33 Wong Wushuang

Jian Wang and Su Liyung where startled by Xiao Yuewu's sudden shout, but both of them instantly were on edge. Su Liyun moved over to Sheng Feilong, shielding him behind her body while Jian Wang summoned his Mountain Splitting Axe and run over to Xiao Yuewu. All of them were extremely taunt; not only was their, more or less, ace unable to fight, Sheng Feilong was also extremely vulnerable at the moment!

All of them were ready to attack, when they heard young calm voices from behind the bushes.

"Whoa, easy their, Junior-Brothers, Junior-Sister. We mean no harm."

A moment later, a group of 6 people walked out from the bushes. 4 boys and two girls, all of them around 1 or 2 years older than Jian Wang and the rest.They wore matching uniforms, namely white pants, white shirts, black shoes and green jackets with the logo of the Heaven Dou Intermediate Academy embroidered on the right chest along with 3 silver stars beneath that logo. That was the uniform of the Third Grade of the Intermediate Academy. So that means those people whre Senior Students for their academy.

Xiao Yuewu heaved a sigh of reliefas he knew those people weren't any enemies. His moonlit Curved daggers vanished from his hands and he slightly bowed to the newcomers.

"Greetings, Seniors!"

The person who talked to them before stepped forward again. He was a tall young man with light brown hair, green eyes and a slim face. He looked quite feminine, but that just made him look even friendlier and more handsome. He looked around and saw Sheng feilong absorb the Spirit power of the dead foxes and looked quite astounded before he looked back at Xiao Yuewu.

"You four killed those Cunning Foxes? And all of you are even unharmed. Did you force their flock to flee? That's really impressive."

Xiao Yuewu liked this seniors easygoing nature and the compliments he gave their group and was therefore quite relaxed as he replied with a smile.

"Yes, we killed them, senior. Though we didn't force the flock to flee; Sheng Feilong, ah, the one who's currently absorbing the foxes' leftover strength used his Spirit Power to trap them in an illusion and assaulted the rest of the flock."

The young man seemed quite surprised and looked at Sheng Feilong again before he seemed to remember something.

"Ah, right, he's the disciple of Senior Spirit Flamingo, isn't he? His Spirit Power must be enormous if he's able to trap three 400-years-old Cunning Foxes and a 500-years-old one. No wonder Senior Spirit Flamingo took him in. I'm Wong Wushuang, by the way. Do you mind if we stay here with you for a while? We could use a short rest after travelling through the forest for all this time. We'll help keeping watch, of course."

Xiao Yuewu's eyes widened for a moment when he heard the young man's name. Wong Wushuang was the commonly known number one student of the heaven Dou Intermediate Academy! Altough he's only 12 years old, he already reached the peak of the Soul Grandmaster Rank, rank 29, and his Spirit Soul is the Dragonscaled Gale Eagle, one of the most powerful bird type Spirit Souls that even has the bloodline of a dragon. Although it couldn't compare to the Phoenix Spirit, it's power and control over the wind element were an incredible boon for an Agility Type Soul Master.

Xiao Yuewu quickly invited them to stay with their group after confirming that Jian Wang and Su Liyun had nothing against his decision. They talked among themselves and Wong Wushuang's easygoing nature made it quite easy for the children to relax in front of their seniors. After waiting for around another half an hour, Jian Wang asked why they we're that far in the Cunning Foxes' territory.

Wong Wushuang looked a bit embarrassed at the question, but still answered.

"We were actually travelling in the east before, but we encountered a nearly 4.000-years-old Iron Hide Gorilla and had to flee to the north for quite a while. We basically just arrived in the foxes territory and run straight into you. Luckily the ape had given up on chasing us when we went through the Black Panther's territory."

Jian Wang nodded in understanding while Xiao Yuewu frowned and looked at Wong Wushuang.

"That Iron Hide Gorilla should be a Guardian, right? But you encountered it in the outskirts, just like the Terrorghost Elk... Could their be something wrong with the Guardians?"

Wong Wushuang seemed surprised.

"You also met a Guardian away from its territory near the entrance to the intermediate platform? You little guys are lucky to have survived meeting it, well done. The Terrorghost Elk is known to be over 4.000-years-old and one of the most powerful Guardians. How did you escape it?"

Su Liyun was the one to answer this time as she embarrassedly smiled at Wong Wushuang.

