Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 1

Book 1: Skydream Iceworm

Chapter 1: The Youth with the Spirit Eyes

The golden, glazed roof tiles atop the huge, palace-like building shone with a dazzling light due to the sunlight. The ancient workmanship that had been used to create the palace’s golden roof and red doors caused people to involuntarily feel a sense of seriousness when they saw it.

When gazed at from afar, a fog seemed to linger around the palace. The buildings that surrounded the palace were lined up neatly, just like the pattern a brick wall had. The area that they occupied seemed limitless to the naked eye. The two words ‘Duke’s Mansion’ were carved into the ﬁfty-foot tall archway that stood in front of the entrance.

This enormous mansion that occupied an area of over 2 kilometres didn’t belong to a city. Instead, it was a singular building located ﬁfty meters northwest of the capital of the Star Luo Empire, Star Luo City. From this you could see that the owner of this mansion held an honored position within the Star Luo Empire.

During the current time of day, the bright and beautiful sunlight would shine on the sparkling glazed roof tiles, causing

a layer of dazzling gold to cover the entirety of the Duke’s Mansion. You could even vaguely see this scene atop Star Luo City’s city walls.

The back door of the Duke’s Mansion’s northern area noiselessly opened, and a skinny ﬁgure quietly snuck out.

The ﬁgure was a youth that appeared to be around eleven or twelve. His stature was reasonably proportioned, and he was wearing a grey cloth shirt that was simple but clean. He also had a small bundle of cloth on his back. His short black hair appeared neat and tidy. A determined look, which was ﬁlled with an intensity that surpassed all of his peers at the same age, was present on his handsome face.

After softly closing the back door of the Duke’s Mansion behind him, the youth rapidly ran a few steps forward. However, he suddenly stopped to look back at the Duke’s mansion, his deep blue eyes brimming with hatred.

“Mother, watch me from the land of the deceased. No matter how hard I have to work, there will be a day when I return, and trample everything here underneath my foot. Therefore, I’ll

honour you by changing my surname to yours—Huo. From now on, my name will be Huo Yuhao.”

After ﬁnishing his sentence, he turned to face the Duke’s Mansion, and gazed at it deeply. Then, he turned around and walked away without any second thoughts.

He didn’t head towards Star Luo City, which was located to the southwest of the Duke’s Mansion. Instead, he went north. His tiny ﬁgure gradually disappeared into the distance as the strong midday sunlight shone on him. Although his body was skinny, the way in which he’d left didn’t give off a helpless feeling at all.

There were wide roads on all sides of the Duke’s Mansion. Huo Yuhao continued to run forward, his eyes gradually turning redder and redder.

“Mother…” The unwilling and unresigned look that his mother had had as she passed away unconsciously appeared in Huo Yuhao’s mind, causing him to tightly clench his teeth.

I have to become stronger! Mother taught me that a person can only rely on themselves. One can only live a better life if they are strong.

Scenes from Huo Yuhao’s memory unceasingly ﬂashed through his mind.

Huo Yuhao’s mother had been one of the Duke’s personal maids, and had grown up together with the Duke. A personal maid only existed for the simple sake of serving her master, but Huo Yuhao had quietly appeared within his mother’s belly one night, twelve years ago.

She was pregnant for ten months, before she ﬁnally gave birth one day.

Despite what identity Huo Yuhao’s mother previously had, he was still the son of the Duke. Therefore, although his treatment within the palace couldn’t be described as good, it still wasn’t too bad. His mother no longer remained a maid, and relied on her child’s nobility to obtain a courtyard for herself.

As such, everything should’ve continued without any trouble, but who could’ve known that disaster would arrive so soon?

The Duke went to war as a representative of the Star Luo Empire, leaving all of the Mansion’s internal affairs to the Duke’s wife. The Duke’s wife already had two sons and a daughter, and she treated anything that could affect her children as things that needed to be suppressed. Things were quite good for Huo Yuhao and his mother while the Duke was in the Mansion, but when he left, the Mansion became the world of the Duke’s wife. Furthermore, she was the favourite daughter of the Star Luo Empire’s current emperor.

Huo Yuhao’s mother had grown up beside the Duke, resulting in her being heavily doted upon by him. Thus, she was always envied by the Duke’s wife. Once the Duke left, she immediately became the main target for the Duke’s wife. Using the excuse that Huo Yuhao’s mother had contracted an infectious disease, she chased them to the servant’s wooden sheds, which were located at the back of the mansion. Furthermore, she cut away all their current sources of income. Huo Yuhao was only two when this happened.

Huo Yuhao’s mother didn’t have a healthy body from the start, thus the arduous lifestyle that they had to live in caused her body to gradually collapse. What’s more, the servants under the control of the Duke’s wife would frequently suppress her, causing her to suddenly die from her illness when Huo Yuhao was ten.

Four thousand years ago, the Douluo Continent collided with the Sun Moon Continent, which had drifted over due to the Western Ocean. This resulted in the Douluo Continent’s landmass being greatly expanded, but also caused the frequency of wars on the Douluo Continent to increase.

The Douluo Continent had originally been divided into two countries ten thousand years ago—the Heaven Dou Country, and the Star Luo Country. However, the Douluo Continent had now been split into three countries. Of the two, the Star Luo Empire still existed, but the royal family had changed. They had fortunately paciﬁed all of their kingdoms at that time, allowing the entire Star Luo Empire to remain united, and thus resulting in them becoming the strongest force of the three.

However, the Heaven Dou Empire was split due to the discord amongst its strong kingdoms. In the end, it was split up into the Heavenly Soul Empire and the Spirit Dou Empire.

The Sun Moon Continent that had drifted over from the west had both a vast surface area and plentiful resources. It was slightly smaller than the Douluo Continent, but it only had a single country, which was the Sun Moon Empire.

War broke out between the two continents almost as soon as they collided. The three countries of the Douluo Continent all dispatched allied armies to ﬁght against their common enemy. After nearly twenty years of war, they ﬁnally managed to defeat the Sun Moon Empire. From that point on, they uniﬁed the two continents under the Douluo name. The Sun Moon Continent no longer existed, only the Sun Moon Empire within the Douluo Continent was left.

However, the Sun Moon Empire wasn’t fully invaded even though it was defeated. They relied on their natural advantages, as well as the conﬂicting views of the three empires of the Douluo Continent, to gradually form a stable, deadlocked situation between the four parties. However, wars still occurred every year.

Due to the frequent amount of wars that the Duke had to participate in, he spent very little time within the mansion. Due to the Duke’s wife deliberately concealing the matter, Huo

Yuhao’s mother was gradually forgotten by the Duke. When the Duke asked about her, his wife merely said that Huo Yuhao’s mother had fallen ill.

Huo Yuhao’s mother had suffered many bitter hardships as she brought him up. When he was six, he carried out the awakening of his martial soul within the Mansion.

Martial souls were an something that everybody on the Douluo Continent possessed. Although the Sun Moon Empire had developed in a different way compared to the other three empires, martial souls were still one of their fundamental concepts.

Everyone would naturally have a martial soul that could be awakened at the age of six. A martial soul could be anything, from a tool to an animal. Beast-type martial souls were referred to as ‘Beast Souls’, while all other martial souls that weren’t Beast Souls were collectively known as ‘Tool Souls’. However, there were naturally some martial souls that possessed mutations. Thus, they were exceptions to this rule.

After the awakening of one’s martial soul, a small amount of people would have a special power along with their martial

soul. This power was called ‘soul force’. Only people who possessed soul force had the ability to cultivate, and to become the noblest profession on the Douluo Continent—a soul master.

Soul masters were separated into nine different ranks. From lowest to highest, they were: Soul Scholar, Soul Master, Soul Grandmaster, Soul Elder, Soul Ancestor, Soul King, Soul Emperor, Soul Sage, Soul Douluo, and Titled Douluo.

Soul masters would increase in power as their soul rank increased. If one managed to reach the highest level of the Titled Douluo rank, one would have the terrifying ability to both move the mountains and seas, as well as even shift the stars.

People who were between the ﬁrst and tenth rank of soulforce fell underneath the category of Soul Scholar. When someone’s martial soul was awakened, their innate soulforce would signify their talent towards becoming a soul master. As such, a person with greater talent would have a greater cultivation speed. If one had tenth-ranked soulforce after their martial soul had awakened, they would be a gifted person with ‘innate full soulforce’. That person would thus be referred to as a genius soul master. A genius soul master would have great accomplishments in his life as long as his martial soul wasn’t too bad.

Although Huo Yuhao was the son of the Duke, he hadn’t inherited a powerful martial soul from the Duke. If he had, the Duke’s wife would’ve had to report his martial soul to the Duke, regardless of whether or not she liked him. From then on, Huo Yuhao and his mother’s destiny would’ve also changed.

Unfortunately, an extremely rare mutation appeared in Huo Yuhao’s martial soul.

He possessed the ‘Spirit Eyes’.

Outside of the two main categories of martial souls, there was an extremely tiny subcategory that were known as ‘Body Souls’. The martial soul that they awakened would be a part of their body, such as an arm, or a leg.

Almost all Body Souls were extremely strong, but the probability of them appearing was extremely small. It could be said that they were existences above both Beast Souls and Tool Souls, and because of this, they were greatly valued whenever they appeared.

Unfortunately, Huo Yuhao’s martial soul was an exception to this.

His Spirit Eyes martial soul had naturally appeared in his eyes. Furthermore, it was also an extremely rare spiritual-type martial soul. Under normal circumstances, Huo Yuhao should’ve become greatly valued. Unfortunately, there were two points that had restricted his development. When he’d awakened his martial soul, his innate soulforce had only been at the ﬁrst rank. Thus, it could be said that his talent was quite poor, which meant that his cultivation speed would deﬁnitely

be extremely slow. The second point that had restricted his development was even more fatal; not only were spiritual-type martial souls rarely seen, spiritual-type soul beasts were also extremely rare.

Whenever a soul master’s cultivation reached the tenth soul rank’s bottleneck, they would need to kill a soul beast that was compatible with their martial soul, and then would need to use its soul ring to break through it.

Not only were soul rings required to breakthrough a bottleneck, but they would also give soul masters a skill. This was also one of the origins of a soul masters strength.

Combined, these two factors practically doomed Huo Yuhao to have no achievements during his lifetime.

However, he was still the Duke’s son in the end. Thus, he still managed to obtain a simple soulforce cultivation method.

Even the children of some servants within the Duke’s Mansion were capable of reaching the tenth soul rank, and

could become soul masters within three years of awakening their martial soul.

However, Huo Yuhao had reached the age of eleven this year. He’d already cultivated for ﬁve years, yet his soulforce had only barely reached the tenth soul rank. Furthermore, he’d worked three times harder than his peers!

After his mother passed away, Huo Yuhao stayed in the Duke’s Mansion for another year. He was still young, so he didn’t have any source of income whatsoever after rashly leaving the Duke’s Mansion. Thus, he could only suppress all of his grievances and hate with his heart. And, due to the oppression that he’d had to suffer through, his mind had matured much more than his peers.

His mother had told him that the only way for him to be outstanding was to become a soul master. Even if he only became an ordinary soul master, his status would still be much higher than that of other ordinary people on the Douluo continent.

Yesterday, Huo Yuhao had ﬁnally managed to raise his soulforce to the tenth rank; this was with his extremely poor

talent, and after ﬁve years of bitterly hard work. This was also the day that he’d planned to leave the Duke’s Mansion.

He needed a soul ring. Even a low-tier ten year soul ring would be ﬁne! That way, he’d have the chance to become a true soul master that possessed his own personal skill.

On the Douluo Continent, soul beasts were ranked according to the number of years that they’d lived for. The strength of their soul rings was closely related to this, as well as their overall power.

Generally speaking, soul beasts were separated into ten year soul beasts, hundred year soul beasts, thousand year soul beasts, ten thousand year soul beasts, and hundred thousand year soul beasts.

Soul masters would have to personally kill a soul beast in order to obtain a soul ring from it when it died.

Huo Yuhao knew that, if he continued to stay in the Duke’s Mansion, he simply wouldn’t have a chance to obtain a soul ring. Practically no one there was willing to help him. Due to

this, he rashly decided to leave the Duke’s Mansion, even though he knew that it was an extremely dangerous thing for him to look for a spiritual-type soul beast by himself. After all, a newborn calf wouldn’t be afraid of a tiger.

Huo Yuhao quickly arrived at the main road as he walked towards the north. Although he was young, he’d already made preparations for the sake of obtaining a soul ring. Besides a set of clean clothes, he’d also brought some dry rations in his bag, as well as some money that his mother had obtained via hard work. He also had a dagger in his bag. But most importantly, he had a simple map of the continent.

Both the Duke’s Mansion and Star Luo City were located in the north-central region of the Star Luo Empire, and the area that Huo Yuhao chose to hunt for a soul beast in was the Great Star Dou Forest that bordered the northern area of the Star Luo Empire and the Tian Hun Empire. Various types of soul beasts lived within the forest, which was almost as big as a province. Furthermore, there were no lack of supreme existences inside of the forest.

If anyone else knew that the eleven year old Huo Yuhao had dared to enter the Star Dou Forest by himself, without a teacher accompanying him, they would deﬁnitely be stunned

speechless. He was overestimating his own capabilities! Since he didn’t have any skills at all, he might not even be able to win a ﬁght against a ten year soul beast!

The main road was perfectly straight, thus Huo Yuhao quickly walked along it, following the roadside. Although he was young, he was still a tenth ranked Soul Scholar. His physical strength was much greater than a normal adult’s.

Huo Yuhao gazed far into the distance as he walked forward. If one were to carefully look at him, they would see that his deep blue eyes had instantly become much clearer, and that there faintly seemed to be light ﬂashing inside of them.

Ever since he’d awakened his Spirit Eyes, Huo Yuhao had discovered that his vision exceeded that of an ordinary person’s. At a relatively close distance, he could see many minute details that ordinary people were unable to clearly see; at a longer distance, the range of his vision was over twice the distance of an ordinary person’s.

The strength of his vision had also unceasingly increased in combination with his soulforce level. The changes that had appeared as his cultivation increased made his trust in his

mother’s words increase. A soul master, I must become a soul master.

“Mother once said that I would become a control system battle soul master if I was able to obtain a soul ring. It’s not that my martial soul is bad, but that my talent is poor. Thus, I’ll just work harder and cultivate longer than other people do.”

Huo Yuhao cultivated as he advanced forward, supported by this resolute conviction. When he was thirsty, he’d look for some spring water; when he was hungry, he’d eat some of the rough biscuits that he’d brought along with him. Other than hurrying forward on his journey, he would sit down and meditate. The fact that he could actually advance three hundred miles in a single day—at his age—was nothing short of a miracle.

However, he only had seven silver soul coins and ﬁve copper soul coins him, which caused him to be extremely frugal with his money.

Ever since the war between the Douluo Continent and the Sun Moon Continent had ended, the continent had undergone

thousands of years of changes. The currency used was now completely uniﬁed: one gold soul coin was equal to ten silver soul coins, which was equal to one hundred copper soul coins.

When he was young, his mother had sometimes quietly taken him outside of the Duke’s Mansion to look for some fruits and wild herbs in the forest to eat, simply for the sake of giving him a better meal than normal. Thus, the amount of plants that Little Yuhao recognised was fairly high. Many times, he couldn’t even bear to buy some cheap biscuits, so he had to resort to looking for some food in the woods beside the road as he travelled along.

Although Huo Yuhao had the guidance of a map, this was still the ﬁrst time that he’d left vicinity of the Duke’s Mansion. Due to this, he couldn’t avoid losing his way a few times, and he had to continuously ask for the help of other people to ﬁnd the correct route to his destination.

This was the so-called ‘reading ten thousand books is not as good as travelling ten thousand miles’. He felt like he’d learned a lot of things after only a few days. His mood had also improved a lot without the oppression and restrictions that were usually imposed within the Duke’s Mansion. The interesting things that he’d seen so far during his journey caused him to be endlessly excited. He was still young after all. After his body had recovered, he didn’t feel tired while travelling. On the contrary, it could be said that he was a bird who’d left its cage. This was the ﬁrst time that he’d had fun after his mother’s passing.

“I’ve been walking for six days, I should get there soon.” Huo Yuhao carefully inspected the paper map in his hands, and then looked in the direction where the trees by the roadside pointed to. He determined that he was already very close to the Great Star Dou Forest.

Huo Yuhao wiped the sweat off of his forehead as he walked into the woods by the roadside. As soon as he sat down in the shade of a tree, intending to meditate and recover his spirit power, the sound of ﬂowing water suddenly began to reverberate through the air. This sound immediately caused Huo Yuhao to jump up in excitement.

The presence of water signiﬁed that he could improve his lifestyle!

Huo Yuhao quickly shut his eyes, and quietly listened for the source of the water. As someone who possessed a spiritual-type martial spirit, his six senses were much stronger than an ordinary person’s. This was especially true when he shut his eyes. When he shut his eyes, his other ﬁve senses would increase in strength by a margin.

He quickly identiﬁed where the sound of water was coming from, and carefully advanced through the forest. The reason why he was being so careful wasn’t because the forest’s ground was uneven, but because he was scared that his clothes would be torn by the brambles in the forest. These were clothes that his mother had personally made for him.

He found his target without walking more than two hundred metres, which turned out to be a small brook approximately three metres wide. The cold water within was so clear that you could see straight to the bottom, and it created both a relaxing and a refreshing feeling.

Huo Yuhao let out a happy cheer, rapidly took his clothes off, and then instantly jumped into the stream, which wasn’t even two feet deep. The last time he’d had a bath was two days ago. The past two days of travelling had covered his body in sweat, and taking a bath in this cold and clear water was simply a pleasure that couldn’t be any more relaxing.

After thoroughly bathing, a brilliant feeling was suffused throughout his whole body when he walked out of the stream. He inwardly thought, Since I’ve already arrived at the Great Star Dou Forest, I’ll simply have a good rest here.

He changed into a clean set of clothes, proceeded to washed his dirty clothes in the stream as well, and then hung them on a nearby tree branch. He then snapped off a tree branch that was approximately three feet long.

He used his right hand to pull a dagger from its sheath at his waist. The dagger was roughly forty centimetres long, and its scabbard was dark green in colour. The scabbard was made of tough leather, though he didn’t know whether it was leather from an animal, or from a spirit beast. He only knew that it was a present that his father had given to his mother. It had always been treasured by his mother, so much so that his

mother had only given it to him the moment before she passed away.

The handle of the dagger was about seventeen centimetres long, and didn’t have any gorgeous decorations on it at all—it gave people a simple and unadorned feeling. Not only did it feel natural to hold, it also felt exceptionally comfortable.

It also didn’t make any noise when it was unsheathed. The twenty-three centimetre long blade was just like limpid autumn water, and seemed to be transparent. Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but shiver because of the dense, cold air around the knife, even though he seemed to be somewhat used to it.

The ‘White Tiger Dagger’. This was the dagger’s name, which his mother had told him.

As Huo Yuhao looked at the White Tiger Dagger, the excitement in his eyes instantly turned into a deep look of sadness. He seemed to see his mother’s ﬁgure in the blade’s reﬂection.

Holding the branch that he’d just snapped off in one hand, Huo Yuhao used the White Tiger Dagger to shave the front of it. When the blade, which was releasing a faint blue light, cut into the tree branch, it felt like cutting through tofu. After two or three cuts, the front of the tree branch had been sharpened.

He sheathed the White Tiger Dagger at his waist, and walked back towards the stream with the sharpened branch in hand.

After taking a deep breath, his eyes immediately lit up. All of the minute details in the clear water were magniﬁed within his eyes. He was now able to see the minute changes in the water’s ripples—even the small shrimps that lay in-between the cracks in the ground at the bottom of the river couldn’t escape the notice of his Spirit Eyes. Furthermore, everything seemed to slow down as he looked at it.

Suddenly, Huo Yuhao made a lightning fast move, and stabbed the sharpened branch he was holding into the stream.

“Pu—” When he raised his hand back up, and turned the tree branch upwards, a half-feet long mackerel had appeared on the tip of it.

To ordinary people, stabbing a ﬁsh was deﬁnitely something that required technique. However, this was something extremely easy for Huo Yuhao, who had the aid of the Spirit Eyes to help him accurately determine the position of the ﬁsh.

A single small ﬁsh was naturally not enough for him. After a few moments of casual labour, he’d stabbed ten mackerels that varied from seventeen centimetres in length, to thirty-three centimetres in length.

“This is good, it can last me for two days at the least. It won’t rot very easily if I roast it too.”

Huo Yuhao happily squatted down next to the stream, and used the White Tiger Dagger to gut the mackerels. The sharp White Tiger Dagger easily managed to cut through the ﬁsh, no matter if it was its scales, chest, or belly. This was no problem at all to Huo Yuhao, who’d been doing manual labor with his

mother since he was young. The ten ﬁsh were all gutted after ﬁfteen minutes.

He looked for some big leaves in the forest, and rinsed them off in the river. Then, he placed the gutted ﬁshes on the wet leaves. After that, he found some dry twigs to use as ﬁrewood, and started a ﬁre next to the stream after a moment of work.

Huo Yuhao only had salt available as a seasoning, but that was enough for something like roasted ﬁsh. He stuck the clean mackerels onto a thin branch, and rubbed some salt into their bellies. Then he took some leaves known as Purple Basil out of his bag, which he’d gotten in the forest a few days ago. He washed and separated the Purple Basil before pushing it into the bellies of the ﬁsh. Only after this did he start to roast the ﬁsh on the grill that he’d created using some thick branches.

It didn’t take long for an unusual smell to spread from the ﬁre that he’d created. The smell was very heavy, and it contained a certain attraction that belonged solely to it. As Huo Yuhao slowly rotated the mackerels, they gradually turned golden. This, accompanied with that heavy aroma, was exceptionally enticing.

At ﬁrst, he only roasted two of the ﬁsh, and set aside the others. If he had roasted too many of the ﬁsh in one go, it would’ve been quite easy for problems to occur while he was controlling the ﬁre.

“How fragrant!”

A happy and delicate cry echoed out at that moment. The cry sounded both clear and pure, but it still startled Huo Yuhao.

He looked towards the source of the sound, and saw two people walking along the side of the stream. The person walking in front was a girl who looked to be around ﬁfteen or sixteen, and had long black hair that was tied into a ponytail behind her. She wore a set of light blue, form-ﬁtting warrior’s robes, which seemed to outline her budding and delicate body that was ﬁlled with youth.

She had phoenix-like eyes, which were both big and bright. She also had a raised nose, an almost perfect oval face, and a pretty and delicate face that was slightly happy as she ﬁxed her gaze on Huo Yuhao’s roasted ﬁsh.

The person following behind her was a youth that seemed to be of the same age as her. His slender body was tall and straight, whilst his short, deep blue hair shone with a jade-like luster under the sunlight. Although he wasn’t old, he gave people a sort of scholarly feeling. His handsome face had a lazy yet warm smile on it, and his hands were rested on the back of his head. He also gazed in Huo Yuhao’s direction with an interested look. However, he wasn’t looking at the roasted ﬁsh, but at Huo Yuhao himself.

The girl ran towards Huo Yuhao in high spirits. A greedy, hungry look appeared on her face as she said, “Little brother, are you selling this roasted ﬁsh? It smells so good! How did you make it?”

It wasn’t that Huo Yuhao hadn’t ever seen beautiful girls before. While he was in the Duke’s Mansion, many of the servant girls had been very pretty, however none of them had ever come as close as the girl in front of him before. Furthermore, none of the girls in the Duke’s Mansion were comparable to the girl in front of him either. She wasn’t an absolute beauty that was perfectly ﬂawless, but she had a sort of outstanding temperament.

Huo Yuhao’s face turned somewhat red as he replied, “I-I’ll treat you both to a meal.”

The girl giggled in response. “Little brother, you’ve even become embarrassed. Then, I won’t be polite.” As she talked, she stretched her hand out to take the roasted ﬁsh that Huo Yuhao had passed over. She didn’t seem to care about what she

looked like as she carefully ate the roasted ﬁsh, then let out a loud cry of “Hot!”.

At that moment, the youth that had been following the girl walked over. He had a helpless look on his face as he raised his hand and greeted Huo Yuhao. Then he said to the girl, “Xiao Ya, this little brother hasn’t even eaten yet, yet you’ve already started eating.”

Xiao Ya’s beautiful eyes widened as she angrily retorted, “What did you just call me?”

The youth immediately raised his hands in surrender, “Fine, Teacher Xiao Ya, that should be ﬁne, right?”

Xiao Ya stared at him coldly and said, “That’s the way that it should be. You should pay attention to your status.” Although she wasn’t that old, her gaze was ﬁlled with a charming look. The onlooking youth couldn’t help but have his expression turned blank. Huo Yuhao, who was to the side, didn’t dare to continue looking. He passed the other ﬁsh that he’d roasted to the youth and said, “Big brother, this is for you.”

