As time passed, the students running laps around the square soon split into several groups.
Out in front was the strong group led by Wang Dong'er, followed by the normal group led by Lin Mo, then the stumbling stitch-in-the-side group, and finally the national-essence group whose curses featured an extremely high concentration of mothers.
A few sneaky bastards tried to cheat on their laps or take shortcuts, only for Zhou Yi to catch them, reset their lap counts to zero, and make them start over.
With thirty minutes left, Lin Mo successfully finished his hundred laps without the slightest irregularity in his breathing.
Don't pit your basic training against my desire to live, goddammit!
In his previous life, running even a little slower would have cost him his life. What, his teammates? Every last one was a true heir to the Daoist tradition, their guiding principle being: better a fellow Daoist dies than this humble Daoist.
Soon, only a quarter of an hour remained before the two-hour limit, and seven others besides Huo Yuhao had yet to finish.
Watching Huo Yuhao grit his teeth and struggle to keep going, Lin Mo frowned in thought.
Although this guy had offed him in his previous life, he had been reborn, and none of those future events had happened yet. There was no need to make an enemy of the son of destiny. Befriending him might even net him some benefits.
Granted, he had never played with a bond system or played a gal game.
But!
Even if he had never eaten pork, surely he had seen pigs run?
To put it politely, it was called farming affection; bluntly, it was being a simp. In his previous life, he had been able to keep even that lunatic emperor Xu Yuwan happy.
In the danger-ridden Sun Moon Empire and Holy Spirit Church.
If his bootlicking hadn't won him Xu Yuwan's protection, someone like him, who weighed all the pros and cons only to pick B every time, would have fucking died long ago.
People often said that when God closed a door on you, he would surely open a window. But when God closed the door, he had caught Lin Mo's head in it, and when Lin Mo stood up, he had banged it against the corner of the window too.
Thinking back now on the twenty-odd years of his previous life, Lin Mo felt that time really did fly like an arrow...
An arrow that shot him dead. Time had really screwed him.
Seeing that only five minutes remained, while Huo Yuhao still had a full twelve laps to go, Lin Mo stopped hesitating.
A long cry suddenly rang out across the square.
The cry was clear and lingering, as though drifting in from the farthest reaches beyond the heavens, settling into everyone's hearts.
Almost the instant they heard it, everyone felt their spirits jolt, as though a basin of cool, clear spring water had been poured over their heads. In that brief moment, most of their exhaustion and soreness eased, and even their breathing grew smoother.
Then the sunlight overhead suddenly dimmed.
No one knew who looked up first, but one after another, everyone raised their heads.
Lin Mo hovered in midair, a pair of dark azure wings unfurled from his back, their span like clouds. Flecks of flowing gold shimmered over his tail feathers, casting a warm, deep glow in the sunlight.
He slowly opened his eyes.
Those dark gold eyes were tranquil and distant, with a weight as though they held the passage of a thousand years.
For a moment, the entire square fell utterly silent.
Everyone stared, dumbstruck, even forgetting to let out the exclamations already on their lips.
Undisguised surprise rose in Zhou Yi's eyes as well.
In the crowd, Wang Dong's pinkish-blue eyes watched Lin Mo in midair without blinking. She developed a keen interest in this person whose Martial Soul could stand shoulder to shoulder with hers.
Xiao Xiao's reaction, on the other side, was somewhat strange.
She, too, stared fixedly at Lin Mo, but a faint blush had crept over her face at some point, and her hands pressed unconsciously against her chest.
Xiao Xiao could feel both her Martial Souls cheering and trembling.
She could not say exactly what that feeling was.
She only felt that the aura emanating from Lin Mo was incomparably familiar and comforting, like reuniting with an old friend she had not seen in ages, or like something that, by some unseen design, should have belonged to her all along.
Her heart thumped wildly, almost leaping out of her throat.
Could I have...
Fallen in love at first sight?!
The instant that thought surfaced, Xiao Xiao's lightly flushed face turned scarlet.
In midair, Lin Mo casually waved a hand.
Huo Yuhao's vision blurred, and by the time he came to his senses, he was already held securely in Lin Mo's arms.
Lin Mo's Azure Flame Mystic Crow already possessed a trace of the spatial attribute. This move was merely a little trick he had worked out while living on a knife's edge in his previous life.
"L-Lin Mo?"
Huo Yuhao's voice went off-pitch.
Held in Lin Mo's arms, his heart pounded like a drum.
For a moment, it was impossible to tell whether the blush creeping up his cheeks came from his run or something else.
Huo Yuhao simply stared blankly at the person so close before him, his mind completely empty. Somehow, he found himself remembering their first meeting.
The first time they met, Lin Mo had made a fuss about switching dorm rooms.
Although he had ultimately failed to switch, they barely spoke despite sharing a room.
Huo Yuhao had even thought at one point that Lin Mo looked down on him and disliked him, just like everyone else, so he had never imagined that Lin Mo would step in to help him now.
Lin Mo, however, had no time to concern himself with what Huo Yuhao was thinking.
Holding him with his left arm, he pressed two fingers of his right hand together and tapped the boy's forehead. The second yellow Soul Ring beneath his feet lit up.
Second Soul Skill, Azure-Gold Eternal Flame.
The next instant, an ever-burning lamp with an azure-gold flame appeared above Huo Yuhao's head. The flame was not hot; instead, it was pleasantly cool, flowing along his meridians into every part of his body.
As the flame passed through him, Huo Yuhao felt all his soreness and exhaustion burned clean away. His nearly depleted Soul Power gathered anew, like the lamp's flame.
"Hold on tight."
Lin Mo gave the quiet instruction.
Then his wings beat fiercely, and the space around him faintly warped for an instant.
The students below merely blinked, and when they looked again, Lin Mo had already vanished from his original position. Only an azure streak remained, circling the square at high speed.
In less than three minutes, all twelve laps were done.
After landing steadily, Lin Mo looked down to find the person in his arms still hanging on in a daze, without the slightest intention of getting off.
He could not be bothered to waste more words, so he simply let go, intending to let the brat land on his own.
The instant he released him, Huo Yuhao dropped sharply. A sense of weightlessness struck, and he fell straight down.
Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed blindly-
As luck would have it, he caught Lin Mo's right wing.
"Hiss-!"
Pain shot through a spot on Lin Mo's right wing, and he immediately bristled and jumped. "Huo Yuhao! Do you have a death wish?!"
Seriously, his Azure Flame Mystic Crow Martial Soul might not rank among the very best in quality, but its looks were absolutely MAX. There were hardly any crows on the entire continent more photogenic than it.
Cursing, he turned and craned his head to inspect his right wing.
Thankfully, no bald patch.
Only then did Huo Yuhao come back to his senses. He hurriedly scrambled up from the ground and apologized, red-faced, "S-sorry..."
But with all his attention on his wing, Lin Mo completely failed to notice that the hand Huo Yuhao hid behind his back was tightly clutching the dark azure feather he had inadvertently plucked from that wing.