Please Join My Team, Chenxing-You Truly Live Up to Your Name!

Looking at the mad old man before him, who had nearly shaken him apart, Ye Chenxing could not help but laugh and cry. He gently freed himself from the old man's hands and asked politely,

"Senior, may I ask who you are...?"

Hearing that, the old man seemed to wake from a dream and finally realized that a dignified Rank Nine Soul Engineer had actually lost his composure so badly in public.

His old face reddened. He hurriedly withdrew his hands, lightly coughed twice into his fist, and forcibly assumed the bearing of an elder.

Though he had barely calmed down on the surface, the fervor in his eyes had not diminished in the slightest. "Child, I am a Rank Nine Soul Engineer, Ye..."

"Old Ye, stop pawing at Elder Kong's disciple."

A deep voice came from above, directly interrupting the old man's introduction. Everyone looked up to see Jing Hongchen and Lin Jiayi leap down from the second-floor viewing platform, landing steadily on the arena.

The moment Lin Jiayi landed, he immediately gave the referee beside him, who was still in a daze, a look.

The referee jolted awake and promptly announced in a loud voice, "Ye Chenxing wins this entrance examination!" Then, with quick hands, he hauled up Wang Jiahao, who was still shaken and weak in the knees, and hurried off the stage.

Meanwhile, Ye Yulin's attention had been completely seized by a few words in Jing Hongchen's statement.

"What?! Elder Kong's disciple?" Ye Yulin abruptly turned his head and sized up the handsome boy before him in astonishment. "Child, you're Ye Chenxing?!"

"That's right." Ye Chenxing nodded slightly.

"But I heard Elder Kong's new disciple was exceptionally gifted in Martial Souls. Could it be..."

Jing Hongchen smiled bitterly and shook his head. "Old Ye, to be honest, today was also the first day he displayed his talent with Soul Tools. Before this, we had never even let him touch a Soul Tool, so it certainly wasn't intentional concealment."

"What?!"

Ye Yulin was so excited that his voice cracked.

"His first contact with Soul Tools?! Impossible! Absolutely impossible!" Ye Yulin shook his head like a rattle, losing control of his emotions again. "You, Jing Hongchen, of all people, should know how complex the internal formations of my Sun God Needle are! Even if I taught a Rank Nine Soul Engineer hand in hand, breaking it down and explaining every last detail, he might not be able to replicate it perfectly! Much less a child at the Soul Grandmaster level who had never even held an engraving knife! No matter how gifted he is, it's impossible!"

The more he spoke, the more agitated he became. Even the finger he pointed at Ye Chenxing trembled. "And not only that, he improved it! Do you know that, Old Kong? He forcibly upgraded my Sun God Needle into a Class Five Soul Tool!! This was a dead-end project that I had spent more than ten years researching before being forced to abandon it! How could the material strength of Class Five metal possibly bear the core formation required by my Sun God Needle?!"

Ye Yulin panted heavily, his eyes fixed on Ye Chenxing. "Honestly, even if you told me now that this kid had been clutching an engraving knife and studying Soul Tools since he was in his mother's womb, I still wouldn't believe he had such ability! Before this, he hadn't even seen what my actual Sun God Needle looked like! This, this, this is absurd!"

By the end, Ye Yulin seemed to have suddenly found a reasonable explanation. He grabbed Ye Chenxing by the shoulders. "Child, tell me the truth. Did Elder Kong give this to you? Fine, that old fellow Elder Kong secretly completed the research behind my back and didn't even tell me!"

Seeing Ye Yulin's nearly crazed, pitiful appearance as he tried to piece together the truth through logic, Ye Chenxing could not help feeling a trace of sympathy.

Was I being a little too cruel to these senior researchers who had devoted their entire lives to this work?

It was like an old scientist who had devoted his entire life to a problem, only to walk outside one day and discover that an elementary school student who had never learned more than addition and subtraction had casually written the final answer to that problem on scratch paper with a pencil.

Who could take that?

"Um... Elder Ye, I really made it myself."

Sympathy aside, Ye Chenxing still decided to tell the truth.

"..."

The wind swept across the arena, carrying silence with it.

Ye Yulin stood frozen in place as though he had been petrified.

Seeing Ye Yulin's soul-leaving-body expression, Jing Hongchen walked over and heavily patted him on the shoulder. He desperately suppressed the upward curve of his mouth, feeling utterly delighted inside.

Hahahaha! Finally, someone else has been frightened by this little monster's terrifying talent just like I was!

Of course, Jing Hongchen's shock was no less than Ye Yulin's, because he knew more of the inside story: Ye Chenxing had never entered Illustrious Virtue Hall's laboratories. The only place where he could have accessed Soul Tools was the basement of the villa Elder Kong had given him!

