Twin Martial Souls

He was not qualified yet. If he wanted to use Spirit Hall's power, he had to prove his worth first.

He nodded and said nothing more.

The day after the test ended, Lu Mingfei officially began his training life at Spirit Hall.

The training was far more brutal than Zhou Dashan had described.

Every day at the hour of the rabbit... in other words, five in the morning, before dawn had even broken, Lu Mingfei had to get up and run five kilometers to warm up.

Spirit Hall's back mountain had a ring trail specifically for training. It was five kilometers long and steeply sloped; after one lap, his thighs would go weak.

After the five-kilometer run came physical training: push-ups, sit-ups, squat jumps. He had to complete one hundred of each exercise. If he failed, he was not allowed breakfast.

Lu Mingfei was a textbook shut-in. He could not even be bothered to attend PE class. This level of training was practically hell mode for him.

On the first day, he threw up after running five kilometers. After just over twenty push-ups, he collapsed on the ground, unable to get back up.

Zhou Dashan stood beside him, watching expressionlessly. He neither helped nor urged him on. He simply watched.

Lu Mingfei lay on the ground, gasping for a full minute before gritting his teeth and forcing himself back up to continue the push-ups.

His arms were trembling, his elbows were trembling, his entire body was trembling, but he did not stop.

Twenty-five, forty-five, fifty...

When he reached one hundred, he collapsed again.

"Can't get up?"

Zhou Dashan's voice came from above him. There was neither mockery nor pity in it, only a calm statement.

"Then skip breakfast today. Soul power control class starts at eight in the morning. You still have an hour. If you keep lying there, you'll be late, and this afternoon's physical training will be doubled."

Lu Mingfei said nothing.

He lay on the ground, sucking in huge breaths. Sweat dripped down his cheeks onto the ground, quickly gathering into a small puddle.

His hands were shaking, and so were his legs.

His brain was screaming at him to give up. You've already worked hard enough. Rest for a while. Stop pushing yourself.

Then he thought of Hui Liyi.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up again.

By the end of the first week, Lu Mingfei had slimmed down noticeably. But he completed every training assignment without missing a single one.

At the training summary meeting, Zhou Dashan publicly praised him, saying that although his foundation was poor, his attitude was proper.

Lu Mingfei felt that this was probably the highest praise Zhou Dashan could offer, because the man was stingy with compliments to an outrageous degree.

For him to say "proper attitude" meant that he truly acknowledged your efforts.

Soul power control training was Lu Mingfei's strongest subject.

His total soul power far surpassed that of children his age, and his control was astonishingly good as well.

The instructor responsible for soul power control was named Ye Fei.

She was a woman in her forties who wore gold-rimmed glasses and looked refined and gentle. Yet supposedly, she was a level sixty-one Soul Emperor, one of the strongest people in Spirit Hall's training camp.

Ye Fei's evaluation of Lu Mingfei was concise:

"Your control over soul power is not like that of a six-year-old child. It is more like that of a Soul Master who has cultivated for several years. You have an extremely sharp perception of soul power and can precisely control both its output and its trajectory. I rarely see talent like this. Nurture it well, and your future will be limitless."

Lu Mingfei felt that Ye Fei's assessment was a little too flattering.

He knew why his soul power control was so good...

Though he was a good-for-nothing, he had one trait others did not: his hands were fast, honed through gaming.

To him, controlling soul power was like controlling a character's skill casts in a game.

When to charge up, when to burst forth, when to pull back—he had always been naturally good at that sense of rhythm.

Basic combat class was Lu Mingfei's nightmare.

The combat instructor was called Jin Hu, a brawny man in his forties whose body was packed with muscle. One of his arms was thicker than Lu Mingfei's waist.

Jin Hu's teaching style was extremely direct.

He started by beating you up and kept going until you learned.

In his first combat class, Lu Mingfei was thrown more than a dozen times by Jin Hu. By the end, his face was bruised and swollen, and not a single part of his body did not hurt.

He wanted to cry, but he held it back.

He knew crying was useless in this world. Tears could not make him stronger.

Soul beast knowledge and wilderness survival were relatively easy for Lu Mingfei.

These two subjects leaned heavily toward theory. With his background of reading novels, he understood many things at a glance and remembered them after hearing them once.

But Lu Mingfei did not relax because of that. He carefully recorded the content of every class and would even take the initiative to seek out instructors afterward to ask questions.

Several instructors were very pleased by his attitude toward learning. Even Zhou Dashan rarely remarked after one class, "You've improved."

Ten days passed quickly.

That night, Lu Mingfei sat cross-legged on his bed in his room, eyes closed as he tried to sense the flow of soul power within his body.

This was his required nightly lesson, without fail.

After ten days of training, he could already feel that black soul power within him with perfect clarity. It was a winding underground river, surging through his meridians, warm and powerful.

But beneath that black soul power, there seemed to be something else.

Lu Mingfei frowned and concentrated, trying to extend his perception deeper.

In the darkness, he sensed an incredibly faint silvery-white glow. It lay hidden in the deepest part of his soul, like a seed buried deep underground, quietly lying dormant.

He tried to touch that glimmer, but the instant his fingers made contact, it recoiled like a startled little animal and vanished without a trace.

That feeling again.

Lu Mingfei opened his eyes, his brow tightly furrowed.

This was already the third time he had sensed that silvery-white power. Every time he tried to examine it closely, it would hide itself, as if deliberately avoiding his perception.

This was not normal.

His martial soul was the Black Dragon King, and its power should have been black. That silvery-white power was clearly not part of the Black Dragon King.

Could I have two martial souls?

Lu Mingfei was startled by his own thought.

Under normal circumstances, a Soul Master could only awaken one martial soul.

Twin martial souls were extraordinarily rare. In the entire history of the Douluo Continent, only a handful had ever been recorded, and every one of them had been an unrivaled genius.

Twin martial souls...

Lu Mingfei thought about it for a long time.

If I really awakened twin martial souls, then what would the second one be?

What did that silvery-white glow represent?

Could it be the White Dragon King?

Lu Mingfei thought of an answer.

But he did not dwell on the question.

Because Lu Mingfei knew that now was not the time to investigate it further.