The setting sun stretched a long, twisted shadow from the shabby wooden gate of Shrek Academy.
The air was thick with the cloying smell of cheap grease, forcibly catalyzed by Soul Power. It should have been appetizing, but at that moment, it was like an invisible slime, making every woman present feel nauseated.
Oscar was feeling exceptionally pleased with himself.
He pushed his creaking little wooden cart, his young face mostly hidden beneath a bushy beard, wearing the shrewd expression of a successful businessman.
He watched Tang San wolfing down a sausage and thought smugly:
Look at that. This is what you call a good reputation!
Even a peerless genius like him has to rely on my sausages to recover. I've got the position of Shrek's number-one supplier in the bag.
His gaze swept around the group before settling precisely on Ning Rongrong, who stood at the front, radiating the most noble and luxurious air.
In his eyes, the girl in the sky-blue dress, with skin as fair as snow, was a walking gold mine.
"Heh heh, pretty miss."
Oscar rubbed his hands together and flashed what he considered a charming smile. He even puffed out his chest on purpose, letting his two yellow Soul Rings sway in the air a couple more times.
"From your bearing, I'd say you come from a distinguished family. That battle just now was quite a spectacle, but it must have startled your spirit, too, right?"
He reached into the cart and pulled out another steaming sausage, one that gave off a certain indescribable odor. Combined with the Soul Mantra he'd chanted earlier—"I Have a Sausage"—the gesture looked especially sleazy to the women watching.
"Here, don't be shy. Try one of my premium Recovery Sausages. Just five Copper Soul Coins."
Oscar lowered his voice and spoke in a coaxing tone.
"My sausages don't just restore Soul Power. Most importantly, thanks to my exceptional talent, they contain a pure aura of life. If a girl eats one, her skin will become rosier and smoother. They're a hundred times better than any rouge or powder on the market!"
As he spoke, Oscar deliberately brought the sausage closer to Ning Rongrong.
On an ordinary day, as a food-type Soul Master, Oscar's half-joking sales pitch might have earned him no more than a roll of the eyes.
But today, he was dealing with Ning Rongrong, whose mind Su Yun had thoroughly won over and whose favorable opinion of Shrek Academy had fallen to absolute zero.
Most importantly, Ning Rongrong had seen everything clearly in the Diary Copy just moments ago.
Su Yun had said that this Soul Mantra carried an extremely vulgar suggestive undertone, and only a crude bumpkin like Tang San—someone willing to do anything to get stronger and utterly lacking in class—would accept it so readily.
Ning Rongrong looked at the sausage swaying in front of her. The heat had made it look a little sticky. Remembering Oscar's sleazy Soul Mantra, she felt a rush of blood surge straight to her head.
In that instant, the pride of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's little princess and her instinctive revulsion as a woman erupted like a volcano!
"Get lost!!!"
Ning Rongrong shrieked. Her voice was clear, yet so piercing with rage that the birds in the trees took flight in a flurry of wings.
She abruptly waved her arm as if swatting away a fly, her eyes full of disgust and revulsion as she glared at Oscar.
"Get that disgusting filth away from me! Stay away, you pervert!"
The smile froze on Oscar's face.
He'd pushed his cart for years, and it wasn't unusual for girls to reject him. After all, the incantations of food-type Soul Masters were a little awkward.
But he'd never imagined that this seemingly gentle, charming noble girl would react with such intense disgust. The way she looked at him was as if he were a lump of rotting flesh that had crawled out of a sewer.
"Uh... Miss, have you misunderstood? It really is just an incantation..."
"Misunderstood? What's there to misunderstand?"
Ning Rongrong stepped forward, trembling slightly with anger.
She pointed at Oscar's nose, then abruptly turned and gestured with her slender finger at the crumbling ruins of Shrek Academy, finally stopping at the rickety sign bearing the school's name.
"So this is the so-called Monster Academy? This is the class you're so proud of?"
With her Soul Power amplifying her voice, Ning Rongrong made sure every word reached everyone present. Each one landed like a lash across their wounds.
"I came here with a shred of hope, wanting to see what these so-called monsters looked like. Now I've seen enough!"
"The teacher's a bandit! That Zhao Wuji used his Soul Saint cultivation to bully the weak, then got beaten into a dead dog in ten moves. He's brought shame on every Soul Master!"
Down in the pit, Zhao Wuji's old face twitched when he heard that. He spat out another mouthful of blood.
"The students are a pack of underhanded scoundrels!"
