Chapter 26

Casting aside the chaotic thoughts in his mind.

Huo Yuhao stood up and dusted off his hands.

He turned and walked out of the dormitory, intending to grab a quick dinner at the cafeteria.

Just as he stepped out of the dormitory building,

Huo Yuhao paused.

Not far away, beneath a lush, sprawling tree, stood a battered old rocking chair.

An old man in gray lay in it.

His eyes were closed, a thin blanket casually draped over him. He looked like any retired old man basking in the sun at the entrance of some village.

But Huo Yuhao knew perfectly well.

This old man was the strongest person in Shrek Academy today.

An Ultimate Douluo, Mu En.

He was also the Master of the Sea God Pavilion, the true ceiling of combat power on the entire continent.

They had casually thrown the strongest person on the continent beneath the freshmen dormitory building to serve as a security guard and watch the door.

Shrek Academy's way of thinking truly could not be judged by common sense.

Still, in Huo Yuhao's eyes, Elder Mu was already one of the few normal people in the whole of Shrek Academy.

Although Shrek claimed to admit only monsters and not ordinary people, Huo Yuhao did not know whether they had actually enrolled any monsters. But they had definitely enrolled a whole pile of oddballs.

If you tossed down a brick at random, you might hit some troubled child with psychological trauma and an abnormal way of thinking.

Compared with some of the inhuman antics of Shrek's upper ranks in the original story, someone like Mu En, who considered things in accordance with the tide of the times, seemed as though he existed on an entirely different plane from the others.

Huo Yuhao withdrew his gaze.

He did not go over to force an acquaintance.

Nor did he deliberately show anything unusual.

He merely headed naturally toward the cafeteria, like an ordinary freshman.

After eating and drinking his fill, Huo Yuhao went straight to the Outer Court library.

Shrek had been passed down for over ten thousand years. Other things aside, when it came to book collections and academic records, this place was unquestionably number one on the continent.

This place was unquestionably number one on the continent.

After showing proof of his identity as an Outer Court freshman at the entrance, Huo Yuhao entered without trouble.

The inside was enormous.

Rows upon rows of towering bookshelves stretched beyond sight, and the air was thick with the dry scent of paper accumulated over countless years.

Huo Yuhao did not wander around aimlessly.

He went directly to the section on martial soul theory and soul beast trait research.

After Tianmeng Iceworm became his intelligent soul ring, it had indeed left him with an empty slot for a second martial soul.

As long as he absorbed a soul beast with suitable attributes, it could directly give his second martial soul a concrete form.

According to the original course of events, he would go to the Far North and make that Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion his second martial soul.

But that had only been his former plan.

Now, Huo Yuhao did not want to do that.

Ice Empress was certainly a good choice. As one of the Far North's Three Heavenly Kings, not only was her cultivation close to four hundred thousand years, she could also unlock Snow Empress's subsequent storyline.

But he truly had little interest in that Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion martial soul.

Aside from granting him the Ultimate Ice attribute and helping him bluff people in the early stages,

it did not seem to have much substantial use in battle during the middle and later stages.

Besides.

He truly did not want a huge green scorpion tattoo on his back.

He could take Ice Empress's origin.

But the Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion martial soul form had to be changed.

How should he change it? What method could extract the origin and strip away the form? That was why he had come to the library.

Over the next three days,

Huo Yuhao entered what could only be called a monstrous study mode.

Other than eating, sleeping, and maintaining the basic circulation of the Heavenly Origin Art,

he spent every moment buried in these yellowed ancient books.

For ordinary people, reading so many obscure and difficult martial soul texts would probably make them throw up within half a day.

But Huo Yuhao was different.

With the boost from his first soul skill, "Mind-Clearing," combined with Spirit Detection's assistance,

he flipped through books like a tireless humanoid scanner.

Often, he only needed a single glance,

for the entire page to be perfectly imprinted in his mind.

