Douluo: Starting by Building Guns

Douluo: Starting by Building Guns

Author: Lingyuntiancheng

Synopsis:

As the saying goes, when your neighbors grow grain, you make guns; your neighbors become your granary.

You've transmigrated to the Douluo Continent. How do you rise to prominence?

Shen Feng will tell you: it only takes three steps.

First, build guns from the start and crush Tang San's mechanical Hidden Weapons.

Second, awaken true Innate Full Soul Power and crush Tang San's fake Innate Full Soul Power.

Third, walk Tang San's path and leave him with nowhere to go.

On the Douluo Continent, thirty kilometers north of Suotuo City in the Balak Kingdom, lay Shuiyun Village.

The sun rose over the horizon. The first rays of dawn had just touched the earth when two figures, one large and one small, arrived at the grove on the hill behind Shuiyun Village.

One was a young man not yet thirty, and the other was a little boy of about five or six.

"Xiao Feng, is this thing you made going to work this time? You can't let your old man down again."

As they entered the woods, the young man glanced down at the little boy beside him, his expression uneasy.

The boy's face stiffened, then he chuckled. "Don't worry, Dad. I guarantee nothing will go wrong this time."

"I had the best blacksmith in Suotuo City make these rifle parts, and the propellant for the bullets is a brand-new product. I carefully adjusted the charge, too. Nothing like last time will happen again."

Shen Rui's expression froze at that, because Shen Feng had said the exact same thing the last time they'd come to test a gun.

Then Shen Rui had barely pulled the trigger when the firearm Shen Feng had guaranteed would be safe exploded in his hands. If Shen Rui hadn't had a few tricks up his sleeve, the whole village might have been holding his funeral banquet by now.

Swallowing nervously, Shen Rui managed a strained smile. "Let's hope your guarantee is for real this time."

Shen Feng stuck out his tongue and teased him. "Relax, Dad. I guarantee there won't be any accidents this time."

As he spoke, Shen Feng pulled a vest and helmet from his backpack and put them on.

Then he jogged away from Shen Rui and hid behind a large rock. "Dad, I'm safe. Please begin your performance."

At Shen Feng's antics, Shen Rui's mouth twitched uncontrollably. "You little menace. How did I end up with a son like you?"

With a curse, Shen Rui flipped his hand and brought out an absurdly oversized rifle.

The whole gun was over two meters long, unquestionably a king among firearms. Its barrel was a full eight centimeters wide, and its muzzle was nearly five centimeters across. Call it an artillery cannon, and nobody would argue.

After one last check of the firearm in his hands, Shen Rui took a huge bullet from his Soul Tool. It was 45 millimeters in diameter and thirty centimeters long.

Actually, it might have been an artillery shell.

He pulled back the bolt, loaded the ammunition, pushed it into the chamber, and shut the gas valve. After completing the whole sequence, Shen Rui took a deep breath. Five dazzling rings—yellow, yellow, purple, purple, and black—slowly rose around him.

The rings flashed one after another. Only when his arms began to glow gold and a soft golden light shone across his skin did Shen Rui tremblingly place his finger on the rifle's trigger.

"Son, please don't let me down."

BOOM—

The next instant, Shen Rui pulled the trigger. A deafening blast rang out, and several trees as thick as a man's thigh snapped in a straight line before him. Flocks of birds burst into the air from the woods in the distance.

Seeing that the round had fired successfully, Shen Feng rushed over to Shen Rui in a few strides. "Dad, check the gun! Is it damaged?"

Shen Rui shook his head slightly. "I sensed it with my Soul Power. The barrel isn't damaged at all. As for the inside, you'll have to check it yourself when we get back."

"But this time seemed a little different from before. There was no white smoke when it fired, and the pungent smell of gunpowder was gone. The power also seemed to have increased quite a bit."

Shen Rui had lost count of how many times he'd tested guns for Shen Feng since the boy started making them at three years old.

In the past, the guns could break trees, but at most they took down two or three with trunks as thick as a bowl. After that, the bullets flew off somewhere else.

Today was the first time a single bullet had broken five trees before its trajectory finally veered off.

Shen Feng chuckled. "Didn't I tell you? I replaced the propellant in the bullets."

"The propellant now is smokeless powder. It's safer than black powder, and the bullets made with it are much more powerful, too."

Shen Rui stared at him. "Smokeless powder? Have you come up with something new again?"

"I really don't know how your brain works. You're always tinkering with all sorts of strange things."

Shen Feng grinned proudly. "Of course! It's because I inherited the best from you and Mom. With both your excellent bloodlines combined, it's only natural you'd have such a clever child."

