The Elders' Overthinking and the Allocation of Soul Bone Ownership

Xuan Zi subconsciously nodded at Huo Yuhao's words, but immediately realized that Huo Yuhao had rejected him. He snapped his head straight, fixing his gaze squarely on Huo Yuhao.

"Say that again?" A hint of gloom laced Xuan Zi's voice, his tone turning severe. He even channeled a fraction of his Title Douluo might, making the surrounding atmosphere turn stern and killing.

This was classic intimidation. Huo Yuhao shrugged; seeing this, he knew the other party wouldn't actually do anything to him. After all, judging by this old bastard's temper, if he really had the authority to do something to him, he would probably be lying down while talking right now.

Without missing a beat, Huo Yuhao repeated his previous words word for word. Xuan Zi grew so furious his beard bristled upward, his soul power churning back and forth several times before he snorted out a sentence from his nasal cavity, "Get lost, old man!"

Huo Yuhao nodded, then calmly turned and walked away.

After Huo Yuhao left, Wang Yan and Du Weilun walked up to Xuan Zi a moment later.

Seeing Xuan Zi in this state, Wang Yan swallowed hard. He stepped forward, first using his hand to stroke Xuan Zi's back back and forth to help soothe his breath, then looked at him cautiously and asked, "Teacher, what made you so angry? Did things not work out with Yuhao?"

Xuan Zi's anger flared up anew. He waved his hand roughly, shooing Wang Yan to the side, then leaped down from the rock and said rather irritably, "That bastard has short-sighted vision and no grand ambitions at all! It seems the heavens are fair after all—no perfect person exists!"

Watching Xuan Zi blow his beard and stare in anger, Du Weilun at the side tentatively suggested, "Then shall we just go with the flow and give him no special treatment at all?"

"Give him a lantern!" Xuan Zi roared with mounting anger, his voice even carrying a trace of soul power that made Du Weilun step back repeatedly.

"...He is, after all, the champion of the current freshman tournament, and he has the ability to shatter someone else's Martial Soul Fusion Skill with his bare hands. If we don't grant him Core Disciple status after this, what gold value do those four words have? Write up a notice stating that he contradicted his elders and showed disregard for school rules, temporarily stripping him of his official Core Disciple status and giving him Reserve Core Disciple status instead, with the same treatment as an official Core Disciple, to observe his future performance."

After his rage subsided a bit, Xuan Zi chugged a few mouthfuls of alcohol and instructed Du Weilun.

Du Weilun didn't dare to refute anything. He submissively nodded on the spot and hurriedly retreated first.

As for Wang Yan, he soothed Xuan Zi with a few more words. Having taken another gulp of alcohol, Xuan Zi's temper had mostly faded. He sat back down on the rock and said to Wang Yan, "I refuse to believe a student with such talent can truly lack ambition to that extent. I bet that after suffering a week of cold shoulders, he'll obediently come back and agree to join the Inner Court."

By this point, Wang Yan had roughly figured out what was going on, so he said with considerable indignation, "Our Shrek Academy's Inner Court isn't just a place anyone can enter! To think he actually turned down such an honor—he'll live to regret it!"

When this matter was later brought up to Mu En, the latter's expression remained calm. He first spoke a few words to comfort Xuan Zi, "Alright, look at you with your beard bristling and eyes bulging. Where is there even a trace of the demeanor of a ninety-eighth-rank Super Douluo?"

Hearing Mu En's words, Xuan Zi obediently sat back down in his original spot. Mu En stroked his beard and said with considerable confidence,

"Geniuses are all arrogant. I imagine in his heart he actually wants to join the Inner Court, but simply doesn't want to use this near-backdoor method. For a child of this age, entering the Inner Court uprightly through examinations probably feels cooler than being directly invited. It's rather reminiscent of my own habits when I was young."

Xuan Zi had also calmed down by now. After letting out a snort through his nose, he said, "Since he wants to play, we'll play along with him to the end. I'm going right over to find Yan Shaozhe and have him raise all of Huo Yuhao's evaluation criteria to the strictest level, letting him experience what it means for talent to merely be the threshold to enter Shrek!"

Huo Yuhao had no idea that his refusal had triggered so many chain reactions. If he knew, he would probably remark that these two men's imaginations were richer than webnovel authors'.

In reality, Huo Yuhao simply had no desire to enter the Shrek Academy Inner Court.

The resources in the Inner Court had to be earned by risking one's life, and the ones in the Outer Court were earned by risking one's life just the same.

The Inner Court also required taking on missions, gambling with one's life, and getting listed from time to time on Shrek Academy's Thunder Intelligence System—which had security comparable to the Land of Light.

Take the strongest Soul King, Death God, for example: that freakish monster only had two special skills, Corpse Explosion and Corpse Control Technique, yet Shrek's Thunder Intelligence System hadn't detected a single one of them, stubbornly letting this generation's Inner Court Seven Devils absorb the full brunt of the damage.

Huo Yuhao firmly refused to believe that Death God Douluo had never used these two skills prior to this; at most, they simply hadn't been used in the place where he was ultimately discovered.

If the intelligence system even acted human—even remotely human—it wouldn't have lacked information entirely.

Unless he lost his mind, Huo Yuhao would never risk his life for an Inner Court organization like that.

Meanwhile, Huo Yuhao was happily sharing a steak feast celebration dinner with Wang Dong and Xiao Xiao while studying the issue of ownership regarding the soul bone Du Weilun had given them.

"This grand-lord has no use for this soul bone. The two of you pick," Wang Dong clumsily cut a piece of steak from the edge with his knife, then chewed as he spoke to Huo Yuhao and Xiao Xiao.

The three of them were currently in a private dining room, so they could freely discuss the matter of the soul bone as long as they didn't deliberately raise their voices.

Unable to bear Wang Dong's steak-cutting style, which could only be described as blasphemy, Huo Yuhao reached out and took Wang Dong's plate. While helping cut Wang Dong's steak into appropriate bite-sized pieces, he said,

"I don't lack mobility or fierce attack methods, so give it to Xiao Xiao. The soul bone Teacher Mu gave out previously went to me, so this one goes to Xiao Xiao. If the next soul bone doesn't have clear applicability, it goes to Wang Dong. That's a bit fairer."

"I agree!" Wang Dong forked up a piece of steak cut by Huo Yuhao and said to Xiao Xiao.

Xiao Xiao nodded as well. She had already been interested in that soul bone, so she said with some embarrassment, "Then thank you both. The next soul bone will definitely go to Wang Dong first."

Huo Yuhao rubbed Xiao Xiao's head, then said to her earnestly, "We are a team, and this soul bone was earned through the joint efforts of the three of us. You don't need to thank anyone for taking it; this is the fruit of your own hard work."

A flush of red bloomed across Xiao Xiao's face, and she nodded again to Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong...