Interlude: Elves, Dragons, and Soul Beasts

Under the wise and sagacious rule of Rus Wang, who reigns without governing, the high-ranking Elven officials elect a Prime Minister to handle state affairs through a vote at the Sage Council, choosing the candidate with the most support.

The high-ranking Elves participating in the Sage Council all hold senior government positions. Although factions exist among them, the surveillance of the Grey Feather Division and the mountain of complex documents submitted by lower-level officials daily ensure they are not idle enough to create party strife that would only increase their own workload and trouble.

Rus Wang likens this minority-led Prime Minister election system—which functions smoothly despite being a clear bug—to the relationship between the military and the politician-led government in his previous life in America. Because when war breaks out, the military actually has to go fight, while the politicians who declare the war can hide far away in their bunkers.

By the same token, the work handled by these high-ranking Elves is all related to the national livelihood. Any sudden situation brings them a massive workload. If any short-sighted individual were to play at party politics, the resulting management chaos could not be quantified by numbers or resolved in a few months. The Elven elite would collectively attack anyone who caused such trouble, dealing with them internally before the Grey Feather Division could even arrive to make arrests.

As for the Grey Feather Division, it is an organization in Rus Wang's hands similar to the Jinyiwei. It belongs to Rus Wang as an individual's violent apparatus and is not part of the national civil service system. It is managed by Youlan and Xingyue, but apart from those two dragons, all other members are Elves.

Elves who join the Grey Feather Division, in addition to being responsible for secretly observing corrupt behavior among officials and carrying out arrests when necessary, must also undergo specialized training to improve their own levels to deal with the various "black and white gloves" of local factions. These Elves who choose to join the Grey Feather Division have all undergone mental screening by Youlan. Some members, for the sake of their families' safety, live in seclusion in the Nanshan Rainforest alongside Elves who no longer have families, and they engage in internal pairing.

Under the two true dragons, Youlan and Xingyue, the highest position for Elves in the Grey Feather Division is Grand Mentor. They also serve as the public face of the division, sitting as representatives within the kingdom's high-level circles.

The current Grand Mentor of the Grey Feather Division, who is also the first to hold the title, is Ulides, the son of the Elven Kingdom's first Prime Minister, Evans. He survived the incident at the time due to his Spirit Douluo cultivation, but he could only watch helplessly as his father, younger brother, and younger sister were killed by chicken soup laced with poison.

This became his most direct motivation for joining the Grey Feather Division. Carrying the fire of revenge, he chose to cross the 90-level threshold that many Elves with cultivation talent dared not cross, becoming the second Title Douluo in Elven history. He swore to Rus Wang that as long as he lived, he would be the inescapable Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all high-ranking Elven families and corrupt officials. (Every Elf possesses Soul Power, and with a lifespan of 300 years, plus the fact that only 74 years have passed since the nationwide riot in the year 196 sparked by Elven Spirit Masters, many who experienced it are still alive. Therefore, Elves generally hold a pessimistic, fearful, and distant view of becoming a Title Douluo.)

My name is Ben.

I don't really like the codename my superior assigned to me; it should have been given to a male agent.

I am an eight-star agent in the Grey Feather Division, the most secretive and righteous organization in the Elven Kingdom. I am currently assigned to the Grey Feather Division's Nanshan Rainforest Border Regiment. My primary job is as the regiment commander, and my side job is as a kindergarten teacher in a border town of the Nanshan Rainforest.

Don't get me wrong, this is not an easy or simple job. If you were to enter the kindergarten and realize that the class you are responsible for consists of a group of dragon hatchlings and the children of high-ranking Elven officials, believe me, you would be sweating buckets too. Because if you don't pay attention for even a single minute, the dragon hatchlings and Elven hatchlings might start fighting over some toy.

These children, whose intelligence has not yet fully matured, are at their most difficult stage between the ages of 6 and 12. Every day spent with them is the time when I and my spiritual contract partner, a Turquoise Dragon, suffer the most mental exhaustion.

Oh, right, speaking of my spiritual contract partner, why did I explicitly state it's a dragon and not a spirit beast? I must clarify this point: because our Grey Feather Division headquarters is in the core area of the Nanshan Rainforest, we have a much more detailed understanding of the difference between the dragons inhabiting it and spirit beasts than the simple, crude classifications in the textbooks of the Elven Kingdom's various academies.

Just as we have clear regulations within the Grey Feather Division not to lump ordinary spirit beasts, ten-thousand-year spirit beasts, and hundred-thousand-year spirit beasts together, the three, if compared to the various periods of us High Elves, clearly belong to three different stages of Elven civilization evolution: animals wearing High Elf skin, High Elves wearing animal skin, and us High Elves today.

[When the system generated the Folded Ear Continent, in order to embed it into the Douluo Planet, it constructed a reasonable Elven evolutionary process and fossil record. Like humans, Elves evolved from monkeys, but they parted ways with humans at the Australopithecus stage and embarked on a different evolutionary path: Australopithecus—Highland Spirit Ape—Erect Spirit—High Elf.]

Ordinary spirit beasts with their soul power are actually no different from wild animals, or even inferior to them. Because once, when I was tracking a police officer to kill a thousand-year spirit beast that had come out of the Nanshan Rainforest and infiltrated the town, that thousand-year spirit beast had already died from the tail-spine attack of a startled Stegosaurus (a heavy-duty draft animal substitute for transporting goods, just like a Brachiosaurus). It was pierced precisely through the head without the slightest awareness to dodge.

[The native creatures of the Zheer Continent are a mix of Jurassic dinosaurs and Cenozoic mammals. Therefore, hundred-year and thousand-year spirit beasts that come to the Zheer Continent cannot throw their weight around. If Panyan weren't responsible for monitoring their population numbers, they would have been wiped out by the native creatures of the Zheer Continent instead (Allosaurus, Smilodon: Hello).]

