Autophagy

"These soul worms are incredibly fragile to physical contact," Aston started explaining. "When they are met with a slight vibration in the soul, they will quickly start pouring out of it to save themselves from danger. That protection mechanism, however, will be their demise."

"So we'll use this dagger to shake their souls..." Marcus muttered. Song Lei touched his chin and thought about Aston's words. Although they were a bit hard to understand, he could still do so somewhat.

"Wouldn't we have to stab it pretty deep?" Song Lei asked. "After all, their soul is inside their body. We would kill them if we stab it that deep."

"That's not a problem. Even if you just tap their body with the dagger, it will make their soul shake. Higher dimensions work much differently than how we think," Aston said. "the thing you see when you look through the monocle is something like their soul gate. The real soul covers the entire body, it can even spread out of it."

"Hmm... That's great then," Song Lei said. "However, we are about to run out of time for today."

"You seem to be right," Aston confirmed after looking at the clock. They had half an hour before three o'clock hit. Before then, they had to go back to sleep. "Let's accompany Marcus back to his room, carry Blake to his room, and then sleep ourselves."

"Mhm."

Song Lei nodded. They left the room carrying Blake's unconscious body. Fortunately, Aston knew which room was Blake's. They managed to reach Blake's room without any events. They left him on his bed and went to Marcus' room.

After finishing cleaning up their traces, they went back to their bed and laid down on it. When the clock hit 03:00, Song Lei waited to confirm that Clark and Rufus didn't do anything to them and directly went back to sleep. After seeing them go back to sleep, Song Lei relaxed. He felt his consciousness slip away...

...

As the morning came, Song Lei and Aston went through the morning classes as normal. During their free time, they separated from Rufus and Clark.

"How are we going to make the soul weapon?" Song Lei asked while looking at the blueprint in his hands.

"Some materials will be hard to come by," Aston said. "Most importantly, making the base of the knife is technically impossible. There's no forge in our orphanage."

"That's a problem..." Song Lei muttered while holding his chin. After thinking for some time, an idea appeared in his head. "Would we be able to use a normal knife as the base and coat it with soulite? Like... Enchanting a sword."

"That's what I thought of too," Aston said. He sighed and continued by saying, "Unfortunately, it isn't very plausible. We would still need to melt it somehow..."

"Then how about just pouring some of that purple liquid onto the blade?" Song Lei kept on producing new ideas. "Would that work?"

"For that to work, you would have to stab your weapon to that person. We don't want to kill," Aston said. They had no other ideas left as they both stood there and kept thinking about what they would do.

After an awkward silence of twenty minutes, Aston sighed deeply.

"It seems like we have no choice left," he said. "We have to keep acting in a covert manner."

"You're right," Song Lei said. "Meanwhile, we can keep training and gathering new allies. You should also be able to produce new ideas and discover new facts that can be useful to us."

"Mhm," Aston nodded. They had no other choice left other than this.

With the free time nearing its end, they went back to their class. After the CQC class was over, it was time for their next free time which lasted for one and a half hours. Song Lei would've preferred to spend this time talking more with Aston, unfortunately, he couldn't do that.

"You're a smart slave of mine..." Clark whispered into his ears. "It's truly interesting that you refuse my blessing so much."

"Let's get this over with," Song Lei sighed. They were currently in the building that the fights took place between trainees. Since Song Lei came to the orphanage, this place was gathering more and more participants.

"Hmph..." Clark sneered. "Keep making me proud and I'll ignore your blasphemous actions."

Song Lei didn't respond to Clark. He knew that he couldn't go against his will. At least until they were able to procure those soul weapons, he had to put up with Clark's actions.

"Today, our arena's star newbie is here to show us wonderful shows! He is talented and strong, just like his master!" Zac announced. Right now, there were about fifty people all surrounding the ring that Zac stood on. "Against him is another newbie! He came here one day after Lewis! Here's Theo! Give him applause!"

As Zac's voice resounded in the building, a storm of applause started blasting. Clark slightly patted Song Lei's back and pushed him towards the arena. His creepy smile was back on his face.

Sighing, Song Lei walked ahead and got up on the ring. He knew that from this day on, until the day they managed to finish their weapon, he would've to put up with these kinds of things.

After going up to the stage, Song Lei and his opponent Theo got ready. After Zac started the fight, they both charged at each other. In a few exchanges of blows, Song Lei was able to get the upper hand and finish the fight.

After Theo got off the stage, Zac announced another person. In this one and a half hours of free time, Song Lei had to fight against five different people. By the time he got off the ring, all of his body was covered in bruises. He was drenched in sweat and there was an exhausted expression on his face.

After Song Lei got off the ring, Clark brought him a towel with his signature creepy smile. Song Lei took the towel and inspected it to make sure that there was nothing wrong with it. When he was sure he wiped the sweat off of his head.

"I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow at the same time," Clark said to Song Lei. 

"I already know that," Song Lei sneered. 'I wonder if you will be able to keep that smile of yours when we destroy your so-called heavenly kingdom,' Song Lei thought. He left the building and went to meet with Aston before the curfew came.

"You seem... Tired," Aston said awkwardly while inspecting Song Lei's bruises. Although he was no doctor, he had some medical skills. "I have been trying to develop a medicine but I lack proper test subjects."

Song Lei raised one of his brows and looked at Aston. "What do you mean? Do we have to go hunting tonight?"

"No no. There's no need to," Aston said. He took out a small bottle from his pocket.

"Umm..."

Song Lei's face soured at the sight of the purple lotion inside the bottle. Aston didn't say anything and poured the lotion onto his hand. He then rubbed it onto one of Song Lei's bruises.

As soon as he did so, Song Lei's wound started smoking.

"Urgh..." Song Lei groaned at the pain that spread around his body. It was a pain that would be enough to make a normal person faint. For Song Lei, however, it wasn't nearly enough.

Shortly after, the pain disappeared from Song Lei's body, alongside the bruise.

"Huh. It's working pretty good," Aston said. "As expected."

"What was that?" Song Lei asked while rubbing the place the bruise was on just a few seconds ago.

"I made that using the worm's regeneration powers," Aston said. "It was pretty effective."

"You've become some kind of soultech scientist," Song Lei said. "I doubt that there are people that know as much as you about souls."

Aston shrugged at Song Lei's words. However, there was a faint smile on his face. Without saying anything, he continued healing Song Lei's bruises one by one. By the time the curfew was about to come, all of Song Lei's bruises had been healed.

They went back to the dorm room to rest for the day. Unfortunately, Song Lei didn't have the luxury to sleep during the night. He had to keep awake just in case Clark changed his mind and decided to attack them. Not being able to answer an ambush because he was sleeping would be the worst thing that could happen. For that reason, Song Lei would stay awake till 3 a.m every night.

When Aston and Song Lei arrived back in their room, Clark and Rufus had already started sleeping. They went to their bed as well without disturbing the two. After the lights of the whole orphanage went off, an eerie darkness covered the room.

This was the beginning of Song Lei's five hellish months in the Eye Orphanage....