment began with both parties simultaneously releasing their martial souls. After observing their previous matches, Huo Yuhao’s trio knew that their opponents consisted of three agility system soul masters; they all walked down the path of speed.

When Wang Yan announced the start of the match, the three opposing soul masters simultaneously charged out while releasing their martial souls. They three of them went different directions, all of them charging towards Xiao Xiao at the same time.

They’d already noticed that Wang Dong was meditating on the ground. When their enemies strongest assault system soul master seemed to have no combat strength at all, how could they give up the opportunity presented to them? Although they’d expended a large amount of energy earlier, they still decided to go all-out.

Wang Yan stood to the side of the arena, not relaxing even a little bit as he kept his eyes carefully trained on Huo Yuhao. He believed that Xiao Xiao alone wouldn’t be able to beat three opponents without Wang Dong’s help. After all, their opponents were three agility-type soul masters! He deﬁnitely had to see how Huo Yuhao would make a move, as well as how he would release his soul skill.

Huo Yuhao’s eyes lit up. Although the faintly golden light in his eyes wasn’t especially clear, Wang Yan managed to see it clearly. However, a change in one’s eye color when they released their martial soul was extremely common for soul masters. Wang Yan also noticed the presence of the seemingly- weak white soul ring below his feet, yet he still wasn’t able to tell what Huo Yuhao’s martial soul was.

At that moment, the three agility system soul masters had already made their move. The three moved in three different

directions, and their speeds were varied. Two of them pounced towards Xiao Xiao, while the third circled around her in an attempt to launch a sneak attack on Huo Yuhao. They were relatively well-coordinated.

Xiao Xiao’s gaze was ﬁxed on the area in front of her from the beginning—as if she was completely ignoring them. She then raised her hands above her head, making it look as if she were supporting the heavens. The Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron instantly rose up and separated into three, which simultaneously ﬂew out to meet her three opponents.

A mind-blowing scene occurred. Without even using her eyes to see what was going on, Xiao Xiao blocked the paths of the three agility system soul masters, using her cauldron that had separated into three. The three agility system soul masters were all at the pinnacle of one-ringed soul masters; they were all around Rank 19. They’d gone all-out, so their movement speed was extremely quick. As a result of this, they simply weren’t able to change their movements fast enough. Thus, all three collided with the three cauldrons.

They naturally weren’t as strong as Huang Chutian, who possessed the Herculean Ape beast soul. After colliding with the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldrons, they were immediately

sent into a confused state. Furthermore, an even more shocking scene occurred in the back of the arena.

Chapter 20: The Body Soul's Secret

Not only was the Threelives Soulcrush Cauldron quick, but its arrival was also relatively sudden. Thus, the three Agility System Soul Masters weren’t able to unleash their soul skills in time. It was apparent to everyone watching that Xiao Xiao was already extraordinary solely for being able to multitask to this degree. It was impossible for her to still have energy leftover to use a soul skill at the appropriate time while also controlling her martial soul, which had already been divided in three. After all, her opponents would arrive at different times since they were approaching her at different speeds.

As a result, Xiao Xiao showed the audience a shocking scene. Three bangs rang out from the cauldrons, unleashing three tremors in their respective places.

It all happened the moment they collided with the Agility System Soul Masters; the three Agility System Soul Masters were knocked back from the impact, and directly fainted from the shock. They didn’t have the physique of assault system battle soul masters, thus this period of dizziness was naturally even longer for them than what Huang Chutian had previously experienced. The cauldrons overtook her opponents and struck them once more.

“Bang, bang, bang.” The three cauldrons approached their respective opponents and struck them once again with precision, causing the three ﬁgures to ﬂy out of the arena at the same time.

The three black cauldrons rose up and merged back into a single entity above Xiao Xiao’s head, then quietly disappeared into thin air following the retraction of her martial soul.

Everyone present fell absolutely silent. This match was even more shocking than the previous match, with Xiao Xiao emerging victorious as the lead ﬁgure. The entire ﬁght had taken less than half a minute. By relying on her own strength alone, she’d forcefully stunned her opponents; she hadn’t even let them dash across half the battleﬁeld. She’d faced a three- directional battle and obtained total victory in all three directions.

Wang Yan had seen all of the previous assessments that Huo Yuhao’s team had passed with his own eyes. In his heart, the strongest person in this three-man team was naturally Wang Dong, whereas the most mysterious one—who was also the steadiest one—was Huo Yuhao. Xiao Xiao’s tool soul seemed to be pretty good, but relatively speaking, its function leaned

more towards that of a part-auxiliary, part-control system tool soul. From his point of view, her tool soul fell behind the other two’s.

However, Xiao Xiao had used her own strength to prove to Wang Yan that she also played a decisively important role in this three-man team. A young lady that was merely around eleven years old had actually been able to discern all of her opponents’ attacking routes with such calmness and precision, and then from there had been able to unleash a barrage of attacks. Even a four-ringed control system Soul Ancestor might not necessarily have been able to achieve such a natural and smooth manner of defense, control, and retreat against their opponents. How was it that such a small young lady such as her was able to accomplish such a feat?

The other groups had originally thought that they could take take advantage of the fact that Huo Yuhao and his team had exhausted their energy in their ﬁrst match, but now, that thought completely vanished from their hearts. Their team had two people with the strength to ﬁght a whole team on their own! They were really too valiant.

However, Huang Chutian’s team—whose strength had been lacking compared to Huo Yuhao’s team—wasn’t nearly as

fortunate. Even though the Lan sisters had awoken from their unconscious state, they had a headache that was so bad it felt as though their heads were going to split apart. They’d also consumed an excessive amount of soul power; to the point that they couldn’t partake in the following matches and had to rely on Huang Chutian alone to continue participating in the competition.

Huang Chutian had previously consumed a large amount of his soul power, and had also been injured by Wang Dong’s Wing Guillotine. Moreover, all three of his opponents would be completely focused on him if he were to face them alone. Even though Xiao Xiao had also faced three opponents alone just now, the other party had been distracted, cowering in fear when Huo Yuhao stood behind her.

As a result of this, Huang Chutian suffered a tragedy. Although he persevered for a while during the second match of the competition, he was defeated by his opponents in the end. Thus, his team was utterly defeated during the second round.

From Huo Yuhao’s three-man team’s point of view, the rest of the competition had entered a virtuous cycle. No one was willing to to forcibly confront them head-to-head in battle, and were all doing their utmost to preserve their strength when

contending against them so that they could deal with the others. One could say that Huo Yuhao’s team won the next three rounds with an abnormal level ease. This was especially the case during the fourth match, when Wang Dong had managed to completely recover his soul power. With both him and Xiao Xiao standing in front of Huo Yuhao, their opponents had only symbolically confronted them for awhile before

conceding.

In the end, Huo Yuhao’s team—representing Freshman Class 1—emerged victorious from all ten matches of the round-robin tournament, obtaining the best score in their group.

Huang Chutian’s team had a strong foundation as well. After losing two matches consecutively, the Lan sisters had recovered a little. They managed to reappear on the scene once more, while Huang Chutian displayed his valiant strength again. They were able to win their last three matches consecutively by directly confronting their opponents, who’d already exhausted a lot of their energy from their previous matches. As a result of that, they won seven out of their ten matches in the end. As such, entering the top sixty-four teams shouldn’t be that great of a problem for them.

When the round-robin tournament ended, Wang Yan ﬁnally couldn’t suppress his curiosity anymore.

