Douluo: Version Prodigies Gather, but the Era Is Misaligned

"You don't need to comfort me. It seems I was too arrogant before. I still have a lot of room to improve."

As he spoke, he suddenly slapped his cheeks hard, pulled himself together, and said with a smile:

"Since your level is already this high, I can skip the basics. Come on, let's begin class."

And so, Xuan Ziwen's secret lessons began that day. After Xuan Ziwen taught Bai Chen about Soul Guide Devices, Bai Chen would teach him forging in return.

After experiencing it firsthand, Bai Chen truly understood what a genius was.

Xuan Ziwen's teaching was filled with wild imagination and creativity. His inspiration seemed endless, and quite a few of his ideas even surpassed this era. He could also absorb the occasional knowledge Bai Chen brought from the Douluo III Era with astonishing speed, leaving Bai Chen sincerely impressed.

Xuan Ziwen, meanwhile, became increasingly convinced of Bai Chen's brilliance during this process.

In his eyes, the child named Bai Chen was no less gifted than himself. Not only could Bai Chen keep up with his train of thought, but he would even offer many marvelous ideas Xuan Ziwen had never considered before. In Xuan Ziwen's view, every one of those ideas carried epoch-making significance. If they could be realized, they would bring enormous changes to society as a whole.

He even felt that exchanging his lessons for Bai Chen's forging techniques was far too unequal. As things stood, even if Bai Chen did not teach him forging, he would still be willing to teach Bai Chen, because he gained quite a bit of inspiration during the process. Such inspiration was often something one could only stumble upon by chance.

Unlike Bai Chen, however, Xuan Ziwen suffered greatly while learning forging.

Forging was a technique that severely tested a Soul Master's fundamentals. For a Soul Engineer like him, whose strength had been forcibly raised through medicine, his foundations could only be described as tragic.

The result was that he could not even manage to get started for a long time.

Fortunately, setbacks of this degree did not affect the relationship between Xuan Ziwen and Bai Chen. After several lessons, Bai Chen and Xuan Ziwen grew closer and closer. Around their fifth lesson, Bai Chen brought Ning Tian along as well.

"Is she the young mistress you occasionally mentioned to me?"

When Xuan Ziwen saw Bai Chen leading a little girl into the laboratory, he reached the answer after only a moment's thought.

"That's right." Bai Chen smiled and pushed Ning Tian forward. "Come on, Ning Tian. He's Teacher Xuan from the Heaven Soul Empire, the one I told you about. Introduce yourself too."

"Mm."

Ning Tian looked slightly nervous. She stepped forward and said:

"Hello, my name is Ning Tian. I am the young sect mistress of the Nine-Treasure Glazed Sect. I've encountered some problems while learning about Soul Guide Devices recently. Could I ask you to teach me?"

"...Pfft."

To Ning Tian's surprise, Xuan Ziwen watched her for a moment, then suddenly burst into cheerful laughter.

Ning Tian's cheeks immediately flushed crimson.

"Y-You, what are you laughing at?!"

Girls were naturally thin-skinned, especially little girls like Ning Tian. Even though she had received elite training from a young age, it was still difficult for her to remain calm after being laughed at like that.

Fortunately, there was no malice in Xuan Ziwen's laughter.

He waved his hand and said with a smile:

"No, I just suddenly remembered that this is what a six-year-old child is supposed to be like. Bai Chen is a special case."

He had spent so much time with Bai Chen lately that he had nearly forgotten that.

Now that he saw Ning Tian's shy and nervous appearance, he suddenly came to his senses. Ah, so this was what normal children were supposed to look like.

"R-Right?"

What he had not expected was that Ning Tian looked as though she had found a kindred spirit after hearing that.

"Bai Chen isn't normal at all! He absolutely can't represent people our age!"

"Oh?"

Xuan Ziwen glanced at Bai Chen with great interest.

It seemed this girl was often struck down by Bai Chen in daily life too.