What did that mean? It meant that without any instructor's guidance or assistance from precise instruments, the boy had relied on nothing but a pile of written materials to forcibly "handcraft" a Class Five junior version of a Rank Nine Soul Tool in his own basement!

And how long had he lived there? A week? Half a month? He had even spent several days hunting soul beasts in the Jingyang Mountain Range...

Yet when something this outrageous happened to Ye Chenxing, Jing Hongchen discovered that he had already become somewhat numb to it.

A full half-minute passed before the petrified Ye Yulin finally caught his breath. The way he looked at Ye Chenxing was filled with complicated emotions.

From the time his Martial Soul awakened at the age of six until now, he had always been called a Soul Tool genius. But if this child's situation was true, if this Class Five Sun God Needle had truly come from his hands without any systematic study of Soul Tools beforehand...

Then compared to this child, Ye Yulin did not even qualify as mediocre.

"Child... may I call you Chenxing?" Ye Yulin swallowed.

"Of course. You're too polite, Elder Ye."

"Good, good, good!" Ye Yulin said "good" three times in a row. A rare hint of nervousness appeared on his normally stern face.

He took a deep breath as though organizing his thoughts, then spoke after a long while. "Chenxing, I am a consecrator of the Sun Moon Empire's Hall of Consecration, a Rank Nine Soul Engineer specializing in High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices and long-range strike Soul Tools. I have taught many students in my life, but I have never seen anyone like you... like you..."

At that point, his voice suddenly lowered, and a trace of bitterness appeared in his clouded old eyes.

"Child, perhaps you do not know this. Among the many branches of Soul Tools, High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices have always been an unpopular field with the fewest people willing to choose it.

"The requirements for talent in this field are simply too harsh—you need to understand aerodynamics, high-altitude stability calculations, ultra-long-range targeting, energy attenuation compensation... Any one of these is enough for an ordinary Soul Engineer to study for a lifetime. Yet even after painstakingly overcoming all of them, when you use what you create to strike from the sky, others will only think it is no different from mindless bombardment. They will not care how much effort you put into it."

Ye Yulin's beard trembled slightly, and a note of desolation entered his voice. "In this vast Sun Moon Empire, there is more than one Rank Nine Soul Engineer. But there is only one Rank Nine Soul Engineer who specializes in High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices. Only one!"

He suddenly raised his head. His old eyes were faintly glistening with tears, and his voice rose. "I have had three dreams in this life. The first is to reclaim the name of our Sun Moon Continent and wash away the humiliation that war left upon us people of the Sun Moon!"

"The second is to create a Class Ten High-Altitude Soul Guide Device! A Class Ten Soul Tool capable of bringing down divine punishment from above the ninth heaven!"

When he spoke of his third dream, Ye Yulin's voice suddenly softened.

"The third... is for someone to inherit my legacy. I am old, with only a few years left to live. Over these years, I have taught countless students, but not a single one could inherit my techniques. Those extraordinarily gifted geniuses all looked down on High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices. I had already prepared myself to take my life's work into the grave..."

Before he finished speaking, Ye Yulin suddenly stepped forward and gripped Ye Chenxing's wrists tightly with both hands. His reddened eyes stared fixedly at the boy before him, his voice trembling from overwhelming excitement. "But today, I met you! How old are you? Eleven? Twelve? The first time you touched a Soul Tool, you accomplished what I failed to accomplish in my entire life!"

"I never believed in gods before, but today, I can only believe that you, child, must be the person heaven sent to inherit everything I have. I know you are Elder Kong's disciple. I ask for nothing else—I only ask that you join my team! My laboratory may not be as comprehensive as Illustrious Virtue Hall, but it lacks absolutely nothing! Use Class Seven and Class Eight equipment as you please, and you may freely read through Class Nine core formations! As long as you are willing to come, all my lifetime insights, notes, and research results will be yours!"

"Within you, I see the possibility of fulfilling all three of my wishes at once... I do not have much time left, cough cough... Child, you—"

Bang!

"Go to hell!"

Suddenly, Ye Yulin took a solid kick to the backside without warning. He cried out and stumbled forward two steps, nearly ramming headfirst into Ye Chenxing.

Clutching his backside, Ye Yulin turned around in shock and fury. He saw Jing Hongchen with a dark expression on his fat face, one leg having just withdrawn from the kick.

"Jing Fatty! You dare kick me—"

"I kicked you because you deserved it! Who are you trying to fool by pretending to be some lonely old man? Look across the entire Sun Moon Empire—ask anyone connected to Soul Tools, and who doesn't know that Ye Yulin has the biggest airs? The people who want to become your disciple have long been lining up from Ming Capital all the way to Shrek Academy."

