Xu Jingyao lay sprawled on the bed, unwilling to move, feeling as though all the strength had drained from his body.
Shadow Douluo suddenly appeared in the doorway.
After waiting for Xu Jingyao for quite some time, he finally spoke. "Pavilion Master, your subordinate should head back."
Xu Jingyao lifted half his face from the pillow and shot him a sidelong glance.
"Head back?"
"To report your condition to His Highness the Crown Prince, along with the fact that you're staying here and don't want to return." Shadow Douluo nodded. "You've been away for so long that the Crown Prince needs some definite word. And there's the Carefree Pavilion's business. Shopkeeper Qian is holding it together alone, but if this drags on, I'm afraid he won't be able to keep things under control."
Xu Jingyao pulled his face out of the pillow and rolled over to sit up, his disheveled hair plastered to his temples.
He thought it over. Fine, there really was nothing wrong with that.
That fellow had told him to get lost, but in reality, no sooner had he left Mingdu than Shadow Douluo's reports had started pouring back into the city in an unending stream!
"Fine, go back." Xu Jingyao fished his fan from the head of the bed and opened it to cover half his face. "Tell that dear elder brother of mine that I have business at the Body Sect and won't be back for a year or so. Have him keep an eye on the Carefree Pavilion, and don't let those princes reach their hands into it while I'm gone. It's his own money pouch too, after all."
Shadow Douluo acknowledged the order, then hesitated. "Pavilion Master, leaving you here alone..."
"What, afraid someone will eat me?" Xu Jingyao snapped his fan shut. "In my current condition, going back to Mingdu would be courting death. Two embryonic soul cores are crammed into my dantian. If I lose control of my soul power even slightly, I'll explode on the spot. You've seen fireworks, right? I'd make a much prettier display than those things. Not a blade of grass would survive within several dozen yards."
The corner of Shadow Douluo's mouth twitched.
"Besides, the Body Sect has cultivation methods specifically for tempering the body. I'll toughen myself up here before going back. Don't worry. That old rascal Du Busi treats me like a precious treasure now. I won't lose out."
Shadow Douluo fell silent for a couple of breaths, then knelt on one knee and saluted. His figure flickered, turning into a cloud of pale gray mist that drifted out the window and vanished into the valley wind in an instant.
The room fell quiet.
Xu Jingyao flopped back onto the bed, his limbs splayed as he stared at the rough stone wall.
The soul power inside him circulated on its own. Two strands of origin power traveled along his meridians, one on the left and one on the right, meeting at his chest and condensing into a thin, silvery-white stream.
The two embryonic soul cores in his dantian were like restless seeds, quivering and pulsing. With every pulse, his meridians swelled.
He closed his eyes and sank his awareness into his dantian, trying to wrap the emerald-green core in life force while suppressing the dark-purple core with the power of destruction.
The two forces wrestled with each other, neither willing to yield. The slightest imbalance sent a burst of stabbing pain through his meridians.
"Tch." Xu Jingyao opened his eyes and gave up. "I'll still have to wait until I've made more progress with the Body Sect's body-tempering method. If my body can't hold up, no amount of adjustment will do any good."
He rolled over, pulled the covers over his head, and fell asleep in a gloomy huddle.
Meanwhile, at Shrek Academy.
Huo Yuhao stared at his martial soul in disbelief. After taking a Soul Ascension Pill, he had never expected his martial soul to mutate!
His white tiger slowly began to manifest. Paired with his Spirit Eyes martial soul, that made twin martial souls!
His soul power began climbing rapidly, shooting straight up to rank 20!
Huo Yuhao wailed in excitement, "Mom! I did it! I did it! Don't worry, I'll definitely avenge you!"
Of course, in a corner Huo Yuhao failed to notice, his White Tiger Martial Soul seemed to carry a netherworld attribute, dark and spectral, only it lay hidden within and was not easily detected.
The Body Sect, in the stone house on the cliff behind the mountain.
A year was neither a long time nor a short one.
Xu Jingyao had grown completely accustomed to life in the Body Sect. Every morning, he practiced his punches on the training grounds with Tie Hu and the other disciples, bare-chested and reeking of sweat. He had become closer to that bunch of muscleheads than blood brothers.
Since that day, Du Busi had never mentioned "returning to the Heaven Dou Empire" again. Occasionally, he came to check Xu Jingyao's cultivation progress, nodded, and left, speaking considerably less than before.
But every time Xu Jingyao brought up the Sun Moon Empire, Du Busi's gaze grew complicated, as though words were lodged in his throat that he could not get out.
Until this day.
Xu Jingyao sat cross-legged on the stone bed. The vortex of silvery-white soul power around him spun faster and faster, and the two embryonic soul cores in his dantian finally could not hold out any longer.
The emerald-green Core of Life and the dark-purple Core of Destruction trembled simultaneously, pounding fiercely like two hearts. Every beat stretched his meridians to their limit, the pain making the veins on his forehead throb.
He gritted his teeth and forced the two powers together.
Throughout the Body Sect's valley, every disciple sensed something unusual at the same moment.
Tie Hu, who had been drilling on the training grounds, abruptly stopped his punch and looked up toward the stone house.
He felt an energy so vast that it made his scalp tingle spreading down from the cliff behind the mountain, as though someone had submerged the entire valley in a pool of warm water.
The hidden injuries left in his body by years of practicing his punches gradually dissolved and healed within that energy. Warmth seeped even into the gaps between his bones.
"Is... is this Martial Uncle?" Tie Hu gaped, his fist still raised in midair.
The disciple beside him had already sat down, crossing his legs and closing his eyes to absorb the energy. One after another, the disciples on the training grounds sat down to meditate where they stood, afraid to waste this opportunity that had fallen from the heavens.
Du Busi stood at the entrance to the Ancestral Hall, hands clasped behind his back, looking up toward the cliff behind the mountain. It was hard to tell whether his expression showed heartache or gratification.
"We're done for. Now we owe him a mountain of debt!"
"You smiled. I saw you smile."
Tie Jian pulled in the corners of his mouth and put on a stern face. "You must have seen wrong, Sect Master."
Du Busi snorted and turned back to watch the mountain. That energy interwoven with life and destruction lasted a full three days and three nights. The entire Body Sect seemed to be soaking in a divine spring. Even the few crooked-necked trees in the corners of the valley looked considerably livelier, their leaves a gleaming green.
Three days and three nights later.
Inside the stone house, Xu Jingyao slowly opened his eyes.
Two soul cores floated quietly in his dantian, one emerald green and the other dark purple. Each rotated on its own, connected by a silvery-white thread of soul power as they exchanged energy at an unhurried pace.
Xu Jingyao sat cross-legged and focused, opening his mind and allowing the two powers to intertwine on their own.
With purple on one side and green on the other, a silver power quietly came into being, circling between the mingling of the two.
He stood, walked to the doorway with his hands behind his back, and looked at the disciples in the valley who were still meditating to absorb the remaining energy. He sighed again.
"Now we owe him a mountain of debt," Du Busi muttered, a measure of helplessness hanging over him.
"As for Heaven Dou... it'll just have to suffer a little."
He paused, then added in a voice so low that only he could hear, "It's not as though that bunch from the Xue Family amounts to much anyway."