Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineering Academy, Dean's Office.
"S-Sir, is it wise to just let Huo Yuhao be? Why don't we administer him straight to the Illustrious Virtue Hall? If he proves his soul engineer classification, then he's more than qualified to start studying there." Lin Jiaya said as he entered the dean's office with his clipboard, looking worried.
"With him in the Illustrious Virtue Hall, we can monitor him constantly and even control the amount of knowledge he can learn without looking like we're voluntarily suppressing his studies. He'll only learn the surface level of knowledge that our institution holds."
Jing Hongchen was doing some paperwork when Lin Jiaya entered.
He glanced up at him, slightly annoyed. "Do you really not understand, or are you playing dumb? You saw that monster's growth from the information department; he was just a Soul Master with a white soul ring roughly three years ago and now look how strong he's become!
Do you know what that means? That means he became a class 7 Soul Engineer roughly around 3 years! No one in the entire history of our empire has ever done it. Not even Kong Deming was such a monster."
Jing Hongchen frowned and put aside the document he was working on, and continued.
"He is a genius beyond anything that this world has ever seen. A young Soul Emperor and a Class 7 Soul Engineer, no sane organization would willingly let such a talent go into enemy territory unless they're either supremely confident about Huo Yuhao's safety...or they have a contingency plan."
They knew that Huo Yuhao was important to Shrek Academy, but they didn't understand how important he was until they had measured his physical attributes and cultivation.
In physical terms, he was already a Titled Douluo! Jing Hongchen was 100% sure that Huo Yuhao would become a Limit Douluo in the near future.
Jing Hongchen didn't understand how Shrek Academy could be so confident to send him here, especially with the Dragon God Douluo Mu En dead, but then he remembered that they had made an alliance or some sort of truce with the Great Beasts in the Great Star Dou Forest.
What if one of them placed some sort of technique on Huo Yuhao that would activate when his life is in danger? Either it was a shield or a full-power attack.
The Sun Moon Imperial Academy had numerous defensive-type soul tools in place, but they were never tested to handle the strikes of a Great Beast! And by human terms, had the strength to Transcendent Douluos or even a Limit Douluo!
Especially Di Tian, the Beast God and Strongest Creature of the World. He, who had the power to tear through space across the entire continent with a flick of his fingers.
Lin Jiayi's fingers tightened around his clipboard. Jing Hongchen's tone had dropped to a low, dangerous calm.
"So I, or anyone else, cannot make any move towards Huo Yuhao except show him sincerity. If we cannot eliminate or recruit him, we will at least be on friendly terms. For now, we will treat him as a talented student of our academy." He said, looking deep in thought.
'Especially since my grandchildren are still studying at Shrek Academy. My hands are tied, suppressing Huo Yuhao's studies will only breed animosity between us. There are no eternal enemies, only aligned interests.'
Jing Hongchen exhaled slowly, his gaze distant as he tapped away on the table.
".... How's the progress on Plan One going along?"
Lin Jiaya sighed deeply, shaking his head. "We've hit a wall, as expected. The main problem lies in the formation arrays. Based on our design, even a Titled Douluo runs the risk of having his soul crushed by the intense spiritual shock of the formation arrays."
Jing Hongchen grumbled, although he expected it, that didn't mean he still liked the outcome.
This was a project that he spent almost his entire life trying to complete and had the support of His Highness, the current Emperor of Sun Moon Empire.
If he doesn't show any results soon, regardless of his status as the Hallmaster of Illustrious Virtue Hall, he will receive some for of punishment.
Lin Jiaya continued,
"That is, unless we can find a spiritual-type Titled Douluo to try it, which will give us a thirty percent chance of success...."
"A spiritual-type Titled Douluo?" Jing Hongchen's eyes widened and he excitedly stood up. "That's it!"
"W-What is? Sir?"
"I'll tell you later. I have to make some preparations..." Jing Hongchen calmly smiled as he turned his chair to face his window, excitement and fear showing in his eyes.
'If I do this, I'll either become the nation's greatest sinner or its greatest hero.'
Lin Jiaya was silent for a while before speaking up, "Um, dean? There's also another matter..."
"Hm? Well, what is it?"
"It's about that strange soul beast."
Jing Hongchen's face changed and he turned back to face him. "What about it? Don't tell me...!?"
A few centuries ago, the Illustrious Virtue Hall had captured a severely injured soul beast of unknown origin.
It was extremely powerful to the point that they had to create an extremely powerful Class 9 sealing-type soul tool, which took roughly a dozen Class 9 Soul Engineers to create and operate—it was called the Sun Moon Monster Seal.
