The moment their palms met, everything stopped.
It wasn't a handshake. It wasn't even a greeting anymore.
The instant Fan Yue's hand touched Tang Yuge's, their spiritual power didn't just react — it exploded. Two rivers colliding, not crashing against each other but finding the same source, rushing together like they'd always been one.
Behind Fan Yue, a translucent silhouette rose from nothing. The Three Saints Dragon — colossal, ancient, its luminous eyes alone carrying enough pressure to make the air feel heavier.
Behind Tang Yuge, something else emerged.
White horns. Scales of jade and blue, shifting like sunlight through deep water. The body of a horse, the legs of a deer, the head and tail of a dragon. A mane of living fire that coiled at its hooves and streamed along its spine like burning silk.
The Five-Element Qilin. A Battle Soul of legend.
And then the two silhouettes began to merge.
Lan Xuanyu stood completely still, watching. He forgot to breathe.
The Dragon and the Qilin didn't clash — they recognized each other. They folded together, layer by layer, their forms dissolving into a single impossible shape. The room flooded with light. Not one color — all of them at once. Gold. Silver. Chestnut. Azure. Crimson. Ash. Amber. The brilliance was so overwhelming that Lan Xuanyu threw his arm over his eyes.
Then — silence.
The light collapsed inward like a held breath finally released.
And behind the two of them, something rose.
A dragon.
Its scales blazed with living gold, but five colors moved beneath the surface — blue, red, grey, amber, chestnut — rippling and shifting like gemstones breathing. Two golden horns swept back from its head. Four pairs of wings unfolded behind it, each one layered with cascading flame. Its tail burned at the tip with fire that held every color at once.
Its eyes were wrong in the most magnificent way — one burning gold like a noon sun, the other white and cold as a full moon on winter ice.
Lan Xuanyu finally lowered his arm.
The moment he did, something inside his chest ignited. Nine-colored light pulsed behind his ribs, violent and involuntary.
My Dragon God bloodline is reacting this strongly? The thought hit him like cold water. Don't tell me their Fusion rivals a Dragon God transformation—
Then both of them collapsed.
Fan Yue and Tang Yuge's hands separated at the same instant. Their faces had gone white as paper. They hit the floor without catching themselves, breathing in ragged pulls, every drop of spiritual and mental energy wrung out completely.
The magnificent dragon behind them dissolved like smoke. Like it had never existed.
Fan Yue focused on breathing. His bloodline vortex stirred reluctantly, then caught — spiritual power flooding back through him in slow, steadying waves.
Across from him, Tang Yuge had already assumed a cross-legged position, eyes closed, recovering with the quiet efficiency of someone who'd been through worse.
Fan Yue waited until he could think clearly, then looked up at Lan Xuanyu.
"That was Soul Fusion, wasn't it."
Not a question.
Lan Xuanyu nodded.
"Exactly that. Same thing happened between me and Dun Qianqiu." He paused. "Rest first. We'll talk when you're both back."
Two hours later, the three of them sat facing each other.
"Soul Fusion," Lan Xuanyu began, "only emerges between Spirit Masters whose Battle Souls share an exceptionally deep resonance. For a short window, it allows you to release enormous concentrated power — sometimes even generating entirely new abilities by merging your individual skills." He let that settle. "It's extraordinarily rare. Compatible Battle Souls aren't enough on their own. You also need near-perfect synchronization of both spiritual and mental force."
Tang Yuge turned her gaze to Fan Yue. She could feel it now — a thread, dense and strangely warm, stretched between them.
"I never imagined I'd find someone I could fuse with," she said. Calm. Factual. But there was something behind her eyes that hadn't been there before.
Fan Yue nodded.
"Since we're in the same class now, we should develop it."
Tang Yuge didn't answer with words. She simply stepped forward, took his hand, and the connection between them snapped taut like a bowstring — present, immediate, real. No Fusion. Just contact.
"Let's start smaller," she said. "Try merging our spiritual power."
Fan Yue felt heat climb the back of his neck. Her hands were warm. Softer than he expected. Tang Yuge's expression didn't flicker.
He exhaled. Closed his eyes.
And then he felt it — her spiritual power washing against his. Impossibly clean. Calm and flowing, like a deep river that had never been touched by sediment. His own power reached toward it almost without his permission, and the two streams joined with an ease that should have taken months of deliberate practice.
They opened their eyes at the same moment.
"Well?" Lan Xuanyu asked, leaning forward.
"Perfect synchronization," Tang Yuge answered. "I can route spiritual power directly to him, and he to me. That kind of flow only happens at very high harmony levels. If we cultivate together, our speed could double."
Fan Yue frowned slightly.
But my technique—
"I don't think it's a good idea," he said. "My cultivation method is... particular. It could hurt you."
Tang Yuge thought for exactly one second.
"Then we start at minimum intensity and scale up gradually. I'll break the connection the moment I sense anything wrong."
"Don't worry so much." Lan Xuanyu's voice was easy, but his eyes were doing something complicated. "If I'm right, your techniques are nearly identical to mine. As long as you don't force her to absorb your full output, there shouldn't be any unpredictable side effects."
