"We've been on the road for six days. We should be close to the Soul Beast forest nearest Shambhala Village."
The speaker was a boy who looked around eleven or twelve. He was thin, with delicate features and neatly trimmed black hair. Dust clung to his brown cloth clothes, and he carried a medium-sized bundle on his back.
Yang Fan studied the map in his hand, then glanced at the jumble of wheel ruts on the road. He reckoned the Soul Beast forest couldn't be far.
Except for a few enormous Soul Beast habitats, most Soul Beast forests belonged to someone. The Spirit Hall oversaw six or seven out of every ten, while the rest were divided between the two great empires on the continent.
That was partly to prevent Soul Beast unrest, and partly to ensure their sustainable development. You could see the importance of this from the fact that Soul Beasts had been driven to the brink of extinction twenty thousand years after the Spirit Hall disappeared. Though the Auspicious Beast's loss of fortune, caused by some shameless god's schemes, had also played a part.
That's right. Yang Fan, who knew so much, was a transmigrator.
He'd been arguing with Tang San fans online about Douluo when a gas explosion next door sent him hurtling into another world.
Sorry the Great Truck didn't get to do the honors.
Yang Fan smiled bitterly to himself. Maybe because he hadn't been hit by the Great Truck, he hadn't gotten the protagonist's luck. His Martial Soul was a Monocle, and his Innate Soul Power was only level 0.5. By any measure, he was a standard-issue weakling.
If he had a Body Martial Soul, he could undergo a Second Awakening. If he had a Beast Martial Soul or a plant Martial Soul, he could improve it with Soul Rings. If he had a weapon-type Martial Soul, he could take a page from Douluo II and fuse rare metals into it. But no—he'd gotten a Monocle.
Short of a divine miracle or the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well guarded by Poison Douluo, there was probably nothing that could turn his fate around.
Still, as a transmigrator, he had some pride. If his talent wasn't enough, he'd make up for it with hard work. And with his foreknowledge, he'd stopped in Nuoding City along the way and visited Su Yuntao, who had awakened his Martial Soul. That was how he learned Su Yuntao had awakened Tang San's Martial Soul just a week earlier.
And why did he know it was Tang San? Who else could have a Blue Silver Grass with Innate Full Soul Power?
He was ten years old. Two years ago, a lucky find had netted him a hundred-year-old piece of Whale Rubber, which had widened his meridians and raised his Innate Soul Power to level three. After years of hard work, he'd finally broken through level ten and could obtain a Soul Ring.
Why wasn't a teacher or an adult accompanying him? Because his talent was poor, and he hadn't joined an academy.
When the children in his batch had awakened their Martial Souls, one boy had awakened a sickle with Innate Soul Power of level three. Naturally, he'd claimed the only work-study student spot.
Yang Fan had grown up eating at whatever household would take him in. With a Soul Power of just 0.5, how could he afford to go to school? As the village chief, Old Liu, put it, his best bet was to farm honestly, get along with the girl next door, Er Ya, and find himself a child bride to support him.
But Yang Fan had seen how many people with poor beginnings had risen to greatness in Douluo II and Douluo III. He figured he ought to take a chance—see what his First Soul Ring could do before deciding whether to lie flat.
What if—just what if—I got some special ability like Amon from Lord of the Mysteries? Then all of Douluo would belong to me, Yang Fan.
The thought filled him with anticipation.
After walking a little farther, he could see the people guarding the forest on behalf of the Spirit Hall. He went over, honestly paid the fee, and listened to their instructions for hunting: don't kill Soul Beasts without good reason, and remember that the deeper you go into the forest, the more dangerous it gets.
Yang Fan knew the Spirit Hall's people were kindhearted. They didn't want a child like him losing his life for nothing.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Yang Fan decided to rest in the shade of a tree by the road.
Hunting Soul Beasts wasn't easy. Even the Grandmaster, a two-ringed Soul Master in the original story, had come within a hair's breadth of death while hunting ten- and hundred-year Soul Beasts. If the cheat-king Tang San hadn't been with him, the Grandmaster would probably have ended up as fertilizer for this forest.
Yang Fan wasn't aiming high. He planned to make do with a plant that had a metal or light attribute. After all, aside from the Evil Eye on another continent, there weren't any especially suitable Soul Beasts for a Monocle with no particular attributes.
