The Possibility of Dual Cultivation in Magic and Martial Arts, an Awakening Phenomenon, One Hundred Points of Innate Internal Spiritual Power

The Magic Temple? Or the Knight Temple?

For a moment, Huo Yuhao was torn.

But after learning about humanity's Six Great Temples in this world, he knew the Magic Temple was indeed a good fit for him, because his Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion Martial Soul from his previous life was highly compatible with magic.

Moreover, even after coming to the Holy Demon Continent, his Spiritual Power far surpassed that of ordinary people, making it easier for him to learn magic.

But what was the point of living another life if he followed the same old path? Why not give himself a challenge?

Besides, he had been a Power Attack System Soul Master in his previous life, and he was skilled in both physical combat and close-quarters fighting. Following the path of a mage alone would be dull.

Thus, he had long since made his decision: he would cultivate both magic and martial arts.

But even then, he had to choose one as his primary focus, and because of his connection to the Knight Temple, he was still inclined to continue cultivating there.

As for magic, with his mastery of the laws of ice and snow from his previous life, along with his cultivation realm, he could even deduce magic for himself.

Besides, this world had magical inheritances. Even if he couldn't study systematically at the Magic Temple, he could buy the relevant scrolls and deduce magic from them, drawing inferences about other things from one example.

What was more, the Knight Temple simply had no ice-attribute knights now. It had them in the past.

With that thought, Huo Yuhao raised his head, looked at Yang Haoyu, and said with a solemn expression:

"Grandpa, I want to cultivate both!"

At those words, Yang Haoyu froze on the spot. He looked at Huo Yuhao, speechless for a long time.

Cultivating both meant dual cultivation of magic and martial arts, didn't it?

He was over a hundred years old and had learned a great deal of history. No one had ever cultivated both of the Knight Temple's paths, Retribution Knight and Guardian Knight, much less two completely unrelated professions.

He knew that some geniuses in history had changed professions. For example, the Holy Necromancer who had plunged humanity into calamity had cultivated Necromancy with the light attribute.

That already made him a heaven-sent genius, didn't it? But light magic and Necromancy still had something in common, if one insisted: both were magic.

But a knight was a knight. Knights had to cultivate External Spiritual Power and fight in actual combat.

Compared to knights, mages followed an entirely different cultivation path.

Besides, there was another difficulty: how were they to coordinate with the two temples?

If Huo Yuhao's Innate Internal Spiritual Power wasn't high during the awakening to come, even if he wanted to cultivate both magic and martial arts, Yang Haoyu would be too embarrassed to bring it up with the Magic Temple.

Huo Yuhao also saw Yang Haoyu's dilemma and continued:

"Grandpa, although I plan to cultivate both, I'll have a primary focus. I want to be a knight first and a mage second. And I'll cultivate here at the Knight Temple, not go to the Magic Temple."

"As for the magic I need, I can obtain it through auctions. If that really doesn't work, Grandpa, you can let me try first and see whether I can cultivate both."

"Yuhao, do you know how difficult it is to cultivate both magic and martial arts?"

Yang Haoyu finally spoke, his voice somewhat low. "In the ten thousand years of the Holy Demon Continent's history, those who have taken this path can be counted on one hand, but every one of them was a genius.

"They wanted to grasp both ends, but mastered neither, and in the end they achieved nothing. Grandpa doesn't want to see you end up like that too!"

At this point, Yang Haoyu became distraught.

"Grandpa, let me try first. If it really affects me that much, I'll give it up."

"Alas!"

Yang Haoyu fell silent for a long time. He didn't agree, but said instead:

"Let's awaken your Innate Internal Spiritual Power first. All cultivation depends on it. If..."

If his Innate Internal Spiritual Power wasn't high, then there was no point even thinking about cultivating both magic and martial arts.

But how could he possibly say something like that?

Besides, he had personally discovered Huo Yuhao's Elemental Body. How could he have been mistaken?

The two said no more and headed straight for the awakening chamber deep underground.

On the way, Huo Yuhao sensed that something seemed to be hidden deep beneath the Knight Temple, and he kept an even lower profile.

As humanity's strongest temple, it surely had plenty of hidden trump cards. If they discovered anything unusual about him, it would be troublesome.

After the two arrived at the awakening chamber, Huo Yuhao looked around curiously.

The awakening chamber was an ordinary stone room, a dozen or so square meters in size. A stone pillar ran through the entire chamber at its center, rich with Spiritual Energy. It seemed to be some kind of formation.

"Yuhao, the awakening is about to begin. Go stand beside the stone pillar."

Huo Yuhao walked over to the pillar in a few steps and examined it curiously.

