The hidden dragon

"Brother Bujue, how could I accept this?"

Despite his words, Huo Yuhao pushed open the door to the little storeroom.

The room was five or six meters in both length and width. It was empty, without even a table, and a thin layer of dust covered the floor. A small window was set into the wall opposite the door.

Inside his Sea of Consciousness, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm also thought settling down in Shrek City for now was a good choice.

"Yuhao, Shrek City looks pretty developed. There must be more opportunities here, too. Why not stay here for now and earn money while you cultivate? Once your Soul Power reaches Level 20, I'll take you soaring straight into the sky!"

"Then we'll beat up every last person who looked down on you!"

"But you really do need to earn some money. Once your Soul Power reaches Level 20, you'll still have plenty of expenses."

After spending a few days with Huo Yuhao in the human world, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had also learned the importance of money.

"I really am a saint. Only thirty Silver Soul Coins a month, and I'm even letting you rent it one month at a time. Count your blessings, kid."

"If this storeroom on the premises weren't going to be unused for a while, how could I possibly rent it to you this cheaply?"

Feng Bujue curled his lips, sighed, and continued:

"You don't look like you have much money. How about this? I have a single bed back at my place. I'll find a small table and bring them over for you."

"Then you can store your fish-grilling equipment here and have somewhere to stay. For washing up, there are communal toilets and baths on the premises. If they're too crowded, come use the private bathroom in my dorm."

"Brother Bujue, I..."

How many people would go this far for a stranger they had only just met? Huo Yuhao pressed his lips together. Since his mother's death, this was the first time he had received care that came without much calculation of personal gain.

Even if these gestures amounted to little more than lifting a hand for the other man, Huo Yuhao knew he had received a kindness, and he would never fail to acknowledge the favor.

"Stop, stop! I had Level 1 Innate Soul Power, too. My relatives dwindled away when I was young, my family fell on hard times, and I was left all alone to raise a younger sister. Back then, I could barely keep us going."

"If my cousin hadn't lent me a hand, I might never have made it this far."

"When I see you, it's like seeing myself back then, struggling to get by and raise my sister, so I'm lending you a hand."

"But making a good life for yourself and advancing further in cultivation will still depend on you."

Feng Bujue waved a hand, pulled a copy of Introduction to Soul Tools (Carefully Revised Edition) from inside his clothes, and handed it to Huo Yuhao. "You seem a little interested in Soul Tools. This edition is more comprehensive. Take it and read it."

"If there's anything you don't understand, you can come inside and find me, all right?"

Brother Bujue seems to have quite a story.

Huo Yuhao nodded and accepted the book, then borrowed cleaning supplies from Feng Bujue and cleaned the room. He placed the table beside the window, put his fish-grilling equipment in a corner, and set up the little bed.

Only then did he have time to open Introduction to Soul Tools (Carefully Revised Edition).

Huo Yuhao first glanced at "Mingde Hall Press, editor-in-chief: Jing Hongchen" at the bottom of the cover. Neither name meant anything to him.

Then he hefted the book. It was two fingers thick and weighed about half a kilogram. A casual flip through revealed four hundred and fifty-four pages, more than twice as many as the booklet handed out earlier.

The paper was thin but tough, its colors vivid; it clearly was not ordinary material. The contents included both text and illustrations, with notes, annotations, and exercises tucked between the pages. The handwriting revealed the writer's meticulous attitude.

Brother Bujue is giving me his old textbook? Then is he a real Soul Engineer?

Huo Yuhao opened the first page and was drawn in by the first sentence:

"Soul Tools have the power to change the world. Martial Souls are both the world's gift and its shackles..."

With his attention entirely on the book, Huo Yuhao quickly entered a state of flow, fully unleashing his reading speed and reasoning ability.

When he encountered something he did not understand, he could even switch to the "Spectator" perspective, dissect his entire process of understanding, identify logical gaps, and approach it from another direction.

Huo Yuhao noted the page number and closed the book, still hungry for more. Not because he had finished, but because dawn had come.

Although it was an introductory book, it contained no shortage of formulas and theorems. The classic examples it cited often involved dozens of compound inferences, and periodically recalling things took considerable time.

Reading those eighty-odd pages felt as though a door to a new world had opened for him.

Huo Yuhao rubbed the space between his brows. Though slightly tired, he also felt he had gained a great deal.

He had gained a basic understanding of Soul Tools and memorized many formulas, theorems, and the conditions for their application, while also becoming keenly aware of how lacking he was in foundational Soul Tool knowledge.

Huo Yuhao opened both the door and the window. A cool cross breeze swept into the room, refreshing him.

Now it was time to go buy supplies!

Shrek Academy, Freshman Class One.

"Anyone who has been in a fight during these past few days of enrollment, stand up." Zhou Yi's words shocked the entire class.

Tang Yin and Wang Dong exchanged a glance, then both stood with a cold snort.

For some reason, Tang Yin had actually been assigned to the same dorm room as Wang Dong. Although he had recognized that half of Xiao Qi's soul was living parasitically in this body, he did not consider her his daughter.

