He settled into the device's chamber with practiced ease.
A wave of tingling numbness washed over him.
When he opened his eyes again, a dense primeval forest stretched out before him.
Every sensation, every texture, every hint of pain, all of it was utterly real.
Ancient trees soared from the earth, their countless branches weaving and crossing overhead in a canopy that swallowed the sky.
"Hah." Arthur exhaled slowly, breathing in the fresh air of this place, and stretched languidly.
Anyone else in his position would probably already be scrambling to hunt soul beasts and raise their spirit rank.
But for Arthur, coming here was no different from taking a leisurely break after a tiring cultivation session.
Besides, his current soul ring years were already quite high. Ordinary spirit upgrading efficiency had dropped sharply for him; the effort required was twice as great for half the result.
He planned to wait for the Spirit Pagoda's peak period and make one concentrated push to ten thousand years then.
For now, he'd treat this as a chance to unwind.
Scattered shafts of sunlight filtered down through the gaps between dense branches and leaves, casting dappled patches of light across the ground that swayed gently with the breeze.
Arthur strolled along at a leisurely pace, looking every bit like a tourist who had come simply to enjoy the scenery.
Back in the external monitoring room.
"What is he doing?" Long Hengxu pointed at one of the screens. Beside a river winding through the primeval forest, Arthur sat cross-legged, working a makeshift fishing rod he had apparently just fashioned himself.
"He's fishing?!" Long Hengxu rubbed his eyes vigorously, unable to believe what he was seeing.
He turned to Wu Zhangkong beside him: "He's actually capturing fish-type soul beasts, right?"
No, there's no question about it, that is just fishing. Wu Zhangkong kept the thought to himself rather than saying it aloud; he had a reputation to maintain.
Several other staff members, drawn over by Long Hengxu's outburst, took one look at the screen, saw that it was Arthur, and calmly returned to their posts.
This wasn't the first time they'd witnessed something like this. No need to make a fuss.
Using such an invaluable Spirit Pagoda slot for pure leisure, Arthur had delivered Long Hengxu a level of rich-person shock that was almost beyond measure.
He glanced at the other screens showing the rest of Zero Class: all of them were perfectly normal, making good use of their time to raise their spirit ranks.
"Wait!" Long Hengxu's eyes suddenly went wide.
There was another one.
On one of the screens was a silver-haired girl with violet eyes.
Na'er had descended upon the forest like a demon sovereign unleashed, fighting at full power.
Three violet thousand-year soul rings blazed behind her in radiant light.
The phantom silhouette of a great dragon roared.
Na'er burst into motion, her figure shooting forward like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.
In the blink of an eye she plunged into a dense thicket ahead.
A black-striped giant bear, its body the size of a small hill, watched her charge toward it with unstoppable force, and the bear's face twisted in terror.
Left with no choice, it fought through the oppressive draconic might and swatted down with one enormous paw.
This thousand-year soul beast was thick-skinned and tough; when that paw fell, even the surrounding air hummed and shook.
Faced with that counterattack, not a ripple stirred in Na'er's violet eyes. She raised one slender finger lightly.
The great dragon phantom behind her roared and plunged downward, its claws carrying a force that swept away all resistance. It met the bear's massive paw and shattered it as though it were nothing.
Boom!
A tremendous impact rang out, and the black-striped giant bear's enormous body was sent flying like a snapped kite, crashing heavily into a tree trunk, which cracked and split apart on impact.
The bear's eyes were filled with shock and terror. It struggled to rise, but Na'er's figure had already flashed to stand before it. She drove another heavy punch squarely into it. This time, the bear couldn't move even if it wanted to.
With the giant bear dealt with, Na'er didn't pause for a moment; her silhouette wove between the trees.
Wherever she passed, whether it was swift wind wolves or lethally venomous emerald-scaled vipers, none could withstand a single punch from her.
The dragon phantom's roar rang out without cease, soul ring light flashing and interweaving in brilliant bursts.
Every strike she threw carried absolute, overwhelming dominance.
Soul beasts were either crushed under dragon claws or sent flying by the force of her fists, with no room to resist at all. The entire area had become her hunting ground.
Hundred-year soul beasts, thousand-year soul beasts, none of it mattered here. One punch and down they went.