At the same time, Shen Feng added the rest of the thought to himself.

Of course, my education back in my previous life under the red flag helped, too. It's what lets me show off in front of people in this strange yet familiar otherworld.

Shen Feng wasn't from this world—or rather, his soul didn't belong here.

In his previous life, Shen Feng had lived in a peaceful country without supernatural powers. He'd started school at five, studied hard for twenty years, graduated from XX University of Technology, then promptly changed careers to become a perfectly qualified cog in the social machine.

Then he'd died suddenly, only to arrive in the Douluo Continent, a world with supernatural powers. Soul Masters were the only supernatural profession on this continent.

Fortunately, both of Shen Feng's parents were Soul Masters, and they were fairly talented. Seven years ago, they seemed to have competed in something called the Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament and had reportedly achieved good results.

After the tournament ended, Shen Feng's parents got together. They passed through Shuiyun Village, where Shen Feng was born, and settled there. They had lived there for six years now.

When he was three, as his brain developed and his memories of his previous life grew clearer, Shen Feng began deliberately searching for the raw materials needed to make the guns and bullets of his former world.

After all, making firearms wasn't complicated—certainly not compared with Tang San's mechanical Hidden Weapons. Every part could be made by blacksmiths on the Douluo Continent.

The only difficult part of making bullets was the propellant, and even that wasn't a major obstacle.

With his Soul Master parents' financial support and all the science and mathematics he'd learned at the university of technology in his previous life, Shen Feng had finally managed, three years later, to perfectly recreate the most basic instruments of violence from his former world.

The enormous gun in Shen Rui's hands, which was almost like a machine cannon, was Shen Feng's finest creation since arriving on the Douluo Continent. It was a custom firearm made for Shen Rui's Five-Ring Soul King strength.

Shen Feng had even given it a fitting name: the .45 Breaker.

With a 45-millimeter caliber, a shot to the body would leave someone bruised in one place and battered in another.

Of course, Shen Feng hadn't developed this thing specifically to target people. He wanted his parents to be safer when they went hunting Soul Beasts for people.

Shen Rui looked at Shen Feng's smug face, then at the enormous gun in his hands. Warmth filled his heart.

That was right. No matter how clever you are, you're still the child Ling Na and I had. What parents would resent their own child for being too smart?

Shen Rui put the firearm away in his Soul Tool and ruffled Shen Feng's hair.

"Come on, let's head back. Your mom's probably already made breakfast and is waiting for us."

"After we eat, I'll take you to the Spirit Hall in the village center. The Spirit Hall deacon from Suotuo City is coming today. You're six now, so it's time to awaken your Martial Soul."

Shen Feng froze, then remembered that he'd turned six three days ago. He'd spent the past few days preparing nitrocellulose and making smokeless powder bullets, so he'd completely forgotten his own birthday.

"Okay, Dad. I'll definitely awaken with more Innate Soul Power than you and Mom."

Shen Rui smiled faintly. "All right, it's a deal. Better yet, awaken with Innate Full Soul Power."

Shen Feng's home stood at the foot of the hill behind Shuiyun Village, several hundred meters away from the village proper.

There were two reasons the family lived so far from the village in such a remote place. For one, wild beasts and low-level Soul Beasts sometimes came down from the mountain, and Shen Feng's family could help protect the villagers by living at its foot.

The other reason was that ordinary people had too much respect for Soul Masters—or, more accurately, they feared them.

On the one hand, they hoped a Soul Master would be born in their family, letting them climb the social ladder. On the other, they worried that powerful Soul Masters might oppress them, especially unfamiliar ones.

When Shen Rui first brought his wife, Ling Na, to Shuiyun Village, the villagers had seen them as just such unfamiliar Soul Masters.

So that Ling Na could give birth to Shen Feng in peace and to avoid unnecessary trouble, Shen Rui built a house with his own hands at the foot of the hill, far from Shuiyun Village.

After living as neighbors for so many years, the villagers of Shuiyun Village were no longer afraid Shen Rui would hurt them. But Shen Feng's family had long since grown accustomed to living at the foot of the hill.

Living away from the village also let Shen Feng work on firearms without restraint. Even if he accidentally caused an explosion, no ordinary people would get hurt.

And if the villagers of Shuiyun Village heard an explosion, they naturally assumed the Soul Masters were practicing their Soul Skills and kept even farther away from the area.

So over the past three years, only a handful of people had learned about the firearms and other things Shen Feng was developing. Most of them were people Shen Rui had helped hunt Soul Beasts, for whom he had used the firearms once or twice.