"At this Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineering Academy, which student wouldn't come running the moment you crooked a finger? When have you ever looked twice at anyone?! When have you ever given anyone a proper glance?! Today you say Li Si is too dull, tomorrow you complain that Wang Wu's spiritual power is substandard, and the day after tomorrow you say Zhao Liu's spatial awareness is insufficient. Now you're telling me no one wants to study under you? Isn't that your own fault?"

Like a wall, Jing Hongchen shielded Ye Chenxing behind him, his fat face full of vigilance. "Chenxing's Martial Soul talent is his foundation. Soul Tools can only serve as support. I have already arranged a complete cultivation plan for him, so don't even think about luring him into that rundown laboratory of yours!"

"Martial Soul talent?" Ye Yulin was so angry that his beard stood on end. Pointing at Jing Hongchen's nose, he snapped, "Jing Hongchen, you want to talk to me about Martial Soul talent? What Martial Soul talent could possibly outweigh his talent with Soul Tools? Could he be an Ultimate Martial Soul or something?!"

Uh...

Jing Hongchen opened his mouth, about to say something, but Ye Yulin waved a hand and cut him off. "Even if he is an Ultimate Martial Soul, I will fight for him today! Do you know how harsh the talent requirements for High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices are? In the entire Sun Moon Empire, among tens of thousands of Soul Engineers, I am the only one to reach Rank Nine in this field! Missing out on a genius for my field would be a loss for the entire empire!"

"You—" Jing Hongchen's face turned red from being choked by those words, yet he had no way to refute them.

He could not exactly tell Ye Yulin that Ye Chenxing was not merely Ultimate—he possessed Dual Ultimate Martial Souls, too. Elder Kong had issued a gag order!

Thinking of that, Jing Hongchen could only force himself to say, "Chenxing is Elder Kong's disciple. Elder Kong decides where he goes! It's useless no matter how much you talk here!"

"Even Elder Kong will definitely support me!" Ye Yulin refused to back down. He raised his chin, utterly certain. "Elder Kong personally witnessed the power of my High-Altitude Soul Guide Device on the battlefield back then. He understands the value of this field better than anyone!"

"Th-That may not be true!" Feeling that he was losing ground, Jing Hongchen blurted out in desperation, "Maybe this child is more talented with other kinds of Soul Tools!"

The moment those words fell, the entire Soul Duel Arena went silent.

Ye Yulin slowly turned his head and stared at Jing Hongchen with an extremely disdainful look.

Under that gaze, Jing Hongchen's old face immediately flushed the color of pig liver. He guiltily turned his face away, not daring to meet Ye Yulin's eyes. Because even he knew that Ye Chenxing casually producing an improved Sun God Needle meant his talent in High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices had already surpassed anything that could be measured by common sense.

How could he possibly be more talented in another field of Soul Tools than in High-Altitude Soul Guide Devices? If that were true, then every Soul Engineer in the Sun Moon Empire had truly lived in vain.

But so what? Jing Hongchen gritted his teeth. He had to stand firm! As the master of Illustrious Virtue Hall, it was already bad enough that Ye Yulin always overshadowed him. Among the Sun Moon Empire's three great Soul Engineers, he accepted being inferior to Elder Kong, but being suppressed by Ye Yulin every time was infuriating. If Chenxing, the future star of the Sun Moon Empire, truly joined Ye Yulin's team, would he not be doomed to never turn things around?!

No! Absolutely not!

Seeing Ye Yulin about to strike back, Jing Hongchen moved first. He grabbed Ye Chenxing's wrist with one hand and pointed toward the Hall of Consecration with the other. "Then let's go to Elder Kong and settle this! Move!"

Ye Yulin showed no weakness either, grabbing Ye Chenxing's other wrist. "Fine! You think I'm afraid of you, you dead fatso?!"

Before the words had even faded, the two Rank Nine Soul Engineers—men whose stomps could shake the entire empire three times over—each seized one of Ye Chenxing's arms. Their flying Soul Tools unfolded at the same time, dragging three streaks of light toward the Hall of Consecration.

The students in the stands craned their necks, staring blankly at the three shrinking specks of light in the sky. The silence of the entire Soul Duel District was instantly shattered.

Who had ever seen two of the Sun Moon Empire's top three figures publicly fighting over someone?

"Are those two really the kind of big shots we normally never even get to see?!"

"Didn't you see the hall master kick that consecrator?"

"They started fighting in public over a new student... Am I dreaming, or has the world gone crazy?"

"Oh no, I got so absorbed in watching! The cafeteria has already started serving food! We won't get anything to eat!"

"Damn! Why didn't you say so earlier?"