With the start of the journey, Mu Ji Wu left the main road and any asphalt road, and began walking parallel to it from a distance to avoid being seen traveling alone.
After leaving the city, there were no more nosy people bothering him, so he took out his pipe from his bag right away and filled it with tobacco again, but he didn’t light it.
He just held it and took a few puffs from it every now and then, quietly.
It was true that it wasn’t harmful and he could smoke for hours as long as he breathed air with it instead of only tobacco, but who knew how long the journey would take while walking.
If he finished all three tobacco pouches, then he would have to risk entering one of the cities along the way, and that might pose a danger to him.
The Douluo Continent was mostly green.
Even if there wasn’t a forest on the road, plains and grassy hills would definitely fill the view.
It was likely that it wasn’t summer and spring was approaching, but it was certainly because of the soul power in the air that nourished everything.
Everything was alive.
The grass was no exception, and even if it wasn’t spirit grass, breathing this air that contained soul power would be extremely nourishing.
Three days passed since Mu Ji Wu began his journey east.
During them he passed two small villages that reminded him of the village where he had lived as a child in the orphanage.
But of course he ignored them and didn’t even approach them, continuing on his way.
Right now he was smoking his second pipe of the day, since he had decided to smoke only twice a day.
And in his other hand he was holding the axe he had bought in Leaf Fire City.
That was the name of the city where Hong Xing’s grave was.
As for why he hadn’t mentioned it before, he had forgotten.
He noticed a sign pointing to the city at a certain distance with that name and concluded it was the same city, or that Mu Ji Wu knew and simply didn’t care.
Who knew.
It was important to note that Mu Ji Wu didn’t need light in the darkness of night.
Even without a moon, it was enough to rely on his martial soul—his eyes—to see.
He didn’t need to summon the soul ring as long as he didn’t want to activate the first soul skill.
So there was no need to worry about turning into a human lamp in the darkness for every passerby, car, or even animal to see him from afar.
Of course, even if he avoided trouble, trouble would come looking for him.
On the night of the day before last, he encountered two stray dogs that attacked him immediately.
Of course, they ended up as cold corpses after a few blows, but because of that he ended up getting his body dirty with blood.
It wasn’t as if he cared, but the sticky feeling on his body was annoying, which forced him to search for a nearby stream before washing himself.
The search took two hours.
That was why now he carried the axe in his right hand and the pipe in his left.
As he walked, Mu Ji Wu focused his inner sense on his body and began examining the purple energy inside it.
‘It’s decreasing.
At this rate it will last four more days and end at dawn on the fifth day.
It will be a bit annoying then.’ During these days Mu Ji Wu noticed how special the energy was.
He didn’t feel heat from the sun during the day or cold at night.
He didn’t sweat.
He didn’t feel hunger or thirst or the need to urinate or defecate.
After it ended, he would have to start taking care of himself on this journey so his body wouldn’t suddenly lose control and act according to his memories if he tried to commit suicide by mistake.
As he walked, spirit energy spread from inside his mind to long distances around him, exploring in every direction in a circle with a fifty-meter radius.
For someone who had been just an office worker in a company before entering the cave, he knew nothing about soul masters or their power or the division of strength among them.
But once, while he was in the cave, specifically five years before he left, he woke up from a state of hibernation that lasted a year to find that he was able to spread energy from his mind that gave him some perception of his surroundings—something like a primitive radar.
He could also look inside his mind.
It was like a vast lake.
He could see the form of himself too, what was called the spirit.
He hadn’t cared before since he found it useless while imprisoned in a cave.
After he got out, he was just a suicide, but now he began to explore his body more to know how to live without losing control.
And he found that his spirit’s sensing ability was extremely useful now.
Although it was just primitive sensing like a bat that senses by echo, it allowed him to perceive movement and the life force around him to know if any creature was approaching him.
And indeed, within the range of his spiritual energy, he felt something running toward him very fast.
Not ordinary human running.
‘A wild animal?
Or a predator?’ While thinking about this, Mu Ji Wu summoned his soul ring and activated it, sensing the spread of soul power from the energy center located below the navel in a state between imagination and reality.
The light gaseous energy spread quietly and quickly through every part of his body before merging into it, enhancing every part of him.
One second—this was the time the enhancement required to complete.
Although he didn’t know how his strength compared among soul masters, he was much stronger than before now.
