Scoundrel! What have you become?!

After shouldering his pack and walking beyond the radiation zone surrounding the Star Dou Great Forest, Huo Yuhao finally could not help but leap up and cheer aloud.

"Hahaha, I've succeeded!" After all, he was only eleven years old this year, and this was his first time leaving home. Although he had encountered perilous situations during this trip to the Star Dou Great Forest, the outcome was good overall, and his gains left him incomparably satisfied.

Having experienced the magical abilities of a Soul Master for the very first time, how could he possibly suppress the joy welling up in his heart?

Huo Yuhao tightened his grip on the golden-eyed white lion pelt behind his back and ran forward a few more steps. The gloomy shadows that had weighed upon his heart all these years seemed to have largely dissipated; the clouds had finally parted to reveal the clear sky, granting him a glimpse of hope.

"I've succeeded! I've finally become a Soul Master!"

"Insolent fool! What have you succeeded in?!" A low, stern reprimand echoed from afar, and Huo Yuhao felt his mind go completely blank. Letting out a muffled grunt, he staggered unsteadily on his feet. Seized by panic, he hurriedly and vigilantly looked toward the source of the voice.

He saw a strange trio of three individuals who also seemed to be coming from the direction of the Star Dou Great Forest.

On the left was a middle-aged man with ordinary features, but whose right arm was exceptionally thick and robust. The person on the right was short and slender, paired with a disproportionately large head, making him look utterly bizarre; the previous reprimand had come from him.

Standing in stark contrast to the two of them was a silver-haired young girl positioned in their center. She looked as though she had stepped right out of a painting, breathtakingly stunning, with rippling azure-green eyes that exuded a gentle and delicate aura.

At least in Huo Yuhao's view, this girl's appearance was by no means inferior to the Tang elder sister he had met previously.

The big-headed man's gaze locked onto him, and Huo Yuhao instantly felt as though his Sea of Spirit had been torn to shreds, uncontrollably forcing his Martial Soul to manifest. Golden light swirled within his eyes, and a faint yellow soul ring rose from beneath his feet.

"What terrible luck! A top-tier mental-attribute Body Martial Soul has just been wasted like this." Having previously encountered a siege by a dozen ten-thousand-year soul beasts, Lang Ya realized that some major anomaly was likely occurring within the Star Dou Great Forest, so he decisively retreated from the forest along with his brother Yu Tao and Wei Na.

Crossing paths with such a little fellow possessing a mental-attribute Body Martial Soul along the way, he had initially thought it a pleasant surprise. But after a careful investigation, he discovered that this kid's innate talent was practically abysmal to the extreme.

Although Yu Tao also recognized that Huo Yuhao's Martial Soul was an eye, he was not a mental-attribute Soul Master himself, and thus could not immediately determine Huo Yuhao's potential.

"Second Brother, since his Martial Soul is an eye, shouldn't there still be room for development?"

"There's no need." Lang Ya shook his head helplessly.

"His physical constitution is too poor, and the chaotic, obstructed meridians in his body have never been conditioned since childhood. Cultivating all the way until now just to obtain his first soul ring has basically severed his future path of cultivation; the probability of a secondary awakening of his Body Martial Soul is close to zero. Even if we forcibly absorbed him into the sect, are we supposed to pour the entire sect's resources into nurturing him? If there truly are those heaven-defying medicinal treasures capable of defying the heavens and changing one's fate, why wouldn't we use them on Wei Na and Ao Tian?"

Lang Ya's reasoning completely aligned with normal logic.

In the original timeline, Huo Yuhao had consumed countless resources and opportunities to reach that level. If those resources and opportunities had been given to naturally talented prodigies like Wei Na and Long Aotian, would their future achievements really fall short of Huo Yuhao's, whose innate soul power was merely rank one?

"What a pity. If we had discovered him sooner, he might have been worth cultivating." Yu Tao sighed with deep agreement. The reason they lost interest in bringing Huo Yuhao back to the Body Sect actually had another factor as well.

That was the fact that Body Martial Souls were almost impossible to pass down to descendants; only on extremely rare occasions when powerful Body Martial Soul Masters coupled would their offspring have a certain probability of inheriting their parents' Martial Soul.

With talent like Huo Yuhao's, reaching the Three-Ring Soul Elder realm in the future would be the absolute limit; he possessed zero value whatsoever to the Body Sect.

This world was simply that realistic. Even the Body Sect, which publicly proclaimed to accept all Body Martial Soul Masters, did not actually take just anyone.

Lang Ya waved his hand with dwindling interest.

"Let's go. We'll rest and regroup first, and enter the Star Dou Great Forest from another direction tomorrow."

Wei Na, standing beside them, merely glanced at Huo Yuhao before withdrawing her gaze.

Compared to a mental-attribute Body Martial Soul Master who lacked cultivation value as Lang Ya and Yu Tao claimed, she cared far more about the anomaly she had experienced earlier within the Star Dou Great Forest.

"A million-year soul beast, the Sky Dream Iceworm?" That strand of consciousness that had taken advantage of the chaos to merge into her Sea of Spirit seemed exceptionally weak at the time, yet before falling completely dormant, it had still imparted some crucial information to her.

Wei Na carefully sensed her condition; her second martial soul had indeed fused with a soul ring and bestowed upon her four soul skills. This completely surpassed her comprehension, yet the facts were right before her eyes, leaving her no choice but to believe.

Aside from the million-year soul ring, that consciousness seemed to have also mentioned that it could grant her an ice-attribute martial soul. Considering that she already possessed an ice-attribute healing-type Snow Lotus martial soul, she simply used this martial soul as a foundation, harnessing its ice-attribute primal energy to cause her Snow Lotus martial soul to lose its original form.

In other words, the Snow Lotus martial soul she had previously focused on cultivating had transformed into formless ice. Once she absorbed and fused with a soul ring from an ice-attribute soul beast again, her second martial soul would naturally transform into the shape of that soul beast.

As a result, as long as Wei Na chose a powerhouse-type ice-attribute soul beast, her ice-attribute martial soul could become powerhouse-type. Furthermore, as long as her body could withstand it, there would be no risks whatsoever.

That final strand of consciousness had also instructed her to definitely choose an Ice Empress Scorpion with around five thousand years of cultivation, which happened to match the limit of the soul ring age she could currently absorb.

Even with Wei Na's composure, it took her a long time to recover from this unexpected surprise.

"An Ice Empress Scorpion with Ultimate Ice attributes..." If everything went smoothly, she would be able to make up for her shortcoming of lacking powerful offensive means, becoming a twin-martial-soul Soul Master possessing both a Body Martial Soul and an Ultimate Martial Soul. One for control, one for offense—the combination could be described as nothing short of perfection.

Huo Yuhao stood dazedly in place, unable to understand why that big-headed man had berated him for no reason before walking away on his own accord.

However, he could also sense that the strength of these individuals was far beyond what he could contend with. To avoid any prolonged complications and night-long dreams, he matched his map to find the correct direction and immediately embarked on the road toward Shrek Academy.

"I should hurry and get away from this area of the Star Dou Great Forest first. If I run into other soul masters again, heaven knows what trouble might arise." Through this incident, he gradually realized that not every unfamiliar soul master was as friendly as the previous Tang elder sister and Night elder brother.

Meanwhile, Wei Na and the other two, having departed from another direction, had also completely cleared the radiation zone of the Star Dou Great Forest.

After a long silence, Wei Na uttered something astonishing.

"Teacher, let's return to Heaven Dou City first; I want to make a trip to the Extreme North."