The sea breeze of Eastsea City swept across the courtyard where Arthur trained.
Eastsea Academy had built him a dedicated cultivation ground, and by now Arthur was, setting aside his formidable background entirely, practically the academy's financial benefactor.
His reputation had sent Eastsea Academy into a period of rapid growth, with new students arriving in a steady stream.
A year had slipped by in the blink of an eye. The Spiritual Power emanating from the young man in the courtyard now surged with the deep, rolling weight of ocean tides.
Beneath a old banyan tree not far away, a beautiful girl waited quietly.
"Hmmm..."
A pale golden Spiritual Power burst suddenly from Arthur's body, sending fallen leaves spiraling up from the ground. His tightly shut eyes snapped open.
The power churned and roiled through his meridians before settling firmly at the peak of rank thirty-nine, just one step short of crossing into Soul Ancestor territory.
"Finally hit a bottleneck." Arthur stretched lazily, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.
"That hardly matters," Gu Yue's clear voice rang out. "How is your Spiritual Power coming along?"
"Almost there."
Over this past period, Arthur's Spiritual Power had climbed steadily under Gu Yue's guidance, and he had now touched the threshold of the late stage of the Spirit Sea Realm.
That's right, Gu Yue's guidance.
Despite Arthur's Spiritual Power far surpassing Gu Yue's at this point, she still had the deeper understanding of its nature.
Even Gu Yue herself had no answer for it.
The founding ancestor of Spiritual Power, reborn, happens to stumble upon a freak of talent. She has given everything she has and still cannot overcome him.
Gu Yue walked toward Arthur, treading lightly over the fallen leaves, a complicated look flickering in her eyes. "The rate at which your Spiritual Power grows is simply outrageous."
She gathered a fine thread of Spiritual Power at her fingertip and reached it toward Arthur's soul sea, only to have it rebuffed by an invisible barrier.
"I have no idea why, either." Arthur grinned. "Probably because I'm so good-looking."
"Oh, please." Gu Yue rolled her eyes. "I genuinely want to crack open that head of yours and have a look around."
She stared at Arthur's skull with a contemplative expression. "Sometimes I wonder, if I ate your brain, would it take me to the next level?"
Arthur stopped grinning. "You're joking. Right?"
"Who knows?"
Gu Yue's alluring eyes tilted upward slightly, the corners of her mouth curling into an ambiguous smile.
She raised her hand and let her fingertip graze lightly past Arthur's temple, leaving a faint chill in its wake.
Arthur flinched backward.
Na'er! Protect me!
"How dare you!"
Na'er, who had been spying from nearby, leaped into view.
She dropped from above like a ruffled little cat, landing squarely between Arthur and Gu Yue.
"Gu Yue, I always said you had ulterior motives for helping Arthur train his Spiritual Power."
"Today you've finally shown your true colors!"
Gu Yue looked at Na'er, who had appeared out of nowhere, and the teasing gleam faded from her eyes. She shook her head with a helpless smile. "I was only joking."
"That said," she winked at Arthur, "I do have a better method in mind. One that would benefit both our Spiritual Powers."
"This method of yours," Arthur said, a faint unease creeping in, "is it... legitimate?"
"Either way works. Would you prefer the illegitimate version?" The suggestion in Gu Yue's voice was unmistakable.
"Hmph." Na'er had no patience for this kind of flirting. She cut in with a cold scoff and went straight for Gu Yue.
A charging tackle, and the two of them were instantly locked in battle.
In an instant, tremors rolled outward as though the earth itself were shaking.
Somewhere in Eastsea Academy, a bewildered new student came running. "What's going on? Is that an earthquake?"
"Ah, don't worry about it." A senior clasped a hand on his shoulder. "You'll get used to it."
Over this past year, Gu Yue's pursuit of Arthur had grown increasingly brazen, and, inevitably, her brawls with Na'er had grown more frequent in turn.
Arthur had filmed them at first. Now he'd grown tired of watching.
Time to slip away.
He took the opportunity to make his escape. He was at rank thirty-nine now. Time to find Mu Ye.
"You really are something else, you little monster. Rank thirty-nine already." Mu Ye shook his head in wonder. Arthur was still barely past ten years old.
"Just lucky," Arthur said, rubbing the back of his head. "I can feel that hidden force inside me now. I think it's what's been making my cultivation accelerate."
"Is that so." Mu Ye's expression grew serious. "Keep it suppressed for now. Don't break through. The training ahead will be very hard."
"How hard?" Arthur was unconcerned. Could it really be harder than his third year of high school in his past life?
"How hard?" Mu Ye chuckled. "Oh, nothing much. Just the constant possibility of dying, I suppose."
So that kind of hard.
"Well, that does sound quite hard."
Mu Ye watched Arthur's face go rigid and burst out laughing. "Scared? It's not too late to back out."
Arthur set his jaw and shook his head. "Not scared exactly. Just didn't expect it to be quite so exciting."
Mu Ye began to explain patiently. "The Body Sect has many cultivation methods, but they all lead to the same place. The core of every one of them is the same: wringing out the body's own potential."
"The method we use most often is pushing ourselves to the absolute limit, using that to unlock deeper layers of potential and fully plumb the secrets of the human body."
"This is a cultivation method unique to us."
"The highest among them is the Innate Secret Method."
He paused there and asked, "Do you know about a second awakening of the martial soul?"
Arthur nodded. "I do."
"Then let me tell you this." A flash of pride crossed Mu Ye's eyes. "A second awakening can actually be controlled deliberately. Our Body Sect has methods to stimulate a martial soul's second awakening, and it will always be a beneficial one."
Arthur already knew this, but he made a point of looking suitably astonished.
It pleased Mu Ye no end.
He went on, "The Body Sect has many methods for guiding a Soul Master through a second awakening."
"The core of every one of them is simple: squeeze the potential out to its absolute limit and force new power to emerge from a point of crisis."
"Can my martial soul still undergo a second awakening?" Arthur asked, curiosity lighting up his face.
"No." Mu Ye said it without the slightest hesitation. "Your martial soul is the most powerful I have ever seen."
He recalled the moment Arthur had released the Holy Lance. "The difficulty of achieving a second awakening in something like that is no different from trying to reach the sky."
"For an innate body martial soul we could manage. That's our specialty."
"But a tool-type martial soul? That's beyond even me."
"Then why did you explain all of that?" Arthur was puzzled. What had Mu Ye been going on about for so long, then?
"Oh, that was just general knowledge. Every member of the Body Sect ought to know it."
Mu Ye stroked his chin, his gaze drifting into the distance with the air of someone stating the obvious. "Core Body Sect doctrine is naturally something you need to understand."
"Even if your martial soul can't undergo a second awakening through conventional means, the core logic of 'squeezing out potential' applies universally."
"I've designed an entirely new training method specifically for you."
"What kind of method?" The little cowlick on top of Arthur's head stood up, and a bad feeling began to stir somewhere inside him.
"Fighting!"
"Fighting?" Arthur's eyes went wide, his cowlick nearly rigid enough to serve as a lightning rod.
"What kind of fighting? Against who? You said there would be risk of death. Surely you're not telling me to go find someone and battle to the death?"
"You'll be fighting me, of course."
"What?" Arthur pointed at himself. "Me?"
"Against you?"
He took a deep breath and tried to make peace with it. He could handle it. He had sparred with Agravaine every single day back then.
"And how many ranks of soul power will you be suppressing yourself to when we fight?" he ventured carefully, silently praying the answer wasn't too high.
"Suppress?" Mu Ye looked genuinely puzzled. "Suppress what?"
"I'll be going all-out, naturally."
All-out?!
"No, wait!"