The next day at noon.
Li Changsheng hadn't slept well the night before. His excitement had weighed on him, and he hadn't gradually drifted off until just before dawn. He didn't open his eyes until the blazing sun shone through the window.
After tidying up and eating something at the hotel where he was staying, Li Changsheng listened to people discussing the previous night's events. Yawning, he headed out.
In this world, every child awakened their Martial Soul at the age of six. So even six- or seven-year-old children here were very independent. No one would find it strange to see a child like Li Changsheng staying at a hotel.
Once outside, Li Changsheng headed toward the slaughterhouse he remembered in Spirit Soul City.
After nearly ten thousand years of development, Spirit Soul City had grown up around God Soul Village. Many Soul Masters and ordinary people lived there, all believing that cultivating in this place would earn them the Sea God's protection.
At the center of Spirit Soul City stood two statues, each a hundred meters tall.
Their presence held the same significance as the golden village plaque in God Soul Village.
The Sea God! The Sea Mother! The two statues had been erected by the Heaven Dou Empire's royal family after Tang San became a god. They symbolized the Sea God guarding the world, and the empire flourishing like the vast blue sea, enduring forever and stretching far into the future...
But hopes always had a way of disappointing people.
The statues still stood, but the once-mighty Heaven Dou Empire, which had ruled over the Douluo Continent, had split into the Heaven Soul Empire and the Dou Ling Empire.
Li Changsheng passed through the square in Spirit Soul City.
His gaze fell upon the two statues at its center.
A man and a woman, crafted by heavenly skill, exquisitely beautiful beyond compare.
The man's long hair streamed behind him. His striking features were majestic even in repose, and the eyes set with brilliant blue sapphires seemed to hold a divine radiance as they gazed toward the distant sea. One hand rested around the woman's waist; the other gripped the Seagod Trident! Eight pairs of wings spread behind him, each containing many Soul Tools and radiating a blue-gold glow. At his feet, countless crimson-gold strands of Blue Silver Emperor Grass coiled around him. They weren't sculptures, but living plants, each at the ten-thousand-year level!
The woman leaned against the man's chest. Red crystal-flame stones accentuated her almond-shaped eyes, giving her a tender, alluring charm. Her slender hands caressed the man's chest. A pair of ears grew from her head, and she tilted her lovely face up to gaze at him with deep affection.
These were the statues of the Sea God and the Sea Mother. They had stood here for ten thousand years.
It was noon, and the scorching sun beat down on the ground, yet many Soul Masters still came to admire the statues.
Li Changsheng, too, stopped to gaze at them from afar. Though he had seen them thousands upon thousands of times, he still couldn't help envying this truly divine couple.
He had once had a wife, just one. Their feelings hadn't run very deep; they had simply reached the right age and come together. She had been beautiful, and a Soul Master, too, but she had long since passed away. He had descendants as well, but after ten thousand years, even blood ties could be swept away by the merciless passage of time.
"If I'd gotten the Check-In System back then, everything would've been different. Maybe I could've had a wife I loved, who loved me in return, and taken her with me when I became a god."
At the thought, bitterness crept across Li Changsheng's young face.
Longevity was wonderful, but never dying could leave a person short of any drive to live. Even if Li Changsheng had only had his scythe Martial Soul, he could have passed the time by cultivating.
He hadn't expected, after transmigrating, to compete with the Shrek Seven Devils for women. He admired their love and envied it, too. If either of the two in each couple had been missing, the whole story would have been incomplete. Tang San and Xiao Wu were the foremost among them.
"But that's all right. This time, I'll work hard and give it everything I've got. With the Check-In System to help me, I, Li Changsheng, can definitely succeed. Ten thousand years have passed. I'm no longer Li Gou'dan, the butt of everyone's jokes ten thousand years ago. I'm Li Changsheng, who has lived for ten thousand years! The man who will rule the continent from now on!"
Li Changsheng smiled faintly. His gaze settled on the statues of Tang San and Xiao Wu one last time. He slowly closed his eyes, then opened them again. A resolute light shone in his bright eyes, and with a smile, he said,
"Hello, Sea God. Hello, Sea Mother. I'm Li Changsheng..."
