"Killing intent accumulated in the martial soul, and the martial soul was closely tied to the Soul Master. Once the killing intent grew strong enough, it would indirectly affect the Soul Master's own mind," Dean Aola said.
"Killing is addictive. If your will isn't firm and you can't control your urge to kill, indulging yourself until that urge spirals out of control, you're finished."
"An uncontrolled urge to kill doesn't just endanger others. You yourself will turn into a beast, a walking corpse."
"Ordinary Soul Masters won't have their minds affected by killing intent as long as they have a little self-control. But Soul Masters whose martial souls can accumulate killing intent possess far more of it than ordinary people. It's a double-edged sword. If their willpower isn't firm enough, they can easily be driven by the desire to kill."
"This child..."
"What's wrong?" Hu Liena asked, somewhat worried.
"Nothing." Dean Aola shook his head.
The killing intent from killing people differed from that of killing Soul Beasts. Killing another species and killing one's own kind involved entirely different states of mind, so the killing intent they produced was different as well.
And this child's killing intent-he had killed people!
More than once, too!
Killing intent born from slaughtering one's own kind was more ferocious, but also more easily lost control of!
Once they lost control, people like this had no interest in the lives of other species. Only their own kind could attract them.
A child this young was already being trained to develop killing intent. What was the Pope thinking?
Wasn't this far too dangerous...?
"Yan, I thought you could at least hold your own when it came to strength. I never expected..."
As Xie Yue watched Yan, who had been blasted off the Soul Fighting stage by Xuan Ming, his expression grew rather intriguing.
"I let my guard down!" Yan's face darkened.
"How was I supposed to know he could fire his first Soul Skill repeatedly?"
Destructive Soul Skills all had cooldowns!
When Xuan Ming unleashed Thunderstorm for the second time, he had used Granite Rock again to block it.
But after the first Thunderstorm shattered his Granite Rock, the brat immediately followed it with another Thunderstorm!
Right in his face!
One explosion after another!
He had also been immobilized by the numbing effect of the first lightning explosion. Even if he wanted to dodge, he couldn't!
He had been blasted straight off!
If he had known the brat was so sneaky, he wouldn't have taken it head-on!
"Are you all right?" Hu Liena walked over.
Yan instantly sprang to his feet and patted his chest badge. "I'm fine, Nana. How could I-"
"Xuan Ming, you're not hurt, are you?" Hu Liena passed Yan and went straight to Xuan Ming, crouching down to check his condition with concern.
"I'm fine," Xuan Ming said.
"And you still say you're fine." Hu Liena took hold of the white hair in front of Xuan Ming's chest that had curled from exposure to intense heat.
"Look, even your hair's curled."
Xuan Ming froze, then instinctively looked across at the bedraggled Yan. Not only had the lightning explosions left his hair a complete mess, but his upper body also bore multiple lightning burns.
"He..."
"He's thick-skinned and tough. He's fine," Hu Liena said.
"You have such delicate skin. How could you compare to him?"
"Nana, I..." Yan felt his heart constrict.
"Ah!" Hu Liena cried, grabbing Xuan Ming's cuff.
"Look, even your clothes are burned!"
"Yan! Didn't you say you knew when to hold back?"
Yan looked utterly bewildered. "Nana, that was him-"
"Be good. Don't fight him next time." Without waiting for Yan to finish, Hu Liena stood, took Xuan Ming's hand, and turned to leave, leaving Yan with nothing but a great roll of her eyes.
"..."
"Xie Yue, he got too close to me, and the flames on my body burned it! I didn't even fight back! You saw it!"
Watching Hu Liena's retreating back, Yan could only turn to Xie Yue and voice the grievances of an innocent man.
He had been afraid Xuan Ming didn't know how to fight and would get hurt, so he hadn't fought back the entire time!
Otherwise, how could he possibly lose to a little rank-thirteen Soul Master who didn't even know how to fight?
"I know," Xie Yue said.
"Nana knows too."
"Then why did she...?"
Xie Yue patted Yan's shoulder and sighed. "Knowing is one thing. It doesn't stop her from playing favorites."
He knew his sister best. If she liked someone, she liked them; if she didn't, she didn't. The difference in her attitude was obvious!
Chapter 42: A literacy crisis
"Bibi Dong, that child you had Yue Guan snatch from Heaven Dou City doesn't belong to you."
The Pope's Hall.
It was inconvenient for Qian Daoliu to appear personally, so he could only have Golden Crocodile Douluo discuss the matter.
"Doesn't belong to me?" Bibi Dong raised her head.
"Then does he belong to you?"
"Xiao Xue had her eye on him first," Golden Crocodile Douluo said.
"Yue Guan snatched him from She Long's hands, too. You have no grounds to forcibly keep him."
"She had her eye on him first?" Bibi Dong raised an eyebrow.
"Yue Guan and Gui Mei already reported the earlier matter involving Dugu Bo at the Elder Hall meeting."
