Peaceful Sleep

Peaceful Sleep

After completing the Promotion Assessment, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong returned to their dormitory. Nothing else happened along the way.

The Promotion Assessment at the start of the second year had a rather complicated process, and there were still many second-year students. It was impossible to finish all the assessments in a single day, which gave Huo Yuhao and the others an extra day or so to rest.

"Damn it, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Why did Director Du deduct five points from me? I could clearly have gotten full marks." After returning to the dormitory, Wang Dong finally began grumbling in dissatisfaction.

Her words were filled with complaints toward Du Weilun. After being influenced by Huo Yuhao, she simply could not accept Du Weilun's deduction from the bottom of her heart.

She still believed there had been nothing wrong with her tactical decision. After all, the Soul Bone within her did far more than merely strengthen her physical attributes and Soul Power.

"As long as you know it yourself, that's enough. Whether you have those extra five points or lose them, your Soul Power won't rise another rank, and you won't get expelled."

Huo Yuhao glanced at Wang Dong. "Cultivate properly. I'm going to sleep. Wake me when it's time to eat. Good night."

"Huo Yuhao, why do you do nothing but sleep all day?" Wang Dong raised an eyebrow at his words. As for herself, due to spiritual issues and damage to her soul, she also liked sleeping.

But she had never seen anyone like Huo Yuhao, who could keep sleeping whenever there was nothing to do. Not to mention that he could actually maintain the growth of his Soul Power while asleep. That was the strangest part.

"Can't you teach me how you sleep? I want to increase my Soul Power while sleeping too. Normal cultivation is exhausting." Wang Dong leaned over beside Huo Yuhao's bed and shook his body.

"You can't learn that, but I can teach you how to sleep more soundly. Want to learn?" Huo Yuhao yawned. "Once you learn it, you'll have more time to cultivate. Don't come bother me afterward."

"Sure." Wang Dong's eyes lit up, and she hurriedly nodded. After all, chances to take advantage of Huo Yuhao were rare.

Whenever she had asked Huo Yuhao to guide her before, it had been fine at first. But later on, he would either make her bring him meals or treat him to something every time. Her little stash of money was nearly empty.

"Read more books, read more newspapers, eat fewer snacks, and sleep more." After making a small joke, Huo Yuhao finally got to the point.

"First this, then that, and after that, do it like this and like that." Huo Yuhao told Wang Dong about several methods he had found and compiled from the outer courtyard library for nourishing one's soul through Spiritual Power.

The knowledge Huo Yuhao taught Wang Dong had originally only been techniques for improving one's vigor or entering deep meditation. Only after Huo Yuhao had compiled them did they gain the effect of gradually nourishing the soul through Spiritual Power.

Through sleep, one's Spiritual Power could relax to the fullest and gather within the Spiritual Sea, allowing one to enter an instinctive state of deep meditation and nourish the elusive soul.

Although this method worked very slowly and would be difficult to show results in the short term, it was still better than nothing for Wang Dong. After all, the soul was inherently the hardest part to affect through ordinary means.

Wang Dong's soul had also been torn apart by Tang San. As the descendant of deities, perhaps because Tang San and Xiao Wu's God Positions were somewhat lacking, Wang Dong had not inherited the part involving the transformation of divine energy, which could also be called deification.

Her constitution was actually that of an utterly ordinary person, at most with a somewhat purer body and spirit.

Naturally, she lacked the ability to heal her own soul. Furthermore, because of the hidden injuries Tang San had left behind when he tore apart her soul—

Through a series of chain reactions, the loss in her soul had also caused varying degrees of damage to both her spirit and body.

As the descendant of deities, Wang Dong had absorbed Immortal Energy from birth. She had even drunk the Water of Life from the Goddess of Life, something only Main God Experts among First-Rank Deities were qualified to drink.

Even so, the true reason her cultivation and strength had not stood out among those of her age after arriving on the Douluo Continent was that, though it could not be seen, Wang Dong was still recovering from severe injuries to some extent.

