Twin Martial Souls

He hadn't earned the right yet. If he wanted to use Spirit Hall's power, he first had to prove his worth.

He nodded and said nothing more.

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

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

Every day at dawn—five in the morning, before the sun came up—Lu Mingfei had to get out of bed and run five kilometers to warm up.

Behind Spirit Hall, a five-kilometer trail circled the mountain. It had been built for training, and its slopes were so steep that one lap left his legs weak.

After the run came conditioning: push-ups, sit-ups, and jump squats. He had to do a hundred of each. No breakfast until he finished.

Lu Mingfei was a homebody who couldn't even be bothered to attend gym class. For him, this was training on nightmare difficulty.

On the first day, he threw up after the run. He managed barely twenty push-ups before collapsing, unable to get back up.

Zhou Dashan stood beside him, watching without expression. He neither helped nor urged him on. He just watched.

After a minute of lying there and panting, Lu Mingfei gritted his teeth, pushed himself up, and kept doing push-ups.

His arms shook. His elbows shook. His whole body shook. But he didn't stop.

Twenty-five. Forty-five. Fifty...

By the hundredth, he collapsed again.

"Can't get up?"

Zhou Dashan's voice came from above him. There was no mockery or pity in it, only a flat statement.

"Then you don't get breakfast today. Soul Power control class starts at eight. You have an hour left. If you keep lying there and show up late, your conditioning this afternoon doubles."

Lu Mingfei said nothing.

He lay on the ground, gulping air. Sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped onto the dirt, quickly forming a small puddle.

His hands trembled. So did his legs.

His mind screamed at him to quit. You've worked hard enough. Take a break. Stop pushing yourself.

Then he thought of Hui Liyi.

He gritted his teeth and pushed himself up again.

By the end of the first week, Lu Mingfei had grown noticeably thinner, but he had completed every training task without missing a single one.

At the training review, Zhou Dashan praised him in front of everyone, saying that "his foundations are weak, but his attitude is right."

Lu Mingfei figured that was the highest praise Zhou Dashan could give. The man was almost criminally stingy with compliments.

If he said your attitude was right, it meant he truly recognized your effort.

Soul Power control was Lu Mingfei's strongest subject.

His total Soul Power far exceeded that of others his age, and his control was surprisingly good.

The instructor in charge of Soul Power control was named Ye Fei.

She was a woman in her forties with gold-rimmed glasses. She looked quiet and mild-mannered, but her cultivation had reportedly reached rank sixty-one Soul Emperor, making her one of the most powerful people at Spirit Hall's training camp.

Ye Fei's assessment of Lu Mingfei was concise:

"Your Soul Power control isn't what I'd expect from a six-year-old. It's more like that of a Soul Master who's trained for years.

Your perception of Soul Power is remarkably keen. You can precisely control how much you release and the path it takes.

I rarely see talent like this. Nurture it well, and there's no telling how far you could go."

Lu Mingfei thought Ye Fei was being a little too generous.

He knew why his Soul Power control was so good...

He might be a good-for-nothing, but he had one thing others didn't: fast hands, honed through gaming.

Controlling Soul Power felt like using a character's skills in a game.

When to charge up, when to let loose, when to pull back—he had always had a knack for that kind of timing.

Basic combat class was Lu Mingfei's nightmare.

The combat instructor was named Jin Hu, a burly man in his forties covered in hard muscle. One of his arms was thicker than Lu Mingfei's waist.

Jin Hu's teaching style was brutally direct.

He started fighting and kept at it until you learned.

In his first combat class, Jin Hu threw Lu Mingfei more than a dozen times. He ended up bruised and battered, aching everywhere.

He wanted to cry, but held it in.

He knew crying was useless in this world. Tears wouldn't make him stronger.

Soul Beast studies and wilderness survival were relatively easy for Lu Mingfei.

Both classes leaned toward theory. After all the novels he'd read, he understood much of the material at a glance and remembered it after hearing it once.

But Lu Mingfei didn't slack off. He took careful notes in every class and sought out the instructors afterward to ask questions.

His attitude toward learning pleased the instructors. Even Zhou Dashan, in a rare moment of praise after class, said, "You're improving."

Ten days passed quickly.

That evening, Lu Mingfei sat cross-legged on his bed with his eyes closed, trying to sense the flow of Soul Power inside him.

He did this every night without fail.

After ten days of training, he could clearly feel the black Soul Power within him. It was like a winding underground river rushing through his meridians, warm and powerful.

But beneath that black Soul Power, there seemed to be something else.

Lu Mingfei frowned and focused, trying to extend his senses deeper.

In the darkness, he sensed a faint glimmer of silvery-white light. It lay hidden in the deepest part of his soul, like a seed buried deep in the earth, quietly dormant.

He tried to touch it, but the moment he reached it, the light shrank back like a startled animal and vanished without a trace.

That feeling again.

Lu Mingfei opened his eyes, his brow furrowed.

This was the third time he'd sensed that silvery-white power. Whenever he tried to examine it closely, it hid itself, as though deliberately avoiding his perception.

That wasn't normal.

His Martial Soul was the Black Dragon King. Its power should have been black. That silvery-white power clearly wasn't part of it.

Could I have two Martial Souls?

The thought startled Lu Mingfei.

Normally, a Soul Master could awaken only one Martial Soul.

Twin Martial Souls were exceedingly rare. Only a handful had been recorded in the history of Douluo Continent, and every one of their wielders had been extraordinarily gifted.

Twin Martial Souls...

Lu Mingfei thought for a long time.

If I really did awaken Twin Martial Souls, what would the second one be?

What did that silvery-white light mean?

Could it be the White Dragon King?

An answer occurred to Lu Mingfei.

But he didn't dwell on it.

He knew it wasn't time to dig deeper yet.