"Bro, what are you doing here?"
Tang Wuyue looked toward the laughter,
and spotted Lu Chuan standing beneath the shade of a tree.
She couldn't help exclaiming in delight.
Jinyu was happy too.
It had sensed Lu Chuan's presence long ago,
but Tang Wuyue had been fighting just then,
and it needed to keep her from getting hurt,
so it hadn't gone looking for him.
Now that the fight was over,
and Lu Chuan had come closer,
the little creature didn't hesitate for a moment.
It jumped down from Tang Wuyue's shoulder,
quickly slithered over to Lu Chuan's shoulder,
and affectionately rubbed its little head against his cheek.
After all,
Lu Chuan was the man who had given it a new life.
If it could talk,
it wouldn't be out of place to call him "Dad."
But Tang Wuyue was jealous.
When she'd first seen Lu Chuan,
her first reaction had been happiness.
After all,
she'd never imagined she'd run into her big bro at East Sea Park!
But the instant Jinyu spotted Lu Chuan, it abandoned her without a second thought,
and darted straight to his shoulder.
The little girl immediately got angry all over again.
"Oh, so that's how it is, you ungrateful little thing!
I find Spirit Fruits for you every day,
help you smooth your scales,
and take you out to sun yourself,
but the moment my brother shows up, you run off without even saying hello?
Huh!
Your wings have grown strong!"
Tang Wuyue stomped over to Lu Chuan,
grabbed Jinyu by the tail, and walked away.
No matter how pitifully Jinyu cried,
she remained unmoved.
So,
little Jinyu could only look at Lu Chuan pleadingly,
hoping he would help.
Lu Chuan could only turn away helplessly, signaling that he couldn't do anything.
The little girl was angry right now.
If he failed to calm her down,
he might be in trouble too!
Instead,
he decided that what he didn't see couldn't bother him,
and looked toward the other person outside the group—
Xie Xie!
Ever since he appeared, the girl in front of him had kept her eyes on him,
as if she were extremely interested in him.
"You're Lu Chuan? You don't look like anything special."
Xie Xie gave Lu Chuan the once-over,
speaking as though she'd expected him to have three heads and six arms.
Lu Chuan smiled.
"Miss, I believe this is our first time meeting. Why do you think I'm special?"
Xie Xie replied as if it were obvious,
"Because you stole the show at the Freshman Ceremony!"
"You're the only person in Class Zero! Everyone else has to take an assessment, but you got in without an exam."
"People at school are saying the school set up Class Zero specifically because of you!"
"Is that so? You know, most rumors are false. I'm just... an ordinary person."
Lu Chuan replied with studied nonchalance.
Tang Wuyue couldn't help rolling her eyes as she listened.
After spending enough time with Lu Chuan, she knew
that his favorite thing was to act humble,
then let other people point out how exceptional he was.
And sure enough,
Xie Xie fell for it. After a scornful laugh, she began listing reasons why Lu Chuan couldn't possibly be ordinary.
"An ordinary person?"
"Would an ordinary person make the school pay such a steep price? Three Grade A Meals a day, plus a spot on the Spirit Ascension Platform? I don't buy it."
"The School Board of Directors is full of sly old foxes. They'd never do anything without a benefit!"
"So you must have some exceptional talent!"
Lu Chuan nodded thoughtfully, smiling.
"Hmm, you make a good point! You really see things clearly. What do you think the school saw in me?"
Xie Xie considered it for a moment before answering:
"At our stage, the only thing we can really compare is Soul Power! So your Soul Power cultivation must be very high!"
Hearing that, Lu Chuan immediately gave her a thumbs-up. "Impressive! You're right! You even guessed that!"
Seeing Lu Chuan's thumbs-up, Xie Xie immediately looked pleased with herself.
"Of course! I've always been top of my class, from childhood to now. How could a little analysis stump me?"
"But speaking of which, what level are you?"
At that, Xie Xie couldn't help getting curious.
She couldn't understand
how, with Twin Martial Souls,
Innate Full Soul Power,
and a current Soul Power level of eighteen,
she still had to wait until the Class Promotion Tournament to prove herself before she could enter Class Zero,
while Lu Chuan had been admitted without an exam. Just how high was his Soul Power?