With that, Li Changsheng headed toward the slaughterhouse.
The slaughterhouse.
Spirit Soul City was home to many people, and outsiders also came to visit and sightsee, so the demand for ordinary meat was very high.
Chicken and duck were the mainstays.
Not every animal in this world was a Soul Beast, just as not every person had the same kind of Martial Soul. Some animals were born to be eaten, not to cultivate—and they couldn't cultivate, either.
The slaughterhouse stood outside Spirit Soul City. Because of what had happened the day before, more troops had been stationed at the city gate, but they were mainly checking Soul Masters. They didn't even look at small children like Li Changsheng and let them pass right through.
And many children were leaving Spirit Soul City. They were all around Li Changsheng's age. The city guards knew that most of them were headed to the slaughterhouse outside the city to work, earning the one Gold Soul Coin they needed to awaken their Martial Souls.
One Gold Soul Coin was no small sum. It could support an ordinary family for several months. Most people couldn't simply come up with that much money, especially when there was no guarantee what kind of Martial Soul their child would awaken. So many parents sent their soon-to-awaken children out to find work and earn a little money to help with expenses.
Helping people awaken their Martial Souls was a lucrative business. After the Spirit Hall Empire fell, the participating Spirit Hall Soul Masters had initially helped people awaken their Martial Souls for free. But gradually, they began charging, and the fees kept climbing.
Li Changsheng found it all rather ridiculous. It was true that Spirit Hall had its own agenda when it helped people awaken their Martial Souls for free, but at least it had been free. Now things had turned into this. A Martial Soul was the stepping stone that let many people rise to greatness, yet even that had become something people weren't equal in. How tragic...
From far away, Li Changsheng could already smell the blood hanging in the air.
As he walked out of the city, he also saw more than ten children his age along the road. They were dressed simply, their faces bright with honest smiles as they chased and played with one another on their way to the slaughterhouse.
Li Changsheng stood out in particular. He was dressed neatly, and there wasn't a trace of hard labor on his fair little face. It was obvious he belonged to the sort of noble family that had moved to Spirit Soul City, so the other children kept their distance from him in fear.
Li Changsheng was rather relieved. He didn't want to roughhouse with a bunch of little brats.
At that moment,
many carriages had gathered outside the slaughterhouse. They had all come to buy supplies.
One after another, groups of children around six years old carried slaughtered chickens and ducks. Their faces were alight with happiness.
Li Changsheng walked straight into the slaughterhouse, which was enclosed by a courtyard wall. The cries of the chickens and ducks layered over one another, and the foul stench made him feel a little sick. He picked out a tall, burly man in the crowd who was directing the workers, slowed his breathing, and walked over.
"Move, move, move! You little stinkers can't even catch a chicken! How are you ever going to awaken your Martial Souls?"
"You over there, are you playing with that chicken? You like chickens so much, you think you'll awaken a Chicken Martial Soul?"
"Faster! Didn't you eat breakfast? What was that chicken giblet soup for?"
The tall, burly man scolded the children catching chickens, though his tone sounded more like playful banter.
Li Changsheng watched from the side.
All these children had come to work here. Though they were only six, children that age grew quite tall in this world, and they had a fair amount of strength. They could handle this sort of work.
The burly foreman seemed like a decent man. He only made the children catch chickens, and he'd apparently give any child who hadn't eaten a bowl of chicken giblet soup for free. At the end of the day, they could also take some meat home, and he paid them well.
But this only happened around the time of year when children were about to awaken their Martial Souls.
It was his way of helping the children.
The burly man sensed Li Changsheng's arrival. He seemed to be a Soul Master, with keen senses. He suddenly turned around, his huge eyes fixed on Li Changsheng.
A murderous aura.
Li Changsheng stopped two meters away from the burly man. He could sense an aura of bloodlust around him, but it didn't come from killing people. It was the result of slaughtering too many chickens and ducks. One look at his thick, greasy hands, held close to his body, told Li Changsheng he was a seasoned hand.
