Great Soul Arena, Part One

Screams filled the room, and blood spilled across the floor. Clinic employees assisting at the side quickly wiped it away to keep the operating room clean. Jodio's surgery was neither refined nor gentle. Gold Experience was among the best support abilities, but its treatments hurt the most. It didn't repair damaged parts; it replaced them.

It removed damaged or diseased body parts, then attached brand-new, intact ones. Gold Experience's approach to healing was that blunt and straightforward. Unlike Cream Starter or Crazy Diamond, it solved the problem from outside the body. It was more practical, too. The price, naturally, was pain.

The people who came for treatment seemed somewhat used to the screaming. Besides, it never lasted long before fading into whimpers. About fifteen minutes later, the surgery was over. The old farmer emerged looking exhausted but excited. He held his brand-new right hand with his left, overcome with joy.

"There aren't any calluses on your new hand. Take care with the farmwork for the next few days. Don't overdo it, and let the calluses build up gradually. Don't worry about the money. Pay what you can at the end of the year. If you can't manage it, we'll talk then." Jodio tossed his bloodstained white coat to an assistant to wash and explained everything to the grateful old farmer.

"Thank you, boss. I don't know what else I can say to express my gratitude," the old farmer said respectfully.

"Go home and live well." Jodio waved him off.

"Next patient. What seems to be the trouble?" Jodio sat down and asked with a smile.

The Great Soul Arena was, at times, not all that different from WWE. Most matches there weren't brutal fights so much as performances. As the soul masters saw it, putting on a show was enough. Ordinary people without Soul Power couldn't tell the difference anyway. As long as the fighting looked good and satisfied their taste for blood, they were happy.

Of course, some fights were real. Soul masters chasing fame, newcomers trying to make a living, and those who hadn't signed contracts with the Great Soul Arena fought with everything they had. They wouldn't stop until they truly couldn't go on. The fame-seekers in particular hit hard.

"Good grief, there's blood everywhere. The cleaners are going to have a rough time with that."

"That's nasty. If someone smashes his teeth like that, I won't be able to fix them."

"Look over there. Damn, he lost a hand. If they call me in for that, I'm charging extra."

Jodio stood in a private box high above the arena with several of its other healing-type soul masters. They watched the fights below with great interest, tossing out comments and critiques. The healers all had a sense of humor, and it had taken only a few days for them to warm to Jodio, whose jokes were on another level.

Come to think of it, Jodio hadn't expected Teacher Shao Xin to work the occasional shift here too. It made sense, though. Five advanced soul masters had to earn some extra money somehow. When the two had run into each other, both had looked guilty and pretended not to know the other.

Jodio worked at the Great Soul Arena for about an hour each night. He earned three silver coins an hour, plus one for every patient he treated. It didn't sound like much, but it added up to at least one Gold Soul Coin a night—365 times what an ordinary person in Douluo earned. By the original story's standards, an ordinary family spent roughly one Gold Soul Coin a year. Jodio could make that in an evening. He had slipped into the comfortable middle class almost without trying, leaving ordinary people a little behind.

Jodio's rates were on the low side, too. The healers who worked here regularly earned around a hundred Gold Soul Coins a month, with extra pay for overtime and holidays. But Jodio didn't much care. As long as he had enough to spend, money was just money. Many of the things he needed couldn't be bought at all. The thing he'd been searching for lately certainly couldn't.

"Brother Jodio, we'll leave the one with the severed hand to you," a healing-type soul master said, getting up to clap him on the shoulder.

"Sure. That's easy enough."

Jodio leaned against the glass and watched the arena, perfectly calm. Most healing-type soul masters couldn't reattach a severed hand, and even those who could had to expend a great deal of Soul Power. Otherwise, when Tang Hao later ended up like Retsu Kaioh—who had lost a foot and then donated one of his hands to a friend—he wouldn't have been left without a way to heal. Tang San had had to nurse him back to health bit by bit.

That was what made Jodio valuable. Severed hands and feet didn't faze him; he could deal with them almost absurdly easily. The Great Soul Arena had signed a contract with him for precisely that reason. They had offered him plenty of benefits, too. They had genuinely wanted him to stay, going so far as to try a honey trap.

Unlike many people, Jodio had nothing against the Great Soul Arena. It was a fighting venue, an entertainment business. If you were angry about something, why take it out on them?

What, was the arena proof that society had gone bad? Then why did Shrek Academy have a Beast Arena? Why were there so many spectators when Huo Yuhao went there? Were they all watching critically? Critically appreciating the beasts fighting and the soul masters killing each other? Your Shrek Academy looked less like an academy and more like one across the border on the Sun-Moon Continent. The difference was that they had both the sun and moon, while you only had the sun.

Who knew why Tang San had caused the Great Soul Arena to disappear entirely ten thousand years later? Society's productive capacity and structure hadn't changed much, yet plenty of good things from ten thousand years ago had failed to survive.

Jodio didn't know whether the soul masters of the major sects had thanked Lord Tang San, Douluo's little sun, during the Spirit War. But he figured unaffiliated soul masters below level forty—especially those around levels ten and twenty—must have been fed up. Damn it, where did my ten or hundred Gold Soul Coins a month go? Spirit Hall was wrong to found an empire, but couldn't you have set up a similar organization to keep paying everyone a subsidy? One saying fit Tang San perfectly: The first thing you do once you've made it is cut down those who helped you get there.

And they weren't even the worst off. That would be the children who no longer received any subsidy at all. Never mind whether they could attend school or find places as working students; they certainly weren't getting that one Gold Soul Coin anymore. Surely Tang San knew how important that coin was. It was what had let him live comfortably back then.

The way Tang San had so quickly distanced himself from the soul masters after becoming a god left Jodio at a loss. So for a hundred years after ascending, all you did was secure godhood for your friends? You did nothing to change society? Jodio sighed. That was a crime boss's way of thinking. He would take it as a warning and never follow Tang San's example.

"Oh?" Jodio spotted Ma Hongjun and Oscar standing in the ring, and his interest perked up. He hadn't watched those two face off in the Great Soul Arena many times. Today might be interesting.

To be continued...