Encountering Humans

Rus Wang had no detailed understanding of human development after Huo Yuhao's era ended. His knowledge was mostly limited to a few scattered references in the timeline of Legend of the Dragon King. In other words, after the Sun Moon Empire destroyed the Heaven Dou Empire, one of the original three-nation military alliance, the Star Luo Empire and Dou Ling Empire could no longer maintain their military defenses and could not stop the Sun Moon Empire from unifying the entire Douluo Continent. They hurriedly developed massive ships to explore lands beyond the Douluo Continent, conquer the Indigenous People, and preserve their ancestors' legacy overseas, out of reach of the Sun Moon Empire's overwhelming military power.

In theory, two hundred years should not have been enough for Soul Beasts to be wiped out so quickly. But on Folded Ear Continent, aside from those that had fled there, only a handful of thousand-year and hundred-year Soul Beasts remained over the past century, excluding a very few ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts. Unlike the Dragon Race, ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts did not have enough intelligence to communicate with Rus Wang despite their age. Apart from displaying intense fear at the mention of humans, they had nothing else to say.

This had always made Rus Wang want to leave Folded Ear Continent and investigate what was preventing Soul Beasts from crossing the ocean and fleeing there.

Now that he had united all the gray territories in the northern part of Folded Ear Continent, he had evolved into his Blade Ruse King form, gaining even greater strength and becoming capable of holding his own against a level-ninety-nine human. Since he could also use Soul Tools, Rus Wang decided to personally travel to the other side of Antarctica and investigate the mysterious continent over there.

"Are you really going to go, Rus?"

Thalassa looked at Rus Wang as he prepared to set off and asked worriedly.

"I have to see for myself. There are fewer than eighty thousand Soul Beasts left on Folded Ear Continent. The Brachiosauruses that we eat as food outnumber all our Soul Beasts combined by five or six times."

Rus Wang strapped the Level 9 Soul Guidance Shield he had developed onto his limbs. If he flew over the South Pole to the continent where Thalassa had come from, the shield would give him four chances to dodge, even if humans spotted and attacked him with a Level 9 Soul Tool.

"Thalassa, tell me again what distinctive landmarks you passed when you came here."

"All right. If you're set on going..."

Seeing that Rus Wang was determined to explore beyond Folded Ear Continent, Thalassa had no choice but to recount the memories from more than two hundred and forty years ago, now long blurred in her mind.

Starting from the southernmost tip of Folded Ear Continent, he would first cross a frigid strait teeming with powerful Sea Soul Beasts. After a few hundred kilometers, the sea would freeze over completely. Though it was less dangerous than being hunted by Sea Soul Beasts, the thick fog stretched on for hundreds of kilometers, visibility was terrifyingly poor, and breathing was extremely difficult. He could not see even a meter ahead, as if he were buried in snow.

If he kept flying in a straight line, he would come across the corpse of a Dragon Race kin, a hundred meters long, lying on the ice—provided it had not yet been buried by the snow or fought over by scavenging Soul Beasts.

After flying for several hundred more kilometers, his mind would be disrupted by something inexplicable. It was not quite a mental attack, but it seemed a lot like one. The effect would continue until a flock of black, white, and orange birds began to appear.

After that, the frozen land would turn back into frozen sea. The ice floes drifting on the water would gradually grow fewer, and a continent covered in tundra would slowly come into view. If he spotted isolated clusters of stone peaks, that meant he had reached the Old Continent rather than veering off course to some island.

Rus Wang, in his Blade Ruse King form, landed panting in front of the rocky ridge. The concentration of heaven and earth energy in the area really was far lower than on Folded Ear Continent—even lower than in its deserts.

No wonder Thalassa had said the strongest Soul Beast on the Old Continent was a mere ape with four hundred thousand years of cultivation. Considering the Heavenly Tribulation, battles between Soul Beasts, and conflicts between Soul Beasts and Indigenous People, five hundred thousand years of cultivation was enough.

