"Fifty li ahead lies the Star Dou Great Forest. Soul beasts roam here. Stay safe."
Huo Yuhao glanced at the sign beside the road without a care, keeping both hands casually tucked in his pockets as he continued onward.
This far out on the fringes, there would only be hundred-year soul beasts at most. He was confident he could handle them easily.
If anyone else had known what he was thinking, they would surely have mocked him for overestimating himself.
A mere Soul Scholar without even a soul ring, with no senior to guide you-what gave you the right to be so arrogant?
Soul beasts could be classified by age as ten-year, hundred-year, thousand-year, ten-thousand-year, and hundred-thousand-year beasts. Their age affected the quality of the soul rings they produced, which appeared in different colors: white, yellow, purple, black, and red.
On this trip, Huo Yuhao intended to get himself a hundred-year soul ring.
"Screech-"
Just as he was considering what kind of soul beast could serve as a substitute if he failed to find one with a mental attribute, a piercing cry suddenly came from ahead.
"Hmm?"
Huo Yuhao's eyes brightened slightly as he looked toward the source of the sound.
Not far ahead of him, a baboon roughly a meter tall, with brownish-yellow fur, a blue face, and protruding fangs, was flailing its limbs and making strange, threatening cries.
A Wind Baboon, a typical ten-year soul beast that could only roam the outermost fringes of the Star Dou Great Forest.
"What an awful racket."
Despite encountering a soul beast, Huo Yuhao showed no intention of fighting or fleeing. Instead, he kept his left hand in his pocket and picked his ear with his right little finger, looking thoroughly impatient.
Seeing that Huo Yuhao seemed to have ignored its threat, the Wind Baboon grew annoyed. It reared up, pounded its chest with both fists, and opened its mouth in a roar. A ball of white light immediately shot from its mouth straight toward Huo Yuhao.
"Too slow."
Huo Yuhao did not move his feet at all. He merely tilted his upper body slightly, and the swiftly approaching white light brushed past him, striking a large tree and blasting a small hole in it.
But the Wind Baboon's attack did not stop there. Following the white light, it lunged forward, reaching for Huo Yuhao with its frighteningly long forearms, its sharp nails clearly visible.
The Wind Baboon's white light and pounce were both fast, but through Huo Yuhao's Demon Eyes, they seemed incredibly slow.
He hopped sideways, and the Wind Baboon missed. Its short hind legs stumbled on the ground, forcing it to brace itself with its forearms.
"Screech-screech!"
The Wind Baboon had just tried to rise and attack again when a force pressed down on its back, pinning it firmly to the ground. Unable to move, it struggled and shrieked.
With both hands in his pockets, Huo Yuhao planted his right foot heavily on the Wind Baboon, nailing it to the ground.
He said, "Brother Baboon, you're not my target. If you've learned your lesson, I'll let you go. How about it?"
There was no way the Wind Baboon could understand him. It struggled for a while with strange cries, then, finding itself unable to break free, reached its extraordinarily long forearms toward Huo Yuhao's calf.
Crack-
The sound of sharp points piercing flesh rang out. The Wind Baboon's raised arms froze in midair before dropping limply to the ground. It had died in an instant.
"You can't blame me, Brother Baboon. You chose this yourself."
Huo Yuhao shrugged innocently and lifted his right foot from the Wind Baboon's corpse. Where his foot had been, two sharp ice spikes had pierced the Wind Baboon's heart and throat.
The outer layers of the ice spikes had already begun to melt. Meltwater mingled with blood and slowly seeped into the earth.
A faint white glow rose from the Wind Baboon's corpse, forming a ring of light.
This was a soul ring.
"Pretty useless. I wouldn't take it even if you gave it to me for free."
Huo Yuhao chose not to absorb this soul ring. Its attribute did not match, and its age was too low.
But rather than leave, he took an interest in the Wind Baboon's corpse.
Soul beast meat was excellent for barbecuing, often far tastier than the meat of ordinary animals.
He took out the White Tiger Dagger, twirled it around his fingertips a few times, then chopped off one of the Wind Baboon's arms with a single slash and stored it in his belt.
Just then, the ground beneath his feet suddenly began to tremble continuously.
Huo Yuhao hurriedly scanned his surroundings with heightened vigilance. He could not sense the presence of any soul beast, which meant whatever was coming was...
Underground!
He lowered his head again. Suddenly, his expression changed. Despite his usual calm composure, a trace of horror appeared on his face.
Without warning, a voice rang out in his mind.
"At last, I have awaited the one chosen by fate. Greetings, human boy with the mental attribute."
Voice Transmission?
Huo Yuhao grew even more alert and even settled into a fighting stance.
Crack, crack-
Cracks began to spread across the ground ahead of him, with faint white light and chilly air emerging through the gaps.
Ice?
Huo Yuhao could clearly feel the temperature dropping steadily.
Soon, the owner of that mysterious voice revealed his true appearance through a fissure more than five meters long.
He had an enormous, perfectly round head a full meter in diameter, with a body nearly seven meters long beneath it.
A pair of small golden eyes sat on either side of his head. His entire body was jade-white and translucent, with golden bands spaced along its length, ten in all.
He looked like an enlarged silkworm.
Where did this freakish thing come from?
Huo Yuhao was neither blind nor stupid. Of course he recognized this as a soul beast, but it was certainly not a hundred-year soul beast he could handle. It had to be at least a thousand years old, ten thousand, or even older.
"Do not be afraid, human boy." The giant silkworm spoke in a somewhat feminine voice. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am a miracle among soul beasts, a witness to the long river of time, a life forgotten by the gods, the continent's sole million-year soul beast, the great Sky Dream Ice Silkworm. My only purpose in meeting you is to become your soul... eh, wait! Where did he go?"
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had been solemnly reciting his grand entrance speech, only to discover, before he could finish, that the human with the mental attribute he had worked so hard to find had vanished.
His dignified facade crumbled at once, revealing his naturally silly, endearing side.
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm hurriedly looked around. In barely more than ten seconds, Huo Yuhao had already run over two hundred meters away.
"Wait! Everything I said was true!"
He was about to burrow back into the ground and follow when the Wind Baboon's corpse caught his attention.
Two sharp ice spikes were embedded in the corpse, which was missing one forearm.
The ice spikes had melted, mingling with the dried blood.
"This... this..."
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm strained to open his two tiny eyes as wide as possible, his enormous white body trembling with excitement.
He could not have been more familiar with this power. It was the very same ice attribute he possessed.
Mental, ice, a powerful physique-aside from the boy's soul power being weak for now, could there be any human better suited for him to entrust himself to?
Was this a gift from fate?
After enduring that hellish torment, he had encountered an opportunity like this!
"No, I won't let this chance slip away! Even if another million years passed, I could never find another human like him!"
"I can't wait another million years!"
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm burrowed back underground, and the fissure closed up again.
A few minutes later, a claw covered in golden scales and fur, wreathed in golden flames, stepped onto this patch of earth.