The Snow Empress spoke as she took out a pass that was identical to Lin Yun's in every way except for the signature.
Lin Yun looked at the pass in the Snow Empress's hand and said,
"You and the Ice Empress really do have something going on."
The Snow Empress blinked and asked,
"What do you mean?"
Lin Yun shrugged and said,
"Never mind. Forget it."
The Snow Empress muttered, "What a weirdo," then said to Lin Yun,
"That settles this matter. What are you planning to do now?"
Lin Yun stretched and said,
"Planning? What could I be planning? The Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament isn't that far off. I'll spend this time preparing, then compete as part of the reserve team."
The Snow Empress nodded and said to Lin Yun,
"Good idea. I can use this time to improve my Soul Tools, too. I've noticed that our—our coordination with Soul Tools works really well."
Relaxing, the Snow Empress had nearly let the words "we Soul Beasts" slip out.
Luckily, she was a Soul Beast with a long cultivation, and all those years hadn't been for nothing. She came to her senses at the last moment and kept the word "Beast" to herself.
Lin Yun didn't try to hide anything further. Instead, he quickly changed the subject.
"For you, studying Soul Tools really is the best choice."
"After all, you don't need to cultivate deliberately. Your Soul Power will increase naturally."
Early the next morning, Lin Yun was about to head to class when he saw a white-clad, masked young man block his way.
Lin Yun was about to ask what was going on when the man raised a hand and said,
"Hall Master Jing wants me to bring you to him. Come with me."
Lin Yun spread his bone wings and said,
"You think you can just tell me to come along? Do you take me for putty?"
Ten minutes later, in Jing Hongchen's office.
Jing Hongchen looked at the sack in front of him and asked the white-clad young man,
"What is this?"
The white-clad young man replied helplessly,
"This is the Lin Yun you asked me to invite."
Jing Hongchen immediately raised his hand and slapped him across the face.
"Idiot!"
"I told you to invite him over, not capture him! Are you deaf?"
The white-clad young man took the slap without getting angry. Instead, he said aggrievedly,
"It's not that I disobeyed your orders. He went straight to fighting me in the dormitory area, so I had to deal with him as quickly as possible."
"I only knocked him out. I didn't seriously hurt him."
At that moment, the sack split open with a pop.
Lin Yun stood up and said,
"So Hall Master Jing really did invite me. You have a truly unique way of inviting people."
Jing Hongchen smiled and said,
"My subordinate was being foolish. But you brought this on yourself by insisting on fighting him."
Lin Yun's expression turned stern as he said,
"Come on, that's ridiculous. This guy had no credentials at all. He just raised a hand and told me to follow him. How was I supposed to know he wasn't a spy or something?"
"I may not be some illustrious big shot, but I still have a use for my life. I can't just let anyone drag me away with a single word."
Jing Hongchen glanced back at the white-clad young man, then waved for him to leave.
Lin Yun watched the young man go out, then turned his attention back to Jing Hongchen.
Jing Hongchen composed himself, stood, and walked over to the sofa on the other side of the office.
"Please, have a seat, Student Lin."
Seeing Jing Hongchen act this way made Lin Yun uneasy. In the original story, Jing Hongchen was one of the clever ones, so there was no predicting what he wanted to say.
Only after Jing Hongchen sat down did Lin Yun perch on the edge of the sofa.
Jing Hongchen reached for the teapot and poured Lin Yun a cup of tea. Feeling thoroughly uncomfortable, Lin Yun simply tapped the coffee table in front of him and said,
"Come on, Hall Master Jing. Are you going to kill me, dismember me, or what? Just give it to me straight."
"Stop torturing me. You're a Titled Douluo, and you're pouring tea for a lousy Soul Ancestor like me. Are you deliberately mocking me or what?"
Jing Hongchen smiled and said,
"Now you're being unreasonable. You're a student at the Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy, which makes you my student."
"What's so insulting about a teacher pouring a cup of tea for a student?"
Lin Yun looked at Jing Hongchen and said,
"Then I'll just pretend nothing happened. Whatever you say, I'll act like I didn't hear it, okay?"
This time, it was Jing Hongchen's turn to slap the table.
"You think my tea is that easy to drink? Don't spit it out. I'm watching you drink it."
Lin Yun set down his teacup and said,
"Exactly. Just say what you want to say. There's no need for all this empty ceremony. It's exhausting, and I'm no good at playing along with it. I'm just a fighter."
"I don't understand all that empty etiquette."
Jing Hongchen took a sip of tea and said,
"I called you here today to ask you something first. You studied at Shrek Academy, too. Have you heard of the Seed Project and the Ultimate Soldier Project?"
Lin Yun nodded and said,
"I've heard of both. In fact, I could just about be considered part of the former."
"The Seed Project is made up of geniuses around my age whom Shrek has gathered through various means. They don't study at the Inner Court or the Outer Court, but at another academy under Shrek."
"The goal is to focus on fast-tracking their training, keeping them ready in case the Sun Moon Empire once again launches an attack on the three original kingdoms of the Douluo Continent."
"That's because very few of the top nobles from the three original kingdoms of the Douluo Continent send their direct descendants to study anymore."
"So Shrek Academy doesn't have much of a sense of how powerful the nobles are. This is one way of keeping a trump card in reserve."
"The Ultimate Soldier Project began much later. It mainly studies how to combine Soul Tools and Soul Masters on a highly integrated level, aiming to let one person use Soul Tools on the battlefield to defeat an entire army."
Jing Hongchen asked curiously,
"You say you were part of the Seed Project? But you studied at Shrek Academy."
Lin Yun smiled and said,
"That's why I said I could just about be considered part of it. My Martial Soul has a Dark attribute and was judged to be an evil Martial Soul—in other words, I was labeled an Evil Soul Master. That's why I wasn't sent there for training. But I had some of the same privileges as those people, such as being taken away alone for Soul Hunting at any time."
Jing Hongchen nodded. Lin Yun noticed a trace of worry in his expression and casually remarked,
"Hall Master Jing isn't going to the battlefield anyway. Why worry about this? Aren't these things ultimately all meant to serve the battlefield?"
Jing Hongchen replied,
"Our spies at Shrek Academy concluded that something had happened to the original regular members of this year's Inner Court team, so some people from the Seed Project were brought in to fill their places..."
Before you continue