That made sense. As an adult, he could ignore the gap between himself and Bai Chen and focus on improving himself. Children did not possess that kind of temperament. Ning Tian must have suffered plenty of frustration because of Bai Chen in their everyday lives.

Since that was the case...

Xuan Ziwen spread his hands and complained in an exaggerated tone:

"Ah, you have no idea how infuriating it is to spend time with him. I rack my brains to come up with an answer, but he gets it effortlessly."

Ning Tian immediately grew even more excited and nodded repeatedly.

"Exactly, exactly!"

"And his talent for Soul Master cultivation is way too ridiculous, isn't it? What the hell is that strength? Is he really even human?"

"Exactly!"

"The most infuriating thing is that this kid isn't even proud of it. Even after all that, he still keeps thinking about how to do better. He's practically an insatiable monster."

"You're absolutely right!"

"Hey, have you two forgotten that I'm still standing right here...?"

Seeing the two victims grow more and more animated, Bai Chen could not help complaining irritably.

He could tell that Xuan Ziwen was trying to use this method to get closer to Ning Tian, but why did he feel like Xuan Ziwen's words were full of genuine emotion?

Before the two could respond to him, the laboratory door suddenly opened with a beep, and a purple-haired woman walked in.

"Senior, Teacher asked me to come find... you..."

Seeing the unprecedentedly excited expression on Xuan Ziwen's usually calm and composed face, the woman's voice abruptly stopped.

She looked back and forth between Xuan Ziwen, Ning Tian, and Bai Chen, tilting her head slightly.

"Illegitimate children?"

"How did your mind even go there?!"

Xuan Ziwen's roar echoed through the entire laboratory.

The Strongest Level-Four Soul Engineer

"Sorry, I was joking."

Two minutes later, the purple-haired woman sat kneeling before Xuan Ziwen, lowering her head and apologizing repeatedly.

Xuan Ziwen snorted irritably and introduced her to Bai Chen and Ning Tian.

"She is Jing Ziyan, the junior I mentioned before who occasionally comes by to visit. She studied under the same teacher as me, so you don't need to be overly polite with her."

Jing Ziyan immediately protested in dissatisfaction.

"Hey, Senior, isn't that wrong? Shouldn't you tell them to respect me more?"

Xuan Ziwen shot her a cold glare.

"What did you say?"

"...Sorry, I was wrong."

Jing Ziyan obediently lowered her head again.

Xuan Ziwen sighed and rubbed his brow with a headache.

Jing Ziyan was his junior by two years, and they had studied under the same teacher. Like him, she was a genius upon whom great hopes had been placed.

However, Jing Ziyan had taken a completely different path from his.

From the beginning, Xuan Ziwen knew that his Martial Soul was utterly unsuitable for becoming a combat-type Soul Engineer. Thus, he decisively gave up on his personal combat strength and devoted all his energy to researching Soul Guide Devices.

Jing Ziyan was different. She was simply too greedy. She was an extremely rare Soul Engineer who had not chosen a specialization. She wanted to learn every type of knowledge, and the result was that she was still only a Level-Four Soul Engineer even now.

Both her teacher and Xuan Ziwen had tried persuading her many times, but she stubbornly refused to change her mind. In the end, they had no choice but to let her do as she pleased.

However, Jing Ziyan had gained a nickname because of it: the Uncrowned King of Level-Four Soul Engineers.

This was not an exaggeration. When it came to Soul Guide Devices below Level Four, even Xuan Ziwen would not dare claim that he understood them better than Jing Ziyan. This was the ability Jing Ziyan had gained by sacrificing her future.

Seeing that Xuan Ziwen's anger seemed to have faded somewhat, Jing Ziyan cautiously asked:

"Um, Senior... since they aren't your illegitimate children, then what are they to you?"

"They are the children of my benefactors."

