Crossing into Douluo, I Started with a Bowl

It was not yet dawn.

Under the illumination of the blazing torches, the city's market had already begun to grow noisy.

Shopkeepers came and went, preparing the ingredients and goods they would sell during the day.

However, a moment later, a sudden, thunderous curse shattered the tranquility.

"You damned Little Cripple, you stole meat from my shop!"

The deep, powerful voice came from in front of a butcher's shop.

Before the counter, a skinny, emaciated Little Cripple clutched a piece of meat and sprinted away.

The rotten cotton at the tip of the wrapping had fallen off. His inferior Wooden Prosthetic kept lifting and dropping, striking the stone pavement and producing a crisp clack, clack, clack.

Although half of his Left Calf was missing and had been replaced with a wooden leg, he was not slow in the slightest.

The fat shopkeeper chased him, panting heavily, but could not catch up.

The distance between them grew wider and wider.

In the end, the fat man could only gasp for breath and collapse onto the ground, shouting uselessly, "Damn Little Cripple! Fucking stop right there!"

"I won't!"

Seeing that he could not catch up, Little Cripple stopped and turned around to make a face at him. Waving his little hand, he said, "Don't be angry. Just consider it an investment in me."

"Pah! An investment in your ass!"

The fat shopkeeper spat on the ground and struggled to his feet. His massive belly bounced.

"Once would've been enough. I'm kindhearted, so I let it go, but the damn brat came back a second time!"

"You really think I don't have a temper?"

Little Cripple waved at him from afar, pretending to soothe him. "Calm down, calm down. Getting angry is bad for your health."

After the fat man had more or less steadied his breathing, he continued, "Once my Martial Soul awakens tomorrow and I gain Soul Power, I'll become a Soul Master. Then won't I have money to pay you back?"

His dirty little face wore an expression of absolute reasonableness.

The surrounding shopkeepers could not help laughing mockingly when they heard this.

"You little beggar, what kind of daydream are you having? Do you think a Lord Soul Master is something you can become?"

"You want to become a Soul Master? You're as skinny as a rack of ribs. Tsk, tsk."

"What an impractical Little Cripple."

Little Cripple ignored their jeers and once again flashed the fat butcher a wide grin.

After expressing his thanks, he ran off like a gust of wind.

The fat man patted the dust from his clothes and watched the tiny figure disappear into the distance. Curling his lip, he muttered, "You'd better pray you really can gain Soul Power."

In a long-abandoned courtyard at the City Edge,

Little Cripple watched the chunks of meat and rotten vegetable leaves bobbing in the pot before him. After adding a little salt, he fell into his memories amid the orange firelight.

His name was Fang Ling, and he had come from Blue Star.

A year ago, he had crossed into the Douluo Continent and become a skinny, emaciated little beggar with no Left Calf and a filthy body.

The little beggar had no name. Everyone who knew him called him Little Cripple, so he had given himself the name Fang Ling from his Previous Life.

His current location was Notting City, Fasinuo Province, within the Heaven Dou Empire.

It was precisely where Notting Academy, the school Tang San attended, was located.

Although it could not be considered a major city, it lay on the border and was one of the trading hubs between the two nations.

Commerce flourished there, making it a wealthy place.

But although it was wealthy, that wealth belonged to other people.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with a crippled little beggar like him, who had started with only a bowl.

As a young, crippled beggar, Fang Ling was truly poor.

He had not even half a coin.

A coarse hemp robe covered in patches, a battered iron pot he had picked up, a dented iron bowl, a sharp broken knife, a straw sandal he had woven himself, and a few other things made up everything he owned.

He had gone from being a modern man in his Previous Life, with no worries about food or drink and a healthy body, to becoming an ancient man who relied on a homemade prosthetic, begging and scavenging to survive. The disparity was simply impossible to describe.

If not for the illusory Progress Bar representing his cheat that was always moving in his eyes, as well as the allure of the miraculous Martial Souls and cultivation that constantly spurred him on, he would have found it difficult to last through this year.

That was right. Fang Ling possessed a baffling cheat.

It was an illusory Progress Bar located in his eyes, visible only to him.

The Progress Bar appeared as a thick, straight gray line. Throughout the past year, it had been growing at a steady but slow pace, and now it was almost touching the border.

Its origin and function were unknown. He had tried countless methods, such as basking in the sun, eating more, and meditating, but none had accelerated it even slightly.

Through mental communication, Fang Ling learned that the Progress Bar would reach one hundred percent in two more days.

And once it reached one hundred percent, a corresponding change would certainly occur.

The day his cheat awakened also happened to be the day he would awaken his Martial Soul.

As a frail little beggar whose nutrition was barely adequate, he would most likely awaken a useless Martial Soul unless he had some absurdly dramatic background.

As for Soul Power, that went without saying. It would be good if he could match even half a level of Yu Xiaogang's.

Without enough meat, he could not perform the physical training supposedly related to awakening Soul Power. Trying would only cripple him further.

To maintain his meat intake and keep his body from collapsing, aside from catching rats and insects in his daily life, he had no choice but to steal.

Because no one would pity a little beggar like him.

From his memories, he knew that the fat shopkeeper had only recently arrived in the city and was relatively kind by nature, which was why Fang Ling dared to steal from him.

Besides, he had stolen from him, but he was a man with aspirations. He had already recorded this favor in his little notebook. Once he became successful, he would naturally repay it.

Apart from that, Fang Ling's only remaining hope was that he really did have some absurdly dramatic background.

If that background could allow him to awaken a sufficiently powerful Martial Soul,

and let him possess decent Soul Power and become a Soul Master despite eating poorly and having a withered body, that would be even better.

Otherwise, he could only hope that his cheat would come through or that crossing over came with benefits.

Two days later, Fang Ling awoke from his sleep early in the morning.

He first checked the traps in the courtyard. There were no signs that they had been triggered.

Only then did he wash up without worry.

He washed his face, brushed his teeth with a willow twig, changed into the clothes he had washed and dried, and gnawed on two bites of steamed bread that someone else had picked over and discarded after selling.

Then he sat upright and proper, waiting for his fated moment to arrive.

The Progress Bar in his eyes seemed to continue inching forward, like endlessly cutting one more time in a certain shopping app. After looping through ninety-nine point nine... nines percent, it was finally about to end.

The seemingly motionless Gray Progress Bar was like a giant beast emerging from hibernation, slowly beginning to awaken.

As countless invisible instants passed, it advanced by an almost imperceptible amount at a time over the course of a year, finally reaching its last stage.

A wisp of rare radiance appeared like the first light of dawn, instantly breaking the silence around him.

Everything in his eyes seemed to be imbued with new life and color.

Accompanied by that profound and mysterious radiance, Fang Ling felt as if his entire being had been sublimated, his soul instantly climbing to its peak.

"Smack!"

A sudden itch made him slap dead the mosquito sucking his blood on his face. He came back to reality from his fantasies, his cheek twitching slightly.

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