“Huo Yuhao, you three stay behind for a bit.” The other teams headed back to rest, but Wang Yan held Huo Yuhao’s three-man team back.

“Teacher Wang.” Huo Yuhao arrived in front of Wang Yan.

Wang Yan nodded in his direction, smiled, then said, “Congratulations to all of you for winning all of your matches in the freshman assessment’s round-robin tournament. I’m afraid that less than ten teams were able to obtain such results during this freshman assessment. You guys are truly very strong. However, I’ve always been very curious about you, Huo Yuhao. Being your team’s leader, what exactly is your martial soul? Even though I wasn’t able to see you do much during your battles, I believe that you’re the core of this team. I’m right about this, aren’t I?”

Huo Yuhao went blank for a moment, and then, feeling slightly bashful, said, “ Teacher Wang, you ﬂatter me. We were able to obtain such good results all thanks to Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao’s powerfulness. I’m only a supporting character

compared to them because, as you can see, I only have a single ten year soul ring.”

Wang Yan laughed faintly and said, “You don’t need to be modest. If you weren’t that powerful, I don’t believe that such talented individuals as Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao would be willing to let you be the team leader. Moreover, I also investigated your performance at the Academy during these past three months. Do you know what students call you?”

Huo Yuhao went blank for a moment, then shook his head.

Wang Yan continued, “All of them call you ‘Iron-willed Yuhao’ because you have a willpower akin to that of steel. Your innate talent is the weakest, but you are the most hardworking. That’s what makes you the role model of Freshman Class 1. However, I didn’t ask around about your martial soul because I wanted to personally see what your martial soul and soul skill was for myself, to prove my own abilities. However, I’ve no choice but to admit that I’ve lost; I couldn’t tell what your martial soul was from the beginning of the competition to the end, and I also wasn’t able to ﬁnd out what soul skill you were using. I saw that white ten year soul ring of yours light up every single match, but I just couldn’t

seem to make out what the effect of your soul skill were. Can you clear up my confusion for me?”

Huo Yuhao replied, “Teacher Wang, my martial soul is the Spirit Eyes, and it’s classiﬁed as a mental-type martial soul. As for my soul skill, please let me keep it a secret. After all, we still need to continue participating in the assessment.” His martial soul wasn’t that big of a secret within the Academy, as there were many people who knew about it. If this Teacher Wang sincerely wanted to ﬁnd out, then he could deﬁnitely do so, yet why should he be so petty? As for his soul skill, he wasn’t willing to reveal it.

“Spirit Eyes? Your martial soul is your eyes?” Wang Yan’s response was even greater than Huo Yuhao could’ve imagined. After hearing Huo Yuhao’s explanation, he was so excited that he almost jumped up. He looked at Huo Yuhao with a face full of excitement.

Huo Yuhao stared blankly and asked, “Teacher Wang, what’s come over you?”

Wang Yan grabbed ahold of Huo Yuhao’s shoulders with both of his hands and said, “Answer me ﬁrst. Is your martial soul your eyes?”

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “Yes!”

Wang Yan inhaled deeply, then interrogated him further with a nervous expression on his face. “Then, do you belong to the Body Sect?”

Huo Yuhao shook his head, feeling lost, “The Body Sect?

Teacher Wang, I haven’t heard of them before.”

A hint of ecstasy blossomed in Wang Yan’s eyes. He released his grip on Huo Yuhao and said, “Wonderful! This is truly wonderful! Haha, I never would’ve thought that our Shrek Academy would obtain such a great bargain. No wonder… No wonder your role is enormous, even though you only have a ten year soul ring. As it turns out, you actually have a body soul. It really is a pity. If you’d entered the Academy earlier, I would’ve helped you obtain a soul ring at the limit of what you could absorb for your ﬁrst soul ring, no matter what!”

Looking at the slightly mysterious Wang Yan who was chattering away, Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but turn around and look at Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao. Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had already encountered the unreasonable Evil Fire Phoenix named Ma Xiaotao before. Teacher Wang had been pretty normal when they met him two days ago! How come he’d suddenly changed? Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but recall the words that Teacher Xiao Ya and his eldest senior brother had said after witnessing the present scene. There weren’t many monster students in Shrek Academy, but there were deﬁnitely many monster teachers.

Wang Yan inhaled deeply, calming the astonishment and joy in his heart. He then said, “Alright. Huo Yuhao, you guys head back and rest ﬁrst. I’ll come and look for you again later on.” After he ﬁnished speaking, he turned around and hastily left.

Looking at his leaving ﬁgure, Xiao Xiao couldn’t help but ask in a low voice, “It can’t be that Teacher Wang is mental, right?”

Huo Yuhao frowned and replied, “Don’t talk about Teacher Wang like that.”

Wang Dong went up to Huo Yuhao’s side and said, “He must’ve lost his composure due to your body soul. I think I’ve also heard that people who possess body souls are extremely rare, but I’ve never heard of something called the ‘Body Sect’ before.”

Huo Yuhao shook his head and smiled. “Forget it. I reckon that Teacher Wang will still come and ﬁnd me again in the future. Shouldn’t we celebrate our total victory? I’ll treat you guys to something good at the dining hall.”

Xiao Xiao was eager to eat, as she immediately revealed her desire to eat something. “Forget about the dining hall. Class monitor, I still haven’t tried your roasted ﬁsh. No matter what you say, you have to satisfy this small wish of mine today.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled and said, “No problem. It’s still early. Let’s return to our dormitories and rest for awhile ﬁrst; we’ll meet at the dormitory’s gate later tonight. There shouldn’t be anything important tomorrow. In any case, let’s rest and reorganise ourselves before before the start of the elimination matches.”

The three of them returned to the dormitory together. Xiao Xiao went upstairs to the girls’ dormitory—the area that was absolutely restricted to the male students.

Huo Yuhao followed Wang Dong back to the dormitory. However, he didn’t expect Wang Dong to look as though he had a lot on his mind.

“What’s up? Wang Dong, what’re you thinking about?” Huo Yuhao asked Wang Dong, who was currently sitting on his bed.

Wang Dong muttered irresolutely to himself, saying, “Yuhao, I’m thinking about what happened during our ﬁrst match today. No matter what way I think about it, I still feel that something isn’t right. Even though the power of my thousand year soul ring skill is extremely strong, the other party was using a martial soul fusion skill! I could feel that you focused your Spiritual Detection Sharing and detected the inner part of their soul skill, but it wasn’t to share it with me. Immediately after you did that, their soul skill was defeated. What exactly did you do?”

He raised his head as he spoke and looked at Huo Yuhao with a burning gaze.

Huo Yuhao’s heart leapt. He knew that it would be slightly difﬁcult if he wanted to keep things from Wang Dong. Wang Dong was different from Teacher Wang Yan; they both shared a dormitory, and had also cultivated together for such a long time. Wang Dong understood him very well. If he fabricated a lie, perhaps he might be able to bluff his way out of it, but Wang Dong would deﬁnitely hold a grudge against him for doing so.

As a result of this, Huo Yuhao didn’t reply at ﬁrst, instead sinking into hesitation and deep thought.

It was deﬁnitely impossible for him to tell the truth. The existence of the million year soul beast, the Skydream Iceworm, was too mind-blowing. It would affect one in unimaginable ways regardless of who that person was. If he told Wang Dong the truth, he might only be harming him.

However, what was he to do if he couldn’t tell him the truth?

Suddenly, the words ‘body soul’ ﬂashed through Huo Yuhao’s mind. His eyes shone, revealing that the fact that he’d come up with an idea.