Xuan Ziwen said indifferently:

"You know that I'm from the Heaven Soul Empire. While my father was still in the Heaven Soul Empire, he received considerable help from the Nine-Treasure Glazed Sect. So after they came here, I simply looked after them a little."

This was the explanation he and Bai Chen had discussed long ago. After all, Xuan Ziwen and Bai Chen looked as though they had nothing to do with each other, so they needed an excuse for their relationship.

"Heh, the children of your benefactors? That really is your style, Senior."

Jing Ziyan moved closer to Bai Chen and Ning Tian and asked curiously:

"Little brother, little sister, what are your names?"

"My name is Ning Tian."

"Bai Chen."

Jing Ziyan nodded with a smile.

"Mm-hm, you two need to work hard and learn from Senior. Senior's skill with Soul Guide Devices is highly praised within our academy. Some people even say that he will definitely become a chief researcher in the future."

"..."

Bai Chen looked at the smiling Jing Ziyan. He obediently nodded on the surface, but his mind was racing.

Jing Ziyan was another familiar face who had appeared in the original story.

Her role had not been particularly large, nor had she been especially important, but someone closely connected to her was very much worth Bai Chen's attention.

That person was the Sword Maniac, Ji Juechen.

In the original story, it was because Huo Yuhao defeated Jing Ziyan that Ji Juechen took notice of him, leading to a series of events afterward.

Even across the entire Douluo series, Ji Juechen was absolutely an oddity among oddities. He was one of the rare few who proved Yu Xiaogang's theory that there were no useless Martial Souls, only useless people.

His innate Martial Soul was only at Rank Three, yet he eventually climbed all the way to the rank of Title Douluo. At the same time, he was one of only two people in the series to hunt and obtain his own hundred-year first Soul Ring. The other successful case was Tang San, the male lead of the Douluo I Era, who possessed the Tang Sect's unique arts.

Although his strength still lagged behind those truly top-tier geniuses at the same level, considering his starting point, reaching such heights was already extraordinarily rare.

At the very least, Bai Chen did not think he could achieve what Ji Juechen had.

If possible, Bai Chen wanted to recruit Ji Juechen into his own camp.

Doing so was not actually all that difficult. In the end, Ji Juechen was not suited to studying at the Sun-Moon Imperial Soul Engineering Academy. What he longed for were opponents who primarily fought with their Martial Souls. Soul Engineers did not suit his tastes at all.

Moreover, the Sun-Moon Empire had undoubtedly held back his cultivation. The proof was that he was still only at Six Rings when he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but after going to the Douluo Original Three Kingdoms, his soul power cultivation began rising at an astonishing speed.

For someone like him, there were countless ways to recruit him into Bai Chen's camp.

The biggest question now was whether Jing Ziyan had already connected with him.

With that thought, Bai Chen took the initiative to ask:

"Senior Sister, I heard Teacher say that you often spar with other students. Are there any Soul Masters among them who are especially powerful?"

Jing Ziyan tilted her head curiously.

"Hmm? There are, but why are you asking?"

Bai Chen said seriously:

"Because I want to become stronger and protect Ning Tian better. If that's the case, I need to get to know more powerful Soul Masters and learn combat methods from all of you."

Ning Tian had not expected Bai Chen to give such a reason. She immediately lowered her head shyly.

"Oh—"

Jing Ziyan became excited instead. She smiled and rubbed Bai Chen's head, praising him:

"Not bad. You already know to protect the people important to you at such a young age. What a little gentleman."

As Bai Chen enjoyed the head pat, he eagerly asked:

"Then, Senior Sister, can you tell me the names and abilities of those powerful Soul Masters?"

"No problem."

Jing Ziyan chuckled and agreed readily.

"Thank you, Senior Sister! As expected, Senior Sister is the most understanding!"

Bai Chen looked overjoyed, and his flattery made Jing Ziyan grin from ear to ear.

"..."

Having watched the entire exchange from the side, Xuan Ziwen could not help shuddering.