Innately Useless Martial Soul, Zero Soul Power

Notting City.

The little girl with short silver-white hair staggered into a house with a small courtyard.

With a bang, the front door shut tightly against its frame.

"Is this where being useless begins?"

Sunlight streamed through the window, falling right onto the girl.

Leaning against the mottled wall, she used her trembling hand to brush aside the silver-white strands obscuring her vision. Though the midday sun shone brightly, the girl still felt ice-cold in both body and soul.

"A useless martial soul with no soul power... I really can't accept a setup like this."

Her father was a five-ring Soul King, and her mother, whom she had never met, also seemed to have been a powerful soul master. Yet when it came to her, everything had collapsed like a landslide.

Other transmigrators either had innately full soul power or even innate super soul power. Some had multiple martial souls and started out as Titled Douluo. They easily married rich, beautiful women and rose to the peak of life.

Xu Qianqian had gritted her teeth and accepted even the godawful mess of a promising story turning into a giant pit.

She had been mentally prepared for even low soul power.

But starting off unable to cultivate at all was a whole new level of disaster she had never imagined.

"Sigh! Life isn't easy. Qianqian sighs." Xu Qianqian helplessly leaned back in her chair, her eyes vacant as though they had lost their light.

There were around a hundred thousand soul masters on Douluo Continent. Ninety-nine percent of people awakened martial souls without soul power and could never become soul masters for the rest of their lives, but Xu Qianqian did not want to be part of that ninety-nine percent.

As a man—ah, pfft!

As a transmigrator.

Who didn't dream of holding the sun and moon in their hand, plucking stars from the sky, with none in the world their equal?

Even if it was just a little, she did not want to live an ordinary, mediocre life.

If she couldn't become a soul master, wouldn't she have to get married someday?

Ordinary people who could not become soul masters generally married quite early.

She had not fallen so far into womanhood that she could accept that. For now, anything related to marriage made her deeply uncomfortable.

If she could become a soul master, she could use cultivation as an excuse to refuse marriage. Even her old-fashioned father would have nothing to say about it.

"My martial soul is completely different from Father's. People would probably believe I was adopted."

Xu Qianqian had never met her mother. She only recovered the memories of her previous life after turning three, so she had almost no impression of her mother. What little information she had came from carefully probing her father.

However, that mother she had never met did not seem to have had a book as her martial soul either.

She held her fair right hand before her as a faint glow gathered.

At the call of her will.

An utterly ordinary book revealed its full form, its cover glowing with a pale green sheen.

With a slight thought, the book slowly began to turn its pages.

Swish, swish, swish, swish—

It flipped from beginning to end, blank from cover to cover.

Other than its slightly yellowed cover, which gave it an aged look, there was no indication of what use this martial soul had.

"Maybe it's because I don't have soul power."

Xu Qianqian slowly closed her eyes, sensing the changes in her body after summoning her martial soul.

Time passed second by second.

Xu Qianqian only felt as though she had been placed within endless darkness, while her five senses became extraordinarily sharp.

Noisy sounds echoed around her ears. It was not merely sound—even images flashed through her mind, like one's life flashing before one's eyes at the brink of death.

"Huh, that's Boss Shi San's voice?" Xu Qianqian directly filtered out the other gathered noises and the irrelevant images, leaving behind only that familiar voice and scene.

In an instant, her mind wavered slightly.

The familiar layout of the blacksmith shop surfaced in her mind.

"Boss Shi San of the blacksmith shop is scolding his two sons, saying they never do any proper work and spend all day loafing around. How are they supposed to inherit the family business in the future? And so on, and so forth..."

In the original story, Boss Shi San and his two sons were supporting characters who had all interacted with Tang San. Tang San had also worked as a blacksmith in Notting City at this very shop.

"I can sense what's happening in a blacksmith shop hundreds of meters away?" Xu Qianqian was rather surprised.

The current situation was like having a high-definition, all-angle camera with no blind spots and no delay installed in the blacksmith shop.

She skipped over the image of the blacksmith shop and continued investigating the range of her perception.

"One hundred... two hundred... no, the radius of my perception is around five hundred meters."

