Everyday Life! More Choices for the Road Ahead!

"Moonlight Flower."

It grew in places of extreme yin and only bloomed on nights of the full moon.

Its petals were silvery white, its pistil pale blue, and it emitted a cold, clear glow.

Its known uses included calming the mind, soothing the spirit, and treating insomnia and Soul Power disorders when used in medicine.

But Ma Hongjun searched through the entire page and found nothing related to Martial Souls.

After thinking for a moment, he used a charcoal pencil to write a line of small words in the blank space beside it:

Moonlight Flower, an object of extreme yin.

The Evil Fire Phoenix possessed excessive yang. This might be able to neutralize it.

To be verified.

His handwriting was crooked, but he wrote with great care.

Oscar leaned over for a look but failed to understand it.

"What are you writing?"

"Notes."

"What notes?"

"Something that'll be useful later."

Oscar curled his lips and did not ask any further questions.

An hour later, Flender came to pick them up.

Ma Hongjun closed the book, gathered the borrowed books into his arms, and followed Flender out of Ink Fragrance Library.

Suotuo City was quiet at night, and only the footsteps of the three of them echoed through the alley.

"Teacher."

Ma Hongjun suddenly spoke.

"Hmm?"

"Can we borrow more books to take back in the future? I don't want to keep running back and forth every time. It wastes too much time."

Flender glanced at him.

"You're sure you can finish them?"

"I can."

Flender said nothing, which counted as tacit agreement.

Ma Hongjun quickened his pace and caught up with Flender.

Moonlight spilled over the three of them, stretching their shadows long and far.

Ma Hongjun's mind was already filled with all kinds of obscure knowledge.

Whale Rubber, Dragon Blood Grass, Moonlight Flower, Mirror Shadow Beast...

These things might not be useful now.

But one day, he would use them.

In this world, knowledge was valued far less than Martial Souls and Soul Power.

This was a world where fists did the talking.

But precisely because of that, knowledge was all the more precious.

Most people buried themselves in Soul Power cultivation, hunted soul beasts, and raised their ranks.

Few were willing to settle down and flip through those thick, tedious books that had no direct connection to cultivation.

This was an opportunity.

Ma Hongjun had seized it.

In the days that followed, Ma Hongjun's life settled into a steady rhythm.

Every day, he got up before dawn, put on his Weighted Armor, and went for a morning run.

The one hundred and twenty jin of weight pressing down on him had made even walking difficult at first, but now he could finish five laps without gasping for breath.

Morning runs were followed by combat training.

His sparring opponent changed from Li Yusong to Zhao Wuji.

"Teacher Li's staff techniques are too refined. They aren't suitable for your current stage."

Zhao Wuji's reason was simple. "What you need to learn is how to survive in battle, not how to make your moves look pretty."

Zhao Wuji's fighting style was indeed crude, but it was practical.

There were no flashy techniques. He simply charged in, struck out, and smashed down.

The Vajra Bear Martial Soul granted him incomparable frontal destructive power. Every attack seemed to be telling his opponent—he did not need technique; he only needed to knock them down.

When Ma Hongjun sparred with him, he went from being completely unable to fight back, to occasionally dodging one or two moves, to catching the openings in Zhao Wuji's attacks and launching counterattacks.

His progress was obvious to the naked eye.

"Kid, stop always thinking about using your Light Pierce from a distance."

After one sparring match, Zhao Wuji instructed him, "Fire one off suddenly when you're in close quarters. Who would expect that? Soul skills are dead, but people are alive."

Ma Hongjun firmly remembered those words.

The afternoons were for physical training and all kinds of supplementary exercises.

Weighted squats, pull-ups, sprinting... Zhao Wuji came up with endless ways to torment them.

Ma Hongjun had already grown accustomed to that level of intensity.

Wearing one hundred and twenty jin of weight, he could complete every training exercise.

Zhao Wuji said that once he could run ten laps in that set of weights without losing his breath, he would increase it to one hundred and fifty jin.

"Teacher Zhao, are you trying to crush me to death?" Ma Hongjun asked.

"You won't be crushed to death." Zhao Wuji grinned. "If you die, it'll be on me."

Oscar laughed gleefully beside them, only for Zhao Wuji to add another set of push-ups to his training.

After dinner, if they were not going to the library, the two of them read on their own in the courtyard.

The books Flender borrowed from Ink Fragrance Library filled an entire table. Ma Hongjun read them one by one while taking notes.

His handwriting was not very good, but his notes were detailed—types, habits, and weaknesses of soul beasts; the origins, effects, and combinations of medicinal herbs; Martial Soul theory; Soul Ring combinations; and the relationships of restraint between different attributes.

Oscar followed along at first, but after a few days, he could not keep going and slumped over the table, dozing off.

"Hongjun, how do you manage to read these without getting sleepy?"

"Because I want to become stronger."

"I want to become stronger too, but I get sleepy the moment I start reading."

"Then you deserve to be weaker than me."

Oscar choked on that, rolled his eyes, and buried his face back in the book.

Ma Hongjun turned to a page describing Light Element soul beasts.

"Holy Light Falcon, the higher form of the Holy Light Sparrow. Its body contains a trace of ancient Phoenix bloodline. Its Soul Ring has an extremely powerful purifying effect on fire-attribute Martial Souls."

"It can gradually remove impurities from flames and return them to their origin."

He had read this passage before, but today, he understood it differently.

After absorbing the Soul Ring of the Holy Light Phoenix Falcon, his flames had indeed changed.

The golden-red flames were purer than the dark-red ones, the scorching sensation of Evil Fire had noticeably lessened, and the form of his Martial Soul had taken another step from a turkey toward a Phoenix.

This was what "returning to the origin" meant.

The origin of the Evil Fire Phoenix should have been the Light Phoenix.

Its evil nature was merely the impurity produced during the mutation of the Martial Soul. As long as those impurities were removed, the Martial Soul would return to what it was meant to be.

Ma Hongjun wrote a line in his notebook:

"The purifying effect of Light Element soul beasts on the Evil Fire Phoenix has been verified."

"Future Soul Rings should continue to be chosen from Light Element avian soul beasts. What is the higher form of the Holy Light Falcon? Further research is needed."

He searched through every book he had on hand but found no answer.

The Holy Light Falcon was already considered a relatively high-level existence among known Light Element avian soul beasts.

Beyond that, there might only be legendary existences—the true Light Phoenix.

But that was not a soul beast.

That was a god.

Or rather, it was a god's mount, a god's messenger. It was not something mortals could hunt.

Ma Hongjun closed the book and temporarily pushed that thought aside.

The road had to be walked one step at a time.

He was only a two-ring Soul Grandmaster now. Thinking about such things was too far ahead.

Their twice-weekly trips to the library continued without fail.

Ma Hongjun had already learned the name of the white-haired old man at Ink Fragrance Library—Qin Mo.

It was said that he had also been a soul master when he was young, but after suffering an injury that crippled his Martial Soul, he opened this library and kept books for company.

Qin Mo rarely spoke, but whenever Ma Hongjun came to return books, he would always take an extra look at the borrowing records.

"You only borrow obscure books," Qin Mo finally said one day.