“Wang Dong.” Huo Yuhao raised his head once more. There was a somewhat serious gaze in his eyes compared to normal.

Wang Dong had never seen Huo Yuhao look this way before, and immediately stared at him while saying, “Could it be that you really have some kind of trump card?”

Having Wang Dong look him straight in the eye, Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but have his mind go blank for a moment, as Wang Dong’s eyes were really just too beautiful. His long eyelashes curled upwards, and the whites of his eyes peeked out from the edges of his jet-black eyes. That curious look in

his eyes made those large pair of eyes seem as though they could speak.

Huo Yuhao secretly let out a sigh in his heart. No wonder those girls were captivated by him. He really was extremely good-looking!

Huo Yuhao lowered his voice and said, “I wouldn’t say that it's a trump card. You could say that this is a secret of body souls. I discovered it not too long ago.”

Wang Dong was astonished. He immediately asked, “The body soul’s secret?”

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “You mentioned yourself that body souls are extremely rare when we returned just now. The reality of the matter is exactly that. Moreover, our body souls really do have a few unique areas. Since cultivating the Tang Sect’s Purple Demon Eyes, I realised that my Spirit Eyes had deﬁnitely started to mutate again. When I focus my ﬁrst soul skill—Spiritual Detection Sharing—in a particular direction, I can generate a spiritual attack if I focus my spiritual force into a single point and strike out with it. I tried it out against a few small animals in the Academy, and it was really effective. I

decided to test it out in battle today because I’d been backed into a really tight corner, but I didn’t know that it would actually be so effective. Maybe… Lan Susu and Lan Luoluo were actually ﬁnding it extremely difﬁcult to use their martial soul fusion skill, and at the same time, they were also being

restricted by your thousand year soul skill. Perhaps they only collapsed after the sudden spiritual force attack from my Purple Demon Eyes combined with the accumulation of all of these factors. However, I shouldn't have had anything to do with them losing consciousness. Have you forgotten what the teacher said before in class? Not only does a martial soul fusion skill consume a lot of energy, but its users will normally be subjected to a rebound. The more powerful the fusion skill is, the greater the rebound. I’m afraid that even the lightest

rebound would cause its users to become extremely weak.

Since they used their fusion skill today, I reckon that they can’t use it again for a period of time, too.

Wang Dong widened his eyes. “What you’re saying is that your martial soul was inﬂuenced by the Purple Demon Eyes, and that you were actually able to unleash a spiritual attack similar to that from a soul skill?”

Huo Yuhao placed a ﬁnger to his lips. “Keep your voice down, lest other people ﬁnd out about this. I’ve just told you my biggest secret.”

From a certain standpoint, Huo Yuhao wasn’t lying. Of course, that wasn’t the entire truth, because in all honesty, a matter like the Skydream Iceworm would be too shocking. Now that he’d found a suitable explanation for his Spirit Shock, Huo Yuhao heaved a sigh of relief. He knew that he’d still have to face many different examinations along with his studies in Shrek Academy, and in order to face these examinations, he absolutely couldn’t afford to conceal his Spirit Shock. Even so, he’d have to ﬁnd an explanation for it sooner or later, and the theory that he’d just given to Wang Dong seemed to be rather suitable.

Wang Dong had a look of shock on his face as he looked at Huo Yuhao. “A body soul is actually so awesome? It can even spontaneously evolve and create a skill.”

Huo Yuhao scratched his head and said, “This isn’t anything special. Your Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess naturally possesses the

ability to ﬂy, right? The altitude of your ﬂight will also increase as your cultivation increases. This kind of innate ability ought to be considered as your martial soul’s natural characteristic.”

After pondering what Huo Yuhao had said for a moment, Wang Dong replied, “Nope, it’s not the same. You’re right, the innate ability of my Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess is ﬂying. But that spiritual attack of yours isn’t an innate ability, since it appeared through the evolution of the Purple Demon Eyes. Meaning, your Spirit Eyes has the natural ability to evolve as a mutating body soul. This is something that my Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess can never compare to. Maybe some other kind of skill will emerge in the future when the Purple Demon Eyes evolve again.”

Huo Yuhao chuckled sheepishly and said, “Actually, it’s not any kind of skill either. A more accurate interpretation should be that the Spirit Eyes is continuously increasing my spiritual force. On the other hand, I found a use for it after releasing my spiritual force through my Spirit Eyes with the assistance of the Purple Demon Eyes.”

Wang Dong nodded and said, “I understand what you mean when you put it this way. It’s just like how I purify or compress my soul power to attack and defend. The only difference

between mine and yours is that your spiritual force is formless, so it’s even more difﬁcult to detect it when you use it. I never thought that there would be such a clever way to use soul power.”

When the doubts in his heart had been answered, there was a somewhat relieved expression in Wang Dong’s beautifully big eyes. However, he quickly became extremely excited again. “Yuhao, the martial soul fusion skill that those twins used was really powerful. I’m afraid that we would’ve lost today even if we’d had three soul rings! Even though a fusion skill can’t last long, it’s still immensely powerful, and has an extremely powerful explosive force. It can be said to be the top-ranked skill for us Soul Masters. Their soul power is going to get even stronger in the future, right? If they can sustain their fusion skill for an even longer period of time, then it will deﬁnitely be extremely difﬁcult for anyone of the same rank to contend against them. It’d be good if we could also have this kind of skill.”

Huo Yuhao burst into laughter and said, “Stop dreaming, how could such a good thing happen to us? I still recall that teacher said that the compatibility of one’s martial souls needs to be extremely high before it will be possible for a martial soul fusion skill to appear. The possibility of it happening is so slim that not even a single one will appear among thousands. If and

when two people’s martial souls are highly compatible, there will be a reaction between both parties. We’ve lived together for three months already, yet have you had any feelings of compatibility with me before? In any case, I haven’t felt anything.”

Huo Yuhao didn’t expect Wang Dong to lower his head as he spoke, as though he was mulling over something. Moreover, his face had become slightly ﬂushed.

“What’s wrong?” Huo Yuhao asked, puzzled.

Wang Dong seemed to have made up his mind when he raised his head. There was a somewhat strange look in his eyes as he looked attentively at Huo Yuhao, and began to speak in a serious tone. “Since you’ve told me the secret of your body soul, then it’s not right if I conceal the truth any longer. The truth is, I’ve always been concealing my ability, as well as my aura, to some extent.”

“Ah?” It was Huo Yuhao’s turn to be surprised. Wang Dong’s strength spoke for itself. He’d already amply displayed the strength of his martial soul—the Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess— during the freshman examination. Wang Dong had only used

his second soul skill once during the ten matches, but even then, no one had been able to see what exactly it had looked like. Yet, he was now saying that he actually still had a concealed ability. How could Huo Yuhao not be shocked at this?

Wang Dong continued, “Although you cannot sense the aura on me, when I received that Spiritual Detection Sharing of yours for the ﬁrst time, I could already feel that your aura was extremely close to mine. The reason that my aura doesn’t extend outwards beyond the scope of my body is because it’s restricted by another power of mine. You’ll only be able to sense the existence of my aura with close bodily contact. Do you want to try it out?”

“Close bodily contact? How do you want to get close?” Huo Yuhao asked in a dim-witted manner.

Wang Dong suddenly became exasperated. “Stupid, isn’t it ﬁne to just hug each other for awhile?”

Huo Yuhao chuckled and said, “Is that so! You should’ve just said so. Do I need to undress?”

“No!” Wang Dong gave Huo Yuhao a shock.

