Give Me Face? What a Joke! The Jade Abacus Is Born!

"Oh." Huo Yuhao nodded faintly, without a ripple in his voice.

In all fairness, he bore no personal grudge against this eldest son of the Dai Family, whom he had never met.

Dai Yueheng was steady in his dealings, unlike the arrogant, overbearing Dai Huabin. He knew what mattered. But bearing the name Dai was itself the original sin—

The White Tiger Duke's Mansion owed his mother and him a debt. He would collect it, bit by bit.

Dai Yueheng frowned slightly. Suppressing an inexplicable sense of familiarity, he lowered his stance. "Junior Huo, I can double the compensation. On top of the three Thousand-Year Soul Bones, I'll add another, plus five hundred points' worth of rare treasures. Huabin can even kowtow and apologize to you in private. I only ask that you not make this public across the entire academy. Spare the White Tiger Duke's Mansion a little face, and consider it a favor I, Dai Yueheng, owe you."

The offer sounded utterly sincere.

A private apology and doubled compensation would preserve the Duke's Mansion's reputation while giving Huo Yuhao ample benefit.

Any ordinary freshman would probably have taken the easy way down and earned himself an enormous favor from the Duke's Mansion.

But Huo Yuhao was no ordinary freshman.

"Make it public? Face?" He gave a derisive laugh, his gaze suddenly turning cold. "I don't understand you, Senior Dai. Who hired a Soul Emperor assassin to ambush me halfway back to the academy? Who took things this far first? And now you're telling me not to make it public?"

"Face is something you earn, not something others hand you." He stepped forward and met Dai Yueheng's mismatched eyes head-on, each word ringing firm. "I can't afford to accept a favor from you, Dai Yueheng; as for Dai Huabin's face, it isn't worth a thing."

"My terms won't change. Either he kneels in public and repents, with full compensation paid, and we put this behind us; or we follow Shrek's official procedure and apply its iron rules—hiring a killer means immediate expulsion, followed by an apology. Two roads. You choose."

With that, he turned to leave. As he passed Dai Yueheng, he did not spare him another glance.

"Boy, the White Tiger Duke's Mansion has depths a freshman like you can't imagine. Don't cut off your own way forward." Dai Yueheng's voice chilled. The pressure of a Soul Emperor seeped out, and even the air seemed to congeal.

Huo Yuhao did not slow. With his back to Dai Yueheng, he waved a hand, his voice clear and certain. "I'll be waiting."

The young man's back was straight as a pine, without the slightest trace of fear.

Dai Yueheng stood where he was and watched Huo Yuhao disappear through the doors of the Soul Tool Department, his frown deepening. That sense of familiarity grew stronger, especially around the eyes and brows. They looked remarkably like someone whose face had long since blurred in his memory.

"Impossible..." he murmured. He shook his head and pushed down the absurd thought.

Deep within the Soul Tool Department lay Qian Duoduo's private forging room.

A heavy soundproof door shut out the noise beyond. Hot, metallic air rushed to meet Huo Yuhao. Flames roared in the forge, precision Soul Tool components covered the workbench, and design drawings filled the walls. It was orderly chaos.

Huo Yuhao had barely seen Fan Yu since Zhou Yi's downfall, though that hardly surprised him.

This was the Douluo Continent where the God of Love had fallen, after all. Everyone was addled by romance. Neglecting work for one's wife was only natural.

Qian Duoduo was holding a palm-sized, silver-gray rectangular device up to his eyes, turning it this way and that. His plump face shone with delight, as though he held a priceless treasure.

Huo Yuhao's gaze snapped to the device—

Its casing was smooth and reflective, its shape neatly rectangular, its size just right to fit in a hand. He blurted out, "A phone?!"

"Hm? Yuhao, you're here!" Qian Duoduo looked up and grinned until his eyes were slits. Holding up the device, he strode over. "You mentioned wanting a portable Soul Tool that could send messages over long distances and publish information for everyone to see. I spent half a month working on it, and I actually made one! I haven't named it yet. What was that you just called it—a 'phone'? Where did that come from?"

"You misheard me, Teacher." Huo Yuhao cleared his throat, his expression peculiar, and hastily covered for himself. "I said 'Jade Abacus.' Jade signifies trust, and an abacus conveys messages—like a talisman bearing news."

