An Extra Martial Soul

"You little brat!"

Chen Dong's face darkened as he stared at Chen Ming, ready to grab him by the back of the collar again.

But now that Chen Ming was no longer playing around with him, there was no way Chen Dong could catch him.

"Say it! Call me Brother Ming, or I'll kick your butt into bloom!"

With a nimble sidestep, Chen Ming evaded Chen Dong's grab and moved to his side, already poised to kick him in the backside at any moment.

Chen Dong's face darkened even further, several especially deep black lines appearing across his forehead.

This little brat.

"By the way, what's your Martial Soul?"

He changed the subject.

"Martial Soul?"

At the mention of Martial Souls, Chen Ming stopped fooling around and turned serious.

With every reincarnation, he rather enjoyed returning to the mindset of a child.

It couldn't be helped. Every life had involved at least eighty years of pressure from being hunted down. Childhood had become the final haven where Chen Ming's mind could relax.

Of course, Chen Ming was simply very relaxed. It was not as though he was particularly childish. Some actions only seemed childish when performed by a child; the same cool pose looked hilarious when one was young, while only when one grew older could others tell that he was trying to look handsome.

Seeing Chen Ming's change, Chen Dong thought there was something wrong with his Martial Soul.

"What is it? Is your Martial Soul defective?"

"Not that." Chen Ming said naturally, "It's just that I have one extra Martial Soul."

One extra Martial Soul?

Chen Dong's eyes widened.

Two Martial Souls?

Chen Ming trusted Chen Dong and did not lie, but he also felt there was no need to explain that he had three Martial Souls right now.

The Soul Martial Soul was Chen Ming's foundation. Due to the cultivation from his first life and the process of reincarnation, his soul bore the memories and will of his past lives. It was itself a Martial Soul, yet it could not be cultivated like a normal Martial Soul, similar to the Spirit Holy Magus Martial Soul that Electrolux bestowed upon Huo Yuhao in his later years.

In his second and third lives, lacking experience, Chen Ming had simply gone with the flow and randomly inherited the Martial Souls of his parents in those lives. Only afterward did he begin consciously selecting Martial Souls to perfect his cultivation.

By his ninth life, according to his plan, he was supposed to have Twin Martial Souls: one was the untrainable Soul Martial Soul, while the other was a Body Martial Soul.

That was right—born of heaven and earth, along with a Body Martial Soul.

But the current situation was that he had one more Martial Soul than he had expected.

So he had not deceived Chen Dong.

Having one extra Martial Soul did not mean one more than ordinary people. It meant one more than he had planned for.

"Never mind the Martial Soul stuff. You wouldn't understand it anyway. I'll awaken your Martial Soul first."

Chen Ming waved a hand, putting on the air of a little adult. His tone and expression were perfectly convincing, but on a six-year-old child like him, they still felt completely out of place.

Chen Dong ignored him, immersed instead in the excitement of awakening his Martial Soul.

Chen Ming directly slapped Chen Dong on the butt and injected Soul Power into his body.

Chen Dong immediately stopped feeling excited.

His face darkened again.

Chen Ming did not need to worry over how to awaken a Martial Soul.

He knew how.

Suppressing the urge to kick Chen Ming, Chen Dong felt the changes within his body.

This was—

He felt it. He felt that restless—Broad Blade!

"Ha!"

With a loud shout, a wide, massive blade appeared in his hand. The moment it appeared, the atmosphere in the room seemed to grow heavier. The blade was primarily black, with red patterns spreading across it, naturally wreathed in a layer of blood-red mist. Faintly, it seemed as though a wolf's howl echoed around it.

At the moment his Martial Soul awakened, Chen Dong felt Soul Power flowing through his body.

His eyes widened!

The words he had used to comfort Chen Ming had not been fabricated. They were principles he genuinely believed in.

In his view, anyone with Soul Power could awaken on their own, even without a Soul Master's guidance at the age of six.