Without the Water of Life, which was immensely beneficial even to Main God Experts, Tang San's crude "operation" could easily have killed Wang Dong on the spot.

Now, her soul and spirit could only undergo instinctive, gradual recovery through the growth of her Soul Power. Perhaps one day, when her Soul Power helped her body complete its transformation into energy, the injuries to her soul might be completely healed as well.

But the influence between the soul and the physical body was mutual. The incompleteness of her soul and spirit would likewise affect Wang Dong's cultivation speed. Under such circumstances, completing the energy transformation of her body through her own abilities was practically a fantasy.

For Wang Dong, the possibility of becoming a God-level Expert through her own efforts was far, far lower than it was for anyone else.

Moreover, her incomplete soul and spirit had an even greater effect: they could not settle into a fixed form. Because the integrity of her soul and spirit had been damaged, they could not form a stable shape.

Therefore, if Wang Dong cultivated together with anyone and received even the slightest external interference—

Even a faint influence from Spiritual Power could deform Wang Dong's soul and spirit, causing them to become increasingly compatible with the other party.

For example, under normal circumstances, a person's spirit and the energy within their body were like two complete building blocks. Depending on their shapes, only very small portions could touch, and they could not merge.

Martial Soul fusion, meanwhile, was like a coincidence where two blocks had an extremely high degree of contact or compatibility, allowing them to complement each other perfectly.

But Wang Dong's soul and spirit were like a mass of powder that had been crushed to bits by external force. When joined with other building blocks, that mass of powder would form a new block under the influence of external force.

And that block would be one hundred percent perfectly compatible with the other block. In the process, Wang Dong would gradually lose herself and become the other person's dependent.

That was also why, in the original work, Wang Dong and Huo Yuhao's six completely unrelated Martial Souls could fuse.

"Alright, go entertain yourself. I'm really going to sleep now." After teaching her the Soul Recovery Technique, Huo Yuhao closed his eyes and lay down, no longer paying Wang Dong any attention.

Although the Soul Recovery Technique Huo Yuhao had just taught Wang Dong had merely been pieced together from miscellaneous knowledge in Shrek Academy's outer courtyard library—

It had been guided by Electrolux, an authority on the undead. It was absolutely genuine and effective. Even if someone discovered it, they would at most think it was a flash of inspiration from Huo Yuhao, since he had not used any knowledge beyond the norm.

Huo Yuhao closed his eyes and entered the Spiritual Sea. "Elder Yi, what exactly is going on with this Soul Bone? I keep feeling that it differs greatly from the Ethereal Demon Leopard Soul Bone I obtained before, but I can't put my finger on why."

The structural models of two Soul Bones appeared within the Spiritual Sea. Huo Yuhao sat cross-legged, propping his chin on his hand as he studied them.

At the same time, the composition of that torso bone was constantly being completed. This was because Huo Yuhao had asked Skydream Ice Silkworm to use Spiritual Detection to examine Wang Dong outside, who had entered deep sleep through the Soul Recovery Technique and was sleeping peacefully.

The gray sphere circled around the torso bone before drifting back to Huo Yuhao's side. Then Electrolux's aged voice emerged from it.

"Mm, it is no wonder you couldn't see it. I wasn't certain before either, but now I am seventy to eighty percent sure."

"Oh? What is it?"

"It is a Magic Array, not something created by this world. Some of the Rune structures I showed you before appeared within it, which is why it gave you that vaguely familiar feeling."

"In the world where I once lived, Magic Incantations were ways of borrowing the forces of nature. A stable Magic Array, meanwhile, could make the elements in nature arrange and combine according to a mage's will for a prolonged period, forming a predetermined shape."

"It is a rather unfamiliar system to this world. After all, the people of this world use a power called Soul Power, which originates more from their own bloodlines than from the spiritual energy of heaven and earth."

"Yet in the end, these two paths will converge. For Soul Masters, human power is ultimately limited, and they must eventually look to heaven and earth for strength. For mages, the frailty of the individual is likewise a shackle that limits their ability to bear World Force."

