"You want to join too?"
"Yes. Grandmaster Lu, do you still remember me?" Jiang Nannan asked cautiously.
"Of course I remember." Anyone who had used a Soft Bone Rabbit with innate full soul power knew how good it was.
After receiving Lu Yu's affirmative answer, a smile appeared on her face.
Lu Yu looked at Jiang Nannan's slightly flushed face. Were people on this continent really this love-brained?
Hadn't I just saved her mother's life? She could repay me slowly later. Did she really need to offer herself in marriage?
"I saw you all discussing cultivation. Could I join too? I don't belong to any sect, so even asking me to join one wouldn't be a problem."
Seeing everyone's strange looks, Jiang Nannan hurried to explain.
Lu Yu pressed a hand to his forehead. Oh no, why did my thoughts go straight to romance? Could there be some heavenly will on this continent eroding people's thinking?
"Of course there's no problem. Soul Masters should prioritize getting stronger. You're welcome anytime."
As she was his reserve Soul Ring supplier, Lu Yu was naturally happy to open up resources to Jiang Nannan.
"Nan Nan! Whenever I begged you to join the Tang Sect and offered you the Mysterious Heaven Skill, you refused. Yet today, the moment you see Lu Yu, you wrap yourself up and deliver yourself to his door! Tell me, are you forgetting your friends over a pretty face?"
Tang Ya grabbed the soft flesh at Jiang Nannan's waist with both hands and began tickling her.
"Stop... stop tickling me. I just think Grandmaster Lu is more capable than the academy's teachers and want to learn from him."
"More capable than the academy's teachers!" Startled, Tang Ya swept her gaze around. "You can't just say that! The academy's teachers are petty. If they hear about it, you'll have a bitter pill to swallow."
"Besides, didn't you say you only knew each other for a while as children? How do you figure he's better than the academy's teachers?"
"When I met Grandmaster Lu back then, he told me the Soft Bone Rabbit was better suited to an Agility Attack System assassin role. Since most of its Soul Skills were mechanics-based, I should consider supplementing them with melee Soul Tools to increase my damage output."
Jiang Nannan held out the storage ring on her hand.
"I partnered with the Soul Tool Department to endorse their products and obtained the right to use several Soul Tools. They significantly increased my combat strength."
"But the teachers in the Martial Soul Department always say I'm neglecting my proper work, that studying Soul Tools is frittering away my ambition on toys."
"How could teachers of that caliber be better than Grandmaster Lu?"
What! The others around them had no reaction, but Lu Yu was rather surprised.
Although rumors said Shrek opposed Soul Tools, Lu Yu had seen that Shrek had developed a Soul Tool Department in recent years, so he had not paid much attention.
He had never expected Shrek's own teachers to think using Soul Tools was frittering away one's ambition on toys.
A Soul Tool was equivalent to a low-quality Soul Ring of the same rank. They were only learning to use them, not make them. How could that be frittering away their ambition on toys?
After all, among Soul Masters of the same rank, those using Soul Tools were stronger than those without.
With sufficient Soul Tool resources, their combat strength could even rise another tier.
Even in high-level battles, a level-94 Class 9 Soul Engineer could contend with a level-98 Super Douluo, and a level-95 Class 10 Soul Engineer could contend with a level-99 Limit Douluo.
Could Shrek's teaching actually be terrible?
Lu Yu shook his head.
These were only deductions. He would have to attend classes himself to learn what Shrek's teaching was really like. Hopefully, it would not waste his precious time.
After deciding to cultivate in Lu Yu's dorm room that night, everyone walked back to the dorms together.
The sight left onlookers green with envy. After all, Huo Yutong, Xiao Xiao, Tang Ya, and Jiang Nannan were each beauties who could contend for the title of campus belle.
Not to mention that Jiang Nannan was already the outer court's most beautiful girl, with a reputation that preceded her. For a time, all sorts of romantic gossip flew everywhere, and countless young men at Shrek lost their dreams that night.
Once back in the dorm room, Lu Yu had Xiao Xiao sit cross-legged on the bed.
"Bear with it. I'm coming in."
Xiao Xiao clenched her teeth as an enormous surge of Soul Power flowed into her body from the palm pressed against her back, but the pain she had imagined never came.
Instead, it felt incredibly comfortable, and Xiao Xiao could not help letting out soft moans.
"Are you two actually doing proper cultivation?"
Tang Ya could not resist commenting from the side.
Xiao Xiao's face was as red as an apple.
