Douluo Continent: My name is Lu Mingfei, and my martial soul is Lu Mingze.

Lu Mingfei's face turned pale instantly.

Four hundred thousand years.

He was a level 20 Soul Master, facing a 400,000-year-old Soul Beast.

The difference between them is roughly equivalent to an ant facing an elephant.

No, it's even more exaggerated than that.

It's like an ant facing a mountain.

Lu Mingfei turned and ran.

But as soon as he took a step, a pressure descended from the sky, causing Lu Mingfei to hesitate slightly.

To avoid any unforeseen circumstances, Lu Mingfei still pretended to be in great discomfort, baring his teeth and making a ferocious face.

Hyotei slowly crawled over and stopped in front of him.

A deep blue eye looked down at him.

"I have a question for you," Hyotei said calmly.

"Answer correctly, live. Answer incorrectly, die."

Lu Mingfei's voice was muffled: "Go ahead and ask."

"What's your name?"

Lu Mingfei thought to himself, this problem is simple.

Lu Mingfei never changes his name or surname, and the thing he fears least in this life is revealing his name.

"My name is Lu Mingze!"

He gave the name Lu Mingze.

It wasn't his own.

It belongs to Lu Mingze.

Hyotei was silent for a second.

"Lu Mingze?"

"Yes! My name is Lu Mingze!"

Hyotei's tail hook slowly drooped down, swaying in front of Lu Mingfei, its cold light gleaming.

"The Lu Mingze I've met isn't you," Hyotei said.

Lu Mingfei's heart skipped a beat.

"But since you're not Lu Mingfei, you're of no value." Hyotei's tone remained calm. "Kill you."

The tail hook was raised and aimed at Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei felt a chill run down his spine.

"Wait, wait, wait!" he shouted frantically, "I'll change it! I'll change it! I'll change it, okay?! My name is Lu Ming—"

Before the word "not" could even be uttered, the tail hook had already fallen.

It wasn't a puncture, it was just a horizontal slap.

The force was terrifyingly precise, just enough to knock him unconscious without smashing his head.

Lu Mingfei's vision went black.

Before he lost consciousness, he heard Lu Mingze's voice ringing in his mind.

"Brother, your chance has come!"

Lu Mingze sounded particularly happy.

He was so happy it made you want to punch him.

Lu Mingfei wanted to curse back, but his mouth wouldn't obey him.

Consciousness is like a stone sinking to the bottom of the water, slowly descending.

The last sound he heard was a cold, icy remark from Hyotei.

"Too clever by half."

Then he knew nothing more.

When Lu Mingfei woke up again, his first feeling was warmth.

It wasn't the kind of warmth maintained by the imperial flames, but rather a genuine rise in the outside temperature.

He lay in a cave, covered with soft animal hides, with a faint firelight flickering around him.

My head is still a little dizzy, and the back of my head is throbbing.

He slowly opened his eyes.

Then he saw a scene that made him wonder if he was still dreaming.

The Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion—the one that almost turned him into a vegetable with its tail—was lying on the other side of the cave, its two pincers crossed in front of it, its posture surprisingly elegant.

And next to it sat a woman.

A woman in a long white dress, with silver-white hair that reached her waist. Her skin was almost translucent white, and her eyes and brows were cool and aloof, like a statue sculpted from ice and snow.

She sat there, holding a cup of tea that appeared out of nowhere, and was talking to Hyotei with her head down.

The two people are chatting.

We had a very pleasant chat.

Hyotei's voice still had that cool tone, but there was something in it that Lu Mingfei couldn't quite put his finger on. How to put it... it was like the relaxed feeling you get when you're chatting with a really good friend.

The older sister, who resembled a snow woman, spoke with a faint smile on her lips.

Lu Mingfei lay there, completely dazed.

His worldview is undergoing a severe shock.

A scorpion.

And a very beautiful snow woman who looks very aloof.

They sat together.

They were having such a pleasant chat.

