Leaving the Far North

"This..."

Xue Bingchen scratched his head and gave an awkward laugh.

"Hehehe..."

A light, pleasant chuckle rang out from within Xue Bingchen's body.

Snow Empress's breathtaking phantom flashed through the air before vanishing, her smile beautiful as melting ice and snow.

That was indeed the case.

She had watched Xue Bingchen grow up and poured no small amount of effort into raising him.

If she could not personally accompany him, how could she possibly rest easy letting Xue Bingchen face that treacherous, peril-filled human world alone?

Xue Bingchen was actually more than happy for Snow Empress to come along!

What a joke!

He would have the Lord of the Far North, with seven hundred thousand years of cultivation and combat strength comparable to a Rank 99 Extreme Douluo, as his personal bodyguard!

With Mother Snow Empress keeping watch inside him, was there anyone on Douluo Continent that Xue Bingchen could not afford to provoke?

Even if Tang Chen from Slaughter City showed up, he would dare to walk right up and slap him twice!

At that moment, light flashed from Xue Bingchen's chest. An exquisite token emanating an ultimate icy aura, carved with snowflake patterns, slowly floated down before Ice Empress.

"Ice."

Snow Empress's cold and imposing voice rang out in Ice Empress's mind:

"While I am away, you will have full authority over all matters, great and small, in the Far North. Should you encounter anything even you find difficult and cannot decide upon, you may use this token to contact me across space at any time."

Ice Empress reached out and took the icy token, clutching it tightly in her hand.

She drew a deep breath. All playfulness vanished from her pretty face in an instant as the terrifying pressure of a four-hundred-thousand-year Peerless Fierce Beast erupted!

"Xue'er, Little Chen, just go without worry!"

Ice Empress stood proudly amid the wind and snow, her emerald eyes shining with a domineering air that looked down upon the world.

"With the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion here, who in the Far North would dare make trouble?!"

Three days later.

Xue Bingchen officially stepped beyond the wind and snow barrier of the Far North.

This was the first time in the twelve years since he had transmigrated into this world that he had left the Far North for so long.

Over the next month or so, Xue Bingchen did not hurry onward. Instead, like a true traveler, he crossed numerous provinces and cities in the northern reaches of the Heaven Dou Empire.

His tall, lean frame of nearly six feet three, paired with his striking white hair and handsome, immortal-like face that nevertheless radiated an icy warning to keep strangers away, made him the center of attention wherever he went.

Along the way, he witnessed the prosperity and bustle of human cities, sampled all kinds of delicacies unavailable in the Far North, and casually taught a few blind thugs who tried to rob him a lesson.

And within the Ice and Snow Space inside his body.

Snow Empress occasionally sent out a wisp of Mental Power to observe the dazzling outside world through Xue Bingchen's eyes.

Looking at the towering buildings, the refined prototypes of Soul Tools, and the bustling crowds, Snow Empress could not help letting out soft sighs.

"Human creativity is truly astonishing. It has been a very long time since I last left the Far North and deliberately observed the human world. Human Soul Masters then were far less powerful than they are now. I never expected that even their towns and cities would develop into such flourishing heights..."

However, that sentiment lasted only a moment.

For a Seven-Hundred-Thousand-Year Fierce Beast like Snow Empress, who had lived through endless ages and witnessed the changing of seas into fields, the few centuries of a human Title Douluo's lifespan, or even the rise and fall of an empire, amounted to no more than the flick of a finger.

Thus, after the initial novelty faded, Snow Empress spent most of her time quietly sitting cross-legged within the Ice and Snow Space, meditating with her eyes closed while also refining the mixed energy Xue Bingchen absorbed from the outside world.

Another half month passed.

At the southwestern border of the Heaven Dou Empire, Fasnuo Province, Notting City.

The noonday sunlight spilled across the streets of this modestly prosperous town.

Dressed in a casual white fitted outfit and holding a skewer of freshly bought candied hawthorn, Xue Bingchen walked down the street as if absentmindedly. Yet his gaze remained fixed on a towering archway not far ahead.

At the center of the archway hung a plaque—[Notting Junior Soul Master Academy].

"Finally here."

Xue Bingchen bit through a candied hawthorn, a playful cold smile curling his lips.

His early departure from the Far North this time was not merely to search Sunset Forest for Immortal Herbs. He also had an extremely clear goal, one that could even be called his highest priority!

It was to come to Notting City and find the six-year-old "child of destiny" who had just awakened Twin Martial Souls this year!

Tang San!

Xue Bingchen had timed his arrival precisely so he could steal Tang San away before a particularly disgusting man got to him first!

He absolutely could not allow Tang San to be accepted as a disciple by that worthless fool named Yu Xiaogang!

At this very moment, outside the gates of Notting Academy.

A plain-looking six-year-old boy in patched coarse clothes, with healthy wheat-colored skin, was following behind an elderly village chief. They had been stopped by the snobbish gatekeeper at the academy entrance, who was loudly mocking them.

"Isn't this the famous opening scene from the original story?"

Xue Bingchen stood in the shadows not far away, watching the scene coldly.

From what he knew from reading the novel in his past life, Tang San's personality was actually extremely complicated, even warped.

In his previous life, he had been an outer disciple of the Bashu Tang Sect. His bones were steeped in that exceptionally feudal, rigidly hierarchical, archaic belief that once one became a disciple, one's master became one's father for life.

Put plainly, he was a shut-in obsessed with handcrafting Buddha Fury Tang Lotuses, with nothing but Hidden Weapons and poison on his mind!

Even worse, he had been an assassin in his previous life!

What did an assassin know about human relationships?

What did he know about normal social interaction?

If he followed the original plot, met Yu Xiaogang here, got fooled by Yu Xiaogang's slick theories, and kowtowed to take him as his master...

Then it would be over!

Once he became a disciple, with Tang San's feudal personality, he would absolutely obey Yu Xiaogang in everything.

Under Yu Xiaogang's selfish, utterly hypocritical guidance, Tang San would soon evolve into that nauseating, half-baked "pure and immaculate Tang God King"!

And once Tang San grew a little older and entered that so-called "Shrek Academy"...

After accepting Flender's bandit logic of "those who dare not cause trouble are mediocrities" and "Monsters should have the privileges of Monsters"...

That sapling called Tang San would grow completely crooked, beyond saving!

If he truly reached that point of being hypocritical and double-standard to the extreme, Xue Bingchen feared that when he met him in the future, he would not be able to stop himself from slapping his head straight into his stomach!