You've Been Laughing at Me This Whole Time, and You Haven't Stopped

Damn, you've been laughing at me this whole time, and you haven't stopped.

Xiao Hongchen had never been one to hold back with his words. Bei Bei frowned. He was already in a foul mood, and now he had to deal with this trouble, too. Even his usually refined expression was about to crack.

The other members of Shrek's reserve team looked ready to blow up as well. After all, only fools were afraid of causing trouble. They weren't worried about getting into a fight right there in the hotel corridor.

Fortunately, Wang Yan came over and defused the tense standoff.

"Enough. Yuhao and the others can choose wherever they want to go. Since they've already left Shrek, we can't hold them to Shrek's standards. We'll settle this in the arena."

After speaking, Wang Yan gave Huo Yuhao a long look, then turned and urged the reserve team to enter their meeting room.

Xiao Hongchen was about to say something else, but the person beside him tugged at his arm. He turned back in annoyance and saw Huo Yuhao shaking his head.

"What?" Xiao Hongchen shook off his hand. "He insulted you, and you won't even let me answer him?"

"Teach them a lesson in the arena," Huo Yuhao said. "That teacher and I have some history, so let's let it go this time for his sake."

"Oh, you've reminded me. I still haven't settled things with you three." Xiao Hongchen looked as though he'd just been reminded. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, his heterochromatic eyes fixed on the three of them until they felt a chill down their backs. "You three used to be from Shrek?"

The others on the team turned to look, too. They were all curious about this.

"Well, you see..."

In the end, when Huo Yuhao got to the part about how Wang Dong had been expelled, the whole meeting room erupted in laughter. Even Chi Qiu and Huo Yuhao couldn't hold back.

"Uh-oh, Wang Dong's calling us by our full names. She never used to do that." Huo Yuhao immediately put on a panicked expression.

During the few days before the round-robin matches, Huo Yuhao had spent most of his time either reading the Soul Tool books he'd brought or cultivating in his room. By the time the round-robin matches began, his Soul Power had broken through to level twenty-nine.

As he spoke, he deliberately wove his Spiritual Power into his story to make it more compelling. When he described how Wang Dong had nearly been burned until her Martial Soul was damaged, how he and Chi Qiu had almost died beneath Ma Xiaotao's flames, and how they'd been threatened into keeping quiet, the Hongchen siblings' faces were full of indignation.

Huo Yuhao rubbed his ear guiltily. "We were expelled from Shrek. Let's go inside and talk."

To understand why Huo Yuhao and the others had come all this way, they had to start with Wang Dong pointing at Shrek's senior staff and cursing them all out...

"Hahaha... I'm not laughing at you. You were right to curse them out." Xiao Hongchen said that, but he was still laughing heartily.

Lin Xi smiled at Huo Yuhao. "Junior, we've gone undefeated in the round-robin matches every year."

"Still, we haven't run into them in the round-robin matches yet. According to the draw, there are nine teams in our group, so we'll play eight matches. Winning six will give us a good chance of qualifying, while seven wins will guarantee it. But you should know what the academy expects of you."

When Huo Yuhao talked about the final match of the freshman assessment, Xiao Hongchen listened with rapt attention, as if he were imagining himself right there in the competition.

"What are you laughing at? What's so funny?" Wang Dong looked flustered. "I shouldn't have let Yuhao tell it. I should've told it myself. Why does it sound so funny when he tells it? I was furious at the time!"

For a while, the meeting room was filled with laughter, in stark contrast to the oppressive atmosphere in the Shrek team's room next door and those of the other participating academies.

"Huh?" Huo Yuhao looked confused. "Doesn't everyone know that the White Tiger and Zhu Families have passed down their legacies for generations?"

"Don't get too worked up, seniors..." Huo Yuhao hurriedly waved his hands, though he was secretly a little pleased. After all, everyone liked hearing that others thought highly of them.

"An undefeated record." Ma Rulong toyed with a Soul Tool the size of a coin between his fingers. "No problem."

Yu Rufeng went over a few more details of the round-robin matches with the main team members, and then everyone returned to their rooms to rest.

"Not enough Soul Beasts with the Mental Attribute?" Ma Rulong's face was full of scorn, too. "Then Heaven really is on our side. We have quite a few well-known Soul Beasts with mental abilities here. I'd say it's fate that Yuhao came to the Sun Moon Empire."

The others all shook their heads.

Yu Rufeng, meanwhile, looked thoughtful. "Ma Xiaotao, the Evil Fire Phoenix, seems to be on their main team roster, too. Sending someone that volatile to the tournament... We'll have to pay extra attention to safety."

Huo Yuhao spent some more time explaining this. The Sun Moon Empire's research into Martial Souls was seriously lacking in this area.

When they enrolled, all they knew was that Huo Yuhao and the others came from the Heaven Dou Empire. They hadn't realized they were Shrek students. After all, no Shrek student had ever voluntarily transferred to the Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy, so the thought had never even crossed their minds.

When Huo Yuhao mentioned that he hadn't been made a core disciple, even the usually composed main team members could barely sit still.

"Junior Yuhao is so wonderful. They must have been blind!" Lin Xi slapped the chair and stood up, indignant.

"You were right to leave," Meng Hongchen said loudly. "That was completely unacceptable. No wonder Yuhao just said he hates injustice most of all."

Everyone entered the meeting room and took their seats. Lin Xi thoughtfully closed the door, and only then did Huo Yuhao begin telling them about his experiences. He glossed over the time before he entered Shrek and kept Chi Qiu and Wang Dong's backgrounds secret, focusing instead on the various ways they'd been treated with arrogance after entering Shrek Academy.

"I believe in you, seniors, too." Huo Yuhao nodded. "Then I'll focus on getting ready for the quarterfinals."

"Be careful you don't laugh yourself to death before your time," Wang Dong said in frustration. "Huo Yuhao, Chi Qiu, you two are laughing, too. I cursed them out for your sakes!"

"She's angry. What should we do?" Chi Qiu had clearly picked up some bad habits in the human world. She joined Huo Yuhao in putting on an act, though her usual cool expression made the deliberately anxious remark even funnier.

"All right, all right. Let's put this matter to rest." In the end, Teacher Yu forcibly brought the conversation back on track. "Yuhao has also given us a lot of useful information, including details about Ma Xiaotao and the Martial Soul Fusion Skill used by Dai Huabin and Zhu Lu."

"Dai Huabin and Zhu Lu used their Martial Soul Fusion Skill, the Hell White Tiger..." When Huo Yuhao said this, Meng Hongchen let out a little gasp. "They have a Martial Soul Fusion Skill, too?"

The team members had also dropped by a few times to tell Huo Yuhao how the first round had gone. To his shock, a student had actually died in the first round of the elimination matches.

"Do we still have enough trigger-activated Defensive Soul Tools?" Huo Yuhao asked Elder Ma as they made their way to the round-robin venue.

"We have enough for now," Elder Ma said. "And don't worry. There's a Soul Tool auction after today's round-robin matches. We can buy some more then, and we brought plenty of money."