Alright, back to why my spiritual contract partner is a Turquoise Dragon and not some spirit beast.

The reason is simple: from the founding of our Elven Kingdom to the present, various fields were initially built with the help of the dragons. Although we Elves have begun to lead the development in various fields now, the relationship between us and the dragons has long been deeply bound. No matter how much some brainless idiots in the country try to cover it up, His Majesty Rus Wang is an obstacle that can never be bypassed.

Therefore, a kindergarten like mine, where Elven hatchlings and dragon hatchlings are mixed together, naturally has to be paired with several ten-thousand-year true dragons selected and dispatched from within the dragon ranks to be mentally and physically tortured by these brats.

"These little brats."

The morning class was finally over. After completing the handover, Ben immediately returned to her personal office in the kindergarten, pulled the curtains, and locked the door. Then, she began gulping down medical disinfectant to release the stress accumulated from taking care of the hatchlings.

Here, Ben has to admit that the benefits for Grey Feather Division agents are incomparable, even to middle-class families among the Elves. Aside from contraband, you just need to submit an application for whatever you want, and it will be delivered to your hands in as little as three days or as long as a month.

"It's a good thing you dragons reproduce even slower than us Elves, Scher. Just taking care of fourteen hatchlings is already torture enough for me; I don't even want to imagine the chaos if twenty-something came along."

After drinking the third bottle of medical disinfectant, Ben, her face beginning to flush slightly under the influence of the alcohol, complained to the Turquoise Dragon who had emerged from her spiritual world, having shrunk its size specifically to lie exhausted on the carpet.

"After all, it's considered good if a pair of dragons can have one hatchling in a hundred years. Someone like His Majesty Rus Wang, who has managed to have three litters with each of nine mother dragons in two hundred and seventy years, is already a rare stallion among us male dragons."

The Turquoise Dragon named Scher took some dried Brachiosaurus meat from a box in the office and popped it into his mouth after unwrapping it.

The number of dragons in the Dragon Valley Forest after the fall of the Dragon God has actually been in a state of extreme endangerment, which the Elves use to assess animal population levels. Even with the Light Dragon King and successive Dragon Kings guarding the true dragon population of the Dragon Valley Forest, the number of dragons has never crossed the 1,200-head threshold due to the dual threats of heavenly tribulations and human hunting.

So, when Rus Wang became the Dragon King of the Dragon Valley Forest and convened a new Dragon Assembly for all the ten-thousand-year dragons present, informing them about the Elves and the Zheer Continent, they truly wept with joy. Although the shadow of the heavenly tribulation had not dissipated, at least there were no humans coming to kill them, right?

Coupled with the fact that Rus Wang had devoted himself wholeheartedly to the early development of the Elves, the foundation of the relationship between the dragons and the Elves had already been firmly established. The dragons wouldn't be stupid enough to destroy their own walls and become enemies with the Elves. Moreover, given the dragons' pitiful numbers, migrating to the Folded Ear Continent would not conflict with the areas where Elves lived.

What's more, Rus Wang and the Elves were the original inhabitants of the Zheer Continent; the dragons of the Dragon Valley Forest knew exactly what their status was when coming to live on the Zheer Continent.

"But speaking of which, Ben, have you investigated the outside world's view of this kindergarten where our dragon hatchlings and your Elven hatchlings are mixed?"

"Oh, that."

Shaking her head, Ben propped herself up on the desk and said.

"Do you know what the public opinion is in our Elven society regarding His Majesty Rus Wang's eldest son, Barus?"

"Uh, as an expert in military, Soul Guidance Devices, and livelihood, developing our two kingdoms together?"

Scher thought for a moment. As the eldest son of the current Dragon King, Rus Wang, Barus was a big name even among the scarce dragon population. His talent in dragon rune arrays and Soul Guidance Devices made all other dragons look on in envy.

"No, he's a real-life fairy tale prince. He and an ordinary Elven girl living in the city were childhood sweethearts, eventually getting married and living happily ever after, and a few years ago, they even gave birth to a girl who hatched from a dragon egg. The time he was chased all over the capital of Ravenna by Rus Wang became the best-selling issue of The Sun Newspaper in history."

"I remember Barus isn't a pseudo-hundred-thousand-year level, right? And don't we have..."

Scher looked at Ben in shock.

"According to common knowledge, after you dragons break through the hundred-thousand-year limit, just like spirit beasts, there is no reproductive isolation with us Elves. Even through the spiritual contract method, by sharing power with us Elves, being raised to a pseudo-hundred-thousand-year level is achievable." (The difference between a hundred-thousand-year spirit beast and a pseudo-hundred-thousand-year spirit beast lies in whether they have a soul core.)

Scher suddenly realized that his current level of cultivation had been forcibly raised to the pseudo-hundred-thousand-year state by Ben, who had upgraded from a Spirit Douluo to a pseudo-Title Douluo through the spiritual contract method.

Considering that Ben was already over 190 years old, had no boyfriend, had the Dragon King's eldest son Barus as a role model, and that Elves didn't have the kind of level restrictions humans did, she could completely rely on the heaven-defying characteristic Rus Wang mentioned—that Elves who reach Title Douluo have a lifespan of 1,200 years, with an additional 100 years for every level gained thereafter—to attempt to break through level 100... Scher's entire dragon body subconsciously moved back a few steps.

"Don't worry, Scher. If I haven't found an Elven man by the time I'm 215, then I'll consider eating you."

"Also, don't even think about applying to the Dragon Council to transfer from this post. Don't force me to take action early."

"...Yes."