They successfully captured it, but with a high cost of a casualty in the thousands with a few Class 9 soul engineers and causing a recession to begin in the empire for a short while.
Normally studying and capturing a soul beast weren't their forte, but it became a problem when it suddenly fell from the sky and crashed into the Sun Moon Imperial Academy at the time.
From the ancient texts that Jing Hongchen read, that strange soul beast was incredibly durable and had the strength to easily evaporate ten city blocks. Although they didn't know what it was, it more than likely an extremely strong 100,000 year old soul beast!
If it weren't for it being injured, the Sun Moon Empire would've ceased to exist.
Now after being captured, the mysterious strange soul beast was placed in the bottom most level of the Illustrious Virtue Hall and is being used as a research experiment.
Unfortunately however, that soul beast was incredibly durable. Even titanium blades couldn't penetrate through its skin. And since after being captured, it became docile and unmoving. If it didn't show signs of breathing, they would've thought it had died from starvation.
Lin Jiaya nervously nodded his head, his lips trembling as his eyes dilated...with feat. "Yes, Hallmaster. The soul beast, also known as MUTO, has started showing signs of brain activity. Tiny muscle twitches here and there, which means it will soon start moving..."
"Dammit. Why couldn't that piece of shit starve itself to death!" Jing Hongchen cursed.
Although they've made many modifications to the Sun Moon Monster Seal over the centuries, to their horror, the MUTO showed signs of getting better and stronger than ever.
If the MUTO is starting to move, then it would soon break out of its seal.
Lin Jiaya gulped and said, "T-there's more, I'm afraid—"
"What?!"
"The MUTO? It's pregnant..."
...
Xuan Ziwen didn't know what to expect when Lin Jiaya came to him for a favor to teach an exchange student from Shrek Academy.
His initial thought was rejecting him, he already has his hands full with his own students and teaching another one, especially someone from the original Douluo Continent, who are commonly known to have... lacking knowledge of soul tools compared to the Sun Moon Empire, was simply too costly.
But he didn't expect to encounter such a monster!
A young class 7 soul engineer? Are they pranking him or something? Are Shrek Academy's standards for soul engineers so low?! Xuan Ziwen shook his head.
Director Lin Jiaya wouldn't be so unprofessional as to not check the students' background. That means that the boy's skills and knowledge are legitimately a Class 7 Soul Engineer.
Xuan Ziwen was curious and decided to test him, to understand his true potential.
Even if the boy was the youngest Class 7 soul engineer he has ever seen, if his mind and skills aren't to his standards, then he wouldn't waste another second on him. Talent without discipline was just noise.
'I underestimated him,' Xuan Ziwen stared at Huo Yuhao in shock, his eyes then glanced towards the boy's hands.
Huo Yuhao had started his work as soon as possible, moving with lightning speed.
From Xuan Ziwen's storage soul tool ring, he brought out multiple metallic materials before him. Without pausing and even using his martial soul, he picked up a titanium ore with his left hand and started spewing intense white flames from his mouth, smelting the raw metal on the spot with eerie precision.
Huo Yuhao didn't stop there and started picking up another metallic ore with his other hand, smelted it, before kneading the smelted metals together with his bare hands. The extreme heat from the smelting ores didn't bother him.
The two molten streams spiraled, then fused, forming a shimmering alloy that pulsed with a particular spiritual energy.
It gained spirituality!
Huo Yuhao completely forgone the hammering process when forging the alloy!
In the far future, blacksmiths had advanced their craftsmanship to the point it can be called divine. And one of the techniques that they have is called Spirit Alloy. It is a process by forging two or more metals together by using hammers and hand alone. Spirit Alloys can retain the spiritual nature of its components, meaning it contains the components of the metals used to make the alloy.
The second metallic ore that Huo Yuhao used was Blue Coppertite, a type of copper alloy that is composed of thirty percent copper, a trace of coppertite, and a variety of other trace elements. Coppertite is a special compound and the origin of the metal's name. It's an excellent conductor of spirit power and is even called a spirit power amplifier.
Not many soul engineers would use this metallic ore, since since it has numerous impurities and a complex internal structure, it is extremely difficult to forge.
Refining such a complex and impurity-ridden ore, whilst simultaneously mixing it with a very durable ore, was simply impossible!
Xuan Ziwen was tremendously shocked. Although he wasn't a pure blacksmith, he knew well enough to understand that whatever Huo Yuhao did was close to a miracle!
He completed it within 5 minutes, all without hammering the ores. Yet, despite lacking that very important step, he managed to refine and purify the metals!
Is that even possible?!
With Huo Yuhao's Ultimate Fire also known as Amaterasu? Yes, it was very much possible. They were flames that he imbued with Holy Light attribute, which is why it turned white.
