"Right!"
With real business on the table, Bai Yingyue packed away the mischief and turned earnest.
"A martial soul only shows its true power under correct control technique."
"You must have felt as much in that last fight."
Luo Fanchen nodded.
"I did. Using the lotus's healing was fine — but directing the little loach to attack mid-combat split my focus in half. It honestly couldn't help me."
Yingyue explained:
"Your lotus counts as an ITEM soul, Senior Brother — one thought is enough to drive it. But the little loach is a BEAST soul. Try to run it like a second fighter while you fight, and of course its real power never shows."
"The lotus is an ITEM soul?" He blinked. "Shouldn't it be a plant soul?"
She was patient:
"Grass, wood, vine, lotus — yes, those are 'plant souls.' Sun, moon, thunder, lightning — 'celestial souls.' The world's martial souls come in ten thousand strange shapes; subdivide them and the categories never end."
"But cut to the ESSENCE, and there are only two kinds of martial soul under heaven."
"Which two?"
"Beast souls and item souls," she answered.
"A soul that can achieve UNITY with its master — possession, man and soul as one — is a beast soul."
"One that cannot is an item soul."
"See? Simple, when you slice it that way." Then, worried she'd been too fierce about it, she poked out the tip of a lilac-scented tongue, sheepish. "Um — don't be scared, little Senior Brother. I just go all serious when it's real work. Hee."
"It's fine. Keep going."
He waved it off, not remotely bothered.
Whatever knowledge the Temple's Holy Maiden carried was the distilled experience of countless mighty predecessors.
Standing on the shoulders of giants beat groping in the dark every single time.
And at the words 'man and soul as one', intuition was already sparking — a new door swinging open in his mind.
One step short of the threshold.
Yingyue continued, serious again:
"Simply put: you draw the soul INTO the body. Your beast soul possesses you — fuses with your flesh — two made one."
"And your strength multiplies."
"WHOOSH!"
The violet moon rose at her back. She gave a soft cry.
"Martial Soul: Possession!"
The moon swelled to the height of a person in an instant, overlapped her slender body — and merged.
"BOOM!"
Violet light wreathed her skin. A crescent of violet moon surfaced at her brow; frost crystallized along her lashes; and a bone-deep cold breathed from every inch of that fair skin.
A face already lovely enough to drip color gained an eerie, wintry glamour on top of it — allure honed to something nearly irresistible.
The Holy Maiden's live demonstration split the fog in Luo Fanchen's head like a stroke of lightning. He UNDERSTOOD.
Possession was the true road.
He'd had it wrong. All wrong!
And he'd blamed the poor loach for uselessness — when it was his own handling. Releasing a beast soul to go bite people like a hunting dog — of course that was garbage usage!
Watching the frost-breathing, beautifully freezing Holy Maiden, he mused aloud:
"If possession amplifies the host — then different soul types must amplify in different DIRECTIONS, yes?"
Yingyue startled — she hadn't expected him to leap a step ahead the instant she pointed.
She nodded firmly:
"Yes. With my Grand Yin Netherglow possessing me, my resistance to water- and ice-type attacks climbs enormously."
"And my command of three powers — water, ice, and moon — sharpens with it. What YOUR amplification is, you'll only know once you've fused."
"Meaning," he said, startled, "anywhere with ice, water, or moonlight — your combat strength soars?"
"Mm-hm."
At her confirmation he quietly clicked his tongue. What a monstrous soul. Once night fell, where WASN'T there moonlight?
Wait.
A problem surfaced fast. That dog of a Holy Son — one of his souls was the Great Sun Illumination.
Under open sun, amid flame — his strength amplified without limit?
And that was only ONE of his two souls. No wonder the wretch walked with his nostrils to the sky. He had a genuine sliver of capital for the arrogance.
A pity, Luo Fanchen thought darkly.
Such a grand, blazing soul, wasted on THAT fellow. It should've been his — it would've paired so well with Junior Sister's moon.
...What garbage am I dreaming about?
He shook his head at himself. Another person's martial soul, becoming his?
Flatly impossible.
What he COULD do was train until he burst the man like a grape. He flexed his fists, hunger for strength sharpening another notch.
For the next stretch, Pontiff Di Weiyang was nowhere to be seen — off on some errand of her own.
In the green of the grass, the beautiful pair sat facing each other while Bai Yingyue transmitted the teaching in her master's stead: how to draw the soul into the body — man and soul as one.