"It pressured Feilong with it's Spirit Power, but he held out long enough for Xiao Yuewu to distract it, which allowed us to flee. I think it wasn't that interested in us anyways, as we should be pitifully weak in its eyes..."

Wong Wushuang lightly laughed and then smiled at Su Liyun, seemingly consoling her.

"No need to talk yourselves down over it. The Guardian's are actually not meant to be defeated, anyways. Moreover, they're even more powerful than normal Soul Beasts of their age since they are special, powerful Beasts and they're said to leave behind a Soul Bone in 100% of the cases. That's also the reason why only Soul Masters up to rank 39 Soul Elders are allowed to enter the elementary platform."

They continued to talk for a while after that and it didn't take long before Sheng Feilong woke up. He didn't notice Wong Wushuang and his team and focused on his Ancient Hypnotic Toad. He willed it to appear and inspected it for a while. It had increased from a slightly over 640-years-old Spirit Soul to a 833-years-old Spirit Soul. An increase of nearly 200 years! That was even better than what Sheng Feilong had expected. Although the 4 Cunning Foxes were around 400 years old, that should have just increased the age of his Ancient Hypnotic Toad by around 100 years.

Sheng Feilong was lost in thought for a moment before coming up with an explanation. The age increase was most likely boosted by the Ancient Hypnotic Toads extreme suitability with Spirit Power. Al the cunning foxes had quite a formidable Spirit Power themselves, the toad managed to absorb even more of it than other Spirit Souls of the spiritual element would be able to. Sheng Feilong nodded to himself and willed his Spirit Soul to disappear again, before looking around.

The first thing he noticed was the lack of fox corpses. Inside the Spirit Ascension Platform, Soul Beast corpses that had their remnant Spirit Power absorbed, would vanish, not leaving behind a body. He then looked around to find his friends and flinched when saw all three of them look at him, as well as 6 strangers! Sheng Feilong quickly calmed down as he saw that they were calmly sitting around with no hostility present while a few kept watch.

Xiao Yuewu and Wong Wushuang walked up to him and Sheng Feilong and the latter introduced themselves. Sheng Feilong was surprised to see the Academy's number 1 genius hand out with his team and also asked what the were doing here. Wong Wushuang told him about their encounter with the Iron Hide Gorilla and Sheng Feilong nodded in understanding, not asking further. They sat down around the patchwork camp that Xiao Yuewu and Wong Wushuang built and talked for a while. Jiang Wang then asked Sheng Feilong how much progress he made with his artificial Spirit Soul and was shocked when Sheng Feilong told him that its age increased by nearly 200 years. Wong Wushuang could help but become interested at that moment and asked for Sheng Felong's Spirit Souls actual age. Hearing that it's already over 833 years old, he become shocked as Sheng Feilong was just 10 years old but already had such a strong artificial Spirit Soul.

Wong Wushuang excused himself for a moment and walked around between his team members, whispering a few things to them, to which most of them nodded, while a few others eyed Sheng Feilong's group of four suspiciously before eventually also agreeing. After talking to everyone of his team members, Wong Wushuang returned to Sheng Feilong's side and spoke up with an interested expression.

"Do you think you could handle increasing your artificial Spirit Soul's age breaking through the 1.000 years boundary?"

Sheng Feilong seemed a bit surprised but still nodded his head.

"I've talked about that with my master before, and he said that I'd easily be able to handle it. So, it's actually my goal to make that breakthrough by visiting the Spirit Ascension Platform this time."

"In that case, do you mind if we help you guys out with that?", Wong Wushuang asked with a slight smile. Sheng Feilong looked at him a bit strangely, before Wong Wushuang quickly made his intention clear.

"Don't look at me like that, we have no ulterior motives. I was just wondering if you could put in a good word with Senior Spirit Flamingo for us. A good impression from him would greatly help us if we wanted to join the Spirit Pagoda sometime, ha, ha. We've also seen one of the Cunning Foxes' traps on our way here, so we could immediately go there and try our luck."

Sheng Feilong thought about this offer for a while, asked his friends for their opinion, still in the presence of Wong Wushuang, and ultimately decided to agree. After that, their newly formed group of 10 went out again, going by the same plan as before to lure out the foxes, although now Wong Wushuang would take Xiao Yuewu's place as 'bait'. Sheng Feilong's team of 4 then focused on taking out the foxes trapped in Sheng Feilong's illusions while Wong Wushuang's team tried their luck at hunting the other foxes before they could flee.