The classroom fell deathly silent.
Everyone's eyes widened, their mouths hanging open, their expressions frozen in an instant of shock.
What had they just seen?
Linghu Chong had punched Gu Qingshan, and then Linghu Chong himself had gone flying?
What the hell was that?
"Ah! My hand! My hand!"
Linghu Chong's agonized scream came from beside the wall, so shrill it made everyone's scalp crawl.
Alice was the first to react. She hurried over in her high heels, then sucked in a sharp breath.
Linghu Chong's right hand.
From his fingers to his wrist to his forearm, his entire right hand looked as if it had been crushed beneath a boulder, his bones reduced to splinters.
"Healer!"
The other students in the classroom finally began to come around, but there was no hiding the shock on their faces.
"He... he didn't even summon his Martial Soul just now?" one boy managed to ask, swallowing hard.
"Linghu Chong's a level-thirty-one Soul Elder... He threw a full-strength punch, and then flew off himself?"
"No, this doesn't make sense. He didn't use any Soul Skill. How did he do that?"
"Could his Martial Soul be some kind of rebound ability?"
Everyone stared at Gu Qingshan as if he were a monster.
Hu Liena and the other two had witnessed the whole thing.
"That guy... a monster."
Gu Qingshan's first meeting with his classmates ended just like that, quite pleasantly.
Back in his dorm, he took off his clothes and sank into the bathtub.
The water had already been prepared. The emerald-green liquid gave off a pungent smell, but Gu Qingshan was used to it by now.
He even thought it smelled pretty good, a little like some kind of herbal tea he'd drunk in his previous life.
He took a handful of Blue Silver Leaves out of his Soul Tool and laid them neatly along the edge of the tub. Then he picked one up, popped it into his mouth, closed his eyes, and settled in to enjoy today's "idle cultivation."
The Blue Silver Leaf's fresh sweetness dissolved on his tongue. Vitality flowed down his throat and through every limb, while the poisonous water in the tub seeped through his skin, constantly stimulating his body. The Thorn Shield's passive mechanism activated on its own, slowly increasing his Soul Power and vitality.
"Level fifteen, eighty-five percent... A few more days of soaking and I'll reach level sixteen."
He sighed with satisfaction and popped another Blue Silver Leaf into his mouth.
This was practically the life of an immortal.
No pressure, no anxiety, no risking life and limb to cultivate. He could just lie there and grow stronger.
Chewing on Blue Silver Leaf, Gu Qingshan drifted toward sleep.
Of course, he had no idea that, a thousand miles away in Holy Soul Village, someone stood on the verge of fury and collapse.
As usual, Tang Hao left Holy Soul Village and followed the mountain path he'd walked countless times to a cave in the hills behind the village.
The cave was well hidden, its entrance concealed behind a waterfall. An ordinary person would have almost no chance of finding it.
Then he saw the little mound of earth, empty.
Tang Hao froze.
The mound was still there, but Ah Yin was gone.
"Where's Ah Yin?"
Tang Hao's voice wavered.
The cave was so quiet he could hear the water dripping.
"My Ah Yin is gone!"
Tang Hao's voice suddenly rose. Like a man set ablaze, he charged forward.
He tore the little mound apart, scattering dirt everywhere, then dropped to the ground and clawed at every inch of soil, searching for any roots Ah Yin might have left behind.
There was nothing.
The Blue Silver Emperor hadn't even left a single root.
Tang Hao's eyes reddened.
Unwilling to give up, he frantically searched every corner of the cave.
In the cracks between the rocks, on the walls, in the shadows—like a wild beast gone mad, he turned the entire cave upside down.
Nothing.
There was nothing anywhere.
"Impossible... It can't be..."
Tang Hao muttered, then suddenly seemed to remember something. His body jolted.
He stumbled to the deepest part of the cave. There was a stone there that looked no different from the rocks around it.
Tang Hao crouched down, pressed both hands against the stone, and slowly moved it aside.
With a trembling hand, Tang Hao reached into the hidden compartment.
Empty.
There was nothing inside.
"Ahhh—!"
Tang Hao let out a bloodcurdling scream. The sound shook loose stones from the cave walls.
The Soul Bone was gone, too.
It was the Blue Silver Emperor Right Leg Bone, a supreme Soul Bone produced by a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast.
Tang Hao had hidden it in the most concealed compartment in the cave. No one but him knew it was there.
"Who was it... Who?!"
Tang Hao sprang to his feet, his eyes bloodshot as terrifying killing intent erupted from his whole body.
"When I find you, I'll tear you limb from limb!"
Someone had stolen his Ah Yin.
They'd pulled her out root and all, and hadn't even spared the Soul Bone.
Tang Hao punched the cave wall. With a crash, his fist smashed a deep hole into the solid rock, and the entire mountain trembled.
He charged out of the cave like a wounded beast, barreling through the woods as he searched in every direction for any possible clue.
He crouched down to examine the ground. There were footprints in the dirt—one small footprint.
The print was faint, which meant the intruder wasn't heavy. It might have been someone small, or someone who'd carefully controlled their weight.
Could a child have done it?
But if it was a child, how had they climbed up the cliff? And how had they gotten through the waterfall?
Following the footprints, Tang Hao tracked them all the way to the main road. But people and carts came and went there. There were no footprints left to follow.
The trail ended there. Could it be that he'd never find Ah Yin again?
He even returned to Holy Soul Village and compared the footprints with those of every child in the village. None of them matched.
Tang Hao broke down. He sat by the cave entrance and wailed at the mound of earth.
"Whoever you are... Even if you run to the ends of the earth, I'll drag you out."
Ah Yin, my Ah Yin!
He still didn't know that someone had already taken cuttings from his wife and was eating her like a snack every day.
The culprit, Gu Qingshan, was at that moment lying in the bathtub of his villa in Spirit City.
The emerald-green poisonous water lapped over his shoulders. The temperature was just right, neither too hot nor too cold.
He popped a handful of Blue Silver Leaves into his mouth and closed his eyes in bliss.
He had transplanted Ah Yin's main stem into a purple-clay pot and placed it on the balcony, where the sunlight was strongest.
Gu Qingshan took meticulous care of her.
The soil was rich loam specially brought back from the Star Dou Great Forest, and he watered her with dew collected at dawn.
He even gave Ah Yin the farmyard manure he gathered each morning.
Under Gu Qingshan's painstaking care, new shoots appeared every day.
He snipped off the new shoots and planted them in the courtyard.
In the right environment, the Blue Silver Emperor grew at an astonishing speed. The Blue Silver Grass in the courtyard grew thicker and spread farther by the day.
Now the entire courtyard was covered in "special" Blue Silver Grass, and he was considering whether to cultivate a second plot.
There was no way he could eat it all!
Each of these cuttings had inherited the original plant's genes and traits, brimming with immense vitality.
Gu Qingshan's health bar climbed rapidly every day.
Before you continue