Unfortunately, once the Sun Moon Empire or Dou Ling Empire established a foothold, they would use Soul Tools to swiftly put an end to all that.

After resting, Rus Wang immediately sent out a little contraption he had tinkered together: a Soul Guidance Drone. Modeled after the Rainbow-7 Drone from his previous life, the device was connected to and controlled through Soul Power, which also supplied its energy. It could fly for 9,500 kilometers—just under half the width of northern Folded Ear Continent. It could not be fitted with a Level 9 fixed soul-guided bomb, but it would make a perfectly good extra pair of eyes for Rus Wang.

Before long, under Rus Wang's control, the Soul Guidance Drone spotted human buildings.

"This is the southernmost tip of the entire continent. Could an expedition from one of the two countries already have established a permanent settlement here?"

Looking at what seemed to be vegetable greenhouses, rows of shipping-container housing like the dozens of research stations from his previous life, and various industrial structures, Rus Wang's face scrunched up like someone who had swallowed a whole lemon. He shrank back as he stared at the screen.

"Whatever. If it's sitting there, it's sitting there. I'll just shrink down and go around it."

Star Luo Empire—Asura Eye Outpost, the joint research station of the Star Luo Empire and the Spirit Pagoda.

The outpost's name commemorated the legendary figure who, more than two hundred years ago, had devised a way to obtain Soul Rings through Soul Spirits, founded the Spirit Pagoda, and ascended to godhood.

Although the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire at the time was also descended from Huo Yuhao, Huo Yuhao had been the sort of man who abandoned his wife and child—and he was an emperor, to boot. The people of the Sun Moon Empire, from top to bottom, and even his own descendants, disliked him. By contrast, the people of the Star Luo Empire, along with the Spirit Pagoda—which had long since abandoned its original mission of befriending Soul Beasts and fallen under the control of Shrek Academy and the great Titled Douluo families—held the powerful Huo Yuhao in deep respect and admiration.

"We caught quite a few Soul Beasts trying to escape today. We can sell them to the Spirit Pagoda for a nice price."

Inside the sentry hut at the research station, packed with Soul Tools used to detect Soul Beast energy signatures, a human officer finished his meal and enjoyed a cup of hot cocoa in the early morning.

The Star Luo Empire had advanced Soul Guidance Technology, but its system of government was still an imperial monarchy. The state of its army was therefore hard to describe. Promotion depended entirely on strength rather than ability. Officers got to enjoy officers' privileges. As for the soldiers? They got fed. What more wages could they expect?

Besides, soldiers were expected to carry out every task assigned by their officers while fulfilling their duties. If they failed, they could be beaten until their bodies were covered in bruises. Being expelled from the army would count as a light punishment.

Officers who dared join an expedition team like this were all people with ambition and at least a little conscience—though not much—by the standards of the army.

The officer checked the time. When he saw that the soldiers' ten minutes of free time were almost up, he immediately bellowed:

"Soldier!"

"Here, sir."

The soldier, standing outside the sentry hut in the snow with trembling legs, heard his superior call and came inside.

A blast of cold air swept through the room, which had been reasonably warm, making the short-sleeved officer frown. He cursed, "Damn those brain-dead building designers! One of these days, I'm going to shove a Soul Cannon in their faces and make them add a porch and a second door to the next-generation research housing."

After complaining, the officer pointed to the other cup of hot cocoa on the table.

"Take it and share it with your whole squad. Don't freeze to death on me. If the compensation money gets embezzled away before it reaches the top, I'm not paying your families out of my own pocket."

"Thank you, sir!"

The soldier carried the hot cocoa away with delight. The door opened and shut, sending another gust of cold air through the room, and the officer started grumbling again.

After cursing the designers and their ancestors for eighteen generations, the human officer casually crossed his legs and propped them on the Soul Tool screen monitoring Soul Beast energy signatures. He pulled up some trashy romance novel to while away the boredom of standing guard in the frozen wilderness.

Outside, the soldier who had received the hot cocoa found his old squad leader and the other men in his squad, who had all been conscripted against their will.

