Book 4: The Golden Road

Chapter 26.1: National Treasure, Cauldron's Trembling Shake

After Mu Jin left, Nanmen Yun’er took her leave as well. Only Wu Feng stayed behind to accompany Ning Tian. Although the three of them were a team, in truth, only Ning Tian and Wu Feng were closely related; Nanmen Yun’er was only a classmate of theirs.

“Young mistress, we can’t just leave this as it is. That bastard dared to hurt you! Shall we use the strength of the clan?” Wu Feng said hatefully.

An unresigned look flashed through Ning Tian’s eyes. “Sister Feng, don’t let anger cloud your reasoning. This is Shrek Academy. How can we rashly use the strength of our clan? Furthermore, we lost in terms of personal strength; we can’t randomly accuse others for our loss. If we want to wash this humiliation away, we’ll have to work hard by ourselves. Also, haven’t I said this before? Don’t call me ‘young mistress’ in the Academy. We’re sisters here.”

“Alright.” Wu Feng obediently replied, softly nodding her head as she did so.

After pondering for a moment, Ning Tian said, “Let’s see if we can find a way to watch their match tomorrow. As long as we watch them carefully, I’m sure we’ll be able to find a clue as to why we lost. They didn’t rely on luck to beat us, they relied on strength. That student with the ten year soul ring seems to be known as Huo Yuhao; he’s the one we should pay the most attention to. He could end up being our greatest opponent during our time in the outer courtyard.”

Fortunately, the tournament’s matches were held individually, which meant that there wasn’t a large audience for each match. As a result, Huo Yuhao’s team wasn’t followed too closely.

Aside from proving themselves, Huo Yuhao’s team had had their confidence levels increased after both successfully entering the top 16 and beating one of the three strongest teams. Soul Elders weren’t that scary; after all, hadn’t they just beat a team led by a Soul Elder-ranked expert? Even an extremely synergistic team like Ning Tian’s had lost to theirs, so the excitement in Huo Yuhao’s team could be imagined.

Huo Yuhao finally fulfilled his promise with Xiao Xiao. He first sold his regular amount of twenty fish, then brought the remaining fish he’d bought to the forest and had a picnic with Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao. This went on all the way until the sky had become dark, when the three quietly returned to their dorms.

Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong first went to clean themselves up. Huo Yuhao knew that Wang Dong was somewhat of a mysophobic, so he changed into a set of clean clothes. “Are we going to do it on your bed, or on mine?”

Wang Dong’s face stiffened and he replied with a slightly angry voice, “Would it kill you to add the word ‘cultivate’? Can you not make it sound so ambiguous?”

Huo Yuhao was speechless. “Don’t listen to Xiao Xiao’s nonsense, I don’t like you. I definitely still prefer pretty girls.”

Wang Dong humphed. “Let’s do it on our own beds, your’s is too hard.”

Huo Yuhao furrowed his brows. “Stop arguing, let’s do it quickly. If we cultivate together, our cultivation speed practically doubles. Don’t you want to quickly catch up to that Ning Tian in terms of soul rank?”

Wang Dong smiled craftily. “Who would want to argue with you? Who said that we can’t cultivate together while we’re sitting on our own beds? Drag your bed over and make a 50cm gap between them. That way, we’ll be able to hold hands if we stretch our hands out. Furthermore, we’ll be able to use the remaining space as the dividing line between our sides of the room.”

Huo Yuhao rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you tired of all of this? Aren’t you just lying to yourself?”

Wang Dong glared at him with his large, beautiful eyes. “Are you coming over or not? If you aren’t, I’m going to sleep. I wasn’t even a hardworking person in the first place. If it weren’t for you, why would I even think of cultivating at night?”

“Fine, I’m scared of you then.” Helpless, Huo Yuhao could only drag his bed over next to Wang Dong’s and sit in a cross-legged position with his palms outstretched.

Wang Dong raised his hands to meet Wang Dong’s, causing their Haodong Power to rapidly circulate throughout their bodies.

Defeating Ning Tian today had been the first time that they’d tried using their Haodong Power to activate a soul skill together. When they’d succeeded, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had faintly felt that there was a chance for them to covertly turn all of their soul skills into fusion skills via their Haodong Power. When the two of them had gathered their soul power to activate the soul skill, it hadn’t been as strong as a true fusion skill, but it had still distantly exceeded the strength of their usual skills. They’d been able to smoothly defeat their opponents because of this.

On the other hand, their match today had given Huo Yuhao a feeling of power for the first time ever. However, their cultivation levels were simply too low. It had taken the two of them working together to activate the soul skill for it to barely reach the level of a Soul Elder. After all, Huo Yuhao’s own soul power was still too weak. If it weren’t for the fact that his Spiritual Shock was a unique spiritual-type attack, they probably wouldn’t have been able to win their earlier match as efficiently as they had.

Only a single day had passed, yet a large number of freshmen had already been eliminated from the freshmen assessment. After the second day finished, only the top 16 teams—or a total of 48 students—would remain from this year’s freshmen assessment. Everyone that had reached this point could be considered an excellent figure from this year’s freshmen; so much so that they could even be considered as one of the most outstanding figures amongst their peers in the entire continent.

During the lot-drawing for the top 16, Huo Yuhao’s team saw a few familiar faces. Huang Chutian’s team—who they’d beaten during the round-robin tournament—had entered the top 16 as well.

Huo Yuhao whispered to Wang Dong, “How long do you think the Lan sisters will have to rest in order for them to use their fusion skill again?”

Wang Dong replied, “I don’t think it’ll be that long. Even though they’re twins, their fusion skill wasn’t that strong. I reckon that it’s because their compatibility rate isn’t that high—their fusion skill wasn’t explosive enough. Its ability to restrict opponents isn’t too bad though. However, they aren’t able to maintain the drain on their soul power for a long time. If we meet them again, you won’t even need to make a move. As long as you help me activate my Light of the Butterfly Goddess, I’m confident that I’ll be able to break their fusion skill.”

While they talked, they continued to observe the rest of their opponents. At this point in the tournament, Huo Yuhao was probably the only one-ringed Soul Master left.

There were even more people in the Spectator’s Stand today. The stands had already been filled up, despite the matches not yet being started. Strangely, there was an empty space in the middle of the stands that was about three or so square meters wide. An old man with disheveled hair and holes all over his clothes was sitting there with his legs dangling off the edge of the stand. He was drinking alcohol from a reddish-purple gourd that he was holding in his hands. In addition to that, there were a few pieces of fried chicken that had been placed on oiled paper in front of him. He was also holding a fried chicken leg in his off hand. As he drank and ate, he appeared to be extremely joyful.

Every single person who was watching the tournament from the Spectator’s Stand was a teacher at Shrek Academy, yet nobody had even dared to approach this old man, much less question him.

Wang Yan respectfully walked over to the sloppily dressed old man and whispered, “Xuan Lao, you’ve come.”

“Yep.” The old man simply snorted before he continued eating and drinking.

Wang Yan pointed towards the stage below and said, “The three youngsters that I talked about are over there. Yesterday….”

When he got to this point, Xuan Lao impatiently waved his fried chicken leg around and said, “I’ll take a look for myself.”