Has It Gotten Even a Little Better?

After everyone had eaten, they headed toward the distant village. Yet the closer they got, the more they felt that something was wrong with the atmosphere around them.

This was clearly a village, yet it was deathly quiet. Not even the cries of chickens, sheep, or other livestock could be heard.

Only when they drew closer did they hear voices coming from one of the houses.

"You've all noticed that something is wrong, haven't you?" Xuan Zi's voice rang out, missing some of its earlier laziness. "This place has already been slaughtered clean by several Evil Soul Masters. Your first mission is to eliminate every one of these Evil Soul Masters. Leave none alive."

Everyone present aside from Xuan Zi was a three-ringed Soul Elder, but in the end, they were merely a group of children with an average age below thirteen. The words "killing people" felt unfamiliar to them, and for a moment, none of them knew what to do.

Yet Xuan Zi gave them no chance to hesitate. With a surge of Soul Power, he pushed them several steps forward. "See for yourselves."

Those few steps brought the sight of the village into view.

The road was empty, yet the walls on either side were covered in dried dark-brown stains. Belt-like objects littered the streets, filling the air with a nauseating stench. On the roof of one house, someone had tossed more than a dozen balls, each with two hollow holes staring down at them.

The children immediately felt their scalps go numb as their stomachs churned violently. What they had just eaten was about to come right back up.

Experiencing such a scene firsthand for the first time, even Wang Nan felt all kinds of discomfort in his body. But having lived two lives, he recovered faster than the others and understood exactly what their first mission entailed.

Including Wang Nan, twelve Soul Elders had come here, personally escorted by Xuan Zi, a rank ninety-eight Super Douluo. There was no need to divide them into teams beforehand, nor was there any need to arrange tactics.

The true purpose of this trip was not to wipe out some Evil Soul Master organization. It was to make these children truly understand what Evil Soul Masters were, to let them experience what a real battle between Soul Masters was like, and to make them understand what kind of thing they were doing.

It seemed someone inside had heard the commotion outside. Chewing on a bone, he walked out of the house.

"Who are you?" The man immediately became alert.

Though he was an Evil Soul Master, he was not so evil that his brain had stopped working. Seeing a group of children appear here, he naturally would not assume that "fat sheep" had delivered themselves to his doorstep.

A tiger's roar suddenly rang out from the crowd. A flash of white light followed, and the muscles of the blonde-haired youth Wang Nan had noticed earlier suddenly swelled. With a crackling burst from the bones throughout his body, his frame grew several sizes larger, and even the surrounding air seemed to turn violent.

This person was Dai Yueheng. Unlike the others, he had trained in the military since childhood. He had truly killed before.

The sight before him did not frighten him. Instead, it ignited his fury. As three Soul Rings rose around him, his blonde hair turned black and white. His fingers flexed, and dagger-like claws extended from his palms.

Dai Yueheng let out a low roar, kicked off with both legs, and pounced at the Evil Soul Master before him.

"Enemies!"

The Evil Soul Master threw down the bone in his hand and shouted into the house. Then he also let out a low roar, his entire body undergoing a dramatic change much like Dai Yueheng's. But while Dai Yueheng was a White Tiger, he resembled more of a hyena. Only one white and one yellow Soul Ring circled him.

Four more Evil Soul Masters emerged from the house. Two possessed the same two-ring cultivation as the first man, while the remaining two had only one ring each.

And yet, just such a handful of people had been enough to turn the entire village into this.

Wang Nan hesitated no longer. Stomping his foot, he charged one of the two-ringed Soul Grandmasters, drawing out his Coiling Dragon Staff in a sweeping strike.

Unlike when he faced Ji Tongxuan and Ma Xiaotao, the man before him was already weaker than Wang Nan. Combined with the Coiling Dragon Staff's suppression of Evil Soul Masters, it was a case of injury on contact and death from a graze. With just one blow, the Evil Soul Master screamed and rolled into a nearby house.

Wang Nan quickly followed. The moment he entered, a foul stench assaulted his nostrils. It was like mixing the reek of a dry latrine with the bloody smell of a slaughterhouse, then leaving it to ferment in this room for hours. The instant it entered his nose, the stench shot straight to his head.

Beside him stood several pitchfork-like farming tools, but what they skewered was not straw or crops. They held small figures, each pierced through the abdomen. Some sort of liquid seemed to have run down the fork tines, leaving streaks across those little bodies.

The places where the forks met those figures had already rotted into an unrecognizable mess. Wang Nan could tell at a glance just what kind of struggle those small bodies had made while they were still able to move.

Several voices seemed to echo in his ears, mixed with laughter and filthy curses.

"Look at these little brats. When they dance, they're no worse than the girls in the city. Hahaha~"

An uncontrollable surge of fury rose in Wang Nan's heart. He no longer held back any Soul Power. With a thrust and an upward sweep of the Coiling Dragon Staff, he pierced the Evil Soul Master and nailed him to the wall.

His right hand gripped the rear end of the Coiling Dragon Staff while his left slid forward along its shaft. When it reached the middle, his left hand clenched tightly, and his right hand pressed down at the same time. The entire Coiling Dragon Staff suddenly trembled, and the Spiritual Sea churned in response. A massive figure seemed to appear inside the house. Then, with a boom, the Evil Soul Master and the entire house exploded together.

Dust billowed all around, clumps of earth mixed with fragments, some soft and some hard, raining down continuously. A bloody stench rose with them, though mixed with the smell of that house, it barely amounted to anything.

With a wet splat, a red object fell onto the ground. Wang Nan glanced at it, walked over, and crushed it beneath his foot. A warm liquid sprayed out and splashed onto him. He no longer cared about the wildly surging Spiritual Power in his Spiritual Sea. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the remaining Evil Soul Masters.

But he had no chance to act. After witnessing his attack, all the students came to their senses. Yellow and purple Soul Rings flashed in succession, and within moments, the Evil Soul Masters had been torn to pieces.

"Children." Only after everyone had calmed down did Xuan Zi slowly speak. "This is what our Shrek Oversight Group must do. This is what our Shrek Oversight Group has always been doing."

"This road is filled with thorns and danger, but someone must strive and fight for it. If even we cannot help these powerless people, then who will help them?"

Amid the silence, they gathered the severed limbs scattered throughout the village and buried them at its entrance, raising a grave mound that would never again receive offerings.

Wang Nan looked at the grave before him, then turned back to glance at the empty village.

Has this world gotten even a little better?