If some complicated theory began to irritate him,

he would casually pick out a few books of continental anecdotes or historical travelogues and read them like novels to clear his head.

In truth, Huo Yuhao already had a rough idea in mind.

The mystery of a body martial soul lay in the secondary development of oneself.

Since his second martial soul was blank, why did it have to be limited to an external soul beast?

Since the soul beast soul rings he absorbed would determine the shape of his second martial soul, could he use some special method himself?

Could he make that incomplete, blank second martial soul become the martial soul he wanted, and the one best suited to him?

This was only a preliminary idea.

But it required a great deal of foundational theory to support it.

Over these three days,

Huo Yuhao's mind had been filled with the academic materials Shrek had accumulated over ten thousand years.

As more and more knowledge entered his mind,

he discovered an absurd problem.

The academic world of the entire Douluo Continent was simply too primitive.

Shrek did indeed possess the most comprehensive soul master knowledge on the continent.

Its records also contained many advanced ideas, some even worthy of being called genius.

However.

All of this knowledge was scattered.

No one had organized it, and no one had established a systematic framework of foundational logic.

Huo Yuhao sat at the desk.

He closed the thick ancient tome in his hands.

Rubbing his brow, Huo Yuhao sighed inwardly.

Without an organized system, it led to a ridiculous result.

Two pieces of knowledge that could often be combined to produce terrifying effects

were recorded in two entirely unrelated books, sometimes even categorized under completely different fields.

Even if someone truly noticed one of those sparks of inspiration,

they lacked the theoretical support from the other field and could not verify it at all.

In the end, it could only be abandoned.

Not only were soul masters severely lopsided in their combat methods, even those doing theoretical research were equally lopsided.

Huo Yuhao rose and returned the book to its proper place.

Yet to him, all of this was instead a vast treasure trove.

He possessed the logical thinking of modern scholars, as well as the habit of deducing conclusions from foundational data.

Once he reorganized this scattered, fragmented knowledge and stripped away its mystical packaging, it would surely prove unimaginably useful in the future.

It would surely prove unimaginably useful in the future.

Without realizing it, night had fallen.

Huo Yuhao left the library and walked back to the freshmen dormitory building.

He pushed open the peeling wooden door.

Huo Yuhao froze for a moment.

Because a faint fragrance lingered in the air.

It was completely unlike the corridor outside, which reeked of sweat and mildew like a typical boys' dormitory.

Then he saw that there was someone else in the room.

A boy.

One with an outrageously handsome appearance.

He had neat, short pink-blue hair and skin so fair it was almost unbelievable.

The youth's features were exquisitely refined, combining a boyish sharpness with an indescribable beauty.

He was absolutely the sort of top-tier beauty who would make a crowd of girls swoon on the street.

At that moment, the youth was standing before the bed that belonged to him, leisurely arranging his bedding.

Huo Yuhao glanced at that bed.

His eyelid twitched sharply.

Not only was it covered in brand-new, high-end bedsheets, it had even been padded with several layers of extremely expensive velvet cushions.

Was he here to study?

This was practically a young master traveling incognito to experience ordinary life.

Hearing the door open,

the pink-blue-haired youth stopped what he was doing and turned around.

A pair of equally pink-blue, beautiful eyes swept over Huo Yuhao with a faintly appraising look.

The atmosphere became slightly quiet.

Huo Yuhao said nothing. He casually shut the dormitory door and walked to his own bed.

The two sized each other up.

Very soon,

the youth lifted his chin, and a haughty expression appeared on his proud, aloof face.

He looked at Huo Yuhao and snorted coldly.

"It's your good fortune that this young master is sharing a room with you."

Upon hearing that,

Huo Yuhao draped the towel in his hand over the bedframe.

He turned around and looked very seriously at his roommate, who was almost excessively beautiful.

Then he nodded.

"Then thank you, Young Master?"

Wang Dong:?

All the intimidating words she had prepared instantly lodged in her throat.

Why was this guy not playing by the rules?