He said it with confidence. He almost believed it.
The truth was, Lan Xuanyu had been certain his cultivation technique was unique — passed directly to him by his teacher, who'd told him only he could master it. But every time he stood near Fan Yue, he felt that dragon bloodline vortex spinning inside him. Dense. Primordial. Identical in structure to his own.
Or it had been, before eight months of whatever Fan Yue had done to himself.
Now the techniques still matched — same architecture, same circulation pattern, same rhythm — but the bloodlines themselves had diverged into something he couldn't fully read. Only when Fan Yue released his Battle Soul could Lan Xuanyu feel the Dragon's presence clearly again.
He had questions. He'd ask them after the competition.
Fan Yue simply nodded. "Alright. Let's try."
Tang Yuge closed her eyes and activated the Mysterious Heaven Technique.
Fan Yue activated Blood Breathing.
The effect was immediate and violent.
Their cultivation speed doubled. The volume of spiritual power they could absorb surged — for each of them — and it moved between their bodies like current through a single circuit, effortless and unimpeded.
Fan Yue felt his meridians come alive. Tang Yuge's spiritual power flowing into him was the cleanest thing he'd ever touched.
She's operating on a completely different level of purity.
On her end, Tang Yuge was working very hard not to show how shocked she was.
It wasn't just the spiritual power hitting her — it was the life energy. A torrent of it, dense and warm, spreading through her body like sunlight through water. By her estimate, at this rate, less than ten minutes would fill her to capacity.
What kind of technique does this? How does he absorb this much Life Force? That kind of proximity to Life itself — I've never even heard of it. How did Shrek miss him during the entrance exams?
She cut the connection first.
Fan Yue felt it immediately — the thread going slack — and stopped alongside her. Their hands separated.
"Report," Lan Xuanyu said.
Fan Yue shook his head slowly. "Harmony level is very high. Speed doubled. But because of my technique, we can only sustain this for about ten minutes a day — and that's while I'm holding back, outside a proper cultivation room."
Tang Yuge was still feeling the aftershocks move through her. Waves of concentrated spiritual power followed by surges of life energy, cycling through her in turn.
She looked at Fan Yue directly.
"How are you absorbing that much Life Force?" There was no pretense in her voice — just genuine, undisguised curiosity. "If you've been training like this the entire time... you're not just a Spirit Master. You're a walking crystal of life energy."
Fan Yue smiled and said nothing.
Lan Xuanyu stood up.
"I'll contact my teacher. She'll know how to properly develop a Soul Fusion bond." Then he turned to Fan Yue. "One more thing. I want to keep you in reserve. You're too significant an asset to reveal right now. For the fight against the fifth years — Tang Yuge goes instead of you."
The air went out of Fan Yue's lungs.
He'd been waiting for a real fight for too long. And now he had to wait longer.
"...Fine." He exhaled. "What can you do."
Lan Xuanyu's smile carried a trace of guilt.
"We're incredibly lucky. No one would ever expect the two of you to have discovered Soul Fusion. When the time comes, it'll hit them like something out of nowhere." He glanced between them. "Now go. Get some rest."
Fan Yue and Tang Yuge walked out into the cool night air together.
He glanced sideways at her.
"...Do you want to practice the Fusion? I think it's worth developing. My cultivation foundation already feels more solid than before."
Tang Yuge considered for exactly one breath.
"Yes." A small smile crossed her face — the first one that reached her eyes. "I know a few things about Soul Fusion. We can work on it."
"Then come to my place."
They trained until exhaustion pulled the floor out from under them.
The day before the fifth-year match, Fan Yue stopped by the Exchange Center to check the odds.
He expected something like 1:2. Maybe 1:3 if confidence in the first years had grown.
What he saw made him stare.
1:1.3?
He blinked. Checked again.
"Did the Academy actually cap their own odds?" He scratched the back of his head. "Are they scared of going bankrupt?"
He thought about it for a moment.
Lan Xuanyu walked out of here with over a hundred purple emblems. Of course they're scared.
He stared at the numbers a little longer.
"If the Academy is doing this..." he said quietly, "it means they genuinely believe we might win. The odds prove it."
He put everything he had on the first years.
Then he left.
The next day, five of them stepped onto the arena floor: Tang Yuge, Yuan Huihui, Lan Mengqin, Dun Qianqiu, and Lan Xuanyu.
The fifth-year representative walked out to meet them.
And the atmosphere changed immediately.
Seven rings. Two-word Battle Armor. The spiritual pressure rolling off him didn't just fill the arena — it bent it, like the air itself was acknowledging something older and heavier than anything the first years had faced before.
What followed wasn't a clean victory.
It was a war.
Every one of them gave everything. Heavenly Treasures burned through for stimulation, attack, and recovery. Combinations that had never been tested under real pressure were tested now, and some of them held, and some of them cracked, and they kept fighting anyway.
It was the first battle that genuinely cost them something.
And it was only the fifth year.