"Understood, teacher." The two, enlightened by the theory, immediately summoned their respective martial spirits. As the two swords appeared, unlike their usual intense resistance, both Zang Xin and Cao Dezhi could sense that they seemed much calmer, as if they had reconciled after hearing the theory. Huo Dong slightly raised his head, indicating that they could begin, then closed his eyes.
Teacher, you don't need to be so considerate. Both of them knew it made no difference whether the teacher opened or closed his eyes, but they were still touched for a second by Huo Dong's understanding. The two stood facing each other, about a meter apart. Sunlight streamed unhindered onto the rooftop floor. Zang Xin looked at his childhood friend, who returned the same expression.
Those were gray pupils, like a frozen river in winter, Zang Xin thought to himself. He extended his right hand first, and everything felt just like that afternoon when they first met.
Cao Dezhi tightly grasped the hand that was offered to him, the sunlight shining on their faces. They looked so alike.
He seemed to be losing sight of whether he was in the past or in reality. The surrounding things and scenery were constantly changing, and the only constants were their tightly clasped hands and each other's eyes. The soul power within their bodies was being consumed at an alarming rate, and a ball of white light gradually shone from where their hands were clasped.
A few glimmers of gold and silver seeped into the white light, representing the elements of time and space. And around that beam of light, the scene of their first childhood encounter gradually became clearer.
They went back to how they were before.
When did it start?
Ever since his martial soul awakened, he was told that he would be studying with a peer who possessed a martial soul perfectly matched to his own. At that time, he was still immersed in the joy of his innate full soul power and did not notice the astonished and reluctant looks in his parents' eyes. Even though his parents were both well-informed soul masters, they had never seen a martial soul like his, which was said to be unable to exist independently.
The Sentimental Sword, a spirit only listed separately in martial soul surveys, almost always appears in pairs with another spirit called the Ruthless Sword. After being chosen and taken away by the Tang Sect for training, Zang Xin learned from extremely limited information that these two spirits were so absurd that they could only appear in pairs on the continent. In other words, at the moment he awakened his spirit, somewhere unseen by him, another person awakened the Ruthless Sword spirit.
At first, he didn't care much. He wasn't dependent on others for cultivation, so what did it matter if he didn't know the other person?
Until the day we met.
It turns out they had known each other for many years.
Perhaps martial spirits really can change a person's perception. Before his martial spirit awakened, he couldn't quite put his finger on what made the guy with the high gray ponytail seem familiar, but a zither-like melody blared fiercely within him:
You know him. Like cutting and polishing jade, like carving and grinding stone.
Do I know him?
Okay, I got to know him very quickly.
He extended his right hand to the other person; the blinding sunlight shone into the courtyard, casting a long shadow of his hand.
"Nice to meet you, my name is Zang Xin."
"Me too. I am Cao Dezhi."
The shadows of the two hands intersected.
Meanwhile, outside of the past footage, Huo Yuhao was sitting on the zombie Xiaobai, observing the energy fluctuations. If there was any danger, he would immediately take action to break the Martial Soul Fusion Technique.
As for why he was sitting on the zombie Xiaobai? Well, to prevent the attack from being too powerful and blowing up the roof, he teleported the two kids and himself to the undead demiplane after the white light appeared. It wasn't that he didn't trust the soul-guided protective shield he had created. For Yuhao, minimizing the commotion was one aspect, but also, in this plane he completely controlled, he could perceive every detail of the martial soul fusion more precisely.
A blond-haired boy yawned and appeared out of nowhere, sitting down beside him and watching the show with great interest.
“Brother Tianmeng,” Huo Yuhao didn’t look away, still staring at the cocoon-like white light, “that student who used the Amorous Sword, he’s a mentalist, right?”
Tianmeng looked at him in confusion, "You've been leading them for two or three months now, why would you ask such a question?"
"Because the two Soul Kings who are performing the Space-Time Martial Soul Fusion Technique in front of you now are Soul Kings whose Martial Souls seem to have nothing to do with Space-Time." Huo Yuhao propped his face up with one hand. "It seems that my previous analysis has been confirmed. Emotions have been reduced to the dimension of Space-Time."
“Something has indeed happened in the realm of gods.”
"What do you mean?" Tianmeng showed little reaction to the incident in the God Realm; he seemed more interested in the details. Clearly, the seven soul spirits did not have a good impression of the God King.
“Ten thousand years ago, the emotional power that Teacher Rong Nianbing demonstrated to me, and the emotional power that I felt when I received the preparatory godhood, still existed. But not now.” Huo Yuhao withdrew his gaze and turned to look at Tianmeng. “It’s like originally you only needed to press the corresponding key to type the character 3; but now, because something happened in the God Realm and took away my 3, I have to indirectly achieve it by typing 2+1 every time I type 3.”
"How could the divine realm be so wicked?" Tianmeng chose to curse the divine realm first when in doubt.
"Is that the main point?" Huo Yuhao also smiled, which was rare for him.
"Otherwise?" Tianmeng grinned and patted his shoulder. "But it's not necessarily a bad thing. First, it's equivalent to you having a certain degree of ability to influence spacetime. Second, we all know that, Yuhao, you..."
"You don't like using the power of emotions, do you?" After a pause, Tianmeng decided to say it anyway.
“…Thank you, Brother Tianmeng.” The young, uncrowned god looked unusually relaxed. “This is my fault. I fell into this situation after Dong’er left.” He took a deep breath. “When I learned that Senior Rong Nianbing’s divine position was named Emotion, I even subconsciously resisted accepting it.”
"Even though everyone has helped me so much, each soul carries a corresponding emotional force."
"But there's no escaping it; I have to face a fact."
Tianmeng remained silent; he understood the truth.
"My emotions are no longer complete."
"How can someone who can't even control their own emotions be the God of Emotions? So even if nothing happens in the God Realm, I'm afraid I can't fully inherit the position of God of Emotions."
"She has taken my heart away. I will never have 'love' again."
Tianmeng remained silent.
He simply wrapped his arms around the blue-haired child.