Autophagy

"Hey, kid! Aren\'t you too young to be drinking here? How about you give us all of your money and get the fuck out of here?" Cayden sneered. Song Lei hardly held himself back from facepalming.

\'Now you just had to go and mess with me...\' Song Lei thought.

"Just leave," Song Lei said while casting an angry glance towards Cayden. As Song Lei\'s ferocious gaze fell on him, Cayden\'s soul shook like never before. He had never felt this way before even against his boss whom he had deemed as the strongest person in the world.

However, Cayden wasn\'t a very smart one. He couldn\'t handle the fact that he was intimidated by a mere child.

"O- Oh! Look at this sassy child! You\'re dead kid!" Cayden said. Although he was trying his best to sound tough, his voice was shaky and timid. His friends hadn\'t felt Song Lei\'s gaze from a close distance, so they had no idea what was going on with Cayden.

On the other hand, Song Lei was celebrating inside his head.

\'I really did it!\' He thought. Since the time he came to the New World and acquired his system, he had been trying to figure out every possible thing about it. Even Body and Mind stats that should\'ve been easy to understand had a lot of depth into them. The Soul stat, however, was much more confusing. No matter what he did, he wasn\'t able to figure out what exactly it did.

Cayden\'s current state of disarray was, again, one of his Soul stat\'s aspects. He had an incredibly high amount of soul stats compared to what a normal person would have. In turn, this allowed him to become a much more intimidating person. His soul\'s sheer sight would frighten the other souls in its premises if he were to become angry.

Cayden did his best to stop himself from shivering and raised his fist. He hurled his fist towards Song Lei\'s cheek. Song Lei could easily dodge the punch, however, he didn\'t do so. It was such a weak punch with no force behind it that it wasn\'t even able to make Song Lei budge.

*Thud

"Was that all?" Song Lei asked. Cayden took a few steps back while holding his hand. He had hurt his wrist from punching in an awkward way.

Song Lei got up from his chair while keeping his hat down. He wanted to make sure that his face wasn\'t seen that much. Seeing Song Lei get up, Cayden gritted his teeth and launched another attack towards him.

Song Lei slightly tilted his head towards his right. Cayden\'s punch flew past his face, punching the air. In the process, Cayden\'s momentum pulled him forward. Song Lei utilized this and grabbed Cayden\'s arm. Using his shoulder as a leverage point, he bent his back and pushed Cayden up with his foot all the while pulling him forward with his hand.

In a split second, Cayden found himself flying in the air as if he was a bird. If he were to fly a bit more, he would hit his head on the ceiling.

\'Freedom...\' A thought filled his head. As if he was freed from his fleshly shackles, a gentle smile appeared on his face. \'I can fly...\'

*CRASH

With Song Lei\'s throw, Cayden flew five meters and hit the wall. If he were to crash into the wall headfirst, he would probably die. Seeing Cayden being utterly crushed, all of his friends were left awestruck. They both looked at each other and agreed to escape without speaking any words. They started walking backward without making any sounds. Unfortunately for them, it wasn\'t that easy to escape from Song Lei.

As if he was a ghost, Song Lei strode forwards in two steps and appeared behind the duo. A chilling sensation filled them, freezing them in their steps. Song Lei raised both of his hands and landed two perfect jabs on their chins.

Without even being able to make any sounds, the trio was knocked unconscious by Song Lei. Zach looked at Song Lei\'s back dumbfounded. He was truly not expecting such a feat from Song Lei. After all, although untrained, these people were thugs. They had experienced a fair bit of street fights. Not to mention the fact that Song Lei was able to crush them single-handedly, even his gaze was enough to scare these people.

"Umm... Do you want something to eat?" Zach asked without knowing what to say. Song Lei hardly held himself back from laughing. He didn\'t answer and picked up the thugs from the ground. Carrying them on his shoulders, Song Lei left the inn and threw them to a nearby alley.