Ordinary people had never even had the chance to see them.

Shen Feng had never planned to spread the process for making firearms, at least not for now.

After all, firearms could greatly narrow the gap in power between low-level Soul Masters and ordinary people.

They were dangerously easy to spread: their principles were simple, they had no hidden safety mechanisms, and they were easier to make than even a crossbow among cold weapons.

As for bullets, black powder could serve as propellant and still make perfectly serviceable ammunition. They couldn't be used in automatic firearms, but they worked just fine in bolt-action rifles.

Besides, Shen Feng wasn't the only person in this world who knew how to make black powder. Tang Xiaosan, still far away in Fasinuo Province and not yet out of Holy Soul Village, knew how, too.

Shen Feng didn't want the firearms he'd worked so hard to recreate to end up transformed into some kind of Hidden Weapon aimed at him.

The father and son followed a narrow path down the hill. Before long, they spotted a small courtyard at its foot.

A few stone cottages stood inside a modest stone wall. The whole property was only about three hundred square meters: the warm little home of Shen Feng's family of three.

As soon as he entered the house, Shen Feng caught the irresistible aroma of food. It was the smell of his mother.

"Da Feng, Xiao Feng, you're back."

At the sound of a voice as sweet as a lark's, a young woman in a pale-yellow dress stepped out of the house and appeared before Shen Feng and Shen Rui. Her figure was slightly plump.

She was Shen Feng's mother, Shen Rui's wife, and the famous Mad Blade Ling Na of the Soul Master World.

Shen Rui had also made a name for himself over more than ten years in the Soul Master World: Mad Fist Shen Rui.

That was why Ling Na called Shen Rui "Da Feng." He really was a madman when he fought.

Back at the Soul Master Tournament, those two had been bitter rivals who refused to yield to each other.

But that had all happened years ago. Now, they were a loving family.

"Mom, what delicious food did you make? I'm starving to death."

The moment Ling Na heard him call her "Mom," her face darkened. She flashed over to Shen Feng and pinched his cheek playfully. "Mom? Do I really look that old?"

"If it weren't for giving birth to you, you little brat, I'd still be a beloved young maiden."

Bearing the pain in his cheek, Shen Feng rose onto his toes and cried out through gritted teeth, "Mom, Mom, it hurts, it hurts! You're going to tear my face off!"

Hearing their son beg for mercy, Shen Rui immediately spoke up to soothe her. "Nana, your figure is still just as good as it was back then."

At the mention of her figure, Ling Na's anger flared. She grabbed Shen Rui by the ear.

"My figure? You dare bring up my figure? If I hadn't eaten so well and exercised so little with you, would I have put on all this weight?"

"..."

Once again, the quiet courtyard at the foot of the hill rang with familiar clamor. This—this was what home felt like.

Half an hour later, Shen Feng rubbed his cheek, Shen Rui rubbed his ear, and Ling Na followed behind them in fitted clothes, arms crossed and looking thoroughly displeased.

The harmonious family of three left the house together and headed for Shuiyun Village nearby.

They were going so Shen Feng could awaken his Martial Soul.

Before long, Shen Feng's family arrived at the Spirit Hall in the center of Shuiyun Village. Calling it a Spirit Hall was generous; it was really just an ordinary stone house.

That was thanks to Shen Feng's family of Soul Masters living in Shuiyun Village. The people who came from Suotuo City to collect taxes didn't dare cause trouble, so the village was relatively well-off and could afford to build a stone Spirit Hall.

A village like Holy Soul Village, where Tang San lived in the original story, had a fine-sounding name, but could only afford to build a small wooden hut to serve as the Spirit Hall where children awakened their Martial Souls.

By the time Shen Feng's family arrived at the village Spirit Hall, quite a few villagers had already gathered there. They were all adults, though; not a single child who needed to awaken a Martial Soul, like Shen Feng, was among them.

They had probably already gone inside the Spirit Hall.

"Good morning, Mr. Shen, Madam Ling, Xiao Feng."

The moment the villagers saw Shen Feng's family arrive, they immediately stepped aside, bowed to them, and greeted them one after another.

Shen Feng's family had lived in Shuiyun Village for six years. Although they had never personally done anything for the villagers, their status as Soul Masters alone had brought the village plenty of indirect benefits.

Not counting the extra taxes the villagers had already been charged, Shuiyun Village had received two work-study student placements at Suotuo City's Junior Soul Master Academy all at once.

Though it was unlikely they'd need them anyway.