Lan Si

Late summer.

The temperature kept climbing, and even the cool breeze had turned stifling. The blacksmith shop in Nuoding City was worse still.

"Bang, bang!"

"Clang, clang!"

"Clang, clang!"

Early in the morning, the blacksmiths let their sweat fly as the ringing of metal filled the air without pause.

A middle-aged man with muscles like granite stood bare-chested, his skin bronze and his black hair loose. His sharp eyes swept over every blacksmith as he earnestly instructed them.

"If you want to become a good blacksmith, you must first learn to control your three hearts. So where are they? I'll tell you. The heart in your chest is the foundation of your life; there's no need to say more about that. The muscles in your two calves are the second and third hearts. If someone wants to unleash all their strength, they must set all three hearts in motion at once. That's why you don't start from the waist when you exert force. The three hearts are the starting point."

Standing at the entrance to the blacksmith shop with a teapot in one hand, the middle-aged man yawned and spoke at length. Then he called out, "Did everyone understand?"

"Understood!" the blacksmiths replied in a booming chorus.

This was one of the biggest blacksmith shops in Nuoding City, and business was decent. The blacksmiths all came from poor families, and their loved ones depended on this work to survive, so they naturally put their backs into it.

"Understood!" A childish voice, clearly distracted and a beat late, rang out.

It belonged to a very small child, only five or six years old. He swung a tiny hammer, mimicking the blacksmiths as he pounded a small piece of red-hot iron. Under his blows, the metal grew longer and longer until it took shape as a crude little dagger, which he plunged into water to cool.

"I finally finished." The little fellow raised his arm and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

At the sight of this comical scene, a group of broad-shouldered blacksmiths burst into laughter.

The little fellow was fair and pretty, with large, lively black eyes and short black hair. Since he was still so young, he was small and adorable.

Compared with the fine ironwork the blacksmiths produced, though, he looked more like he was playing house.

"Haha, good lad. No wonder you're the child of a Soul Master!" The middle-aged man laughed as he walked over. His calloused hand patted the child's shoulder, and he chuckled. "All right, A-Si, that's enough for today. I'll take care of the rest. You've been running around here since early morning without even eating breakfast. Keep it up, and you won't grow any taller."

"I know, Uncle Otto." The child beamed with an innocent smile.

"Ah..." At the sight of the child's smile, the middle-aged man named Otto let out a quiet sigh for no reason he could explain. His heart felt heavy.

The child was named Lan Si, the son of his friend, Lan Zong.

The two had grown up in Beidi Soul Village, north of Nuoding City. They had awakened their Martial Souls at the same time, and both had awakened hammers. Fortunately, Lan Zong had awakened Soul Power and become the village's only Soul Master. He had also married a female Soul Master. With Lan Zong's support, Otto had opened this blacksmith shop in Nuoding City.

But their good fortune had not lasted. A few years ago, Lan Zong broke through to level forty.

It should have been cause for celebration. The couple had gone to the Star Dou Great Forest to obtain Soul Rings, leaving their young child in Otto's care before they set out.

But they never returned. Only later did Otto learn that they had encountered a high-ranked Soul Beast in the Star Dou Great Forest. Both Lan Zong and his wife had perished.

From then on, Otto had raised Lan Si.

Lan Si was very well-behaved. He never cried or made a fuss, and he knew how to take care of himself. But the more well-behaved he was, the more it pained Otto. The child was too lonely. It was only in this blacksmith shop that he opened his heart and smiled from the bottom of it, because his father, Lan Zong, had once worked as a blacksmith for a time.

"A-Si, take this money and buy yourself something tasty from the street. You'll be six in two months, and you'll need a healthy body when it's time to awaken your Martial Soul." Otto crouched down, gently stroked Lan Si's fair cheek, and handed him a money pouch containing more than a dozen Copper Soul Coins.

"Thanks, Uncle Otto. I'll be off, then." Lan Si smiled brightly, took the money pouch, waved, and happily ran out of the blacksmith shop.

Watching Lan Si bounce away, Otto smiled with relief. He hoped the child would have a bright future.