Huo Yuhao laughed and said, “Then come on.” He willingly spread his arms out wide as he spoke, walking towards Wang Dong for a hug.

Wang Dong, on the other hand, was slightly dazed when he saw Huo Yuhao getting closer and closer to him. He didn’t have Huo Yuhao’s willingness, which in turn caused his body to unconsciously tense up. His whole being seemed to have entered an especially rigid state.

Huo Yuhao hugged Wang Dong in a very natural manner. From his point of view, it was a hug between friends. Wasn’t this very normal? But, when he really hugged Wang Dong, the feeling changed slightly.

He suddenly remembered that this was the ﬁrst time that they’d been so intimately in contact with one another, making him suddenly recall the time when he’d seen Wang Dong’s ﬁgure from behind once more.

He’d originally thought that Wang Dong’s body would be as muscular and sturdy as his. After all, they were both Soul Masters who painstakingly trained their bodies and cultivated their soul power everyday.

However, when he hugged Wang Dong, it was completely different from what he’d imagined. Even though Wang Dong’s body was elastic to the touch, it was also extremely soft; the kind of softness that made him feel as though he had no bones. Moreover, he also had a faint fragrant smell on him. They were about the same height, so when Huo Yuhao hugged Wang Dong, his face was to the side of Wang Dong’s neck. When his chin rubbed against Wang Dong’s slender neck, the smooth and sleek feeling made his mind tremble slightly.

Huo Yuhao really wanted to let out a sigh, but he felt that something was wrong. However, at his age, his knowledge in certain areas was still insubstantial, and thus he didn’t think too much of it. He only felt that hugging Wang Dong was much more comfortable than he’d imagined it would be.

“How does it feel?” Wang Dong practically mumbled. He didn’t put his hand on Huo Yuhao’s back and hug him the same way; rather, he only let Huo Yuhao hug him. The feeling that he had was also different from what Huo Yuhao felt. Huo

Yuhao’s body was very sturdy, and he also had a heavily masculine scent that was accompanied by the faint scent of sweat that youngsters had. Such an experience made Wang Dong blush deeply.

“It’s pretty good. Very comfortable.” Huo Yuhao subconsciously answered, based on what he felt.

Wang Dong went blank for a moment, but his expression immediately became one of anger after a moment. “Stupid, did I let you hug me so that you could feel comfortable? I was letting you feel the aura of my martial soul!”

“Uh… I forgot. I’ll try hugging you again.” Huo Yuhao suddenly felt somewhat embarrassed, but he immediately hugged Wang Dong even tighter.

When Wang Dong was hugged with even more strength, he couldn’t help but let out a light groan. He wanted to push him away, but he still decided to endure it. With his hands reluctantly grabbing Huo Yuhao’s clothes and his lips tightly shut, he really looked as if he’d suffered a large grievance.

Huo Yuhao slowly gathered his soul power while conscientiously perceiving Wang Dong’s aura, but the ﬁrst thing he smelled after hugging Wang Dong was the strong fragrance that came off his body. Wang Dong’s body felt somewhat ﬁrm, but it was still extremely soft.

Gradually, Huo Yuhao felt the undulations of Wang Dong’s aura; it was a strong, radiant aura that felt comfortably warm. As it stimulated his soul power to slowly circulate around Wang Dong’s body, it caused an indescribably comfortable feeling. What made him even more astonished was the fact

that an even stronger aura of life had gradually appeared in the midst of the radiant aura.

Wang Dong’s aura unexpectedly transformed three times in a row, but every change made him feel even more intimate with Wang Dong. When he felt the ﬁnal transformation in Wang Dong’s aura, his soul power surprisingly started to circulate along the circulation paths of the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

This, this was...

Huo Yuhao gradually widened his eyes; Wang Dong was similarly astonished. After Huo Yuhao hugged him, a golden stream slowly appeared on the surface of his skin. Then, it slowly turned a bluish-gold colour before turning dark-gold.

The colour of the light changed three times; this was also a strange undulation that Huo Yuhao felt after his aura transformed.

In the end, Wang Dong was still more experienced than Huo Yuhao. Huo Yuhao silently sensed the aura on Wang Dong’s

body, while Wang Dong observed everything on Huo Yuhao’s body. He discovered that a light had started to appear on Huo Yuhao’s body. First, it was a dim, white stream that was soft and profound, and even had a diverse feeling to it. When his aura came into contact with this white aura, an indescribable sense of coziness unexpectedly appeared. Huo Yuhao’s aura seemed to be virtuous, and harmonized perfectly with his own aura.

Following that, the aura on Huo Yuhao’s body began to transform. His soft and profound aura gradually turned chilly, and a faint chilliness appeared on his body. However, that chilliness also felt as if it were ﬁlled with an endless amount of life; it merged perfectly with the aura of life on Wang Dong’s body. Although one was an aura of life was one that belonged to the natural world, while the other was an inexhaustible amount of life that came from the desolate cold of ancient times, the endless undulations of life that they shared allowed the two auras to combine with each other, further harmonizing them.

When the stream surrounding Wang Dong’s body ﬁnally turned dark-gold, the aura on Huo Yuhao’s body changed from an icy-blue colour to an insipid grey one.

This grey was very, very dull. However, to Wang Dong’s astonishment, the profundity and stability that came from the stream of grey surpassed even the dark-gold on his body.

Yes, the aura on Huo Yuhao’s body had expectedly transformed three times in a row as well. Furthermore, it fused perfectly with Wang Dong’s aura each time it transformed.

Gradually, Wang Dong’s hands, which were holding onto Huo Yuhao’s clothes, started to rise upwards, hugging him as well. At this moment, there were no distracting thoughts in their minds; they were completely immersed in the wonderful feeling caused by the changes in their respective auras.

The three different auras varied unceasingly, while the soul power in their bodies started to circulate. Furthermore, the circulation speed of their soul power became increasingly faster as time passed, while the speed at which the three auras alternated continuously increased.

The differently-coloured streams that unceasingly surrounded the two were faintly discernible; in reality, they

were very light in colour, so only the two of them could clearly sense their auras.

At this moment, the two didn’t understand what this state truly meant to them, but they took advantage of the opportunity that had presented itself and calmly hugged each other, silently perceiving this wonderful and increasingly relaxing feeling.

Regardless of whether it was Huo Yuhao or Wang Dong, the two of them felt as if the other party had merged into their body; this feeling was simply too wonderful. Subsequently, their souls felt as if they had ascended to a higher plane.

At this moment, a refreshing feeling appeared in Huo Yuhao’s spiritual sea. An extremely familiar voice then echoed out.

“How can your luck be this good? This can’t be true.”

This sudden voice startled Huo Yuhao, slightly awakening him from that strange feeling. He subconsciously wanted to release his hands.

That voice hurriedly said, “Quickly hug him, you idiot.”

Huo Yuhao immediately tightened his arms. He had an absolute trust towards this voice, because he had already recognised that this voice belonged to no one else but the Skydream Iceworm.

Yes, the Skydream Iceworm, who had been in a deep slumber for several months, had actually awakened due to Huo Yuhao’s and Wang Dong’s hug.

However, it quickly turned taciturn. After a brief moment, its voice rang out in Huo Yuhao’s mind again, “From now on, follow my instructions. I’d never have thought that you’d actually be able to ﬁnd someone who’s completely compatible with your aura. This Brother really can’t understand it. No, this is practically impossible! However, you’ve done it. This, to you, is something extremely fortunate. You have to grab this chance; it’ll give you two endless prospects in the future.”