Although he didn’t understand the connection between a ring that enhanced the body and the Spirit Eyes martial soul he had obtained, he knew that the legend of the Spirit Pagoda Master, Douluo Ice Spirit Huo Yuhao, had the Spirit Eyes as his first martial soul, which made him the first soul master in terms of spirit abilities, and that he created spirit spirits and artificial soul rings.
Of course, back then as a child, even if he didn’t care, he would find these descriptions and legends in every part of books and history.
And now, as he recovered his memory, he remembered that martial souls of the eyes category were classified as body souls, of the spirit category.
True, they were part of the body, but they involved the spirit more, on the saying that the eyes are the window of the spirit.
Of course, although he didn’t understand the connection between body enhancement and his Spirit Eyes, he remembered the words of that person in the cave: “Although it’s the first ability you’ll get, it’s the most important.
It will be the foundation of everything for you in the future, and you can’t fight without it.
Because the power system in your world is different from my old world, my abilities that you inherit will kill you before you kill your opponent, so I spent time creating this skill and the other body system for you.
Remember, then remember: the body is the most important and the foundation before everything from me.” Although he didn’t understand any of this nonsense like the talk of a mysterious charlatan, he didn’t care now.
He would explore the matter slowly in the future.
But now… He turned north to see a wild boar running fast, the ground rumbling beneath its hooves as it sped like a truck.
‘Boars usually always move in one direction before changing it with difficulty due to their almost nonexistent necks.’ Mu Ji Wu recalled the information in his head slowly.
He stomped his foot hard and Mu Ji Wu shot ten meters from his spot, avoiding the wild boar, since he didn’t want to get into a fight with this beast that weighed about 130 kilograms or more.
Of course he was confident in his ability to kill it, but he didn’t want to.
He had always been a good, calm, kind person.
Unless something made him lose his deep patience like the sea and revealed the volcano beneath it, he wouldn’t bother much.
Maybe that was why Hong Chuan said he resembled his wife.
True, he was calm, but it also meant that the end of calm was not good.
Indeed, after moving away, the boar continued running until it disappeared, speeding off without even looking back even if it wanted to.
Mu Ji Wu shook his head before the soul ring disappeared quietly, but not the enhancement.
The enhancement always lasted for ten minutes or a little more.
And as he thought back on the soul ring’s ability, his memory returned to the reason for choosing the prison, or the inheritance.
It was that his martial soul, like other humans who even if they weren’t soul masters had a martial soul, was his eyes.
He had eyes even though he didn’t know their type because he had no possibility of advancing as a soul master, but he had eyes.
And that was what made him compatible with the inheritance’s requirements: a person with special eyes who had never trained before.
What a rare requirement, and he had already fulfilled it.
He pulled his head out of the hated inheritance memory.
The rest would be a story for another day.
With that he continued the journey, and the days passed quietly until he reached dawn on the eighth day from the start of the journey.
Mu Ji Wu was sitting on an old, large tree branch, sensing his body with soul power.
The amethyst energy in his body was like the embers of a fire about to go out.
Only a few strands remained, like long hair, but even though it was little, it still supported him with all its strength, which made him think about the power of the inheritance’s owner, which he now had—almost.
And even after eight days, Mu Ji Wu hadn’t reached the “east” required by his eyes, so he kept walking until now, wanting to see his body’s reaction after the protection disappeared.
And an hour passed, and then the sun rose from the east with the last amethyst strand fading from his body.
Immediately he felt the slight cold of dawn and the humidity in the air, and the real but mild heat of the dawn sun, and hunger and thirst too.
He took a deep breath as he sensed all of this quietly.
All these sensations confirmed that he was still human and had left the cursed cave.
Because of accepting the inheritance, he had been in a state similar to the previous energy protection but for 130 years.
He had forgotten what human sensations were like, and now they were returning.
After continuing to analyze his sense of touch for about a minute, Mu Ji Wu opened his eyes quietly, and a faint glimmer of light shone in them from his vast spirit power.
In front of him was a small pile of firewood he had prepared in case of any emergency after the protection vanished.
And indeed, dawn in the third month of the year was still cold even for a soul master like him.
In the end, he was still at the bottom of soul masters with one ring.
Even ordinary humans knew the division of soul masters from the first ring to the ninth.
True, he was stronger than an adult now, but only that.
He hadn’t broken past human limits yet.
He took the lighter from the nearby bag and lit the fire in the wood, and warmth began spreading from it quietly.
Mu Ji Wu moved closer to the fire, sensing the heat quietly with his eyes closed for a few seconds before opening them, then took out a food can, opened it from the designated pull tab, and finally placed it next to the fire to heat up.