"I'm not doing it on purpose. I don't know why, but the moment Grandmaster Lu's Soul Power enters my body, it feels incredibly comfortable. Even my Soul Power flows faster."
"What! You even have a secret technique for speeding up Soul Power circulation! Can I have a turn? I promise I'll sound better than Xiao Xiao."
Tang Ya teased from the side, making Xiao Xiao blush even harder.
"Let Jiang Nannan come try."
"Huh, me?"
Seeing Lu Yu nod, Jiang Nannan also sat cross-legged on the bed with a flushed face.
Lu Yu pressed one hand against Xiao Xiao's back and the other against Jiang Nannan's.
Two streams of Soul Power entered their bodies separately.
"Mmm... it really does feel good. My Soul Power really is flowing faster. Wait, this is Soul Power Fusion!"
Jiang Nannan could not help letting out a soft moan either, but as a fourth-year Shrek student, she recognized Soul Power Fusion immediately!
"Soul Power Fusion? Could he actually have a Martial Soul Fusion Skill with you two? One of you has the Three-Life Soul-Suppressing Cauldron, one has the Soft Bone Rabbit, and one has Blue Silver Grass. How could you possibly have a Trinity Martial Soul Fusion Skill?"
Jiang Nannan was puzzled too. Indeed, their Martial Souls were far too different in type. Just like Spirit Eyes, a butterfly, a hammer, and a scorpion, Martial Souls with absolutely nothing in common could not possibly fuse!
Not to mention that her Soul Power circulation had just doubled in speed. That was clearly the sign of a one-hundred-percent Martial Soul Fusion compatibility!
"There's indeed no Martial Soul Fusion Skill. It's just that my own talent lets me achieve one-hundred-percent Soul Power Fusion with others, that's all."
Lu Yu's casual "that's all" shattered Tang Ya's composure. One-hundred-percent Soul Power Fusion directly doubled cultivation speed, and he called that "that's all"?
"Grandmaster Lu, I want to cultivate too. Can I come up as well?"
"Master, I want to cultivate with you too."
Seeing even Tang Ya ask to join, Huo Yutong could not help speaking up. Originally, her master had only fused Soul Power with her every night, but now...
"All right, all right. I've never learned the Heart Separation Control Method. Figuring things out on my own, I can only divide my attention between two tasks. Tonight, I'll help Xiao Xiao and Jiang Nannan switch to the Mysterious Heaven Skill first. You two can take your turn tomorrow."
"We'll cultivate together once I've learned the Heart Separation Control Method."
Although group activities involving more than two people did not increase cultivation speed, Lu Yu was kindhearted. As long as it did not delay his own cultivation, he would lend those close to him a hand whenever he could.
With the matter settled, Tang Ya could only squeeze onto the other bed with Huo Yutong to cultivate.
Although one man and four women were crammed into a single room, nothing else happened that night. Everyone worked hard at cultivating.
In a dorm room outside the academy, Wang Dong lay fast asleep on her bed, mumbling in her dreams, "Hmph, just you wait, brat. Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west. Don't look down on a youngster for being poor."
With that, she rolled over and continued sleeping deeply in her dreams.
The next day, Lu Yu and the other two did not arrive at the last minute. Instead, they reached Freshman Class One ten minutes early.
Most of the seats in the classroom were already occupied. It seemed everyone was still very enthusiastic about attending school on the first day.
Although they had arrived relatively late, anyone who had attended school knew that in classrooms with freely chosen seating, the first row was often empty. They quickly found three adjacent seats.
"You two sit here first. I'm going to memorize our classmates' faces."
After finding seats, Lu Yu began strolling around the classroom, though he was actually probing his classmates' Martial Souls.
At the back of the classroom, he also spotted the Blue-Haired Pervert Girl he had driven out yesterday. From the conversations of the female classmates gathered around her, he learned she was using the alias Wang Dong.
After making a circuit, Lu Yu discovered that this class truly lived up to its name as a class of poor students. Forget top-tier Martial Souls; there were barely even any high-grade Martial Souls.
In terms of Martial Soul quality, the best were the three of them and Wang Dong.
Moreover, the person with the highest Soul Power Level was actually him, while second place was Wang Dong at level twenty-one.
In an entire class, the second-highest level was only twenty-one. Even in an advanced academy ten thousand years ago, this would have been a class of poor students.
Seeing that it was almost time, Lu Yu hurried to find his seat and sit down. A middle-aged old woman with white hair, a face full of wrinkles, and a stern expression also walked through the door.
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