After dividing the pathetically small amount of already-cold cocoa among their canteens, they downed it in one go.

"Man, our sentry post's officer really is a good one. Look at the people running the greenhouses—they can't even skim anything off the top. And what they cook for us is some indescribable paste with brown bread."

After finishing his drink, the old squad leader muttered under his breath. He leaned against the railing and held his feet over an empty oil drum with a fire burning inside, trying to bring some warmth to his frozen toes.

In the Star Luo Empire, a non-noble Soul Master could rise no higher than noncommissioned officer unless he broke through to Soul Elder or joined one of the deadly expeditions that kept people away for years. Only then did commoners have a chance to climb further.

"Sir, what do you think they want so many Soul Beasts for? There are plenty of them back home. Why do we have to come all the way out here overseas to catch them?"

The soldier who had brought everyone the officer's hot cocoa seized the chance to ask his squad leader a few questions during their brief ten-minute break.

"Aw, you don't know, do you? Ever heard of a Soul Spirit?"

The old squad leader smiled at the new recruit.

"Um... no." The new recruit shook his head, puzzled.

"To be honest, I don't really know what the heck they are either. But the people up top are crazy about them. Supposedly, they have special benefits for helping you advance."

"Huh? Like a Spirit Bone?"

"Who knows? Anyway, the Spirit Pagoda's willing to pay a lot for Soul Beasts, so we catch them."

There was a reason the Spirit Pagoda bought the Soul Beasts caught by research stations on the New Continent. First, ever since Huo Yuhao had been deceived through marriage, the Star Dou Forest had been badly weakened and was slowly dying, like a dead tiger that could still manage a feeble puff of breath. But it was still a tiger, and it could still hurt people. With a ninety-something-ten-thousand-year beast god like Di Tian there, capturing high-value Soul Beasts remained costly.

The two New Continents were different. There were no Soul Beasts with more than five hundred thousand years of cultivation, and the ones with over four hundred thousand years could be counted on both hands. Hunting them was ridiculously easy. The cost of shipping? Just have the expedition team bring more Storage Soul Tools when they set off. Catch a few thousand and bring them back—the Spirit Pagoda wouldn't run out of money, would it?

The old squad leader was a rough sort and could not explain anything more. He fobbed the recruit off with a few vague words, then changed the subject and left it at that.

"Damn it, where's the breakfast cart? Am I supposed to scarf down my food on the way to my post during the last few minutes again? If I make it back alive this time and get promoted to senior sergeant, I'll beat the hell out of those food-delivery guys."

While the officer read his trashy romance novel and the soldiers grumbled over breakfast, Rus Wang was taking a longer route more than a hundred kilometers away. The multiple Soul Tools at the sentry post that monitored Soul Beast energy signatures detected his presence and immediately lit up red—a first since the post had been established.

The officer, who had been lounging with his legs crossed, toppled off his chair and stared in disbelief at the screen.

He ignored everything else, grabbed his Soul Communication Device, and called the research station director. In an urgent voice, he shouted, "Reporting, sir! We've detected a Soul Beast at the hundred-thousand-year level for the first time—and its direction... it's coming from the south, from that foggy region!"

In an instant, the entire research station erupted in alarm bells. All the officers and senior researchers hurried to the heated conference room for an emergency meeting.

The energy signature of a hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast was not enough to make everyone at the research station panic. On the contrary, since the expedition teams were an important force for the Star Luo Empire's future migration to this continent and escape from the Sun Moon Empire's advance, they often had a Titled Douluo as their team leader. (Peerless Tang Sect had a hundred Titled Douluo. After Huo Yuhao introduced the method of obtaining Soul Rings through Soul Spirits, the early Soul Spirit method would surely have spread only among the upper ranks, but Soul Spirits would inevitably lead to a sharp increase in the number of Titled Douluo.)

