The two men leaned against opposite walls of the dormitory, exchanging glances in silence. Finally, Cao Dezhi couldn't stand it any longer. He released the breath he'd been holding since entering the room and spoke first, a helpless expression on his face:
"what to do?"
"I could say that kind of nonsense too." Zang Xin had been holding his breath for so long, only to find that the other person hadn't said anything useful. He couldn't help but roll his eyes. "What else can we do now? Try it. If you succeed, ask the teacher for a reward; if you fail, apologize."
"...Do we really have to have physical contact like the teacher said?" Cao Dezhi got a headache just thinking about it.
Zang Xin, unusually, didn't respond immediately. His eyes, like an unresolved tangled mess, burned across Cao Dezhi's face. So many emotions surged within those passionate eyes, yet even the most indifferent could not fathom their depths. Silence descended once more. Finally, he lowered his gaze, a sigh escaping from deep within his throat, as if he had let go of something, or perhaps resigned himself to fate.
"People often say that when the two swords, one passionate and the other ruthless, are combined, they are as inseparable as two stars reflecting the moon, and when they work together, they are like shadows following each other." He tried his best to make his tone calm. "But we both know that although our soul power can indeed be fused, whenever we use our martial souls, once the two swords are drawn together, they immediately become like enemies meeting, the swords vibrating and humming, as if they want to fight to the death."
"Perhaps we are inherently incompatible."
Cao Dezhi watched quietly as Zang Xin delivered his eloquent and passionate speech, then added,
"Have you had enough of martial arts dramas?"
"Don't ruin the atmosphere!!" someone who had just had a bout of pretentious intellectualism protested vehemently. "Judging from your expression, you seem to have figured something out. Come on, tell us."
“Your intuition is pretty accurate,” Cao Dezhi raised his eyebrows at him. “I’ll tell you one thing and you’ll understand. Our martial spirits are extremely rare and there are very few records of them, so no one has ever told us how to use these two swords.”
"At the same time, because the concepts of ruthlessness and sentimentality are too abstract, our understanding of them is limited to the effects of soul skills."
"Perhaps it's not obvious to you yet. Your first four soul skills are all related to emotional control, so you'll naturally think that being affectionate is manipulating emotions; but for me, being ruthless has always been an unsolvable concept. Ruthless Ice Heart can block my perception of emotions, while Severing Thoughts and Heartless seem like pure, powerful, brick-throwing clearing skills."
"What exactly is ruthlessness? What exactly is the ruthless sword?"
"I didn't know. So I always thought it was just a pure offensive martial soul, cold and hard like its sword."
Zang Xin suddenly realized something. He glanced at Cao Dezhi out of the corner of his eye, but the other man continued:
"But as Teacher Huo mentioned last time, that's called a refrigerator."
Zang Xin couldn't keep his composure in the face of this unexpected refrigerator.
“What you said before all makes a lot of sense, but then a refrigerator suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and I just couldn’t hold back.” Zang Xin thought to himself that in twelve years, his brother had finally shown his first sense of humor. “But aside from that, what you said really made things clear to me. According to you…”
"Please, I'm begging you, say something that a human can understand." Cao Dezhi promptly stopped Zang Xin from launching into another long-winded speech. The other man glared at him irritably and said:
"In short, you are not a refrigerator, and I am not a central air conditioner, that's all."
A powerful and mysterious figure in the eyes of students, a learned and talented colleague in the hearts of teachers, the honorary tower master of the Spirit Pagoda who spent the whole night analyzing the data he smuggled from the Spirit Pagoda, he only went to add some good stuff to the Spirit Ascension Platform to the simulation system for the practical exam in the morning, and at noon, in order to avoid being disturbed, he simply ran to the undead demiplane to study modern soul technology for half a day. In the afternoon, he remembered that he still had a bunch of troublesome students, so he struggled to overcome the great temptation to continue his research and prepared to go out to inspect the people's conditions.
Unless he sensed danger, Huo Yuhao generally wouldn't keep his mental exploration active 24/7. The mana cost was secondary; the main problem was that it would make life incredibly boring. His thinking was correct. As soon as he opened the office door, he saw two groups of students seemingly facing off. Upon his arrival, the office instantly became so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and even the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees.
"Oh dear, did I come at the wrong time?" He put on that aloof smile again, tilting his head and speaking lightly. The office was full of familiar faces. On one side were the two little phoenixes and the angel who wasn't feeling well, and on the other side were the two guys with guns who had come to him a few days ago to ask him questions instead of going to the Spirit Pagoda when their souls had gone wrong.
Ah, I didn't mean to say that the question was bad.
"Teacher!" Leng Yaozhu stood at attention. "We weren't arguing! We were just discussing the group assignments for the practical exam. Um... these two students want to join our group, and we happen to be two people short, but..."
Huo Yuhao turned his gaze to the other side, to Yun Ming and Guan Yue. Apart from the last incident, these two students hadn't caused him any trouble and didn't seem like polite kids who would bully others.
“However,” Yunming said, seeing the teacher looking at him, “this would mean there would be four offensive characters in the team, which doesn’t fit the team composition in the textbook. We don’t know if the teacher will allow this to happen.”
"Is that all? Even now, everyone's still stuck on textbooks. Were all those unconventional questions you came up with in class for nothing?" Yuhao, who had personally shattered the prejudice against soul tools years ago, felt a chill run down his spine after hearing this. He then said in a tone that was half helpless and half speechless, "It's no big deal. Don't worry about forming your groups. What's suitable is best; there's no need to be so rigid about everything." He glanced at the five people who seemed somewhat insecure and added, "Back in my exam group, all three of us were control-type characters, and we still managed to beat everyone."
The five students nodded, seemingly understanding, and were about to thank the teacher and register when the teacher suddenly seemed to realize something: "Wait, four offensive students? Aren't the remaining two Zang Xin and Cao Dezhi?"
“It’s them.” Yali blinked innocently.
"Shouldn't there be five offensive types? Besides Zang Xin and Ya Li." Teacher Huo's sharp gaze swept over them. "Oh, to avoid having too many offensive types and not being able to form a team?"
"Hehe," Leng Yulai chuckled sheepishly. "You're incredibly insightful, teacher."
"What did you write... Agility-based?!" Huo Yuhao covered his face with one hand, both laughing and crying. "One of the requirements for an agility-based character is to be small in size. If you, such a big phoenix, were to be an agility-based character, I'm afraid the other side would think you're a giant Yun Chuang."
"Please, I'm begging you, please change it quickly."
The five of them hurriedly logged into their team information. During this time, Guan Yue asked curiously why Cao Dezhi and the other guy weren't there, as she wanted to spar with them. Then she noticed, puzzled, that the three girls were trying not to laugh.
"We were just thinking about some happy things."