"Huo Yuhao... may I call you Yuhao?" As they were parting, Qiu'er timidly asked Huo Yuhao.
"Of course!" Huo Yuhao looked at Qiu'er and said, "Qiu'er, listen to Di Tian and don't go wandering off. It's very dangerous outside right now."
Qiu'er quietly listened to Huo Yuhao, as though listening to the parting advice of an old friend she had known for years.
Huo Yuhao stayed no longer. After giving Di Tian a slight nod, he left the Lake of Life with Snow Girl and departed from the Star Dou Great Forest.
"Thanks for your help, Snow Girl!" Huo Yuhao said gratefully along the way. If he, a human, had been the one to deal with those Brain-Eating Beasts when the fighting first broke out, rather than Snow Girl, they might have been in serious trouble.
Whatever grudges existed within the world of soul beasts, and however much Dragonkind despised vicious creatures like Brain-Eating Beasts, a soul master of wholly human origin killing powerful soul beasts would inevitably leave the inhabitants of the Star Dou Great Forest with a bad impression.
Snow Girl had not given it much thought. She spread her pale hands indifferently. "What's the big deal? I just came along with you and cleared out a few fools who didn't know better."
They had already traveled some distance from the Star Dou Great Forest when Snow Girl noticed that Huo Yuhao's expression had only now settled.
"Are you still thinking about Qiu'er?" Snow Girl asked with a frown.
Huo Yuhao sighed. "Neither my life nor my death is in my own hands! Her life is in her own hands, but her death isn't! The net is tightening."
Snow Girl said nothing more. Soon, they sensed large numbers of soul masters gathering on the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest. These soul masters killed every beast they saw, and the soul beasts on the outskirts had no power to fight back against such high-ranking soul masters.
In a perilous situation like this, unlike humans, who could efficiently organize a coordinated resistance, the barely intelligent soul beasts on the outskirts were a heap of loose sand, left to be harvested at will.
Huo Yuhao soon identified the soul masters gathering there: members of the Shrek Inspection Corps!
His memories of his previous life told Huo Yuhao that only members of the Shrek Inspection Corps wore those uniforms!
"Should we intervene?" Seeing this, Snow Girl recalled how Huo Yuhao had even avoided killing the Wind Baboons that provoked them on their way into the Star Dou Great Forest. Assuming his bleeding heart had gotten the better of him, she asked.
"This isn't our business. We should stay out of the conflict that's about to happen here as much as possible!" Huo Yuhao shook his head.
"By the way, Snow Girl, we need to change the appearance of our disguise soul tools before we return."
Violent fluctuations of energy erupted in the distance. Neither of them paid any attention, continuing back toward the Sun Moon Empire.
After Huo Yuhao and Snow Girl left, Di Tian and the other ferocious beasts by the Lake of Life went off to cultivate or patrol, leaving only Qiu'er sitting there in a daze.
Qiu'er had not taken human form. After spending the past several days cooperating with Di Tian to deal with the Seal of the parasitic Divine Sense within her Sea of Consciousness, she was terribly sleepy. She lay lazily on the ground, ready to sleep.
But the sealed strand of Tang Wutong's divine consciousness inside Qiu'er's Sea of Consciousness began making a racket.
Tang Wutong thought very highly of herself. Once this strand of Divine Sense figured out what had happened, how could she stand being sealed inside the Three-Eyed Golden Lion?
To this princess of indescribably exalted status, every one of these beasts in the Star Dou Great Forest had courted death by treating her this way. "Just you wait, you lowly beasts! Once I report this to the Divine Realm, the Fire God will destroy this wretched forest!"
This strand of Tang Wutong's Divine Sense raged inside Qiu'er's Sea of Consciousness. The noise kept the exhausted Qiu'er from falling asleep.
Qiu'er had already gone seven days without sleep!
"Glutton, why haven't you let your Sister Tong out yet? Do you want to watch your Aunt Bi and Aunt Zi be destroyed by divine punishment?" Tang Wutong's icy voice rang out within Qiu'er's Sea of Consciousness.
Inside Qiu'er's Sea of Consciousness, a gigantic butterfly was imprisoned in a Black Crystal!
Butterflies symbolized freedom, but one standing seven feet tall looked utterly bizarre!
The Butterfly God! That was Tang Wutong's divine office in the Divine Realm. Dominion over butterflies was also the path she followed.
More than anything else in her life, Tang Wutong hated being called a glutton, so she used that name for whatever she loathed most.
She said to Qiu'er, "Glutton, don't you think being a wild beast that does nothing but eat and sleep all day is utterly lowly and utterly dull?"
"I don't know what to call you, so I'll keep calling you Sister Tong. Sister Tong, why do you insist on making me go and see the outside world?" Unable to bear her racket, Qiu'er asked blankly.
"Glutton, haven't I already told you? Outside is a dazzling world of splendor that will sweep you off your feet. There's nothing here but trees and water. What's so good about it?" Tang Wutong's words dripped with contempt.
"What's so good about it? Aunt Bi Ji is here, and Aunt Zi JI, and Uncle Di Tian... they're all very kind to me..." Hearing Tang Wutong impatiently repeat what she had said before, Qiu'er murmured to herself.
"What's good about them? They're just a bunch of beasts! Glutton, do you want to be a beast your whole life? Once a beast, always a beast-is that really how it'll be?" Had she not been trying to disrupt Qiu'er's sleep, Tang Wutong would no longer have bothered wasting her breath.
"Sister Tong, you're not allowed to talk about them like that!" Qiu'er gave a lazy yawn.
"I'm not allowed to say it? What right does a glutton who does nothing but eat and sleep, sleep and eat, have to tell her Sister Tong what to do?" Tang Wutong flew into a rage.
"Let me out! Let me out..."
This strand of Tang Wutong's Divine Sense kept screaming inside Qiu'er.
What troubled Qiu'er was that she had to wait every day until this strand of Tang Wutong's Divine Sense grew tired before she could fall asleep!
While the two girls spent their days bickering like this, Huo Yuhao and Snow Girl had already returned to the Sun Moon Empire.
Of course, Huo Yuhao and Snow Girl could not use their own identities now. Instead, they went by the names "Spirit Ice" and "Ice Girl"!
After giving Xuan Ziwen a vague account of his trip-that he had reached a bottleneck in his cultivation and therefore gone out soul hunting-Huo Yuhao immediately asked about Ye Guyi.
Before this trip to the Star Dou Great Forest, Huo Yuhao had sent Ye Guyi, on whom he and Snow Girl had personally performed three bone-setting operations, to the Infirmary at the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy. He had also entrusted her care to Teacher Xuan.
Yet upon returning and seeing Xuan Ziwen again, Huo Yuhao could clearly sense the despondency in the teacher's voice.
"Teacher, nothing could have happened to Sister Guyi, could it? Before I left, her bone-setting operations were largely finished. She only needed to recuperate..."
"It's not a matter of the operations." Hearing Huo Yuhao's question, Xuan Ziwen sighed, then recounted what had happened over the past few days.
On the day Huo Yuhao returned, a faint scent of blood drifted on the wind through the Interrogation Room in the rear courtyard of the Sun Moon Imperial Family's disciplinary squad.
The Interrogation Room held every kind of torture instrument and was steeped in a murderous chill.
The man standing before the utterly weakened Ye Guyi was named Wang Shaojie, a member of a collateral branch of the Sun Moon Imperial Family. His face twisted with vicious malice as he seized her wavy golden hair and drove his right fist hard into her abdomen.
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