The key was that this Soul Beast's path was unlike that of the others. In the past, Soul Beasts had fled here from the north to escape humans, risking being hunted by Sea Soul Beasts and crossing the sea through the icy fog to reach the world beyond. This hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast, however, had come from the south—the same direction where several research station advance teams had vanished without a trace. Numerous advance teams led by Soul Douluo had tried to pierce the dense fog and Mental Interference in the polar region, hoping to uncover why Soul Beasts kept trying to flee farther south. But no matter how many advanced Soul Tools each team brought, once they entered the fog, it was like wandering through a maze. After wandering for months, they would emerge from the mist only to find themselves back where they had started.

"Send out the Soul Tools. Let's see what this Soul Beast looks like."

At the Titled Douluo's command, several Soul Tools flew out from the research station to investigate the hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast.

As expected, the Soul Beast destroyed them. But the blurry images they transmitted at the last moment still gave everyone in the conference room a promising start. The hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast was a four-legged, subspecies dragon Soul Beast no one had ever seen before. A fin resembling a fish's remained on its tail, and its wings were connected to its forelimbs. Its enormous forward-facing claws suggested it could adapt to life in the sea, on land, and in the air.

"If I remember correctly, the maximum destructive force those scouting Soul Tools could withstand was around the hundred-and-fifty-thousand-year level, right?"

The Titled Douluo was silent for a moment, then turned to the research station's Soul Tool director and asked.

"Yes, sir. That means this subspecies Dragon Race beast is a Ferocious Beast with at least a hundred and fifty thousand years of cultivation."

Greed immediately stirred among the Star Luo people in the conference room. They had no intention of selling this Soul Beast to the Spirit Pagoda members present.

The Spirit Pagoda was Shrek Academy's proxy. It had always participated in the New Continent expeditions openly while secretly funding the Star Luo Empire with various Soul Tools and the latest Soul Spirit research. But it remained an independent power outside the empire, not one of their own.

A Soul Spirit was a substitute for a Soul Ring that was superior to an ordinary Soul Ring, caused less harm to Soul Beasts, and maximized a Soul Master's ability. A high-level Soul Spirit could grant a Soul Master multiple Soul Rings and Soul Skills at once. Soul Spirits could also be passed down to descendants, making them even more precious than Spirit Bones.

Capturing a powerful, healthy, hundred-thousand-year Dragon Race Soul Beast to use as a Soul Spirit would undoubtedly be the best choice for a Soul Douluo from a Titled Douluo family. How could they casually sell it to outsiders? (At this point, the "scientific" relationship between mental power and compatibility with Soul Spirits had not yet been discovered.)

"Ahem."

Apparently sensing what the Star Luo people were thinking, the Spirit Pagoda members immediately said they did not want the Soul Spirit from this Soul Beast, but would buy its body for experiments.

In truth, ever since Huo Yuhao created the Soul Spirit method and then hurriedly ascended to godhood and left, both Shrek Academy and the Spirit Pagoda had spent the past two hundred years studying the secrets of Soul Beast Soul Rings together, while remaining deeply at odds internally—after setting aside Huo Yuhao's vague founding ideals.

The former wanted to remain an independent power, more or less, as the Sun Moon Empire's unification of the entire Douluo Continent became unstoppable. The latter consisted of independent Titled Douluo families, sects, and schools that were not loyal to the imperial family, along with the Spirit Pagoda, controlled by Shrek Academy personnel. They wanted to integrate into the various nations as a service organization. Emperors came and went, after all. As long as the families did not seize the throne and played both sides, they could last forever. Whatever path they took, they could not stubbornly follow one road all the way to their deaths.

So not every Spirit Pagoda member was like the inner-court students Shrek assigned to the Spirit Pagoda, who recognized only the academy and not the empire, stubbornly refusing to adapt. If they tried to imitate Shrek's people, this frozen wasteland would likely become the coffin of the Spirit Pagoda member still sitting in the conference room.

Soon, a series of operations to capture Rus Wang began. What they did not know was that Rus Wang, who had originally planned to avoid contact with humans, had decided to turn around and completely wipe out the thorn in the side along the route back to Folded Ear Continent because of their actions.