That night, Dai Yunze had a dream.
He lay on a soft, spacious bed, with Huo Yuhao no longer beside him fighting him for the covers, and for once, he slept quite soundly.
But he still dreamed.
In his dream, he found himself standing on the stone platform where his martial soul had been awakened that day, with a blurred figure before him.
Although he could not see the face of the person before him, Dai Yunze knew it must be Mr. Long, who had awakened his martial soul.
Moreover, although his dream recreated almost every detail of the great hall from that day, only he and Mr. Long were there.
Of course, to his eyes, Mr. Long was nothing more than an indistinct black silhouette.
Yet that shadow filled Dai Yunze with profound unease, and he even seemed to hear a faint, peculiar cry.
Then he saw another shadow suddenly separate from the figure before him. Like ink spreading through water, it first passed through the stone platform beneath his feet, then entered his body.
Dai Yunze witnessed the entire process as an observer. As the shadow flowed, his body on the stone platform turned transparent, allowing him to see the shadow enter it and seemingly be absorbed little by little.
As the shadow was gradually absorbed, another force surged out from within his body.
For some reason, that newly emerged force made Dai Yunze feel extremely uncomfortable.
It was like the instinctive, hair-raising dread people felt when confronted with danger, accompanied by a seemingly bone-piercing chill.
But at the very instant that force appeared, Dai Yunze discovered, to his utter horror, that everything around him had gone still.
The flowing shadow, the energy newly emerging inside his body, even space and time—all abruptly froze.
As everything stood still,