"It was beneath the hoes you swung and within the hammers you struck..."
A strange light instantly lit up in the boy's clouded eyes.
He heard the National Preceptor explain the principle of seeds breaking through the soil, heard how breathing could coordinate with the rhythm of the muscles.
For ten years, he had swung a sickle in the fields. Those countless harvests and chops now transformed, under the National Preceptor's guidance, into clear diagrams of meridian circulation that flashed wildly through his mind.
"Do not seek outward..."
The boy's heart began to pound violently.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The sound grew louder and louder, like a war drum pounding within his chest.
The noble Soul Master frowned. He sensed that something seemed wrong with the trash beneath his feet.
"Playing tricks!"
The noble Soul Master barked coldly. A phantom Azure Wolf appeared behind him, and two yellow century-old Soul Rings rose beneath his feet.
He lifted his foot, carrying a gale of Soul Power, ready to crush the boy's chest beneath it.
Yet that foot stopped in midair.
It was not that he did not want to step down.
He simply could not.
The boy's callused, mud-stained hand had somehow risen and firmly seized the noble Soul Master's ankle.
"You're right. My Martial Soul really is a broken sickle."
The boy's voice had changed. It was no longer weak and fearful as before.
Fourteen years of suppressed fury rolled in his throat like magma before a volcanic eruption.
The boy slowly rose from the mud.
He did not summon that insignificant sickle Martial Soul.
He closed his eyes and deeply inhaled the air thick with the earthy stench of soil.
Boom!
A scorching current surged from his heart and instantly washed through every limb and bone in his body.
His