With the detector scouting ahead, the four of them had a much easier time exploring the Star Dou Great Forest.
As they went, Xiao Hongchen suddenly began forcing small talk about this and that.
But Xiao Hongchen's social skills were hardly up to the task of getting close to someone. The conversation was painfully stiff, and if Meng Hongchen hadn't kept smoothing things over, it would have died altogether.
"Lu Yi, you've been studying Soul Tools too?"
When they learned that Lu Yi had begun studying Soul Tools after the tournament and had become a Level 3 Soul Engineer a few months earlier, both Xiao Hongchen and Meng Hongchen were surprised.
There was a saying among Soul Engineers that those trained by the Douluo Three Kingdoms or Shrek Academy would automatically be rated half a level, or even a full level, lower under the Sun Moon Empire's standards.
But that applied only to mid- and high-level Soul Engineers. Below Level 5, it made almost no difference.
Low-level Soul Engineers were still laying their foundations. At that stage, there was little room for a gap to open up.
Xiao Hongchen told Lu Yi frankly that, under his grandfather's influence, he had grown up surrounded by Soul Tools.
His Martial Soul had awakened at six. Before turning seven, he had obtained his First Soul Ring and become a Soul Master. With his innate sensitivity to metal, he had quickly mastered smelting, forging, and carving Level 1 Core Arrays, and soon became a Soul Engineer.
He had reached Level 2 at eight, Level 3 at nine, Level 4 at eleven, and Level 5 at thirteen.
By the Soul Fighting Tournament, he had been a Level 5 Soul Engineer for a year and a half. He had broken through to Level 6 soon afterward.