Soul Saint's Diary (Part One)

"Treasure map."

Zhou Qing tugged at the piece of beast hide and found it quite sturdy. Pointing at the red dot marking the starting point, he said, "This should be Fasinuo Province, where we are now. And the destination is Tianming City, a coastal city on the southwestern shore of the Star Luo Empire."

"A treasure map? Did the Soul Saint put all the treasures he collected during his lifetime over there?" Tang San asked in surprise.

"That's possible."

Zhou Qing rolled up the map and set it aside. "Or perhaps this Soul Saint never had the chance to explore that place. After all, it makes no sense for a Soul Saint from the Heaven Dou Empire to hide a treasure within the Star Luo Empire, unless there was something wrong with his head."

That was true!

A dignified Soul Saint was no weakling, and he had even returned to Holy Soul Village for his final breakthrough... Though he had failed, Tang San could tell that this Soul Saint was attached to home. If he had anything valuable, he would naturally keep it by his side. There was no way he would store his treasures in a foreign land thousands of miles away.

Afterward, the two spent two hours thoroughly searching the "little castle." Aside from the small gray pouch and the beast-hide map, they found an iron box.

The box was thirty centimeters long and twenty centimeters wide. It could be opened, and inside were three diaries. Thanks to the iron box's fairly decent seal, they had been preserved quite well.

Zhou Qing and Tang San exchanged a glance before taking out one of them: "Rice Village Diary."

Douluo Calendar March 6, 1885

Today, people from Spirit Hall are coming to the village to awaken everyone's martial spirits. I'm so happy—I can finally have a martial spirit of my own!

My martial spirit is a small sapling with two leaves. My Innate Soul Power is actually Level Six!

Mother personally dug up bamboo shoots from the nearby bamboo grove and caught a bamboo rat. She made my favorite dish, stir-fried bamboo shoots with meat!

That was the content of the first page.

Zhou Qing continued turning the pages.

Douluo Calendar March 6, 1886

Mother finally saved enough money for me to attend a Soul Master Academy. I'm so happy!

But after starting school, I learned that villages that have produced Soul Masters have Work-Study Student slots. However, several villages have to share one slot. Rice Village has never produced a single Soul Master, so we don't even qualify to share a slot. Back then, Village Chief Grandpa went to beg the village chiefs of other villages, but their villagers drove him out. That was why I could only wait until my family saved enough money, with support from the other villagers as well, before I could attend a Soul Master Academy.

I swear that I'll become a powerful Soul Master and make Rice Village great because of my name! Rice Village won't have to share a slot with other villages anymore!

"Rice Village... that was Holy Soul Village's former name," Tang San murmured. He could not help admiring this Soul Saint, because the man had truly changed Rice Village's name to Holy Soul Village through his own efforts. From that day onward, Holy Soul Village had gained a status unmatched by the surrounding villages.

It no longer needed to share a Work-Study Student slot with other villages, and it received one every year. Whenever children from other villages possessed Innate Soul Power but could not obtain a slot, those villages would even come together to purchase one from Holy Soul Village, allowing all of Holy Soul Village's residents to benefit.

Tang San had seen such a transaction once when he was two years old. He had not understood it at the time, but now he grasped the crux of it.

Zhou Qing, however, focused on something entirely different. He complained, "Did this guy only write one diary entry a year? They're so short, too—and they're all on March 6."

He flipped to the next page.

Sure enough.

It was dated Douluo Calendar March 6, 1887.

It described his cultivation progress, as well as how, after returning to Rice Village, his mother had once again made his favorite stir-fried bamboo shoots with meat.

Judging from his wording, he had been doing quite well.

That was only natural.

With Innate Soul Power Level Six, by Douluo Continent's current standards for judging potential, as long as he progressed steadily, reaching Soul Saint during his lifetime would not be difficult.

Even though his martial spirit was an unknown little tree, becoming a plant-type Soul Master meant that whether he chose the Support System or the Control System in the future, his prospects would be good.

Therefore, the teachers at his school should have treated him somewhat favorably.

As for why the Spirit Hall personnel who awakened his martial spirit had not taken him to Spirit Hall...

All that could be said was this.

One could not expect Spirit Hall's grassroots personnel to spend their free time researching martial spirit records to improve themselves. Su Yuntao had judged Blue Silver Grass with Innate Full Soul Power to have no cultivation value in the original story. More than two hundred years ago, upon seeing an unknown little sapling as a martial spirit, they would most likely have firmly concluded that it possessed no offensive ability and given up on recruiting him.

To the grassroots Spirit Hall personnel in these small cities responsible for awakening martial spirits, a sickle with Innate Soul Power Level One might have been more valuable than a sapling with Innate Soul Power Level Six—or even Blue Silver Grass with Innate Full Soul Power.

Perhaps that was why, even now, many talented commoner Soul Masters did not directly join Spirit Hall.

Thinking of Flender, Zhao Wuji, Shao Xin, and the others in Shrek from the original story, all of whom had no clans behind them, loved freedom, and came from thoroughly commoner backgrounds, Zhou Qing realized that if one truly wanted to investigate why Spirit Hall had missed out on these commoner geniuses, the grassroots personnel responsible only for awakening martial spirits bore no small share of the blame.

However, the main reason was still the environment of the continent, which made everyone yearn for and pursue martial spirits with offensive power...

With that thought, Zhou Qing pulled his wandering thoughts back and flipped through several pages in succession, soon finding the final page.

Douluo Calendar March 6, 1891

I graduated from the Junior Soul Master Academy. My soul power has reached Level Nineteen, only one step away from Level Twenty, but I no longer have the money to attend an Intermediate Academy.

Soul Master cultivation costs a great deal of money. I'm already thirteen years old. I can't keep relying on my family and the village—I need to earn money myself.

So, I chose to become an Adventurer!

Over the past year, I accepted many missions from the Spirit Hall Branch in Nuoding City and earned enough rewards for my cultivation. At fourteen, I broke through to Level Twenty, temporarily teamed up with a Soul Hunting Team, hunted the Soul Beast I wanted, obtained my second Soul Ring, and reached Level Twenty-One in soul power.

"Spirit Hall issues missions?" Tang San clicked his tongue, feeling a strange sense of familiarity.

In the Tang Sect of his previous life, outer disciples and inner disciples also needed to complete missions to receive mission rewards and obtain precious materials. He had not expected Spirit Hall to use the same sort of system.

"Yes."

Zhou Qing knew that in this real world, Spirit Hall also possessed functions similar to an Adventurer's Guild. Once many independent Soul Masters reached a certain age and could no longer receive the subsidies issued by Spirit Hall, if they did not wish to join Spirit Hall, they relied on accepting missions from Spirit Hall or organizations similar to Adventurer's Guilds to earn rewards.

More than two hundred years ago, near Nuoding City, wild soul beasts often attacked villages, and many Soul Masters accepted corresponding missions to hunt and kill them.

The corpses of soul beasts were handed over to Spirit Hall, the Adventurer's Guild, or similar organizations. After all, aside from Soul Rings and Soul Bones, their meat and various materials from their bodies were also valuable.

Spirit Hall's upper ranks could not possibly have failed to realize this.

It was simply that nowadays, apart from soul beast regions where villages and towns had only recently been established, soul beasts within areas already fully occupied and controlled by humans could no longer be hunted at will.

After all, soul beasts were the primary resource Soul Masters needed to break through their bottlenecks.

As for wild Soul Beast Forests such as the Star Dou Great Forest and Sunset Forest, which had yet to be fully explored, Spirit Hall and the Two Great Empires imposed no requirements whatsoever...