The Ultimate Fire purified the impurities of the metals and did it with eerie precision thanks to his visual prowess as well, making sure he didn't accidentally ruin the metals.
He then stopped spewing flames and let it cool down a bit, but he didn't stop kneading the spirit alloy and shaped it into a sphere, roughly the size of a tennis ball.
After finishing that step, Huo Yuhao raised his right hand and one golden blade popped out of his middle knuckle. Usually carving blades were used for sculpting the soul array formations into the soul tool's core.
But Huo Yuhao didn't have any other carving knives besides the Life Guardian Blade, and he wasn't going to use it on something like this.
Xuan Ziwen's eyes grew wider and wider as the mysterious Darkgold Terrorclaw easily cut into the spirit alloy.
That was a combination of Titanium and Blue Coppertite! That alloy is one of the most tough metal in the empire, no, the world! Yet that strange golden blade easily cut into it as if it were butter?
'No, that looks like a soul bone.' Xuan Ziwen fixed his glasses.
He hadn't collected any of Huo Yuhao's assessment details and other particulars from Lin Jiayi before this, so he had no idea what this 19 or 20 year old teenager's abilities were like.
He hadn't even seen Huo Yuhao's martial soul, but he had already used fire breathing!
'What kind of genius that I'm looking at?' Xuan Ziwen gulped.
Huo Yuhao's movements were incredibly fast – at least, it seemed this way from Xuan Ziwen's perspective. Every slice connected to the next without pause, and deep grooves began to appear on this dark-silver metal sphere's surface.
Xuan Ziwen came next to Huo Yuhao out of curiosity, and meticulously monitored his work.
Huo Yuhao worked with tremendous speed. It didn't take long for sophisticated and intricate patterns to appear on the metal sphere's surface.
Xuan Ziwen's brows knitted into a knot, and he muttered to himself, "Charge, Power, Power, Power, Power, Power, Power, Power, Spread, Spread? Adding seven arrays to such a small body is outstanding, but why are you making seven Power and two Spread? Are you making a bomb?"
"You are pursuing something so extreme, so you can only use it once. Don't you feel like it's a waste due to the fact that you will discard it after a single instance?"
Ten minutes— Huo Yuhao had completed sculpting his soul formation array after Xuan Ziwen spoke. In total, it took him ten minutes to finish the soul formation array.
What was previously just a spirit alloy sphere now looked like an exquisite art piece at this point. Deep and shallow grooves, vertical and horizontal lines snaked all over the metal dark-silver sphere, giving it a formidable three-dimensionality.
Huo Yuhao chuckled as he placed the finished product on the table. "Do you wanna see what it can do, teacher Xuan? I still have a lot of time, don't I?"
Looking at the confident smirk on Huo Yuhao's face, Xuan Ziwen was stunned for a moment.
Was this seriously a teenage boy? Why does he give the same aura as his teacher, Kong Deming?
"I..." Xuan Ziwen's voice trembled, and he took a moment to calm down. "Alright, show me. If it's actually that creative, you are allowed to exceed the time limit by a little bit."
Huo Yuhao grinned. And he started completing his Godly Shotgun 7.0.
Xuan Ziwen thought that giving the boy an extremely short deadline—an hour, of completing his task would be the hardest part of it all.
Even the most experienced and skilled Class 7 Soul Engineer would take at least a couple hours or so to forge Class 7 soul tool formation arrays.
What Huo Yuhao was doing, however, was creating a functioning Class 7 soul tool!
It was completely different from just the formation arrays, as the soul engineer only has to create the "core" instead of building the entire system. A soul tool involved three layers: first the core, then the inner shell, and lastly the outer shell.
'Is that... a gun?' The concept of guns wasn't foreign to Xuan Ziwen. They had used gunpowder in the past and used it to create fireworks and many more, but mostly for guns.
They discontinued the creation of guns when they discovered that using soul power for ammunition was more effective, efficient and very much less expensive.
And in just another ten minutes, Huo Yuhao completed his soul tool — Godly Shotgun 7.0
"Here's a personal invention of mine," Huo Yuhao said as he presented it in his hands.
Forged in a sleek obsidian casing with silver inlaid soul circuits, the Godly Shotgun 7.0 resembled a high-grade semi-automatic firearm—but its beauty was in its deception. It measured just under a meter in length, its barrel reinforced with compressed alloy plating to withstand explosive soul power discharge.
On the dark-wood stock were about eight ammunition shells, another personal creation of Huo Yuhao's that he would explain later on.
Huo Yuhao held the Godly Shotgun over his shoulder and said, "So? Where can I shoot?"
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Chapter Title: MUTO, Xuan Ziwen's Shock