The Master's Doubts

Chen Xuan had barely stepped over Dorm Seven's threshold when he ran straight into someone before taking two steps.

Yu Xiaogang stood with his hands behind his back in the shadowy corridor, blocking his way.

"Chen Xuan, come with me."

Yu Xiaogang's tone was flat. He clearly had no intention of listening to Chen Xuan's explanation and turned toward the teaching building.

Wang Sheng stood in the doorway, anxiously tugging at Chen Xuan's sleeve.

"Oh no, Xiao Chenyu's side is still waiting. Why is the Master looking for you now?"

"You think I want to go?" Chen Xuan pulled his sleeve back and patted Wang Sheng on the shoulder. "I'm staying out of the back mountain business. Let Tang San and Xiao Wu have their moment. One has a hundred-year soul ring, and the other can throw people around. They won't lose out."

With that, Chen Xuan slowly followed Yu Xiaogang.

Going to the back mountain to play house with a bunch of children was nowhere near as interesting as listening to the Master lecture.

Yu Xiaogang's office was at the innermost end of the top floor of the teaching building.

The room was small, even cramped. Two large bookshelves stood against the walls, crammed with all kinds of yellowed materials and notes. The room never saw sunlight and carried the musty smell of moldy paper.

Yu Xiaogang walked behind his desk and sat down, pointing at the empty space opposite him.

"Stand there."

Chen Xuan walked over and stopped.

Yu Xiaogang did not speak right away. With his hands clasped on the desk, his oppressive gaze fell on Chen Xuan's face, trying to find a flaw in this six-year-old child.

Chen Xuan cooperatively lowered his head and gripped the corners of his clothes, showing the nervous unease expected of a blacksmith's son facing an academy teacher.

After leaving Chen Xuan hanging for a full half minute, Yu Xiaogang finally spoke.

"About what happened in practical combat class, what have you not explained?"

Chen Xuan raised his head, his face full of confusion.

"Master, what do I need to explain? I just threw a rock, and it happened to hit the thing Tang San threw. Didn't you say on the field that it was just good luck?"

"Don't use my own words to fool me!"

Yu Xiaogang slammed his palm against the desk.

"I understand Tang San's methods. The hidden weapons he throws are incredibly fast, with tricky trajectories." Yu Xiaogang leaned forward, lowering his voice. "You have innate rank-nine soul power, a mutated stone martial soul, and not even a soul ring. How could you precisely intercept it in midair?"

Chen Xuan looked at Yu Xiaogang's slightly flushed face.

This old bastard had forcibly labeled it luck on the field to protect his disciple's pride. Now that they were behind closed doors, he was digging to the bottom of it again.

He was afraid.

He was afraid that Chen Xuan really possessed some secret beyond the limits of his theoretical framework. If Chen Xuan had truly suppressed Tang San with a few lousy rocks, then his theory of "there are no useless martial souls" would become a complete joke.

Chen Xuan sighed and placed a hand at the collar of his coarse-cloth shirt.

"Master, since you insist on asking how, I'll show you how."

Chen Xuan undid the buttons and directly took off his shirt.

A six-year-old child's body should have been pale, tender, and slight. But Chen Xuan's shoulders and back presented an entirely different sight.

A large patch of terrifying bruises covered the area from his right shoulder blade to his arm. Some spots had already turned purple, while others were still red and swollen.

The web between his right thumb and forefinger, along with his index knuckle, was covered in thick calluses. There were even several cracked, bleeding wounds.

Yu Xiaogang froze.

He stared at the injuries on Chen Xuan's body, his brows tightly furrowed.

"For the past few nights, I've been practicing throwing rocks on the back mountain every night." Chen Xuan draped his shirt over his arm, his voice sounding somewhat muffled. "I don't have a soul ring, and my martial soul is just a few useless rocks. My father forged iron in Saint Soul Village his whole life. He told me that blacksmiths have no clever tricks, only brute strength."

Chen Xuan raised his right hand and made a grasping motion in the air.

"Every night, I swing a hammer a thousand times and throw rocks two thousand times. I wear the skin off my hands, then let calluses grow back. That rock hitting Tang San really was luck. But for that bit of luck, I nearly ruined my entire arm."

More than half of those injuries were real.

The Flame Bow was an epic weapon, absurdly powerful, but its recoil was equally terrifying. Over the past few nights, every time he drew and fired it on the back mountain, the bow's vibrations violently tore at the muscles in his right arm.

Those bruises and calluses were all marks left by the Flame Bow.

But in Yu Xiaogang's eyes, they were ironclad proof that a lowborn commoner had resorted to self-torturing training to compensate for the flaws in his martial soul.

Yu Xiaogang stood up, circled around the desk, and stopped before Chen Xuan.

He reached out and pinched the purple bruise on Chen Xuan's right shoulder.

"Gah—"

Chen Xuan cooperatively sucked in a sharp breath and abruptly shrank back.

Yu Xiaogang pressed down from Chen Xuan's shoulder blade with his fingers, feeling the stiffness of his muscles.

It really was purely external strain. There was no sign of soul power backlash, nor any meridian mutation caused by a special martial soul awakening.

These were traces left behind by overexerting the body's strength.

Yu Xiaogang let out a long breath.

The stone in his heart finally dropped.

Chen Xuan had no hidden trump card and no astonishing talent. He was merely a fool unwilling to accept mediocrity, trying to fight the soul master system with brute force.

In Yu Xiaogang's eyes, such a method was utterly foolish.

"Put it on."