The youth smiled and said, “Gentlemen shouldn’t take good things that belong to others. Little brother, you still haven’t eaten. Did you catch these ﬁsh in the river?”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head and said, “It’s not a problem, I can still roast more.” While he spoke, he handed the roasted ﬁsh to the youth. Then, he skillfully took two of the ﬁsh that he’d set aside, so that he could roast them on the wooden rack.

The youth gently smiled and said, “I’m Bei Bei and she’s Tang Ya. Little brother, what’s your name?”

“I’m Huo Yuhao.” He replied whilst carefully roasting the ﬁsh. During his journey, he’d met many travellers while sleeping outdoors, and had also received a lot of help from them. Thus, he hadn’t hesitated to give Tang Ya one of the ﬁsh he’d roasted when she asked. The past few days had taught him the fact that people had to mutually help each other while they were outdoors.

Bei Bei sat next to Tang Ya. The way he ate the roasted ﬁsh was much more graceful than Tang Ya’s. At the very least, his hands weren’t fully stained with oil.

By the time Huo Yuhao had ﬁnished roasting the second batch of ﬁsh, Tang Ya was already impatiently waiting. Under Bei Bei’s helpless gaze, she snatched another roasted ﬁsh.

However, Bei Bei was unwilling to eat another ﬁsh, thus he motioned for Huo Yuhao to eat ﬁrst. Huo Yuhao was already hungry, so he ate the other ﬁsh while continuing to roast more.

Although the seasonings used on the roasted ﬁsh were only salt and purple basil, the roasted ﬁsh’s taste was extremely delicious. And although the ten ﬁsh weren’t that big, their size together was still quite large. All of the ﬁsh were eaten by the three.

“This is simply too tasty. I’ve never eaten such a delicious roasted ﬁsh before. Little brother Huo Yuhao, how about I hire you as a chef, okay?” Tang Ya laid down on the grass, and stretched in satisfaction. Her curves were completely exposed, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Bei Bei scratched his head whilst looking at her, but didn’t do anything about it.

“Do you have any money? Teacher Xiao Ya?” Bei Bei asked, splashing cold water on her idea.

“Eh… I’ll have money in the future.” Tang Ya was slightly embarrassed as she sat up. She glared at Bei Bei, seemingly unhappy at him for ruining her plans.

Huo Yuhao stood up and said, “Brother Bei, Sister Tang, I’ll have to leave ﬁrst.”

Bei Bei said, “Little brother Huo, this is the desolate countryside, and isn’t that far away from the Great Star Dou Forest where soul beasts wander. Just where do you intend to go?”

Huo Yuhao shook his head, then grabbed his clothes that had already dried from the tree branch. He smiled and waved goodbye to the two after he’d packed his clothes into his bag. Afterwards, he turned around and left under Tang Ya’s slightly astonished gaze.

“He couldn’t really want to go into the Great Star Dou Forest, could he?” Tang Ya gazed at Huo Yuhao’s shrinking back as she pondered.

Bei Bei shook his head and said, “I can’t be sure. I can vaguely sense that he possesses soulforce, but it’s very weak. It also seems that he’s alone. This is truly somewhat strange.”

Tang Ya stuck her tongue out and said, “Since he has soulforce, why don’t we recruit him into our Tang Sect?”

Bei Bei unhappily replied, “You can’t be wanting to recruit someone into the sect, simply because they cooked you some delicious ﬁsh?”

Tang Ya’s face reddened when her intentions were found out, and she stuck her tongue out at Bei Bei.

Bei Bei said, “This Little brother Huo has deﬁnitely experienced something in his life. I can see that his maturity exceeds his peers from his gaze alone. However, I don’t know what his talent is like.”

A happy expression suffused on Tang Ya’s face as she replied, “Since you’re putting it like this, does that mean that you’ve agreed?”

Bei Bei bitterly smiled, “Sect leader of the great Tang Sect, Miss Tang. Before you took me in as a disciple, the Tang Sect only had you, and you alone, as its leader. Therefore, since your ambition is to strengthen the Tang Sect, it’s only natural that we recruit suitable people. This Little brother Huo looks like a rather steady and calm person. If his talent is passable, he’s a suitable choice. And from the clothes that he’s wearing, his family circumstances shouldn’t be too good. Thus, our Tang Sect can recruit this kind of disciple now.”

Tang Ya looked at Bei Bei with a slightly curious gaze as she said, “You’re actually quite crafty. I couldn’t tell that at all.”

Bei Bei stood up and brushed the dust off of his clothes as he replied, “This is simply called being astute, but calling me wise is ﬁne too. Let’s go. Since we’ve eaten so many of his roasted ﬁsh, we should at least protect him for a segment of his journey, just in case he gets in danger when he encounters some soul beasts, no matter whether we recruit him into the Tang Sect or not.

Tang Ya also stood up and giggled. “You’re indeed quite smart this time, because your thoughts are actually identical to mine. Let’s go after I clean up a bit.”

Huo Yuhao was naturally unaware of the conversion between Bei Bei and Tang Ya. He’d originally planned to bring some roasted ﬁsh with him, but that plan couldn’t be realised, as he hadn’t wanted to expose his identity as a Soul Scholar, which was why he hadn’t caught any more ﬁsh. His mother had

taught him to talk with reservation when dealing with strangers. Although he had a good impression of Bei Bei and Tang Ya, he still decided to separate from them after he ﬁnished eating.

Even though Huo Yuhao was young, he still thought a lot about things. He could tell that Tang Ya and Bei Bei weren’t ordinary people. Bei Bei had said that this was the desolate countryside, yet they both didn’t even have any bags on them. Thus, he believed that it would be better for him to separate from the two.

After eating the meal, he’d already recovered from his prior exhaustion. He marked the position of the small stream on his map. Who knew, he might have a use for it when he returned.

After walking forward for a short time, a wooden signboard on the roadside caught his attention.

“You will enter the territory of the Great Star Dou Forest in 50 metres. There are soul beasts roaming around, so please be careful.”

Sure enough, he hadn’t gotten lost. He was ﬁnally about to reach his destination. In addition to his current feeling of excitement, Huo Yuhao also felt a trace of nervousness. He touched the White Tiger Dagger on his lower back and suppressed the uneasiness in his heart. Then, he took determined strides as he advanced forward.

Becoming a soul master was the only way out for him. This was the conviction that he held in his heart, and he’d never regretted his decision.

The air gradually turned cool and refreshing, and an extraordinarily serious feeling seemed to exist within it. The Great Star Dou Forest was like a soul beast that had its mouth wide open for young creatures. He would either have an opportunity…or be swallowed!

Huo Yuhao was still young, after all. After only a brief moment of astonishment and nervousness, his mood changed into that of excitement. He’d ﬁnally arrived at his destination after so many days of travel. When he thought about obtaining a soul ring for himself, so that he could truly become a soul master, he felt his blood boil. Although he was only eleven, he’d already bitterly cultivated for over ﬁve years, just for the sake of today.

In his excited state, he unconsciously increased the speed of his steps. The speed of his advance towards the Great Star Dou Forest was also slightly fastened.

A slightly strange feeling suddenly appeared in his mind as he advanced forward. Huo Yuhao then felt a slight stabbing pain in his eyes, causing him to unconsciously move soulforce to his Spirit Eyes.

A weak stream of air spiralled around Huo Yuhao’s eyes, and he seemed to see a shadow ﬂash across the left side of the road in front of him.

As an extremely rare spiritual-type mutated martial soul, his Spirit Eyes had a very strong ability to sense danger. The feeling of immediate crisis Huo Yuhao felt caused his senses to immediately sharpen. He rapidly lowered his body to the left, and used his right hand to quickly unsheathe the White Tiger Dagger from his waist.

A black ﬁgure ﬂashed past the area he’d previously been at. The area where it had pounced was almost within Huo Yuhao’s reach, which immediately allowed him to clearly see what it was.

It was a baboon that was roughly one metre tall. Its body was covered in light brown fur, and its eyes were brown in colour. It had two arms that were oddly long, and sharp ﬁngernails on its claws. Its canine teeth were exposed from its lips, and a savage light was present in its eyes. It immediately let out a low roar towards Huo Yuhao since it had failed to hit him. It then powerfully stamped its hind legs, once again pouncing towards Huo Yuhao.

Although his Spirit Eyes didn’t have an accommodating soul ring, its fundamental ability was still fairly good. After he’d poured his soulforce into his eyes, the pouncing baboon’s movements became much slower in his eyes. Huo Yuhao, who

had previously dropped to the ground, rapidly rolled to the right. He then sprung up and tumbled a few steps backwards, whilst simultaneously raising the White Tiger Dagger before him.

The clear sounds of his nervous heartbeat echoed out, and his breathing had clearly become rushed. This was the ﬁrst time in his life that he’d encountered a soul beast’s attacks. The palm he was using to hold the White Tiger Dagger had already been covered in sweat, and his expression had also turned somewhat blank, because he didn’t know how to react.

After the baboon missed two attacks in a row, it seemed to become enraged. Its upper body rose up, and it used its ﬁsts to vigorously beat on its chest, letting out a roar. At the same time, it suddenly opened its mouth towards Huo Yuhao. It immediately spat out a ball of white light, which went directly towards Huo Yuhao.

Even though Huo Yuhao had no experience, he was still able to see that his opponent was a soul beast now. There was still a certain distance between where he was and the Great Star Dou Forest, which was the reason why he hadn’t been prepared at all. With his current level of cultivation, it was very possible

that he would suffer a calamitous fate if he were to be struck by that white ball of light.

At that moment, Huo Yuhao’s mind had already become blank. The ball of white light didn’t seem very fast when he looked at it through his Spirit Eyes, but in reality, it would arrive in the blink of an eye.

Whilst spitting out the white light, the baboon had also pounced towards Huo Yuhao at an extremely quick speed, a savage light in its eyes.

Huo Yuhao had already lost the ability to think due to his nervousness. When the white light reached him, he subconsciously followed his instincts and brought the White Tiger Dagger in his right hand up, striking the white light head-on.

A strange scene appeared at this moment. By the time the white light had collided with the White Tiger Dagger, the baboon had already arrived, and had extended its long arms in front of it, slashing towards Huo Yuhao’s shoulders with its sharp claws.

Since the battle had reached this point, Huo Yuhao’s fate seemed to already be sealed. Was he really going to perish under this soul beast’s claws?

The baboon clawed Huo Yuhao’s shoulders, and made use of its sturdy body and the momentum from its charge to ﬂip around midair, in an attempt to ﬁercely throw Huo Yuhao downwards.

In the same moment that it reached Huo Yuhao and attempted to throw him down, a white light ﬂashed past its body. Its body seemed to stiffen for a moment, and Huo Yuhao was ﬂung outwards instead of being smashed into the ground. On the other hand, the baboon rolled on the ground for a little while, before ceasing any further movements.

“Peng—” Huo Yuhao’s body collided with a nearby tree trunk, then slid down. Everything in front of his eyes turned dark, and the violent spike of pain instantly caused him to lose his ability to breathe.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao’s appearance truly looked quite miserable. There were long wounds on his shoulders, and his jacket had nearly been torn apart.

However, he still managed to awaken from his empty- minded state amidst the violent pain. His gaze subconsciously shifted towards the baboon that lay unmoving on the ground.

A faint white light had appeared over the baboon. It slowly and gradually began to condense into a white halo above its body. The halo wasn’t clear, and the light was also only faintly discernible. However, this still made Huo Yuhao gape at it.

Soul ring? This is a soul ring? Huo Yuhao was so excited that his body trembled slightly, and the wounds on his body didn’t seem to hurt that much anymore.

He'd only learnt the most basic meditation technique within the Duke’s Mansion, yet he’d heard far, far too much about soul beasts and soul rings. Almost every single guard within the Duke’s Mansion would bring up the topic frequently, but this was the ﬁrst time that he’d personally seen one.

Could it be that it’s already dead? Huo Yuhao thought blankly to himself. A soul ring would only appear when a soul beast had died! But, how had it died?

His Spirit Eyes’ ability appeared at this moment, causing his memories to surge through his mind like a tide.

The white light that the baboon had released had struck the White Tiger Dagger, however as soon as that happened, the White Tiger Dagger had suddenly emitted a light, unexpectedly absorbing all of the white light. This was also the factor that altered the most crucial moment of the battle.

According to the baboon’s instincts, a weak human like Huo Yuhao would deﬁnitely lose all of his combat power after being struck by its soul skill. Then, he would lose at least half his life from being ﬁercely smashed to the ground. However, it never thought that its soul skill would be subconsciously neutralised by Huo Yuhao’s White Tiger Dagger. When it ﬂipped its body in order to throw Huo Yuhao, Huo Yuhao had instinctively swung his hands upwards, causing the White Tiger Dagger in his right hand to naturally slash upwards as well.

Originally, the White Tiger Dagger’s length hadn’t been long enough to reach the baboon that had already soared into the sky. However, the White Tiger Dagger suddenly released a foot- long blade of light in that instant, which swept across the baboon’s body. It seemed to have turned the white light it had previously absorbed into a sharp blade. Although Huo Yuhao

was unable to clearly remember where the dagger had struck due to his blank mind, something had deﬁnitely happened. That blade of light must have deﬁnitely slashed the body of the baboon.

I actually won? Huo Yuhao gazed at the white soul ring, but the excitement in his heart gradually faded. Soul rings were necessary items for soul masters to advance in rank. However, not all soul rings were suitable for soul masters to absorb. Only a soul ring that had a high compatibility with the soul master’s martial soul could be absorbed, for the best results.

Chapter 2: Skydream Iceworm

The strength of a soul ring was based off of how many years the soul beast had cultivated for; the better a soul ring was, the stronger the skill it would grant to a soul master.

White soul rings were those formed by a ten year soul beast. All soul beasts that had cultivated between ten and a hundred years would produce a white coloured soul ring when they were killed. The baboon that Huo Yuhao had luckily managed to kill was undoubtedly a ten year soul beast, and a ten year soul ring had also clearly appeared in front of Huo Yuhao. Unfortunately, the soul ring wasn’t one he could absorb.

Although Huo Yuhao didn’t have any experience at killing soul beasts, and couldn’t see what type of existence the baboon was, he was certain that the baboon wasn’t a spiritual-type soul beast. Therefore, its soul ring was thus even more unsuited for him.

He wanted to check the baboon’s condition, but a wave of both pain and soreness ﬂooded his body when he was about to stand up. His excessive nervousness from earlier caused him to be unable to use any strength at all now. Combined with the

pain from his shoulders, the exertion of force caused him to let out a mufﬂed groan, and almost caused him to faint.

He was only eleven after all! The determination in his heart had even wavered slightly, after the battle that he’d just experienced. The amount of spiritual-type soul beasts that existed was extremely little, yet he’d almost been killed by the ﬁrst soul beast he’d encountered. Furthermore, this had only been a ten year soul beast. What if he’d encountered a hundred year soul beast? He would’ve had absolutely no chance of even narrowly escaping, simply because it was impossible for luck to be with him at all times. The miraculous power that had momentarily been released from the White Tiger Dagger obviously couldn’t make up for his weak strength.

What should I do? Huo Yuhao struggled to barely sit up. He leaned against the tree that he’d previously ﬂown into, and gasped for breath.

I can’t die, I’ll deﬁnitely succeed. I still have to seek justice for my mother, I can’t give up like this! Huo Yuhao tightly clenched his teeth, and unceasingly hardened his conviction. However, the scenes from his previous battle with the baboon continuously let him know that he had been overestimating his capabilities.

Huo Yuhao’s mind was ﬁlled with an empty feeling, and he didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, a voice echoed out inside of his mind, without any prior warning.

“Finally, I’ve met a spiritual-type human! What a pity that this brother can’t cry! If I could, my face would deﬁnitely be covered with tears!”

Huo Yuhao was startled. He didn’t understand why a voice had suddenly appeared inside of his mind. However, at this moment, the ground beneath him suddenly trembled without any prior warning. Cracks began to appear on the ground two metres in front of him, and then gradually expanded until they turned into a crevice; a dim golden-white light faintly shone from within the crevice.

This, what is this? Another soul beast?

Huo Yuhao subconsciously gripped the White Tiger Dagger tightly, and nervously gazed at the crevice that was gradually expanding. If it wasn’t for his aching body, he might’ve already run away.

An icy chill was released from the crevice, which caused the surrounding temperature to drop. The area of the crevice gradually increased, and after a moment, its diameter had reached ﬁve metres wide, causing the true appearance of the golden-white light to ﬁnally be revealed.

It was a plump and fat-looking head with a diameter of over one metre. After it slowly wiggled its body and managed to climb up, its entire body was revealed. Its body was over seven metres long.

Following its appearance, the surrounding temperature became so cold that Huo Yuhao was able to see his own breath, and it caused him to be unable to help but shiver a few times.

This was deﬁnitely a soul beast, yet it unexpectedly resembled a silkworm. However, it was god-knows how many times larger than a normal silkworm.

Its body was the same colour as white jade, sparkled, and was translucent. Although it had dug itself out from the earth, there wasn’t any dirt on its brilliant skin at all. Halos of light moved about underneath its epidermis, and it unexpectedly had a small pair of eyes on its head that ﬂickered with a golden

light. Strangest of all, golden patterns were engraved on its body at certain intervals, starting half a metre from its head. From head to tail, it had a total of ten golden patterns.

A look of despair appeared on Huo Yuhao’s already nervous face as he gazed at its enormous body. It has such an enormous body, and it has the power to change the temperature... it’s at least a hundred year soul beast. It’s over, everything’s over.

“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. This brother won’t harm you!” The voice from before echoed out in Huo Yuhao’s mind once again, and the enormous silkworm nodded its head. Its huge head then drooped downwards, before stopping a metre away from Huo Yuhao. It even emitted a faintly fragrant odor from its body.

Huo Yuhao said in a startled tone, “Are you the one that’s talking to me?”

The enormous silkworm nodded its head in response, and its voice continued to echo out inside of his mind, “It’s obviously this brother that’s speaking. Did you get captivated by my beautiful body?”

After realizing that the enormous silkworm didn’t have any evil intentions, Huo Yuhao’s taut heartstrings relaxed a bit.

“What do you want to do?”

The silkworm replied, “First off, let me introduce myself. I am the embodiment of heroism and chivalry! A king of kings amongst soul beasts, who is both equally smart and good- looking! I’m an absolute expert, one who has cultivated for a million years! I’m the Skydream Iceworm who’s set the record for the longest lifespan in the Douluo Continent! Yup, you can call me Brother Skydream!”

Huo Yuhao’s eyes instantly turned lifeless, “Mil-Million year soul beast?” The Skydream Iceworm’s age differed from his prediction by a factor of ten thousand times. Furthermore, were there really such existences as million year soul beasts in the world? The strongest soul beast on the Douluo Continent should only be a hundred thousand years old!

The Skydream Iceworm, who was clearly pleased with himself, said, “Aren’t you in awe? Aren’t you really excited? You’re the ﬁrst human who’s seen my almighty ﬁgure.”

Huo Yuhao blankly said, “Then what do you want to do?”

The Skydream Iceworm’s voice suddenly became serious, “This brother wants to become your soul ring—the Douluo Continent’s ﬁrst ever intelligent soul ring.”

“Ah?” Huo Yuhao looked at the Skydream Iceworm in front of him with a dumbstruck expression. He’d momentarily lost his ability to think.

Everything that had occurred so far had simply been too sudden. Admittedly, he did thirst for a soul ring. However, in the past, the soul ring that he’d wanted to obtain was simply a ten year soul ring. He’d never had any extravagant hopes. Yet, at this moment, a massive silkworm that could talk had suddenly dug itself out from beneath the ground, had told him that it was an almighty million year soul beast, and that it wanted to become his soul ring. This made Huo Yuhao completely unable to understand what was going on at all. Furthermore, he didn’t know whether the Skydream Iceworm was telling the truth or not.

However, the enormous silkworm in front of him wasn’t something that he could hope to ﬁght, regardless of whether it

was telling the truth or not.

The Skydream Iceworm’s enormous head turned in the direction of the Great Star Dou Forest, and carefully scanned it. Then, it turned back towards Huo Yuhao and said, “I’m going to start, okay? Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle. I won’t cause too much pain.”

“You…” Before Huo Yuhao could even voice any sort of opposition, an extremely cold aura caused him to immediately lose consciousness. He could only faintly see a white object charging towards him. In the next moment, all of his thoughts faded away.

The ten golden patterns on the Skydream Iceworm’s body moved rhythmically, almost as if they were alive. The white object that Huo Yuhao had seen was actually the Skydream Iceworm’s head, which had reached forward to press against his head.

The ten golden patterns rapidly enveloped Huo Yuhao’s skinny body, and the Skydream Iceworm slowly turned itself halos of white light that unceasingly surged into his body.

“Too weak, too weak. This is simply too tragic. I’m so pitiful, ah! Just how many more seals will I have to put on my body before his weak body can support me? It’s so hard to become an intelligent soul ring.”

When the Skydream Iceworm had surged towards Huo Yuhao’s body, a layer of incorporeal spiritual undulations had spread out from its body. These terrifying spiritual energy undulations almost instantly covered everything within a hundred miles.

When the spiritual energy undulations covered Bei Bei and Tang Ya, who had sped up to chase after Huo Yuhao, they immediately fell into a momentarily sluggish state. Although the spiritual attack hadn’t been too damaging, it still caused all living beings to lose their ability to think for a short period of time.

At this moment, a large portion of the southern area of the Great Star Dou Forest had become frighteningly quiet.

Previously, the sky had been extremely clear and sunny. However, it had suddenly darkened, and a thunder-like boom resounded out in the air. In that instant, the sun’s brilliant rays of light were unexpectedly covered up by the darkness. Then, an enormous pressure that caused one to be unable to even breathe descended from the sky.

When the thunder-like boom resounded in the air, the Skydream Iceworm’s enormous body, who was currently trying to merge with Huo Yuhao’s body, violently shook for a moment. Its small, golden eyes looked upwards into the sky, and a terriﬁed look immediately appeared inside of them. Inside of that terriﬁed expression was also a hint of shock. The pressure in the sky clearly hadn’t affected it, but it exceeded its knowledge.

A grey stream of air descended from the sky, as if an enormous attractive force had sucked it downwards. After only an instant, it landed on the back of Huo Yuhao’s head, and quietly entered it.

“Who dares to ﬁght with this brother over a person?” The Skydream Iceworm ﬂew into a rage. Its huge spiritual undulations instantly surged forth in an attempt to expel the grey stream of air from Huo Yuhao’s body.

An extremely blurry ﬁgure appeared behind Huo Yuhao, and an aged voice with a hard-to-describe imposingness echoed out, “The hand grasps the sun and moon, and also plucks the stars; This world has no one like me. I didn’t think that this old man would have a trace of a remnant spirit left that still existed here.”

The vague and illusory ﬁgure didn’t seem to be affected by the Skydream Iceworm’s powerful spiritual attack at all. With a whoosh, it disappeared into the back of Huo Yuhao’s head.

The Skydream Iceworm didn’t dare to strengthen his spiritual attack again, as traces of blood had already begun to seep out of Huo Yuhao’s seven apertures. He discovered that, after the grey stream of air had entered Huo Yuhao’s mind, it had immediately turned into a soybean-sized grey pearl. Then, it had turned silent. It didn’t conﬂict with his spiritual energy, nor could he affect it with his power.

“I can’t be this unlucky. It was so hard to ﬁnd a spiritual-type human, but a bastard wants to snatch him from me. Are the heavens jealous of a genius like myself? This brother is so pitiful!” Although he was currently voicing his complaints, his movements didn’t slow down at all. Dense white light

gradually condensed and poured into Huo Yuhao’s body, while the Skydream Iceworm’s body both gradually turned more transparent during the process, and rapidly decreased in volume. There had already been no turning back for him, from the instant he’d started to pour his energy into Huo Yuhao’s body.

Huo Yuhao’s body had turned completely jade-white, and resembled the previous appearance of the Skydream Iceworm. His shoulders’ wounds were recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye.

“Wahaha, no matter what way you put it, this brother is ﬁnally free! You bastards who took me as food no longer have any chance, wahaha!” The Skydream Iceworm’s voice, who was clearly pleased with himself, gradually turned softer and softer. The huge spiritual energy that had previously covered a hundred miles proceeded to shrink at a frightening speed, then gradually disappeared.

Several terrifying auras from within the depths of the Great Star Dou Forest simultaneously let out violent undulations, as if they’d sensed something. However, they were fated to to not have any success in their endeavors.

When the Skydream Iceworm’s voice had completely disappeared, a jade-white halo soundlessly appeared beneath Huo Yuhao’s body. After circling around his body three times, its light dimmed, and the entire halo merged into his body, disappearing without a trace.

Huo Yuhao didn’t know that, while he was unconscious, he’d managed to obtain his ﬁrst soul ring. Furthermore, this was a soul ring that was truly unrivalled and unique on the Douluo Continent.