"Yue Guan and the others met that child first. They reported the news to me as soon as they returned to Spirit City, and I immediately issued orders to bring him back."
"Before I issued my orders, that child probably hadn't even returned to Heaven Dou City. How does that make her the first to have her eye on him?"
"Elder Golden Crocodile, if you're talking about first come, first served, it seems I came first, doesn't it?"
Golden Crocodile Douluo frowned. "You only issued orders. Xiao Xue was the first to approach that child."
"Naturally, she came first."
"She came first?" Bibi Dong stood.
"Has she already won that child over? Or has Xue Qinghe already won that child over?"
"Neither has, it seems?"
"If we're talking about who approached him first, Dugu Bo was the first to approach that child. Ultimately, Xuan Ming should count as one of Dugu Bo's people."
"When I had Yue Guan bring him back, he was snatched from Dugu Bo's hands. What does that have to do with her?"
Golden Crocodile Douluo gave a muffled snort. "I'm not arguing these things with you. In any case, that child is Xiao Xue's. You can't keep him."
Bibi Dong's brows drew together slightly. "So Elder Golden Crocodile merely came to inform me?"
"I am informing you. What of it?" Golden Crocodile Douluo said.
"..."
"Then naturally, I wouldn't dare say anything more." Bibi Dong sat back down.
"That child is at Spirit Hall Academy right now. If Elder Golden Crocodile wants to abduct him, feel free."
As she spoke, Bibi Dong returned her attention to the memorials on her desk.
Seeing Bibi Dong give in so easily, Golden Crocodile Douluo couldn't help feeling a trace of doubt.
Could this be a trap?
"You'd better not try any tricks," Golden Crocodile Douluo warned before turning to leave.
Bibi Dong raised her head and narrowed her eyes, watching Golden Crocodile Douluo leave.
Xuan Ming had been adapting fairly well to Spirit Hall Academy these past few days. With his connection to Hu Liena, no one dared bully the child.
Moreover, Spirit Hall Academy was full of children who had yet to experience the world, unlike those noble children in Heaven Dou City who instinctively treated Xuan Ming as an oddity, or even a plaything.
Those children were mostly just curious about Xuan Ming. After all, this was their first time seeing such a peculiar martial soul mutation.
Yue Guan reported that, in this environment, Xuan Ming had already lowered his guard considerably. He wasn't resistant to his current life at Spirit Hall Academy and had relaxed.
A child who had endured a life of displacement had finally found stability, only for someone to suddenly shatter that hard-won peace. Guess how he would feel?
Again and again-the child probably wouldn't be in a very good mood, would he?
Spirit Hall Academy.
Worried that Xuan Ming wouldn't adjust to the environment if he studied in a lower-grade class, Hu Liena simply brought him along to the upper-grade classes. Whether he understood or not, he could get used to the environment first.
Then Hu Liena discovered that Xuan Ming was very clever. He could remember many things after hearing them just once and understand them quickly. He could even skip many lower-grade courses entirely.
"Are you... really an orphan?"
Hu Liena looked at Xuan Ming with a strange expression.
When it came to martial soul cultivation, she could still attribute it to talent.
But this child didn't have the slightest difficulty reading and writing, either!
Spirit Hall Academy also had academic classes. Students weren't required to be versed in ancient and modern learning, but at the most basic level, a Soul Master couldn't very well be completely illiterate.
Thus, the first three years at Spirit Hall Academy involved a heavy academic workload.
Soul Masters had stronger spiritual power than ordinary people, as well as stronger memories. As long as they held themselves to strict standards, they could generally master nearly ten years' worth of an ordinary person's academic coursework in three to five years.
Most people only began the actual theoretical courses after three years of academic classes.
After all, if they failed their academic classes, they wouldn't even understand what their teachers were saying, let alone study those complex theories of Soul Master cultivation.
She was a spiritual-type Soul Master with relatively strong spiritual power and a clever mind, so she had finished the foundational academic courses in just two years and moved on to theoretical studies.
When she brought Xuan Ming to upper-grade theory classes over the past two days, she had already found it strange. This child could actually understand what the teachers were saying!
At the time, though, she had only thought the child was exceptionally gifted.
But today, she had brought back two lower-grade academic textbooks, intending to teach Xuan Ming to read, only to discover that he could actually read them!
For nobles, who had specialized tutors teaching them these things from the age of four or five, being literate wouldn't be strange.
But wasn't Xuan Ming an orphan from the border?
How could he possibly be literate? Who had taught him?
"..."
Faced with Hu Liena's suspicions, Xuan Ming fell silent.
He also wanted to know why the Douluo Continent used Chinese.
Thus, even though he had never attended a single day of school in this world and no one had taught him, he could still read the writing here.
He hadn't noticed this problem before. After all, he had hardly ever seen any books in the past.
Now, he couldn't very well say the villagers had taught him, could he?
Given his former circumstances-both parents dead, homeless, and unable to afford even food-where would he have found the chance to learn to read and write?
"Don't be angry. I was only asking. I didn't mean anything else."