So far, only Ji Ning, Cheng Luo, and Zhong Yue had yet to break through.
No one hurried them, but all three knew perfectly well-the whole team was waiting for them. Ji Ning stood among the wooden posts, Cheng Luo leaned against the wall, and Zhong Yue carried his tortoise shell with twice his usual training load. Three people, three kinds of silence.
Ji Ning's breakthrough came the most quietly, and the most stubbornly.
Ji Ning had spent an entire afternoon among the wooden posts. His Hummingbird Martial Soul vibrated rapidly behind him, its wings beating faster and faster, until even their afterimages were almost invisible to the naked eye. He was practicing flash strikes-moving instantly from one wooden post to another, the intervals between each strike growing shorter and shorter. As his Soul Power drained rapidly, he inched closer to his limit.
Feng Xiaotian stood outside the array of wooden posts and watched for a while before saying only, "Still not fast enough."
Ji Ning did not answer. On his next flash strike, he pushed his speed to an unprecedented level, and the hummingbird's wings let out an exceedingly faint hum. Then the bottleneck that had held him back all this time cracked open. Soul Power surged from his dantian, flowing smoothly past the level-thirty barrier. Ji Ning's figure paused in midair before landing steadily atop a wooden post.
"Finally, level thirty," Ji Ning said with feeling.
Watching Ji Ning's expression, the corner of Feng Xiaotian's mouth twitched slightly. Breaking through to level thirty while hovering like a hummingbird-it had not been won through fighting, but forced out under pressure.
Ji Ning jumped down from the wooden post and landed before Feng Xiaotian, giving him a nod of thanks. Feng Xiaotian nodded back.
Beside them, Feng Lingtian found Ji Ning's name in his notebook and drew a check mark after it.
A few days after Ji Ning, Cheng Luo broke through.
Cheng Luo broke through during a sparring session with Su Mei'er. The instant the Wind Lightning Chain wrapped around the Wind-Binding Vine, the wind patterns along the vine suddenly swelled, breaking free of the chain's restraints-something that had never happened before. Cheng Luo looked down at his vines, his expression as composed as ever, though the corner of his mouth curved involuntarily. "I've reached level thirty." His tone was as steady as usual.
Zhong Yue broke through that same evening. While doing weighted training with his tortoise shell on his back, he suddenly stopped, and the phantom tortoise shell behind him grew more solid than ever before. "Level thirty." Zhong Yue set down his training weights and let out a long breath. "Finally got over that hurdle."
Standing nearby, Feng Lingtian silently found Cheng Luo's and Zhong Yue's names in his notebook and drew a check mark beside each.
At that point, every empty space in the notebook had been filled.
All twelve members of the team had broken through to level thirty. Only Bai Yu still lingered at level twenty-three, but her chimes had never fallen a beat behind.
The Soul Hunting that followed was tightly scheduled. After fully assimilating the medicinal effects, Su Mei'er went to the marshlands south of the Heavenly Wind Mountain Range with Feng Lingtian and Zhong Yue, where they killed a Water Wind Fox. Just as Feng Lingtian had expected, the instant she absorbed the Soul Ring, the frosty white on her third tail suddenly burst outward. The watery blue faded, and icy blue spread. With the dual properties of water and ice, she could switch between them in battle. Her Third Soul Skill was called Wind and Water Confinement, and under the enhancement of ultimate ice, its confinement carried an Ice Seal effect.
Jiang Lin hunted an Elusive Spirit Deer. The moment he absorbed its Soul Ring, his body jolted violently, and his Spirit Eyes truly completed their awakening for the first time. When he opened his eyes, their pale golden light was more than twice as substantial as before. Jiang Lin fell silent for a moment, then said, "I can see them."
"See what?" Feng Lingtian asked.
"The paths of your movements." After speaking, Jiang Lin swept his gaze over everyone's positions on the training grounds and pointed out each person's openings in turn. After listening, Lu Hanxiao fell silent for a moment, then turned to Feng Xiaotian. "Don't let Jiang Lin stare at me during training from now on."
At Lu Hanxiao's utterly serious words, the training grounds fell quiet for an instant. Then Su Mei'er was the first to laugh. Shi Yan followed, laughing so hard he nearly spilled his bowl of medicinal broth. Zhong Yue scratched his head and chuckled a couple of times. Even Lu Qing turned his head away, his shoulders shaking once. Lu Hanxiao stood in their midst, expressionless, the tips of his ears slightly red. Only Feng Xiaotian did not laugh, but he did not stop them either. Once the laughter gradually died down, he raised a fist to his mouth, gave a cough, and said, "Back to training."
Half a month passed in the blink of an eye, and the twelve of them completed the hunts for their Third Soul Rings one after another. Bai Yu, meanwhile, reached level twenty-four, still a full six levels short of the level-thirty threshold.
Seeing the gap between herself and everyone else, Bai Yu grew quieter and quieter. She attended training as usual, and her chimes remained as precise as ever, but she smiled less often. Before, Bai Yu would laugh when Shi Yan grimaced at the bitterness after drinking his medicinal broth, and she would tilt her head curiously to listen whenever Lu Hanxiao spoke on those rare occasions. These past few days, however, Bai Yu only stood quietly to the side, the wind chimes swaying gently on her wrist, ringing with every step, but with less of a smile.
Feng Xiaotian noticed. He did not ask her about it on the spot.
One evening after training, Bai Yu sat alone at the edge of the training grounds, holding the wind chimes on her wrist in a daze.
She had hung this string of bells on her wrist herself on the day of her awakening, knowing that she could no longer withdraw her Martial Soul into her body. The Martial Souls of everyone in the village were like this. Some chose to hang them at their waists, others tied them around their ankles, and everyone chimed with every step. According to the village elders, the reason their Martial Souls could not be withdrawn into their bodies was so that the mountain god would know where they were and they would not get lost.
Bai Yu could actually feel that the mountain god had always been there. The mountain god's protection of the villagers was never something grand and earthshaking, but a faint echo in the wind, the slight tremor of a bell occasionally swaying on its own. The mountain god had never abandoned a single person in the village.
Yet she was the only one on the team still stuck at level twenty-four. Bai Yu was a year older than Ye Qingyu. Sometimes she wondered whether she had been wrong to divide her attention back in the village to soothe the Martial Soul fluctuations of the elderly and the young. But on second thought, without those years of tempering, her wind chimes could never have attained their present precision. Gains and losses were all held in the same string of bells. She could reason it through, but she still could not suppress her dejection.
Feng Xiaotian walked over and sat down beside Bai Yu. He said nothing, simply sitting there.
"Captain," Bai Yu spoke first, her voice very soft. "Am I holding everyone back?"
Feng Xiaotian did not answer immediately. He was silent for a moment before saying, "Do you think Su Ran wasn't afraid of holding everyone back when he spent a month in the wheat fields?"
Bai Yu froze for a moment.
"He was. But he went anyway." Feng Xiaotian stood up and looked down at Bai Yu. "You're a year older than them. When you break through, you'll understand more clearly than they do just how you got there."
Bai Yu raised her head, her eyes a little red, but she did not cry. Feng Xiaotian reached out and pulled her to her feet.
"Don't hold the bells too tightly. They can't ring if you grip them tight."
Bai Yu loosened her fingers. The wind chimes swayed gently and gave a clear ring, just as crisp as always.
She did not yet know that what lay hidden within this string of bells was far more than the mountain god's protection.