Time passed, second by second.
Laughter and chatter from students in the distance drifted in through the window, along with the soft rustle of wind through the leaves. Everything seemed calm and normal. That feeling of being watched never returned.
After a long while, Huo Yuhao slowly exhaled a breath of stale air. The tension in his nerves eased slightly, but the wariness in his eyes didn't fade in the slightest.
"Could something... have happened in the Divine Realm?"
A bold guess surfaced in his mind.
For a God King like Tang San to temporarily turn his attention away from continuously monitoring a "key piece" was no small matter.
"Or did something go wrong with one of Tang San's plans... maybe even expose it?"
Considering that he had returned through rebirth, and that Wang Teng, another "transmigrator," had appeared, Huo Yuhao had a vague sense that this world's "script" might already be beyond Tang San's complete control.
Somewhere out there, there might be variables even a God King could neither predict nor withstand.
His soul had been reborn, carrying the memories and origin of his previous life with it. That was the greatest "accident" of all. Perhaps it had already disturbed some higher-level karma or laws, setting off a chain reaction.
"But one thing is certain for now—" Huo Yuhao's gaze sharpened. "Since Tang San hasn't continued watching, at least his attention must be occupied by something more important and urgent. For me, that means a rare window of opportunity."
A window of opportunity meant a chance.
It meant he could cultivate the Dao Heaven Technique more freely and delve deeper into the other techniques he had created in his previous life.
He wouldn't have to worry every moment that the "director" was watching his every move.
That would undoubtedly give him much more room to maneuver and improve his safety.
However, just as Huo Yuhao began planning how to make use of this "free" time, he had no idea that the source of all these changes lay in Dormitory 108, no more than twenty meters away.
Dormitory 108.
The room had been cleaned until not a speck of dust remained. A faint scent of air freshener lingered in the air.
The handsome boy sat cross-legged on a bed covered with a soft mattress. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was long and even. At a glance, he seemed to be in deep meditation.
Yet his consciousness had already sunk into his own Sea of Spirit.
It was a space far smaller and dimmer than Huo Yuhao's Sea of Spirit. His mental power was a pale gray, wavering slowly.
But suspended at the very center of this space was an especially conspicuous object: a pearl about the size of a fist, glowing with a soft, pale golden light.
Its smooth surface shimmered, throbbing faintly as if it were alive. It radiated an ancient, mysterious aura.
At that moment, its glow was pulsing rhythmically, as if it were nurturing something.
Where the light gathered, the phantom of a card was slowly becoming real, its outline growing clearer by the second.
The boy was named Lin Yan, a native of Douluo Continent and the son of a moderately powerful Soul Master family in the Heaven Dou Empire.
His life should have followed the path laid out by his family. With decent aptitude, he would cultivate to the rank of a Three- or Four-Ring Soul Ancestor, become a mainstay of the family, marry, have children, and live out his life in peace.
But everything changed on the day of his Martial Soul Awakening at age six.
During the awakening ceremony, the instant his hand touched the Awakening Stone and his Martial Soul was about to manifest, his mind shook with a deafening crash!
Countless fragmented, bizarre memories burst into his mind like a flood breaking through a dam!
The fragments were chaotic and mostly indistinct, but several crucial details were branded into his mind with unusual clarity:
—A boy named Huo Yuhao.
—He was the favored child of fate on Douluo Continent.
—In the future, he would ascend to the Divine Realm and become a new deity.
—He had a million-year Soul Beast, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm, as his Wisdom Soul Ring.
—He had a powerful ice-attribute Second Martial Soul.
—At Shrek Academy, in Dormitory 108, he had a roommate named Wang Dong—who was actually Tang Wutong—and who would become his partner...
—At a place called the Valley of Universe Inquiry, a powerful being—shown in the fragments only as a vague blue-haired figure surrounded by overwhelming divine might—would repeatedly kill and revive him, subjecting him to inhuman torment...
At the same time, the pale golden pearl appeared from nowhere in the depths of his Sea of Spirit.
