Su Hui and Shui Bing'er walked out of the Gold Stone Studio.
He carried a bulging sack in each hand.
Shui Bing'er walked beside him along the flagstone road back to Skywater Academy.
Every so often, she glanced at the sacks in his hands. Her lips pressed together, then relaxed, then pressed together again as she tried to hold back her question.
Halfway there, she finally stopped.
"Su Hui."
Confusion tangled in her voice.
"You bought all those metal ores and took away a whole sack of scrap. What are you going to do with them?"
She paused, then asked suspiciously, "Don't tell me you're going to use them for barbecue."
Su Hui turned his head and smiled at her. "Actually, I'm pretty interested in smithing. I want to look into becoming a blacksmith."
"Smithing? A blacksmith?"
Shui Bing'er repeated the words without thinking.
Her expression didn't change in the slightest.
But a spark leaped in her beautiful ice-blue eyes, and the words Are you messing with me? were written all over it.
She quickly ran through every memory she had of Su Hui.
The first time she'd met the boy.
He'd been turning skewers over a campfire.
His hand had sprinkled on the seasoning more deftly than a Soul Master releasing a Soul Skill.
Back then, she'd already labeled him a master of barbecue.
Then they'd met again on the snowy plains of the Far North.
Su Hui had transformed into a sought-after genius Soul Master.
His strength was enough to make even her, a core student of Skywater Academy, look up to him.
It had taken her quite a while to persuade herself to accept the strange idea that a genius Soul Master could also be a barbecue expert.
Now he was saying that he actually liked smithing and wanted to be a blacksmith!
A barbecue seller!
A genius Soul Master!
A blacksmith!
Those three identities, which had nothing to do with each other, tumbled around in Shui Bing'er's head, fighting for space. No matter how she tried, she couldn't fit them together.
She felt as if every link in her chain of logic had snapped clean off where Su Hui was concerned.
She opened her mouth to say something, but the words rolled around on the tip of her tongue before she swallowed them again.
She realized that whatever she said, it would probably sound wrong.
If she questioned him, she'd seem to be making a fuss over nothing.
If she agreed, she couldn't bring herself to say it.
As she saw it, Su Hui shouldn't waste his energy on anything besides cultivation. It would be a terrible waste of the talent he'd acquired after birth.
Still, Shui Bing'er understood one thing: I'll probably never be able to guess what astonishing thing this boy will say next.
Never mind. Some things weren't her place to meddle in; it would only make her seem nosy.
She looked away and laughed. "You have a lot of interests."
"A few." Su Hui didn't explain further.
There was no need to explain his identity as a blacksmith.
Besides, his mind was already filled with the scrap in the sacks.
Just where was the "treasure with a special aura" Elder Yi had sensed? Which stone was it hidden in?
He could hardly wait to crouch by the roadside and smash the stones open one by one to find out.
The two walked on without another word.
Once they reached the entrance to Skywater Academy, Shui Bing'er parted ways with him.
After taking a few steps, she looked back at Su Hui.
The boy strode along with a sack in each hand, looking as if he'd struck the deal of a lifetime.
She shook her head and turned toward the girls' dormitory.
Su Hui carried the two sacks along the academy's path, passed the row of ginkgo trees by the training grounds, and turned onto the flagstone path leading to his private courtyard.
The moment he hooked the door shut with his heel, he let out a long breath, his shoulders loosening with it.
He set the two sacks down.
Then he immediately crouched and untied the sack filled with scrap.
The moment the rope came loose, a heap of grayish, yellowish stones spilled out with a clatter, scattering across a patch of floor.
Some were large and lopsided; others rolled into the corner. Not one of them looked remotely decent.
Su Hui hurriedly communicated with Electrolux through the Sea of Consciousness. "Elder Yi, is the treasure you sensed among these stones?"
Ice Empress sat cross-legged on the illusory ice of the Sea of Consciousness, her elbow propped on her knee and her chin resting in her palm. Tilting her head, she scrutinized the heap of scrap on the ground again and again.
With her elbow propped on her knee and her chin resting in her palm, she tilted her head and scrutinized the heap of scrap on the ground again and again.
Her exquisitely sharp features wore equal parts disdain and doubt.
"I've been staring at them forever, and no matter how I look at them, they're just a pile of rotten rocks."
Their patterns were coarse.
There wasn't the slightest trace of energy.
Even the fossils of the lowest-grade Soul Beasts were worth more as collectibles.
Her golden eyes slid toward the gray sphere in midair.
"Lord Electrolux, are you sure your senses haven't gone awry after sleeping for so long?"
"With your soul origin damaged, the occasional misjudgment would be understandable."
Ice Empress refused to believe that, with her level of cultivation, she couldn't see through a few rocks.
But the gray sphere quivered slightly, and Electrolux's aged voice remained calm. "Little one, clear your mind. I'll borrow your body."
"Okay."
Su Hui relinquished control of his body without the slightest hesitation.
The next moment, Su Hui's black pupils were suddenly stained a deep gray.
The gray wasn't cloudy, but clear and profound, like a color that had settled after being washed by the passage of countless years.
His entire bearing changed in the blink of an eye.
The boyish liveliness and sharp edge he'd never bothered to hide were replaced by a profound air that spoke of a long and ancient past.
Like an old well.
Its surface was perfectly still, yet it was unfathomably deep.
No one knew how many fragments of time lay buried at its bottom.
'Electrolux' raised his right hand and pointed into the air with his index finger.
The grayish scraps around the sacks shuddered violently, as if seized by an invisible hand.
Every stone rose into the air.
Seven or eight stones of different sizes slowly revolved overhead, their rough grains of sand pattering down in the light filtering through the window.
One irregular, fist-sized gray-brown stone broke away from the pile.
It drifted steadily toward him, as if drawn by an invisible thread.
'Electrolux' extended his finger again and lightly touched the stone's surface.
"Crack!"
The stone broke apart at his touch.
Its outer layers peeled away one by one.
The gray-brown shell grew thinner and finer as it was stripped off.
The instant the last layer of stone split apart beneath his fingertip,
a mass of jade-green liquid flowed from its core!
The liquid slowly gathered in midair, then contracted into a bead no bigger than a fingernail.
It looked round and full.
Su Hui's consciousness had remained clear the whole time.
Through those gray eyes, he saw the thing plainly.
A liquid substance.
It was jade green all over, its color three shades purer than the finest imperial-green jade.
Its translucent texture was warm as jade, and a stream of liquid light seemed sealed within it.
Even as it hung motionless in the air, it kept radiating a gentle vitality that made every pore in the body relax.
"!!!"
Ice Empress sprang to her feet.
Her golden eyes widened more than ever before.
"Wh-what is this? Its life force is so dense!"
She stared at the fingernail-sized jade-green liquid. "No, it's not just life force. It also has powerful spiritual energy."
"I've roamed the Far North for years, and I've never felt such pure life force and spiritual power surging together!"
"Hm?"
Ice Empress's description struck Su Hui's mind like lightning.
His consciousness churned violently in the Sea of Consciousness, and the flash illuminated something deep in his memories.
A name suddenly sprang from the layers of fragmented knowledge, carrying disbelief, elation, and shock.
"Gold of Life? This is Gold of Life!"
He nearly shouted himself hoarse in the Sea of Consciousness.
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