Huo Yuhao subconsciously thought in his mind; “Brother Skydream, just what do you mean? Wang Dong’s aura is perfectly compatible with mine?”

The Skydream Iceworm responded; “Simply put, the current relationship between you two is just like that of a married couple between mortals. On the one hand, we have Yin; On the other hand, we have Yang. We have two completely identical auras, but they respectively represent Yin and Yang. After they

fuse completely, a completely harmonized body of Yin and Yang will form. As a result of this, you’ll inevitably release an extremely large amount of power. It seems like you humans call this situation a ‘Martial Soul Fusion’. In other words, your martial soul and the martial soul of this fellow you’re hugging are perfectly compatible. Furthermore, there are different levels of martial soul fusions. Generally, the possibility of a fusion only exists if your compatibility exceeds ﬁfty percent. However, the compatibility between you two is a hundred percent. Not only that, but this Brother was even astonished by the fact that you two actually have three martial souls that are fusing with each other. This practically isn’t a miracle, it’s perverted!”

“Three martial soul fusions?” Huo Yuhao asked blankly. “How can that be possible? Wang Dong only has one martial soul, and that’s the Radiant Butterﬂy Goddess! I only have two martial souls, and my second martial soul isn’t even decided yet.”

The Skydream Iceworm unhappily said; “Do you think he’s just going to tell you that he has a few martial souls? If it were me, I wouldn’t even talk about it! As for you, not bad. You originally had one martial soul, but I gave you an Ice martial soul. That’s two. But do you still remember that small grey ball? That unfathomable fellow. Even if he looks very weak, don’t look down on him. I’ve thought about him for a long time, but I still can’t swallow him up. He’s unexpectedly become a strange sort of martial soul. Even with this Brother’s million years of experience, I still can’t fathom what he’s doing. It doesn’t seem to be able to obtain any soul rings, but the innate strength of its soul terriﬁes even me. Even I can’t imagine what it’ll become. But, this martial soul that can’t even be called a martial soul actually managed to fuse with this fellow you’re hugging. Otherwise, why would this Brother be so stunned?”

Huo Yuhao astonishedly said, “If you put it this way, then doesn’t it mean that Wang Dong has triple martial souls as well?”

Chapter 21: Fusion of the Three Innate Martial Souls

The Skydream Iceworm indifferently said, “Idiot. That’s obvious. Haven’t you ever thought to yourself about this? Even someone possessing twin martial souls wouldn’t be able to withstand the suppressive strength of a thousand-year soul ring when he is at the level you humans call ‘Rank 20’. The reason why he can do it is exactly because he has three martial souls. Each and every one of his martial souls has improved his physique, so that’s how he’s able to possess a thousand-year soul ring when he’s only at Rank 20. Using the descriptions you humans use, this fellow you’re hugging is a super-genius that’s hard to see even in ten thousand years.”

Huo Yuhao would absolutely never have thought that Wang Dong would actually possess three martial souls. No wonder, no wonder he told Xiao Xiao that she’d absolutely never be his match in a 1v1 situation. No wonder he possessed such strong self-conﬁdence. He was only a two-ringed Soul Grandmaster, but he had never displayed any feelings of admiration towards anyone. Huo Yuhao had never thought that Wang Dong’s talent was THIS high.

“Foolish kid, what do you have to be stunned about? In a sense, you’re someone who has triple martial souls as well! Furthermore, don’t forget this: your ﬁrst soul ring is an unprecedented million-year soul ring. I can guarantee that you absolutely won’t ﬁnd a second million-year soul beast on the

Douluo Continent. Therefore, even though he’s an exceptional genius, you’re unique and unmatched. Have some conﬁdence in yourself. For example, now. With your Brother as an unprecedented intelligent soul ring, I’ll let you take the initiative when you two undergo martial soul fusion. Relax your body and allow me to do everything.”

As he spoke, a refreshing feeling instantly spread from Huo Yuhao’s brain to his entire body, causing his awareness towards his surroundings to dramatically increase.

It was as if he’d used his Mental Detection; everything in the room appeared as a three-dimensional ﬁgure. Not only that, but there seemed to be various colors interchanging in the room. Huo Yuhao ﬁnally saw the colour changes on Wang Dong’s body. Gold, bluish-gold, dark gold—the three colors ﬂickered alternately. On the other hand, the three colors on his body were white, ice-blue, and grey; the three colors transformed unceasingly.

It was just as the Skydream Iceworm had said, the compatibility between their martial souls was simply too high. Whenever the color on Huo Yuhao’s body became white, the color on Wang Dong’s body would turn gold. Then, the ice-blue on Huo Yuhao’s body would be matched with Wang Dong’s bluish-gold; grey was matched with dark-gold.

The three pairs of colours were extremely harmonized.

However, after the Skydream Iceworm started to move, the colour of Huo Yuhao’s pupil quietly turned a faintly ice-blue color, which was different from the time when it had helped Huo Yuhao ﬁght against Ma Xiaotao’s terrifying Phoenix Flame. This time, the Skydream Iceworm only poured a trace of its strength into Huo Yuhao’s spiritual sea; it didn’t control his body. He only guided Huo Yuhao’s aura, causing it to start producing various transformations.

Gradually, it could be seen that the aura on Huo Yuhao’s body had quietly strengthened by quite a bit. During this kind of process whereby martial soul fusion was occurring involuntarily, a transformation in the aura of one party would inevitably cause a subsequent transformation in the aura of the other party.

Consequently, Wang Dong’s aura immediately strengthened by quite a bit as well, and at this moment, a strong spiritual undulation was released from Huo Yuhao’s body, simultaneously jolting the two. The two then fainted in what was practically the same instant, causing their bodies to fall onto Wang Dong’s fur-covered bed.

The Skydream Iceworm’s cunning voice then rang out, “Next, just watch this Brother. There’s also a distinction between the main user and the secondary user during a martial soul fusion, so let’s take the dominant position and take a few advantages. Eeh, this fella called Wang Dong is actually... since that’s the case, I’ll take a few less advantages from him.”

Strands of icy-blue thread started to slowly appear on Huo Yuhao’s ﬁngertips, rapidly enveloping his and Wang Dong’s bodies. If you examined them closely, you would realise that these threads were actually completely made from soul power; this was absolutely not Huo Yuhao’s soul power. With his current cultivation, he was simply too far from wanting to materialise his soul power.

Gradually, the two who were embracing each other had already turned into an enormous cocoon.

After all, the Skydream Iceworm was a silkworm, and forming cocoons was a natural abilities that belonged to silkworms. Currently, their respective auras were completely concentrated within that blue cocoon, unceasingly wandering about their bodies while transforming.

The Skydream Iceworm’s pleased voice rang out, “Done. I’ll just let them continue for now. It was a perfect fusion, their compatibility rate was 100%. With the fusion between three martial souls, I don’t believe that grey tortoise won’t be forced out. If you have the ability, come out from your shell and ﬁght three hundred rounds with this Bro. Hmph.”

The dormitory quieted back down after that. Only the large icy-blue cocoon remained, ﬂickering with a mysterious light. There were no soul power undulations outside the cocoon, and the two people within the cocoon were in a deep, deep sleep.

Time slowly passed. Today was the only day Huo Yuhao didn’t sell his roasted ﬁsh.

Xiao Xiao waited for the two for a long while, but she didn’t see them exit the dorms. Just like how male students couldn’t casually enter the girls dorms, female students couldn’t enter

the male dorms as they wished! After a moment of helplessness, she could only return to her room to rest.

