The sun hung high in the sky, and a gentle breeze blew. Several weeks had passed since the start of the school year. The Soul Tool courses, announced at the beginning of term, finally had some news: the textbooks were ready, and the courses and related resource allocations were more or less in place. Qian Duoduo, dean of the Soul Guidance Department, had been run ragged these past few weeks. Even his burly frame had shed several pounds.
Resource allocation was no simple task. By comparison, writing the textbooks had been easy. They only needed to cover the basics, with the difficulty brought down to a level the students could understand. Even that was a little difficult for these Soul Tool geniuses. Perhaps they had never encountered a real challenge before; expecting them to understand why ordinary people struggled was asking a bit much. Still, that was understandable, especially when they were given a choice between those two tasks. They had enthusiastically assured him they would make everything clear.
That left Qian Duoduo to suffer. In the entire Soul Guidance Department, there wasn't a single trusted subordinate who could lend him a hand. In the end, he had to handle everything himself, coordinating with all the administrative departments. It had been a grueling process. He'd made countless unnecessary trips before he finally grasped the basic details. And the hardest part still lay ahead. As the saying went, touching people's interests was harder than touching their souls. Opening courses in the Soul Guidance Department inevitably meant needing more resources. There was the instructors' pay, though that was the small expense; training resources were the real cost. Students couldn't train with textbooks alone, could they? They needed hands-on practice to test what they'd learned and reinforce their understanding. Only then would they truly know it. What you learned from books was ultimately shallow; to truly understand something, you had to put it into practice.
The resources required were immense. Even if ordinary metals were used for all the nonessential parts of Soul Tool production, a small amount of Rare Metal was still needed for the cores. It wasn't that Rare Metal was unaffordable; it was that it was scarce even at a high price. One reason the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Tools were so advanced was its abundant Rare Metal reserves. With so much material available for experimentation, it could naturally train a large number of Soul Engineers.
The Three Great Empires of Douluo had a serious problem. Rare metals came from ore deposits, after all. Even if the Three Great Empires had fewer deposits, and the kinds of ore there differed from those in the Sun Moon Empire, they could surely find substitutes. The underlying principles were the same. So why were Rare Metals scarce? That was a subject no one dared touch. Not a single scholar had offered an opinion on it, even though anyone who understood the issue at all could see the simple answer. But throughout history, those who studied the matter had all come from traditional Martial Soul clans. They could never speak the truth at the expense of their own interests.
The truth was that these clans occupied vast tracts of valuable land, much of it where Rare Metal deposits lay. Such places were usually the clans' ancestral lands, and no one was allowed to disturb them. Every clan had its own territory, and when all those lands were joined together, the result was staggering. Thus, even ore that wasn't scarce became scarce. Nor could the Three Great Empires trade for Rare Metals with the Sun Moon Empire. Rare Metals were precious and tightly controlled there, so Soul Engineers from these lands had no chance of buying them.
Soul Engineers needed Rare Metals, while only some traditional Soul Masters needed small amounts to make various tools. The Tang Sect was one such group, but unfortunately, it had fallen into decline. Hidden Weapons had long since all but disappeared from use, leaving only a small part of the tradition intact. The Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect and the Tang Sect had once made a perfect pair: one Martial Soul was suited to finding Rare Metals, and the other excelled at using them. But that partnership had been broken. Had it formed a complete cycle, it would have become a true behemoth.
All these factors combined to leave the Soul Engineers of the Three Great Empires desperately short of Rare Metals, severely limiting their numbers. Without Rare Metals, they couldn't make Soul Tools, and the whole idea of becoming a Soul Engineer was nonsense. Soul Engineers had little say in the Three Great Empires; traditional Martial Soul clans held all the power. That meant Soul Engineers might well betray their country. The Sun Moon Empire was a paradise for them. If it really invaded, the people might even welcome its forces with food and drink. But how could anything change? Touching people's interests cut deeper than touching their souls. They could only watch as the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Tools advanced by leaps and bounds, making era-defining progress. Here, they stood still, unable even to catch up to the Sun Moon Empire's heels. They couldn't understand it even when it was explained to them step by step. The geniuses at Shrek Academy would be geniuses in the Sun Moon Empire, too. The only reason they couldn't compete was their environment.