After all, that claim sounded perfectly reasonable.

That was why he had done challenging things, such as climbing mountains and training. When he had been even younger, he had even sat alone by the small river at the edge of the village and meditated for three days, displaying astonishing willpower.

Unfortunately, after his final attempt six years ago, he had accepted his fate. He believed that he truly had no Soul Power and could not awaken on his own.

Now, with Chen Ming's help, his heart had truly suffered a tremendous shock.

He was not a child, but an adult.

So the claim that people with Soul Power would awaken on their own might have been spread precisely to numb people from the lower classes like them.

For a moment, the excitement of awakening his Martial Soul vanished, leaving behind only helplessness.

"Old Chen, your Soul Power is really strong."

Chen Ming noticed Chen Dong's emotions and could only use the strength of his Soul Power to cheer him up somewhat.

"Strong? How strong?"

"At any rate, it's no weaker than mine," Chen Ming said.

Chen Dong had no frame of reference.

Nor was it easy for Chen Ming to explain.

After all, one of them was supposedly self-awakened, only six years old, and had never encountered a real Soul Master, while the other had just awakened his Martial Soul with the help of that six-year-old. How could they determine their Soul Power Levels?

After carefully examining Chen Dong's Martial Soul, Chen Ming confirmed that its quality was extremely high. Therefore, the tenth level of Innate Full Soul Power was indeed innate.

If he possessed Innate Full Soul Power, then what was Chen Dong's actual Soul Power Level now?

After obtaining his first Soul Ring, he might not stop at level eleven or twelve.

When Soul Masters cultivated to every multiple of ten, they needed to obtain a Soul Ring before they could continue increasing their Soul Power. Yet even if they had not obtained a Soul Ring, the Soul Power gained through cultivation still remained within them; it simply did not manifest.

In fact, this principle could be extended more broadly to include unawakened Soul Masters. Even before awakening, Soul Power would still slowly accumulate. The existence of Innate Level Twenty Soul Power served as an indirect proof of this.

Chen Dong might never have cultivated, but with the talent of Innate Full Soul Power, mere normal physical development should have raised his Soul Power by quite a few levels.

Yet awakening his Martial Soul only at the age of twenty-six had, more or less, still delayed Chen Dong.

"Sigh, Old Chen, we need to find a way to learn how to cultivate, right?"

Chen Dong rubbed his hair, his face full of worry.

Cultivation?

It felt both familiar and foreign to him.

"In our situation, we don't even have Soul Master certificates. You're fine, but I'm already twenty-six. If I tried to attend school now, it probably wouldn't be easy."

His life had undergone an enormous change after awakening his Martial Soul and gaining Soul Power, which seemed to be at no low level.

All his original plans had been rendered useless.

For a moment, the adult's eyes were instead filled with bewilderment as he looked to the child, as though searching for someone to rely on.

"We definitely need to find a place to cultivate," Chen Ming said. "Old Chen, you're a bit old, but your Martial Soul feels very powerful. Even if you can't attend school, you could try joining a sect, right?"

Join a sect?

"Heh! Now that you mention it, I really do have a goal."

In his youth, when he had admired Soul Masters, how could he not have imagined his future? He had once searched everywhere for information related to Soul Masters.

Among them, there was a Mad Saber Sect that he had long yearned for.

Now that he had awakened his Martial Soul, he felt that his Martial Soul had been subtly guiding him all along, making him unable to forget the Mad Saber Sect. Because of that, he had gathered quite a bit of information about it.

"Mad Saber Sect?"

Chen Ming repeated the name twice, but he had no impression of such a sect in his memories.

Still, since it was named after blades, Old Chen's broad blade, with its Innate Full Soul Power, should be enough to get him in.

"By the way, Old Chen, what are you planning to call that blade?"

"The blade's name."

Chen Dong carefully examined his broad blade, faintly seeming to resonate with the howling Wolf Soul.

"Wolf Lord!"