On the other hand, Tang Ya had dragged Bei Bei to the entrance of Shrek Academy in order to wait for Huo Yuhao’s roasted ﬁsh. However, they didn’t ﬁnd Huo Yuhao’s absence strange. After all, they had heard of the freshmen assessment’s system. The assessment system changed every year, and this year’s system was especially ﬁerce! The two even asked around about the trio’s situation within the assessment. Since Huo Yuhao didn’t set up his stall, they naturally assumed that he was too tired from the assessment. Thus, they didn’t think much of it, and decided to go back to their rooms after waiting for a while.

They weren’t the only ones who were disappointed by Huo Yuhao’s absence. Today, Jiang Nannan had also queued up early. Unfortunately, she could only return disappointed today.

However, nobody knew how important this was for Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong. After being schoolmates for three months, the relationship between the two started to have a qualitative change from today onwards.

……

Sea God’s Lake, centre island, lakeside.

Teacher Wang Yan, who had just carried out the freshmen assessment not long ago, was standing here. Only, he had an exceptionally respectful expression on his face.

An old man with disheveled hair was sitting not far away from him, his ﬁgure somewhat messy. His originally-white changpao had already been changed into a greyish-brown one which had many holes on it. His naked feet were currently immersed in the cool water of the Sea God’s Lake while his right hand held a massive bottle gourd.

The bottle gourd was red-purple in color, and nobody knew what it was made out of. He occasionally took a gulp from it, immediately causing a strong smell of alcohol to spread. His other hand held a fried chicken, ignoring the grease on it. The way he was eating and drinking made one feel that it was extremely joyful.

“Xuan Lao, this is what happened. These students are still young; they’re freshmen. Even though that’s the case, they’re truly deserving of our attention.”

“Oh…” The sloppy elder who was called Xuan Lao swallowed a mouthful of chicken before glancing back at Wang Yan. In all other aspects, he looked like a very old man. However, his unexpectedly scarlet eyes were extraordinarily bright; they seemed as if they could steal one’s soul away. But his gaze was slightly disorderly, so much so that he even appeared vacant; it was as if he wasn’t seriously paying attention to Wang Yan’s words.

“A Body Soul, interesting.” Xuan Lao mumbled to himself, his voice somewhat rough and aged.

Wang Yan asked, “Xuan Lao, can a hair martial soul be considered a Body Soul?”

Xuan Lao spoke as he ate, “It could be connected to it.”

Wang Yan replied, “Since that’s the case, Lan Susu and Lan Luoluo should deserve your attention; they can even release a

fusion skill. If they can even be connected to a Body Soul, their future potential should be quite large.”

Xuan Lao shook his head and said, “Hair? Impossible. You’re known as a person whose research and theoretical skills are very strong, so how could your knowledge of Body Souls be so weak?”

Wang Yan smiled bitterly. “There’s simply no one I can perform research on! Also, the information related to Body Souls is simply too limited. The Body Sect hasn’t entered the world for a long time.”

Xuan Lao chuckled and stood up, his wet feet stepping on the grassy ﬂoor. He appeared very casual and relaxed as he said, “Then let me teach you something. To tell how strong a Body Soul is, you have to see how important it is to the body. If the body part used in a Body Soul is more important to the human body, the better it’ll be. Because of that, I’m quite interested in that youth who has the Spirit Eyes. If your hair falls off, it can still be grown back. But what if you lose your eyes? Furthermore, he even possesses a spiritual-type martial soul. In other words, his martial soul actually consists of his eyes and his brain. To be able to see a Body Soul that stands at the peak of all Body Souls within your lifetime, you’re quite lucky.

However, I believe that his Body Soul hasn’t been completely stimulated yet. Otherwise, why would he be reduced to using a ten-year soul ring? Go tell Little Ning I’ll be watching the freshmen assessment’s ranking tournament. Ask him to leave a space for me.”

“Yes.”

……

Night gradually descended. However, the ice-blue halo in Wang Dong’s and Huo Yuhao’s room continued to quietly ﬂicker.

Time gradually passed as evening became night. The aura surrounding Huo Yuhao’s and Wang Dong’s body had secretly undergone mysterious changes; the colors of their respective auras had further coiled around each other, fusing. Furthermore, their respective soul power had even travelled in a strange cycle after entering each other’s bodies. In addition to that, each differently colored aura was followed by a different circulation path.

If it were anyone else who had entered a martial fusion, they would need at least three days to complete their fusion. However, the Skydream Iceworm’s help managed to help them directly complete the soul power circulation paths during their fusion by utilising the interactions between their auras,

allowing them to save an extremely large amount of time.

After a wordless night, day gradually arrived.

The ice-blue cocoon gradually melted, revealing the situation within. Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong were still tightly hugging each other, but the differently colored auras surrounding them had already disappeared. Their faces were right next to each other, and they could even smell each other’s breath. They were sleeping very, very soundly.

After coming to Shrek Academy, this was the ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao hadn’t woken up early to cultivate, as well as the ﬁrst time he hadn’t eaten breakfast.

The outside of the dormitory quickly became lively. The other students living in the dorms had already woken up, and they were rushing about to clean themselves.

The noisy sounds gradually affected the two who were sleeping soundly, causing Wang Dong to wake ﬁrst.

“Ugh.” Wang Dong’s soft groan sounded somewhat lethargic, yet also seemed slightly delicate. As he slowly opened his eyes, he saw Huo Yuhao right next to him.

He was left stunned for a moment. After moving his body for a moment, he realised that he’d been tightly hugged by Huo Yuhao; their chests were stuck to one another’s tightly. Huo Yuhao’s body even seemed to be giving off a warm feeling.

Wang Dong only knew that he had slept for a very, very long time. He had never felt something like this before, so at this moment, besides a slight sense of peculiarity in his heart, he actually felt panicked.

“Huo Yuhao, wake up.” He struggled lightly against Huo Yuhao’s embrace, wanting to free himself from Huo Yuhao’s hands. However, staying in that position for too long a time had caused the two’s bodies to slightly stiffen up. Without even talking about Huo Yuhao’s hand, even his own hand felt slightly numb as he tried to pull them back to himself.

“Ah?” Huo Yuhao ﬁnally woke up from his sleep, discovering Wang Dong, who was in front of him, with a glance. The two were simply too close to each other; the only reason why their noses weren’t stuck together was because Wang Dong had deliberately raised his head. But, Huo Yuhao felt the sensation of a long pair of eyelashes as Wang Dong blinked.

“Why’re you so close to me?” Huo Yuhao spoke subconsciously. As he spoke, his warm breath covered Wang Dong’s face.

“You…” Wang Dong ﬂew into a rage. He suddenly started struggling, ﬁnally withdrawing his arms. Then, he used his hands to grab Huo Yuhao’s shoulders, pulling himself backwards while raising his soft legs and shoving them between him and Huo Yuhao, creating a gap between the two of them.

When Huo Yuhao woke up, he subconsciously loosened his grip on Wang Dong’s hands. But after being separated from Wang Dong by his legs, he ﬁnally woke up from his sleep. However, Wang Dong woke him up even more in the next moment...

Within the dorm room, the two each had a single bed to themselves. The sudden strength released by Wang Dong’s long legs immediately kicked Huo Yuhao away, causing him to land on the ground with a “putong”.

“Aiya, Wang Dong, what’re you doing?” Huo Yuhao was in agony due to being ﬁercely kicked to the ground by Wang Dong while he’d been completely defenceless. This immediately caused an indignant expression to appear on his face.