Yu Xiaogang withdrew his hand, took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his fingers, then returned to his seat behind the desk.

The severity on his face disappeared, replaced by a lofty sort of pity.

"Chen Xuan, your perseverance is admirable. But you have taken the wrong path."

Leaning back in his chair, Yu Xiaogang began his lecture.

"The foundation of a soul master lies in the evolution of the martial soul and the addition of soul rings. This method of purely training your body may give you a slight advantage at lower ranks. You may even catch Tang San off guard with your explosive strength."

"But it is ultimately an inferior path."

Yu Xiaogang tapped the desk, his tone becoming exceptionally certain.

"Once you reach rank twenty, or even rank thirty, a soul master's soul skills will undergo a qualitative leap. By then, your brute strength will be worth less than a sheet of paper before true soul skills."

Chen Xuan put his shirt back on, lowered his head, and said nothing.

Seeing his appearance, Yu Xiaogang assumed he had been discouraged and softened his tone.

"I did not call you here today to blame you. I wanted to remind you not to waste your time on meaningless physical hardship. Your martial soul may be scattered, but as long as you meditate steadily and raise your soul power, you can become a high-ranking blacksmith in the future and live without worrying about food or clothes."

"Do not compare yourself to Tang San. He has his path, and you have your fate."

Chen Xuan raised his head, wearing precisely the right expression of disappointment and respect.

"I understand. Thank you for your guidance, Master."

"Go." Yu Xiaogang waved a hand, picked up a document from the desk, and did not look at him again.

Chen Xuan turned and headed for the door.

He pulled it open, walked out, and closed it behind him.

Click.

The instant the lock clicked shut, the uneasy, disappointed expression on Chen Xuan's face vanished completely.

He tugged at his collar, touched the bruise on his right shoulder, and curled his lips into an exceedingly mocking smile.

A useless fool who hadn't accomplished anything in thirty years thinks he can lecture me about inferior paths?

You can't even tell whether my injuries came from the Flame Bow's recoil or from throwing rocks, yet you dare classify me so confidently?

Chen Xuan shook his head and walked downstairs.

Yu Xiaogang had completely categorized him as an "ascetic who only understood brute strength." That suited him perfectly.

From this day onward, in Yu Xiaogang's eyes, he was an insignificant outsider with no threat whatsoever, destined to be eliminated by the soul master system.

He could freely build up his trump cards in the shadows.

By the time he returned to Dorm Seven, it was nearly dark.

The room was noisy. Wang Sheng stood in the middle of the shared sleeping platform, waving his arms around as he described something.

"You didn't see it! Big Sis Xiao Wu sent Xiao Chenyu flying with one kick! Tang San barely even used his martial soul, and he took down those sixth-years in just a few moves!"

When he saw Chen Xuan enter, Wang Sheng hurried over.

"Chen Xuan, you missed a great show! What did the Master want with you?"

"Nothing much. He asked how I trained my strength." Chen Xuan yawned, walked to his bed, and lay down. "I'm tired. I'm going to sleep first."

Tang San sat nearby, wiping the sleeve arrow in his hand with a soft cloth.

Hearing Chen Xuan's words, his movements paused, and his gaze swept over Chen Xuan's right shoulder.

He had also found Chen Xuan's move on the field strange. But since the teacher had already questioned him and reached a conclusion, there should not be any problem.

After all, the teacher's theories were invincible.

Tang San withdrew his gaze and continued wiping his hidden weapon.

Late at night, the snores in Dorm Seven began on schedule once more.

Chen Xuan opened his eyes.

In the lower-right corner of his vision, the translucent countdown had just reached zero.

[Time until next draw: 00 hours 00 minutes.]

[Daily draw has been refreshed. Draw now?]

Chen Xuan did not get up and head to the back mountain. He had not yet tested the Wind Eagle Crossbow, but he was not planning to go out and mess around tonight.

He pulled the blanket over himself, completely covering his body.

"Draw."

A roulette wheel appeared in his vision and began to spin.

In the first three draws, he had gotten two epic weapons and a pair of lousy socks.

Who knew what would come out tonight.

The roulette slowed further and further. The pointer passed over alternating red and blue sections before finally stopping on a blank square without any color.

A dull gray light flashed.

[Congratulations, Host. You have obtained a special item: Wordless Heavenly Tome ×1]

Chen Xuan froze.

The Wordless Heavenly Tome?

That name sounded incredibly impressive. In martial arts novels, things like this usually recorded some peerless divine art or earth-shattering secret.

With a thought, he took the item out of the system inventory.

An old thread-bound book appeared in his hand. Its cover was made of yellowed kraft paper, with not a single word on it.

Using the faint moonlight filtering through the window, Chen Xuan opened the first page.

Blank.

He opened the second page.

Still blank.

He flipped through more than a dozen pages in one breath. There was not even an ink dot in the entire book—just blank white paper.

At that moment, the system notification sounded lazily.

[Description: A blank book containing no content. The paper is of excellent quality, highly absorbent, and very suitable for use as scratch paper.]

Chen Xuan's fingers gripping the pages stiffened.

He rolled his eyes beneath the blanket.

Scratch paper?

I waited all day, and you gave me scratch paper?

Chen Xuan was about to throw the lousy book back into the system inventory when his fingertips suddenly felt a hard lump inside the back cover.

It was tiny, only the size of a grain of rice, embedded within the kraft paper's inner layer.

Chen Xuan paused.

He took the rusty iron spoon from his pocket and used the edge of its handle to carefully pry open the inner layer of the back cover.

An extremely thin roll of parchment fell out from inside.