Making no social distinctions in teaching, this was a teaching style of Yu Yu. Any living being, talented or not, as long as it was not evil, and had never done anything unforgivable, Yu Yu would happily take it as a disciple. Yu Yu never liked crowded places. He always went to wild places. Therefore, many of his disciples were spirit creatures.
Yu Yu was a powerful being with an excellent cultivation. As more and more spirit creatures became his disciples, he created a scripture titled Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text, as the beginner tutorial for his spirit creature disciples.
Ji Hao silently activated his primordial spirit. Five light streams with the colors of golden, silver, black, gray, and rainbow rose from his head. They wove into a hundreds of meters wide, multicolored cloud in the air about nine meters high. The embryos of Dao of destruction, void, and evolvement sat on the cloud, their legs crossed. They opened their mouths and read the Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text aloud along with Ji Hao.
While he was reading the scripture, a great amount of natural power was inhaled into Ji Hao’s body, absorbed by his embryo of Dao, then transformed into the pure powers of sun, extreme negative, destruction, void, and evolvement, accumulating in his body. He controlled these powers with his primordial spirit and turned them into fist-sized, five-colored lotuses, flying out from Ji Hao’s mouth along with his voice.
Along with a faintly audible, beautiful melody, those lotuses softly, slowly drifted down from the air and merged into the heads of Shermie, his children, and grandchildren.
Shermie’s body was a little burning. He trembled slightly, with his slim eye popped widely up, even as big as his fists. He looked at Ji Hao in a great surprise. Subconsciously, he reached out his arms, lowered his body, then put his forehead and palms down on the ground and kowtowed to Ji Hao, worshipping him.
To be honest, without Ji Hao’s explanation, Shermie couldn’t understand a word from the Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text. After all, Shermie was a spirit creature, and was a crayfish, one of the lowest types among water-kind creatures. He couldn’t even read. Understanding the profound Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text? That would be way too difficult for him.
But, Ji Hao consumed his own power and planted his own understanding about the Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text directly, deeply in the souls of Shermie and his children and grandchildren, allowing them to understand the mysticalness of this text.
Shermie was shaking with excitement. His shells bumped against each other, causing a slight noise. While trying their best to calm down from the wild joy in their hearts, he and all the other little crayfishes lied quietly, foreheads and palms against the ground, daring not to move.
All of a sudden, they felt the great joy and happiness, coming straight from their hearts. They felt that they were the same as before, but in the meanwhile, they clearly realized that everything had changed. Their bodies, their souls, their fates; everything was completely different, as those lotuses drifting out from Ji Hao’s mouth merged into their bodies.
Guided by Ji Hao, Shermie started learning things from the Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text the first. He sensed a slight, yet sharp pain from his soul. He endured it, gritted his teeth, and continued.
A strange sense of power was released from Shermie’s soul. His soul turned purer and purer, more and more transparent, crystalline and glowing, like earth turning into gold, and iron turning into a holy weapon. The Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text purified and strengthened the soul with the great pain, so that the cultivator could go beyond the nature of spirit creatures, and miracles could happen.
This Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text Yu Yu created was titled after ‘natural trial’, because he wanted his spirit creature disciples to go through a cruel pain when they started their cultivations. Like natural trials, the pain would improve their souls and free them, turning them into much higher grade lives from ‘spirit creatures’, and make them perfect and sturdy foundations of Dao.
Shermie and the other little crayfishes trembled intensely, not because of the joy anymore, but because of the endless pain from their souls. They felt like they were in the worst hell, being tortured forever.
Shermie slightly opened his mouth, gasped deeply for air, then said harshly to his children and grandchildren, "Boys, is this the greatest mercy from your grand Shifu…Get through it, you have to…As long as we get through this, we will no longer be lowly crayfishes living in mud, chewing rotten grassroots…We, we will have a chance to become dragons too!"
The group of little crayfishes responded with moans, snorts, or deep quick shouts. They also had their teeth gritted tightly while enduring the pain from their souls. None of them complained.
Ji Hao nodded. Not to mention anything else, for this determination he had, Shermie deserved a better future and a great luck.
This time, Ji Hao had truly found valuable things in Kui Water.
About water-kind spirit creatures, there was a term, ‘shrimp and crab warriors’. Shrimp and crab warriors were huge in numbers, but awfully weak, pure cannon fodders. From the ancient era to present, not a single famous, influential one had ever emerged among shrimp and crab warriors.
Shrimps, prawns, crayfishes, and similar creatures were all poorly talented. In the water world, large fishes ate small fishes, small fishes ate tiny fishes, tiny fishes ate shrimps, and shrimps ate mud. For a lowly creature that fed on mud, even if it luckily became intelligent, it would have no future at all.
But looking at Shermie and the group of little crayfishes behind him, who were guided by himself, Ji Hao somehow felt that he might create a miracle.
Time was flying. More and more dark-yellow spell symbols sparkled inside the Kui Gate. Countless different sized spell symbols buried deeply inside the mountains, slowly absorbing the earth power, and accumulating a terrifying destructive force.
Ji Hao had already explained the contents of the Natural Trial Spirit Creature Soul Text to Shermie and his descendants eighty-one times. In this process, many of those little crayfishes passed out hundreds of times, but they didn’t give up. They made it to the end, and completed their cultivation based on the text.
They stood up from the ground. Shermie and those little crayfishes, each of them completed one round of cultivation based on the text at least. The nature of their souls had already started ‘evolving’. The senses of powers from these crayfishes had changed, turning special. Looking at them carefully, one would find a pearl-like luster added to their shells.
"Nicely done! Not bad, really not bad!" Ji Hao looked at Shermie and those crayfishes behind him. Including Shermie, ninety-nine crayfishes were standing in front of Ji Hao now.
"These are your new weapons and armors. I made these for you according to your body shapes. You are good at punching, so I made each of you a pair of ‘soul-tearing’ gloves, designed specially to hurt your enemies’ souls. These gloves can also release cold power to hurt your enemies, and are very strong. Come on, try these!"
Waving his hand, Ji Hao sent a series of silver, sparkling, strangely-shaped gloves and armors to Shermie and the other little crayfishes. Those gloves were made with the extremely negative power. They were bone-piercingly cold, and quite a couple of little crayfishes sneezed a few times under the cold power released from their gloves.
Shermie hurriedly kneeled on the ground with those crayfishes as they thudded their foreheads against the ground a few times in a row, then happily put on their armors and gloves.
Those armors and gloves were sparkling brightly with a silver light, fitting Shermie and those little crayfishes’ bodies perfectly, just like new shells growing on their bodies. Shermie clenched his fists and threw a few punches in the air, causing a sharp swishing noise. This time when he punched, Ji Hao couldn’t even see his fists.