The jade-white colour gradually faded from Huo Yuhao, and an ice-blue layer started to appear below his skin. This lasted roughly ten seconds, before it gradually dimmed and restored the original colour of his skin. Then, his body tilted, causing him to fall against the tree he’d previously leaned against.

A thin white membrane that had a faint golden sheen to it soundlessly rose into the air, before it rapidly shrunk and formed a ball that disappeared inside of Huo Yuhao’s heart. There were no more traces of the Skydream Iceworm’s aura after that.

The big hole in the road had already closed at an earlier time, and except for the collapsed Huo Yuhao, the baboon that’d been killed by him had had its corpse left on the ground. Everything else also seemed to have recovered to its normal state.

Not long afterwards, two ﬁgures ran over extremely quickly.

“Ah!” A ﬁgure let out a cry, and instantly sped up. She sped over to Huo Yuhao’s body, and stopped beside him.

“We’re late. It seems little brother Yuhao was attacked. These soul beasts have really become more and more rampant! They’ve actually come out of the Great Star Dou Forest!” Tang Ya carefully helped Huo Yuhao up off the ground, a gloomy and worried expression on her face.

Bei Bei walked over to the baboon and turned it over. He saw that a slanted, foot-long wound had been inﬂicted on the baboon’s chest, and that even its heart had been cut part. This was clearly a fatal wound.

“That was a Wind Baboon. From its size, and the strength of its muscles, it should be a ten year soul beast. It’s already dead.” Bei Bei walked over to Tang Ya and squatted down to check on Huo Yuhao’s condition.

The thing that amazed them was that, although Huo Yuhao’s clothing had been seriously damaged, they couldn’t ﬁnd any sign of injury on his body.

Bei Bei tapped Huo Yuhao’s wrist with his right foreﬁnger, which caused the White Tiger Dagger to drop into his palm. A faint blue light ﬂashed in Bei Bei’s hand for an instant, and then a hazy blue luster immediately appeared on the White Tiger Dagger.

“This is a soul tool. Yuhao must’ve used it to kill that Wind Baboon. Although the Wind Baboon was only a ten year soul beast, both its speed and power are relatively decent, and it can also use an innate soul skill to attack its opponents. Since he can kill a Wind Baboon at his age, Little Yuhao is already quite good. It seems that our earlier judgement of Yuhao wasn’t accurate enough—he should already be a ﬁrst ring soul master.”

Tang Ya anxiously examined Huo Yuhao’s body, then said, “Talking about this is useless right now. We wasted time all because you insisted that I wash my hands and my face. If something happens to Little Yuhao because of that, I’ll never forgive myself. No matter what level of talent he has, I’ve decided that I’ll deﬁnitely convince him to join our Tang Sect.”

Bei Bei’s gaze softened as he looked at Tang Ya’s anxious expression. The kindness that came from Tang Ya’s heart was something he loved very much. “Don’t worry, he’s ﬁne. Can’t you see that his breathing is normal? There aren’t any wounds on his body either. Judging from his the way he fainted, he must've lost consciousness after being slammed into that tree by the Wind Baboon during their battle.”

Tang Ya stared blankly for a moment, then raised her head up and glared at Bei Bei. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You made me worried.”

Bei Bei helplessly replied, “Who could’ve known that you’d be unable to see something so simple?”

“Humph!” Tang Ya helped Huo Yuhao up, and allowed him to lean on her body. After conﬁrming that he truly had no

problems, she relaxed.

Bei Bei stood up and carefully checked their surroundings as he quietly guarded Tang Ya.

After Huo Yuhao fainted, he entered a dream. He dreamt that he’d entered a pure white space. There were many motes of light within the space, and he couldn’t see the end of it. However, his gaze still seemed to somehow be able to reach every single corner of the space.

Whilst in the midst of understanding the mysteries of the space, it had suddenly turned turbulent. After that, golden lights had interweaved and entered the space.

The golden lights converged into enormous golden rings of light which ﬂoated in midair, and the many motes of light within the room started to increase in size due to their appearance.

The ten golden rings of light slowly started to rotate, and a milky white halo appeared within every single one of them. As the halo’s strength increased, they gradually gathered together

and formed ten enormous balls of light that ﬂoated within the space. The height and the volume of the space increased many folds in size in turn.

At that moment, an unremarkable grey ball of light appeared near one of the golden balls of light. The grey ball’s size was much smaller than the other ten balls of light. Furthermore, the golden balls of light began releasing a strong golden light, as if they wanted to chase it away. However, the grey ball remained tranquil, and continued to ﬂoat in midair. No matter how much the golden lights attacked the grey ball, it didn’t seem to be affected at all.

In the end, the ten golden lights could only give up on the meaningless task. They turned stable, and ﬂickered with a dim luster.

As Huo Yuhao’s consciousness gradually cleared, the smaller motes of light that were ﬂoating in the space gradually sank downwards, forming a faint golden ocean that supported the ten enormous balls of light. Only the extremely tiny grey light remained midair, unwilling to join the large balls of light.

“So you’re called Huo Yuhao.” A voice suddenly echoed out. Following that, Huo Yuhao’s vision instantly retracted, and he unconsciously lowered his gaze. He could only see his naked self-standing above the golden ocean, right in the middle of the ten now-golden-white balls of light.

“Where is this? Why am I here?” Huo Yuhao asked in amazement.

“This is your mind’s sea of consciousness, or spiritual sea. In the future, this will be Brother’s home. This place was too small, so Brother simply helped you expand it. However, your body is just too weak, so I’ll have to make do for now.”

“You’re the Skydream Iceworm? I’m not dreaming?” Huo Yuhao became even more stunned when he heard the voice and tone of the person who’d spoken. Everything that he saw in front of him had already surpassed his knowledge. Not to speak of Huo Yuhao, who was only eleven; even adults would be shocked to the point of them trembling in fear if they were presented with such a miraculous scene.

“Dreaming? If you were able to have such a nice dream, wouldn’t you have died from happiness? This is obviously not a

dream. As I said, this is the world within your mind.” The Skydream Iceworm unhappily replied.

Huo Yuhao blankly said, “What’s that?”

The Skydream Iceworm replied, “You really are foolish. How do I explain this to you? Well... let’s put it this way. You know about your eyes—they’re the martial soul that your consciousness calls the ‘Spirit Eyes’. I’ve just gone through your memories, so I know about your previous experiences. The Spirit Eyes are your martial soul, but at the same time also your eyes. Thus, the spiritual sea is where your spiritual energy is stored. If you want to display the might of your Spirit Eyes, you’ll need to convert your soulforce into spiritual energy, then release it using your Spirit Eyes. The speciﬁc location of your spiritual sea is your brain, behind your Spirit Eyes. As of right now, your consciousness is immersed within your spiritual sea. The body that you’re seeing isn’t actually your real body, but a body that I’ve created using spiritual energy for the sake of communicating with you.”

Huo Yuhao ﬁnally understood a few things after hearing this detailed explanation. The fear in his heart also weakened by a lot. Young kids were much more sensitive than adults at

certain times, and he felt that the Skydream Iceworm truly didn’t have any malicious intentions towards him.

“Then, how come you appeared in my spiritual sea?” Huo Yuhao asked again.

The Skydream Iceworm replied, “Didn’t I just tell you? I want to become your soul ring, an intelligent soul ring! As of now, I’ve already become one. However, for the sake of becoming your soul ring, I’ve suppressed and sealed a large amount of my power. From now on, you’ll have a soul ring, and can become one of the human’s so-called soul masters. However, your innate talent is much worse than what I thought. You can practically use the term ‘extremely poor’ to describe it. I really don’t know whether my choice was correct or not.

Huo Yuhao was slightly ashamed as he said, “I admit that my talent isn’t that good. But, I’ll work hard. My innate spirit power was only rank one.”

The Skydream Iceworm gloomily said, “I’ll think of a method to help you improve yourself later on.”

As the length of the conversation increased, Huo Yuhao’s guts did too. “Skydream Iceworm.”

“Call me Brother Skydream.”

“Fine, Brother Skydream. You said that you were a million year soul beast, is that true? Also, why did you pick me? I’ve heard that Soul Scholars can only withstand soul rings that are below four hundred years old. However, since you’re a million year soul beast, how were you able to become my soul ring?”

The Skydream Iceworm suddenly let out a long sigh, “Do you think that I wanted to pick you? I had no other choice! If I’d continued to refrain from making a choice, my life would’ve come to an end. And once I died, my body would’ve most likely become food for those guys in the Great Star Dou Forest! Under my state of helplessness, I could only use this plan to attach myself to you humans. This is also my only way out. Would you like to listen to my story? In the future, we’ll be with each other for a very, very long time. I don’t want to hide anything from you either, so I’ll tell you everything.”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head and said, “Brother Skydream, please speak.”

The Skydream Iceworm replied, “At ﬁrst, I was just an ordinary Iceworm soul beast. I wasn’t born in the Great Star Dou Forest, but in an extremely cold place located in the northern areas of the continent. We Iceworms are soul beasts that have two innate attributes, spiritual and ice attributes. However, our combat strength is seriously limited by our speed. Thus, we can only be considered very ordinary soul beasts. What’s more, we’re also affected by the presence of natural predators. Very few of us can cultivate longer than ten thousand years. I’m the sole exception to that.”

“When I was thirteen years old, I carelessly fell into a crack in the ice whilst running away from a predator. At that time, I thought I was done for. However, who could’ve known that I’d drop into a ball of ten thousand year Ice Pith? I sank into a deep sleep after that. I was still very weak and small back then, and my body wasn’t even three inches long. That sleep lasted for an entire ten thousand years. When I woke up, I found myself in an icy cave. That ten thousand year Ice Pith had disappeared—it had all been absorbed by me. However, as a result of my slumber, I had thus turned into a ten thousand year soul beast. I was indescribably pleased and surprised back then! However, I discovered that I couldn’t ﬁnd any way to exit the icy cave at all.”

“I was surrounded by extremely hard ice in that icy cave. Although I had already become a ten thousand year soul beast, our Iceworm clan has always been weak in combat, resulting in me being unable to forcefully break through the ice. Fortunately, there were many holes in the icy cave that I was

able to climb through. Thus, I crawled around in search of an exit. In the end, I still couldn’t ﬁnd an exit, but I found an even larger ball of Ice Pith. The appearance of this new ball of Ice Pith signiﬁed that I had food to eat. Hence, I entered another deep sleep. However, this sleep lasted several tens of thousands of years…”

Chapter 3: The Million Year Soul Ring

As Huo Yuhao listened to the Skydream Iceworm’s explanation, he suddenly felt a strange feeling. Could it be that the Skydream Iceworm’s name was because it had dreamt everyday?

“Although I wasn’t able to leave the icy cave, eating the ten thousand year Ice Pith simply felt too good. Thus, I was lucky to not be able to ﬁnd a way out, because I found another large lump of ten thousand year Ice Pith whilst crawling around to look for one. I slept again, but I didn’t even know how long I’d slept for this time—yet the ﬁrst set of golden patterns had appeared on my body by the time I woke up.”

“A golden pattern has an extremely important meaning to us Iceworms. It signiﬁes that our cultivation has reached a hundred thousand years. From what I remember, our Iceworm clan has never had an existence possess a cultivation of a hundred thousand years. I was the ﬁrst to do this! This was unprecedented in history! At that time, I evolved into a Gold- patterned Iceworm. I also had sufﬁcient power to break through the ice and leave. However, at that time, I didn’t know that hundred thousand year soul beasts would suffer enormous restrictions, which would make it harder for them to increase

their cultivation. Perhaps it was because I was lucky, or perhaps it was because our Iceworm clan has a deﬁciency of combat strength, but I miraculously didn’t attract any Heavenly Tribulation.” The Skydream Iceworm sighed. “I decided to continue sleeping, since I was too lazy to leave anyway. Thus, I continued to sleep in the icy caves. Because my cultivation had reached a certain level, I was able to break the ice and enter areas which I previously couldn’t. This allowed me to ﬁnd even more top quality Ice Piths, all of which became my food.

“Just like that, I repeated the cycle of sleeping after eating, and eating after waking up. I didn’t even know how much time had passed. Only the golden patterns on my body were able to tell me how long I’d lived for.”

“In the end, I ﬁnished eating all of the Ice Pith within the icy caves one day. I then dug myself out from the bottom of the icy caves, arriving at the ocean. I ﬂoated in the ocean, and moved with the tide; I ﬂoated along the edge of the continent, eventually moving towards the south. I also encountered my ﬁrst enemy during this journey."

“At that time, I already had nine golden patterns, which meant that I was a powerful nine hundred thousand year soul

beast. I originally thought that I was an unequalled existence within this world. However…”

As he continued to speak, the Skydream Iceworm clearly became somewhat embarrassed, “However, I’d never done anything nor fought with anyone when I was awake. In the end, I had to rely on my enormous spiritual energy to scare that enemy away. This ﬁnally roused my caution, which made me attempt to cultivate the ability to attack. However, I discovered that my cultivation lifespan didn’t mean that I was strong. I was indeed a million year soul beast, but my combat power was in fact inferior to some ten thousand year soul beasts. Those ten thousand year soul beasts that were good at ﬁghting were simply opponents I couldn’t hope to achieve victory over. The outside world was truly too dangerous. However, I didn’t know the way back.”

“I thought that since the ocean was dangerous, perhaps the continent would be safer. Thus, I went ashore. However, I discovered that the continent wasn’t very peaceful either. Maybe it was an effect of absorbing too much Ice Pith, but my body had a special smell that could attract the attention of any and all soul beasts. It caused them to see me as food.”

“In the end, I was captured by a strong hundred thousand year soul beast from the Great Star Dou Forest. However, it didn’t immediately kill me; Instead, it brought me to the Great Star Dou Forest. Only after listening to him did I understand what was going on. As it turned out, I possessed too much Heaven and Earth Yuan Qi. As long as they were able to absorb and transform my energy, any soul beast could become a hundred thousand year soul beast, and any hundred thousand year soul beasts could break free from the limit of their

cultivation lifespan. But, it took a long time to absorb my energy, since the energy I’d cultivated for a million years was too enormous. Thus, it brought me back to its nest.”

“However, that fellow underestimated how awesome this Brother is. Although I wasn’t too good at ﬁghting, I was able to increase the strength of my aura. Thus, I was able to attract all of the hundred thousand year soul beasts in the Great Star Dou Forest. Hehe.”

“The huge battle royale that ensued included nearly every single soul beast in the Great Star Dou Forest whose age exceeded ten thousand. They fought so desperately! I originally thought that I now had a chance to escape. However, who could’ve known that they’d be so crafty? Once the battle had almost ended, they actually stopped and negotiated with each other. In the end, a tragedy occurred to this Brother. They

ﬁnally came to an agreement, deciding to absorb my power together, since the soulforce in my body was large enough. After that, they trapped me in the centre of the Great Star Dou Forest and forced me to release the Heaven and Earth Yuan Qi from my body for them to absorb. The stronger soul beasts

would be closer to me, and the beneﬁts they obtained would thus be greater. These bastards practically took this Brother as food.”

“Ai, since I had no way to resist them, I could only let them order me around. I tried to think of a plan to break free from their control whilst having my energy drained by them. My Yuan Qi was very pure, thus there was enough for them to absorb it for over ten thousand years. After a few thousand years of pondering and observing, I discovered that I’d not only need to escape from them, but would also need to conceal my aura to successfully break free from their control. You humans then appeared in my line of sight. There were a few times when some especially strong humans entered the depths of the Great Star Dou Forest to hunt those hundred thousand year soul beasts. Unfortunately, they were struck by a tragedy. Under the nourishment of this Brother, the high ranking soul beasts within the Great Star Dou Forest had deﬁnitely become the strongest soul beasts on the Douluo Continent. Although those humans had extremely strong weapons, they could only suffer a big defeat. However, this allowed me to understand the advantages you humans had.”

“Brother is a spiritual and ice dual-attribute soul beast. After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to think of a way to become a human’s soul ring. If this happened, that human would deﬁnitely become extraordinarily strong, and I could rely on my spiritual-type attribute to preserve my own consciousness. Thus, I would become an unprecedented intelligent soul ring. Humph, once that happened, Brother would deﬁnitely get revenge, and would help that human kill all of the bastards who persecuted this Brother. Hence, I started carrying out my plan. However, who could’ve known that I’d fail on my ﬁrst attempt? The guy that I chose was what you humans call a Titled Douluo, and he was rather strong. However, he was truly rubbish. He actually exploded immediately, before even seeing my real body. He couldn’t even withstand the shock of my spiritual energy. Only then did I discover that becoming my host wasn’t something so simple. They would ﬁrst need to have a spiritual-type attribute as well, and be able to sustain the energy of my soul power. This was something that was even harder. Hence, I had no results, even after searching for a few thousand years. At that point, my soulforce had almost been fully drained by those hundred thousand year soul beasts. This Brother would’ve soon become akin to a candle that had no wax left.”

“However, the Heavens still took care of Brother. When Brother had already despaired, the tenth golden pattern

appeared on my body. I’d ﬁnally become an unprecedented million year soul beast. After the tenth golden pattern appeared, I ﬁnally possessed the power to resist those combat- oriented hundred thousand year soul beasts, and I could also conceal my own aura. Thus, I renamed myself as the Skydream Iceworm; I was no longer a Gold-patterned Iceworm. However, I was deﬁnitely unable to beat so many hundred thousand year soul beasts. Furthermore, my Heaven and Earth Yuan Qi had almost been fully absorbed by them. The only energy that I still had was my origin soulforce, which was what would provide the greatest aid to them. These were my two great attributes, which had yet to be absorbed. Revenge was something currently unattainable for me. Hence, I found an opportunity, and used the energy that I had obtained after

breaking through to conceal my aura. Then, I escaped by burrowing through the earth.”

“Aih——” The Skydream Iceworm sighed. “Unfortunately, Brother still suffered a tragedy. Breaking through to a million year soul beast was actually a double edged sword. Although I managed to barely break free from their control, my lifespan suddenly reached its end due to the Heavenly Tribulation that abruptly arrived. If I wasn’t able to preserve my life with other methods, I would’ve died soon from exhaustion; it was also at this moment when Brother met you, a young fellow. Although you were pitifully weak, Brother had no other choice! Yet, you also had a spiritual-type attribute. Hence, Brother could only work hard to merge with your body. No matter which way you look at it, those bastards can’t obtain this Brother’s most precious thing.”

Huo Yuhao had already forgotten his fear from earlier as he listened to the Skydream Iceworm’s story. He felt righteously indignant as he said, “They’re too despicable. How could they be like this? They actually trapped you for almost ten thousand years!”

The Skydream Iceworm felt that his anger gave them common ground as he said, “Exactly! Although Brother is quite cute, quite handsome, and quite strong, they simply can’t treat

Brother as food! Things are good now though. On the whole, I’ve managed to escape and not allow them to obtain Brother’s body. Huo Yuhao, although you’re young and your abilities are still lacking, it’s fortunate that you’re still pure. Brother will treat this as a plan to raise you up. When you’re strong in the future, you must help Brother get revenge! Didn’t they rely on my soulforce to evolve? In the future, turn them into your soul rings and soul bones! Humph!”

Huo Yuhao had no hesitation at all as he answered, “I’ll deﬁnitely help you get revenge after I grow up.” This relationship between man and beast had rapidly deepened due to this slightly odd yet miraculous story.

In reality, although the Skydream Iceworm had lived for a million years, it had only met with a few soul beasts after all. Even though its intelligence wasn’t inferior to that of a human’s, how could it know that humans had sinister hearts? If a human had encountered fortunate events like the Skydream Iceworm had, he would absolutely not reveal his story so easily. Choosing a kid like Huo Yuhao, who was practically as white as a sheet of paper, was actually quite lucky for it.

“Brother Skydream, I still don’t understand a few things. Since you’re so strong, you had to seal your own power to become my soul ring. Just what’s the matter with this? Can you still bestow a soul skill to me?” After losing his fear, an even greater sense of curiosity ﬁlled Huo Yuhao’s heart.

The Skydream Iceworm laughed cunningly as he said, “Brother naturally has a way. Since I’ve been planning this for so long, I’ve already prepared the proper arrangements. After obtaining some experience from blowing those humans up, I realised that all of my help will have to focus on your safety. I already have no way of retreat now; if you die, I die too. My original soulforce was almost fully drained by those soul beasts from the Great Star Dou Forest. Otherwise, your body wouldn’t have been able to withstand my power, even if I’d sealed it. When I merged with your body, most of the energy that entered you was my origin energy and my spiritual energy. Can you see those ten balls of light? They’re the ten seals that I’ve set up. If you look at it from another angle, it can be said that I’ve already bestowed you the power of your ﬁrst soul ring. However, you’re temporarily unable to use it.”

“This also means that, although your ﬁrst soul ring is a million year soul ring, it currently doesn’t have the might of a million year soul ring. However, the energy that I’ve sealed within your body will gradually disperse as your cultivation

improves, which in turn will increase the might of your soul ring. It might even increase the might of your future soul rings. After all, the energy that I’ve accumulated over a million years is simply too enormous for you.”

Huo Yuhao blinked his eyes and said, “I still don’t fully understand what you’re saying.”

The Skydream Iceworm unhappily said, “Idiot. I’ll repeat the simple points again. Your body, which has currently obtained its ﬁrst soul ring, can only withstand the soul ring of a four hundred year old soul beast at most. Thus, the realistic might of your ﬁrst soul ring is a four hundred year soul ring. After you make a breakthrough you’ll be able to withstand the might of a thousand year soul ring, so your ﬁrst soul ring will become a thousand year soul ring. Your ﬁrst soul ring will follow the amount of energy that your body can withstand, and will increase accordingly. In other words, your ﬁrst soul ring can evolve at any time, and your future soul rings will also have this beneﬁt. Of course, this evolutionary energy that I can bestow upon you is limited. The stronger the soul ring you obtain in the future, the more energy you save for me. Using the energy that I sealed within your body, it can at most help increase ten of your soul rings reach the hundred thousand year soul ring rank.

“Ah? So many? We soul masters can only possess nine soul rings at most, no?” Huo Yuhao spoke with a startled tone.

The Skydream Iceworm snorted coldly and loftily said, “That’s only true for ordinary people. You’re already no longer an ordinary person—ever since Brother merged with you. A single martial soul can naturally only absorb only nine soul rings. However, you currently don’t just have a single martial soul. After killing a hundred thousand year soul beast, you will both obtain a soul bone and a hundred thousand year soul ring that contains two soul skills within it. You should know this.”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head.

The Skydream Iceworm said. “As a million year soul ring, and an unprecedented intelligent soul ring, I’m obviously stronger than them. Not only can my incarnation, which is your ﬁrst soul ring, undergo unlimited evolution according to the condition of your body, it can also bestow four soul skills to you. However, I have no soul bones that I can give to you— instead, I can give you another martial soul.”

Huo Yuhao had already predicted that a million year soul ring would beneﬁt him greatly, but he’d never thought that it

would be to this extent. A soul ring that could undergo unlimited evolution had already caused him to be ineffably happy. Yet, the greater surprise was actually in its other beneﬁts. Four soul skills and an extra martial soul, just what kind of concept was this?

Since the four soul skills belonged to the ﬁrst soul ring, their might would inevitably evolve as his ﬁrst soul ring evolved. They were abilities that could be used forever! And, an extra martial soul could simply be described as a miracle. It was equivalent to turning him, who only had the Spirit Eyes martial soul, into a genius who had twin martial souls. Adding another martial soul would mean that he would have at least nine additional soul rings, which would give him nine more soul skills. How could a hundred thousand year soul ring even compare to the strength ampliﬁcation of this million year soul ring? Although his own strength was still weak even after obtaining these ampliﬁcations, and required him to slowly increase it, this million year soul ring undoubtedly opened a great door to the heavens for Huo Yuhao, allowing him, who’d originally had mediocre talent, to have a future of unlimited possibilities.

“The martial soul that I’ve bestowed you with is Ice, but it’s Ice that currently doesn’t have a soul.” The words that the

Skydream Iceworm said next pulled Huo Yuhao back from his happiness.

“Ice that doesn’t have a soul? What’s that?” Huo Yuhao had a look of doubt on his face.

The Skydream Iceworm said, “This means that the martial soul I’ve bestowed you currently only has an attribute, but not a form. When you absorb your ﬁrst ice-type soul ring, the form of your second martial soul will be ﬁnalized. The soul beast of the soul ring you absorb then will thus become your second martial soul. This also means that your second martial soul will deﬁnitely be a beast soul. You don’t have to worry about this, I’ve already thought about it for you. However, your current cultivation isn’t sufﬁcient. Once your strength is higher, I’ll take you to complete your ﬁrst ice-type soul ring. Now you should understand why I said that I wouldn’t have enough energy to amplify your soul rings. Because of this, you must be extremely careful when choosing your soul rings, and you should listen to my suggestions.”

“Fine.” Huo Yuhao excitedly agreed, “What are my four soul skills?”

