Becoming Ma Hongjun, I Don't Want to Coast to Victory!

Douluo Continent, Balak Kingdom, in an obscure little village.

A chubby little boy with bright red hair was lying in the courtyard of his home, basking in the sun.

Yet his face was full of helplessness.

"Honestly, was it really such a crime to be a little too loving?" the boy sighed.

He wasn't from this world.

More precisely, he was a transmigrator.

In his previous life, his family had been fairly well-off. His father had arranged a blind date for him, and he'd gotten a pretty good impression of the woman. After a year together, they were preparing to get married.

But the day before the wedding, one of his friends spotted his fiancée at a hotel.

As it happened, he had a female friend who was an expert at keeping a whole pond of fish.

After she talked some sense into him,

the world lost one honest man and gained one fish keeper.

Of course, he still had principles.

He wouldn't move on to the next fish until he'd released the current one.

But one day, while he was out shopping,

one of his ex-girlfriends and his current girlfriend ran into each other. As they traded barbs, his confidante showed up. And to make matters worse, his childhood friend was the person in charge of the mall.

Then things blew up, and a policewoman who'd sat beside him in high school appeared.

They failed to calm everyone down. In the ensuing shoving match, he ended up transmigrating.

It taught him one thing: keeping fish wasn't as easy as it looked.

Of course, maybe he was the one who'd been kept.

"Ugh! True love is so hard!"

At the thought, a melancholy look crossed the boy's face.

But it soon turned into a wry smile.

After all, he'd only figured all that out after transmigrating.

What surprised him most was that he'd ended up in Douluo Continent.

The anime had once been a huge hit across the internet.

Of course he'd watched it. He thought it was just so-so,

but the girls in it were pretty great.

At first, he hadn't realized what world he was in.

But the moment he heard about Martial Souls, he understood.

And when he learned his own name, he was stunned.

His name was Ma Hongjun.

His original name had been Ma Jun, but the difference of a single character made all the difference in the world.

"Ugh, of all the people I could've transmigrated as, why Ma Hongjun?" the boy muttered.

At first, he'd held out a little hope that it was just a case of two people having the same name.

But then he learned that the village's Martial Souls were all ordinary livestock. That convinced him he was probably the Ma Hongjun from the story.

As Ma Hongjun, if he followed the original path and worked a little harder, he could become the God of Fire—a main god.

In theory, he could just coast. All he had to do was wait for his Martial Soul Awakening, get taken away by Flender, enter Shrek Academy, and wait for Tang San. Then he could slack off and eventually snag himself a godhood.

The problem was that this guy's Martial Soul was dangerous in the early stages.

This was a real world.

Who knew whether he'd run into Flender when his Martial Soul awakened?

If his Evil Fire flared up before he met him, wouldn't he explode and die?

And even if he did meet Flender, how high-class a place would that miserly man find for him?

He had principles, too. It wasn't that he looked down on those who offered themselves—he respected them greatly. Their tastes simply weren't his.

Most importantly,

he didn't particularly like Tang San or Grandmaster.

One judged people through tinted glasses and was selfish to the core; the other was hypocritical, timid, and conceited.

People said that Yao Lao was in the Endless Fire Realm, and Yu Xiaogang was no more in the Divine Realm.

It wasn't the whole story, but there was some truth to it.

There was another point: if his Martial Soul didn't mutate, and was just an ordinary farm animal like everyone else's, then all of this would be nothing but wishful thinking.

Did anyone really think Tang San would take an ordinary person along? If you weren't a genius, that guy probably wouldn't even spare you a glance.

Just look at Old Jack. He'd treated Tang San so well in the early days, but later he never appeared again.

Still, even though he didn't like Grandmaster or Tang San,

Shrek was still better than Spirit Hall.

Flender's lessons were ridiculous, but at least he took care of the original Ma Hongjun.

As for joining Spirit Hall, Ma Jun had never considered it.

Bibi Dong was simply insane.

Of course, the scumbags had driven her to it.

First Qian Xunji, then Yu Xiaogang.

After being treated that way by two men, and with the Rakshasa God whispering in her ear, it was no wonder she'd lost her mind.

Still, Bibi Dong wasn't exactly blameless. As the Holy Maiden of Spirit Hall, she'd turned against her own teacher for a man who craved fame—and, most importantly, that man belonged to an opposing faction.

But Qian Xunji had been useless, too. There were plenty of ways to go about it, yet he'd insisted on forcing himself on her.

Ma Jun despised men who forced themselves on women.

He couldn't win a woman over after all that time, but if Qian Xunji had just treated Bibi Dong a little better—

Wait, that wasn't really a question of treating her well or badly.

Hadn't he treated his own fiancée well?

In the end, he'd still lost everything.

"Ugh! No matter which world you're in, people's hearts are treacherous," Ma Jun sighed.

In the end, though, Ma Jun decided that if he got the chance, he'd do his best to save the girls in this world.

That was just how big-hearted he was! But from now on, his name was Ma Hongjun.

Of course, everything he'd just imagined depended on one condition: he had to awaken a Mutated Martial Soul. If he didn't, it was all just fantasy.

But there was a major problem weighing on his mind.

It was the Evil Fire that came with his Martial Soul Awakening.

If his Martial Soul really did mutate, that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.

He'd thought about searching for the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

But the reality was that he was only six years old and knew nothing about this world. Even if he made it to the imperial capital and found Dugu Bo,

with how ruthless that man was, he wouldn't just lose out on Immortal Herbs—he'd lose his life.

It wasn't as if he could help treat Dugu Bo the way Tang San had.

Forget that Ma Hongjun didn't know how. Even if he did, he wouldn't dare!

Hadn't even Tang San, with his powerful backing, nearly died?

If he went there and said something like that, death would be the only thing waiting for him. Even if they didn't kill him, he'd end up as a lab rat.

Besides, without Dugu Bo, he couldn't reach the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well at all.

As for telling anyone else, Ma Hongjun wasn't ready to die. Which great faction on Douluo Continent wasn't built atop mountains of bones?

Did people really think the titles of Upper Three Sects and Lower Four Sects had been handed out for free? They were earned through real battles, carved out in bloodshed against sects large and small.

When Bone Douluo first met Tang San, his first thought hadn't been to recruit him, but to assassinate him. That alone showed how dark and unforgiving this world was.

All in all, this world was nowhere near as wonderful as he'd imagined. Only strength could serve as the foundation for everything.

"Looks like all I can do is pray that Flender shows up—or that I don't awaken a Martial Soul," Ma Hongjun whispered.

He'd finally made it to this world, yet he hadn't even seen a single pretty girl from the outside. Ma Hongjun really wasn't ready to accept that.

Then he heard footsteps outside the door. The boy wiped the helpless look from his face and turned toward the entrance.