Wang Dong's surname was Wang, not Tang, which said plenty.

So even if he needed Wang Dong to secure the child of destiny whose identity he still did not know, he would not indulge her bad habits in the slightest.

Fatherly love struck with a heavy fist!

"Only two?" Zhou Yi raised her eyebrows. "What a bunch of trash. Don't you know that those who don't dare cause trouble are mediocrities? Everyone except these two, get outside and run a hundred laps around Shrek Square. Anyone who fails to finish within two hours will be expelled immediately!"

The whole class erupted, but Tang Yin's eyes lit up. That familiar feeling was back!

Those who did not dare cause trouble were mediocrities, and there was that familiar running, too!

To think the academy's culture had been passed down for ten thousand years, enduring without end!

A mere hundred laps would be easy for Tang Yin. With his Level 29 Soul Power and the endlessly renewing nature of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, he could manage two hundred.

Restoring the Tang Sect's glory naturally required a reputation. Just imagine: would a student who could run two hundred laps as soon as he enrolled, leaving all his classmates behind, not deserve admiration?

With a smile on his lips, he chose the course that would earn him the greatest reputation and raised his hand to volunteer for extra training:

"This is Shrek Academy. It's supposed to produce monsters, not trash. So I request that it be increased to two hundred laps!"

At these words, even some students who had not cared before changed expression. They could grit their teeth and manage a hundred laps, but wouldn't two hundred be asking for their lives?

Even Wang Dong was dumbfounded. If he liked running, he could just put his head down and do extra laps himself.

Why make decisions for everyone else? There were plenty of students in Freshman Class One with only one Soul Ring; they might not be able to finish.

Zhou Yi, however, felt Tang Yin had a point that happened to accord with her teaching philosophy, so she relaxed the conditions:

"Two hundred laps, with the time extended to four hours. This is your first assessment since enrollment. Those who fail will be expelled."

Although the students felt it exceeded their abilities, faced with Zhou Yi's cold expression and the pressure of her six Soul Rings, they felt there was no room to bargain and headed outside to run.

Wang Dong's temper flared, and she wanted to blow up at Zhou Yi.

Tang Yin saw what she was thinking. How could he let a puppet ruin Shrek's school culture? So he deliberately provoked her:

"If you can't even finish two hundred laps, you deserved to lose to me earlier."

Wang Dong's eyes widened. "How dare you slander me! A draw! We tied!"

She argued, but her feet carried her outside. A mere two hundred laps-who was he looking down on?

Tang Yin finished his two hundred laps in exactly three hours, just as the other classes were dismissed.

He glanced at Wang Dong, who was still flying on outstretched wings, and at the many students panting like oxen, their pace already slowed to a walk.

Some trash still needs to be weeded out. Shrek Academy feels like it's getting better and better.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Tang Yin felt that he was drenched all over. With time to spare, he headed back to the dorm to use the toilet and take a shower.

He had only just reached the front of the dorm building when he saw a dense crowd brawling amid billowing dust. Everyone was squeezing toward one spot, while curses and wails rang out incessantly:

"At Shrek, fists do the talking! Losers, settle your business in the dorm!"

"I can't hold it! Let me go first! It's about to spray out!"

"Four hundred people fighting over two toilets! This is inhuman!"

Tang Yin's expression twitched. This is bad. I can't hold it much longer either.

Over the next few days, Huo Yuhao bought supplies and cultivated his Soul Power in the mornings, sold grilled fish in the afternoons while using spare moments to read, helped Feng Bujue hand out flyers and read in the early evenings, and cultivated his Soul Power at night.

During this time, he discovered that the knowledge he learned seemed engraved in his mind, never to be forgotten, saving him a great deal of review time.

Though monotonous and repetitive, his days were fulfilling. His grilled fish stall had thoroughly made a name for itself, drawing quite a few Shrek Academy students in search of food.

These free-spending young masters and ladies quickly became his loyal customers, bringing him more than ten Silver Soul Coins in daily income.

Huo Yuhao and Feng Bujue often sat on the steps eating grilled fish and drinking cheap ale, occasionally chatting about anything and everything. The two quickly grew familiar.

After a few days, Feng Bujue's busiest period was also over. Once the evening's work was done, Huo Yuhao went to find him.

"Little Huo, why are you giving the book back? Having trouble understanding it? Then why didn't you ask me? I've been busy these past few days, but not so busy I couldn't spare time to answer questions."

Feng Bujue frowned slightly at the book Huo Yuhao offered him, then earnestly tried to encourage him:

"Don't turn away because it's dry, and don't be intimidated by the difficulty. Back then, it took me over thirteen hundred full class hours to finish learning this book, and that was with guidance from plenty of excellent teachers."

"You can't write yourself off over a temporary difficulty. You only have Level 1 Innate Soul Power. It'll be hard to accomplish much through your Martial Soul alone..."

Before Feng Bujue could finish, Huo Yuhao pressed his lips together and said outright:

"Brother Bujue, I've already finished it."

