Tail

Star Luo City, northwest district, White Tiger Duke Mansion.

At daybreak, a well-built boy of about eleven or twelve, dressed in gray cloth, slipped out through the back gate on the north side of the Duke's Mansion.

After murmuring a few words under his breath—things like, "Mom, I'll come back and avenge you"—he cast one more resentful glance at the Duke's Mansion, then turned and headed for the Star Dou Great Forest without hesitation.

At the same time, a black figure emerged slightly from the trees somewhere a thousand meters from the Duke's Mansion.

Watching the scene from afar, his whole body began to tremble involuntarily. His long, powerful hands gripped the hem of his clothes and tugged at it again and again, as if he held a grudge against it. Fortunately, the fabric was good quality, so it didn't tear.

Then he turned and vanished into the woods.

A moment later, a young figure emerged from another direction beyond the woods.

He looked about the same age as the boy who had just left the Duke's Mansion. Even if he was older, it couldn't have been by much.

His large eyes were strikingly black and white, his brows finely shaped, his skin fair, and his lips thin. His nose was straight, and he carried himself with elegance. His long black hair fell casually down his back without making him seem the least bit unkempt. He wore a luxurious, close-fitting outfit, mostly black, with gold trim along the edges. A large black hooded cloak draped over his back, accentuating his slender, slight build.

He looked every bit the refined young nobleman of ancient times.

His looks and figure were nearly perfect. If he had been on Blue Star, anyone of the opposite sex who saw him would have been briefly spellbound.

The boy was named Feng Piaoling, and he had two identities.

In one, he was an orphan adopted by Xu Tianran, Crown Prince of the Sun Moon Empire. Blessed with extraordinary talent in both Soul Master cultivation and Soul Tools, he had been highly valued by Xu Tianran since childhood.

Alongside Ju Zi, the future empress dowager of the Sun Moon Empire who would nearly unify the Douluo Continent, he was counted among Xu Tianran's most trusted confidants.

He had been ordered to infiltrate Shrek Academy and investigate the former Crown Prince Xu He, preferably finding an opportunity to eliminate him.

As for how Xu Tianran knew Xu He was at Shrek, that had to do with Feng Piaoling's other identity.

He was a transmigrator.

In his previous life, he had unfortunately died suddenly after staying up all night reading a pepper novel.

When he woke again, he had been reborn into this world, ten thousand years after Tang San had become a god.

He had been reborn in a remote border town of the Sun Moon Empire.

His parents hadn't both died, he hadn't been jilted, and no one had bullied him.

His mother ran a restaurant. Her Martial Soul was a Talisman, and she had no Soul Power.

His father was a Soul Master with the Green Lotus Sword as his Martial Soul. It wasn't a top-tier Martial Soul, but in his early twenties, he had already reached nearly the Soul Ancestor level.

But when Feng Piaoling was six, everything changed.

Evil Soul Masters attacked his city.

The civilians, including his parents, were all slaughtered. He alone survived.

Watching the boy from the Duke's Mansion disappear farther into the distance, Feng Piaoling's heart filled with complicated emotions.

Without realizing it, he had been in this world for almost twelve years.

The things he'd experienced had been more thrilling than all the decades of his previous life put together.

He had gone from the high spirits of his arrival in this world to his current unruffled calm—from being hidden in a rice jar, terrified into vomiting as he watched his parents die, to facing his enemy now with patience and composure.

At this point, the identity of the person who had killed his parents was all but clear.

The people who had killed his parents had indeed been Evil Soul Masters.

But the true mastermind behind it all was likely someone else.

And the most likely suspect was none other than Xu Tianran, the Crown Prince of the Sun Moon Empire who had adopted him.

The reason was simple.

First, Xu Tianran had dealings with the Holy Spirit Cult.

Second, the Evil Soul Masters had spent three days in the small town killing, burning, and looting. They had wiped out nearly every living thing on the whole street where his family lived, leaving no chicken or dog alive. Even an earthworm would've been split lengthwise.

Yet they had somehow failed to find him, hidden in the rice jar.

When they finally did, Xu Tianran had traveled a great distance and personally led people there to kill all the Evil Soul Masters.

Anyone with a shred of intelligence could see that something was wrong.

The reason Xu Tianran had set his sights on Feng Piaoling was also simple.

He had a cheat.

It was called Heaven Rewards Diligence.

As long as he found the right method and direction, any skill or cultivation technique could be mastered through unremitting effort.

The difficulty varied. For instance, before his Martial Soul awakened, Feng Piaoling meditated every day to sense Soul Power. He started when he was a little over one and kept at it until he was four. After two and a half years, he finally sensed Soul Power.

Then, over the next two years, he experimented with absorbing it and created a cultivation technique suited to himself.

Using this technique, he not only cultivated Innate Full Soul Power but also sensed the Martial Souls in his bloodline: his father's Green Lotus Sword and his mother's Talisman.

Neither was particularly powerful.

But it was a very good start.

With this self-created cultivation technique, he avoided having the Green Lotus Sword and Talisman Martial Soul devour each other when his Martial Soul awakened, and awakened Twin Martial Souls instead.

Out of caution, when his father took him to the City Lord's Mansion to awaken his Martial Soul, he revealed only the Talisman Martial Soul.

As it happened, the local City Lord had once attended Shrek Academy and was a fan of that swindler from ten thousand years ago, the Grandmaster, Yu Xiaogang.

When he learned that Feng Piaoling had awakened a Talisman Martial Soul with Innate Full Soul Power, he asked whether he had a second, even more powerful Martial Soul.

Feng Piaoling naturally denied it outright. He hadn't even told his parents about it, but somehow he had still brought disaster down on his family.

With that, it wasn't hard to understand why Xu Tianran had traveled all the way to find him in this godforsaken border town.

If Xu Tianran had recruited him openly, Feng Piaoling might have served him for his parents' sake, perhaps even pledged his sincere allegiance and helped him unite the continent.

But that madman should never, ever have brought in Evil Soul Masters to kill his parents.

And now, his revenge was about to begin.

After leaving the Sun Moon Empire, he had come straight here to lie in wait for Huo Dog and snatch Tian Meng and Electrolux from him.

As for why he called him Huo Dog?

Besides being trained like a dog by Tang San in the middle and later parts of the story, his own doglike character had plenty to do with it. Those who understood, understood.

To snatch Tian Meng and Electrolux, he had made extensive preparations.

In the more than five years since his Martial Soul awakened, he had not only raised his Soul Power to level thirty early on but had also taken special care to temper his spiritual power, successfully expanding his Spirit Sea.

The method for expanding his Spirit Sea was simple. First, he had some servants at the Crown Prince's Mansion throw pebbles at him. Then he gradually increased the difficulty, using Soul Tools to attack him.

Meanwhile, he released his spiritual power to dodge.

At first, he had probably been left bruised all over and looking like a complete wreck. But as he used his spiritual power more and more, it continued to grow, and his Spirit Sea expanded along with it.

During that time, he had also created a method for cultivating spiritual power and refining his eyes, the Heaven-Reaching Demon Eye, as well as a footwork technique, Clone Shadow.

The Heaven-Reaching Demon Eye could temper spiritual power and see through an enemy's weaknesses.

Clone Shadow had astonishing speed and evasion, and could also create Soul Power duplicates to confuse enemies.

Either one of these techniques could provide tremendous support in battle.