"Alright, we've strayed too far from the topic. Let's return to this Soul Bone."

"This Soul Bone differs from the kind you obtained before, which came from living creatures called Soul Beasts and were Energy Crystals formed from massive amounts of condensed energy along with a portion of their spirit and soul."

"It contains no foreign soul or spirit. It is more of a pure energy product. As for the Runes that make up this Soul Bone, due to my incomplete memories, I cannot identify them all for the time being."

"But I can say for certain that although this so-called Soul Bone resembles the Soul Bones of this world in appearance, it is absolutely not something this world could naturally produce."

Hearing this, Huo Yuhao nodded, and an answer roughly formed in his mind.

Since it was not something from the Clear Sky Sect, it could only be something Tang San had created.

Although Tang San came from the Soul Master world of the Douluo Continent and did not care much about advancing his own cultivation system—

The Asura God was still a top-tier God King Position in the current world, and the God Realm itself ruled over quite a few worlds.

There were even magical worlds like Ice and Fire Chef among them, so the appearance of concepts resembling magic was naturally nothing surprising. It might not have been entirely Tang San's handiwork, but it was likely inseparable from him.

"Then, Elder Yi, can we imitate the construction of this Soul Bone and artificially create something similar?"

Electrolux seemed to ponder upon hearing this and did not respond for a long time.

After a while, Electrolux finally said, "It is possible, but very difficult."

"Putting aside technical limitations, where would the energy alone come from?"

"Such an Energy Crystal placed within the human body would bring obvious benefits even without any additional effects."

"But such a massive amount of energy is not something you are qualified to covet or obtain at present."

"After all, aside from the disordered and chaotic energy found in nature, if your target is energy that is relatively pure, abundant, and can be absorbed and mobilized by the human body, then it must belong to someone."

"So after all that, we've come back to the same thing? Energy, attributes, elements." Huo Yuhao paused.

"Let's begin researching it first. I have some ideas as well, but I need to make several other plans before I can connect all these things together."

Watching Huo Yuhao sink into thought within the Spiritual Sea, Electrolux sighed. Then a cold spiritual ripple surged directly from the gray sphere, and Huo Yuhao immediately felt himself lose consciousness.

As Huo Yuhao's spiritual consciousness dispersed and returned normally to his body, Electrolux's aged voice slowly rang out. "Have a good sleep, child. Haste makes waste. Do not rush anything, or you may only spoil it through overcleverness."

Ever since arriving in this world, due to the existence of Soul Power and the Spiritual Sea, Huo Yuhao's spiritual consciousness had constantly wandered between the outside world and the Spiritual Sea. He had never stopped pursuing strength.

That pursuit was blind, but it also excited Huo Yuhao. After all, as an ordinary person, he had never imagined he would have a chance to pursue the extraordinary.

Though that opportunity carried the malice of deities, the pressure had also become the driving force pushing him forward.

Yet Huo Yuhao, as a transmigrator, still possessed the mindset of an ordinary person. Even though neither his body nor his spirit felt tired, and despite being in perfect condition thanks to the circulation of Soul Power and the Spiritual Sea—

The heart could grow weary. In Electrolux's view, Huo Yuhao, who wanted to handle many things at once and do everything in his plans as perfectly as possible, was already walking along the edge of a cliff.

Electrolux even believed that Huo Yuhao had become obsessed, no better than Electrolux himself had been when revenge had clouded his mind.

Although sleep was not a necessity for powerful beings who possessed extraordinary strength, even the strong needed to relax. Knowing when to tense and when to loosen was the true path of cultivation.

Otherwise, if one stubbornly pressed onward, one would eventually walk into a dead end and succumb to deviation without realizing it. That was why Electrolux intervened and forcibly made Huo Yuhao truly "sleep" for a while.

This was the first real sleep Huo Yuhao had had since coming to this world. And because of Electrolux's presence, he slept with an inexplicable sense of peace.