Watching her teacher react like this, Yan Shaozhe could not help feeling puzzled. Was it really that exaggerated?
She was going to have a taste for herself!
She picked up another leaf and put it in her mouth, then reacted even more violently than Mu En.
It was as though she had been tossed into a hot spring. Her pores opened, and a gentle, nourishing current of life force washed through her, leaving her comfortable from head to toe.
"T-Teacher!" Yan Shaozhe's voice went off-key. "I feel... I feel like my life force has increased! In other words-I, I can live longer!!!"
She practically shouted it, and even the corners of her eyes glistened suspiciously.
Gu Xingyue could not help feeling puzzled at the sight of Yan Shaozhe.
Anyone who didn't know better would think she'd eaten something strange. Did she really need to react that strongly?
Mu En, however, realized the gravity of the matter before Yan Shaozhe did.
The flush had yet to fade from her face, but her expression had already turned grave. She turned to Gu Xingyue, her tone more solemn than ever. "Xingyue, until you become a Hyper Douluo, you must never reveal your second martial soul to the world. Remember, not a single word of this can get out."
Seeing his master's serious expression, Gu Xingyue instinctively nodded. "Your disciple will remember."
Beside them, Yan Shaozhe was still patting her chest to calm herself, looking as though she had yet to recover from the shock of her junior brother's ability.
She muttered under her breath, "Junior, you have my respect..."
Mu En ignored Yan Shaozhe's joking. She had already begun worrying about Gu Xingyue's future cultivation path.
The Thunderclap Infernal Prison Vine symbolized destruction, while the Evergreen Life Vine represented pure life. These two ultimate attributes were like ice and fire, opposing yet nurturing one another.
If handled improperly, the backlash from their clashing attributes could make a soul master explode on the spot, cosplaying fireworks outright.
After a moment's consideration, she gradually settled on a plan-the most important thing right now was to improve Gu Xingyue's spiritual power cultivation first.
Only sufficiently powerful spiritual power would let him better control the balance between the two attributes and achieve yin-yang balance, so that cultivating both martial souls would not be too dangerous.
She looked at Gu Xingyue, anticipation and deep concern mingling in her gaze. "Your path will be far harder than most people's."
Gu Xingyue met her gaze and smiled, standing with his hands behind his back and the bearing of a grandmaster. "Merely a little wind and frost."
Mu En shook her head with a laugh. A smile rippled across her cool, otherworldly face, making her seem like a lake brushed by the spring breeze.
Watching from the side, Yan Shaozhe sighed. "Teacher hasn't smiled like that in a long time."
Gu Xingyue: ...
Standing there, he could not shake the feeling that something about Yan Shaozhe's words was strange.
Mu En paid it no mind. She turned to Gu Xingyue and instructed him gently, "Xingyue, rest here for a while. We have something to attend to. Once we're done, I have a mysterious gift for you."
"How mysterious?" Gu Xingyue asked casually.
Mu En merely curled her lips into a meaningful smile without answering.
She turned and walked out, her moon-white robes tracing an elegant arc through the light at the doorway.
Yan Shaozhe hurried after her, remembering to turn back and wave at Gu Xingyue before leaving.
Gu Xingyue watched their retreating figures disappear into the glow beyond the door. Standing alone in the empty room, he felt rather conflicted.
I started off blessed with a beautiful master, yet something keeps feeling strange.
He shook his head, chasing those jumbled thoughts out of his mind, and his gaze fell on the wicker chair Mu En had just occupied.
The entire chair had a warm amber hue. The wicker was finely woven and looked expensive at a glance, and it even faintly exuded a pure aura of life.
Gu Xingyue walked over and sat down. The moment he settled into it, a warm, enveloping power wrapped around him.
It felt like sinking into an invisible hot spring. Every pore on his body relaxed, and even his breathing grew a little lighter.
He looked down at the chair, then around him. Don't tell me this thing was woven from branches of the Golden Tree?
How else could a chair feel even more over-the-top than those painstakingly arranged simulated cultivation environments outside?
Wasting no more time, Gu Xingyue closed his eyes and began circulating his soul power.
As everyone knew, ultimate attributes were slow to cultivate and were late-game carries.
Before rank seventy was their farming phase; only after rank seventy did they truly start coming into their own.
At that level,
an ultimate attribute effectively put its user twenty soul power ranks ahead of an opponent in combat, letting them challenge a Titled Douluo.
A typical late-game carry: suffer early, ascend to godhood late.
And he had it even worse.
Other people had only one ultimate attribute. He had two.
Ultimate Lightning plus ultimate life-he had completely stacked a double slowdown debuff.
So he could not slack off. He had to seize every moment to grind experience, hit max level as soon as possible, then descend upon the battlefield with thunderous might, treating every opponent as a speed bump. Coming through, coming through.
Now-was the time to cultivate!
He took a deep breath and immersed himself in cultivation.
Then... his eyelids began to grow heavy.
It was as though a pair of hands, gentle as a mother's, softly closed his eyes for him. His consciousness drifted down like a feather sinking into a deep pool.
The world around him gradually blurred and receded, replaced by an endless ocean of emerald light.
To someone who did not know better, he had merely fallen asleep.
Asleep sitting up, and in a rather casual posture at that.
But an old hand would recognize it at a glance-Gu Xingyue had entered deep meditation.
It was a state countless soul masters might spend their entire lives without ever touching even once.
During deep meditation, the circulation of soul power would automatically gravitate toward the most perfect route, increasing soul power several times more efficiently than ordinary cultivation.
More importantly, every instance of deep meditation meant the cultivator's understanding of their own martial soul had risen another step.
What rank had Gu Xingyue cultivated to today, you asked?
He would only tell you: I have attained enlightenment.
At that moment, the life element and Heaven and Earth Essence within the Golden Tree seemed to answer a summons, surging toward him like a hundred rivers returning to the sea and pouring into his body without end.
Fortunately, his physique was powerful and his meridians resilient. Otherwise, he would not have been able to enjoy this blessing...
Emerald motes of light swirled around him like thousands upon thousands of fireflies, shrouding his entire body in a soft radiance.
He had clearly never learned any profound soul power meditation method. One could even say he had never learned basic meditation.
Yet he had done it.
He had achieved something countless people yearned for in their dreams yet could never attain.
People like that were usually called-
Geniuses.
And, miraculously, the two ultimate attributes, one destruction and one life, were each quietly keeping to their own corner within his body at that moment.
They revolved in a peculiar rhythm in relation to one another.
Like two kitties that had just been shut in the same cage but had yet to show any intention of tearing into each other with great, vicious bites.
Before you continue