Xu Qianqian felt somewhat excited, and even her body trembled slightly.

Perhaps her martial soul was not as useless as she had expected. Maybe there was still the tiniest chance of salvaging it?

After a while, Xu Qianqian slowly opened her eyes, a trace of regret in her voice. "If I could cultivate soul power, perhaps I might be able to uncover more secrets of my martial soul."

Not long after her words fell, she froze completely.

Soul power, inner strength, Tang San...

Xu Qianqian vaguely had a bold idea.

But a few seconds later, she dismissed that bold idea again.

Going directly to Holy Soul Village would make her intentions far too obvious. It was unrealistic to persuade her father to live for several years in that backwater village, and Tang Hao was the sort who would rather kill the wrong person than let the right one go.

A Soul King taking a child to Holy Soul Village—who would believe they had no ulterior motive?

One careless move, and she might lose her life.

She only had one life. Caution was the key to longevity.

"For now, there's no rush. Tang San will come to Notting Academy eventually anyway."

Xu Qianqian set herself a small goal: while Tang San was attending school in Notting City, she would slowly observe him through her martial soul and see whether she could "steal" the cultivation method of the Xuantian Skill.

Tang San might have only just been born. Over the next six years, she had to consider whether there were other ways to cultivate.

Xu Qianqian understood the principle of not putting all her eggs in one basket. If she truly found a way to cultivate within those six years, there would be no need to risk approaching Tang San.

With innate Rank 0 soul power and a cultivation speed as slow as a turtle's crawl, she was unlikely to have much interaction with those favored geniuses in the future.

Xu Qianqian knew her place very clearly.

Being terrible yet addicted to playing was something that only happened when she played Honor of Kings in her previous life.

Risk her life?

How many lives did she have to squander like that? Did she think she was the protagonist?

Shaking her head to cast aside her scattered thoughts, Xu Qianqian raised her eyes toward the window. From the treetops obscured by leaves came intermittent chirps and tweets.

Her thoughts drifted away as well.

"By now, Father should be back."

"He'll be disappointed that I can't become a Soul Master and cultivate, won't he?"

Her father had a fairly good relationship with the lord of Notting City. She did not know what he had gone to Heaven Dou City for this time, but it seemed he wanted her father to help escort him.

Judging by the time she had calculated earlier, barring any surprises, he should have arrived home within the next couple of days.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Urgent knocking interrupted Xu Qianqian's thoughts.

Xu Qianqian looked toward the front door.

"Who is it?"

What was the rush? Anyone unaware might think they were attacking a city!

"I'm a servant from the City Lord's Manor..."

After the person knocking explained his identity and stated his purpose, Xu Qianqian opened the door and followed him to the City Lord's Manor in Notting City, deeply puzzled.

Why did City Lord Xiao want to see her?

After pondering it for a long time, Xu Qianqian still could not come up with any useful answer. The servant before her also looked as though he wanted to say something but held it back, merely telling her that she would understand once she saw City Lord Xiao.

Seriously, every one of them was speaking in riddles.

Before long, Xu Qianqian entered the reception hall of the City Lord's Manor.

The servant who had brought her in hurried away as well.

"Qianqian, you're here."

A square-faced man who had been waiting for some time strode quickly out from behind a screen.

He was Xiao Yuanshan, the lord of Notting City.

However, he did not look to be in very good condition.

His right arm was bent and held flat before him, wrapped in thick bandages. His loose clothing was stuffed full and bulging, even his forehead was wrapped several times in bandages, and a heavy scent of medicinal herbs emanated from his entire body.

"Greetings, Uncle Xiao."

Suppressing the unease in her heart, Xu Qianqian greeted Xiao Yuanshan.

After her earlier resonance with her martial soul, Xu Qianqian could use part of its wide-range sensory ability even without summoning it, though it was not as clear as when her martial soul was active.

Seeing Xiao Yuanshan's condition, Xu Qianqian began to investigate the City Lord's Manor.

Suddenly, the choking stench of blood seemed to pour directly into her nostrils. The intense assault on her five senses made her frown slightly.

Blood...

A dense smell of blood.

Within a five-hundred-meter radius of the City Lord's Manor, there were a large number of corpses.