The Skydream Iceworm replied, “You’ll have to rely on yourself to comprehend them. Something that you comprehend on your own will always be clearer than something I tell you directly. However, don’t be happy so early. You’re right, I’ve given you four soul skills, and they’re all spiritual-type soul skills; however the energy that I’ve sealed within your body is also very enormous. Thus, you must remember a few things. Firstly, the energy that I’ve sealed inside of your body can only help you increase the age of your soul rings—which is also their might—when your cultivation has reached a sufﬁcient stage. However, it can’t increase the strength of the soulforce that you cultivate. Secondly, the four soul skills that I’ve bestowed you with are, due to the fact that they’re from me, auxiliary soul skills that don’t have much attack power. Because of this, you’re still quite weak right now. You still have a long way to go if you want to become strong, do you understand?”

“I understand. My mother taught me that nobody could reach the heavens in a single step, that one step could only

leave a single footprint. The only way for one to become a man above all other men is to rely on one’s own hard work and diligence. Brother Skydream, you can rest assured; I’ll deﬁnitely work hard.”

“That’s good. However, your natural aptitude is truly poor. Ai… if there’s a chance in the future, I’ll ﬁnd some heavenly treasures for you to eat. Your Spirit Eyes martial soul was caused by a mutation, but your potential isn’t bad. However, the mutation process has greatly affected your bodily functions since you were young. Your passageways are now narrow and rough, causing your cultivation to be slightly challenging. Let’s take it slowly, we can’t rush this. Oh right, there’s something I have tell you.

“Can you see that grey ball up there?”

Huo Yuhao said, “I can see it. Is that also your power?”

The Skydream Iceworm said, "No, I don't know either. It happened when I fused with your body. I think your soulforce may have caused this. That grey ball of light seems to be a spirit, and also seems to not belong to our world. I don’t even know where it came from. However, although this spirit was

weak, it’s a very high ranked spirit, so I don’t have any methods of dealing with it. However, I can sense that it doesn’t have any evil intentions. Right now, it’s currently in a deep sleep. It might not wake up during your entire lifetime, but if it does, it could be slightly troublesome. Don’t worry, if it doesn’t

move, then that’s that; If it truly does do anything harmful to you, I’ll protect you—it won’t be a problem.”

“Alright, you should go back to your body now. The two humans outside have been waiting for you this whole time, and they don’t have any evil intentions towards you.”

“Two humans?” While Huo Yuhao was astonished, the scenery in front of him suddenly turned blurry. He felt like he’d instantly been sucked into an enormous whirlpool, and everything turned dark.

……

“Why haven’t you woken up yet!” Tang Ya patted Huo Yuhao’s face and shot an inquisitive glance towards Bei Bei, who was next to her.

Bei Bei gently smiled and said, “Both his qi and blood are completely smooth, and his body’s soulforce is very normal. Furthermore, it’s very vigorous. If I’m not wrong, he must’ve just broken through the soul Scholar realm, and this is the sign of him entering the Soul Master realm. His body needs to harmonize with this power right now, thus he naturally needs a certain amount of time to get used to the soulforce that he’s obtained after breaking through. Unfortunately, it was only a ten year Wind Baboon.”

Tang Ya humphed and said, “How is that very unfortunate? It’s normal for someone’s ﬁrst soul ring to be a bit weaker than the rest. The fact that he was able to kill a Wind Baboon by himself is already quite good.”

Bei Bei chuckled and said, “The way to capture a woman’s heart is through her stomach, much less for a person like you, whose heart and stomach are conjoined.”

Tang Ya’s charming face turned slightly red, “Pah, you’re the one who’s heart and stomach are conjoined. You’re impudent; don’t forget that I’m your teacher!”

Bei Bei didn’t retort. He only looked at her and warmly smile.

“Ugh…” Huo Yuhao let out a light groan, and slowly opened his eyes.

“Little Yuhao, you’ve ﬁnally woken up! You worried me to death.” Tang Ya was immediately exhilarated when she saw Huo Yuhao open his eyes.

Huo Yuhao felt some confusion in his mind, and only became clear-headed after composing himself. He clearly recalled the conversation that he’d previously had with the Skydream Iceworm, causing him to be unable to help but subconsciously mutter to himself, “Was I really not dreaming?”

Tang Ya giggled and pinched Huo Yuhao’s arm for a moment, causing him to immediately cry out in pain. “Sister Xiao Ya, what’re you doing?”

Tang Ya smiled. “I’m helping you check whether or not you were dreaming! How are you? Are you more awake now? You really have some guts, actually daring to travel into the Great Star Dou Forest by yourself.”

Huo Yuhao was slightly embarrassed as he scratched his head. Held only just learned how weak he was, and how much he’d overestimated his capabilities, after meeting the Wind Baboon. However, an eager feeling quickly rose up from his embarrassment. He jumped up from the ground, and roused

the soulforce in his body.

A scene that made Huo Yuhao indescribably happy immediately appeared.

His soulforce, which had originally reached a bottleneck, had undergone a qualitative change—even the strength of his body seemed to have slightly increased. Gentle soul power surged out, and everything that he saw with his Spirit Eyes became clearer. Furthermore, many instinctive marks had appeared in his mind, and each and every one of them were skills. Four, there are actually four soul skills! Brother Skydream truly exists! I wasn’t dreaming! Everything’s real, I actually possess a million year soul ring!

Only now did Huo Yuhao believe that everything he’d experienced earlier was real. The ecstasy in his heart surged out unceasingly, and he couldn’t help but let out a loud shout, “I’ve succeeded!”

Bei Bei and Tang Ya saw a jade-white soul ring rise from Huo Yuhao’s feet. It slowly moved upwards, all the way until it reached his head. Then, it slowly moved downwards with a rhythmic pace. It was his ﬁrst soul ring.

Bei Bei subconsciously thought to himself, “Sure enough, it’s a ten year soul ring.” Only, he had a slight feeling of doubt in his heart. Why did the colour of Huo Yuhao’s ten year soul ring seem to have a sort of sparkling, translucent feeling—as if it were slightly different from an ordinary ten year soul ring? Could it be that the Wind Baboon had had a higher cultivation? However, how could he have known that a million year soul ring was also jade-white?

The change that had occurred to Huo Yuhao wasn’t limited to just his soul ring; a faint gold sheen had also appeared inside of his deep blue eyes. Bei Bei and Tang Ya could both sense undulations of soulforce from his eyes, as well as a spiritual undulation, which caused them to be distracted for an instant.

Previously, the powerful spiritual energy that had been released by the Skydream Iceworm had caused them to temporarily lose the ability to think. However, they had been unable to sense it due to the enormous difference between it and them. However, Huo Yuhao was currently very close to

them. He’d changed, and the spiritual undulations that were being released from his eyes caused them to be shocked.

“A spiritual-type martial soul? A spiritual-type martial soul that’s merged with a Wind Baboon as its ﬁrst soul ring?” Bei Bei, who’d been calm until now, couldn’t help but have his expression slightly change. According to the theory of soul masters that he understood, this seemed to be something impossible! However, the facts were right in front of him.

The faint golden sheen quickly vanished from Huo Yuhao’s eyes. He’d also recovered from his surprise. He excitedly jumped up, “Succeeded, I’ve truly succeeded! I’m a Soul Master now!”

Bei Bei and Tang Ya both looked at each other and saw the shock in the other’s eyes. Tang Ya couldn’t help but ask, “Little Yuhao, is your martial soul a spiritual-type? I sensed a strong spiritual undulation earlier.”

Huo Yuhao ﬁnally recovered from his excitement, and he was slightly embarrassed as he said, “Yeah! My martial soul is the Spirit Eyes. It’s a mutated martial soul that has the spiritual attribute.”

Tang Ya’s eyes brightened, “Spirit Eyes? A body soul? Good.”

Bei Bei had clearly realised something too, causing him to nod his head and say, “I really didn’t know about it. What a pity that we arrived late. If we hadn’t, we would’ve found little brother Huo a better soul beast to merge with.”

Huo Yuhao’s mind had already cleared up from his earlier surprise. Although he was young, the experiences that he’d had in his youth had caused him to be somewhat vigilant. He immediately guessed that Bei Bei and Tang Ya must’ve thought that the soul ring he’d just absorbed had been from the baboon. Even though he didn’t understand why a million year soul ring was white, this was undoubtedly his current best way of concealing it. Naturally, he wouldn’t go and explain anything.

“Big brother Bei, sister Xiao Ya, did you guys chase after me?

Are there any problems?” Huo Yuhao asked probingly.

Tang Ya replied, “We only guessed that you were here to enter the Great Star Dou Forest, but I didn’t think that you’d really do it. Your guts are too big. Don’t you know that the Great Star Dou Forest is called a forbidden area for mankind? Even some Soul Masters with extremely high cultivations don’t

dare to enter the inner parts of the forest. And if it’s a little guy like you, a teacher must accompany you for you to even be able to move around the surrounding areas of the Great Star Dou Forest. The reason why we chased after you was to protect you, since Bei Bei and I are Soul Masters. However, your luck is

quite good. Although the ﬁrst soul ring you’ve obtained isn’t too strong, you’ve suffered no injuries on the whole.”

After hearing her words, a thick warm feeling immediately surged through Huo Yuhao’s young heart. He was young, but he’d experienced far, far too much of the hypocrisy of the world. When Tang Ya was talking, he could tell that there were no traces of falsehood within the sincere look her eyes held.

“Sister Xiao Ya, I…” Huo Yuhao almost brought up the issue of the Skydream Iceworm, due to impulse. However, at this moment, a cough echoed out in his mind. Under the attack of a certain refreshing aura, he immediately swallowed his words.

Tang Ya giggled and said, “Look at your dim-witted appearance. Fine, I won’t talk about that anymore. Little Yuhao, since you’ve already obtained a soul ring, what do you plan to do next?”

Huo Yuhao was stunned by her question. Yeah! What plans did he have for himself? Before coming to the Great Star Dou Forest, his aim all along had been to become a Soul Master, and obtain a soul ring that belonged to him. The difference between Soul Masters and Soul Scholars was indeed as vast as the heavens and the earth! Becoming a Soul Master also signiﬁed that he’d stepped through a door, one which would

allow to him travel through the wide seas and skies from now

on. However, he’d truly never thought of what to do in the future. After all, he was only eleven, and this was the ﬁrst time that he’d left home.

Tang Ya was secretly happy when she saw the blank look in his eyes. She sent a glance towards Bei Bei.

Bei Bei nodded towards her and said, “Little brother Huo, what kind of people does your house have?”

Huo Yuhao’s gaze instantly froze for a moment. Following that, he shook his head decisively. “There’s no one else, I’m the only one that’s left.”

Tang Ya was exulted. She blurted out, “Then that’s really too good.”

Huo Yuhao was immediately stunned, while Bei Bei had a speechless expression on his face. He knocked her head, “What’re you saying?”

Tang Ya had also realised her slip of the tongue. She glared at Bei Bei and said, “I didn’t do it on purpose! Little Yuhao, since you don’t have any ideas right now, why not join our sect?”

“A sect?” Huo Yuhao had heard of sects when he was in the Duke’s Mansion. On the Douluo Continent, the strengths of sects were extremely high, especially some Soul Master sects that had long histories. From the meaning of the word ‘sect’, the Duke’s Mansion in itself could be considered a large sect.

Tang Ya nodded her head and said seriously, “It’s a sect, and was previously the number one sect in the continent. If you join, you deﬁnitely won’t be at a disadvantage. Furthermore, our sect’s secret techniques are very suitable for you to cultivate. Since you’re all alone and you’re so young, it’d be better for you to join our sect, since everyone will take care of each other, rather than you being so bold by yourself. After all, luck can’t always be with you. What if something happens when you’re moving by yourself?”

Huo Yuhao subconsciously asked, “Sister Xiao Ya then, what is your sect called?”

Tang Ya resolutely said, “The Tang Sect. It was previously the number one sect in the continent.”

After hearing the two words ‘Tang Sect’, Huo Yuhao’s body couldn’t help but tremble. Even though the Tang Sect had started to decline, the Tang Sect still had an important place within the Douluo Continent’s history. It could even be said that there had never been a sect that could compare with it.

When he was very young, his mother had told him the many legends of the Tang Sect. The Tang Sect had been founded ten thousand years ago, and it could be said to be one of the oldest sects in history. Supposedly, the ﬁrst sect master of the Tang Sect, Tang San, had changed the entire structure of the continent, establishing the future development of the continent’s Soul Masters. The Tang Sect, at that time, had truly been the number one sect under the heavens, and not just in name. Furthermore, the legends said that Tang San had broken through the highest realm of Soul Masters, Titled Douluo, to become an existence that was on another level, one that wouldn’t die from then on. However, in the end, no one knew how he’d done it.

After ten thousand years, the legends of the Tang Sect still remained, but the sect itself had already left the stage of history. Very few people knew that the Tang Sect still had later generations of disciples; even the details of some of the Tang Sect’s legends had already become vague. However, there was

someone who had once said that, if it weren’t for Tang San

establishing the future development of the Soul Masters within the Douluo Continent ten thousand years ago, the Douluo Continent might not have been able to achieve victory over the experts of the Sun Moon Continent, and thus unify the two continents when the Sun Moon Continent had collided with the Douluo Continent four thousand years ago.

“Little brother Huo, you’ve heard of the Tang Sect?” Bei Bei asked.

Huo Yuhao nodded his head and said, “I’ve heard some of the legends about the Tang Sect. Only, I don’t know where the Tang Sect is.”

The rims of Tang Ya’s eyes suddenly turned red. “The Tang Sect doesn’t have its mansion anymore, and our foundations were snatched away. Currently, the only people of the Tang

Sect remaining are Bei Bei and I. I’m the current sect master of the Tang Sect, and Bei Bei is my founding disciple.”

“Ah?” Huo Yuhao looked at them with an astonished expression. If you just looked at their ages, Tang Ya wasn’t that much older that Bei Bei, and from their conversations, you couldn’t tell that they were master and disciple at all.

Bei Bei coughed twice and said, “You’ve also seen our situation now, little brother Huo. The Tang Sect only has the two of us right now, but we’ll deﬁnitely work hard to let the Tang Sect rise again. If you’re willing, you’re welcome to join. There’s one point that Xiao Ya was right about: The Tang Sect has a secret technique that should be completely suitable for you to cultivate, and will have many beneﬁts towards your future development.”

After hesitating for a while, Huo Yuhao asked, “Then, what do I have to do after I join the Tang Sect?”

Tang Ya replied, “You need to unceasingly raise your cultivation, and become even stronger. When the sect needs you, you need to exert yourself for the sect. I won’t boast or lie to you, our Tang Sect has truly declined as of now. However,

we still have our secret techniques. Also, another thing. Our Tang Sect was once the number one sect in the continent, so we still have a few privileges. You should’ve heard of the number one academy on the continent, Shrek Academy. Shrek Academy is extremely strict when it recruits students, but

they’re willing to give our Tang Sect an exempted spot every year. Bei Bei and I have already joined Shrek Academy, and it just so happens that there’s a space available this year. If you’re willing to join our Tang Sect, this space will belong to you. As for whether or not you can stay in Shrek Academy, that will rely on your hard work. I can give you this much. However, little Yuhao, I have a request. Once you’ve joined the Tang Sect, you’re a man of our Tang Sect for your entire life. If you decide to leave one day, you’ll have to return all of the Tang Sect’s secret techniques.”

Tang Sect...Tang Sect. Huo Yuhao’s eyes gradually brightened, and he looked seriously at Tang Ya. “Sister Xiao Ya, I agree; I’m willing to join the Tang Sect.”

Chapter 4: 'Thunderbolt' Bei Bei

Bei Bei spoke with slight astonishment, “Little brother Huo, you deﬁnitely need to think about this carefully. Joining a sect is not a small matter. Even though our Tang Sect is already on the decline, when all is said and done, we were still once the number one sect under the heavens. If you regret your decision in the future, and wish to betray the sect, no matter whether it is Tang Ya or myself, neither of us will forgive you. ”

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “Big brother Bei, I’ve already thought this matter through carefully. I no longer have any relatives, and am of a young age as well. I only learned how dangerous the outside world was after coming to the Great Star Dou Forest this time around. I want to become an outstanding individual and a powerful Soul Master. Joining the Tang Sect is no doubt a shortcut for me to achieve that. Not only does joining the Tang Sect let me enter Shrek Academy, I can furthermore receive guidance from the both of you. Moreover, I believe in the both of you. The two of you were willing to tell me of the predicaments the Tang Sect is currently facing. I can thus feel the sincerity that the both of you hold towards me. I’m willing to help the Tang Sect regain its glory together with the both of you.”

“Good, you couldn’t have said it any better.” Tang Ya took hold of Huo Yuhao, and embraced him in excitement.

Bei Bei also nodded slightly as he looked at Huo Yuhao, as if he felt the same way too. Huo Yuhao was much more mature than his peers of the same age. Although he’d only obtained his ﬁrst soul ring after he was over ten years old, and even though talent was important, hard work was absolutely necessary, let alone the fact that he was a rarely-seen owner of a spiritual- type body soul. It could be said that the Tang Sect had gotten him for a cheap price.

The faint fragrance on Tang Ya’s body caused Huo Yuhao’s face to immediately turn red. He didn’t dare to move at all, he just stood there innocently.

It was Bei Bei who again helped him out of this embarrassing situation, “Teacher Xiao Ya.”

Only now did Tang Ya loosen her embrace on Huo Yuhao’s arm. She smiled at him, and looking at her appearance, she was extremely pleased. Obviously, though she absolutely wouldn’t admit it, the very ﬁrst reason that she’d wanted Huo

Yuhao to join the Tang Sect was because of the excessively delicious roasted ﬁsh that he made...

“Little Yuhao, you should formally become my apprentice now. Our Tang Sect only has three people as of now, and we don’t have that many rules. Once you become my apprentice and call me your teacher, you’ll be a member of our Tang Sect in the future.” Tang Ya said ﬁrmly.

Huo Yuhao nodded and kneeled down in front of Tang Ya with a ‘putong’ sound. He then paid his respects to her, “Disciple Huo Yuhao greets teacher.”

Tang Ya stood there, unmoving. After letting him pay his respects three times, she helped him up.

Note: Paying his respects, for those that don’t know, means knocking his head to the ground.

“Very good, Yuhao. In the future, you’re teacher’s second disciple. Acknowledge your eldest senior brother.” As she spoke, she pointed towards Bei Bei.

“I acknowledge eldest senior brother.” Huo Yuhao bowed again, this time towards Bei Bei.

Bei Bei smiled slightly and said, “You don’t have to be so polite, junior brother. We’ll be family in the future.”

Tang Ya seemed to relax as she said, “Yuhao, you should be like Bei Bei, and refer to me as Teacher Xiao Ya in the future. However, don’t learn to be as cheeky as him, understand?”

“Yes, teacher.” After paying his respects, Huo Yuhao had clearly become slightly reserved. However, the blankness in his heart had stabilised a lot. Joining the Tang Sect had caused a sense of security to imperceptibly appear in his heart. This feeling hadn’t appeared in his heart in a very long time.

Xiao Ya ﬂipped her wrist over, and pulled out a book from somewhere. She then passed it to Huo Yuhao, “Little Yuhao, this is a copy of our Tang Sect’s Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record; our Tang Sect’s secret techniques are recorded inside. Out of them, the Mysterious Heaven Technique is the foundation to all of the other techniques contained within. If you use it to meditate, it will deﬁnitely increase your cultivation speed. Your cultivation is still shallow, so changing

your cultivation technique to the Mysterious Heaven Technique won’t have any side effects. Later on, Bei Bei and I will guide you in cultivation. Besides the Mysterious Heaven Technique, the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record also has ﬁve more secret techniques. They are, respectively: Mysterious Jade Hands, which is for training one’s hands; Purple Demon Eyes, which is for train one’s eyes; Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon, which is a capturing technique; Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks, which is a speed-type technique, and Hidden Weapon Hundred Separation, which is a method to use hidden weapons. The most famous techniques of our Tang Sect involve our hidden weapons, but you need to establish a good foundation before you can cultivate in them. What you need to do now is begin cultivating in the ﬁrst ﬁve secret techniques. In the future, I’ll teach you how to use hidden weapons.”

“Earlier, when I said that our Tang Sect had a secret technique that’d be especially suitable for you, I was referring to the Purple Demon Eyes. The Purple Demon Eyes is a technique to train one’s eyes, and you’ll be able to release an extremely strong spiritual attack after cultivating it to a certain degree. Since your martial soul is the Spirit Eyes, there shouldn’t be a more suitable technique for you than this. You should train in this technique as much as possible.”

After receiving the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record that Tang Ya had handed him, Huo Yuhao carefully placed it into the folds of his shirt, “Thanks, teacher. I’ll deﬁnitely put in a lot of effort to cultivate these techniques.”

Bei Bei tapped his belt, causing a belt that was black, and embedded with round white jades, to appear in his hands.

“Junior brother, I’ll give you this imitation of the Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges that our Ancestor Tang San once had. Just take it as a meeting present from your eldest senior brother. With it, carrying a few items on you will be much more convenient.”

Whilst speaking, Bei Bei fastened the Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges belt onto Huo Yuhao’s waist, and told him how to use it. As it turned out, the twenty four embedded jades on the belt each had a half-metre wide space that could be used to store various objects. Huo Yuhao only needed to guide his soulforce into the belt to be able to use it. It was a relatively precious soul tool.

Huo Yuhao’s poor talent was reﬂected by the state of his body, but he was extremely smart. After a few tries, he

managed to easily control the Twenty Four Moonlit Bridges. However, a lot of his soulforce had been drained while he was learning to control it.

Tang Ya said, “Little Yuhao, the reason why I followed your eldest senior brother out here was the same as yours; it was to kill a soul beast for its soul ring. Follow us, I’ll take you back to Shrek Academy once I’m done.”

“Yes, Teacher.” Huo Yuhao hurriedly gave a respectful reply.

Tang Ya giggled and said, “Although you’ve already taken me as your master, you don’t have to be so reserved. Since the Tang Sect only has us three, what’s the point of us being so old- fashioned?”

Bei Bei unhappily said, “With a teacher like you, it’d be a wonder if your disciples were able to be reserved. It’s getting late, let’s hurry up. Hopefully our luck will be better, and we’ll be able to ﬁnd and kill a suitable soul beast on the outskirts of the Great Star Dou Forest.”

“Yeah.” Tang Ya nodded and said, “Let’s go.”

Tang Ya walked in front, while Bei Bei remained behind, pulling Huo Yuhao along by the hand. The three of them sped up simultaneously, and rushed towards the Great Star Dou Forest.

After obtaining his ﬁrst soul ring, Huo Yuhao clearly felt that his own cultivation had risen greatly. This was especially so for his body, allowing him to be much more relaxed during the journey. However, his speed was still greatly different compared to Tang Ya and Bei Bei’s. A gentle ﬂow of soulforce ﬂowed out from Bei Bei’s hand into his, practically carrying him along on their journey. On the other hand, Huo Yuhao himself didn’t need to expend much strength.

While they ran, Bei Bei spoke to Huo Yuhao, “Junior brother, our Tang Sect’s Mysterious Heaven Technique is presently one of the continent’s best cultivation techniques. As long as you cultivate it diligently, you’ll deﬁnitely reap some beneﬁts. I’ll tell you the tricks needed to circulate the Mysterious Heaven Technique. You must remember them.”

“Okay.” Huo Yuhao nodded his head, and listened to Bei Bei’s explanation seriously.

Not only was Bei Bei’s outward appearance scholarly, he also had an extremely gentle and meticulous temperament. When he explained the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s cultivation technique to Huo Yuhao, he patiently explained all of the particulars of the technique in detail. When they came across an area that Huo Yuhao didn’t understand, he would give an explanation that was both easy and simple to understand, which caused Huo Yuhao to quickly become immersed in the fantastic technique.

Tang Ya, who was walking in front, couldn’t help but stick her tongue out, because she was completely certain that she’d be unable to explain things as orderly as Bei Bei was, if she were the one to teach Huo Yuhao. As the sect master of the Tang Sect, she herself was truly unqualiﬁed as a teacher.

Bei Bei and Huo Yuhao continued onwards, with one person talking and one person listening. Almost two hours unknowingly passed.

The large road had already disappeared, and their surroundings were now ﬁlled with dense forest. The air had turned fresher and cleaner, but there seemed to be a faint serious aura emitted from the depths of the forest.

“This is the general method used to cultivate this technique. As for the speciﬁcs, you’ll have to slowly get a feel for them after trying it out for yourself. If you have anything that you don’t understand, you can ask me.” Bei Bei said to Huo Yuhao.

“Thanks, eldest senior brother.” Huo Yuhao’s admiration towards Bei Bei had continuously risen while Bei Bei had been explaining everything to him; naturally, his respect for Bei Bei had grown as well.

