Yan Feng

At this moment, Lin Yuan walked over to the two who were chatting.

"Two masters, I shall take my leave now."

Du Busi and Cao Xin nodded, and Lin Yuan departed.

After changing into a clean set of clothes, Lin Yuan headed straight out of the Nine Treasures Glazed Sect.

His errand today was to go to the slums within Nine Treasures City to tidy up the "dog kennel" he hadn't returned to in half a year.

Although it was all just junk, he still felt a sense of attachment to it, so he had specifically set aside half a day to go back and clean up.

Upon arriving at the dilapidated wooden shack, he found that, as expected, everything had been scavenged clean.

Before leaving, Lin Yuan had stored quite a bit of dried meat he'd caught in the mountains inside the house.

Now, not only was that all gone, but the only piece of furniture in the room—that broken wooden plank bed—had also vanished without a trace.

All of this was well within Lin Yuan's expectations.

Walking to the center of the room, Lin Yuan transformed his hand into a dragon claw and probed into the dirt below.

He hadn't been digging for long before a simple, small wooden box appeared before his eyes.

He opened the box with gentle movements; the contents were very simple.

A small pouch of coins, some scattered children's toys, and a wooden pendant.

Aside from the money, these were all things left behind by his original body's parents.

After his parents died, his relatives had descended like sharks smelling blood, stripping his home bare.

The fact that Lin Yuan had been able to hold a Nine Treasures City residency permit showed that his original family background hadn't been too bad, but alas, people are fickle when things go cold.

He picked up the wooden pendant with a sense of nostalgia and examined it.

The wood of this pendant was quite high quality; it was likely crafted from some kind of plant-type spirit beast.

It was carved with a mysterious pattern, and at first, Lin Yuan had wondered if the pendant possessed some mystical function or perhaps a "pendant grandpa" hidden inside.

However, no matter how he tested it, the pendant remained completely unresponsive, leading him to the final conclusion that it was truly just an "ordinary" piece of jewelry.

He hung it around his neck and tucked the other childhood trinkets back into his spirit storage device before heading back toward the Nine Treasures Glazed Sect.

Pushing open the rotting wooden door, Lin Yuan looked at the people in front of him with some surprise.

A group of ragged street urchins stood before his door, blocking his path home.

Although they were all malnourished, their faces revealed the ruthless edge unique to the slums, and Lin Yuan immediately understood that he was being robbed.

"Do any of you brave souls recognize me?" Lin Yuan asked with a touch of helplessness.

He said this because, when he lived in this area previously, he had beaten every single street urchin in the vicinity into submission.

Lin Yuan was very sympathetic to the hardships of these children; if they suffered even a minor injury, they might not survive the winter.

The fact that he couldn't find a single familiar face among this group suggested that the children he had known previously were likely mostly dead.

This was the Douluo death rate, or perhaps the feudal dynasty death rate.

The children looked at each other in confusion upon hearing this.

"It seems the kids who knew me are all dead," Lin Yuan said with a lonely look in his eyes.

"Cut the crap!" A boy stepped forward aggressively, brandishing a tetanus-ridden blade.

"Hand over your money and take off your clothes!"

Being threatened by such a little brat, Lin Yuan only found it amusing.

He had no interest in continuing to tangle with these urchins, so he instantly manifested his thousand-year spirit ring.

"A... a spirit master..." The pressure from the thousand-year spirit ring caused the urchins to instinctively take a step back.

Even though they were uneducated and didn't know what the color of the spirit ring represented, that terrifying pressure told them instinctively that the boy in front of them was absolutely not someone to be trifled with.

"Alright, I don't want to hurt you. Let me pass." Lin Yuan's gaze was sharp; looking him in the eye felt like having a blade pressed against them.

Lin Yuan's attitude was more than reasonable; under normal circumstances, these urchins should have backed away regardless.

"D-damn it, we aren't afraid of you..." The little brat who had been shouting at Lin Yuan was trembling like chaff.

"Our boss is a spirit master too! He has the best kind of spirit ring for a spirit master—a yellow one! We've already robbed several spirit masters; you definitely aren't as good as him!" The little brat pointed at Lin Yuan and shouted.

Mentioning their boss seemed to stiffen his spine.

"Boss?"

"Y-yes! Scared now? Our boss is right here." Having said that, the little brat stepped aside.

Immediately following, the surrounding urchins also cleared a path.

But what left both Lin Yuan and the urchins baffled was that the leader who should have been standing there was nowhere to be seen.

Lin Yuan didn't suspect that the urchins were lying to him; when he revealed his spirit ring, he had truly felt a flicker of spirit power fluctuate and vanish.

A young boy, an expert of about eight or nine years old, panted heavily as he fled along a narrow path.

His name was Yan Feng, a level eighteen assault-system Spirit Master with a Bone Dragon martial soul.

He was the leader of this group of street urchins, having drifted to this place only five months ago.

Yan Feng had been born into a minor noble family in the Heaven Dou Empire, possessing both a house and land, living a life of boundless joy.

Logically speaking, as someone who possessed the same martial soul as the Sect-Protecting Douluo of the Nine Treasures Glazed Sect from ten thousand years ago, he should never have ended up in such a wretched state.

However, due to the peacekeeping operations of the Shrek Supervisory Corps, they struck indiscriminately at all martial souls with dark attributes or related characteristics.

From the moment Yan Feng's martial soul awakened, his parents had taken him on the run, living days filled with constant, lingering fear.

In the end, the Shrek Supervisory Corps still knocked on their door.

To cover his escape, his parents had chased him out through the back door.

Yan Feng had been living this life for a year now, and all traces of childishness had completely vanished from the boy's face.

Like a rat in a gutter, he dodged the investigations of Spirit Masters from Shrek and other factions.

When he saw Lin Yuan release his spirit rings, although he didn't know how a Spirit Master could have the ability to absorb a thousand-year spirit ring, his instincts told him that the most urgent priority right now was to run!

This person was definitely a young master from a major power; if he were to get entangled with a Spirit Master of such status, it would inevitably attract the scrutiny of major powers.

He did not want to go back; being caught now and handed over to Shrek meant certain death.

Don't let Shrek's lackluster handling of the Holy Spirit Cult fool you; they were incredibly efficient at catching people like him, who possessed dark-type martial souls even if they weren't considered Evil Spirit Masters!

In order not to let his parents' sacrifice go to waste, he absolutely had to survive.

"You're running so fast, aren't you worried that I might kill those little lackeys of yours?" A voice, calm to the point of being eerie, rang out from beside Yan Feng.

"Ah?!"

Yan Feng, who had turned around to check, couldn't help but cry out in alarm. He saw Lin Yuan following him at the exact same pace with a completely indifferent expression.

Compared to his own disheveled state, the Lin Yuan before him appeared incredibly relaxed and composed.

"You really aren't a very qualified leader; I can tell that those people trust you quite a lot."