Wang Dong was slightly breathless as he sat up. After straightening his messy clothes, he angrily said, “You’re asking me what I was doing? Why were you sleeping on my bed last night?”

“Uh…” Only then did Huo Yuhao discover that he’d been kicked off Wang Dong’s bed. He remained silent for a brief moment, thinking to himself, “Bro, oh Bro, you’ve doomed me. Don’t you know how mysophobic that guy is? Why would you make me sleep together with him?”

Although he thought this in his heart, he still argued, “You can’t blame me for this. Look, didn’t you sleep with me as well?”

Wang Dong snorted angrily. Just as he was about to reply to Huo Yuhao, a piercing ring suddenly rang out, jolting both of them.

“I forgot, it’s time for class. Crap, we’re late. Quick.” Huo Yuhao instantly jumped up, directly running outside with Wang Dong in tow.

Wang Dong didn’t have the time to be angry with Huo Yuhao, as he was also aware of the trouble they had gotten themselves into. Thus, he ran alongside Huo Yuhao.

The two didn’t have time to eat breakfast, nor did they have the time to shower. Instead, they quickly ran towards the teaching blocks. They were extremely clear about Zhou Yi’s temper; was there any difference between being late for class and committing suicide?

Their appearances were truly somewhat wretched. Wang Dong was still ﬁne. At the very least, he had still managed to straighten his clothes when he’d kicked Huo Yuhao earlier. Huo Yuhao, on the other hand, was in an even more sorry situation. His school shirt was half tucked into his pants. Not only that, his hair was also messy, and two of his shirt buttons were unbuttoned, exposing his bronze chest. As he ran, the wind blew his clothes around.

However, they didn’t have the time to worry about that. Right now, all they wanted to do was to rush to the classroom

with the utmost haste and extinguish the ﬂames of Zhou Yi’s anger; they were already late!

After a minute, they arrived at Class One’s entrance.

“Reporting in.” Huo Yuhao shouted out, full of energy.

“Reporting in.” Wang Dong’s voice was softer than his, so much so that it seemed like he didn’t have any energy at all. He stole a glance at Huo Yuhao, a somewhat complicated expression in his eyes. Then, he ruthlessly raised his hand and pinched Huo Yuhao’s back.

Huo Yuhao’s expression immediately changed, but seeing that Zhou Yi had already walked over to them, he forcefully held in the scream that almost left his mouth.

The other students were already present. Seeing Huo Yuhao’s sloppy appearance, a smile unexpectedly ﬂashed through Zhou Yi’s eyes. However, the always meticulous Huo Yuhao didn’t manage to notice it as a result of the severe pain from his back.

“You two, what happened? Come in ﬁrst.” Zhou Yi waved over to the two.

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong hurriedly walked into the class, and Wang Dong even shut the door considerately.

Xiao Xiao, who had already arrived earlier, couldn’t help but widen her eyes as she saw their wretched appearances. Her mouth moved, but she didn’t say anything. It looked as if she was asking, “Heavens! What were the two of you doing last night?”

The gazes of the entire class were focused on the two, especially on the monitor whose clothes were untidy.

Zhou Yi used her ever-cold voice to ask, “My dear class monitor, tell me. What were you two doing?”

“Uh… sorry, Teacher Zhou. We overslept.” Huo Yuhao replied with an embarrassed look on his face. Now, all they could do was to take the initiative to apologize for their mistakes. Furthermore, they could only receive whatever punishment Zhou Yi gave them without complaining.

“Who slept with who? You actually managed to oversleep?” Zhou Yi made a rare joke.

Huo Yuhao was stunned, while Wang Dong’s face instantly reddened. This was because she’d hit upon the truth.

The whole class continued to remain silent, but this silence only lasted for three seconds. Right after that, the class burst into laughter.

Wang Dong lowered his head, wishing he could ﬁnd a whole to jump into. This was embarrassing, simply too embarrassing! Having just noticed Huo Yuhao’s untidy clothes, he just wanted to slap him to death! This bastard, he made me lose all my face.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Yi smiled as well. Although the smile on her face looked even uglier than someone crying, Huo Yuhao was certain, certain that she was smiling.

Zhou Yi raised her hand, and her authority as a super- teacher undoubtedly manifested itself, causing the entire class

to quieten immediately. However, Zhou Yi ignored the smiling expressions in their eyes.

“Enough. Return to your seats.” Zhou Yi waved her hands, forgiving the two in a completely unprecedented manner.

“Ah?” Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong subconsciously raised their heads, thinking they had heard wrongly.

Zhou Yi glared at them, “What? You’ve overslept to the point where you don’t know what I’m saying?”

Only then did Huo Yuhao understand what she had said. Pulling Wang Dong’s sleeve, the two gloomily walked over to their usual seats. However, they didn’t feel like raising their heads after feeling the surrounding looks of ridicule.

However, it was fortunate that they were still freshmen, where everyone was only eleven or twelve-year-old students. They only treated the issue of two people sleeping together as a joke; they didn’t think too much of it. But if this reached the ears of the outer courtyard’s upperclassmen, and was distorted

by the words of a few fujoshis, it could become an even bigger scandal.

After walking back to the teaching podium, Zhou Yi indifferently said, “After three days, the freshmen assessment has ﬁnally ended. The ﬁnal results were already tallied last night.”

After hearing her words, the students of Class 1 were ﬁlled with energy; not every group was as absolutely conﬁdent they had passed the assessment like Huo Yuhao’s group.

A smile that nobody dared to compliment unexpectedly appeared on Zhou Yi’s face for the second time today. “I have no choice but to admit that you’ve worked very hard. You’ve given me face. Out of our twenty-two teams from Class 1, all of you have passed the freshmen assessment. I’m very happy about this.”

“Bang——” The entire class was ﬁlled with boiling excitement; cheering sounds ﬁlled every corner of the classroom. This time, Zhou Yi didn’t stop them. She smiled as she watched the excited cheering of the kids in front of her.

They truly had the qualiﬁcations to start cheering! Last night, all of the proctors as well as the teachers in charge of the ten classes had worked together to tally the results of the assessment.

Practically all the proctors stated that the students from Class 1 were much more resilient than the students from the other classes. During the intensive assessment competition, they had all displayed a frightening amount of willpower and combat strength; out of all the classes, they were the class that had turned the tides the most times during the assessment. Most outstandingly, the students from Class 1 practically won all the matches that involved opponents who were evenly matched with them.

Ever since she had become a teacher at Shrek Academy, this was the ﬁrst time Zhou Yi had received public praise. Originally, the students in Class 1 had been the fewest in number among the ten classes. But after the round-robin tournament, over half of the students who had participated in the assessment had been eliminated. As a result of this, Class 1 was now the class who had the greatest number of students in Year 1.

No matter how strict Zhou Yi was, everyone was feeling very happy today. This was also the main reason why Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had been forgiven even though they had turned up late to class.

“Okay, quiet down.” After letting the class cheer for a long time, Zhou Yi motioned for them to quiet down.

“The only way for you to guarantee that you’ll stay in the academy is to pass the assessment. At the very least, you won’t be easily eliminated for another year. However, it’s only one more year. If you become lazy in the future, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to continue seeing you after your second year here. Furthermore, it’s not such a big deal to be able to pass the freshmen assessment. Out of the twenty-two teams here, fourteen teams haven’t ﬁnished their freshman assessment yet, because you’ve entered the top 64. You’ll still have to go through the knock-out competition, which is where you can truly prove how outstanding you are.”