At this moment, Tang Ya, who’d been walking in front, suddenly let out a cold snort. Her footsteps suddenly turned

illusory, and her body instantly turned into consecutive afterimages as she pounced towards a large tree on the group’s right. The only thing that Huo Yuhao could faintly see was a few cold lights that ﬂickered outwards. A Wind Baboon, similar to the one that had almost killed him previously, fell from a treetop.

Xiao Ya unhappily said, “These Wind Baboons are simply the most detestable creatures. Not only do they take the initiative to attack, they even launch sneak attacks.”

Huo Yuhao hadn’t used his Spirit Eyes earlier, so he was entirely unable to see how Xiao Ya had moved, “Teacher Xiao Ya, did you use a soul skill just now?”

Xiao Ya was slightly proud of herself as she replied, “It wasn’t a soul skill, but the synergy of our Tang Sect’s Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks and hidden weapons. Wasn’t it awesome? If you cultivate properly, you’ll also be able to use them together in the future.”

“Xiao Ya, careful.” Bei Bei’s expression suddenly changed. He suddenly raised his right hand and made an illusory grabbing movement towards Tang Ya. Clearly, they’d worked together

frequently, as Tang Ya’s toes tapped the ground lightly, and her body ﬂew up. She seemed to be weightless as she was pulled over by the absorption force exerted on her by Bei Bei’s hand.

A pitch black shadow instantly fell to the ground and let out a light noise. Following that, a strong sweet smell assaulted the senses of everyone present.

Huo Yuhao’s mind felt dizzy, but a wave of icy air instantly surged through his body, sealing his mouth and nose. An icy mist ﬂew slightly outwards from Huo Yuhao’s mouth and nose, causing the sweet-smelling poison gas that he’d previously inhaled to be dispersed into the air.

An ice attribute? My second martial soul? Huo Yuhao immediately questioned the stream of icy air’s origins. However, he clearly hadn’t controlled it.

Just as he was beginning to feel pleased because of his second martial soul’s effects, Tang Ya had been pulled closer by the absorption force of Bei Bei’s hand. She used her right hand to press against Bei Bei’s shoulder, causing her delicate body to curl up and then ﬂip around in midair to land behind Bei Bei.

Two light rings simultaneously rose up from Tang Ya’s legs, the bright yellow colours moving up and down in a rhythmical manner. Her two soul rings were unexpectedly of the hundred- year rank.

In that instant, long blue vines were rapidly released from Tang Ya’s body. One of them just so happened to wrap around Huo Yuhao’s waist, while even more dispersed into the distance.

However, compared to Tang Ya, Bei Bei, who was standing in front, shocked Huo Yuhao even more.

Up to this point, in his mind, this eldest senior brother of his was a gentle, scholarly person. He always wore a gentle smile when he was beside Tang Ya, and had an extremely approachable feel. However, at this moment, he’d changed into a completely different person.

When Xiao Ya had jumped over his head, a dazzling blue light had shone from in-between Bei Bei’s eyebrows. Following that, the blue light instantly expanded outwards from his eyebrows, and spread to his entire body. The ﬁerce blue light resembled several small snakes as they exploded out, surrounding and

moving all over his body. Except for the blue lightning symbol that had appeared on his forehead, only a single change had appeared on his body due to his martial spirit.

However, just this one, simple change caused Huo Yuhao to have a completely new understanding towards Soul Masters.

The part of his body that had changed was his right arm. His right sleeve had turned completely into ash due to the expansion of his right arm, which had suddenly increased in length by more than half a foot. His entire arm had become extremely thick, and was now covered in violet-blue scales. His hand had turned into a claw that was also covered with the same scales, while every joint in his hand had become extremely thick. The violet-blue lightning that circled his body gathered and separated unceasingly. However, his soul rings, two of which were yellow and one of which was purple, weren’t like those of an Soul Masters; they didn’t circled around his his right arm instead of his entire body, the place where the unusual changes had appeared.

These three rings signiﬁed that he was a Soul Elder. His eldest senior brother, who was only four to ﬁve years older than him, was unexpectedly already a Soul Elder-level expert, who was already above the rank of thirty! Furthermore, his

soul rings were two hundred-year ones and a thousand-year one, which was the best possible combination.

For soul rings, white represented a ten-year soul ring, yellow represented a hundred years soul ring, purple represented a thousand year soul ring, and black represented something even higher, a ten thousand year soul ring. Besides these, if the mighty hundred thousand year soul beasts, such as the ones who’d persecuted the Skydream Iceworm, were turned into soul rings, they’d be red in colour.

Huo Yuhao had already asked them their ages. Bei Bei and Tang Ya were both the same age—ﬁfteen. However, Bei Bei was slightly older, if you looked at the month that they were born in. Considering the fact that he’d reached the Soul Elder realm at such an age, and that he had three soul rings of this level, using the words ‘heaven’s chosen’ to describe Bei Bei couldn’t be any more suitable. If you looked at their cultivations, he’d clearly surpassed Tang Ya, who was only a Soul Grandmaster that was above rank twenty, despite being his master.

“Gua, gua...” After letting out this strange cry, the shadow that had landed on the ground instantly shot out, pouncing towards Bei Bei.

Bei Bei snorted coldly, and a layer of purple light appeared in his eyes. He placed his thick right arm in front of him horizontally, causing a web of lightning to immediately cover the space in front of him, which prevented the shadow from passing.

“Ka la—” Under the rumbling sound of lightning, the shadow rebounded backwards, while Bei Bei staggered three or four steps back at the same time. The expression on his face changed slightly; Clearly, his opponent’s strength had surpassed his prediction.

“It’s a Mandala Snake! Wah, it’s a thousand-year one too, this is too good! Bei Bei, I want this one.” Tang Ya wasn’t astonished, but instead happy as her lovable voice let out a loud cry.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao had also clearly seen the shadow that had ambushed them. It was a three-metre-long snake, whose entire body was pink. There was also a small protrusion on its forehead that faintly resembled a ﬂower.

Bei Bei clearly didn’t share Tang Ya’s excitement, and instead had a serious expression on his face. Although he was already a

Soul Elder-level expert, it was still hard for him to easily achieve victory over a thousand-year soul beast. However, the reason that it was possible for him to do so in the ﬁrst place was because of his sufﬁciently strong martial spirit. If an ordinary Soul Elder were to see a thousand-year soul beast, the only thing that they could do was turn around and run.

“Xiao Ya, take care of Yuhao.” Bei Bei let out a low roar, causing the ﬁrst soul rings on his right arm to ﬂicker. Under the strong undulations of his soulforce, a foot-long violet-blue dragon claw condensed and shot out towards the Mandala Snake.

This was Thunderous Dragon Claw, Bei Bei’s ﬁrst soul skill.

However, the Mandala Snake was extremely crafty. It had previously been entrenched in the ground, but it suddenly shot into midair the moment that Bei Bei’s attack activated. Its long tail suddenly whipped about in midair, immediately resembling a pink-coloured shadow as it pounced towards Bei Bei.

Bei Bei didn’t retreat, but instead advanced. He instantly leaned his body downwards, while using the Ghost Shadow

Perplexing Tracks to ﬂash forward. The lightning dragon claw that had already ﬂown out unexpectedly turned around in midair to pursue the Mandala Snake from behind. At the same time, his second soul ring lit up. Countless snakes of lightning suddenly expanded simultaneously, turning into lightning arrows that ﬂashed through the air, forming a dense, thunderous web that tried to envelop the Mandala Snake.

The previous Thunderous Dragon Claw had only been used to make the Mandala Snake move, while the net formed from Bei Bei’s second soul skill, Vigorous Thunderbolt, was the true trap. As long as the Mandala Snake was trapped by the net of lightning, the Thunderous Dragon Claw could catch up to it from behind. Even if the Mandala Snake wasn’t severely wounded, it would at least give Bei Bei a decisive opportunity.

However, a thousand-year soul beast’s strength was absolutely not that simple. As the lightning web closed in on the Mandala Snake, it spat out a pink mist from its mouth, which caused a smell ten times sweeter than earlier to spread out.

Tang Ya took Huo Yuhao with her as she rapidly retreated, for fear that they would both would be affected by the mist. This was also the ﬁrst time that worry had appeared on her charming face.

When the lightning arrows formed from the Vigorous Thunderbolt skill were sprayed by that pink mist, it was as if

they’d been submerged; their might was still present, but it had instantly become fragmented.

The Mandala Snake displayed its valiant side at this moment. Its body suddenly straightened out in midair, and it proceeded to powerfully smash through the lightning web. It had unexpectedly managed to open a gap in the web made by Vigorous Thunderbolt. When it ﬂew out from the web, it swung its tail, causing the pink light at the tip of its tail to brighten. It then whipped the Thunderous Dragon Claw behind it, loudly shattering Bei Bei’s ﬁrst soul skill.

However, Bei Bei’s attacks weren’t completely useless. As someone who had one of the strongest beast souls, his attack power was at the peak of soul masters at the same rank as him. Although the Mandala Snake was valiant, a ﬁne layer of lightning had appeared on its body after it had consecutively broken through two of Bei Bei’s soul skills. When it landed on the ground, it was unable to continue releasing attacks.

At the same time, Bei Bei didn’t proceed to launch anymore attacks. He didn’t dare to inhale the toxic pink mist that had spread out into the air either. As he rapidly retreated, a porcelain bottle appeared in his hand. After dumping a pill out for himself, he threw the bottle towards Tang Ya.

Tang Ya grabbed the porcelain bottle and immediately dumped out two pills. She ate one pill, and shoved the other into Huo Yuhao’s mouth.

“Bei Bei, I’ll help you.” While chewing the pill, Tang Ya said.

Bei Bei shook his head and replied, “This fellow is very troublesome, I’m afraid that I’ll have to plan on a battle of attrition. There’s a very high possibility of soul beasts appearing in the surroundings, so you should be careful. I’ll take him on alone. Also, take care of Yuhao.”

This was the second time that Bei Bei had reminded Tang Ya to take care of Huo Yuhao, which caused a warm feeling to surge through his heart. Throughout his entire life, Bei Bei was the ﬁrst person other than his mother to treat him this well. Due to this, he couldn’t help but be moved.

I want to help eldest senior brother; I’m not trash.

Huo Yuhao rapidly poured his soulforce into his Spirit Eyes, and the soul skills that he’d just obtained immediately ﬂashed

through his mind.

A faint golden light appeared in his deep blue eyes once again, and his jade-white soul ring started to rise up from his feet.

If you looked at them just from the surface, you couldn’t see any signs of anything happening. However, the next moment, both Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s bodies simultaneously shook, an astonished look appearing in their eyes.

From their point of view, time seemed to have slowed down. Everything around them had become exceptionally clear, and a large amount of information instantly appeared inside of their minds wherever they looked. When Bei Bei looked attentively at the Mandala Snake, the distance between him and the snake appeared in his mind; even the minute changes in strength from every one of its muscle appeared in his mind. All of the subtleties and minute details had appeared clearly in the depths of his mind.

Not only that, but they didn’t even need to use their eyes to see anything in a thirty metre radius around them. All of their surroundings had appeared inside of their minds as three-

dimensional shapes. Furthermore, any subtle changes that occurred would immediately be reﬂected in their minds.

This was...

No matter whether it was Bei Bei or Tang Ya, they both immediately thought of Huo Yuhao. Was this Huo Yuhao’s ﬁrst soul skill? Why could it be so mystical? With the assistance of a detection ability like this, facing any opponent would be far, far, too effortless—especially with an opponent like the Mandala Snake, which was a soul beast specialised in speed. For a person like Bei Bei who had sufﬁcient attack power, there wasn’t anything else that could be as helpful as an ability to predict his opponent’s movements and seize a key opportunity.

This ten-year soul ring’s skill was actually so strong? Its auxiliary ability was this outstanding? Sure enough, it deserved its name as a rarely seen mutated spiritual-attribute martial soul!

Huo Yuhao naturally didn’t know that both Bei Bei and Tang Ya had credited the mysticality of the skill that he was currently using on his mutated martial soul. However, in reality, he wasn’t using one soul skill, but two.

The two skills that he was using were the ﬁrst skill that the million-year soul ring had given him, Spiritual Detection, combined with the second skill, Spiritual Sharing.

These two skills were auxiliary-type skills, and this was the ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao had used them. Although he hadn’t been able to completely comprehend the subtleties behind the two skills, he was still able to exhibit most of their enormous effects.

With the current strength of his body, the might of the Skydream Iceworm’s soul rings were roughly equivalent to that of a four hundred year soul beast’s. Because of this, the range of his Spiritual Detection and Spiritual Sharing was roughly thirty metres. However, with his current power, the maximum number of people that he could simultaneously share his Spiritual Detection ability with was three. His strength wouldn’t be enough if there were more people.

His soulforce consumption while using these two skills wasn’t great, but Huo Yuhao had to use a certain amount of spiritual power too. It could be said that he was using both spiritual power and soulforce to jointly support these two skills. With his current level of cultivation, lasting at least an

hour wouldn’t be a problem at all. The exact amount of time that he could last could only be discovered later on, through testing.

A low rumble suddenly reverberated from Bei Bei’s body. His whole body emitted strong, violet-blue lightning, and the scales on his right arm rapidly spread outwards towards his body, encasing the right part of his chest within them. This caused the aura released from his body to instantly rise abruptly. His third soul ring, the purple one, also released a dazzling radiance at this moment.

This was the skill from his thousand-year soul ring, ‘Thunderous Fury’.

As a person who possessed a beast soul with the strongest attack power, his third soul skill, ‘Thunderous Fury’, was capable of instantly raising the effects of Bei Bei’s soulforce attacks by more than ﬁfty percent. Furthermore, the strength of his lightning attribute had also doubled. Although this wasn’t a direct attack skill, it still managed to increase Bei Bei’s condition to an extraordinarily strong realm. Even some four- ringed Soul Ancestor experts wouldn’t be his match if they had weaker martial spirits.

Although Bei Bei wasn’t that old, his amount of combat experience was extremely plentiful. After obtaining the support of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection and Spiritual Sharing, he knew that his chance had come. Since he couldn’t be sure of how long Huo Yuhao could maintain this state, he immediately decided to use all of his strength at once by releasing his strongest ability.

A violet-blue lightning bolt curled around the dragon claw that his right hand had turned into, and a Thunderous Dragon Claw about twice the size of the previous one appeared around his hand. However, Bei Bei didn’t directly release it this time. Instead, his body ﬂashed as he pounced towards the thousand- year Mandala Snake.

The Mandala Snake was also crafty. Its thousand years of cultivation had caused it to possess a certain amount of intelligence. The aura released from Bei Bei’s body had already caused it to feel a considerably high level of danger. Since itself unable to harm its opponent anymore, it suddenly spat out a mouthful of toxic mist towards Bei Bei, before turning around to run away.

“Humph!” Bei Bei snorted coldly, and the light in his eyes suddenly turned slightly profound. A layer of fragmented

lightning suddenly burst outwards from his body, forcibly dispersing the toxic mist. At the same time, the Thunderous Dragon Claw in his right hand shot out towards the space diagonally to the left of him.

At this moment, the effects of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection fully appeared. The reason that Bei Bei could predict his opponent’s movements and strike ﬁrst was because of the Spiritual Detection that Huo Yuhao had shared with him. When the Mandala Snake sprung forwards, it ﬂed diagonally to the left in front of Bei Bei. However, at this moment, an enormous absorption force appeared in the path that it had taken in order to escape, and it was almost as if it had simply delivered itself right into Bei Bei’s hands. Once the enormous absorption force caught the Mandala Snake, its forward momentum was immediately dissolved, and it was sucked towards Bei Bei.

With the threat of life and death looming over its head, the Mandala Snake immediately exploded out with power. A ﬁerce pink light immediately shone from the top of its head, and it let out several sharp hisses. The ﬂower-like protrusion on the top of its head suddenly exploded, and an arrow made of pink blood ﬂew straight at Bei Bei.

However, Bei Bei had already responded to this in advance. The instant before the ﬂower-like protrusion exploded, the Thunderous Dragon Claw on his right arm had already

launched a ﬁerce attack. It landed on the body of the Mandala Snake in the same instant that the protrusion exploded.

The arrow made of pink blood had only ﬂown several inches before it was swept away by the explosion. However, Bei Bei felt cold sweat form. The Thunderous Dragon Claw that he’d released had actually turned pink when it touched the pink blood. If it weren’t for the fact that he was able to predict his opponent’s movements, and seize a decisive opportunity, it might’ve been very troublesome for him if he’d been infected by that blood arrow.

Bei Bei’s ﬁgure ﬂashed as he instantly charged forward. This time, the thousand-year Mandala Snake had no countermeasures left. It was accurately grabbed by Bei Bei’s right claw when it was only seven inches away from him. It still attempted to use its body to wrap around Bei Bei’s, but directly lost consciousness after being struck by the terrifying lightning from Bei Bei’s Vigorous Thunderbolt.

The thousand-year Mandala Snake was widely known for its tyrannical body and its lightning-like speed. However, once it fell into the hands of Bei Bei, who possessed an extraordinarily powerful martial spirit, its defensive power wasn’t worth mentioning at all. Under the state of Thunderous Fury, Bei

Bei’s dragon claw let out a ﬁerce blow, partially crushing its head. Its bones seemed as if they could be crushed at any time.

“Xiao Ya.” Bei Bei let out a low roar.

Tang Ya naturally wouldn’t let go of such a good opportunity. Carrying Huo Yuhao, she rapidly approached the Mandala Snake. A half-foot long throwing knife appeared in her hand, which she then ﬂung directly into the Mandala Snake’s mouth that Bei Bei had pinched open, ending the life of the thousand- year Mandala Snake.

The violet-blue light from his lightning vanished as Bei Bei ﬁnally relaxed, while a purple soul ring slowly condensed and formed above the Mandala Snake’s head.

Tang Ya looked towards Bei Bei with an excited expression, and Bei Bei nodded back at her, “Quickly start. I didn’t think that we’d meet a thousand-year soul beast at the edge of the Great Star Dou Forest. The quality of soul beasts in the Great Star Dou Forest has really increased.”

Tang Ya giggled and said, “I didn’t think that it’d go this smoothly. Protect me.” Whilst speaking, she rapidly sat down in a cross-legged position beside the Mandala Snake. A blue, gem-like luster shone in her right hand, and she slowly raised her empty hands. After gently tapping the purple soul ring above the Mandala Snake, it was immediately sucked into the blue light in her hand. Then, it merged with her body.

The smile on Tang Ya’s face suddenly vanished as she began to concentrate on absorbing the soul ring. Only now did Huo Yuhao realize that Tang Ya had already reached the bottleneck of the thirtieth rank. The reason why she and Bei Bei had come to the Great Star Dou Forest must’ve been to look for a suitable third soul ring for her. Only, what was Teacher Xiao Ya’s martial soul? A blue vine?

“Xiao Ya’s martial soul is Bluesilver Grass.” Bei Bei said gently, as if he’d seen through the doubt in Huo Yuhao’s heart.

Huo Yuhao was astonished as he replied, “The Bluesilver Grass? The same martial soul as the person in the Tang Sect’s legends?”

Bei Bei nodded his head and said, “Ten thousand years ago, the ﬁrst generation sect master of the Tang Sect relied on his Bluesilver Grass martial soul to forge the Tang Sect’s glory. Afterwards, he became a God and left. However, he didn’t leave any descendants in the Tang Sect. For the sake of remembering him, the later generations of the Tang Sect stubbornly gloriﬁed Bluesilver Grass when choosing the next sect master. In addition to that, the Tang Sect would put much more effort into nurturing Soul Masters who possessed Bluesilver Grass. Unfortunately, the facts have proven themselves. Bluesilver Grass isn’t something that just anyone can unleash great power with. Ever since the almighty legend of the Tang Sect left, the Tang Sect hasn’t had any more experts with Bluesilver Grass that were able to stand at the pinnacle of the continent. However, this tradition has continued to be passed down, and nobody can change it. Xiao Ya’s innate talent to use her Bluesilver Grass is already rather good, so I hope that she can make some sort of a breakthrough.

Huo Yuhao was slightly curious as he asked, “Eldest senior brother, if that year’s Tang Sect was truly as strong as the legends say, why did it head down the road of decline?”

Bei Bei smiled slightly and replied, “You’ll gradually understand the answer to this question once you arrive at Shrek Academy. There were many internal and external

problems. Currently, the only people left in the Tang Sect are the few of us, but in fact, this isn’t a bad thing at all. At the very least, it’ll be very hard to use certain restrictions on us. On the contrary, junior brother, you’ve truly given me a great surprise!”

Huo Yuhao naturally understood that Bei Bei was referring to the soul skills that he’d just used. He couldn’t help but scratch his head in embarrassment. “I was just trying to use it, it’s good that it was a bit helpful.”

Bei Bei ﬁrmly said, “How could that only be considered ‘a bit’ helpful? I don’t normally have the assurance to face a thousand-year soul beast. If it weren’t for that fantastic assistance from your spiritual power, it would’ve been very hard for me to escape in one piece.”

Previously, when his confrontation with the Mandala Snake had reached its last crucial point, he’d relied on Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection skill to help him accurately predict the Mandala Snake’s every movement. Not only that, but the most important moment was when the Mandala Snake had detonated its crown.

The moment before it happened, Bei Bei had clearly felt a kind of bright feeling surround the Mandala Snake’s crown within the Spiritual Detection world. He hadn’t been able to see it with his eyes at all. This all came from the feeling that he’d felt from the three-dimensional world of Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection. Because of this, he’d been able to near- instantly react subconsciously. If not, he might not have been able to retreat in one piece if the toxic blood had polluted him.

This also made Bei Bei aware of how enormous of a role Huo Yuhao’s skill had had during the battle. He made a conservative estimation; if he had the assistance of Huo Yuhao’s skill during a ﬁght with an opponent, his overall strength would be increased by twenty to thirty percent minimum. This was a phenomenal increase! Furthermore, this was only Huo Yuhao’s ﬁrst soul skill.

Huo Yuhao still had some lingering fear in his heart as he said, “That snake was truly too ﬁerce. Eldest senior brother, what soul beast was it”

Bei Bei replied, “It’s called a Mandala Snake, and its toxicity is extremely strong. Not only does it have a numbing effect, it also has a strong destructive effect towards one’s mental state. It was one of the most terrifying existences amongst poison-

type soul beasts. Its body was extremely tough, and ordinary blades will have difﬁculty wounding it. Its only weaknesses are its mouth and eyes. However, the Mandala Snake will always protect these two exrtemely well. Furthermore, its speed is incomparably quick. However, the most terrifying part of this snake is its attack. Once it clearly identiﬁes its opponent, it rarely gives up.”

Chapter 5: First Glimpse Through The Gate

“Because of its innate strength and toxicity, the Mandala Snake doesn’t have many natural predators. Before they reach a thousand years of age, their bodies will have a dark green colour, and they’ll grow a metre longer for every hundred years they live. By the time they’re approaching the thousand- year level, their bodies can be as long as ten metres in length. Once they break through, the energy inside of their bodies will condense, and they’ll continuously molt. Not only will the colour of their bodies change from dark green to pink, their bodies will also simultaneously shrink back down to one metre. Afterwards, they’ll grow another metre every hundred years. After reaching two thousand years of age, they’ll once again shrink back down to one metre. However, the pink colour of their skin will become deeper. If we look at the colour and length of this Mandala Snake, we can see that it should’ve been over one thousand three hundred years old. If it weren’t for your help, I’m afraid that I’d’ve had to suffer a bit to kill it.”

Naturally, Bei Bei didn’t say that it actually wouldn’t have been too hard for him and Tang Ya to team up and kill the Mandala Snake—if Huo Yuhao hadn’t been there.

After listening to Bei Bei’s explanation, Huo Yuhao’s knowledge grew. “This Mandala Snake is actually that mysterious. Then, would it perhaps shed again, once it’s reached ten thousand years in age?”

Bei Bei nodded and replied, “A ten thousand year Mandala Snake will turn yellow. That would be a truly terrifying existence. Even Soul King experts won’t dare to rashly provoke a ten thousand year Mandala Snake if they encounter one. You’d need a Soul Emperor, at the very least, to be able to beat it easily.

“Junior brother, since Xiao Ya is currently absorbing her soul ring, tell me about your soul skill. What’s the name of the soul skill that you just used, and how long can you maintain it for? This is very important information.”

Huo Yuhao had previously heard the Skydream Iceworm’s reminder, and knew that he couldn’t let him be revealed. After pondering about it for a little while, he said, “Eldest senior brother, the skill that I just used is called ‘Spiritual Detection Sharing’. You should have been able to sense its range: it can only currently be of help within a roughly thirty metre radius. When my soulforce increases, its radius should also increase. I

don’t know how long I can maintain it, but I feel that its soulforce consumption doesn’t seem to be too large.”