Even the cleverest housewife couldn't cook without rice. No genius could leap beyond the limits of their era. The gap between the two sides was a gap between eras. You couldn't expect Newton to understand the photoelectric effect. If he couldn't, did that make him a fool? Everyone knew it was because of the era he lived in. The only solution was to catch up, little by little—and they had to cast off their burdens and pursue that goal with everything they had. Only then would they have the slightest chance of matching the Sun Moon Empire's progress. Once the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Tools let Soul Engineers fight on equal terms with traditional Soul Masters, it would truly unite the world.
Soul Tools like that were bound to emerge as Soul Guidance advanced. Traditional Soul Masters would inevitably be phased out. Anyone or anything that tried to resist the tide of the times would be crushed. You had to adapt to the times, not expect the times to adapt to you.
That was why Shrek's Soul Engineer training plan was bound to fail. Its goal was to train a large number of Soul Masters who were also familiar with Soul Engineering, so they could stand against the Sun Moon Empire. But in reality, there weren't enough resources. In the end, the program would inevitably be scaled back or canceled altogether.
Eventually, they might concentrate all their resources on a handful of people to achieve some results. Everyone knew the real solution, but if everyone acted on it, there wouldn't be a cyclical pattern of history. The most dramatic example had been the Spirit Hall's attempt, ten thousand years ago, to unite the world and have the Angel Clan take control of all its resources. In the ten thousand years since, there had been no war sweeping across the continent on that scale, but smaller conflicts had never ceased.
The only time a continent-wide war had threatened to break out was when the Sun Moon Continent collided with the Douluo Continent. But the conflict hadn't yet grown intense, so both sides backed down. Truly fierce conflicts never ended without a war. There was a name for this: the cycle of history. Wars arose from land annexation, and periodic depressions came from overproduction. Everyone knew that if they all took a little less, they could avoid a war that might engulf them. But would they actually let go?
History had proved, and would continue to prove, that war was inevitable. Shrek's task was to produce a true powerhouse who could stand firm in that war. Shrek was only an academy, after all. It had neither the need nor the power to directly oppose the Sun Moon Empire. When the Sun Moon Empire started a war, it would have no reason to antagonize Shrek, either. It could simply treat Shrek as the continent's foremost academy, just as the Three Great Empires did. The Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy would inevitably be curtailed to secure Shrek's neutrality. Any leader who wasn't brain-dead would handle things that way.
Shrek's job was to raise its standards as much as possible, so it would have more say in future negotiations. That was what people called strategic value. Poor Dean Qian Duoduo still hadn't truly understood this. That was why, as dean, he was subordinate to Yan Shaozhe. In theory, the two were equals, but Yan Shaozhe still had the final say on academy matters. Yan Shaozhe knew about decisions concerning Soul Tools, while the dean of the Soul Guidance Department did not. That showed how the people in the Sea God Pavilion judged Qian Duoduo's abilities.
Fortunately, Qian Duoduo was exceptionally skilled at managing money—in other words, he was a brilliant financial manager. He knew how to use funds wisely to get the most out of them. That was what kept the underfunded Soul Guidance Department afloat.
Each year, a thousand students enrolled. Even with Shrek's extremely high expulsion rate, there were still more than three thousand students on campus over the six years. Many left before graduation to return home and inherit the family business. Supporting so many students consumed an enormous amount of resources. Even the Sun Moon Empire couldn't easily provide for that many people all at once.
This absolutely correct measure was still bound to fail. There was simply no way around it—unless someone stated the solution everyone already knew in their hearts. And they would still need the power to put that solution into practice.
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