Freshman Assessment

While Chi Qiu guarded Huo Yuhao, Wang Dong went to dinner alone. When she returned to the dormitory, she began thinking about her plans for the future.

The freshman assessment was only three months away. At dinner, she had asked some older students for advance word about it. The assessment would be held in teams of three, and each team could have only one Power Attack System Battle Soul Master.

Didn't that mean she definitely couldn't be on a team with Miss Qiu?

The thought troubled Wang Dong greatly. In her eyes, not being on the same team as Chi Qiu meant that sooner or later she would have to face her—which meant she'd have little chance of winning the championship.

Among her peers, aside from Huo Yuhao and Chi Qiu, she was confident she could beat most people. Even if Huo Yuhao was on the opposing team, she could team up with Chi Qiu and target him. Huo might be strong, but his teammates might not be much to worry about.

After thinking it over, she suddenly came up with a plan. She shouted in her heart, Wang Dong, you really are a genius! Then she happily sat down on her bed and began cultivating. This time, however, the way she circulated her Soul Power was somewhat different from usual.

She had to thank Huo for his notes. They recorded the cultivation paths of Soul Masters from different disciplines in great detail!

Three months passed in the blink of an eye.

Huo Yuhao did nothing particularly attention-grabbing. Every day, he went to class, cultivated, grilled fish, and trained extra in the evenings. When Wang Dong and Chi Qiu attended Zhou Yi's classes, he helped them copy their notes. In the meantime, he visited the Soul Tool Department once. An upperclassman told him that students could only take Soul Tool Department courses starting in their second year.

But only Chi Qiu and Wang Dong knew how much he had improved.

Three months had been enough for Huo Yuhao to consolidate the Soul Power and spiritual power he had gained so rapidly earlier. He had also found a cultivation path that suited him well, and raised his Soul Power by another level. Now, after being tempered by the remaining essence of the Soul Ascension Pill within his Eye of Destiny, he had reached the bottleneck at level twenty.

Wang Dong was astonished. She had changed disciplines, which had made cultivation more difficult for her, but that was no reason for Huo to have caught up with her by so much!

She was no longer as lazy as she had been before. If anything, she was giving it her all. Even so, she had only just crossed the threshold of level twenty-four.

As for Chi Qiu, neither Huo Yuhao nor Wang Dong could tell what level she was at. She also kept refusing to let Wang Dong test her Soul Power.

Huo Yuhao, meanwhile, was already thinking about something else. If nothing unexpected happened, he planned to build up his Soul Power and wait until the break to obtain a Soul Ring under Tian Meng's guidance. That way, when he got his Soul Ring, the Soul Power he had accumulated would burst forth, and his level should rise accordingly.

Huo Yuhao also actively sought out Chi Qiu for practical combat training. He believed that, rather than doing simple physical conditioning, he could improve both his combat skills and physical fitness through actual hand-to-hand sparring. It was much more practical than Zhou Yi's method of making them run laps.

As it turned out, the method was indeed very effective.

Chi Qiu was already an expert at fighting, and Huo Yuhao benefited greatly from sparring with her. At first, she could knock him down in three moves. Three months later, he could finally exchange a few blows with her, and his physique and combat instincts had improved noticeably.

Later, Wang Dong joined the training too. Clearly, she also thought it was more effective than Zhou Yi's method. As the class monitor, she even took the initiative to organize class sparring matches during physical training, just to spite Zhou Yi.

The position of Class One's monitor should have gone to Chi Qiu, but she was always at odds with Zhou Yi. Yet she managed to complete every task, leaving Zhou Yi furious but unable to say anything.

It was only after appointing Wang Dong that Zhou Yi realized Wang Dong was just as rebellious.

The class's two strongest Battle Soul Masters were both troublemakers. What could she do?

If she expelled them, she would be lowering her own promotion rate. To some extent, Zhou Yi's impressive promotion rate was also thanks to the large number of "underperforming students" she had expelled.

She had never expected to find herself having to swallow her anger like this.

That day, Huo Yuhao called Wang Dong and Chi Qiu over again for extra training.

"Huo is such a training maniac." Wang Dong put a hand to her forehead, looking thoroughly exasperated.

"Give me a break." Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong had truly become nothing more than good brothers. He teased her, "If I didn't call you over, would you be lying around on your bed again? Come on, you and I are taking on Qiu'er again."

"Yeah, yeah." Wang Dong gave her Butterfly Wings an irritated flap. "Who said I was lying around? I've been working incredibly hard lately, all right? I can't even rest for one day. You're a demon."

Before she had even finished speaking, Chi Qiu was already rushing toward them. Her excellent physical conditioning gave her incredible speed.

Her first target was Wang Dong.

In these sparring matches, all three of them were allowed to use an ordinary wooden staff as a weapon.

Chi Qiu flicked her wrist, and the staff in her hand chopped straight down toward Wang Dong's head. To anyone watching, the speed of the blow made it look less like sparring and more like she was trying to kill Wang Dong.

But Huo Yuhao watched calmly from the sidelines. He knew Wang Dong could dodge it, and he knew Chi Qiu was already holding back.

