Ye Feng slowly drew the graduation certificate from his clothes and unfolded it before Yu Xiaogang.
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm no longer a student at Nuoding Academy."
Yu Xiaogang's pupils abruptly contracted.
"A graduation certificate... That's impossible! How could you have graduated?!"
He snatched the paper and examined the red seal and the dean's signature in minute detail. The color drained from his face, leaving it an ashen gray.
All his plans, all his carefully prepared arguments and tactics, had become a joke in that instant.
The other man wasn't even a student at Nuoding Academy anymore. What good was throwing around his "Grandmaster" title to intimidate him?
"Bastard, just you wait!"
Unable to get his breath, Yu Xiaogang shook with rage. In the end, all he could do was grind out that utterly pointless threat through clenched teeth.
Ye Feng couldn't be bothered to spare him another glance. He took back his certificate, brushed past the clown, and walked out of Nuoding Academy for good.
Behind him, Yu Xiaogang roared in a fury that could have devoured someone whole.
Ye Feng merely curled his lip.
He was nothing but a theoretical hack who lived in his own world. If Ye Feng weren't worried about the consequences, he had ten thousand ways to make the man shut up forever.
After leaving the academy, Ye Feng didn't linger.
Nuoding City wasn't large, but it wasn't small, either. Finding a quiet place where no one would bother him wouldn't be difficult.
He deliberately chose remote, run-down alleys.
Most of the houses here were old, with peeling walls and moss spreading over them. The air was thick with a damp, musty smell.
Few people walked the streets. The handful he passed were ragged paupers with numb expressions.
That was exactly what Ye Feng wanted.
In places like this, nobody would care about a new neighbor moving in.
At the very end of an alley, he spotted a small house with a courtyard.
The courtyard wall had partly collapsed, weeds grew unchecked, and the wooden door looked ready to fall over at the slightest breeze.
A crooked wooden sign hung on the door, bearing the crudely written characters for "For Rent."
Ye Feng stepped forward and knocked.
After a long while, a shriveled old man in a grease-stained jacket poked his head out and eyed him warily.
"What do you want?"
"To rent the place."
Ye Feng was brief and to the point.
The old man looked him up and down. Though his clothes were plain, they were clean, and he carried himself with distinction. He didn't look like one of the local poor.
"Five Gold Soul Coins for a year."
The old man held up a bony finger.
For a place in this neighborhood, that price was clearly outrageous.
Ye Feng didn't even bother to haggle.
He simply took five Gold Soul Coins from his clothes and tossed them over.
"The key."
The old man fumbled to catch the coins, then bit one to make sure they were real. His wariness vanished at once, replaced by a fawning smile.
"Right away, sir! Just a moment!"
He turned and went inside. A moment later, he came back with a ring of rust-spotted keys and handed it to Ye Feng.
"The courtyard's yours now. Do whatever you like with it!"
Ye Feng took the keys without a word and turned to leave.
He had no need to build unnecessary ties with anyone.
A transaction was all it was.
Next, he went to the market in the city and bought some pots, pans, bedding, clothes, and other necessities.
He kept things simple. As long as they worked, they were good enough.
By the time he carried his bags back to the run-down courtyard, it was already evening.
The setting sun bathed the weeds in a golden glow.
Ye Feng put down his things but didn't hurry to tidy the house. Instead, he cleared the weeds from the courtyard, then found some boards and stones to shore up the partly collapsed wall.
Finally, he went to the old wooden door, pulled it shut, and slid the bolt into place.
"Creak—"
The heavy sound shut out the outside world.
From today on, this would be his sacred ground for cultivation.
Night fell.
Ye Feng sat cross-legged in the middle of the cleared courtyard.
He didn't rush to cultivate Soul Power. Instead, he pulled the thin booklet Introduction to Heart Separation Control from his clothes.
His experience in the Star Dou Great Forest had made him understand that relying on Soul Skills and an External Soul Bone alone wasn't enough.
In a true fight for life and death, the slightest lapse could prove fatal.
And Self-Created Soul Skills would be his greatest trump card for surviving in the future.
"Light Particle Theory."
That was the idea he had come up with by drawing on the physics he'd learned in his previous life. Its core was extreme compression and control.
Introduction to Heart Separation Control was the key to making that idea a reality.
He closed his eyes and began guiding his spiritual power according to the method described in the booklet.
The first step in Heart Separation Control was to split his spiritual power into several independent, noninterfering streams.
It was like making one brain think about several different problems at once.
At first, the attempts were painful and tedious.
Ye Feng felt as if his skull were about to split open.
He tried dividing his spiritual power in two, but the two forces were like mischievous children: the moment they separated, they tangled together again, even crashing into each other and sending a stabbing pain through his head.
Sweat trickled down his temples.
Failure.
Again.
He gritted his teeth through the discomfort and tried again and again.
From two streams to three.
Each additional stream made the difficulty grow by several times.
His spiritual power drained far faster than it did during Soul Power meditation.
After only an hour, he was already dizzy and mentally exhausted.
But he didn't give up.
Genius was ninety-nine percent inspiration and one percent sweat.
Perhaps he had that one percent of inspiration, but without all that sweat, it would amount to nothing.
He repeated the process throughout the entire night.
Failure, failure, and more failure.
Only when the eastern sky turned pale and the first ray of dawn pierced the darkness did anything change.
As golden sunlight fell upon him, Ye Feng's whole body shuddered.
The light attribute Soul Power inside him resonated with the dawn in a wondrous way.
In that instant, inspiration struck.
Why did he have to forcibly "tear apart" his spiritual power?
Light itself was made up of countless particles.
His Martial Soul and Soul Power were, at their core, light.
What he needed to do wasn't split them apart, but "guide" them.
He closed his eyes again. This time, he didn't forcibly divide his spiritual power. Instead, he imagined it as the surface of a still lake.
Then, using his spiritual power as a guide, he gently "pinched" a wisp of the purest light attribute Soul Power from the vortex inside him.
Wrapped in his spiritual power, that wisp of Soul Power became an incredibly fine golden thread of light.
Success!
Ye Feng's heart leapt with joy.
He immediately followed the same method, guiding a second thread, then a third...
When he had successfully condensed the fifth thread of light and left it floating in his spiritual world, he once again felt that familiar tearing sensation.
His spiritual power had reached its limit.
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