The Yuhao Chronicles - Volume 1 Chapter 42

Although they had already finished their first match, the powerful duo stayed around watching the two final matches in their arena and the surrounding arenas. Tomorrow they would be fighting in three more matches, and by what they had seen from the surrounding battles, there was not much to worry about.

The first afternoon of the freshmen assessment quickly finished, and a new day began. Last night for the two roommates consisted of light cultivating. They did, however, come to a realisation about the following day. Due to their overwhelming prowess in the first battle, they both agreed that there was likely going to be many forfeits against their team. As all the students needed to fight several battles in a single day, and since the students weren’t all idiots, they would come to the realisation that fighting and being beaten by them would have no gains and only hurt the results they could receive against other teams.

As predicted, all three of their following battles were forfeited before they could even ascend to the arena. While this did annoy Yuhao and Wang Dong, there was nothing they could do except hope for more prideful competition in the third and final day.

Due to these three forfeits, their team had inadvertently obtained the perfect result possible for their arena, not to mention the fact that with these results, they’d basically already entered into the top one hundred and fifty teams.

At the end of the second day, Wang Yan called them over to notify them that tomorrows matches will force stronger teams against one another. While they still won’t be against their own classmates, he warned them not to be carefree and overestimate themselves as even he doesn’t know who they are going to be facing in tomorrow’s five battles.

All they could do was nod in reply before leaving the examination area. As they did so, they unexpectedly bumped into two people. The people they’d bumped into weren’t random people, as it was more specifically Ma Xiaotao, and the distraught man himself, Xu Sanshi.

Wang Dong was quite confused when he saw the boy with Ma Xiaotao. Compared to high-spirited behaviour he was showing when she first saw him, the current Xu Sanshi had an ashen look on his face, as if all the energy had been drained from his body. He looked extremely dispirited.

Even Ma Xiaotao looked a little different, as while she was still very beautiful, which even he could admit, there was an abnormal flush on her charming face, and the pinkness of her eyes had darkened a bit. Even though it was nowhere near the darkness of that scary day, it still sent a shiver down her spine seeing it.

“We’ve found them, right? Sister Xiaotao, can I go now?” Xu Sanshi had a bitter smile on his face as he spoke. After being tormented by an intense amount of pain for a few days, he’d finally managed to endure the last of it. However, the drain on his energy, physical strength, and spirit power was too severe. Right now, all he wanted to do was return to his room and sleep.

Ma Xiaotao nodded. “Okay, you can go.”

Xu Sanshi glanced at Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong with a look that said ‘you can fend for yourselves’ before he left. His disloyal appearance caused the two to feel nervous. Just why had Ma Xiaotao been looking for them?

Ma Xiaotao indifferently said, “You two, follow me.”

Following Ma Xiaotao’s lead, the two walked towards the lakeside path. After walking for a little while, they arrived at the lakeside where Yuhao fought her off. She only stopped when she was right in front of the Sea God’s Lake.

However, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong both kept their distance from her. Wang Dong had a worried look on his face while Yuhao was keeping all emotion from showing on his own. Internally, he was quickly thinking about what the reason could be for her to seek them out.

‘Why is she here? I did not see or sense an elder who would have seen us on that day. All of the elders would have been on the Sea God’s isla-,’ Yuhao mentally facepalmed as he came to a realisation.

‘Mu En! He is always watching who comes and goes in the freshman dormitories from his table the entrance, so with us leaving the dorm but never arriving after class, he must have realised something was up. It must have been very unusual and suspicious, even more so as it was around the same time as the incident. How could I not even consider that before?!’

“Senior sister Ma, why did you call us over?” Huo Yuhao asked probingly, unsure if he was correct in his assumption or not.

With her back to them, Ma Xiaotao said, “I’d first like to apologize to you two.”

Wang Dong went to respond but Yuhao gently elbowed him in the ribs to keep him quiet as he responded first, “Apologising for what Senior sister? I am confused.”

Wang Dong shot him a glance, but Yuhao ignored it to focus on Ma Xiaotao. Their senior sister suddenly turned around, the shades of pink in her eyes suddenly darkening further. An ineffable pressure suddenly appeared on Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong’s bodies.

“I know very well that you two were there on that day.” Ma Xiaotao growled. “That day, there was an ice-type spirit master who stopped me. Neither of you have an ice-type spirit as my master has already checked, however, you are the only two people who were unaccounted for during the time of the incident.”

Wang Dong’s eyes widened.

Ma Xiaotao noticed this and continued, “I need to find that spirit master. So, tell me everything you know. Perhaps it some mysterious protector of yours. Either way, I must find them.”

Wang Dong attempted to keep a straight face, however, being only a 10-year-old child, couldn’t hold the bluff. His head slightly turned in Yuhao’s direction, just enough to be noticed before he realised what he was subconsciously doing and straightened himself. Both Ma Xiaotao and Yuhao noticed this clear indication of who Xiaotao should be really focusing on, earning an audible sigh from Yuhao, as her intense gaze turned to focus solely on him.