"There! Now you know every detail. It's not SO hard, but getting the knack takes most of a day, minimum."
She stretched, lazy and loose, entirely relaxed — and the fullness of her chest strained forward, impossible to miss.
Luo Fanchen would have needed sainthood not to notice. Incredible, he marveled privately. HOW does a girl still this green develop THAT far? It defied reason.
"Enjoying the view?"
The voice came soft and floating at his ear. His heart jumped once — the exterior held, steady as an old dog. He raised his gaze to that pretty face, unreadable between pleasure and anger, and said:
"Junior Sister is born lovely — skin of snow, bearing of ice. Of course you're very easy on the eyes."
Yingyue smiled sweetly. "No lying now, little Senior Brother~ Just then, it didn't LOOK like you were studying my face."
"Just then I was contemplating the fine points of soul possession." He met the Holy Maiden's eyes without a flush or a flutter.
Please. The player-king of his past life, flinching before this girl? Absurd.
"You can tell the truth, Senior Brother~ Yingyue won't mind. They grew out to be looked at, after all — it's just that when OTHERS look, Yingyue doesn't like it."
"If Senior Brother likes looking, Yingyue's perfectly willing. And if you wanted to TOUCH..."
Her expression had gone warm and suggestive, her words dripping honeyed bait. He was halfway to saying yes — when he caught the flicker of slyness deep in those lovely eyes, and his heart banged an alarm.
Close one. He'd nearly stepped straight into the girl's little trap.
Open a certain player-king's courtship diary, and rule one reads: in the dance between men and women, the cardinal sin is letting the other side set the rhythm.
YOU conduct their feelings. You are never the one being played.
Weak nations have no diplomacy — and weak men have none either. Women are drawn, always, to the man who can pluck their moods like strings.
His principle was simple: with women, give a true heart — but never an honest inch.
"Ah, Yingyue."
He arranged his face into grave, elderly disappointment — and Yingyue, who'd been certain her 'evil scheme' was one breath from landing, faltered.
Her plan had been simple: get him to admit it, then hold the little handle forever after — behave, or I tell Teacher you were ogling me.
No real malice in it. What girl doesn't love tormenting someone a little? And you only ever bother tormenting the ones you like — the way certain boys spend all of grade school tugging the braid of the girl in front.
Luo Fanchen said: "You call me Senior Brother; I call you Junior Sister. Ours is a pure and proper bond. How is it, then, that you're now attempting to SEDUCE your own senior?"
"Wh— WHO'S seducing you?!" Her eyes flew wide.
He was all innocence. "Your senior brother's heart is set wholly on cultivation. I have no wish to look upon such useless things — and yet you INSIST that I look."
"Useless... THINGS???"
Bai Yingyue took it like a thunderbolt to the crown.
How had the pot been flipped onto HER?!
Two minutes ago your eyeballs were about to burrow in, and NOW you're a plaster saint?! She could have clawed the grass bald.
AAAAH!!!
This MAN. So HATEFUL!
Done with games, she opened her cherry lips to counterattack — and he cut her off.
"Junior Sister. You wouldn't want word of this reaching our master, surely? Let us never speak of it again. Your senior brother is a gentleman of principle."
"HAH?"
That was HER endgame. HERS.
Bai Yingyue's brain bluescreened. The plan had been airtight. How was she the one lying dead at the bottom of it?!
"I'm off to attempt the possession."
Radiating rectitude, Luo Fanchen rose and strode away — three sentences, and the entire balance of attack and defense between them had inverted.
She glared after that infuriatingly graceful back, silver teeth grinding, tore up a blade of grass and snapped it viciously in half.
"PAH! Lying, two-faced man!"
"You giant pig's trotter!"
"I'll believe anything else — but I will NEVER believe you're not a lecher!!"
"Just you wait. I WILL drag the lecher in you into the light." She puffed her cheeks, wholly unreconciled.
"Go on then — practice! Grind yourself to death, rotten Senior Brother. Without four hours' work you haven't a PRAYER of learning it."
And that wasn't spite talking. That was data.
Never mind her own eight hours — even Holy Son Huang Yan, with his heaven-defying comprehension, had needed more than four full hours to master Martial Soul Possession.
"BOOM!"
A detonation in the distance cut her thought in half. She looked up — and her cherry lips fell open, tongue frozen mid-word.