An adult Troll, whose formidable physique and ancient totem let him clash head-on with high-ranking cultivators in the Cultivation World.
Chi Hu strode into the shed.
His bell-like eyes fixed on the Black Wind Pig still sleeping in the corner.
"How's this Black Wind Pig coming along?"
Chi Hu spoke.
His voice boomed like a great bell, making the wooden posts in the shed vibrate.
The burly guard beside him quickly bent at the waist to answer.
"As you ordered, young chieftain, we feed it the finest spirit-beast meat every day."
"The pig's had a great appetite lately. It's grown nice and sturdy."
Chi Hu nodded with satisfaction.
He walked over to the Black Wind Pig and looked down at the massive beast.
He didn't notice Yu Xiaogang huddled in the opposite corner.
Or rather, in the eyes of a Troll of his stature, Yu Xiaogang was less than an ant on the ground—not even worth noticing.
Yu Xiaogang huddled in the corner, barely daring to breathe.
Looking at this towering giant, who seemed like a god descended from the heavens, he felt half the arrogance he'd just built up vanish in an instant.
But he was deeply unwilling to accept it.
"So what if you're tall?"
Yu Xiaogang gritted his teeth silently.
"You savages only know how to cultivate your bodies. You don't understand the intricacies of the Cultivation Method at all."
"Once I break these chains, none of you will be able to hold me!"
With that thought, Yu Xiaogang closed his eyes again, preparing to guide that wisp of spiritual energy.
Just then, Chi Hu, standing beside the Black Wind Pig, seemed to find the air in the shed a little stuffy.
He frowned slightly and took a deep breath of the cold air outside.
Then, with great impatience, he let out a long breath through his nose.
"Whoosh!"
It was nothing more than the most ordinary, casual breath of an adult Troll warrior.
But as he exhaled, a wisp of the vast totemic Bloodline Power within Chi Hu, as boundless as the ocean, spilled out beyond his control.
This wisp of Bloodline Power became an invisible wave of scorching air, sweeping outward in every direction from Chi Hu.
To the thick-skinned Black Wind Pig, the wave felt like a warm spring breeze, pleasant against its hide.
To the guard, it was proof of the young chieftain's formidable strength, filling him with awe.
But to Yu Xiaogang, huddled in the corner and focused on guiding his spiritual energy, this wave was nothing short of a disaster!
The scorching Bloodline Power was like a violent, force-twelve hurricane.
It pierced Yu Xiaogang's frail body and slammed into his dantian.
"Crack!"
Yu Xiaogang heard a sharp sound of something shattering inside him.
The wisp of spiritual energy, no thicker than a strand of hair, had taken him half a month of agonizing effort to gather. He'd endured countless bouts of tearing pain in his meridians to form it.
But before this volcanic surge of scorching Bloodline Power,
it couldn't even hold out for half a breath.
Like a snowflake dropped into molten lava, it was shattered by the impact in an instant and evaporated without a trace!
That wasn't all.
The raging wave barreled on, throwing the meridians throughout Yu Xiaogang's body into chaos.
"Pfft!"
Yu Xiaogang's eyes flew open, bulging from their sockets.
He opened his mouth and spewed a great mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs. It became a cloud of blood mist in midair.
His body was flung away by the wave like a kite with its strings cut.
"Clang!"
The iron chain around his neck snapped taut, choking him until his eyes rolled back.
Then he crashed hard into the stinking mud and writhed.
His meridians were completely shattered.
His newly kindled dream of cultivation had been blasted to pieces by someone's casual breath.
Meanwhile, on Douluo Continent.
The cheers on the Shrek Academy training ground were cut off as if by a giant pair of scissors.
Silence reigned.
Ma Hongjun stood frozen, mouth agape and hands still raised in applause.
The smile on Tang San's face had frozen.
He stared at his teacher, lying in the mud and water on the screen, not knowing whether he was alive or dead.
The immense shock left Tang San's vision swimming.
"How could this happen..."
Tang San's voice trembled uncontrollably.
"That man didn't even attack. He didn't even look at Teacher."
"He just... just let out a breath."
Flender clutched his chest, took two steps back, and leaned against a wooden post, his face bitter.
At last, he understood what it meant to be an ant.