“No way.” Bei Bei looked at him, ﬂabbergasted. “The soulforce consumption of a skill that has such an enormous effect like yours ‘doesn’t seem to be too large’? Your Spirit Eyes seem to be too strong. Furthermore, your soul ring was only obtained from a ten year Wind Baboon! This is almost too impossible to believe. The soul masters of the Douluo Continent have researched martial souls for over ten thousand years, but there’s never been a situation like yours recorded within any of the books I’ve read. This is truly hard to imagine.”

Huo Yuhao lowered his head and said, “I don’t know what’s going on either.”

After Bei Bei pondered the matter himself for a while, he revealed a smile and said, “Junior brother, you don’t need to think too deeply about it; a strong soul skill is always a good thing. With the support of this soul skill, I’m afraid that any soul master will be willing to work with you in the future. However, junior brother, you’re a spiritual-type soul master. In the future, do you plan to walk the path of an auxiliary system soul master, or a control system soul master?”

Huo Yuhao was stunned for a moment. “I don’t know either.”

Bei Bei said, “Choosing the path your cultivation will take is very important. This directly relates to the the soul skills that you’ll choose for your future soul rings, as well as the direction of your cultivation. Although you, a spiritual-type soul master, have only just obtained your ﬁrst soul ring, you’ve already revealed your martial soul’s strong potential. If you become a simple auxiliary system soul master, I feel that it would be a bit of a waste. Although I don’t know what kind of spiritual soul skills you’ll manage obtain in the future, I’m inclined towards making you become a control system soul master. You’ll have to put in a lot of time and energy into your spiritual control, but if everything goes smoothly, you might become the core of your team in the future.”

“A team? Do soul masters have to join a team?” Huo Yuhao asked curiously. Since his youth, he’d always relied on himself for cultivation, and had had to experience everything for himself. No one but his mother had ever taught him anything. Now that he’d joined the Tang Sect, in his opinion, his eldest senior brother had become more important than a teacher. It had only been a short period of time, but Bei Bei had taught him many things.

Bei Bei patiently explained, “Our profession as soul masters has developed quite a bit after so many years, but the idea of forming a team was entirely created by the almighty founder of our Tang Sect, ten thousand years ago. At that time, he and his companions were called ‘Shrek’s Seven Monsters’. The seven of them all had formidable abilities, and could release an even stronger ﬁghting strength when they worked together. From then on, cooperation between soul masters became the only path for their development. After all, the strength of an individual is miniscule. For example, your cooperation with me just now. It allowed me to be much more relaxed during the battle. Xiao Ya and I also have some combination tactics. Conversely, the number of soul masters within a team normally shouldn’t surpass ten. Out of that team, there would be a battle-type soul master who’s responsible for defense, an assault system soul master who’s responsible for attacks, and a control system soul master who both commands and controls the battleﬁeld. There are also auxiliary system tool-type soul masters, auxiliary system food-type soul masters, agility system soul masters, along with many other types of soul masters. They all have different uses in a team.”

Huo Yuhao seemed to have suddenly understood something as he said, “Then, is eldest senior brother an assault system soul master?”

Bei Bei smiled as he nodded and said, “My martial soul is the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon; It’s considered a rather strong martial soul amongst beast souls. It specialises in attacks. On the other hand, Xiao Ya’s martial soul is Bluesilver Grass, which will allow her to become a control system soul master like the almighty ancestor of the Tang Sect from the legends. However, her controlling abilities mostly appear within the Bluesilver Grass. If you can also become a control system soul master, we can rely on the combination of your spiritual controlling abilities and Xiao Ya’s Bluesilver Grass. With two control system soul masters, we won’t even need an auxiliary system tool-type soul master to be able to form a strong team.”

Huo Yuhao nodded seriously, “Eldest senior brother, I’ll listen to your advice. Then, I’ll work hard to become a control system soul master. Only, my natural talent isn’t too good... My cultivation speed is very slow…” After speaking to this point, he couldn’t help but lower his head. When he compared himself, who was already eleven but only had one ring, to Bei Bei or Tang Ya, his talent was quite disappointing.

Bei Bei rubbed Huo Yuhao’s head and smiled. “Talent is only one part of success. In the past, there weren’t always people who could guide you on your cultivation path. Add on to that the fact that you didn’t have a suitable cultivation technique, and it’s already very commendable that you have been able to

reach your current situation with hard work alone. Furthermore, your martial soul in and of itself is pretty good, which means that your potential in the future will be very great. Thus, you don’t have to be so remorseful. Since you have the time right now, it’d be better for you to cultivate more. As long as you’re able to break through to the thirtieth rank before the age of twenty, you’ll have hopes of becoming a strong soul master. No matter whether it’s me or Xiao Ya, we’ll both do our best to help you.”

“Thank you, eldest senior brother.” Only a touched expression remained on Huo Yuhao’s face.

Bei Bei gently pat his shoulder. “Meeting you might also be Xiao Ya and I’s good fortune, since we were able to resolve the issue of her advancement in rank so quickly. After she ﬁnishes absorbing her soul ring, we can return to the academy. This place isn’t particularly suitable for cultivation. You can recall the Mysterious Heaven Technique that I told you about earlier right now, and can start cultivating it once we’ve reached a safe area.”

“Yes.” Huo Yuhao replied respectfully. In his heart, Bei Bei had already become slightly more of a teacher to him than Tang Ya.

“Oh, right, junior brother. Didn’t you say that you were unclear about how long you could maintain your Spiritual Detection Sharing for? Why don’t we experiment to see? This will relate to our future cooperation during battles, as well as let you understand your own ability, and familiarize you with your new skill.”

Under Bei Bei’s suggestion, Huo Yuhao released his Spiritual Detection Sharing once again. A faint golden light ﬂickered out from his eyes, and a three-dimensional image that was thirty- metres in radius appeared inside of his and Bei Bei’s minds.

Huo Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing was ﬂawless, and was able to clearly differentiate any subtle changes within that thirty-metre radius.

The more Bei Bei experienced it, the more astonished he became. This Spiritual Detection Sharing wasn’t just an auxiliary detection skill, but was like another brain for him to make decisions with. Every minute detail within a radius of thirty metres had essentially been revealed, and there were absolutely no dead angles. While he was under this skill’s

effect, it was as if he had countless eyes that were observing the situation from various angles with the highest level of carefulness!

The thing that made him even more astonished was that Huo Yuhao seemed to be extremely relaxed while he had this soul skill activated; he hadn’t even shown any traces of exhaustion. While they shared the effects of his Spiritual Detection Sharing, they could even feel some of the changes occurring inside of Tang Ya’s body as she merged with her soul ring.

Tang Ya’s ﬁgure seemed to have become even more slender, yet her aura was becoming richer and more powerful at an astonishing speed. There was also a luster that had appeared on her skin, while her qi and blood had become more exuberant.

In the blink of an eye, ﬁfteen minutes had passed, yet Huo Yuhao’s face had only turned slightly pale.

Bei Bei inwardly gasped with praise. A spiritual skill that lasted so long—it was already enough to be used in battle. Furthermore, not only could Little Yuhao’s Spiritual Detection Sharing be used on the battleﬁeld, it also had many other uses.

For example, while they were on a dangerous adventure or hunting soul beasts, this was a rarely seen and extremely practical ability!

Finally, after Huo Yuhao had maintained his skill for almost an hour, he was unable to persevere any longer. His body ﬂashed as he ended his Spiritual Detection Sharing. He felt stabs of pain in his mind, and the strong sense of dizziness nearly caused him to fall down. He hurriedly sat down in a cross-legged position, and immediately started meditating to recover his lost soulforce and spiritual power.

This wasn’t the ﬁrst time that Huo Yuhao had experienced bitter pain due to an overdraft of his spiritual power. The feeling of his mind becoming blank was deﬁnitely not a comfortable feeling.

Bei Bei had been quietly observing him the entire time. When he saw that Huo Yuhao didn’t collapse after his exhaustion of power, but rather tiredly sat down in a cross- legged position to meditate instead, a smile couldn’t help but appear on his face. He silently nodded his head. Compared to seeing someone’s talent, Bei Bei preferred to look at someone’s temperament. In his mind, this junior brother of his had undoubtedly passed this test.

The time needed for someone to absorb a thousand year soul ring was considerably long, so Bei Bei walked around their surroundings in order to spread out some medicine that could chase away soul beasts. Their luck was actually quite good; only a few ten-year and hundred-year soul beasts appeared as Tang Ya cultivated, but they were all chased away by Bei Bei. Furthermore, they didn’t encounter any other existences at the

level of a thousand year soul beast, so the process was more

frightening than truly dangerous.

“Phew…” After exhaling deeply, Tang Ya slowly opened her eyes, causing a radiant light to appear inside of her bright pupils. The energies in her body had all risen by an extremely large amount.

Along the path of a soul master’s cultivation, the thirtieth rank was an important threshold. Being able to cross this threshold allowed one to step into the Soul Elder realm. Reaching the Soul Elder realm signiﬁed that one was a true expert that had an immeasurable future. Many Soul Masters who had rather poor talent were unable to break through the bottleneck of the thirtieth rank, even after using up all of their life’s energy.

“I succeeded.” Tang Ya jumped up excitedly. Following the stimulation of her soulforce, two yellow soul rings and one purple soul ring rapidly rose up from her feet. The most eye- catching sight was naturally the thousand-year soul ring. The bright purple colour released an aura ﬁlled with grandeur; Tang Ya’s strength had already entered a completely different level from this moment on.

Bei Bei smiled as he said, “Xiao Ya, congratulations.”

Tang Ya let out a cheerful cry as she suddenly pounced on Bei Bei, giving him a big hug. “Bei Bei, thank you.”

Bei Bei hugged her delicate body, and a slightly doting look appeared within the smile on his face. “Since I’ve promised to help you achieve your dreams, I’ll naturally do just that.”

As Tang Ya rested in Bei Bei’s embrace, she inadvertently saw a pair of large, astonished eyes looking at her, causing her to suddenly remember that there was another person present. She instantly broke free from Bei Bei’s embrace, and looked at Huo Yuhao, whose Spirit Eyes were ﬂickering, with a slightly embarrassed look as she said, “What’re you looking at? Haven’t you seen love between a teacher and a student before?”

Huo Yuhao answered with an extremely honest tone, “I’ve never seen it before!” When he saw Bei Bei and Tang Ya hugging each other, a indescribable sense of envy suddenly appeared in his heart. However, he wasn’t jealous of them at all. His eldest senior brother and his teacher Xiao Ya were truly well matched with each other.

Bei Bei coughed and said, “Alright, since you’ve already ﬁnished absorbing your soul ring, we should quickly leave this place. During the past few years, the number of accidents that have occurred to soul masters entering the Great Star Dou Forest have increased. Even the areas around the forest have existences such as thousand-year soul beasts, so it would be better for us to leave sooner rather than later.

Tang Ya nodded her head and said, “Let’s go.”

At this moment, the sky had already dimmed. However, spending the night in the Great Star Dou Forest clearly wasn’t a good plan, so the three of them ignored their exhaustion as they rapidly ran towards the outside of the forest.

Huo Yuhao, who’d recovered his spiritual power, even activated his Spiritual Detection Sharing again, creating another level of safety for their journey towards the exit of the Great Star Dou Forest, so much so that they even managed to evade a thousand-year soul beast that wouldn’t take the initiative to attack.

After rapidly hurrying along for two hours, they managed to ﬁnally return to the brook where they’d eaten the roasted ﬁsh. This was already several tens of miles from the Great Star Dou Forest, which meant that they were, fundamentally, far away from any danger.

Huo Yuhao was naturally dragged over and made a chef one again, under Tang Ya’s ﬁerce request for him to roast more ﬁsh. However, he didn’t need to catch the ﬁsh this time around.

Bei Bei simply stretched his right hand into the water, then violet-blue lightning ﬂashed in the water, causing ten unconscious mackerels to rise to the surface belly-up. After that, he used the Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon technique to quickly get them to the brookside, allowing them to nearly instantly be able to eat.

Tang Ya also took out some food that was stored within her storage soul tool. The three people sat together and ate a sumptuous dinner.

Tang Ya was in extremely high spirits, which made her eat even more. After ﬁnishing her meal, she directly slept on the large tree beside the bonﬁre. On the other hand, the person who’d actually obtained the most beneﬁts, Huo Yuhao, hadn’t gone to sleep yet. He resisted the doubled exhaustion caused by his tired body and mind, and asked for Bei Bei to give him some pointers so that he could begin to cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Technique for the ﬁrst time.

Bei Bei very much admired Huo Yuhao’s diligence. After taking off his outerwear to cover Tang Ya with, he explained some of the main aspects of the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s cultivation to Huo Yuhao. In addition to that, he helped Huo Yuhao start meditating.

The paths that the Mysterious Heaven Technique passed through during cultivation were much more complicated than Huo Yuhao’s original meditation technique. The number of passageways used by the technique were at least ten times greater than that of his original technique, so much so that

Huo Yuhao’s soulforce had never even passed through many of the channels.

For the sake of ensuring Huo Yuhao’s safety while cultivating, Bei Bei sat behind him in a cross-legged position. Bei Bei’s hands were pressed against the centre of Huo Yuhao’s back, allowing his soulforce to seep into Huo Yuhao’s body as he guided Huo Yuhao’s soulforce along the ﬁrst circulation of the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

By the time that Huo Yuhao had just started to guide his soulforce around his body, Bei Bei’s expression had turned serious. Huo Yuhao’s comprehension skills were very high, and he was also very smart. However, his body’s talents were indeed somewhat lacking. After Bei Bei’s soulforce had entered Huo Yuhao’s body, he discovered that his meridians were extremely narrow, and that there were some very delicate meridians in his body that wouldn’t be able to handle any strong force ﬂowing through.

At this moment, Bei Bei realised that the fact that Huo Yuhao had been able to cultivate to his current rank, and that he had been able possess his ﬁrst soul ring, had been somewhat difﬁcult for him. After obtaining his ﬁrst soul ring, his body would’ve improved to a certain extent, but his passageways were still this frail. It could be seen just how poor his talent was, so much so that he truly wasn’t much better off than some ordinary folks who hadn’t even awakened their soulforce. Just how much willpower did he have to have to have cultivated his soulforce to the tenth rank and have become a Soul Master!

Bei Bei had a calm temperament; discovering this didn’t make him feel despair towards Huo Yuhao. Instead, his respect

for him slightly increased. Being able to have such unwavering determination at Huo Yuhao’s age meant that, even if Huo Yuhao’s talent was somewhat poor, he’d still be able to achieve something in life.

After investigating the condition of Huo Yuhao body, Bei Bei guessed that the reason that Huo Yuhao’s Spirit Eyes were so strong was deﬁnitely linked to the mutation of his martial soul. Furthermore, although his mutated martial soul was very strong, the harm it had caused to Huo Yuhao when he was young was also very great. Because he hadn’t been properly cared for, it caused his talent to become like this. If he’d been immediately treated with medicine after he was born, perhaps his junior brother would’ve been a genius.

In reality, Bei Bei’s guess was only half-accurate. The reason why Huo Yuhao’s body was so frail was indeed because of the deﬁciency caused by the mutation of his martial soul, and because of the lack of care towards him after awakening his martial spirit. However, the main reason why his Spirit Eyes’ skills were so strong, was because of the million-year intelligent soul ring, the Skydream Iceworm.

As the dark sky gradually turned dark blue, a patch of white slowly began to appear from the east. Bei Bei slowly withdrew

his palms, and let out a long breath. It was hard to conceal the exhaustion on his slightly pale face.

He’d used an entire night to help unblock Huo Yuhao’s passageways, helping him complete the ﬁrst circulation of the Mysterious Heaven Technique. This process had been quite arduous, but it had had enormous beneﬁts for Huo Yuhao.

“Peh—” Huo Yuhao spat out a mouthful of clotted blood before he opened his eyes.

At this moment, Huo Yuhao felt that all 36,000 pores on his body had been opened up, causing an unprecedented feeling of relaxation to spread throughout his body. The mouthful of clotted blood he’d spat out were impurities within his blood that had caused the stagnation of his passageways. After Bei Bei had helped him unblock his passageways, it ﬁnally unclogged his passageways. Even if his passageways were still thin and weak, he could at least let soulforce ﬂow through them. This would allow Huo Yuhao’s soulforce to ﬂow smoothly when he cultivated in the future. To a certain extent, this had changed his physique.

Even though Bei Bei was an excellent cultivator amongst his peers, and was a Soul Elder level expert, he was exhausted after unblocking Huo Yuhao’s passageways.

“Junior brother, stand up and look towards the east. Follow my movements, and focus your eyes.” Bei Bei resisted his exhaustion, and let out a low shout towards Huo Yuhao while grasping his shoulders with his hands.

At this moment, Tang Ya, who had originally been sleeping soundly, actually woke up. She jumped up and arrived beside Bei Bei.

The three of them opened their eyes and looked towards the eastern sky. A faint purple cloud seemed to ﬂash through the marble-white sky that was gradually turning bright. If you didn’t have astonishing visual acuity, as well as sufﬁcient concentration, it would be impossible for one to discover its existence.

The appearance of the purple cloud caused the three people’s attention to be focused on it. They even stopped exhaling. Instead, they lightly and slowly inhaled, simultaneously ﬁxing

their gazes on the hint of purple that had suddenly, faintly appeared.

The purple cloud wasn’t present for very long. By the time the morning sun had slowly risen from the east, it had already disappeared.

Only then did the three people slowly close their eyes, and simultaneously exhale the impurities from their bodies.

Bei Bei and Tang Ya each spat out a misty white stream of air.

After inhaling and exhaling several times, it ﬁnally dispersed.

Although Huo Yuhao’s cultivation wasn’t even close to that of his Teacher Xiao Ya, or his eldest senior brother, he felt an intense shock.

When he had looked at the purple cloud in the distant east, a strong warm feeling had seemed to ﬂow into his brain via his Spirit Eyes, causing his eyes to obtain an unprecedented nourishment; so much so that he was able to look at anything with an extremely clear level of vision without using any soulforce. Even his peripheral vision instantly expanded.

And when he had shut his eyes to contain that purple cloud, it had slowly immersed itself into his eyes. His Spirit Eyes had even started to naturally activate the soulforce within his body, causing it to merge with the purple cloud. The originally warm feeling gradually became a faint refreshing feeling that gave him an unspeakable sense of relaxation.

The Purple Demon Eyes, this was the skill that Teacher Xiao Ya had spoken about. This was the skill that was said to be the most suitable for him to cultivate! This was only the ﬁrst time that he’d cultivated it, yet it unexpectedly had had such an effect. Huo Yuhao felt that even the soulforce that he’d previously cultivated and upgraded for the past several months hadn’t had as good an effect as this eastern purple cloud.

After a full 15 minutes, that feeling of relaxation gradually disappeared. When Huo Yuhao ﬁnally opened his eyes, a faintly discernible purple light had already appeared in the depths of his clear, deep blue eyes.

“It seems that you truly had good results!” Tang Ya looked at Huo Yuhao with a pleased expression on her face.

Huo Yuhao hurriedly stood up and respectfully said, “Thank you, teacher. Thank you, eldest senior brother.”

The purple glint in Bei Bei’s eyes gradually dimmed, but a look of extreme exhaustion still remained on his face. He patted Huo Yuhao’s shoulder as he said, “We’re a family. In the future, you don’t need to thank us. However, I’m going to rest for a while, so I’m afraid that we can only leave later. Teacher Xiao Ya, please prepare some food. Junior brother, go cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Technique again to consolidate your memories from last night.”

“Yes.” The respect that Huo Yuhao had towards this eldest senior brother of his had deepened even more. After hearing his words, he immediately sat down and began to follow the Mysterious Heaven Technique to circulate his soulforce.

With the profound memories of last night, along with Bei Bei unclogging his meridians, activating his soulforce was now much easier. The soulforce that he’d originally obtained via meditation gradually turned a faint white colour after being reﬁned by the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

After two hours, Bei Bei took the initiative to awaken from his cultivation. His cultivation level was already extremely strong, so he could easily sweep away his exhaustion.

Tang Ya gave Bei Bei some rations and quietly asked, “How is he?”

Bei Bei smiled slightly and said, “You were actually right this time. My junior brother is a promising talent. His body’s condition isn’t great, but he has strong comprehensive abilities. Furthermore, he can bear hardship, and his heart is steady. He’s a good sprout. In addition to that, the Mysterious Heaven Technique in and of itself has beneﬁts towards his growth. If he cultivates it for a long time, it’ll help repair the passageways in his body. This is a technique that’s also quite suitable for him. As for his future growth, it’ll depend on his own hard work, as well as what opportunities he obtains. All we can do is open a door for him, but how far he can travel will be up to him.”

Tang Ya softly said, “Thanks.”

Bei Bei couldn’t help but laugh as he said, “Just what’s gotten into you? Normally, you’d never say thanks to me. Could it be because of my junior brother? I won’t stand for a rival in love.”

Tang Ya punched him unhappily and said, “You know what I’m thanking you for, stop acting stupid.”

Bei Bei gently moved his arm, leisurely pulling Tang Ya into his embrace. “Xiao Ya, I’ll admit it. The reason that I agreed to join the Tang Sect in the ﬁrst place was because I’d fallen for you, because I fell in love at ﬁrst sight. But as I cultivated the Tang Sect’s techniques, I realised more and more just how deep our Tang Sect is. Although the Tang Sect has declined, wouldn’t it be interesting if we were able to redevelop it, and bring it to great heights? Therefore, I’m already not just doing things for the Tang Sect solely because of you, but also because of the Tang Sect in and of itself.”

Tang Ya blinked her large eyes and said, “Does that mean that you’ll still work hard for the future of the Tang Sect, even if I don’t like you?”

Bei Bei’s expression immediately changed as he spoke with a slightly exasperated tone, “Be a bit more normal please.”

“Heehee.” Tang Ya smiled. “I just love seeing you reveal your true colours. You normally have such a digniﬁed look, aren’t you tired of it?”

Bei Bei ﬂicked her forehead. “That’s called being civilised. Don’t think that everyone’s like you! You’re always revealing your thoughts on your face.”

Tang Ya grabbed his wrist and spoke with a wronged expression, “I’m not allowing you to ﬂick my forehead anymore, this is offending your teacher. Right, do you think that little Yuhao will be able to last at the academy?”

Bei Bei shook his head and said, “It’s hard to say; it’ll depend on his will. All I can say is that, if he can really manage to last

there, and stay for the full twelve years, then his future accomplishments might be even higher than mine.”

Tang Ya was startled. “I didn’t think that you’d have such a high evaluation of him.”

Bei Bei smiled slightly and replied, “My junior brother’s mutated martial soul is extraordinary. You’ll understand when I give you an example. There’s already been a slight difference between the ﬁrst and second time that he used his Spiritual Detection Sharing. This means that his mastery of the skill isn’t that high, yet it’s already ampliﬁed our powers by an enormous amount. Furthermore, if what he’s said is true, it seems that this skill can still evolve. If his future soul skills are all like this, he’ll deﬁnitely reach the pinnacle of spiritual control system soul masters.”

Tang Ya said. “It’s just that, his self-defense skills are lacking. It’ll remain like until he reaches a certain level of cultivation, too.”

Bei Bei replied, “No, you’re wrong. He won’t need to protect himself, because, even if he merely has the skill that he just used, he’s destined to have no lack of companions beside him.”

Huo Yuhao’s cultivation period lasted even longer than Tang Ya and Bei Bei expected. His cultivation unexpectedly lasted all the way until noon. During this period of time, Bei Bei went over to him a few times to check on the circulation paths of the Mysterious Heaven Technique, which he found to have no deviations at all. It could be said that Huo Yuhao had truly entered the Tang Sect after his cultivation this time.

After Huo Yuhao awakened from his cultivation, he ate some food. Then, the three of them headed towards the east.

The majority of the Great Star Dou Forest lay within the territory of the Star Luo Empire, only a small portion of it lay within the Tian Hun Empire. On the other hand, Shrek Academy was located to the northeast of the Great Star Dou Forest, so the distance between the two wasn’t considered too far.

The reason that Tang Ya and Bei Bei had entered the Great Star Dou Forest from the south was because the surrounding area had a relatively low number of strong soul beasts.

Because Shrek Academy frequently had students who’d enter the Great Star Dou Forest to kill soul beasts, they were utterly hated by the expert soul beasts within. So much so, that a large number of soul beasts had charged out of the forest, creating a major event known as a ‘beast wave’, which had gone towards Shrek Academy.

Because of this, every single person within the academy below the Soul King rank was prohibited from entering the Great Star Dou Forest from the entrance closest to the academy. Even if one were a Soul King expert, he’d still need a teacher guiding him to be able to enter.

The three of them hurried towards Shrek Academy, but the speed of their advance wasn’t considered quick, since they had to circle around the Great Star Dou Forest. Thus, they had to travel nearly a thousand miles.

During their journey, Tang Ya and Bei Bei imparted the absolute techniques of the Tang Sect to him. Of them, the techniques that Huo Yuhao comprehended the most where the Mysterious Heaven Technique and the Purple Demon Eyes. As for the Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon, Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks, and Mysterious Jade Hands techniques, he’d only just taken his ﬁrst glimpse through the gate.

