What the Hell, Soul Master World—Prepare to Welcome Me!

"Hm? I'm listening."

Tang Ya stood up, crossing her arms as she cast a sidelong glance at Bei Bei with one eye higher than the other, her face full of ridicule.

She practically had the words Do you think I believe your bullshit? plastered across her face.

But after Bei Bei pointed at Chen Ping's Insect Staff and explained the whole story from beginning to end, Tang Ya was stunned. She even forgot about settling accounts with Bei Bei.

"This can actually cause Martial Soul Evolution? Can my Blue Silver Grass be modified like that too?"

Tang Ya immediately grew anxious and paced back and forth. "It's a pity that our Tang Sect has long since declined to the point of having no assets left. Buying a Soul Bone really is..."

"There's no use for us to worry about this. It seems Chen's Martial Soul automatically absorbed that Soul Bone onto itself."

"There are quite a few strange points here. We'll probably have to visit Teacher Wang Yan to get an answer."

Bei Bei comforted Tang Ya before continuing, "There's something you don't know. Brother Chen Ping is a distant relative of Teacher Wang Yan. We'll be returning to Shrek Academy together later anyway, so this works out perfectly."

It was only then that Chen Ping finally recovered from haggling with the system.

With his pockets empty, he couldn't afford any Staff Technique for the time being and could only continue using his Thrust Staff.

"So, how does this Thousand-Year Soul Ring feel, Senior Sister Xiao Ya?"

Chen Ping temporarily put away his Martial Soul and looked at Xiao Ya, who was full of energy.

"Good! Better than good!"

Tang Ya excitedly clenched her right fist and pulled it down against her chest. "After absorbing this Touch Dragon King Soul Ring, I'm not far from Level Thirty-Two. I estimate that I'll reach Level Thirty-Two before the end of this semester."

"I had already prepared myself to make another trip to Star Dou Forest after the semester ended if I failed to capture a suitable Soul Beast this time. It's all thanks to meeting you, Little Brother Chen."

Tang Ya's excitement was written all over her face. Even Chen Ping was infected by her cheerful tone and smiled unconsciously.

"I should be thanking you and Senior Bei Bei. If you two hadn't happened to be fighting that Big Touch Dragon King, I wouldn't have been able to take the opportunity to dig out its nest, much less obtain a Soul Bone."

"If anyone should be thanking someone, it should naturally be me."

Bei Bei smiled when he heard this. "Why draw such a clear line between us, Little Brother Chen? If you don't mind, just call me Big Brother Bei Bei from now on, and call her Sister Xiao Ya."

"Calling each other Senior and Senior Sister sounds too distant. Once you enroll, we'll be connected by fate. We can't just suddenly lose touch."

Hearing this, Chen Ping hurriedly nodded. If he didn't embrace a thigh that had been offered to him and make friends with a benefactor, he would have lived all these years for nothing.

The three of them chatted for a while, growing increasingly animated. During the conversation, they also discussed Tang Ya's Third Soul Skill.

It was worth mentioning that because the Soul Beast she absorbed had changed, Tang Ya's original Third Soul Skill had naturally undergone some changes as well.

It was no longer the original Shaluo Snake Net, but a skill called Touch Dragon's Entanglement, an instant Soul Skill with both damage and control effects.

Its effect was roughly to cause eight vines, far thicker than ordinary Blue Silver Grass, to instantly grow from the ground near the target, wrapping around and strangling it.

The killing power of this Soul Skill was quite impressive.

Even a huge tree wide enough for one person to wrap their arms around would be left with rings of deep indentations after being wrapped by Touch Dragon's Entanglement and released, showing just how terrifying its strength was.

Aside from the skill consuming somewhat too much Soul Power—Tang Ya's Soul Power would be completely depleted after using it at most twice—it had no other obvious weaknesses. It could be considered extremely powerful.

At least, after imagining what would happen if he were bound by that thing, Chen Ping pursed his lips.

Yeah, once he was bound, he could only wait to die. There was no way he could escape.

They said Control System Soul Masters countered Power Attack System Soul Masters. From the looks of it, that really wasn't an empty claim.

This also immediately prompted Chen Ping to devise a plan for defending against the control skills of Control System Soul Masters.

After all, he was a Power Attack System Soul Master. In the future, aside from other Power Attack System Soul Masters competing in the same field as him, the most difficult opponents to deal with would be Control System Soul Masters.

If he thought things through in advance and prepared several emergency plans for evading common control-type Soul Skills, he would probably stand out more after enrolling and leave a good impression on his teachers.

Perhaps Chen Ping's thoughts were overly pragmatic, but his current circumstances left him no choice but to be pragmatic.

The reason Chen Ping was doing everything possible to enter Shrek Academy wasn't because he was blindly following the crowd. It was because Shrek truly had many opportunities.

Never mind anything else—the teachers at Shrek Academy were all filthy rich. The New Student Competition rewarded a Soul Bone, and when the two Class Teachers quarreled and made a bet, they added another Soul Bone.

Only such an abundant resource pool could allow Chen Ping to consume enough resources to develop as quickly as possible.

Compared to that, what use would it be for him to rank first in the entire Heavenly Soul National Seventh Academy, which was ranked among the top twenty in the entire Heavenly Dou Empire?

Would the school give him a Soul Bone?

Was there any point in being king of a mountain with no tigers?

Once he entered the All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Tournament, he would just be a stray dog by the roadside, kicked out of the competition in a single blow.

The three of them chatted idly for a while, boasting about all sorts of things under the sun, and grew much closer in the process.

Bei Bei and Tang Ya, in particular, saw Chen Ping in a completely different light.

Putting aside the fact that Chen Ping had lived two lifetimes, the five-plus years of experience he had accumulated traveling far and wide since transmigrating were absolutely beyond what Bei Bei and Tang Ya could match.

Even Tang Ya, despite her family's decline to the point where she had lost the Sect's headquarters, still had Bei Bei to rely on.

Chen Ping, on the other hand, had started with his parents sacrificed to the heavens and had crawled out of a heap of corpses.

Thus, most of the time, it was Chen Ping who told the two of them about some of the unusual things he had encountered on Douluo Continent.

After chatting for a while, Chen Ping would subtly steer the conversation back toward Shrek Academy, learning more about the academy.

By the end of their conversation, he had found out which classes Bei Bei and Tang Ya attended, who their Class Teacher was, how many days remained before Shrek Academy's vacation, and how long the vacation would last.

There was nothing he could do about it. They were students, and these were the things students liked to talk about most. Whether on Blue Star or Douluo Continent, the nature of students as a group would never change.

Watching the two of them chatter away as they shared which teachers were better and which teachers had bad tempers,

and listening as they casually slandered a few teachers, Chen Ping felt a long-lost sense of nostalgia well up inside him.

Such stable, easygoing days were within easy reach for people in Chen Ping's hometown, but on Douluo Continent, they had practically become a privilege.

No matter how he looked at it, this was the otherworldly life he wanted.

Those days of doing any kind of Dirty Work just to scrape together enough to chew on for a single day were finally over.

Chen Ping secretly clenched his fists, a faint smile appearing on his face.

What the hell, Soul Master world—prepare to welcome me!