But that wasn't even the most striking part.
What truly made Long Hengxu lose his composure was this: out of all the soul beasts she had beaten into the ground, not a single one was dead.
Na'er was tormenting them without killing them.
She simply beat them down and moved on, leaving behind a stretch of ground covered in groaning, battered creatures.
She was practically a living demon lord.
"What... what is the meaning of this?"
The beautiful girl on screen, in Long Hengxu's eyes at that moment, was absolutely a devil child who tormented the living but refused to kill.
He couldn't help but turn to Wu Zhangkong again. Wu Zhangkong was a man of experience; he hoped for a reasonable answer.
"This..." Even the ever-composed Wu Zhangkong nearly broke his expression.
On screen, Na'er finally brought her demon-child behavior to a halt.
She dumped all the soul beasts she had just beaten half to death into a heap, tore out a length of vine, channeled her soul power into it, and used it to bind them together.
Then she dragged the whole bundle away.
She ran ahead holding the vine like a leash, while the mass of bound soul beasts stumbled and tumbled along behind her.
She was dragging them now.
"She's still tormenting them!"
In that moment, Long Hengxu felt a flicker of genuine relief. He had originally harbored some dissatisfaction with Wu Zhangkong going off to teach Zero Class.
That dissatisfaction vanished in an instant.
Zero Class needed Wu Zhangkong, and no one else.
He was the only one suited for it.
Otherwise, who would teach them? Long Hengxu himself?
Right now, Long Hengxu was genuinely afraid that if he had been the one teaching Zero Class and had accidentally provoked Na'er, he'd wake up the next morning to find himself bound head to toe and floating somewhere in the Eastsea.
"Hmm, shift the camera and check which direction Na'er is heading," Wu Zhangkong said, having spotted something the others had missed.
He didn't know much about devil children, but he understood lovesick thinking just fine.
"That direction leads to the river, where Arthur is?" Long Hengxu said blankly.
"As expected." Wu Zhangkong gave a small nod. Na'er was heading straight for Arthur.
That also explained the bundle of bound soul beasts quite neatly.
Wu Zhangkong could figure it out without even having to think hard: Na'er had prepared everything and was bringing it all over so Arthur could use the soul beasts to raise his spirit rank.
He understood far too well how a lovesick mind worked.
As for why he understood it so well, well, don't ask.
"Sorry, Teacher."
The voices of Wang Jinxi and Zhang Yangzi came from nearby.
Wu Zhangkong and Long Hengxu turned simultaneously, looks of surprise on their faces: "Why are you two out already?"
"We ran into a Face-Demon Spider," Wang Jinxi said, his complexion pale. His gaze swept across the monitoring screens, and a look of growing puzzlement crossed his face. "Teacher, you two..."
"Were you not watching my trial this whole time?!"
He distinctly remembered being told there would be continuous monitoring. Yet it was perfectly obvious that neither of the two men's attention had been anywhere near his screen.
Long Hengxu and Wu Zhangkong exchanged a glance, and both felt a moment of awkwardness.
It wasn't like Wu Zhangkong to make such a careless oversight, but Na'er's behavior had simply been too impossible to look away from.
Long Hengxu cleared his throat twice and attempted to redirect: "The Face-Demon Spider is no weak opponent. No one's blaming you. Rest for a moment; we'll review the battle shortly."
By this point, Wang Jinxi and Zhang Yangzi had also noticed the strange scene unfolding on the screens.
They stood there, struck dumb.
Arthur, entirely oblivious to everything happening around him, was fully absorbed in the noble pursuit of fishing.
Na'er had appeared at some point, having made her way over to him. She casually grabbed one of the half-dead wind wolves from her bundle of captured soul beasts.
"Brother, this one's a seven-hundred-year soul beast," she said, tilting her head toward him coaxingly. "Don't you want to use it for spirit upgrading? All you'd have to do is barely lift a finger."
"Shh." Arthur gestured for silence. He hadn't caught a single fish after all this time; he had no mental bandwidth left for spirit upgrading.
"Oh..." Na'er didn't pick up on anything being off. She assumed Arthur simply found the age too low.
She tossed over another soul beast, a great black bear groaning and crying out in pain, and introduced it helpfully: "This one's definitely at least a thousand years old. Do you want it?"