He knew that this wasn’t her usual behaviour as she was heavily influenced by the Evil Fire Phoenix at the moment. While Xu Sanshi’s peak-ranked water-type martial soul may temporarily be able to suppress the demonic fire within her, being only a water-type spirit and not an ice-type spirit, its usefulness would no doubt quickly diminish.

With that option expiring, her only other options would be to adamantly search for this mysterious ice spirit master or stop cultivating altogether. Knowing her character from the books, he knew that the latter was not even a considered option by her.

“Who?” Ma Xiaotao asked Huo Yuhao in a low voice.

At this question, which he knew she would try and get him to answer one way or another, he was stumped. He had already discussed with Amra and Electrolux about her issue, and they had together come up with three possible solutions to permanently fix her issue. They would all remove the negative effects of her spirit, with one having clearly greater benefits than the other. However, the better of the two solutions required him to gain a fire-type spirit beast on his FrostFire spirit before he could use them.

Yuhao decided to trust her now, rather than making her wait in uncertainty until he was fully prepared. He turned to Wang Dong and reassuringly said, “It is alright Wang Dong. I will take it from here. Could you head back to the dorm first? I will meet up with you later.”

Wang Dong went to argue back about whether or not staying alone with this woman was a good idea, however stopped himself when he noticed the determined gaze in his roommate’s powerful eyes. He nodded, before wishing him good luck and walking back to the room. As he walked off, he couldn’t help but feel a weird feeling in his heart as he left the two behind. Even though he had only known Yuhao for a couple of months now, thinking of him being alone with a beautiful woman made his heart rate feel strange.

Seeing him walk off in the distance, Yuhao turned his gaze from the back of his roommate to Xiaotao herself. Being this close to her and entirely focusing on her, he could now feel the low levels of heat coming from her.

“Is there somewhere we can go more private? I would prefer to talk in a less open setting.” Yuhao boldly said, which would no doubt lead many people to the wrong conclusion.

Ma Xiaotao herself, raised an eyebrow at this statement, before gently nodding and indicating him in the direction of the Sea God Lake’s centre. Wanting to see what he would do, she released her martial spirit, further increasing the surrounding temperature, which she surprisingly found had no impact on this mysterious freshman, before running off over the lake, leaving him on the edge of the lake to cross by himself. She believed he did not have any means to move as she did, so she was curious about how he would get across.

Yuhao chuckled at the immaturity of her action before releasing his own Spirit Eyes and Steel Space Dragon spirit. While he could easily accomplish the task by using his ice energy to freeze a path on the lake itself, it would kind of defeat the purpose of waiting until being in an enclosed setting before exposing one of his secrets. He is planning on using his FrostFire spirit if need be in the coming knock-out assessment so it is better to be safe than sorry.

Yuhao used his Spirit Eyes and Purple Demon Eye to increase his time perception and range of vision, as it would be needed to accomplish what he is planning on doing. Looking at the furthest location he can through the mist above the lake, he released and used his third spirit ring, Portal Control. As purple portal formed in front of him, he stepped through.

Up ahead, Ma Xiaotao was just about to turn back around to assist Yuhao across, when a purple circle appeared thirty metres in the air. Not even a second later, Yuhao surprisingly walked out of it before plummeting downwards. Contrary to what you would expect from someone falling at fast speeds, he was looking up ahead and not downwards towards the lake’s surface.

She quickly accelerated towards where he would fall in order to catch him, only to stop on the water’s surface when another portal appeared beneath him and caused him to disappear. Shocked, she looked around, only to see him at least eighty metres ahead of her appearing and subsequently dropping out of another portal. This continued on until he disappeared into the mist ahead. Not wanting to be shown up, she infused her spirit power into her body and rushed off along the water.

While Ma Xiaotao was making a mad dash after him, Yuhao himself was having a blast. He was essentially in a never-ending skydive and being someone who flew jets on Earth, he loved every moment of it. This was a method of travelling he had only just thought of on the spot. While it was an extremely fast way to move across large distances, especially when the floor is not dirt such as in this case, it was extremely draining on his spirit power reserves.

While his one hundred-thousand-year-old spirit rings allow him to use powers much stronger and much more versatile than the average hundred year or thousand-year ring, they also had an equivalent cost to them. A regular spirit master at his rank would probably only be able to use one of his skills a single time before they emptied out their reserves, however, his spirit reserves were extremely dense and pure, allowing them to be much more efficient than even normal spirit master prodigies.

After two more portals, he finally managed to catch sight of the inner-court island. Finding a good position, he created another portal across the last gap which spat him out on the man-made beach. As he was in a momentary high from the act of continuously skydiving, he forgot that he was travelling at almost terminal velocity. Therefore, when he exited the last portal, he skidded across the sand, tripping on the floor as he couldn’t move his legs fast enough to react to the intense speed and ended up face planting in the sand.

Yuhao groaned and rolled over onto his back as he murmured, “Well so much for looking cool.”