Huo Yuhao never used Spiritual Detection Sharing in these fights. The whole point was to sharpen their combat instincts. Wang Dong twisted aside, dodging Chi Qiu's staff through sheer speed, without the help of Spiritual Detection Sharing.

Speed! Wang Dong's Butterfly Wings beat at an astonishing pace. Her flying speed now was beyond what an ordinary Butterfly Martial Soul could achieve.

Her way around the "only one Power Attack System Battle Soul Master per team" rule was to train like an Agility Attack System Soul Master, so she could qualify when it came time to register their team.

This did nothing to diminish her skill as a Power Attack System Soul Master. Instead, it gave her a new understanding of how speed and strength could complement each other.

Chi Qiu didn't seem to mind that her first strike had missed. She immediately turned and swept her staff toward Huo Yuhao. Huo Yuhao sprang backward, creating half a body's worth of space, then braced his own staff forward and met Chi Qiu's head-on with a deft application of force.

The moment the staffs collided, both snapped in two. The broken ends flew toward Wang Dong, who nimbly spun aside.

Chi Qiu looked at the broken staff in her hand and fell into thought. "Let's call it here for today."

Huo Yuhao was delighted. In the past three months, this was the first time he had broken Chi Qiu's weapon. Before this, it had always been his own weapon that suffered.

Wang Dong protested, "I haven't even had a chance to fight yet. Why are we stopping?"

"All right, save some energy," Huo Yuhao said. "They're announcing the team assignments in class later, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Chi Qiu said. "There are sixty-two students in our class. I wonder what that woman will do."

Huo Yuhao smiled. "I just hope I don't end up facing your team!"

He did feel a little regretful about it. He wasn't in the same class as Qiu'er, so there was a good chance they would end up as opponents. That was also why he had been training so hard to improve his close-combat skills.

If he ended up facing Qiu'er's team... She knew him too well. He needed some way to protect himself. Otherwise, if Spiritual Detection Sharing were cut off for his teammates, they would have little chance of beating Qiu'er.

The three chatted for a while longer, then returned to the classroom building to wait for class.

Huo Yuhao was somewhat nervous about the freshman assessment. Even though his level-twenty Soul Power was enough to meet the requirements, he naturally wanted to try for the championship too.

He hoped to find out who his teammates would be as soon as possible, so he felt both eager and apprehensive when the teacher went to the front of the room to announce the team assignments.

But the teacher read out every student's name without mentioning his.

"Next, you'll have time to form teams freely. You can make arrangements among yourselves."

After saying that, the teacher walked over to Huo Yuhao and said gently, "Yuhao, I didn't call your name just now because not many students in the class expressed interest in teaming up with you when we collected everyone's preferences. Your priority was also quite low."

"There are ninety-four students in our class. With three to a team, that leaves one person over. See if anyone is willing to switch teams with you during the exchange period. If not, I'll have to ask whether a team from another class is willing to take you."

"I'll make sure you find a team, so don't worry."

Huo Yuhao's gaze dimmed for just a moment. Then he smiled and shook his head at the teacher. "It's all right, teacher. I understand."

But he made no move to look for a team himself. No one in the class knew what his first Soul Skill did, so naturally no one would want him as a teammate.

He would rather wait for the assignments, then. He was confident he could team up with anyone and still achieve a good result. Everyone who tried Little Huo's Spiritual Detection Sharing loved it.

It was almost time for class to end when the teacher hurried over to him again. "Yuhao, I've found you a team. I'll take you to meet your teammates now."

Huo Yuhao obediently followed the teacher and headed toward... Freshman Class One?

A bold, joyful guess came to him. His Attribute Connection told him that Qiu'er was standing inside. So he didn't even use Spiritual Detection to look. He wanted to see the surprise with his own eyes.

But when he actually walked into the classroom, Chi Qiu wasn't the only one standing there. There was also—

Wang Dong.

Both of them brightened when they saw Huo Yuhao.

Well, that saved them the trouble of getting used to each other. After three months of intensive training, they already knew each other inside out!

Zhou Yi, standing behind them, spoke up. "Is this the student left over from your class?"

The phrase "left over" was rather unpleasant. Zhou Yi wasn't particularly friendly toward Huo Yuhao either. Unless she liked a student, she never treated them very well.

Huo Yuhao's teacher patted him on the shoulder. "Go on, Yuhao. For now, you'll spend some time with Teacher Zhou and your teammates."

She had thought Huo Yuhao might be afraid. In her eyes, he had always been a quiet, shy, hardworking, and earnest student. But she hadn't expected him to walk over to Chi Qiu with his head held high, neither servile nor arrogant.

He extended his right hand with exaggerated formality. "Hello, let's get acquainted. My name is Huo Yuhao. I think working together for the freshman assessment will go very smoothly."

Chi Qiu blinked and took his hand. "Hello, I'm Chi Qiu. I think working with you in this assessment will be very enjoyable too."

Wang Dong rolled her eyes from the side.

What are you two putting on an act for?

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