The Initial Establishment of Trust

The entire venue fell deathly silent; a pin drop would have been audible.

Huo Yuhao stood before the gradually stabilizing magic formation as though he had done something utterly trivial.

But to Xu Qingsong and the members of the Light of Truth, it was nothing short of a miracle!

"You..." Xu Qingsong's voice was somewhat hoarse, and his usually impassive face was now filled with shock.

Several black-robed figures instinctively stepped back half a pace. The pressure this boy gave off was simply too overwhelming.

"Now, can we discuss the terms?" Huo Yuhao dusted off his hands, his tone calm.

Xu Qingsong took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

"Follow me." He left behind those three words and turned toward a hidden passage.

Huo Yuhao said nothing and followed him directly. Lin Mu tried to follow, but a black-robed figure stopped her. She could only watch anxiously as Huo Yuhao's back vanished into the darkness.

Inside a plain stone chamber, there was only a stone table and two stone chairs.

"Who exactly are you?" Xu Qingsong asked bluntly.

"Who I am isn't important." Huo Yuhao sat down on his own. "What's important is that I know what you want—and I know where you went wrong."

[Thought Palace]

[Target: Xu Qingsong]

[Psychological State: Fanaticism 60%, Vigilance 30%, Greed 10%]

[Weakness: Major blind spots in his knowledge system; an extreme desire for unknown powers]

[Response Strategy: Reveal a small number of advanced concepts, establish an information barrier, seize control of the discourse]

"Where did we go wrong?" As expected, Xu Qingsong's interest was piqued.

"The way you've been doing things is pathetic." Huo Yuhao gave his assessment without any courtesy. "Bloodline fusion? And you want to create some kind of master key? You've got the whole direction wrong."

He raised one finger. "You treat the 'divine legacy' like a treasure chest, thinking that making a key will open it. But in reality, it's an operating system."

"An operating system?" Xu Qingsong's brows knotted together. He had never heard this term before.

"That's right." Huo Yuhao continued throwing out concepts. "What you need is administrator access, not a physical key. Bloodlines are merely one kind of login account—and the lowest-level kind at that."

Xu Qingsong fell silent.

He understood every word Huo Yuhao said, yet when they were put together, they sounded like an incomprehensible heavenly tome.

But this boy had just stabilized the out-of-control formation all by himself. Xu Qingsong had no choice but to believe him.

"What do you want?" Xu Qingsong asked in a low voice.

"Simple." Huo Yuhao tapped the table. "First, release those students. They're just ordinary accounts. They're of no help whatsoever in obtaining administrator access, and keeping them will only cause trouble."

"Second, give me the highest level of access, so I can use all of the academy's research materials and experimental equipment."

"What gives you the right?" A black-robed figure stepped out of the shadows, his tone hostile.

"Because I can do what you can't." Huo Yuhao did not even glance at the black-robed figure, keeping his eyes on Xu Qingsong. "You've researched this for so many years and haven't even touched the door. But I can let you truly access the core of the 'divine legacy.'"

Xu Qingsong's breathing grew somewhat hurried.

"Fine." He ultimately made his decision. "I can give you an independent laboratory and the corresponding access. But those students cannot be released for now."

"Fine." Huo Yuhao agreed readily. He had never expected them to release the students immediately. His goal was to infiltrate their ranks first.

"I hope you're not playing me." Xu Qingsong rose to his feet. "Otherwise, you won't be able to bear the consequences."

"Don't worry." Huo Yuhao smiled. "It's a win-win for us."

Before long, Huo Yuhao was brought to a new location.

This was no longer a dark basement, but a spacious laboratory on the top floor of a tower in the academy's restricted zone.

Every kind of cutting-edge soul tool equipment was available, while the bookshelves were packed with the Light of Truth's research manuscripts from over the years.

"From today onward, this place is yours to use." The black-robed figure overseeing the handover spoke coldly. "All your research results must be reported immediately."

With that, he turned and left. The heavy metal door slammed shut with a clang.

Huo Yuhao looked around, the corner of his lips curling upward.

The fish had taken the bait.

Late that night, Lin Mu secretly infiltrated the tower.

"Are you crazy? Cooperating with them is like seeking the skin of a tiger!" The moment she saw Huo Yuhao, she lowered her voice and spoke anxiously.

"Shh." Huo Yuhao made a silencing gesture and pointed at an inconspicuous device in the corner.

Lin Mu immediately shut her mouth.

"Don't worry," Huo Yuhao told her through their spiritual connection. "I'm not helping them. I'm digging up their roots."

"But..."

"No buts." Huo Yuhao's mental transmission was calm yet forceful. "If you want to overturn the chessboard, you first have to become a player instead of remaining a pawn at others' mercy. Right now, I'm going to take a seat at the table."

After soothing Lin Mu, Huo Yuhao threw himself wholeheartedly into his research.

He did not rush to examine those complex soul tools. Instead, he walked toward the bookshelves.

[Thought Palace] fully activated.

[Mission: Record and analyze all research materials]

[Estimated time required: 72 hours]

Huo Yuhao's fingers raced across the pages, while his eyes seemed to turn into a high-speed scanner.

One thick manuscript after another transformed into countless streams of data in his eyes, pouring into the vast database of the [Thought Palace].

Soul tool principles, energy circuit design, ancient rune analysis, bloodline resonance theory...

Knowledge that others found profound and obscure was absorbed, processed, and reconstructed by him at a terrifying speed.

"So that's how it is..."

"There are three errors in this energy conversion formula."

"The essence of ancient runes is a form of information encoding?"

As his knowledge base continued to expand, Huo Yuhao's understanding of this world was also rapidly being rewritten.

Time passed second by second.

Forty-eight hours later, Huo Yuhao had finished reading two-thirds of the material.

Not only had he grasped all of Light of Truth's core technologies, but he had even discovered problems that they themselves had failed to notice.

[Report: Traces of anomalous data tampering discovered in research manuscript No. 73]

The prompt from the [Thought Palace] made Huo Yuhao stop turning pages.

He pulled up an electronic image of the manuscript and began comparing the data.

[Analyzing...]

[Comparison complete]

[Conclusion: The manuscript's core data was deliberately altered, causing a major deviation in the subsequent research direction]

"An insider?" Huo Yuhao raised a brow.

He continued digging deeper, cross-verifying all the materials.

Before long, an enormous web of connections was constructed within the [Thought Palace].

"So Light of Truth isn't a monolith either."

He discovered that the organization was divided into at least three factions.

The "Relic Faction," led by Xu Qingsong, advocated opening the divine inheritance at any cost.

Another was the "Conservative Faction," led by Vice Principal Mo Li, which believed the research should proceed cautiously and opposed using living people for experiments.

There was also the most deeply hidden faction, the "Theft Faction." They seemed uninterested in the divine inheritance itself, and instead had their eyes on certain byproducts produced during the research process.

The ones tampering with the data were most likely members of the "Theft Faction."

"Now this is getting interesting."

Huo Yuhao shut down the [Thought Palace] and walked to the laboratory window, looking out at Sun Moon Royal Academy beneath the night sky.

He raised a hand and lightly drew a circle on the glass.

"I've found the breakthrough."