Huo Yuhao’s diligence had deeply stunned Tang Ya and Bei Bei. He, who was only eleven, didn’t forget to cultivate even as they travelled. When Bei Bei told him that he could slightly increase his soulforce by continuously using his soul skills, Huo Yuhao unceasingly used his Spiritual Detection Sharing as long as he could. And the second that he started to rest, he’d immediately start cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique. As they continued on with their journey, he even split his attention, releasing his soul skills while simultaneously pondering the Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks, Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon, and Mysterious Jade Hands.

Because Huo Yuhao took a long time to cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Technique, their speed towards Shrek Academy was slowed down. However, Bei Bei and Tang Ya didn’t rush him; they even increased their cultivation time under his impetus.

“Xiao Ya, with your talent, if you had even half of my junior brother’s diligence, I predict that you would’ve long surpassed me.” Bei Bei said as he looked towards Huo Yuhao, who was currently sitting cross-legged under a large tree, his attention focused on cultivating.

Tang Ya curled her lips and said, “Are even you that diligent? It’s not like even you can compare with little Yuhao. However, he seems to be hiding something within his heart. It’s this secret that pushes him to be so hard working. However, I don’t know if that’s a good or thing, a bad thing.”

Bei Bei smiled slightly as he stated, “Having a target is never a bad thing. Furthermore, he’s still young, so his heart will eventually open up as we secretly inﬂuence him. Currently, the most important thing for him is breaking through to rank thirty before the age of twenty.”

At this moment, Huo Yuhao had awakened from his meditation. A faint white stream of air swirled around his mouth and nose, and a golden light ﬂickered through his clear eyes the instant he opened them. His Spirit Eyes seemed to have become even more penetrating.

Admittedly, the reason that Huo Yuhao diligently cultivated was to become an outstanding person. However, the most important thing for him right now was to comprehend the new experiences he’d acquired from switching to the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

With Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s help, his physique had improved by a certain amount. The Mysterious Heaven Technique was truly a considerably outstanding technique; they’d already been travelling for four days straight, thus the total amount of time that he’d cultivated the Mysterious Heaven Technique was also four days long. During the past four days, the soulforce in his body had already transformed into the soulforce cultivated by the Mysterious Heaven Technique. The impure and chaotic soulforce in his body was gradually puriﬁed during the transformation process. Every time he ﬁnished cultivating, his entire body would experience a warm feeling that led to an unspeakable amount of comfort; its recovery effects were even better than that of sleeping.

Although his total amount of soulforce hadn’t increased by much, Huo Yuhao could clearly feel the changes that had occurred in his body, as well as the qualitative change his soulforce had gone through after transforming into the pure soulforce of the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

This was the ﬁrst time in his life of cultivation that such a clear improvement had occurred, so how could he not be assiduous and diligent?

“Little Yuhao, you can’t always be working so hard. You should take a rest when you need to. If not, won’t you become a blockhead after a while?” Tang Ya said seriously.

Huo Yuhao nodded and said, “Yes, Teacher Xiao Ya.”

Tang Ya giggled as she said, “Don’t be so honest and obedient, okay? It’s really boring. Alright, let’s go, we’ve almost reached the academy. You’ve been immersed in cultivation the past few days, so I didn’t get the chance to tell you about some things that you need to pay attention to inside of the academy. You’ve taken a break at just the right time, so relax your mind for a bit and listen.”

Chapter 6: The Number One Academy on the Douluo Continent

“Oh.” Huo Yuhao had originally planned to ponder the few capturing techniques that Bei Bei had taught him yesterday, but he immediately turned blank after hearing what Tang Ya had said.

The three continued their journey. While they were walking, Tang Ya explained the situation within Shrek Academy to Huo Yuhao.

Shrek Academy had been established ten thousand years ago, and the word ‘Shrek’ meant ‘monster’ in the ancient language. This also meant that, the people who’d founded Shrek Academy at the start had wanted to establish an academy of monsters.

Shrek Academy’s oldest motto was “To breed only monsters, not ordinary people.”, but the word ‘monster’ actually referred to geniuses.

Even the person who’d founded the Douluo Continent’s number one Tang Sect had graduated from Shrek Academy, and it was also that student who brought about the ﬁrst glorious moment for Shrek Academy. At that time, Shrek Academy had only had their founding students, who were referred to as the Shrek’s Seven Monsters within the Shrek Academy’s history.

The story of Shrek’s Seven Monsters had already spread for a long time, and the most famous of them was still the husband and wife couple that included the sect master of the Tang Sect. Afterwards, although the Tang Sect declined, Shrek Academy still stood high. Furthermore, following the developments that came with the passage of time, it gradually became the number one academy on the Douluo Continent.

Nowadays, Shrek Academy held a position of power within the continent, the root of the cause of being the continental war that had occurred during the collision of the Douluo Continent and the Sun Moon Continent four thousand years ago.

When the war had only just started, the three empires of the Douluo Continent had been divided in their opinions, causing the Douluo Continent to be at a disadvantageous position

during the start of the war, so much so that the army of the Sun Moon Continent had been able to make their way to the inner parts of the Douluo Continent.

At this crucial moment, Shrek Academy’s dean from that year had made a rallying cry. This had an unexpectedly large response, causing nearly sixty Titled Douluo super-experts to temporarily become the commanders of the three armies. After taking command of their armies, they swiftly destroyed the Sun Moon Empire’s army, obtaining the ﬁnal victory in the war, and unifying the continents into one called the Douluo Continent. The Sun Moon Empire only managed to continue existing afterwards by giving up its lands, and by paying war reparations. However, their military strength had been weakened by an extremely large amount, which led to them being unable to contend with the three combined armies of the Douluo Continent anymore. Its military strength was equivalent to that of a single empire, at most.

The war also caused the reputation of Shrek’s Academy to soar. It wasn’t just because Shrek Academy had gathered sixty Titled Douluos, but was also because that year’s dean had become the commander of the three empires’ uniﬁed army. Under his rallying cry, the royal families from the three great empires discovered, to their great surprise, that practically all of the generals of the uniﬁed army had come from Shrek

Academy. Under the uniﬁed allocation of resources by Shrek Academy’s dean, the combined army of the three great empires no longer had any discord between them. It was also because of this uniﬁcation that they were able to achieve victory.

From then on, Shrek Academy no longer belonged to any single country; it had become a standalone existence.

Shrek Academy had successively raised extremely wise deans. Although the academy held a majestic position on the continent, they weren’t arrogant in the least. The academy’s attitude towards all countries was the same. Furthermore, they didn’t possess any private armies, and the number of teachers that they kept was even kept at a certain limit. Because of this, Shrek Academy didn’t cause any of the countries to feel a sense of danger. After all, Shrek Academy was an academy. Thus, not only did it continue to exist, but its lofty position within the continent was also one that couldn’t be easily shaken by any country.

Shrek Academy was located within the southeastern portion of the Tian Hun Empire, with the Great Star Dou Forest located directly southwest from it. The Dou Ling Empire was east of it, and the Star Luo Empire was located northwards. It

could be said that Shrek Academy was located at the intersection point of the three empires.

Tang Ya told Huo Yuhao that Shrek Academy was currently divided into two parts: the inner courtyard and the outer courtyard. Every year, the number of new students they’d recruit was around a thousand or so, yet the total number of students within the academy had never surpassed ﬁve thousand. It would take twelve years for one to complete their studies and graduate after entering Shrek Academy. This also meant that Shrek Academy’s elimination rate was extremely high every year. If one wasn’t able to pass the academy’s assessments, he’d be mercilessly kicked out of the academy.

However, every single person that managed to successfully graduate from Shrek Academy was a once-in-a-generation genius.

It could be said that Shrek Academy was truly a cradle ﬁlled with experts, so much so that even political issues would occur between the Tian Hun Empire, Dou Ling Empire, and Star Luo Empire due to the number of students that Shrek Academy would admit each year. The fame of the number one academy in the world could clearly be seen from this.

The Sun Moon Empire, on the other hand—possibly due to their enmity with Shrek Academy—had never asked to send people to study at Shrek Academy. There were also a few high- level academies within the Sun Moon Empire that had already reached a fairly high standard after experiencing a few thousand years of development. Only, the Sun Moon Empire’s military strength had always been limited due to the pact they’d made after the war, which prevented them from expanding too much. Thus, the Sun Moon Empire was still keeping a low proﬁle, at least on the surface.

“Yuhao, once you enter the academy, you’ll cultivate in the outer courtyard. The outer courtyard is split into many faculties, so you should temporarily cultivate inside the control faculty. At the same time, you should simultaneously study inside of the Soul Engineering Institution. How about it?” Tang Ya asked Huo Yuhao after giving him a simple introduction to the Shrek Academy’s internal situation.

“Teacher Xiao Ya, what’s this ‘Soul Engineering Institution’?” Huo Yuhao asked.

Tang Ya replied, “The so-called Soul Engineering Institution is a place created for the sake of studying soul weapons.” She

unexpectedly clenched her teeth in anger as she said the words ‘soul weapons’.

“Soul weapons?” Huo Yuhao was still slightly puzzled. However, you couldn’t blame him. Shrek Academy was currently the number one academy on the continent, yet he’d grown up in a closed environment since he was young. Thus, he naturally had little knowledge and experience of such matters.

Seeing Tang Ya’s slightly unhappy expression, Bei Bei took her place explaining things to Huo Yuhao. “Soul tools actually have a very large relationship with our Tang Sect. In a sense, soul tools are weapons that we use soulforce to activate. Higher quality soul tools will possess greater might. This also means that, even if you’re only a tool soul master, you’d still be able to possess considerably high attack power if you had a strong soul tool. However, the development of soul tools was one of the main reasons for our Tang Sect’s decline.”

“Our Tang Sect was still ﬂourishing four thousand years ago. However, the collision with the Sun Moon Continent was the root cause for our Tang Sect’s decline.” Tang Ya spoke with a hateful tone, “Our Tang Sect was famous for hidden weapons, and our main source of income was obtained by selling hidden

weapons. In the past, almost every single country would purchase a certain amount of hidden weapons from us—even some sects would do the same.”

“Over four thousand years ago, war quickly broke out when the Sun Moon Continent collided with our Douluo Continent. The three empires’ armies, supported by the hidden weapons of our Tang Sect, collided with the army of the Sun Moon Empire. In the end, although the Sun Moon Empire wasn’t strong in the aspect of soul masters, they possessed unique insights in the aspects of soul tools. These soul tools were activated with soulforce, and surpassed our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons in strength as a whole, as well as in attack range. In the end, it caused the three empires of our Douluo Continent to suffer disastrous losses during the initial phase of the war.”

“Although we won the war in the end, the effectiveness of our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons was called into question. From then on, various countries started a large-scale reduction in purchasing our hidden weapons. Even though our income was still high, a large portion of it was donated out, as per the will of the ﬁrst sect master. The donated money was used to improve the lifestyle of the ordinary folk who lived in impoverished areas, as well as to build schools and other public facilities. Thus, we didn’t have a lot of extra cash.”

“At that time, the Tang Sect had several thousand people in it. However, the speed of our decline was simply too quick. After only a mere two hundred years, our Tang Sect had rapidly declined. The former number one sect in the continent never saw its former glory again. When the Tang Sect reached my generation, the only three people left were my father, my mother, and me. And when we were hunting some soul beasts, my mother and father died. Thus, the Tang Sect only had a lone child like me left.”

When she got to this point, tears ﬂowed down Tang Ya’s smooth and exquisite face, and she couldn’t help but clench her

ﬁsts tightly.

Huo Yuhao murmured, “Teacher Xiao Ya, are our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons truly incomparable to these soul tools?”

Tang Ya sighed and said, “In certain aspects, what you say is indeed true. What the Sun Moon Continent brought to us wasn’t just soul tools, but also a plentiful amount of minerals. These rare minerals are all extremely good conductors for soulforce, which makes them especially suitable for manufacturing soul tools. This caused the high-speed development of soul tools to happen during the few thousand years after the war had ended, which resulted in an even smaller market for our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons. However, in the ﬁeld of degree of meticulousness, as well as design ingenuity, our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons absolutely surpass soul tools; this is especially true of a few sharp hidden weapons, which are even superior to soul weapons. However, the manufacturing requirements for those hidden weapons are also extremely complicated.”

Bei Bei rubbed Tang Ya’s head and said, “ The development of soul tools has truly dealt a harsh blow to our Tang Sect and its hidden weapons. When I’d just met Tang Ya, she stubbornly believed that hidden weapons were stronger than soul tools.

However, the facts have proven that soul tools are capable of replacing our Tang Sect’s hidden weapons in becoming weapons that are accepted by all parties, which indeed makes sense. Firstly, it’s because they’ve simply been easily accepted by the masses, especially those tool soul masters who don’t actually have any attacking capabilities. After possessing a soul tool, they turned into battle soul masters in practically an instant, with the only cost they had to pay being soulforce. Thus, after Xiao Ya and I discussed it, we decided that out Tang Sect absolutely could not continue following our old ways, locking ourselves in our own world, if we wanted the sect to ﬂourish once again. If we want to make the glory of the Tang Sect reappear, then not only do we have to understand soul tools, but we also need to merge them with the manufacturing techniques of our current hidden weapons to create even stronger soul tools. This is the only way our Tang Sect will have the opportunity to grow. Because of this, each and every one of our Tang Sect’s disciples must simultaneously study soul tools while cultivating their martial souls.”

Huo Yuhao replied, “Teacher Xiao Ya, eldest senior brother, since soul weapons are so strong, why did the Sun Moon Empire lose to the allied army of our three empires during the war?”

Bei Bei smiled calmly and said, “That’s because, although the soul weapons they possessed back then were strong, even the strongest soul tool wasn’t able to compare to the ﬁghting power of a Titled Douluo. However, after a few thousand years of development, a few especially strong soul tools have begun to appear, whose strength can even threaten Titled Douluos. However, soul tools have a major issue, which is the fact that stronger soul tools require stronger soul masters to use them to their fullest extent. If you don’t have enough soulforce to support their usage, their power will be extremely limited. Thus, an interesting phenomena has occurred after our two continents merged together. The people over here are doing their utmost to study the methods needed to manufacture soul tools, while the people over at the Sun Moon Empire are doing their best to cultivate strong soul masters. After these past few thousand years, our two continents seem to actually be somewhat balanced.”

Huo Yuhao ﬁnally had an initial understanding of Shrek Academy with Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s introductions.

After Tang Ya rubbed the tears off of her face, she grabbed Huo Yuhao’s sleeve and said, “Little Yuhao, the most important thing for you to do right now is to stay within Shrek Academy. Bei Bei and I are already third year students, and it shouldn’t be a problem for us to rise to the rank of fourth year students

since I’ve obtained my thousand-year soul ring. After becoming fourth year students, the elimination rate isn’t that high. After a few more years, we’ll have the chance to enter the inner courtyard and study there. However, you’re different. After entering the academy as a ﬁrst year student, the competition you’ll face will be the most intense. The academy will have an assessment for new students every three months,

and only students who are able to pass the assessment can stay. Although our Tang Sect has the privilege of admitting a single student into Shrek Academy, whether you can continue to stay will all depend on you. This is something that no one can help you with, do you understand?”

Huo Yuhao nodded his head seriously as he said, “Teacher Xiao Ya, I will deﬁnitely do my best. However, with your and eldest senior brother’s power, have you actually not become students of the inner courtyard?”

Tang Ya replied, “Wanting to enter the inner courtyard of Shrek Academy is easier said than done. The rules for Shrek Academy have never been changed. The outer courtyard was only created later on, due to the three empires requests so that they could cultivate even more talented people. However, only students who have entered the inner courtyard are considered true students of Shrek Academy. Every single student in the inner courtyard is a genius or a monstrous genius, and some of

them can only be described as monsters. Students in the outer courtyard will have a test after staying there for six years, and can graduate after passing that test. Only the most outstanding people that take the test, which number extremely few, will have the chance to take the entrance exam for the inner courtyard. Only after passing that test will they have permission to enter the inner courtyard. The time taken to complete their studies within the inner courtyard is also six years. Supposedly, every single person that has graduated from the inner courtyard is at least an expert of the Soul Emperor rank! Furthermore, they’ll receive the best treatment from all

countries, including the Sun Moon Empire.”

“It’s that amazing!” When Huo Yuhao heard this, he couldn’t help a feeling of infatuation rising in his heart. He secretly thought to himself that, if he could one day become a graduating student from Shrek Academy’s inner courtyard, he could return to the Duke’s Mansion to ask for his mother’s remains. Then, his mother could be at peace. After he thought of this, he couldn’t help but clench his ﬁsts tightly.

Bei Bei was serious as he said, “It’s far more amazing. I once saw an upperclassman from the inner courtyard. He entered the Great Star Dou Forest by himself, and defeated three ten- thousand-year soul beasts with his bare hands, without killing them! He then took them back to the academy. Supposedly,

that was the mission he’d received for his tenth year assessment.”

Tang Ya said, “I’ve even heard that there was once a twelfth- year upperclassmen who’d already reached the Soul Sage level by the time he graduated. Furthermore, he even possessed a hundred thousand year soul ring! That upperclassman later stayed in the academy to be raised as the next dean of the academy.”

After hearing their explanations, Huo Yuhao had begun to have an impatient feeling. His interactions with Bei Bei and Tang Ya these past few days had made him deeply understand the enormous beneﬁts he received towards his cultivation when he had a good teacher. Shrek Academy was undoubtedly the best choice! He secretly made a vow to himself that, no matter how hard he had to work, he’d ensure that he remained in the outer courtyard, and that he would strive to enter the inner courtyard in the future.

With this feeling in his heart, Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but begin to ponder the secret techniques of the Tang Sect while they walked. Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s introduction to Shrek Academy had already ignited a ﬂame in his heart.

Tang Ya and Bei Bei couldn’t help but smile at each other when they saw Huo Yuhao’s appearance. When they’d entered Shrek Academy in the beginning, weren’t they just like Huo Yuhao?

After a few hours, Huo Yuhao ﬁnally saw Shrek Academy.

Rather than calling it an academy, it’d be more suitable to call it a city. As they walked out of the forest near the main road, they were able to see the tall walls of the city beginning to extend upwards from the distant ﬁelds.

Shrek Academy had been established on a wide ﬁeld, thus the area that it covered was extremely vast. It was a city in and of itself, and the city’s name was ‘Shrek City’. Shrek City was one

of the biggest cities on the Douluo Continent, and the number of people who lived in it surpassed two million. Furthermore, Shrek Academy was the sole governor of the city, and didn’t need to pay any taxes to any country. This single point just by itself was something that every single other academy, including those in the Sun Moon Continent, were unable to say.

Shrek Academy wasn’t located in the middle of Shrek City, but the eastern part. This was because the distant Great Star Dou Forest was located towards the east.

Shrek Academy was surrounded by land in all directions, and could also be said to be accessible from all directions. It wasn’t only the location of Shrek Academy, but was also the most important trade city for the Douluo Continent’s original three empires. Because of Shrek Academy, the peacekeeping within Shrek City was extremely good. Transactions made within the city weren’t just fair, but also made people feel at ease. Because of this, most of the merchants from the three empires would choose to do their business within Shrek City when conducting transnational trade.

The southern, western, and northern city gates of Shrek City could be entered and exited through at will. Only the eastern

gate was exclusive to Shrek Academy.

Under Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s lead, Huo Yuhao arrived outside the eastern city gate.

This city gate was only usable by Shrek Academy, but it was currently extremely busy. There were at least ﬁve thousand people gathered outside the eastern gate, and it was unusually lively. A large number of traders had already moved here due to the rumours, as this gate was even livelier than the other gates by a large margin.

“Junior brother, you’re just in time for the academy’s recruitment of new students. You should be able join this year’s batch of new students without any problems, which’ll make you our junior by three years. These ordinary new students don’t just have to pass the assessment, but also have to have a recommendation letter from one of the three empires’ capital cities at the very minimum. This time of year is always the busiest period of time for Shrek City.”

Huo Yuhao quietly asked, “Eldest senior brother, is the assessment very difﬁcult?”

Bei Bei hesitated, and subconsciously looked towards Huo Yuhao.

Tang Ya, on the other hand, was straightforward as she said, “He’ll ﬁnd out sooner or later. This will also become the driving force behind his future hard work, so it’s better to tell him now. Little Yuhao, the entrance exam for Shrek Academy’s outer courtyard has two requirements: One, you cannot be older than twenty, and two, your soulforce cannot be lower than the ﬁfteenth rank. If you look at it purely from the standpoint of the examination’s standards, you don’t meet the qualiﬁcations to enter.”

She didn’t say anything that would make Huo Yuhao work harder, because she knew that he already worked hard enough.

Huo Yuhao asked seriously, “Then, will the ﬁrst assessment after three months also test my soulforce?” With his physique, wanting to increase his soulforce from the eleventh rank to the ﬁfteenth rank within three months was an entirely impossible task.

Bei Bei shook his head and replied, “No. The assessments of our Shrek Academy always consist of live combat. As a teacher

once said, ‘any amount of numerical data pales in the face of live combat’.”

Huo Yuhao forcefully nodded his head. “Teacher Xiao Ya, eldest senior brother, perhaps I currently can’t compare to the overwhelming majority of the new students, but I will deﬁnitely exceed them in the future.” His words had a calmness that surpassed his peers, and an a ﬁrmness that did the same was also present within his Spirit Eyes.

Bei Bei, who was a head taller than Huo Yuhao, extended his arms out to grab his shoulders as he said, “Let’s go. If you can get through the following three months, eldest senior brother will be optimistic about your chances to get to the end.”

Bei Bei and Tang Ya took Huo Yuhao with them as they skirted the crowd, and arrived at the eastern city gate.

There were ten male and female youths standing outside the eastern city gate, protecting it. They were roughly the same age as Tang Ya and Bei Bei, and all of them were wearing yellow warrior robes with a green pattern inscribed on the chests. This was the uniform for second and third year students of Shrek Academy’s outer courtyard.

When they saw Bei Bei, they immediately became respectful. “Eldest senior brother Bei, you’ve returned.”

Bei Bei smiled and greeted every one of his junior and senior brothers. Afterwards, he spoke a few words to the leader of the group. That student glanced at Huo Yuhao, then immediately nodded his head. “There’s nothing to doubt about our senior brother’s words. Go take this junior brother inside to register.”

Bei Bei smiled as he gave him a thumbs up. “Thanks. I’ll treat you junior brothers to a meal next time.”

The other person wasn’t polite either as he laughed. “Then that’s that. We won’t give up the chance to have a feast.”

Bei Bei raised his hand and gave him a high ﬁve. “I won’t disappoint everyone.” When he’d ﬁnished speaking, he and Tang Ya took Huo Yuhao into the eastern city gate, which was also the symbol for Shrek Academy’s door.

Not far away, a new student, who’d just ﬁnished enrolling for his assessment, asked the older student who was in charge of

his assessment, “Senior classmate, who was that senior classmate?”

“That was senior brother Bei. His name is Bei Bei, but everyone calls him Thunderbolt Bei Bei. He possesses the number one beast soul, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon. Furthermore, he’s exceptionally talented. At the age of thirteen, he broke through to the thirtieth rank, and his cultivation has supposedly approached the fortieth rank, which means that he could breakthrough and become a Soul Ancestor in one or two years. He’s one of the outstanding experts of our outer courtyard. With senior brother Bei’s strength, and if it weren’t for that junior classmate called Tang Ya who’s accompanying him, he could’ve already started the ﬁfth-year assessment for the outer courtyard. If he breaks through to the fortieth rank, I predict that even the sixth-year assessments won’t stop him. Eldest senior brother Bei isn’t just strong, he’s always been kind to people. If you were to ask who the most popular person in the outer courtyard was, it would deﬁnitely be him. Senior brother Bei is the Prince Charming of many female students in the outer courtyard, but he’s single- mindedly focused on who he loves. For the sake of junior classmate Tang Ya, he’s rejected the confessions of an uncountable number of junior and senior female classmates. Reportedly, even some of the female senior classmates from the inner courtyard have fallen for him. Everyone says that

senior brother Bei will deﬁnitely enter the inner courtyard in two years at most.”

When Bei Bei and Tang Ya took Huo Yuhao into Shrek Academy, it was different from the vast and solemn scene that he’d imagined. Shrek Academy had an elegant environment, and there were various types of abundant and lush ﬂora within. As he walked along the wide main path, he was able to see at least ten plants in every direction he looked. These plants had clearly been meticulously pruned.

After he’d walked for two hundred or so metres, several enormous sculptures appeared in front of him, covering his line of sight. There were a total of ten sculptures, and they were all ten metres tall. They had all been carved from extremely tough granite.

There were three sculptures in the front, with the middle sculpture resembling an old man. He had a set of spectacles and a beaming look on his face. His ﬁgure was average, but he was slightly plump, and he looked like a yes-man.