Ning Rongrong's gaze swept toward Tang San, who was eating a sausage. The disdain in her eyes was almost tangible.
"You can't win, so you resort to hidden weapons. Your sneak attack fails, and then you sit here eating this disgusting stuff. Tang San, have you no shame? Do you think someone like you deserves to be called strong?"
Tang San had just swallowed a mouthful of sausage. At her words, it felt like the sausage had turned into a branding iron lodged in his throat. He could neither cough it up nor swallow it, and his face turned purplish-red.
"And you!"
Ning Rongrong finally looked at Oscar, her eyes full of disgust.
"You're a pervert whose Soul Mantra is packed with vulgar innuendo, and you still have the nerve to peddle this stuff to me? You could feed it to a pig, and even the pig would think it was filthy!"
"This dump is full of filth, twisted values, and people who can't manage even the most basic respect. I don't want to stay here another second! Disgusting! Absolutely disgusting!"
After finishing her tirade, Ning Rongrong's chest heaved with emotion. She turned away without sparing another glance at anyone from Shrek and walked straight over to Su Yun.
In that moment, her expression changed from that of an enraged lion to a cat nursing a grievance.
Su Yun stood to one side with a smile at the corner of his mouth. He snapped his folding fan shut, the crisp sound serving as the perfect full stop to Ning Rongrong's speech.
"Well said."
Su Yun began to applaud slowly. Each clap was like salt rubbed into the wounds of the people from Shrek.
"Rongrong's words were truly a wake-up call. This so-called Shrek may look like a gathering of monsters on the outside, but inside, it's nothing more than a den of failures rejected by the mainstream Spirit Master World, yet unwilling to fade into obscurity. They've gathered together to lick each other's wounds and swindle Gold Soul Coins out of commoners."
Su Yun walked over to Ning Rongrong and quite naturally patted her on the shoulder. His voice was gentle, yet carried the commanding confidence of someone in control of the whole situation.
"A place like this doesn't deserve to have your footprints. Come on. I'll take you all to the best restaurant in Suotuo City. We can wash our eyes—and our ears."
Just then, the Diary in Su Yun's arms began flipping on its own again. Golden lines of text, born from the drastic shift in causality, flashed across the pages.
[So satisfying! Absolutely exhilarating!] [Ning Rongrong just tore Shrek's underwear right off and burned it in front of everyone.] [In the original story, these 'monsters' would have gradually brainwashed her, until she became one of their hangers-on. But now, thanks to my diary's intervention, she saw them for what they really were ahead of time.] [Zhao Wuji's bandit nature, Tang San's viciousness, Oscar's sleaziness... Things that were once dressed up as 'personality' have now become fatal stains in Rongrong's eyes.] [Law of Causality ruling: Shrek Academy's reputation has been utterly ruined. Luck Value decreased by 30%!] [Tang San, oh, Tang San. Look at that half a sausage in your hand. Can't you suddenly smell shit wafting right at you?] [For that tiny bit of Soul Power recovery, you've thrown away the last shred of dignity you had as a protagonist. In the hearts of those three girls, you've been nailed to the pillar of shame forever as a 'sleazy scoundrel.'] [As for Oscar—heh, brother, your dream of the 'Big Sausage' ends here, today, once and for all.]
The moment the Diary updated, Ning Rongrong and Zhu Zhuqing both received the feedback.
Ning Rongrong saw Su Yun's praise in the Diary, and her hurt feelings vanished at once, replaced by a sense of accomplishment: I did the right thing.
She took the initiative to link arms with Su Yun on his other side, then spat provocatively toward the gate of Shrek Academy.
Meanwhile, Tang San stood there holding the remaining half of his sausage, caught between a rock and a hard place.
The meat's faintly salty aroma had turned nauseating after Ning Rongrong's cutting remark that even pigs would think it was filthy.
He could even feel the commoners watching nearby looking at him with the same disdain they'd reserve for an accomplice to a pervert.
"Ugh... blegh!"
Tang San finally couldn't hold it in. He bent over and vomited up the sausage he'd just eaten, along with a mouthful of bitter fluid.
His face was as pale as paper. Between the jolt from his Hidden Weapon being deflected and the psychological blow he'd just suffered, he swayed on his feet.
Watching it all unfold, Yu Xiaogang felt the world spinning around him.
The Shrek glory he'd painstakingly cultivated, the direct disciple he'd been so proud of—in Su Yun's hands, they'd become a complete and utter farce!
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