We Must Believe Chen Ping Is Happy

Yeah. Other than outstanding graduates from Shrek Academy, who would dare brazenly write a slogan like that on a sign?

Besides, this place was only a few dozen li from Shrek City. This Mr. Chen Ping before them had to be a genuine Shrek prodigy!

"Disperse, all of you. This gentleman is an outstanding graduate of Shrek Academy. What are we all crowding around here for, making the place stink? Disperse."

Having figured out the key point, the middle-aged man hurriedly dismissed his men and sat down beside Chen Ping.

"Young sir, to be honest, I have a distant niece who is also a student at Shrek. Perhaps you know each other."

"My niece is also a Blue Silver Grass soul master, just like my son, but her talent is far greater than Xiaolong's."

"The last time she visited our family—her uncle and aunt—she was already a Soul Grandmaster, not far from becoming a Soul Elder."

Chen Ping's thoughts immediately stirred. Ever since transmigrating to Douluo Continent, he had spent the past few years struggling to make a living, possessing only a vague idea of the timeline he was in.

It was not until Chen Ping learned from a student of an Advanced Soul Master Academy that their team had been eliminated from the All-Continent Advanced Soul Master Tournament by a single member of the Shrek Reserve Team in a One Versus Seven that he had roughly figured out the timeline.

The Shrek Reserve Team member who had defeated all seven of them was named Dai Yueheng!

"You mean Senior Sister Tang Ya, right? I've heard of her."

Without blushing or missing a beat, Chen Ping tacitly accepted the identity of a Shrek student.

Just as Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi were hailed as the Outer Court Twin Stars, the fame of the heavenly couple Bei Bei and Xiao Ya should not have been small within Shrek Academy either.

In any case, Chen Ping was fairly confident that he would eventually enroll at Shrek Academy, so he might as well board first and buy the ticket later—he would enjoy being a Shrek student for now.

"Ha, what a coincidence!"

Before he had even mentioned Tang Ya's name, Chen Ping had already guessed whom he meant. This made the middle-aged man even more certain that Chen Ping was an outstanding student of Shrek Academy.

He also became even more convinced by Chen Ping's claim that if a Blue Silver Grass soul master absorbed a Soul Ring produced by a Gem Crystal Insect, they could obtain the Soul Skill "Life Force Refraction."

A few Gold Soul Coins in exchange for an exceedingly valuable suggestion, along with inherited family knowledge—Wang Xiaolong's family had definitely gotten an incredible bargain.

Still, it could not be denied that those few Gold Soul Coins truly were no small sum for their family.

From all his years of traveling and observing, Chen Ping had more or less figured out the attitudes of the major empires toward ordinary people, as well as the average annual income of common folk—apart from the Sun Moon Empire.

The way it operated was basically the same old thirty-three taels of silver model.

The money ordinary people earned each year was mostly taken away through Tax Revenue after deducting what was necessary for survival, with only the remainder being disposable income.

For an ordinary farmer, after land rent and agricultural taxes were deducted, only a few Gold Soul Coins remained.

Fortunately, Douluo Continent basically had no natural disasters, and crop yields were high. Most people produced enough food to feed themselves and sell a little, so they did not starve to death.

Yet once they entered the cities, because of the gap between industrial and agricultural prices, even laborers like those before Chen Ping, who likewise earned their living through sheer physical labor, could make twenty to thirty Gold Soul Coins a year.

After subtracting food expenses, they could still save more than ten Gold Soul Coins annually.

For a labor crew captain like Captain Wang, who possessed the cultivation of a Soul Elder, his annual income exceeded one hundred Gold Soul Coins.

Even so, paying Chen Ping several Gold Soul Coins at once was equivalent to half a month's income for the man.

No wonder he had called people over to surround Chen Ping the moment he found an opportunity. If he had been swindled out of such a sum, he likely would not have slept soundly for the next month.

After chatting with Captain Wang for a while longer, Chen Ping finally bade him farewell and continued toward Shrek City.

The information Chen Ping had sold was indeed well worth the price, but the reason he knew such secret information was not because of inherited family knowledge.

The intelligence on which Soul Beast's Soul Ring Blue Silver Grass needed to absorb in order to develop toward the Healing System—and which Soul Beast was preferably common and easy to find—had been exchanged by Chen Ping for thirty Scholar Points.

This was one of the few abilities of Chen Ping's system. It could help him simulate and deduce all sorts of situations, provided he had enough Scholar Points.

That was also why Chen Ping found his system so disappointing.

He did not dare hope for one of those systems that made their host invincible from the start. But surely he could have gotten one that gave out supplies for daily check-ins, or one that rewarded god-tier equipment for completing system missions?

Yet Chen Ping had ended up with nothing but this Scholar Cultivation System, and it had only awakened recently.

Chen Ping had awakened amid a pile of corpses when the original owner of his body was six years old.

The sight of corpses strewn everywhere had dealt an almost unbearable blow to Chen Ping, who had grown up in a peaceful society.

Among the bodies lay the original owner's parents, brothers, and other members of the Sect. It seemed that only a very few people, such as the Grand Elder, had escaped disaster.

According to the original owner's memories, the place where he had lived was called the Coiling Dragon Sect, a secluded Sect similar to the Body Sect. It had always been peaceful and joyful, content to keep to itself.

The Sect's inherited martial soul was the Coiling Dragon Staff, the same martial soul possessed by Qian Jun and Jiang Mo, the two Spirit Hall offerings from Ten Thousand Years ago.

However, Chen Ping's martial soul was an exceptionally rare mutation of the same type as Yu Xiaogang's.

Not only had it failed to mutate in a positive direction, it had mutated into something even worse: a Willow Staff with an Innate Soul Power Level of only two.

Chen Ping did not know what exactly had happened to bring such a catastrophe of extermination upon the Coiling Dragon Sect.

But after Chen Ping cautiously survived his first night in the Sect's residence by rummaging through its stored grain, a system activation progress bar appeared before his eyes.

For Chen Ping at the time, it was an unexpected blessing falling from the sky. For an ordinary person who had just witnessed corpses covering the ground, nothing could have felt more reassuring than a system.

Yet even Chen Ping had not expected that once his system began activating, it would take more than five years—nearly six.

Chen Ping's life had not gone smoothly during those years.

For a Sect extermination tragedy on such a scale, the Shrek Inspection Team, the local City Lord, and even the provincial governor all came to investigate.

But clearly, Chen Ping, with an Innate Soul Power Level of two, was not worthy of their attention. As for being taken back by a major power and carefully nurtured with resources, he could only dream about it.

One could say that the only reason Chen Ping, a modern man with no cheat and a low Innate Soul Power Level, had managed to wander Douluo Continent for so long was that he had been holding onto a single breath of determination, waiting to turn his life around after the system appeared.

But in the end, as though the heavens were playing a joke on him, after waiting all those years, the system that activated was a Scholar Cultivation System that could not provide Chen Ping with any tangible supplies.

Still, it was a system nonetheless. Simply put, it was a system where Chen Ping could put in one portion of effort and receive two portions of reward. How much he gained depended on how much effort he put in.