Welcome Back, Qian Renxue

"Xiao Xue... you must live on." Her hand trembled as she gently stroked my cheek, then fell limp.

Heaven seemed to have played a cruel joke on me. I had spent my entire life in the dark. Only as my mother lay dying did I learn the truth. By then, it was too late.

My Divine Throne shattered, and my mother died beneath his sword. Walls collapsed, smoke filled the air, and the armies of the Two Great Empires stormed Spirit Hall and plundered it at will. I watched Spirit Hall's legacy of a thousand years perish.

Helplessness and regret could not begin to describe my pain.

After burying my mother and the elders who had fallen in the war, I hid in the shadows and watched our enemies savor their victory. What hurt most was not seeing them celebrate atop the ruins of the Spirit Hall Empire. It was—

In a village, a child asked timidly, "Grandpa Village Chief, are the bad people gone?"

The Village Chief reassured the child. "Don't be afraid. Those villains from the Spirit Hall Empire who tried to invade Heaven Dou will never come back."

"Lord Sea God defeated them."

Grandfather, were these the people I had sworn to protect?

My mother had sinned against Spirit Hall. She had dragged it into the wrong and made it a target for all. I had tried to save Spirit Hall and rule this continent in my own way, but I failed to spread the glory of the Angels across this land. In the end, the victor, Sea God Tang San, became the object of the continent's faith.

Our era ended, and the story of the Shrek Seven Devils became legend. People praised the wonders of the Sea God Era and watched them ascend, never realizing that the demons had been set loose.

The old order collapsed, but no new order took its place. The Sea God ruled the continent through sheer might only during his own era. After he left, darkness quietly gathered in unseen corners.

Spirit Hall's era had ended, but the awakening of Martial Souls continued. Policies differed from place to place. Lords awakened Martial Souls only for their own subjects, and each territory had its own fees. Some territories did not even provide awakenings. Villagers went their entire lives without awakening their Martial Souls, and countless talented commoners went undiscovered. Even where commoners could awaken successfully, their talent merely made them fodder for the nobles.

You commoner Soul Masters who proclaimed in Spirit Hall's day that you would never be its lackeys, that you only wanted to be Free Soul Masters—were you truly free now?

With Spirit Hall gone, the truce the Sea God had decreed came to an end. After his ascension, war between nations engulfed the world again. Yet thousands of years passed with Heaven Dou and the Star Luo Empire locked in a strange balance. Neither could swallow the other.

I watched the Tang Sect sell Hidden Weapons, Shrek Academy produce talent, and the Clear Sky Sect and other forces Tang San had left behind stand above worldly affairs while secretly keeping the continent's powers in check. For thousands of years, Heaven Dou and the Star Luo Empire remained at odds, until the Heaven Dou Empire split in two and the three nations plunged into ceaseless war.

As for me—

My life had long since ended, but the shattered Divine Seed had merged with my soul. Unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation, I could only drift helplessly through the River of Time. I witnessed everything that would come to pass.

During the first Evil Spirit Master Rebellion, they emerged from the shadows. Wherever they went, countless families were destroyed. Evil Spirit Masters cultivated with their victims' blood and souls. Behind every powerful Evil Spirit Master lay heaps of bones.

Only then did people begin to yearn for the coming of the Angels.

Yes, our bloodline was the natural bane of Evil Spirit Masters. Once an ordinary Angel Soul Master reached the rank of Titled Douluo, she became a calamity to them. An Angel Titled Soul Master could easily kill a Limit Evil Spirit Master through that advantage alone.

In Spirit Hall's era, every Pope had been an Angel, and Angels at the Limit Douluo level had existed as well. Evil Spirit Masters never stood a chance of gaining power.

But after our defeat in that war, our bloodline had withdrawn from the world. The occasional Angel Soul Master who appeared on the continent could not escape the Evil Spirit Masters' brutal attacks. They were cunning enough never to let a Soul Master with an Angel Martial Soul reach Titled Douluo.

The scourge of the Evil Spirit Masters persisted until Shrek Academy stepped in like a savior. They used Sea God's Light to suppress the Evil Spirit Masters. The survivors basked in its glow and thanked the Sea God from the bottom of their hearts for saving them.

Yet the Evil Spirit Masters kept coming, wave after wave, for tens of thousands of years.

Six thousand years later, I watched another continent drift in from across the sea. Its people came with ambitions much like ours. They started a war and tried to conquer this continent. Their Soul Tools gave them an advantage, but Shrek Academy's immense power to rally others stopped their march toward unification. Their Soul Tools, however, also drove the Tang Sect founded by the Sea God into decline.

Four thousand years later, a genius who emerged as suddenly as Tang San once had brought the weakened Tang Sect to an entirely new peak.

In that era, the Sun Moon Empire launched a war of unification. Just as victory was within its grasp, Tang San, who had been a god for ten thousand years, intervened and stopped it. That young genius eventually attained a Divine Throne too, but he was nothing more than Tang San's lackey.

Several thousand more years passed before the continent was finally unified. Then Space Rifts appeared, and beings from the Other Plane began invading this world. Countless heroes rose in that era. They held the front lines at the Space Rifts and stopped the invaders.

Such stirring, tragic tales of heroism. Yet they made my soul tremble, because I knew more than those heroes who now lay in their graves.

I knew Tang San's father had become the Lord of the Plane, while his mother had seized control of Life's core through Body Seizure. They had every ability to stop the invasion, but they watched the catastrophe consume countless lives with cold indifference.

My consciousness slowly wore away in the River of Time. Soon it would scatter.

I thought back to that scene at the village entrance twenty thousand years ago—

"Grandpa Village Chief, are the bad people gone?"

"Don't be afraid. Those villains from the Spirit Hall Empire who tried to invade Heaven Dou will never come back."

The lambs had joined forces with the wolves to drive off the Fierce Tiger. How bitterly ironic.

At last, I felt my soul reach its end. My consciousness began to fade...

"Mother, I'm coming to find you."

Qian Renxue slowly opened her eyes and looked around in confusion. She was inside a magnificent hall, surrounded by Spirit Qi that could grant eternal life.

She felt none of the aimless drifting of a soul after death. Instead, she had a body again.

Instinctively, Qian Renxue summoned her Martial Soul.

The Fallen Angel.

Six black rings and three red—the same configuration she had possessed back then. The effects of her shattered Divine Core were gone, but her Divine Throne had been stripped from her as well. She was now a Level 99 Limit Douluo with the strength of a Quasi-God.

"Welcome back, Qian Renxue."