Bei Bei said to Huo Yuhao, “The person in the middle is the founder of Shrek Academy, and also the ﬁrst dean of the academy, Flender. The person to his left is an ancestor of my clan. He created the teaching foundations that are currently used by various martial soul systems within Shrek Academy. He’s also one of the martial soul world’s ten core role models, and has the title of Grandmaster. His name is Yu Xiaogang. My mother was a direct descendant of his bloodline. The woman to the right is also another ancestor of mine, Liu Erlong. She’s Grandmaster’s wife. The three of them were able to merge together and form the Golden Iron Triangle. If Dean Flender could be said to have founded Shrek Academy, then Grandmaster would be the true spirit behind it. He was also the person who single-handedly raised Shrek’s Seven Monsters, whose sculptures are behind them.

The sculpture of Grandmaster looked like a middle-aged man who’d wasted away a bit, while Liu Erlong was a charming middle-aged woman.

There were seven sculptures lined up horizontally behind them. When Huo Yuhao’s gaze fell upon the sculpture in the middle, who stood at the forefront of the others, his body couldn’t help but tremble.

It was a statue of a tall man who had a handsome appearance, but the most peculiar thing about him, were his eyes. There was a pattern on his forehead with the word “King”, and although it was only a sculpture, it had a sort of imposing and strong pressure.

“The seven sculptures that stand behind the Golden Iron Triangle are Shrek’s Seven Monsters, who previously created their own glory. The person who’s standing in front is the White Tiger Douluo, Dai Mubai, while the second person is the Sausage Douluo, Oscar. The third person is our Tang Sect’s ancestor, the Asura Douluo, Tang San.

Tang San was the most handsome amongst the seven. His blue hair was draped across his shoulders, and he wore a

simple set of warriors robes. Blue vines that were clearly his Bluesilver Grass martial soul had coiled around the sculpture. There was also a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, but his lifelike gaze was ﬁxed on a woman who was ﬁfth in the row, who had braided hair.

“The fourth person is the Evil Phoenix Douluo, Ma Hongjun, while the ﬁfth person is Tang San’s wife, the Soft Bone Douluo, Xiao Wu. According to the stories, she was a hundred thousand year soul beast who chose to cultivate as a human. The person even further back is the Nine Treasure Douluo, Ning Rongrong, who holds the title of the world’s strongest auxiliary soul master; she was also the Sausage Douluo’s wife. The last person is the Netherworld Douluo, Zhu Zhuqing. She was the wife of the White Tiger Douluo.”

The ﬁrst generation of Shrek’s Seven Monsters sculptures all had different shapes, but the fact that they were all Titled Douluos attested to how strong they’d been in the past.

Tang Ya’s gaze was ﬁxed on the sculpture of the Asura Douluo, Tang San. The Golden Iron Triangle and the ﬁrst generation of Shrek’s Seven Monsters had laid the foundation for Shrek Academy. Even though ten thousand years had gone by, and even though Shrek Academy had raised an uncountable

number of outstanding geniuses and experts, the number of sculptures had never increased, and had remained at ten.

Bei Bei explained to Huo Yuhao, “We’ll have to separate here. If you walk to the left, you’ll arrive at the Martial Soul Institution. If you walk to the right, you’ll arrive at the Soul Engineering Institution. These are the two largest branches of Shrek Academy, and they both belong to the outer courtyard. If you were to compare them, the Martial Soul Institution is larger, while the Soul Engineering Institution is smaller. Furthermore, the Martial Soul Institution is also divided into many departments. We’ll go to the Martial Soul Institution to get you registered ﬁrst. The basic requirement for you to enroll in the Soul Engineering Institution is for you to pass the ﬁrst assessment for new students.”

Huo Yuhao’s gaze was still stuck on the ten sculptures. When he thought about the legends that his mother had told him about, he occasionally felt a shocked feeling rise in his heart.

The road to the left of the sculptures was still very wide, and could ﬁt four or ﬁve carriages side-by-side. There was a signboard next to the road with the words ‘Lakeside Path’ written on it.

You could faintly see a large body of water hidden within the shady green trees to the right. This also meant that there was an enormous lake behind the ten sculptures of the Golden Iron Triangle and Shrek’s Seven Monsters.

Tang Ya noticed Huo Yuhao’s gaze, and couldn’t help but speak with a slightly proud voice, “That’s an artiﬁcial lake made for the sake of commemorating our Tang Sect’s ancestor, Tang San. It’s called Sea God’s Lake, because according to the legends, our ancestor Tang San inherited the Sea God’s legacy. The Sea God’s Lake has an extremely large surface area, and is ﬁlled entirely with groundwater. Our Shrek Academy’s inner courtyard is located on an island in the middle of the Sea God’s Lake. Every single disciple from the outer courtyard feels honored if they’re able to reach the centre island of Sea God’s Lake.

Bei Bei looked toward the Sea God’s Lake with a deep gaze, and a determined and stubborn light ﬂashed through his eyes.

The Sea God’s Lake was indeed very large. As they followed the lakeside path to head southward, they only needed to turn westwards after a full ﬁfteen minutes had passed. Only after they’d walked another ﬁfteen minutes or so did the path ﬁnally begin to recede, causing a vast, rectangular plaza to appear in

their line of sight. A signboard with the words ‘Shrek Plaza’ also stood beside the plaza.

There were many tall teaching areas behind Shrek Plaza. The colours of these teaching areas were all different, and were separated into four main colours—white, yellow, purple, and black. If one gazed into the far south of Shrek Plaza, they’d even be able to see a grey teaching area.

Bei Bei pointed towards the teaching areas next to the plaza as he said, “The different coloured teaching areas represent the different years of students, which are differentiated according to the colours of soul rings. The white teaching areas are for new students, just like the lowest level ten year soul rings. Accordingly, the yellow teaching areas are for the outer courtyard’s second and third year students, and the purple teaching areas are for the fourth and ﬁfth year students. The black teaching areas are for the sixth year students. If you’re able to leave the black teaching areas, you’ll be able to obtain a graduation certiﬁcate from the academy’s outer courtyard.

“Those grey teaching areas in the distance belong to the Soul Engineering Institution. If you compare were to compare their size here, the Soul Engineering Institution takes up roughly a third of the teaching area, while the Martial Soul Department

takes up a full two-thirds. Besides these teaching areas at the front, there are also many special teaching grounds located in the back, such as the Soul Dueling Arena, the assessment areas, the dormitories, the teacher’s ofﬁces, and so on.”

The new students’ white teaching areas were located to the far south, and were also the closest to the lakeside path. The three of them walked southwards from Shrek Plaza, arriving at the teaching area.

Because it was currently the period that new students were admitted in, the new student’s teaching area was especially lively. A few new students who’d already passed their assessments were currently there to enroll.

With Bei Bei and Tang Ya’s guidance, Huo Yuhao was able to report for his registration extremely smoothly. The school’s fees were paid by Bei Bei, with the fee for a new student unexpectedly being ten gold soul coins. Furthermore, this didn’t include his food expenses. If one had to quit school due to failing an assessment, their school fees wouldn’t be refunded.

After collecting his dorm key and two sets of school uniforms, as well as a white freshman badge, Huo Yuhao followed Tang Ya and Bei Bei towards the new student’s teaching area.

Tang Ya said, “Little Yuhao, the dormitory’s behind the teaching areas; it’s the largest building in the entire academy. You can go there by yourself later. New students will formally start their classes in three days, so you can familiarize yourself with the environment during the next few days. We’ve paid for your ﬁrst year’s school fees, but you’ll have to rely on yourself for next year. The academy has various types of competitions, all of which have prize money for winning them. Also, you’re already a soul master, so once you ﬁnish registering, you can collect a salary that the three empires give out once a month. You should save some of it, but it should be enough for food.”

Huo Yuhao made sure he remembered everything that Tang Ya said. When he was about to bid his farewells to Teacher Xiao Ya and Bei Bei, Bei Bei looked at the nearby bulletin board and furrowed his brows slightly when he saw the announcement pasted on it.

Huo Yuhao didn’t need to walk up to it; He merely circulated his soulforce a bit, and the strong visual abilities of his Spirit

Eyes exhibited their use, allowing him to see the words on the announcement clearly.

Huo Yuhao’s mother had taught him how to read since he was young, so although he’d never formally attended school, his education level wasn’t bad at all.

He saw the words that were written on the announcement: “Teacher in charge of the class one: Zhou Yi. Teacher in charge of class two…”

Zhou Yi? I think that I’m in class one! Because he’d registered early, Huo Yuhao had been directly assigned to the ﬁrst class of new students, class one.

Tang Ya had also noticed. She let out a low cry of surprise. “Ah? Why is it that perverted old grandma, Zhou Yi? Doesn’t she teach year three? Why would she be assigned to teach new students?”

Bei Bei smiled bitterly, “I heard that Teacher Zhou was overly strict when she taught the third year students, which resulted in only ten percent of her students being promoted to fourth

year students. Furthermore, she was reported by the students to the academy many times, which led to her being demoted to teaching new students. Junior brother, you must be careful. There aren’t many monstrous students within the outer courtyard of our Shrek Academy, but there are many

monstrous teachers. Of them, the worst is this Teacher Zhou.

Chapter 7: Freshmen Entering the Academy

After hearing Bei Bei’s introduction to Teacher Zhou, Huo Yuhao was also astonished. “Eldest senior brother, if this teacher does these sort of things, why doesn’t the school seem to care?”

Bei Bei spoke in a low voice, “Although Teacher Zhou Yi is a strict teacher, she’s honestly a very good one. Of all the students promoted from her class, none of them have actually said that she was a bad teacher. Teacher Zhou’s strictness is mainly reﬂected in the high requirements that she sets for her students, as well as in her harsh teaching methods. However, almost a fourth of the students who’ve been taught by Teacher Zhou, and passed, have entered the inner courtyard. This statistic is one of the best within the entire academy. Teacher Zhou was only demoted to teaching freshmen because the commotion was too big this time. However, as long as you work hard enough, and are outstanding enough, Teacher Zhou’s teaching will only have beneﬁts for you.”

Huo Yuhao relaxed and replied, “So it’s like that. Teacher Xiao Ya, eldest senior brother, you guys must have plenty of other things to do. I’ll return to my room ﬁrst.”

Bei Bei smiled and said, “That’s ﬁne, Teacher Xiao Ya and I want to go and take our promotion test. If we can pass this test, we’ll be promoted to fourth-years. I live in Room 316, so you can go there if you need anything.”

Bei Bei and Tang Ya were truly busy. The reason why Tang Ya had been in such a rush to obtain her third soul ring was so that she could smoothly pass the fourth-year promotion test. Furthermore, there would be even more issues waiting for them after they were promoted. Huo Yuhao had gone to the Great Star Dou Forest alone, and had obtained his soul ring there, so his self-protection abilities were quite strong. Thus, they didn’t worry much about him.

After passing through the white school building for ﬁrst- years, and the yellow school building for second and third-year students, Huo Yuhao saw the dormitory. The dormitory occupied an extremely large area, and although it was only a single building, the same four colours—white, yellow, purple, and black—were still present on it. The building’s colours clearly represented the different living areas of the students from their respective years, and had a total of six ﬂoors.

Huo Yuhao arrived at the entrance to the white building, and was met with the sight of a man who looked quite old. The old man had a set of grey clothes on, and the the number of ﬂies that his wrinkles could crush to death had reached the double digits. His eyes were yellow and muddle-headed, while his eyelids were droopy. His appearance was as if he had one foot in the grave. The sunlight between the buildings spilled

perfectly over his body. His body, which was half-lying in a chair, actually gave off a very comfortable feeling.

Huo Yuhao walked forward and spoke respectfully, “Hello, Grandpa. I’m a new student who’s come to live in the dormitory. Would you like to check my freshman badge?”

The old man didn’t even raise his head as he stretched his trembling right hand out. Then, a slightly deep yet hoarse voice echoed out, “Take your badge and dormitory key out for me to see.”

Huo Yuhao hurriedly passed the two items over.

The old man waved them in front of his eyes before returning them to Huo Yuhao. “Go on. Room 108 is the third room from my left on the ﬁrst ﬂoor. The women’s dorms start

from the fourth ﬂoor, so you can’t go upstairs at all. If we discover you up there, you’ll be expelled.”

“Thank you.” After bowing and greeting the old man again, Huo Yuhao walked into the dormitory building.

The old man didn’t move from his original position as he muttered nostalgically to himself, “It’s rare to see a kid with manners.”

As he muttered to himself, a few new students walked past the area. However, they clearly hadn’t taken note of the old man beside the building, and directly went inside. The old man didn’t stop them either. He simply sat there drowsily.

After following the old man’s instructions, Huo Yuhao quickly found his dorm room. The dormitory had a standard hallway layout, with both sides of the long hallway having dorm rooms with numbers etched into their doors. The passage of time was clearly visible in the dorm rooms, and it could be seen that they had been in use for an extremely long amount time. The two ends of the corridor had shared bathrooms.

After using his key to open the door, a gust of slightly musty air surged out of the room. Huo Yuhao hurriedly turned to the side, waited a while, then held his breath as he charging into the room and opened the window. The room had been uninhabited for over a month, at the very minimum. A layer of dust covered the entire room.

By relying on the window’s ventilation, Huo Yuhao was able to clearly see the dorm room’s layout. The dorm room was very small, its area only about ten square metres or so. The two beds took up a large portion of the room’s ﬂoor space, but there was also a table, two metal wardrobes, as well as a lamp on the ceiling. There were also a few metal protrusions on one of the walls. Bei Bei had told him that lamps were basic soul tools that needed soulforce in order to light up. The metal protrusions were places that one could pour soulforce into.

After some ventilation, the musty air within the dorm room had ﬁnally cleared up. As Huo Yuhao looked around the small room, a hard-to-describe excitement appeared in his heart. From today onwards, this would be the dorm room that he’d live in for a year. From the looks of it, he’d even have a dorm- mate. I’ll clean up a bit ﬁrst.

The saying ‘poor children can manage a house earlier on in life’ was true. Although he’d been born in the Duke’s Mansion, Huo Yuhao’s life hadn’t even been as good as a commoner’s. He used a little bit of his saved money to buy a basin from the student convenience store located outside the dorms, and after requesting a used cleaning rag from the shop, he immediately started to clean the dorm room.

After only an hour had passed, not even a speck of dust was left under the meticulous scrutiny of Huo Yuhao’s Spirit Eyes. Although everything in the dorm room was still in-place, there was now a sort of fresh smell to it. Huo Yuhao didn’t plan on buying any sort of bedding for himself, since the wooden bed was already enough for someone like him, who devoted all of his hard work to cultivating.

He felt a bit hungry, so he enquired about the dining hall’s location. After buying the cheapest lunchbox from the student convenience store, he went to the dining hall.

Each year-group had a dining hall that belonged to them, which were located behind the dormitory. When Huo Yuhao walked into the freshman dining hall, he was astonished. At that moment, there weren’t many people in the dining hall, making it appear extremely spacious. There wasn’t even a

single table; it was an entirely empty place. There was only a washbasin used to wash one’s hands and tableware. The inner parts of the dining hall had windows that one could buy food from, with price tags outside them. There were a total of eight windows that increased in price from right to left, and all served different dishes.

There were actually no seating areas in the dining hall? The dining hall’s entrance even had the words ‘No food is allowed to be taken from the dining hall. No exceptions.’ written on it.

After a brief moment of astonishment, Huo Yuhao walked towards the right-most window to buy the cheapest available food, which was stir-fried vegetables and white rice. However, he still devoured the food despite its quality. For him, having something to eat was already extremely good. Furthermore, the food’s price was extremely cheap; it was only two copper coins. With his monthly income of one gold coin, he could eat for the entire month as long as he was frugal with his money.

Whilst eating, Huo Yuhao observed the dining hall. He discovered that the most expensive window’s food was actually priced in gold spirit coins. That was something that he didn’t even dare to imagine.

After quickly ﬁnishing his mealy, Huo Yuhao returned directly to his dorm. Like the saying goes, the clumsy bird needs to ﬂy into the forest earlier. He understood the difference between himself and the other students, so he naturally couldn’t waste any time.

After sitting in a cross-legged position on the sturdy wooden bed, Huo Yuhao quickly entered a meditative state, and started cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

Although his cultivation speed was far slower than Bei Bei’s or Tang Ya’s, he’d already improved quite a bit compared to the past. After changing his cultivation technique to the Mysterious Heaven Technique, he could now at least feel a slight improvement in his cultivation as he cultivated, which was much better than his previous state. Furthermore, after the few days of cultivation that he’d done during their journey back, his originally chaotic and impure soulforce had already completely turned into that of the Mysterious Heaven Technique. There was one effect of the Mysterious Heaven Technique’s soulforce that was extremely useful for him—the Mysterious Heaven Technique would nourish his passageways when he circulated it. Although he couldn’t see much improvement currently, Bei Bei had told him that it would deﬁnitely improve his physique in the long run.

Huo Yuhao had already planned his time out well. Every day, he’d cultivate the Purple Demon Eyes in the morning, then spend two hours practicing the Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon, Ghost Shadow Perplexing Tracks, and the Mysterious Jade Hands, as well as some grappling techniques. As for the rest of his time, other than the time he spent eating, he’d use all of it to cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

Soulforce was the foundation of a soul master. Currently, he had to use as much of his as he could to cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Technique.

“Oh, this technique isn’t bad at all. It’s indeed quite suitable for your current state. You humans are really skilled!” When Huo Yuhao had just entered his cultivation state, everything he saw suddenly turned white. The voice of the Skydream Iceworm also echoed out; he’d been brought back to his spiritual sea.

Huo Yuhao was slightly surprised as he called out, “Brother Skydream?”

The Skydream Iceworm’s lazy voice echoed out, “Your body’s condition has changed a lot during the past few days. You’ve ﬁnally gotten a good start. Your body’s endurance has also been gradually increasing. Not bad, not bad. The abilities that you’re cultivating are suitable for you, especially this meditation

technique, and that eye training technique. The four soul skills I’ve given you have indeed received beneﬁts from them. You must practice using these soul skills constantly, especially the last one. It should be very effective when combined with your eye training technique. You’ve obtained a basic soul-attack skill. All in all, your condition, as of now, is slightly better than I had predicted.”

“Brother Skydream, I’ll deﬁnitely put a lot of effort into cultivating.” After hearing the Skydream Iceworm’s voice, Huo Yuhao reafﬁrmed that he’d truly merged with a million-year soul beast, and that he hadn’t been dreaming.

The Skydream Iceworm then said, “I’m tired, thus I need to rest for a period of time. You should just follow your current cultivation method. When you break through, and you need a second soul ring, I’ll naturally wake up. At that time, the ice- type martial soul that I bestowed you with should be able to become a full-ﬂedged martial soul. It’ll cause your strength to have a qualitative leap.”

Huo Yuhao replied, “How can I ﬁnd you if I need to?”

The Skydream Iceworm said, “If you encounter any danger that you’re unable to escape, I’ll naturally help you out. Don’t worry, I can only live while you’re still alive! Alright, I’m going to sleep…”

The white light vanished, and Huo Yuhao woke up from his meditation. To his astonishment, he found that the sky outside had already turned completely dark. He’d actually cultivated for six hours... at the very least. The Mysterious Heaven Technique in his body also seemed to have had a slight improvement.

It’s already become night time, but I’m a bit hungry. However, looking at the time, the dining halls should’ve already closed. Fortunately, there were still a few more dry rations within his cloth sack. Thus, after drinking some water and allaying his hunger, Huo Yuhao continued to cultivate.

After absorbing some of the mystical energy from the eastern purple qi at dawn, Huo Yuhao returned to his room to start cultivating a few of the Tang Sect’s techniques. His

attainments in these techniques could be said to only be superﬁcial. Furthermore, he didn’t dedicate most of his energy to this; he was just doing some light cultivation.

By the time he’d ﬁnished his training session, the sky outside had already turned bright. After cleaning himself up, Huo Yuhao walked over to the dining hall for some food. Once he reached the dining hall, he was somewhat concerned. Ever since he’d started cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Technique, his appetite had been rising constantly. Strengthening one’s physique required sufﬁcient nutrients, yet he had no money. His school fees had already been paid for by his eldest senior brother, how could he ask Bei Bei for more?

Fortunately, there weren’t many varieties of food available for breakfast. Furthermore, breakfast was also cheap. Huo Yuhao bought a few eggs and a bowl of porridge, causing him to reluctantly spend three copper coins. He’d ﬁnally replenished his body’s nutrients. Yesterday, he’d even had the thought that the food here was cheap. However, he suddenly discovered that the price of food within Shrek Academy was actually more expensive than the food outside.

“Junior brother, you can’t be stingy while eating; you can’t lack nutrients. The school has some jobs that are within your

abilities to do. You can do these jobs for your livelihood income.” Unbeknownst to him, Bei Bei had arrived at Huo Yuhao’s side.

“Eldest senior brother!” Huo Yuhao let out a cry of surprise. Up till now, the only people that he was able to recognise within Shrek Academy were Tang Ya and Bei Bei.

Bei Bei was slightly apologetic as he said, “The reason why I haven’t given you any money directly is because I hope that you can learn to rely on yourself. Combat strength is only a part of one’s strength; a person’s composite strength is determined by many different abilities. Of them, the most important ability is their ability to live under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

“Eldest senior brother, you’ve already given me a lot of help. I understand. I still have a few silver coins as of right now, so I’ll go take up some jobs after school opens.”

Bei Bei rubbed his head. “I’ll go ﬁrst. You must remember this: money can be earned, but you can’t be stingy with your food. You must have your nutrition.”

Huo Yuhao followed Bei Bei as they walked out of the dining hall together. He decided to listen to his eldest senior brother’s advice; he’d treat himself to a meal today.

When he returned to his dorm room, Huo Yuhao was surprised to discover that the door to his room was open. He felt astonished at ﬁrst, before realizing the fact that his roommate might have arrived.

At that moment, a youth walked out of the room. After seeing Huo Yuhao, he was also stunned.

The youth had a delicate appearance, as well as fair skin. His large eyes were very unusual; they were actually a faint pinkish-blue. His settled short hair was also the same colour. His appearance seemed to be even more handsome than Bei Bei’s. This was truly the most handsome person that Huo Yuhao had ever seen. His height and age didn’t seem to be that different from Huo Yuhao’s either.

“You are?” Huo Yuhao asked subconsciously.

The youth was somewhat haughty as he stared at him. “Step aside.”

“Oh.” Huo Yuhao hurriedly stepped to the side. The youth walked past him, then stopped after taking a few steps out of the room. He turned around to look at Huo Yuhao as he said, “You also live in this dorm room, I assume. Since you’ve cleaned this room up so well, I’ll allow you to live with me for now. I have a few rules that you must remember: One, you’re not allowed to randomly bring other people back to this room. Two, you’re not allowed to bare your disgusting naked body in this room. Three, you’re not allowed to snore at night. Four, you’re not allowed to bother me. Five, you’re in charge of the cleanliness of this room in the future, but you can’t touch my bed. Do you understand clearly?”

When he saw the youth’s arrogant appearance, Huo Yuhao couldn’t help but let his anger hit the roof. “Why must I listen to you?”

The youth snorted coldly. “If you don’t listen to me, I’ll simply throw you out. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to try.”

Huo Yuhao had been bullied by people from the Duke’s Mansion since he was young, so the people that he hated the most were these types of arrogant people. He coldly said, “If you want ﬁght, then let’s ﬁght. Let’s go outside.”

As he looked at Huo Yuhao’s unsubmissive appearance, the youth actually laughed. His smile was very good-looking, but the disdain and contempt in it ignited the anger in Huo Yuhao’s heart even more.

“I still don’t know your name.” The youth said with disdain.

Huo Yuhao spoke in a low tone, “Before asking someone elses name, shouldn’t you tell me your name ﬁrst?”

The youth indifferently said, “I’m Wang Dong.”

“I’m Huo Yuhao.”

Wang Dong smiled as he suddenly approached Huo Yuhao. “Very good. I think that your name shall quickly disappear

from Shrek Academy. Let’s go, idiot.” As he said this, he took the initiative to turn around and walk out of the room.

Huo Yuhao’s ﬁsts were tightly clenched as he followed Wang Dong with large strides. Even though he knew that his combat strength wasn’t that high, he would never allow anyone to bully him again. Furthermore, this person would even be his roommate for at least a year.

Zona Novel Online

Unrivaled Tang Sect Volume 1

Chapter 1: The Youth with the Spirit Eyes

Chapter 2: Skydream Iceworm

Chapter 3: The Million Year Soul Ring

Chapter 4: 'Thunderbolt' Bei Bei

Chapter 5: First Glimpse Through The Gate

Chapter 6: The Number One Academy on the Douluo Continent

Chapter 7: Freshmen Entering the Academy

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Zhao Ge Chapter 1-10

Wu Chang Jie

Zhao Ge Chapter 121-130

List of Novels A-Z

Completed novels