\'I should probably go...\' Song Lei thought. However, just as he was about to leave the place, he felt that he was quite hungry. \'Maybe after a quick snack...\'

...

Aston kept scribbling formula after formula on the paper. It wasn\'t easy to craft soul weapons. It required much more than forging skills. He turned his head to look at the clock. It was already 11 p.m. The rain had stopped twenty minutes ago.

\'Lewis is late...\' He thought. He had thought that Song Lei could come back before midnight as he was going to be doing a relatively easy job, however, that didn\'t seem to be the case. \'I should hurry up.\'

He had to finalize this blueprint. He had been working on this since forever. He wanted to make sure that it was done by tomorrow so he could start producing them. Considering that it was getting late, he took out another pen and started writing with both of his hands.

Aston had this ability since he was a child. His inhuman intelligence on positive sciences was beyond any kind of genius that had existed in history. It was so much that he could simultaneously think about two things at the same time.

However, this ability had its downsides too. In a normal person\'s body, the brain would be the organ that used the most amount of energy. In Aston\'s case, this was amplified even more. All the thinking would make him sweat even though he wasn\'t moving from his place.

If the brain was a car, sugar would be its gasoline. He would have to consume a lot of sugar to keep himself from fainting. Even then, eventually, his brain wouldn\'t be able to replenish its energy fast enough to keep up with Aston\'s pace.

After writing for thirty more minutes, Aston managed to finish the blueprint. Although he was incredibly tired, he would be able to get a good night\'s sleep before starting his task of forging soul weapons tomorrow.

His body was hot because of the sudden energy expenditure. He opened the window to cool down a bit.

He threw the two pens aside and stored the blueprint into his soul storage. When he was finally done, he crumpled on his bed.

\'I wonder how he is doing...\' Aston thought. Although Song Lei was late, he wasn\'t worried about it. After all, Aston knew that Song Lei could deal with whatever came his way. Aston slightly envied Song Lei on this aspect.

There were different kinds of intelligence. For example, Aston was a genius on Logical-Mathematical and Creative intelligence. Song Lei, on the other hand, could be considered a genius in a wide spectrum of things such as interpersonal intelligence and kinaesthetic intelligence.

\'Heh... How childish...\' Aston criticized himself. Every person had their strong sides. No one was perfect after all.

Suddenly, Aston felt goosebumps all over his body. He forced his tired body to wake up and threw himself to the side. This was the best call he could make, as a well-crafted knife was stabbed into the place he had just been.

Frowning, he jumped once more and took cover by going to a corner of the room. Someone had thrown a knife from outside the window!

Considering that the assailant wouldn\'t let him off, Aston quickly took out his dagger and readied himself for any kind of confrontation.

A split second later, a shadow dashed into the from the window. Its balance was incredible, so much so that it wasn\'t affected even a little bit considering that it had just jumped in from the window.

Quickly surveying its surroundings, it located Aston without giving him time to sneak attack. Aston took a defensive posture, however, he was in a tired state that limited his physical capabilities.

The shadow\'s appearance got revealed as the moon showed itself in the sky by escaping the clouds surrounding it, illuminating the room in the meanwhile. It was a person wearing all black clothes with a mask on his face. Although Aston wasn\'t able to identify who it was, he could guess that this person was a relatively tall male by looking at his stature.

Aston raised his awareness as best as he could and waited. Both sides didn\'t move for half a minute, however, it felt like hours to Aston.

Suddenly, the man disappeared from his place and appeared in front of Aston. He swung his knife and disarmed Aston in an instant. Now, Aston was completely defenseless.

"What do you want?" Aston asked the man calmly.

"No need to worry. I was just testing you," the man said. He slashed the knife at Aston. Surprisingly, it hurt just a little bit. It didn\'t even leave a scratch on Aston.

"This knife is dull..." Aston muttered.

"Yes, it is. That knife I threw was too. Although it would\'ve hurt a lot more if it were to hit you," the man said.

"You don\'t have to worry. I\'m just here to leave a message...."