Soul Split, One Soul, Two Bodies

There was good news, and there was bad news.

The good news was that he clearly remembered that before the Hundred-Ton King sent him on his way, the phone packed with countless study materials had also been crushed to pieces beneath its wheels—physically formatted.

Otherwise, if some passerby happened to pick it up... just imagining that kind of social death made his scalp tingle.

Even if he died, he still wanted to preserve his reputation.

The bad news was that his Loser System really was gone. It had been unable to withstand its host's absurd luck; its energy overloaded, its core collapsed, and it vanished completely.

Before the system suddenly died, only the five golden legends that had caused the disaster survived the explosion from the ten-pull draw.

The reason he could awaken his martial soul innately without undergoing the martial soul awakening ceremony was thanks to one of those golden legends fusing with his soul.

It was Istaroth, the Archon of Time from a certain two-character open-world game from his previous life.

She had now become Yin Chen's martial soul.

He could clearly sense that two golden legends had fused with him. One had become the martial soul Istaroth, but the other was like a flower seen through mist. No matter what he did, he could not find any definite trace of its existence or purpose. It seemed to have completely hidden itself away, or existed in some way he could not understand.

The other three golden legends that had been swept away and vanished without a trace were closely connected to the half of his soul origin that he had lost.

Though they were separated by an immense distance—his initial sense placed them at least several thousand kilometers away—their connection had not been severed.

Whenever he thought of the other half of his soul, once part of him, facing hardship thousands of miles away, Yin Chen felt an inexplicable irritation and powerlessness. He unconsciously raised his small hand and rubbed his tightly furrowed brow in frustration.

That subtle movement did not escape Uncle Hui, who had been watching him closely.

The old man's heart immediately tightened. Thinking only that Yin Chen was overcome with grief, or had been made uncomfortable by the bleak, frigid wind in the cemetery, he hurriedly stepped forward. His withered yet warm hand gently rested on the boy's painfully thin shoulder with careful restraint, his voice hoarse and choked with emotion.

"Little Chen... my condolences. We... should go home."

A dry warmth flowed from that callused hand, a rare tenderness belonging to the human world.

Yin Chen raised his head, his flecked golden eyes carrying a distant look.

His gaze seemed to pass through the tall, cold black tombstone before him, cross over Yuming City's low yet solid walls, and finally fall upon the distant west—upon the dark mountain range rolling along the horizon beneath the dim sky like a sleeping dragon: the Mingdou Mountain Range.

That was where his parents in this life had died in battle.

At the same time, in his soul perception, that was also the direction where his other self—the half of his soul that had been torn away and taken—was located.

"Let's go, Uncle Hui. We're going home."

Yin Chen finally just shook his head helplessly and temporarily suppressed all his chaotic, complicated thoughts.

At this moment, he was merely a child who had just turned six. He possessed nothing and could do nothing, so he could only hope that his other self was not too unlucky.

After all, he was only a six-year-old child without any major backing. His household had only Uncle Hui, a Soul Elder. At most, the commander of the Eighth Spirit Master Legion might take care of him a little out of consideration for his deceased parents.

But asking others to take risks and travel thousands of kilometers to save someone was simply wishful thinking.

His parents had been members of the Eighth Spirit Master Legion, possessing Soul Ancestor-level cultivation. They had followed the famed Duke White Tiger for years, guarding the stretch of territory along the Mingdou Mountain Range.

This time, they had fallen at the hands of the enemy because of yet another small-scale conflict with the Sun Moon Empire.

The favor earned by dying for their country could probably do no more than ensure that the two surviving dependents, one old and one young, would not be easily bullied or have their property seized by those with malicious intentions in the short term.

After all, his parents' many years in the military had allowed them to accumulate some savings—not abundant, but enough to make others covet them.

Yet no matter how greedy a noble might be, they would have to weigh the consequences of offending the entire military system before making a move.

Whether it was Dai Hao, the hardline Duke White Tiger, or the Golden Spear Douluo, who commanded the Eighth Spirit Master Legion and was famed for his formidable offensive power, neither was someone to be trifled with.

Oppressing the surviving dependents of military personnel—once exposed—would not merely invite the wrath of the Eighth Spirit Master Legion, but the united retaliation of the entire Star Luo Empire military.

Just as Yin Chen was feeling powerless, deep within the Evil Demon Forest of the Sun Moon Empire, thousands of kilometers away.

The light here could never penetrate fully. It was blocked layer upon layer by countless twisted, tangled giant branches of grotesque shapes and the dense miasma that never dispersed, as though this place had formed a domain of eternal night all its own.

The air was filled with the cloying scent of rotting plants and the fishy stench rising from deep within the soil.

This was a paradise for powerful Soul Beasts, and a graveyard for the weak and the trespassers. Ordinary Soul Masters did not dare set foot here.

Yet at this moment, amid this forest where danger lurked everywhere and silence coexisted with shrieks, a petite figure utterly out of place in her surroundings was moving with difficulty and vigilance, taking deep and shallow steps between jagged strange rocks and pitch-black roots exposed above the ground, twisting like giant pythons.

She appeared to be a little girl of around six years old.

Her once exquisite purple-and-white dress was now torn in many places. The soft hem had been sliced open by sharp thorns and stone edges along the way, faintly revealing fair, almost translucent skin beneath, delicate enough to break at a touch.

She possessed exceptionally rare, silky silver hair that seemed condensed from moonlight, reaching her waist. At the tips, it strangely faded into a mysterious pale purple.

Even more unusually, two small, delicate pointed ears stood quietly amid her smooth silver hair. They were now trembling faintly without her noticing, following their owner's vigilance as they strained to catch even the slightest movement in the surrounding wind and grass.

Most eye-catching of all were her eyes, as though carved from the finest purple crystal—clear, pure, as if they held the stars within them.

Yet at this moment, those beautiful eyes were filled with a frustration entirely at odds with her childish appearance.

"Damn it, where the hell did this Loser System blast me off to?"

Her voice was crisp and childish, yet it carried a trace of irritation.

That was right. The consciousness inside this body was Yin Chen. Though the body belonged to someone else, the one controlling it was the other half of Yin Chen's soul. It could now be said that he was one soul in two bodies.