Mingdu, Hongchen Mansion

Perhaps because he had lived two lives, Chen Ming had been born with stronger spiritual power than ordinary people. And because he had reincarnated with the memories of his previous life, his innate spiritual structure was more complex than normal. His spirit was more independent and mature than his body.

The clearest manifestation was that Chen Ming possessed greater spiritual power and was born with a Sea of Consciousness.

But the problem was that Chen Ming felt his spiritual power... did not seem to be as high as it theoretically should have been. Moreover, compared to the Sea of Consciousness described in the usual accounts, his was far too small. It was as if... he himself did not possess a Spirit Attribute. The spiritual power he gained through growth was on the same level as that of ordinary Soul Masters; his only distinguishing trait was that his innate spiritual value had started out relatively high.

Still, this was only a guess. With Chen Ming's current knowledge and abilities, he had no way to determine whether this conjecture was right or wrong.

One thing was certain, however: this spiritual power definitely did not come from his Martial Soul. The Dragon Elephant Sect had always been a sect of brutes. Although spiritual power was not an innate weakness like agility, they did not possess even the slightest advantage in it.

Even the Vajra Dragon Elephant merely combined the physical strength and Gold-Earth Attributes of two brute Martial Souls into one even greater brute Martial Soul. It did not also stack their spiritual growth. An ordinary Soul Master was still just an ordinary Soul Master.

Nearly three more months passed. Almost half a year after Chen Ming awakened his Martial Soul, fifteen-year-old Chen Ming was finally brought by Sect Master Chen Li to the heart of the Sun Moon Continent—the capital of the Sun Moon Empire, Mingdu—shortly before the New Year.

At that moment, Mingdu was nothing like a city that should have existed on the Douluo Continent. There were no city walls. The roads were neatly planned, sidewalks and traffic lanes were clearly separated, and Soul Tool Streetlights stood one after another along both sides of the roads.

Though some irresistible force had caused those Soul Tool Streetlights to be spaced rather far apart, and the streetlights along non-main roads were only moderately bright, the familiar planning and layout, along with the Soul Tool technology that had quietly become part of Mingdu's daily life, still gave Chen Ming, who had spent many years in this world, a faint sense of familiarity.

Although that flicker of familiarity lasted only a moment before bursting like a bubble, stirring inexplicable ripples in Chen Ming's heart that had gradually calmed long ago, Chen Ming did not dislike the feeling.

Chen Ming had not been an orphan in his previous life, but when he thought about it carefully, he might as well have been.

His parents divorced when he was young. His mother went abroad, his father remarried, and he was treated as a burden and thrown to his grandparents to raise. His grandmother passed away when he was around ten, and not long after he became an adult, his grandfather followed her.

Because his family's circumstances had been poor since childhood, and he had always worn and eaten the worst things, he had always been a target for bullying. Though he had beaten every person who dared bully him until they knelt on the ground, he had merely replaced physical bullying with cold violence.

So after he formed that habit, he never had any friends from beginning to end.

He could not be bothered to disturb his parents, who had built new families, nor could he be bothered with such family affection. He simply lived alone.

He usually took odd jobs, wrote novels, occasionally ghostwrote for elementary school students, and whenever holidays came around, he bought drinks and went to local tourist attractions, wandering around while doing a little business. His life had not been especially good, but it had been passable, until the day he transmigrated...

There were many reasons for transmigration in this era, and as time passed, many methods of transmigration had already been eliminated. Even Chen Ming sometimes could not explain exactly how he had transmigrated.

He only vaguely remembered that day. He had just gotten up and stepped into the bathroom to wash his face when he noticed that something seemed wrong with the toilet. The water began spinning furiously like a vortex. He slammed the toilet lid shut, immediately turned and ran out, only to find water beneath his feet from who knew where, nearly smashing his head into the sharp edge of the sink.

After leaving the bathroom, Chen Ming had wanted to calm down alone and picked up his phone to see whether he should call the police. But before he could do anything, he discovered that the phone's cord had somehow suddenly snapped, electric sparks flashing from the break. If he had not noticed in time, he would have been electrocuted.

Then he tried to run outside, only to discover that the door lock had broken. He could not open the door from the inside at all, and no one answered his cries for help.

Just as Chen Ming carefully tore the phone free with another object and prepared to call the police and leave the room that had become unfamiliar, his foot slipped and he lost his balance completely.

Though he avoided the sharp objects, his face still struck the floor, leaving him dazed before he passed out.

But that was not why he transmigrated... at least, not directly.

Chen Ming vaguely remembered that after losing consciousness, he seemed to arrive in a pure white space. While he was still hesitating, the void instantly transformed into a broad national highway...

A fully loaded red-and-white vehicle drove toward him, then shot into the sky at the angle of an uphill slope. In midair, it transformed into an Optimus Prime riding a sword, who threw a Poké Ball at him. A green-skinned orc jumped out of the Poké Ball and smashed a chessboard heavily into his head...

Why had Chen Ming always been reluctant to recall how he transmigrated?

Because the process was so absurd that it made people wonder whether he had eaten too many mushrooms from Yunnan or been drugged.

In short, if the first half could still be considered an imitation of Final Destination, then the latter half was purely a stitched-together monstrosity. Transmigration itself was already abnormal, but a transmigration process like this was so abnormal that it was simply beyond abnormal.

Sometimes, Chen Ming suspected that he had offended some great deity before transmigrating, forcing them to send him to another world no matter how many rules they had to break or how awkwardly they had to do it.

Unless necessary, Chen Ming absolutely did not want to recall that stitched-together monstrosity of a transmigration experience.

As an old-established family with more than two thousand years of history in the Sun Moon Empire, the Hongchen Family's main residence was not within Mingdu. Most of its clansmen lived within the family's hereditary territory, which they had managed generation after generation as nobles.

But as a top noble family that had been connected to high-level Soul Tools for generations, the Hongchen Family also possessed a sizable residence in Mingdu, the Sun Moon Empire's capital, where land was worth its weight in gold. It was used by family members conducting business in Mingdu and as a foothold for gathering intelligence on the inner workings of the Sun Moon Empire's court.

Over the past several decades, this residence had had one clear master: the current head of the Hongchen Family, a Rank 9 Soul Engineer of the Sun Moon Empire, the current master of Mingde Hall, Jing Hongchen, known as the Golden Toad Douluo.

This Hongchen Mansion was not particularly large, but compared with the residences of other noble families in Mingdu, it was already among the finest. Although the family was named Hongchen, seemingly carrying an air of transcendence and carefree detachment, Hongchen Mansion followed the same pattern as the buildings and residences of other Sun Moon Empire nobles.

From the outer walls and main gates to the flowers and plants within, everything emphasized an air of extravagance. Even Chen Ming had to admit that these decorations possessed a certain artistic quality.

But compared to such external things, Chen Ming looked forward more to things that belonged to him, such as power and knowledge. If he had spare time, he would rather find a place to meditate and cultivate properly or read books than devote his energy to this so-called art.