But just then,
Lu Chuan had already gotten the answer he wanted
and wasn't listening to her at all. He simply muttered to himself, lost in thought:
"Xie Xie... she didn't change her name... So where did things go wrong this time..."
Tang Wuyue had just finished scolding Jinyu. Hearing Lu Chuan mutter, she looked surprised and asked in confusion,
"Bro, do you know my roommate?"
"No."
Hearing Wuyue's question, Lu Chuan came back to himself and shook his head, but for some reason added,
"But we might get to know each other very well."
His words came out of nowhere,
leaving both Tang Wuyue and Xie Xie stunned.
Xie Xie looked at Lu Chuan strangely. "Why do you talk so weirdly?"
"Do I?" Lu Chuan came back to himself and scratched his head.
"You do."
Xie Xie nodded seriously.
"The way you looked at me just now was like you were looking at... at some old thing you hadn't seen in ages."
Lu Chuan smiled and changed the subject. "You're describing yourself as an old thing?"
Xie Xie thought it over. It did seem a little inappropriate to compare herself to an object.
Whether you were "a thing" or "not a thing," neither was a compliment.
But none of that mattered.
Lu Chuan was a legendary figure at Eastsea Academy now,
and all she wanted was to fight him,
no matter where.
"Hey, how about a match?
I didn't get enough of fighting your younger sister just now!
Her Blue Silver Cage move really is impressive, but control types naturally counter agility-attack types, so it was a bad matchup for me.
But you seem to be a power-attack type, right? We could have a good, satisfying fight!"
Xie Xie took a couple of steps forward,
moving closer to Lu Chuan.
Her dark green eyes gleamed with a desire to fight!
But Lu Chuan had no interest in fighting right now. He'd been exhausted all day and only wanted to eat, so he refused without hesitation.
"No." Lu Chuan said.
"Why?" Xie Xie asked, confused.
"Because you can't beat me."
Lu Chuan said it as if it were obvious.
The casual way he said it
looked almost like contempt to Xie Xie.
A moment later, Xie Xie exploded:
"We haven't even fought yet! What gives you the right to say that?"
"I'm just stating the facts!"
Lu Chuan shrugged and began laying it out for Xie Xie.
"You only have one Soul Ring, right? I already have three, and all three are Thousand-Year Soul Rings. How are you going to fight me?"
Lu Chuan's words were very practical.
But they still made Xie Xie furious.
Most importantly,
she couldn't find a reason to argue back!
Three Soul Rings!
Nine years old, and already at the Soul Elder level—is that even human?
She'd thought Lu Chuan was, at most, a Soul Grandmaster!
If she'd known Lu Chuan was a Soul Elder,
she never would've brought it up!
But she'd already said it,
and Miss Xie had her pride.
She couldn't just let the matter drop.
With no other choice,
all her anger finally turned into a breezy threat:
"Lu Chuan, just you wait! Once I break through to the Soul Elder level, I'll beat you until you're crawling!"
"Sure, I'll wait. Just don't come crying and begging me to stop when the time comes!"
Lu Chuan smiled brightly.
Xie Xie grew even angrier at his words. She huffed and stormed off in a huff.
Lu Chuan watched Xie Xie's retreating figure and couldn't help smiling.
Yet deep in his eyes, a profound light flickered.
Just now,
some memories of the Dragon God had suddenly awakened in his mind!
In an age lost to the distant past,
there had been a shadow beneath the Dragon God's command.
It dwelled neither in the light
nor in the darkness,
but moved through the gaps in time and the folds of space.
It had no fixed form.
Sometimes it was a streak of flowing light,
sometimes a patch of nothingness,
and sometimes the half-transparent shadow of a dragon,
slipping through the narrow divide between past and future.
It was the Dragon God's shadow guard.
Its name was the Space-Time Dragon.
And the girl before him
was a descendant of the Space-Time Dragon!
Lu Chuan could sense the girl's bloodline affinity for time and space,
so if nothing unexpected happened,
Xie Xie might one day walk alongside him.
Fate—
sometimes it really was an interesting thing.
Before you continue