The winner had barely been announced when Huo Yuhao moved. Giving Ma Xiaotao no time to recover, he touched his Storage Soul Tool, and the Spirit Slashing Blade appeared in his hand. Xiao Hongchen patted his shoulder and cheerfully left the arena.
In truth, if he unleashed the full power of his Ultimate Ice, he was confident he could have taken Ma Xiaotao out of the fight right then and there. But he didn't want to draw too much attention from Shrek. When he had studied there, he hadn't openly revealed that he possessed a Second Martial Soul.
He gave the Soul Power in his hand a slight stir. A metallic click sounded from within the Spirit Slashing Blade, and the Partition Formation stopped working. His spiritual power began to seep, strand by strand, into the pure ice Soul Power.
By mixing the power of his Spirit Eye into the ice, he was, in a sense, lowering the rank of his Ultimate Ice.
The Ice Empress had told him that Ultimate and non-Ultimate powers belonged to two different tiers, but there were still differences in strength within each tier. For instance, she and the Snow Empress both wielded the power of Ultimate Ice, but the Snow Empress's chill was even more potent.
So Huo Yuhao was working to lower the rank of the ice Soul Power within the Spirit Slashing Blade until it sat right on the line between Ultimate and non-Ultimate. Ordinary Soul Masters would find it hard to tell which side of that line it fell on.
That way, if Shrek questioned him, he could claim that Meng Hongchen—or even Teacher Yu—had charged it for him. Both of them had ice Soul Power of a fairly high level.
As Ma Xiaotao charged toward him, Huo Yuhao pointed the