The pillar was covered in densely packed markings that looked like some kind of writing.

When Huo Yuhao saw them, he suddenly realized they were the elven script he had read about in books.

But before he could take a closer look, he heard Yang Haoyu say solemnly:

"Yuhao, close your eyes and empty your mind. The awakening ceremony is about to begin."

Huo Yuhao nodded firmly at Yang Haoyu.

At that moment, he noticed a stone glowing with fluorescent light in Yang Haoyu's hand.

That should be the Awakening Stone!

Huo Yuhao glanced curiously at the Awakening Stone, then closed his eyes.

In front of him, Yang Haoyu's five fingers suddenly closed around the Awakening Stone.

Crack!

The Awakening Stone shattered in his palm, sending milky-white crystal fragments flying.

A ball of milky-white light emerged from it, turning into a streak of light that floated above his palm.

Yang Haoyu casually waved his hand, and the ball of light landed directly beside Huo Yuhao.

"Yuhao, absorb it. Feel it!"

Before Huo Yuhao could respond, his body began to tense.

He felt a surge of Spiritual Energy pour into his chest like a scorching river. It flowed through his meridians and throughout his limbs and bones, finally entering his dantian.

Hot!

Incredibly hot!

It collided with the cold in his body. As heat and cold alternated, he felt as though fire were burning in his meridians, and as though ice were slicing through them.

Fortunately, his meridians had always been much wider than those of ordinary people. Otherwise, he really would have felt a little uncomfortable.

Before long, he felt something like a barrier in his dantian shatter. A cool sensation flowed into his body from his limbs and bones, seemingly another kind of power.

The coolness gradually deepened into cold, sweeping through his meridians and across his entire body.

His breath turned to white mist, and frost began to form on the stone floor beneath his feet. Ice-blue light spread outward from him, instantly covering the entire floor of the awakening chamber.

At the sight, Yang Haoyu abruptly took a step back, his expression changing. But more than anything, he was delighted.

Under normal circumstances, an unusual phenomenon like this meant that the person's Innate Internal Spiritual Power was certainly not low.

But something didn't seem quite right. Wasn't this phenomenon a little too big?

Under Yang Haoyu's gaze, ice rapidly formed across the awakening chamber floor, then cracked.

The cracks spread outward from beneath Huo Yuhao's feet, and in an instant, the entire awakening chamber became an ice cavern.

But that was only the beginning.

The ice beneath Huo Yuhao's feet continued spreading downward through the cracks, penetrating the awakening chamber floor and the bedrock of the mountain where the Knight Temple stood.

Through the fissures, countless streams of ice-attribute Spiritual Energy rushed in wildly, flowing into Huo Yuhao's body.

A beam of ice-blue light emerged from his body, becoming a pillar of light that pierced through the mountain where the Knight Temple stood and shot into the sky from its peak.

The pillar was astonishingly thick, more than ten meters in diameter. Its ice-blue light illuminated the entire Imperial Dragon Pass.

The instant the pillar shot into the sky, the heavens seemed to split open.

The pillar cleaved through the gray-blue clouds, sending them billowing to either side and revealing the heights above.

The pillar continued upward until it reached several hundred meters into the sky, then burst apart at its peak.

Ice-blue light spread in every direction from the shattered tip of the pillar, like an ice flower blossoming in the heavens.

Wherever the light passed, the clouds were dyed ice-blue, and even the air became as clear as ice.

Then a blizzard descended.

The snow came without warning, as though someone had overturned a snow mountain in the sky.

The snowflakes were absurdly large, each the size of a palm. Driven by some force, they spun and gathered.

Strangely, though, the snowflakes weren't falling from the clouds.

They appeared out of thin air over the ice fields for hundreds of miles around Imperial Dragon Pass, rose from the snow on the ground, condensed from the moisture in the air, and broke away from the ice beneath the earth.

All the ice-attribute Spiritual Energy within Imperial Dragon Pass was converging in one direction, surging toward the source of the ice-blue pillar.

The knights of Imperial Dragon Pass raised their heads and saw a sight they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

The sky had been dyed by ice-blue light, becoming a sea of ice.

At the center of that sea, two illusory figures slowly appeared. But the knights had never seen either of them before and didn't know exactly what they were.

If Huo Yuhao had seen this with his own eyes, he would surely have recognized them as his two Martial Souls from his previous life: the Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion and the Spirit Eyes.

The Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion's illusory figure was so large that it covered half the sky. She was ice-blue all over, every marking on her carapace clearly visible. Her stinger was raised high, ice-blue light gathering at its tip like an ice-blue sun.

Her pincers were spread wide, and an aura of ultimate frost surrounded her. Her illusory figure stretched for thousands of meters across the sky above Imperial Dragon Pass.