"Looking for work?" The burly man stared at Li Changsheng. He was taken aback for a moment, then asked tentatively.
Li Changsheng shook his head. Before he'd become a child again, he had taken quite a few Gold Soul Coins from the Li Family and hidden them away. He had enough to cover his expenses, and this place wasn't suited to making use of the Night-Startling Spear.
There must have been people who escaped the previous day and saw him use the Night-Startling Spear.
"No. I'm here to buy chickens. A hundred of them, alive." Li Changsheng replied calmly.
But the sweet, childish tone of his voice made it sound a little exaggerated.
The burly man froze for a moment. Buying chickens was perfectly normal; maybe the boy was placing an order for his family. But wanting them alive was a bit much, wasn't it?
"Alive?" The burly man confirmed.
"Mm..."
Li Changsheng thought for a moment, then asked the God of Wisdom silently, "If I have them make the chickens half-dead, will they lose their blood energy?"
Catching a hundred lively chickens would be a bit of a hassle for Li Changsheng.
<Answer: Yes. But you only need to kill a hundred and fifty.>
Li Changsheng nodded, then said to the burly man, "Make that a hundred and fifty. But I have a request. I can pay extra."
The burly man was stunned. Why did this child speak with such an old-fashioned air, as if he were lecturing the world and calling the shots? Still, he nodded. The customer was king.
"I need you to leave these hundred and fifty chickens half-dead, then put them all in the same large cage. After that, prepare a handcart for me. I'll cover the cost."
Wouldn't it work just fine if he gathered all the chickens together, then used the Night-Startling Spear to destroy them all at once?
The Night-Startling Spear definitely had that kind of power.
From what Li Changsheng had observed, the Night-Startling Spear's thrusts attacked an area rather than a single point. He only needed to prepare a cage small enough to hold all the chickens.
The God of Wisdom hadn't mentioned this, or perhaps it was because Li Changsheng hadn't asked.
The burly man was even more surprised. But after Li Changsheng urged him on and handed him a Gold Soul Coin, he stopped wasting time. What an eccentric big spender!
He hurriedly gathered the children who were working there and had them get everything ready for Li Changsheng.
The children caught chickens and occasionally glanced over at Li Changsheng, who was sipping tea in a nearby pavilion. Their faces were full of surprise.
They seemed to be thinking, "Why isn't he catching chickens? Doesn't he want to awaken a Martial Soul? He has no ambition at all!"
About an hour later, the burly man entered the tea pavilion with a broad smile.
"Little sir... No, boss, the chickens are ready. Where would you like them delivered?"
Li Changsheng stood up and looked at the handcart parked by the entrance, along with the cage he'd requested. The chickens inside all looked half-dead. Satisfied, he nodded and took out another Gold Soul Coin, handing it to the burly man.
"Boss, th-this is too much. One Gold Soul Coin is enough!"
Ever since the war between the Sun-Moon Continent and the Douluo Continent thousands of years ago, currency had gradually been standardized. A Gold Soul Coin looked like nothing more than a thin piece of gold, but it was worth a great deal. This alone showed how much money the Soul Masters who helped people awaken their Martial Souls were making.
Li Changsheng didn't mind. He raised a hand and pointed at the children catching chickens. "That's a tip for them."
As the burly man stared in surprise, Li Changsheng took out the Night-Startling Spear, which he had just wrapped in strips of cloth, and tied the handcart to its shaft with a rope.
Once the cart was hitched to the Night-Startling Spear, its heavy load became as light as a feather. Without the least effort, Li Changsheng pulled it away.
The children carrying wooden crates along the way were dumbfounded.
They looked at the cart Li Changsheng was pulling, then at the crates several of them had to carry together, and were even more stunned.
Li Changsheng didn't return to Spirit Soul City. Instead, he pulled the cart toward the forest outside the city.
Rumor had it that a Soul Beast clan of boars, nearing a hundred years old, lived deep in the forest, so few people came here. It would make things convenient for Li Changsheng, and the weakened chickens could be taken care of by Soul Beasts, too. Very convenient.
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