Lu Mingze's voice came out again at this moment, his tone full of schadenfreude.

"Brother, you're awake?"

Lu Mingfei thought to himself, "Am I still dreaming?"

"It's not a dream."

"Can you explain why a 400,000-year-old scorpion would be sitting and chatting with a beautiful woman?"

Lu Mingze paused for a second, then said in a particularly irritating tone, "Bro, do you think a 400,000-year-old soul beast can't have friends?"

Lu Mingfei: "..."

"Besides, with such high cultivation, what's wrong with her taking human form? The Snow Maiden you saw, if I'm not mistaken, should be the Snow Empress of the Three Heavenly Kings, who is close to 700,000 years old."

Lu Mingfei glanced at the two figures over there again.

An Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion.

A snow woman with silver hair.

What merit or ability do I, Lu Mingfei, possess to encounter these two ferocious beasts simultaneously in this lifetime?

What are they talking about?

"How would I know?" Lu Mingze's voice was tinged with amusement. "Why don't you go ask them?"

"roll."

But Lu Mingfei's voice might have been a little too loud.

The two figures on the other side stopped talking at the same time and turned their heads in unison.

Two pairs of deep blue eyes stared intently at him.

Lu Mingfei froze.

Hyotei gently swayed its tail, its tone flat: "Awake?"

Xue Di glanced at him, her gaze indifferent, as if she were looking at a decent product.

Lu Mingfei forced a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"Um... ladies, could we possibly do this? Please don't kill me?"

The air inside the cave seemed to freeze.

Lu Mingfei lay stiffly on the animal skin, his mind replaying only one thought: Why can I, Lu Mingfei, have a 400,000-year-old scorpion and a 700,000-year-old snow woman staring at me at the same time?

How many people in the entire Douluo Continent have ever enjoyed such treatment?

Xue Di's voice was as clear and cold as an icy spring flowing over stones: "Name."

Just two words, but Lu Mingfei felt the hairs on the back of his head stand on end.

"Lu Mingfei," he answered honestly.

You can't be dishonest.

I almost got swatted to death by a tail just now for mentioning Lu Mingze's name. Doing something this stupid once is enough.

Xue Di nodded slightly and then asked, "Do you know Lu Mingze?"

Lu Mingfei was stunned for a moment.

This is a somewhat delicate issue.

Lu Mingze is his martial soul. In a sense, Lu Mingze is him, and he is Lu Mingze. But just now, Bingdi said that the Lu Mingze she saw was not him.

What does this tell us?

This means that Lu Mingze, that brat, had run away on his own before.

In his mind, Lu Mingfei frantically called out to Lu Mingze: "What's going on? Why does she know you? What have you been doing behind my back?"

With his mind completely calm, Lu Mingze didn't utter a single word.

That little rascal actually hid up beautifully!

Lu Mingfei took a deep breath and said to Xue Di, "I know him. Lu Mingze is my martial soul."

Xue Di's eyes flickered.

Hyotei's tail twitched slightly.

"A Martial Soul?" Ice Emperor's voice held a hint of amusement. "Interesting. A level 20 Soul Master, and his Martial Soul can actually take form to that extent."

Lu Mingfei thought to himself, "I also want to know why."

Xue Di was silent for a while, then suddenly asked a question that almost made Lu Mingfei jump off the animal skin.

"I heard you can harmlessly resolve the great tribulations that Bing'er and I face every 700,000 and 400,000 years?"

Lu Mingfei's mind went completely blank for a moment.

A great calamity that will last for seven hundred thousand years.

A great calamity lasting four hundred thousand years.

He's a level 20 Soul Master, a newbie who hasn't even acquired his second Soul Ring yet, and he's supposed to help two Soul Beasts that have lived for over a million years to overcome their tribulations?

What's the difference between this and asking an ant to build a bridge across the sea?

Lu Mingfei's lips moved, his voice trembling slightly: "Who...who said that?"