The illusory Spirit Eyes floated above the Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion's head. A huge golden vertical pupil turned slowly, and wherever its gaze passed, everyone's Sea of Consciousness felt as though something had gently brushed against it.

The golden light flowing within the vertical eye moved like a living thing, surging and intertwining deep within the pupil, as if it could see through all illusions.

The two illusory figures appeared at the same time, lighting up the entire sky above Imperial Dragon Pass.

Ice-blue light spilled from the figures and intertwined with the pillar that had shot into the sky from underground, enveloping all of Imperial Dragon Pass in a sacred, piercing radiance.

Wind and snow raged, heaven and earth changed color, and even the air froze in the ultimate cold.

Flags on the city walls were torn apart by the gale, and snow on the battlements was blown everywhere. But everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up.

Long Tianyin rushed out from beneath the Knight Temple and looked up at the sky, his expression changing drastically.

"An awakening phenomenon? Who's awakening?"

No one could answer him. All of Imperial Dragon Pass trembled amid the phenomenon, and the pressure emanating from the two illusory figures made even the Ninth Tier Long Tianyin's heart tremble.

The Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion's chill and the Spirit Eyes' mental pressure, two utterly different powers, erupted at once, creating an unprecedented phenomenon.

The sentries on Imperial Dragon Pass's northern wall were already in chaos.

The blizzard swept in from the south, blocking their vision, and the flags on the wall were torn apart by the gale.

But what frightened them more than the wind and snow was what appeared on the southern horizon.

Because of the phenomenon over Imperial Dragon Pass, the Demon Clan's army had mobilized.

Black figures poured out from the depths of the ice fields, charging toward the northern wall like a tide.

At their head were several enormous Seventh Tier Bear Demons, several times larger than ordinary Bear Demons, black demonic energy swirling around them.

Behind the Bear Demons were densely packed ranks of low-tier demons, numbering at least several hundred thousand.

"The Demon Clan is attacking! The Demon Clan is attacking!"

Horns sounded over Imperial Dragon Pass, one blast after another, urgent and piercing.

Long Tianyin's figure flashed, and he appeared above the northern wall.

He glanced at the demons surging in from the south, then at the enormous ice-blue figure in the sky, his face ashen.

As commander-in-chief of the three armies, he swiftly issued his orders:

"Defend with all your strength! All knights, heed my command and follow me into battle!"

Meanwhile, in the awakening chamber.

Huo Yuhao was enveloped in ice-blue light, floating in midair with his eyes tightly closed.

The ice-blue pillar of light pierced upward from beneath his feet, bathing both him and the entire awakening chamber in its glow.

His body trembled slightly within the pillar as his Innate Internal Spiritual Power completed its final consolidation.

Yang Haoyu stood behind him, forming seals with both hands and pouring out his Spiritual Energy with all his strength to stabilize Huo Yuhao's condition.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, but his hands were steady as a rock.

He could feel Huo Yuhao's Innate Internal Spiritual Power surging forth with tremendous force, while the power emanating from the two illusory figures in the sky flowed back into Huo Yuhao through the pillar, forming a perfect cycle.

"Steady, Yuhao," Yang Haoyu said quietly. "Steady."

Huo Yuhao couldn't hear him. His consciousness had sunk into the depths of his Sea of Consciousness, and the awakening of his Innate Internal Spiritual Power had stirred the power at the very depths of his soul.

The Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion's origin power churned within him, while the Spirit Eyes' Spiritual Power surged through his Sea of Consciousness.

Above his Sea of Consciousness, ice-blue and golden light intertwined, forming a dazzling scene.

And in the deepest part of the Sea of Consciousness, the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's will trembled slightly.

The ice-blue pillar of light gradually receded, and the illusory figures in the sky slowly faded.

The blizzard gradually subsided, revealing the gray-blue sky.

But most of the ice-attribute Spiritual Energy for hundreds of miles around Imperial Dragon Pass had been drawn away. The snow on the ground had grown a layer thinner, and the chill in the air had also weakened considerably.

Yang Haoyu withdrew his Spiritual Energy, stepped forward, and caught Huo Yuhao as he fell from the air.

Huo Yuhao's body was ice-cold, but his heartbeat was steady and his breathing even. He had merely fainted.

He looked down at the shattered pedestal of the Awakening Stone. A line of numbers glowed on the spirit-measuring slab on its base.

Innate Internal Spiritual Power: 100 points.

Seeing this, Yang Haoyu drew a deep breath and suppressed the shock in his heart. Holding Huo Yuhao in his arms, he turned and strode out of the awakening chamber.