Three Years

Because of a drunken entanglement years ago, he had ruined the bond between himself, Ye Xishui, and Mu En.

He had always believed that he bore an inescapable responsibility for Ye Xishui entering the Holy Spirit Cult and becoming an evil Soul Master. Silently protecting her at her side was his way of making amends.

In his daily life, the only thing he could do was sit in the side hall day after day, year after year, like a statue.

Just as he had grown accustomed to this gray atonement, someone he had never anticipated suddenly entered his life.

Long Xiaoyao stood early at the entrance of the great hall, gazing into the distance as though waiting for someone.

A faint expectation lay buried deep in his eyes, so subtle that even he could not sense the change in his own emotions.

From afar, Ye Xishui sat within the Blood Soul Hall and silently watched Long Xiaoyao. It had been too long. Long Xiaoyao had protected her for far too long, practically becoming her shadow. Other than matters concerning her, he rarely showed emotional fluctuations over anything else.

"He seems to have changed." Ye Xishui's gaze fell upon Long Xiaoyao, no longer holding its usual coldness and distance. She murmured softly, "He has become more like he used to be."

Three figures appeared in the distance. The person in the middle seemed boneless, limply slumped against the two beside him.

They were Mu Feng's group returning from outside. Little White and Xiao Hei supported the unconscious Mu Feng from either side.

Upon seeing Long Xiaoyao, Little White respectfully greeted him. "Elder Long."

Mu Feng leaned against the two like a puddle of mud. His robe was tattered, and even his delicate, handsome face was covered in dust.

Long Xiaoyao frowned. "How did he end up like this again?"

Little White hurriedly tried to explain, but he spoke too quickly. The words from his leaking voice came out indistinctly, making Long Xiaoyao's eyelids twitch.

The secret technique Ye Xishui had taught Mu Feng was to suppress his Soul Power, then repeatedly exhaust the Soul Power within his body. Through recovery after recovery, he would widen his meridians and condense his Soul Power.

It bore some resemblance to Tang Hao sealing Tang San's Soul Power for training, then allowing it to explosively increase after the seal was removed.

However, after Ye Xishui's refinements and with the supplementary pills she refined, practitioners could directly raise the limit of three or four levels of Soul Power that their bodies could store before obtaining a Soul Ring to ten levels.

Yet because each stage of a Soul Master required different amounts of Soul Power to advance, this secret technique only worked for Soul Masters below level forty.

Long Xiaoyao grabbed Mu Feng's right hand and sensed the changes in his meridians. Compared to when he had first awakened his martial soul three years ago, he had improved tremendously.

Following the principle that more guidance could not hurt, with an Ultimate Douluo right in front of him, Mu Feng often eagerly sought Long Xiaoyao's advice on cultivation.

Moreover, compared to Ye Xishui's indifference, Long Xiaoyao's outwardly cold but inwardly warm personality made him far easier to approach.

Though he was trapped by his past and unable to move on, making him seem somewhat gloomy, that did not mean he was difficult to get close to.

Long Xiaoyao had also carefully observed this little fellow, Mu Feng. Not only could he exceed Ye Xishui's demanding training regimen, he often added extra training, leaving himself so exhausted that he was usually carried back.

Just when he thought Mu Feng had been blinded by hatred and become as obsessive as an evil Soul Master, the little fellow would recover a bit of strength, then bring some fruit and snacks over to chat with him.

Over time, the two no longer felt as unfamiliar with one another as they had at the beginning. Especially when they encountered issues where their views differed, Mu Feng would not blindly defer to him.

At their most heated, Long Xiaoyao would release a Soul Power barrier to cut off vibrations in the air, and the old man and the child would argue inside the barrier until their faces turned red, neither willing to yield.

Gradually, this nine-year-old little fellow carved out a place in his heart. As time passed, their relationship began to develop into a layered state somewhere between teacher and friend, grandfather and grandson.

But aside from Mu Feng's own hard work, the Holy Spirit Cult's cultivation resources had also helped him immensely.

Mu Feng had also taken two Profound Water Pills, the pills Bei Bei had swindled from Xu Sanshi for Huo Yuhao in the original story. Even the Soul Ascension Pills, which Tang San's precious daughter had needed to risk her life for, were no exception.

If the Profound Water Pill's benefits to Huo Yuhao were multiplication, then for Mu Feng, they were merely ordinary addition.

After swallowing the Profound Water Pill with high expectations, Mu Feng had also hoped to soar to new heights. Yet the benefits it brought were far inferior even to the pill Ye Xishui had refined for him back then.

A Soul Master's cultivation speed did not simply rise from one to ten. The difficulty increased exponentially the further one progressed. This was why the Profound Water Pill's effect on Mu Feng was nowhere near as astonishing as it had been for Huo Yuhao.

After bidding Long Xiaoyao farewell, Little White had Xiao Hei carry Mu Feng back to his room alone while he reported Mu Feng's cultivation progress for the day to Ye Xishui.

"He is already nearing the bottleneck?" For a full three years, Mu Feng had not obtained his first Soul Ring. He had remained focused on strengthening his physique and compressing the quality of his Soul Power.

Now that Mu Feng was about to break through to level thirty, the secret technique she had given him would no longer be useful. It was time for him to obtain a Soul Ring.

Ye Xishui nodded. Although Mu Feng had only grown by an average of three levels per year, and only barely matched the cultivation speed of ordinary Soul Masters despite being supplied with abundant cultivation resources,

Ye Xishui was already very satisfied with this result. The further her secret technique was cultivated, the more severely the lack of a Soul Ring and the resulting Soul Power limit constrained one's cultivation progress.

It was like running with a stone strapped to one's back. The more exhausted one became in body and mind, the heavier that stone seemed to grow.

Every step taken at that point was a test of one's willpower, and level thirty was the finish line of this marathon.

Giving up halfway would naturally still yield some cultivation results, but crossing that finish line would be a transformation from the inside out, from heart to body.

This journey of cultivation that challenged one's limits was a dual torment and trial of body and mind.

Even Mu Feng, who had lived two lives and understood the tiresome old truth that one could not see a rainbow without weathering storms, had wanted to give up midway several times.

But the world he now lived in had long been vastly different from the rules of survival in his previous life. There was no comfort of beer and barbecue, only trials of life and death.

Before entering the Holy Spirit Cult, he could be said to be extremely unfamiliar with actual combat. Thus, compared to other Soul Masters, his inexperience in battle was his greatest weakness.

When he first hunted a small soul beast, even with two Soul Sages standing guard nearby, he had still flailed about in panic and attacked wildly. If Xiao Hei had not intervened in time to restrain the frenzied soul beast, his first real battle would have ended in failure and serious injury.

Even so, after personally cutting it open and disemboweling it, Mu Feng still had nightmares for two days before recovering.

Unlike when his mind had spiraled out of control during his martial soul awakening and he accidentally killed two evil Soul Masters, experiencing the sensation of killing for the first time while conscious did not feel good.

On this point, Mu Feng greatly admired Shrek Academy's teaching system. It did not use Soul Power Level as the standard, but only judged a Soul Master by actual combat performance.

Otherwise, no matter how high one's level was, what use would it be if one had poor mental fortitude on the battlefield, saw rivers of blood, and became so frightened that one's legs went weak and one lost the will to fight?

After understanding where his weakness lay, Mu Feng added practical combat lessons to the training regimen Ye Xishui had designed for him.

And his sorry state today had been caused by a battle against an Ironclad Rhino more than four hundred years old.