All the cans he brought contained mutton soup with beans or some other nutritious grains.
Each can held about half a kilogram of contents and might be enough for his child body for half a day or a full day until night.
After a few minutes, the soup in the can began making a bubbling sound from floating bubbles, indicating that it was hot and ready.
Mu Ji Wu summoned his soul ring and activated the ability before he lightly reached out and touched the iron can.
Indeed, he only felt some heat and his hand didn’t burn, showing the strength of his body after the enhancement.
He took the can in his hand and rotated it for half a minute until the bubbles calmed down a bit, then began drinking from it directly.
He didn’t buy a spoon; rather, he forgot.
He hadn’t thought about it after being away from human society for all these years.
After drinking a little, a few tears flowed, but not like his crying for his wife.
They were tears of some happiness and freedom.
He had confirmed that he had finally left the cave and regained some feeling as a human.
His tongue tasted every flavor that entered it—from the saltiness of the soup and meat to the heat of black pepper and the taste of beans that had almost no taste but blended with the rest.
He drank and drank the soup until he emptied the can in one go before breathing the air deeply.
“Haah, damn you.” And with all manners, he cursed the inheritance’s owner and the cave as usual.
He took the water bottle from the bag and drank until he was quenched with the cold water from the cold air.
After filling his body with food and water, Mu Ji Wu gathered his belongings in the bag before extinguishing the fire and setting off on his journey.
And the days passed quickly on him.
On the first day after the protection disappeared, he finally felt tired again and began resting every now and then, drinking water and sweating like a normal human.
And he emptied the bottle that day and went searching for a riverbed before filling it again.
When night fell, he began to feel sleepy, which he had forgotten, so he took out the sleeping bag, got in, and slept next to the burning fire on a plain beside a slight hill that blocked the wind and breezes.
He wasn’t afraid to sleep in the open because spirit power spread even while he slept and would only alert him if a living being approached.
On the third day he had to bathe in a river after his smell became a bit foul from sweat and the memory of his wife telling him to stay clean.
On the fifth day he hid under a large tree while it rained outside.
He had already put his bag in the third plastic bag he hadn’t used and saved it for exactly this situation.
If he needed, for example, to cross a river by swimming or if it rained, the bag would protect his supplies like that.
On the eighth day after the protection vanished, his canned food and the first tobacco pouch ran out, which made him feel a little sad about it.
Then he stayed thinking about whether he should go to a city to resupply food, but he passed wild orange trees and gathered some along with some apples.
Then he decided to try hunting and barbecuing himself before seeing if he needed to get food from a city or village.
Contrary to expectations, his control over food was excellent and clean, which produced delicious barbecue even without spices.
This was due to the power of his eyes.
Even without a ring focusing on them, they were still strong on their own, so he decided to back down from the idea of visiting a city—first to save his money, second to avoid humans and dangers.
On the thirteenth day after the protection vanished, the rags on his body could no longer withstand the natural elements and the tiring journey, and they tore, revealing his childlike body and belongings to everyone.
Luckily, at that time he was in the forest and no one saw him.
He didn’t care anyway, but he hunted a deer and made a skirt from its hide that went longer than his knees, then made something like a shirt from fox hide for his upper body.
Thanks to experience from days of hunting, his handicraft, enhanced by body power and improved sight, was excellent, and skinning the hide was clean, and after washing it became excellent.
And so the days passed, and Mu Ji Wu felt that he had finally almost reached the desired east after a month from the start of the journey.
His hair, which was a bit long before, was now long, extending a little past his shoulders and down a bit along the spine.
Currently, Mu Ji Wu looked like a barbarian from ancient times, wearing animal skins and living with them in the forest.
Mu Ji Wu came out of the last forest of his journey after a good sleep, with his first pipe of the day in his hand and the sun rising slowly.
“It’s good that I finally arrived.
This last pouch was about to run out.
Also, I want to see where my journey as a soul master will begin, until I reach death.” After this month it was clear that Mu Ji Wu was a little more lively—but only a little, like one or two hairs’ worth.
He left the forest to find, not far away, a main paved road, so he walked toward it and no longer avoided it since he was already close to the goal.
Walking alongside the road, he kept going as usual without weariness or boredom.
Finally he came across a sign by the roadside that said “Welcome to East Sea City,” and from afar his strong eyes caught the silhouette of a giant city waiting for him.
He knew instinctively that he had finally reached the east.