Nightmare’s Call

Lin Sheng had never had such sleep for a long time. When he woke up, the sun’s rays were flaring through the canopy roof and shining down on the forest floor. The pasture on either side of him was wet with morning dew, while he found himself in the arms of Khadula, whose cascading white long hair was hugging him on both sides. The girl closed her eyes and rested her head on his chest on one side; her face was as delicate as it was white, and her eyelashes were long and curly. She seemed to have fallen asleep.

A pleasant scent drifted into Lin Sheng’s nostrils. It felt soothing to the heart yet caused an itch to his nose.

“Khadula?” Lin Sheng raised his hand and was just about to touch her nose when Khadula suddenly awakened. Her large, expressive eyes beamed at Lin Sheng.

“You are awake!” She sat up, hoisting her white long hair together with the alluring scent away from Lin Sheng.

“Thanks.” It was a weird feeling. Khadula was his split soul, but because of the separate memories, their behaviors were different.

“Am I seducing myself here? What’s going on?” He let out a half-smile.

“If you like, I can do anything.” Khadula winked at him. “I am you, and you are me. No matter how you treat me and what you do to me, I will tell no one.” She pouted, stricken with a pair of dimples on her cheeks.

Lin Sheng admitted that she had gotten the better of him. Yet since she was his split soul, he knew every thought of her. At that moment, he could see the various adult-grade materials going on in Khadula’s mind. The most appalling thing was that the images were all of the smitten Khadula and him. He nearly lost himself in it, and Lin Sheng knew that what Khadula said was real. But it was awful to make out with himself, he thought.

“Lin Sheng…”

“Don’t say it!” Lin Sheng flung a halting hand at her, his voice determined. “I’m not that kind of person! What is the purpose of painstakingly cultivating our sacred power only to be screwed by our lustful desire?”

Khadula said nothing again but wore a loving smile. She was a split soul of Lin Sheng’s, one in the body with him. She knew the nature of him and understood his every thought. Lin Sheng realized that if he stayed with Khadula any longer, he might lose himself for real. Recognizing this reality, he got to his feet at once and glanced up at the sky. Then he took out his mobile phone to check the time.

“Nine in the morning! It’s time to resolve the issues of the Night Lord. I might have injected the basic combat instinct into him, but the Night Lord could not function on his own. He is more like a lowest-ranked Blackfeather swordman. I have to take control. But even with my full power on, I can only last for three breaths. This means there is still a huge power gap between my soul and the Night Lord.” Lin Sheng was thinking hard on the problems. He had slaughtered as many monsters and gathered as numerous memories as he could remember. He could have written a memoir of himself and his experience to fill an entire library. So solving this problem was just a piece of cake for him.

“I must find a way to solve the problem.” He recalled the knowledge about the souls from his memories. “What have I done that the other summoned commanders could act independently? Khadula and the Steel Lord have been utilizing their full potential from the very beginning. Why can’t I control them?”

Lin Sheng wanted to compare the differences between the two situations. so he went into the Holy Sanctum, sat behind the prayer altar and analyzed the information. Before long, a tiny detail that was almost inconsequential crossed his mind.

“It’s the difference in the souls.” The penny dropped, and he started to get a hang of the problem. “What I give to the split soul is only a core. Around the core, they take the memory fragments as nutrients and get the nourishment from the body itself. Then through the stimuli of the outside world, they improve and shape a new split-soul individual, which is already different from me.” Things began to dawn on him.

“That means they are the seeds I have sown, each of them grows in a separate body into a distinct fruit.” Feeling the black smoke of the Night Lord surrounding him, a thought came to Lin Sheng’s mind. “Does it mean that as soon as I let them grow in a different environment, these split souls will become different beings?”

He became silent as he felt the lump of the still Night Lord’s soul in his mind. As the Night Lord was more powerful than the Steel Lord, the indigestible souls were even more in number and higher in strength. “Besides, the fluctuating emotions might have caused volatility in the inborn abilities of the Night Lord, which increased the exhaustion of my soul. But if I pull away and only inject the combat basics into the Night Lord, there will be little emotional turbulence. This way, the inborn abilities will be in a dormant state and I could keep exhaustion to the minimum.”

Sensing that he had cracked the problem, Lin Sheng could not wait to test out his theory. He asked Khadula to take charge of the matters in the Holy Sanctum while he dashed to the Blood Armor-guarded forest behind the sanctum.

Lin Sheng began to regulate his mind and emotions, and then gradually transferred his soul into the Night Lord. Plumes of smoke gathered before him and materialized into the tall figure of the Night Lord. It was not until a minute later that the Night Lord slowly raised his hands.

“It works!” Excited, Lin Sheng tried to clench his fist. The body would not use up much energy as long as he kept his emotions steady. “And this body seems to attract special energy from the surrounding environment. Its absorption rate is phenomenal!”

Lin Sheng carefully assessed the body of the Night Lord, whose strength might be poor but his intake of energies from the environment was nothing short of stunning. As powerful as Khadula and the Steel Lord were, their absorption rate of mysterious energy was only one third that of the Night Lord.

“No wonder this fella is crowned the most powerful councillor in Blackfeather City.” Lin Sheng lamented. Staying in the body of the Night Lord was a tiresome task, and he had to keep a tab on his emotions. But Lin Sheng felt that this body was continuously generating a ton of pure soul particles that nourished his soul. And the rate of growth of his soul now had even surpassed that when he played the Bloodazure Harp by several times.

“This is a cheat! It’s like having an oversized soul accelerator!” Using a councillor-class body to nourish himself was a rare luxury one could have. Lin Sheng believed that he was one of the lucky few to do that.

“This way, I can temporarily use the combat ability of the Night Lord. It just requires some time to adapt, and let my soul, as the split soul of this body, receive nourishment and grow stronger. Before long, my soul here will restore to the full potential of this body, just like Khadula. And that means I can leverage this powerful body to turbo-boost my soul to become on par with Khadula’s level of strength.”