"Huh?" Feng Bujue blinked, looking stunned.

Huo Yuhao gave the explanation he had prepared: "My Martial Soul has the Mental Attribute. Maybe I learn more efficiently..."

"Bullshit!" Feng Bujue retorted, glaring, then smacked his lips when he realized he had overreacted. "I graduated from an advanced Soul Engineer academy in Mingdu. You could say it brought together Soul Engineer prodigies from across the Sun Moon Empire. Mental Attribute Martial Souls might be rare, but how could a place like that not have any?"

"They often learn new material several times faster than people with other Martial Souls, and only need to spend a little time reviewing old material."

"So people with Mental Attribute Martial Souls have a very strong head start. Even if they only begin studying at eleven or twelve, they can later catch up with students from major families who started as children."

"If someone like that starts studying Soul Engineering as soon as their Martial Soul awakens, their progress is even more frightening."

"But!" Feng Bujue held up two fingers, his voice rising an octave. "Even the best among them took at least two hundred class hours to learn this book!"

Huo Yuhao paused, then said innocently:

"Then that person was very outstanding. But I really have finished it, and I have no reason to lie to you, Brother Bujue."

That's true. What would be the point of showing off in front of me? Feng Bujue more or less accepted Huo Yuhao's explanation, but remained doubtful as to whether he had truly "finished" the book.

"Then tell me, what are the limiting conditions of the fourth clause of the array-pattern integration theorem?"

"The Soul Power within the array must share the same source and rank. Exceeding the boundary makes it prone to collapse; reversing the sequence causes the array foundation to self-destruct!"

"What are the three principles for installing the heat-dissipation array of a standard focused Soul Power ray Soul Tool?"

"Brother Bujue, don't set a trap. There are five. This is a little long, so I'll give the key points: coaxial alignment, gradient arrangement of the patterns, separation between heat-dissipation and energy-gathering arrays, a heat-conducting base, and auxiliary dissipation arrays."

...After a round of questioning, Feng Bujue knew rationally that Huo Yuhao had spoken the truth, but emotionally found it difficult to accept. He gave him a brooding look and said:

"So, over these past few days, while selling grilled fish and keeping up your Soul Power cultivation, you not only memorized practically every point, but understood them mostly correctly?"

"Uh, if I haven't answered anything wrong." Huo Yuhao felt that he seemed to be having trouble accepting it, and offered comfort. "Brother Bujue, it's not as if I understood absolutely everything. There are two questions on the test at the end of the book that I didn't completely understand..."

Only two questions out of forty-odd that he didn't completely understand... Feng Bujue's eyelids twitched violently. In that course's final exam, answering ten questions in a full day in the exam room counted as a pass.

He had only answered a dozen or so correctly himself.

He no longer wanted to complain. Let it all burn. Damn Mental Attribute Martial Souls. No, how could a normal Mental Attribute Martial Soul reach this level?

Damn freak.

"Mm, you may absorb knowledge quickly, but you're only a little better than me. That doesn't prove anything."

Feng Bujue cleared his throat and pulled back his right sleeve with his left hand, revealing a silver metal bracelet. A faint fluctuation of Soul Power flashed and vanished, and several books and a strangely shaped pointed rod appeared in his left hand.

Huo Yuhao nodded, accepted the books and rod, and briefly glanced at the titles:

Principles of Elementary Soul Tools

Elementary Soul Tool Design

Principles of Elementary Core Array Operation

Key Points for Engraving Level 1 Core Arrays

"Brother Bujue, what's this rod for?"

"Now I believe you've never encountered Soul Tool knowledge before." Feng Bujue sighed. "That's a refined-iron engraving knife. Its quality is only average, but it's good enough for engraving Level 1 to Level 3 Core Arrays."

"Study these seriously. Working with Soul Tools isn't just about memorizing books. You mustn't get complacent."

"Don't learn that business of hammering metal blocks by hand from Shrek Academy's Soul Tool Department. Hand-hammered metal can hardly match metal refined by Soul Tools in uniformity of texture and reliability of quality. I'll give you a supply of every metal you'll need for practice."

"Thank you, Brother Bujue!"

Huo Yuhao did not refuse these things, because he truly needed them. He simply kept these kindnesses in his heart.

"That's it? Say something nice." Feng Bujue huffed, wanting to soothe his battered spirit.

"Your Soul Power fluctuations are so strong, Brother Bujue. You must be an amazing Soul Engineer!"

"Hehe, I passed the Level 4 Soul Engineer certification exam when I was seventeen. My cultivation talent's poor, and I damaged myself taking pills. My Soul Power's been holding me back."

"You have a scholar's meticulous air, Brother Bujue. You must have graduated from a top Soul Engineer academy!"

"This humble fellow graduated from the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy."

For once, Feng Bujue could not be bothered to conceal anything. It was not as though it were a criminal record.

"Then why did you come all the way to Shrek City, Brother Bujue?"

"Isn't this the holy land of Soul Masters? I came to see whether there was any way to help me break through to Level 50 Soul Power. Unfortunately, these past few years haven't yielded much."