"The reward is... a Soul Bone."
A Soul Bone!
Demon Bear Douluo's burly body stiffened. His breath caught in an instant!
For nothing more than the cost of a meal, the reward really was a Soul Bone!
He even wondered if he'd imagined what he heard!
Tuoba Xi, who had been watching from the sidelines, saw his pupils contract to pinpricks!
He stared at Lin Feng's far-too-languid face, trying to find even the slightest hint that he was joking.
Nothing!
Not a trace!
Only the indifference of someone talking about a stone by the roadside!
Spirit Kite Douluo, still wolfing down noodles, had only vaguely caught the words "Soul Bone."
She took advantage of a pause in her chewing to glance up quickly, but nothing seemed to have happened.
Naturally, she assumed she'd misheard, then lowered her head again and launched into another desperate battle with the food in her bowl.
"Five thousand years."
Lin Feng's next words drifted out, light and casual.
Boom!
If the last words had been a peal of thunder, these were the sky collapsing and the earth crumbling!
A five-thousand-year Soul Bone?!
"Gulp."
Tuoba Xi struggled to swallow, his throat so dry it felt ready to catch fire.
Demon Bear Douluo's eyes turned red in an instant. His whole face flushed the color of liver from sheer, overwhelming joy, and he could barely breathe!
Lin Feng seemed not to notice how everyone had lost their composure. In the same mild tone, he continued with an even more terrifying revelation.
"From a Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear."
The moment he said it, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the restaurant!
Silence!
A silence so complete you could hear a pin drop!
Every person present was a Soul Master. Who didn't know what the words "Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear" meant?!
It was a legendary super Soul Beast!
A terrifying creature that, even with a century of cultivation, could slay an ordinary ten-thousand-year Soul Beast!
A five-thousand-year Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear Soul Bone... Its value was enough to drive every Titled Douluo on the continent mad!
This time, Spirit Kite Douluo heard every word loud and clear!
"Whoosh!"
At last, she tore her gaze away from the food. Her eyes, like two sharp swords, fixed on Lin Feng.
Of course, she didn't forget to lift the entire plate to her mouth. Watching warily, she shoveled the noodles in as fast as she could, afraid someone might steal them while she watched the spectacle.
Just as everyone's hearts seemed ready to leap out of their chests, Lin Feng calmly uttered four more words.
"An External Soul Bone."
As soon as his voice fell,
he casually waved a hand in Demon Bear Douluo's direction.
Hummm—
A dense, dark-golden radiance appeared out of thin air, hovering in front of Demon Bear Douluo.
It was a Soul Bone shaped like a claw, its surface a deep gold and covered in mysterious patterns.
A razor-sharp aura, capable of piercing anything and tearing everything apart, surged outward. The skin of every Titled Douluo present prickled with pain!
"Thud!"
Demon Bear Douluo's legs gave way. No longer able to support his massive frame, he dropped straight to his knees!
It wasn't reverence. It was his body's most instinctive response to an unimaginable surge of joy!
In the corner, Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo were so shocked that they clutched each other's hands, their fingernails digging into flesh without either of them noticing!
Tuoba Xi shot to his feet, his face full of shock and disbelief!
But the strongest reaction—or, rather, the strangest—belonged to Spirit Kite Douluo.
She had still been slurping down noodles when she heard "External Soul Bone" and saw the Soul Bone with her own eyes. Her mind went completely blank.
"Pfft—"
She instinctively tried to spit the noodles in her mouth out to express her shock.
But at the last possible moment, a glutton's instinct to protect her food overcame her body's reflex!
She clamped her mouth shut!
And so, under a bizarre pressure...
Two sauce-covered, glistening noodles shot perfectly out of her nostrils.
They drooped onto her stunned, pretty face and swayed gently.
In that silence, so profound it seemed to choke the air out of the room,
"Pfft—!"
A burst of laughter, completely impossible to suppress, broke the spell without warning!
It was Yan!
He was clutching his mouth with one hand and pointing at Spirit Kite Douluo with the other. His whole body shook violently, like a baboon having a seizure.
But the piercing laughter still poured uncontrollably through his fingers.
"Hahahaha... hic!... Noodles... noodles... hahahaha..."
He laughed so hard he could barely breathe, tears streaming down his face as he nearly collapsed to the ground.
That earth-shattering laughter was like a command.
In an instant, every gaze in the restaurant swung like a spotlight and pinned itself on the storm's eye—Spirit Kite Douluo.
More precisely,
on her stunned, pretty face, and the two noodles still dangling beneath her nostrils, coated in rich sauce and swaying with each breath...
At last, Spirit Kite Douluo recovered from the overwhelming shock.
She felt it.
The strange yet familiar sensation against the tip of her nose!
Boom!!!
Scalding blood surged from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, like a volcano erupting!
Her already stiff face turned visibly from pink to bright red, then from bright red to a shade close to purplish-black!
It was over!
Who was she?
She was the only woman on the Spirit Hall Elder Council! A ninety-third-rank Titled Douluo who stood at the pinnacle of the Soul Master World!
And now!
At this very moment!
In front of nearly all her colleagues in Spirit Hall! In front of three promising juniors!
NOSE! NOODLES!
"Ah—!"
A silent scream, enough to tear the soul apart, echoed through Spirit Kite Douluo's mind.
But her body had gone rigid, like a statue carved from ten-thousand-year-old ice.
Humiliation!
A sense of shame unlike anything she had ever known crashed over her like a towering wave, drowning and shattering her reason and dignity!
She jerked her head up. Her phoenix eyes, which should have blazed with authority, now burned with a fury capable of scorching the eight wastelands. She glared viciously at the culprit—Yan!
However...
She'd forgotten the two pieces of evidence still hanging from her nostrils.
That murderous glare had no intimidating effect at all. With the two noodles bobbing so comically, it only made her look... even more ridiculous.
"Pfft, hahahaha— I can't take it! Help! Xie Yue! Give me a hand! I'm laughing myself breathless!"
Yan's laughter was completely out of control now.
Hu Liena bit her lip hard to keep from laughing aloud, but her shaking shoulders and flushed cheeks betrayed her.
She even felt tempted to pull out a recording Soul Tool and capture this historic moment!
Even the usually composed Xie Yue turned around sharply and let out a violent, heart-wrenching cough to cover up his twisted mouth.
Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo exchanged a glance, and each saw a hint of... schadenfreude in the other's eyes.
Tuoba Xi's eye twitched violently. He reflexively poured himself a cup of tea to calm his nerves, but his hand shook, spilling it straight down his trousers.
Amid all the giddy laughter, the fury in Spirit Kite Douluo's eyes crumbled away, bit by bit.
In its place came boundless despair.
And bewilderment.
So this was what social death felt like.
She felt as though her life had come to a full stop right there.
Trembling, she raised a hand and plucked off the two culprits with the solemnity of someone bidding farewell to the world. Without even looking, she tossed them into the trash.
Then,
under the gazes of everyone—some sympathetic, some fighting laughter, some still stunned—
she, Spirit Kite Douluo,
let out a quiet sigh and picked up her chopsticks once more.
At this point, she might as well eat first.