After leaving the blacksmith shop, Lan Si passed an empty alley and suddenly stopped. His head throbbed, and he clutched it with both hands as a flood of strange yet familiar memories surged into his mind.

It took a good while before he came to his senses. He stood and looked around, then glanced at his small, tender hands. Without thinking, he murmured in Huaxia Language, "Strange. Hadn't I already died? And what's going on here? Why has my body gotten so small? Wait, I've actually been reborn and transmigrated to Douluo Continent."

As he muttered to himself, memories from his past life continued pouring into his mind.

He had lived in the world of The Degenerates.

He had learned the Supreme Universe Art and the Five Thunders Heart Art, and broken through to the Large Heaven Realm.

The Bad Commander had set his sights on him, and he had died.

"Ah. I don't have any powerful backing in this life, so I'd better keep a low profile. I don't want to repeat the mistakes of my previous life. As for my parents' deaths, unless they were deliberately killed by someone, and given that humans hunt Soul Beasts and Soul Beasts strike back at humans, I can't exactly kill every Soul Beast to avenge them. I'll just have to see if I can find the one that killed them someday. But first, I need to cultivate the Supreme Universe Art and the Five Thunders Heart Art, so I won't awaken my Martial Soul only to find I have no Soul Power. And then there are firearms. In my previous life, the forging techniques in The Degenerates' world weren't good enough to make them. Here, I can have the blacksmiths make the parts in batches, then assemble them myself. I'll have to handle the bullets myself, though. They can help make the casings and bullets, while I mix the gunpowder."

Having made up his mind, Lan Si grabbed a quick breakfast on the street, then returned to his lodgings.

...Two months later, in a dim, modest room.

Lan Si sat cross-legged on his bed, his body wreathed in hazy white light, with blue arcs of electricity occasionally flickering around him.

As the first faint rays of morning sunlight shone through the window, Lan Si slowly opened his eyes.

"Phew..." Lan Si exhaled a long breath of stale air and thought, Going from nothing to having Qi is the hardest part. Two months is simply too short. Even with the experience from my previous life, I can't raise the Supreme Universe Art and the Five Thunders Heart Art to the first level in such a short time, let alone combine them like I did in my previous life.

Just then, a series of heavy footsteps sounded outside the room.

"A-Si, are you up?" Someone knocked on the door, and Otto's gentle voice came from outside.

Lan Si smiled warmly, got up, and straightened the slightly rumpled bedding. "Come in, Uncle Otto. I'm already up."

Creak!

The door opened, and Otto walked in. He ruffled Lan Si's hair and said with a smile, "Come on. It's time to awaken your Martial Soul."

"Mm." Lan Si looked excited. He was eager to find out what kind of Martial Soul he would awaken.

There was no need to worry about Innate Soul Power. He had cultivated the Supreme Universe Art and the Five Thunders Heart Art, so he was bound to have at least some Soul Power. But his Martial Soul was less certain.

According to Uncle Otto, his father's Martial Soul had been a hammer, from the Power Attack System, while his mother's had been a flower, from the support system. Neither was anything out of the ordinary, and their cultivation had been very slow. Reaching the Soul Elder rank before the age of thirty had already been quite an achievement.

Speaking of Soul Elders, Lan Si thought of the theories of that damned Grandmaster from the original Douluo story, Yu Xiaogang. He claimed that anyone who failed to break through level thirty before the age of twenty could never advance to Soul Elder in their lifetime. What utter nonsense—nothing but a frog in a well comforting himself and making excuses for his own failure to break through level thirty. It was the biggest pile of crap imaginable. His own father, as Lan Si remembered him, had become a Soul Elder at twenty-four.

There was also that saying: "There are no useless Martial Souls, only useless Soul Masters."

If that was true, then wasn't Yu Xiaogang himself useless? He was already so old and still couldn't break through to Soul Elder.

Or why else had he never taken on disciples with ordinary talent? It was only after meeting Tang San, who had Twin Martial Souls, that he dared come out and show off, bragging about how brilliant his theories were.

Tang San had Twin Martial Souls and a transmigrator's cheat besides. Even if he'd been a pig, surely someone could have taught him well!