You thought you'd found a peerless technique. You thought you were a genius among ten thousand.
You secretly built up your strength in a corner, dreaming of soaring into the sky.
Then someone happened to walk by and casually took a breath.
The trump card you'd been so proud of, all your effort and hope, became a colossal joke.
At Pope Palace in Spirit City,
Bibi Dong gazed at the screen and sighed softly.
A deep helplessness flashed in her beautiful eyes.
"How ridiculous. Truly ridiculous."
Bibi Dong spoke in a low voice.
"That's the law of that world."
"Faced with an absolute disparity in power, any opportunistic technique or theory is as fragile as a sheet of paper."
Back in the livestock shed.
Chi Hu heard a noise from the corner.
He turned around, his massive body shifting slightly, and glanced at Yu Xiaogang, who lay in the mud, vomiting blood.
"What is that?"
Chi Hu frowned, a hint of confusion in his voice.
The guard hurried forward and explained with an ingratiating smile.
"Young chieftain, he's a slave from outside who does odd jobs."
"He's very frail. Maybe he lost his footing and fell just now."
Chi Hu curled his lip in distaste.
"What use is a waste like that?"
He casually pointed at the Black Wind Pig still sleeping.
"If he's still alive tomorrow, just butcher him and add his meat to the pig's feed."
"I'm hosting a few honored guests from the sects in a few days. This pig had better be fat by then."
With that, Chi Hu turned away without sparing Yu Xiaogang another glance and walked out of the livestock shed with heavy steps.
The guard respectfully saw the young chieftain off.
The shed fell quiet again.
Yu Xiaogang lay in the icy mud and water, staring blankly at the dry straw above him.
He didn't cry or shout.
He only felt that his heart had died completely that night.
Cultivation, techniques—what did any of it matter?
In this cruel world, he would always be nothing but a waste, face-down in the muck.
The image on the Sky Screen slowly faded amid Yu Xiaogang's hollow, despairing gaze.
The air on Douluo Continent was so oppressive it made people want to go mad.
With a watery ripple, the scene on the Sky Screen slowly shifted away from the foul-smelling livestock shed of the Troll Race.
Audiences across the continent unconsciously breathed a sigh of relief.
Yu Xiaogang's despairing situation had weighed on everyone so heavily that even breathing felt difficult.
But as the new image gradually brightened, the stone that had just lifted from everyone's hearts shot straight back up to their throats.
It was a dimly lit prison cell.
The air was thick with the stench of mold and blood.
Cobwebs filled the corners, and murky droplets trickled down the walls. Their "drip, drip" echoed through the cell, sending chills down the spine.
Several fat black rats darted through the damp pile of straw, entirely unafraid of people.
Xue Beng, prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, was curled up in one corner of the straw pile.
His expensive silk nightclothes had long since been torn into rags, smeared with muddy water and dried blood.
His face, usually marked by a touch of arrogance and decadence, was now swollen like a pig's head, with bruises at the corners of his mouth.
Xue Beng was trembling all over.
He regretted it so much.
When he'd first been transported to this mortal kingdom, he'd thought that with his rank of Soul Elder at level thirty-one, dealing with a few mortal constables would be a piece of cake.
But the mortal martial artists practiced inner true qi.
In a single exchange, one of them not only broke his Swan Martial Soul but knocked him unconscious with a single palm strike.
When he woke up, he'd been locked in this lightless death cell.
The jailers didn't care that he kept shouting, "I'm a prince of the Heaven Dou Empire!"
To them, he was just a madman with something wrong in his head.
To make an example of him, the jailers came up with new ways to torment him every day. They denied him food and lashed him with whips soaked in salt water.
"Let me out... I really am a prince..."
Xue Beng buried his head against his knees, tears and snot running down his face as he murmured in despair.
In the imperial palace hall in Heaven Dou City,
Emperor Xue Ye sat on the throne, gazing at his son's wretched state on the screen, his eyes red with heartache.
"My poor child!"
Emperor Xue Ye pounded the armrest of the throne, his voice trembling.
"How dare those uncouth mortals humiliate the bloodline of my Heaven Dou Empire like this!"
The ministers beside him all lowered their heads, not daring to speak.
Everyone understood.