After hearing Zhou Yi’s words, the two raised their heads, exposing a trace of amazement in their eyes. There was no need to mention the fact that all twenty-two teams from their class had passed the assessment, but there were actually fourteen teams that had entered the top 64. In other words, their class alone occupied over 20% of the top 64 spots; the percentage of students from Class 1 who managed to enter the knockout round was double that of the other classes. With a result like this, they truly deserved to be arrogant!

Zhou Yi continued speaking. “During the round-robin tournament, a total of six teams managed to win every single match they participated in. Our class only has one such team. Originally, I was planning to give them a reward, but unfortunately, they turned up late to class. Hence, their merits are equal to their demerits, so I won’t reward them or punish them.”

Once again, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong became the center of attention of the entire class. The two of them truly felt depressed! They then looked each other in the eye. Their gazes looked normal, but both of them were stunned.

When they looked at each other, they clearly sensed the soul power in their bodies undulate for a moment. This caused a sense of intimacy that was hard to describe to involuntarily arise, so much so that they felt like hugging each other again.

At this moment, the two simultaneously thought of the reason why they had ended up on Wang Dong’s bed after hugging each other.

Wang Dong muttered, “Could we have succeeded?”

Huo Yuhao was more certain of the answer than Wang Dong. After all, he had talked to the Skydream Iceworm! He naturally couldn’t appear too certain, but he couldn’t help but expose a fervent look in his eyes.

“It could be. Shall we try it out after class?”

“Yep.”

The two nodded at each other at what seemed to be the same instant. A hard-to-describe sense of understanding involuntarily arose between the two, and although Huo Yuhao’s Mental Detection hadn’t been activated, the two of them seemed to be able to predict their counterpart’s next move. This feeling made them feel as if they were twins; it felt wonderful, yet extraordinarily peculiar.

“Thump——” A loud sound jolted the two from that peculiar feeling. The two simultaneously raised their heads, just in time for them to see Zhou Yi’s angry face.

Oops… their absent-mindedness during class had been caught.

“You two, go outside and start running with chainmail on you. You’re not allowed to stop until the bell rings. You two just achieved something, but you’re already so satisﬁed with yourselves!”

This isn’t fair! The two simultaneously cried out in their hearts. However, they knew that as long as Teacher Zhou decided on something, there was no way she would change her mind. Helplessly, they could only leave the classroom with a

bitter look on their faces and return to their dorms to get their chainmail.

As she saw the two leave dejectedly, Zhou Yi snorted, “All of you, remember this. No matter how successful you are, you must always have a humble and cautious heart. Not only can arrogance cause you to deteriorate, it can also take your life. The knockout round will start tomorrow, so I’ll give you a simple explanation regarding its main parts.”

The two of them were doomed to not listen to Zhou Yi’s explanation, but it was fortunate that Xiao Xiao was still there. Although she didn’t explicitly state it, Zhou Yi intended Xiao Xiao to pass the information on to them.

“I’m blaming you for this.” Once they left the teaching block, Wang Dong exploded, speaking angrily to Huo Yuhao.

Huo Yuhao had a wronged expression on his face as he said, “How can you blame me for this? You were the one who insisted on me hugging you yesterday.”

“What did you say?” A cold light appeared in Wang Dong’s eyes as he looked at Huo Yuhao with clenched teeth.

“Uh… we’re a team, we should be united.” Huo Yuhao solemnly looked towards Wang Dong, who already had his ﬁsts clenched.

“Unity my ass. You’re the reason why I got punished, so you tell me what you’re going to do about it.” Wang Dong said angrily, “Also, you slept on my bed last night. What’re you going to do about that?”

Huo Yuhao patted Wang Dong’s shoulder while putting his hand around his neck, “Okay, okay. We’re all brothers, so we shouldn’t bicker over a small matter like this. Okay? We should just quickly ﬁnish Teacher Zhou’s task, just in case she ﬂips out on us.”

In the instant Huo Yuhao placed his hand around Wang Dong’s neck, Wang Dong was immediately stunned. Huo Yuhao’s voice had also become softer. After speaking, the two completely stopped moving. Huo Yuhao subconsciously looked towards his hands; Wang Dong did as well.

“Why would this happen?” The two spoke in unison.

Correct, a strange thing had happened to the two. When Huo Yuhao’s hand touched Wang Dong’s neck, it seemed like the two had been connected. Huo Yuhao’s soul power had ﬂowed into Wang Dong’s body in a very natural manner, while Wang Dong’s soul power had slowly ﬂowed back. It was as if the two had formed a complete whole. Although the connection was only formed from Wang Dong’s neck and Huo Yuhao’s hand, that feeling was very clear.

“That’s not right, let’s try it again.”

Huo Yuhao ﬁrst pulled back the hand he was holding Wang Dong with, before gripping Wang Dong’s two hands with his own hands.

Wang Dong’s hands were unusually soft, and they were extremely smooth; it was very comfortable to hold them. However, the present Huo Yuhao didn’t have the time to fully experience this feeling.

In the instant the two held hands, the soul power from Huo Yuhao’s Mysterious Heaven Technique started moving. It ﬂowed rapidly from his right hand into Wang Dong’s left hand. Then, his left hand generated what seemed to be an absorption force that absorbed Wang Dong’s soul power into his body. The soul power of the two rapidly circulated, and the speed of this circulation was at least double the speed of Huo Yuhao’s previous circulation speed.

Wang Dong was a genius among geniuses in the ﬁrst place, so he immediately realised what had happened. “Try controlling it for a bit. Try and pour it into your body.” As he spoke, he pulled back his left hand. This way, only his soul power was being transferred to Huo Yuhao’s body.

Immediately, Huo Yuhao felt that his soul power was explosively increasing at a astonishing rate; an unprecedented feeling of power ﬁlled his entire body.

As a result of being remoulded by the Mysterious Water Pill and nourished by the Mysterious Heaven Technique, the endurance of his passageways had already reached the apex of what could be achieved by his peers. Although a large amount of soul power had entered his body, he didn’t feel bloated at all.

An imperceptible sense of understanding had already appeared between the two of them. Huo Yuhao immediately activated his Mental Detection, enveloping Wang Dong within it.

For the sake of immersing himself in this bizarre feeling, Wang Dong shut his eyes. Immediately, he discovered that the range of Huo Yuhao’s Mental Detection was increasing at an astonishing rate.

Originally, Huo Yuhao’s Mental Detection could exceed a range of sixty metres when it was activated in a spherical manner; it could reach a hundred metres or so when it was focused in one direction. However, his Mental Detection quickly reached a radius of a hundred metres as a result of Wang Dong’s additional soul power.

As the two stared stupeﬁed at each other, Huo Yuhao’s voice trembled slightly, “Wang Dong, have you heard of soul masters who can share their soul power with another person who they fused their martial soul with?”

Wang Dong blankly shook his head and muttered, “Why would this happen? Don’t tell me that our attempt yesterday

actually succeeded?”

Huo Yuhao had an excited expression as he said, “Shall we ﬁnd a place to try it out?”

Right at this moment, an angry voice rang out from the window of the nearby teaching block: “Why aren’t you two wearing your chainmail and running? Why’re you holding hands and courting each other?”

Cerita silat IndoMandarin

Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 3

Chapter 15: Three Months

Chapter 16: Freshman Examination

Chapter 18: The 33rd Arena—3v3

Chapter 19: Soul Fusion Skill—Empyreal Net

Chapter 20: The Body Soul's Secret

Chapter 21: Fusion of the Three Innate Martial Souls

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