The pearl was sentient. It conveyed information to Lin Yan and called itself the "Hundred Treasure Pearl." Its powers were mysterious: first, it could nurture all kinds of rare treasures, cultivation techniques, and even special abilities.
Second, it could seize other people's fortune, especially the fortune of Huo Yuhao, the "favored child of fate," and turn it into energy to nurture treasures. It could also help its host gradually take the original's place, become the new favored child of fate, and ultimately embark on the path to godhood!
To demonstrate its abilities, the Hundred Treasure Pearl gave him a "novice gift pack" on the spot.
It transformed the ordinary iron hammer Martial Soul he had awakened at the ceremony—one that had granted him only first-level innate Soul Power—into the Black Iron Thunder Pattern Hammer, boosting him to sixth-level innate Soul Power!
Not only that, it also granted him the incomplete embryonic form of an ice-attribute Martial Soul!
Twin Martial Souls! And one of them started with sixth-level innate Soul Power!
At that moment, the ambition lying dormant in Lin Yan's heart blazed to life like a wildfire.
Why should Huo Yuhao, the boy in those memory fragments, become the favored child of fate, ascend to godhood, live forever, and earn the admiration of countless people?
Now that he, Lin Yan, had a heaven-defying opportunity like the Hundred Treasure Pearl and Twin Martial Souls of his own, why couldn't he take Huo Yuhao's place?
He wanted to become a god, too! He wanted to stand atop the world, look down on all living beings, and enjoy eternal life!
From then on, Lin Yan consciously began to "show off" his talent, quickly becoming the strongest of his family's younger generation and its brightest hope.
When he expressed his desire to attend Shrek Academy for further study, his family spared no expense, pulling strings and finally securing a city lord's recommendation letter from a major city. That allowed him to meet one of Shrek's strict enrollment requirements.
Now, as he watched the new treasure being nurtured by the Hundred Treasure Pearl, Lin Yan felt both anticipation and a touch of regret.
"Too bad... neither of my Martial Souls is Spirit Attribute."
He sighed to himself. "Otherwise, maybe I could have gone to Star Dou Great Forest and found that million-year Sky Dream Ice Silkworm, then taken it for myself! That was the crucial first step that sent Huo Yuhao soaring..."
The memory fragments he had received were incomplete, jumping back and forth, but his impression of Huo Yuhao's greatest early opportunity—the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm—was especially vivid.
He knew that near the end of his eleventh year, when his Soul Power reached level ten, Huo Yuhao encountered the dying Sky Dream Ice Silkworm on the outskirts of Star Dou Great Forest and fused with it, changing his fate against all odds.
He had considered trying to seize it himself, but the scenes in his memories and the reality before him made two things clear. First, he didn't have a Spirit Attribute Martial Soul. If he tried to fuse with the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's immense Spiritual Origin, the odds of success would be extremely low, and his mind might collapse.
Second, among the treasures the Hundred Treasure Pearl was currently nurturing, there was nothing that could guarantee the capture of, or a safe fusion with, a million-year Spirit Attribute Soul Beast. The risks far outweighed the rewards.
So he could only settle for the second "cutting in line" strategy: getting into Dormitory 108 at Shrek Academy first and snatching Huo Yuhao's roommate, Wang Dong.
According to the Hundred Treasure Pearl, as long as he successfully "claimed" this key position and established a connection with Wang Dong, he could continually draw fortune from Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong, speeding up the pearl's nurturing process and gaining even greater benefits.
But whenever he thought of the terrifying scenes in the memory fragments—Huo Yuhao being repeatedly killed by that blue-haired divine shadow, his body smashed to dust only to be restored—Lin Yan shuddered.
He was afraid that if he snatched Wang Dong, who was Tang Wutong, and took Huo Yuhao's place, he would suffer the same fate.
Fortunately, the Hundred Treasure Pearl reassured him once again: as long as he successfully snatched Wang Dong, it could use the immense fortune drawn from that first connection to nurture a treasure capable of affecting the Divine Realm and temporarily keeping it away from Douluo Continent!
That would undoubtedly greatly reduce the risk of that terrifying being intervening directly.
Before you continue