In this Renegade Immortal World, even a lofty true god like the Sea God could be eaten as a tonic.
For a prince with low Soul Power to be beaten by mortal jailers was already a stroke of luck amid misfortune.
At least he was still alive.
But reality was often crueler than anyone could imagine.
In the prison cell,
Xue Beng's sobbing caught the attention of someone in the opposite corner.
It was a thin old man sitting cross-legged in the shadows.
His clothes were even more tattered than Xue Beng's, barely enough to cover him.
His body was covered in poisonous sores the size of copper coins. Some had burst, oozing yellow-green pus.
The old man wasn't an ordinary mortal prisoner.
He was a low-level rogue cultivator who had only just entered the Foundation Establishment stage.
Some time ago, he'd been gravely wounded while fighting for a low-grade spirit herb. Poison had invaded his heart, and he'd fled all the way to this mortal city. In the end, he'd collapsed in the street from exhaustion and been arrested and thrown into the death cell as a beggar.
The old man's body was completely ruined, and his life force was about to run out.
He slowly opened his eyes.
Two clusters of Ghost Fire flickered in his murky pupils.
He turned his head and stared fixedly at Xue Beng, curled up in the straw, like a wild dog that hadn't eaten in half a month.
"What a young body."
The old man swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva, his throat making a sound like metal scraping against metal.
"Although there's no spiritual energy in you, your Bloodline Power is even more vigorous than that of ordinary mortal martial artists."
"That really was a stroke of luck."
The old man's gaze grew more and more frenzied, and greedy desire instantly consumed his mind.
He knew he didn't have much time left.
If he wanted to stay alive, there was only one way: seize another's body!
He would abandon this rotting flesh, covered in poisonous sores, and forcibly take over that young man's body.
Xue Beng shuddered under the old man's eerie green gaze.
He instinctively shrank toward the corner of the wall and asked in a trembling voice, "Y-you... what are you staring at? I'm a prince!"
The old man paid no heed to his warning.
His cracked, withered lips suddenly parted, revealing a chilling smile.
"Boy, lend this old man your body for a while!"
As soon as the words left his mouth,
a tiny crack suddenly split open at the crown of the old man's head.
A fist-sized ball of green light, trailing a gust of icy wind, shot straight out of his skull.
The green light moved incredibly fast, leaving a long trail through the air.
Xue Beng didn't even have a chance to dodge.
His vision blurred, and the green light slammed into the space between his brows before burrowing inside with a whoosh.
"Ah!"
A bloodcurdling scream instantly echoed throughout the entire cell.
The process of seizing a body was cruel and violent.
After the old man's soul entered Xue Beng's sea of consciousness, it was like a hungry wolf charging into a sheep pen.
He opened his invisible jaws and began wildly tearing at and devouring Xue Beng's original soul.
Xue Beng clutched his head and rolled back and forth in the filthy pile of straw.
It felt as if ten thousand red-hot steel needles had pierced his brain all at once. The agony that came from the depths of his soul made him wish he could smash his own head to pieces.
"Get out! Get out of my body!"
Xue Beng shouted in despair, his eyes rolling back as foam spilled from his mouth.
Douluo Continent.
In Tiandou Imperial Palace, Xue Ye saw the scene and his vision went black. He toppled straight off the dragon throne.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
The hall descended into chaos as the ministers and imperial physicians rushed forward to help.
On the training field at Shrek Academy,
everyone watched Xue Beng writhe in agony on the light screen, their scalps prickling with dread.
"He's eating Prince Xue Beng's soul!"
Ning Rongrong covered her eyes in fright, unable to watch any longer.
Tang San drew a deep breath, his expression more grave than ever.
"So these are the methods of the cultivation world."
Tang San's voice was low.
"That old man is just a low-level cultivator who's on the verge of dying from illness. He isn't even worth a finger of that Soul Refining Sect."
"And yet, even he can easily take the body and soul of a thirty-first-rank Soul Elder."
"In that world, people from Douluo Continent are practically natural supplements, running wild all over the place."
Everyone felt a wave of sorrow after hearing Tang San's words.
Just as everyone thought Prince Xue Beng was about to be completely devoured and turned into an empty shell controlled by a cultivator,
the situation inside the cell suddenly took an unexpected turn.