Return to Shrek

"Zhao Wuji! So you finally remembered to come back, damn it?"

Flender stood at the academy gates, his reflective glasses perched on his long, narrow face and his hands clasped behind his back. His tone was as sarcastic as ever. He had been standing at the gates for over an hour, kicking the loose stones at his feet several times over.

He looked Zhao Wuji up and down, taking in the wounds all over him, and frowned slightly.

"What happened? I sent you to take the kids Soul Hunting. How did you end up looking like this?"

Zhao Wuji had just landed, and the wings from the Mushroom Sausage had yet to fully fold away. The shout nearly made him stagger on the spot.

"You old devil Flender, haha!" Zhao Wuji steadied himself. Rather than getting angry, he burst out laughing, showing a mouthful of uneven teeth.

His face bruised and swollen, he stepped forward and slapped Flender hard on the shoulder. "What are a few injuries? We hit the jackpot this time! Oscar reached rank thirty, Xiao Wu reached rank thirty, and Tang San not only reached rank thirty, he even got a Soul Bone!"

Flender's lenses flashed as Zhao Wuji's slap drove his shoulder down. Surprise and doubt mingled on his face.

"Really?"

Everyone behind them nodded in unison, their faces alight with the joy of having survived a brush with death.

Oscar hurried half a step forward and turned his right hand over. A purple Soul Ring lit up, and a strange-looking Mushroom Sausage appeared out of thin air in his palm.

"Dean, the real deal! Third Soul Skill, I've got a Mushroom Sausage!"

Xiao Wu tossed her scorpion braid behind her, and ripples of Soul Power spread from her body. Her rank-thirty Soul Power glimmered faintly in the air.

"I broke through too!"

Tang San said nothing. With a thought, eight deep-purple spider legs unfurled from his back. Each was over a meter and a half long, covered in fine, dense barbs that glinted with a cold blue light in the sun.

Flender looked at the eight spider legs, fell silent for a while, then nodded slowly. "Not bad." He pushed up his glasses and abruptly changed the subject. "The medical expenses will still come out of your wages this month."

Zhao Wuji's smile froze on his face. Behind him, Ma Hongjun's shoulders shook as he tried to hold back his laughter. Zhao Wuji turned and glared at him, and he immediately swallowed it, though his face had already turned the color of pig liver.

Flender glanced over the group. "You have tomorrow off. The day after, someone will come to teach you. Get yourselves ready and don't disgrace the academy." With that, he turned and left, the hand behind his back quietly rubbing the shoulder Zhao Wuji had slapped sore.

Wang Xingyu raised an eyebrow. If the plot followed its course, wouldn't Gangzi be arriving the day after tomorrow?

Everyone was already exhausted. At those words, they breathed sighs of relief and headed for the dorms in twos and threes, arms draped over one another's shoulders.

Wang Xingyu and Tang San returned to their dorm. Wang Xingyu flopped onto his bed, every bone in his body creaking.

Tang San sat on the edge of his bed and took the Hidden Weapons out of his storage bag one by one to inspect them. Wang Xingyu couldn't be bothered to move again. He closed his eyes and soon fell fast asleep.

Night deepened. Moonlight filtered through the window, spreading a thin veil of silver over the floor.

Tang San was already asleep, but a faint purple light suddenly lit up his back. Without warning, a spider leg burst from his body, grazed the edge of Wang Xingyu's bed, and stabbed into the wall, gouging a groove half a finger deep into the plaster.

Wang Xingyu reacted almost instinctively-he rolled off the bed, blanket and all, and slammed onto the floor on his back.

The muffled thud jolted Tang San awake. He sat up and saw Wang Xingyu lying on the floor wrapped in his blanket, while his own spider legs gleamed brazenly with a cold blue light in the moonlight, one of them still embedded in the wall.

Wang Xingyu poked his head out from under the blanket, opened his fan, and fanned his face. "I'm fine. It's a little hot."

Tang San lowered his head to look at his back. The spider legs trembled slightly, beyond his control. He concentrated and slowly drew them back into his body one by one, then looked at Wang Xingyu, guilt on his face. "Sorry, Xingyu. I just got the Soul Bone, and I haven't fully adapted to it yet. I can keep it under control during the day, but it came out on its own when I fell asleep."

Wang Xingyu climbed off the floor and tossed the blanket back onto the bed. He took another look at the groove in the wall, where dust was still trickling down, and closed his fan.

"Don't look so tense. It didn't hurt me. A Soul Bone is just like a limb: the more you treat it as something foreign, the more likely it is to go out of control. Try thinking of it as an extension of your fingers, and little by little it'll come naturally."

With that, he flopped onto the bed. He was still very sleepy, and before long his breathing grew even.

Tang San sat on the edge of his bed, looking at the fresh gouge in the opposite wall. Before lying down, he shifted half an inch closer to the inner side of the bed.

Early the next morning, sunlight poured through the window. After yesterday's life-and-death chase, the eight of them had clearly grown much closer.

Everyone gathered in the dining hall. Oscar had risen earliest and stood at the entrance with his hair a mess, holding a plate of freshly made sausages. "Come on, fresh out of the pan. One each to get your strength back."

Xiao Wu grabbed three sausages, handed one each to Tang San and Wang Xingyu, and took a big bite of her own, her cheeks bulging. "Oscar, your soul incantation is a bit weird, but you really are a good cook."

Oscar scratched his head, about to take the opportunity to praise himself, when Ma Hongjun came up from behind, yawning, and casually plucked a sausage off the plate. "Just in time. I was hungry." He took a bite and said indistinctly, "Brother Oscar, how about another Mushroom Sausage so I can fly around a bit more?"

"Dream on. Hey, Rongrong, you can have the biggest one."

Ning Rongrong accepted it and softly thanked him.

Wang Xingyu finished the porridge in his bowl and stood up. "Little San, Xiao Wu, let's go to the back mountain in a bit. Yesterday's chase stretched our meridians quite a lot. Cultivating while connected now should be more efficient."

The grass on the slope behind the mountain was greener than it had been a few days ago, and sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves.

The three sat down at the top of the slope. Wang Xingyu extended his Blue Silver Grass, winding one strand around Tang San's wrist and another around Xiao Wu's. A strand also connected Tang San and Xiao Wu. The triangle complete, Soul Power began circulating through the loop.

After just one full cycle, Wang Xingyu felt the difference. The Soul Power was circulating faster than before. Tang San and Xiao Wu had both broken through rank thirty and reached rank thirty-one, and the total amount of Soul Power each possessed had risen to a new level. He was still only rank twenty-two, and the gap had widened.

The greater the gap, the more Soul Power flowed from the higher level to the lower one. The difference in Soul Power continually washed through his meridians, passively increasing his cultivation speed.

"Feel it?" Tang San asked, his eyes closed.

"Mm." Wang Xingyu's eyes were closed too. "Your Soul Power is stronger now that you two have broken through. At this rate, I should reach rank thirty soon."

Xiao Wu opened one eye, the corner of her mouth curling up. "Then when you reach rank thirty, we can go Soul Hunting again. This time, we can't let the Titan Giant Ape cut in line."

Wang Xingyu kept his eyes closed. At this rate, rank thirty really wasn't far off.