"Jade Abacus... Jade Abacus..." Qian Duoduo stroked his beard and repeated it twice. His eyes lit up. "Great name! It has style! Jade Abacus it is!"

Huo Yuhao took the other Jade Abacus that Qian Duoduo handed him. It felt cool in his palm. The casing was made of lightweight Silverglow Mithril, with a flat Image-Transmitting Crystal set into the front. Its craftsmanship was far too refined for a first-generation prototype.

He could not help asking, "Teacher, does this Jade Abacus only send messages?"

"Of course not!" Qian Duoduo proudly patted his chest, his face alight with excitement. "Following your idea, I built in two core functions. First, once two Jade Abacuses are linked through Soul Power, they can exchange written messages over long distances. Second, there's a public information platform where anyone can post and read messages. What did you call it again... a forum? Right, a forum!"

Huo Yuhao froze.

Messaging and a forum? This was no first-generation Communication Soul Tool. It had already reached the threshold of the mobile internet!

His mouth twitched as he railed inwardly: Which one of you is the Soul Guidance Holy Land, anyway—the Sun Moon Empire or Qian Duoduo? Did you use some kind of cheat to develop this so fast? I tossed out a couple of concepts, and you went and made the finished product?

"There must be some limitation?" he asked after steadying himself.

"Well... there is one." Qian Duoduo scratched his head, looking regretful. "It needs Soul Power to activate and operate, so ordinary people can't use it. I'd hoped to bring it to the common folk, but I'll have to keep working on a way to power it without Soul Power."

Huo Yuhao was at an even greater loss for words.

So a version that doesn't need Soul Power is already in your development plans? Teacher, which one of us is the transmigrator?

"Teacher, you're selling yourself short." He did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Getting this far is already an invention that marks a new era. You can take your time with the version that doesn't need Soul Power."

As he spoke, he sent a thread of Spiritual Power through his fingertip. The Image-Transmitting Crystal on the Jade Abacus lit up at once, and a pale-blue screen appeared before his eyes:

Welcome—Device No. 3

Huo Yuhao: "..."

It even had a device number. Pretty official.

Please enter a username: Huo Yuhao (default)

He moved his fingertip and casually chose an alias. "Change username to Ever-Burning Ocular Arts Master."

Username changed successfully: Ever-Burning Ocular Arts Master.

Qian Duoduo leaned over for a look, his face full of confusion. "Ever-Burning Ocular Arts Master? What's that supposed to mean? Why use an alias when you have a perfectly good name?"

"You need an alias to browse a forum." Huo Yuhao spun his nonsense with a perfectly straight face. "Where's the fun in going around with 'President of the Lionheart Club' over my head?"

P.S. An excerpt from the historical records in Legend of the Dragon King Book (incomplete)

The Comprehensive History of the Douluo Xianzhou Empire: Soul Guidance Volume explicitly recorded that in the year 2631 of the Douluo Calendar, Soul Guidance Technology on the continent achieved a milestone breakthrough.

Led by Qian Duoduo, the foremost authority in the Soul Tool field of his day, and with his prized personal disciple, Heavenly Lord Huo Yuhao, participating in the design of its core architecture, the Terminal Jade Abacus was officially unveiled.

This era-defining long-distance communication Soul Tool broke down the barriers that had long forced the continent to rely on Communication Soul Guidance Arrays, Communication Talismans, and even couriers to convey information. It removed the constraints that distance placed on communication and fundamentally reshaped the flow of information across the continent, laying the foundation for the continent-wide spread of the Soul Guidance Network, the coordination of Xianzhou Empire governance, and the interconnected development of Soul Tool industries.

As a secretary of the Divination Commission charged with examining historical records and tracing the course of the ages, I have surveyed ten thousand years of Soul Tool development. The birth of the Terminal Jade Abacus marked the crucial divide between traditional Soul Tool Technology and its transformation into something accessible to all and connected by networks. —Ling Zichen, Secretary of the Xianzhou Divination Commission, Research Notes on the Terminal Jade Abacus, in the Comprehensive History of the Douluo Xianzhou Empire: Soul Guidance Volume