So a plant Soul Beast with low combat strength, a high age, and an attribute that more or less suited him was the best choice for a kid like him.
He took a bow and a quiver of arrows from his bundle. He'd commissioned the finest craftsman in Shambhala Town to make them. His Martial Soul couldn't provide any combat strength, but it did improve his eyesight. Until he got a Soul Skill, a bow and arrows were the best weapons for him.
He'd spent years practicing with the village hunters. He'd hunted plenty of ordinary animals, but this was his first time going after a Soul Beast...
Along with the bow and arrows, he had a dagger to finish off any Soul Beast that was badly wounded.
As a modern man, he'd grown used to killing since arriving in this world, but he still believed in killing without tormenting his prey. He knew that the deeper a Soul Beast's resentment, the higher the chance it would produce a Soul Bone... and that, a thousand years from now, people would even torture and kill Soul Beasts of the same species to manufacture Soul Bones.
After taking a few swallows of water, Yang Fan straightened his bundle and continued searching for a suitable Soul Beast, summoning his Martial Soul.
A monocle floated in front of his right eye. Its lens was a deep, dusky purple, and its frame was made of an unknown dark-gold metal, faintly etched with mysterious patterns.
When his Martial Soul possessed him, faint purple ripples shimmered around the lens, nearly invisible to the naked eye. Through the thin layer of purple crystal, Yang Fan's pupils seemed to transform into a starry sky with no end in sight.
Yang Fan reached a stream and spotted an unusual plant.
Its petals had no fixed shape. They flowed like rippling water, their edges subtly shifting from moment to moment. One second they might resemble a magnificent peony; the next, an elegant orchid—or even a strange flower he'd never seen before.
Was this a plant Soul Beast with the ability to shapeshift?
He'd never had any formal lessons, nor had he peeked at the records of the Spirit Hall or the Upper Three Sects. He had no idea what this plant was.
But from what he could tell with his Martial Soul, it seemed to fit his needs.
As he saw it, there were three basic possibilities for a plant's shapeshifting ability: optical tricks that created visual distortions, toxins that caused hallucinations, or mental interference.
His Martial Soul gave him keen eyesight, and he was still some distance from the strange flower, so poisoning seemed unlikely. Whether it relied on optical illusions or the rare Mental Attribute, either would be a good fit for him.
Besides, Soul Beasts with shapeshifting abilities usually weren't very dangerous. They tended to survive by borrowing the tiger's fierceness to scare off others. The best-known example was the Ice Silkworm Clan from Douluo II. Some Ice Silkworms had evolved mimicking Soul Skills because they were so weak.
But since this was his first time obtaining a Soul Ring, Yang Fan was cautious. He studied the surroundings carefully and found no sign of other Soul Beasts—especially not a Mandala Snake, that famously treacherous Soul Beast from Douluo.
As far as he could remember, nearly all the protagonists in the Douluo series had faced this classic venomous snake early on, and successfully killed it or helped someone else kill it.
He was still far from the forest's depths. He hadn't seen any bamboo groves along the way, either, so in theory there shouldn't be any overly powerful Soul Beasts here.
This plant probably wasn't very old, and the Soul Skill it had evolved probably wasn't all that impressive. It couldn't run away like an animal Soul Beast, either. It was perfect for a beginner. Yang Fan felt like his luck might actually be pretty good.
He slowly drew a feathered arrow from the quiver on his back, deftly setting its nock against the bowstring. As he took a deep breath, the slack bowstring tightened little by little until the bow was fully drawn. The limbs bent, giving a faint, taut creak as if they were storing up an explosion of force. He planted his feet apart, one forward and one back, and lowered his center of gravity. His whole body was like a compressed spring, coiled and ready to snap.
He narrowed his eyes, sighting through the arrowhead as he fixed on the distant target. The wind seemed to still in that instant. His breathing grew slow and shallow, and the whole world seemed to shrink to him and his far-off mark. As he drew the string to his cheek, the muscles beneath his sleeves swelled slightly. His arm was as steady as rock, not trembling in the slightest.
"Whoosh—"
The instant his breathing shifted, his fingers snapped open. The bowstring shuddered violently with a crisp twang, and the feathered arrow became a streak of light, tearing through the air with a sharp whistle. In the blink of an eye, it struck the flower's heart dead center. The feathers at the arrow's tail still quivered violently, humming in its wake.