Spirit City, the Pope's Hall.
It was a towering temple built entirely of brilliant gold and white jade. Countless dazzling star gemstones studded its hundred-meter-high dome, radiating a sanctity and majesty that mortals dared not gaze upon directly.
Atop the high dais in the council chamber sat a figure of peerless grace.
She wore a magnificent black-and-gold papal robe, the Nine-Curved Purple Gold Crown upon her head, and held a scepter symbolizing supreme authority.
Not a trace of age marked her exquisite, breathtaking face. Only her long, narrow phoenix eyes held the iron resolve and icy coldness of one who looked down upon the world and ruled all living beings.
The current Pope of Spirit Hall, Bibi Dong.
Below the dais, an elderly man in the robes of a Platinum Bishop knelt fearfully on one knee, holding a dark-gold cylinder high in both hands.
"Your Holiness!" The Platinum Bishop's voice trembled uncontrollably. "An urgent Message-Delivering Cloud Falcon has just arrived from the Nuoding branch in Fasinuo Province of the Heaven Dou Empire! Administrator Ma Xiunuo used Spirit Hall's highest-level Red-Gold Special-Grade Sealed Letter, bypassing the provincial main hall to submit it directly to Your Holiness!"
"Fasinuo Province? Nuoding City?"
Bibi Dong's elegant brows stirred slightly. Her voice was soft and pleasing, yet carried the inviolable authority of imperial blood. "A mere frontier branch dared to activate a red-gold sealed letter without permission? If this concerns some trifling matter built on chasing wind and shadows, I will have his head."
Her slender, pale fingers moved slightly, and a gentle, invisible force of soul power drew the dark-gold cylinder into her hand.
With a flick of her fingertip, the Pope's Hall's exclusive mithril sealing clay shattered, and the parchment steeped in mithril ink slowly unfurled before her.
The instant her gaze touched those lines of ink, the phoenix eyes of the previously indifferent Pope-the eyes that governed the continent's destiny-abruptly narrowed!
[Awakening in Holy Soul Village... innate full soul power at level twenty...]
[Unknown supreme divine-grade dragon martial soul; the testing Soul-Inducing Crystal overloaded and shattered on the spot...]
[Returned after one day in the Soul Hunting Forest... completed registration as a Soul Grandmaster at the Nuoding branch...]
[First soul ring: thousand-year, deep purple! Second soul ring: thousand-year, deep purple! Two divine thousand-year rings have appeared at the Soul Grandmaster realm!]
Crack!
In that instant, Bibi Dong's hand tightened involuntarily around the parchment, pinching a crease into its edge!
A divine-grade dragon martial soul? Innate level twenty? Two thousand-year purple rings?
Aside from Qian Renxue, the inheritor of Qian Daoliu's Holy Angel lineage in the Worship Hall, was there actually a second person in this world who could shatter the continent's iron law of ten thousand years, charge straight to level twenty at six years old, and bear two thousand-year soul rings beyond his rank as a Soul Grandmaster?
If she could win over such a peerless prodigy, would Spirit Hall-or even the entire Douluo Continent-still have to worry about being unable to wash away the Angel Clan's brand?
Bibi Dong slowly rose. Beneath the Nine-Curved Purple Gold Crown, unprecedented gravity and ambition surfaced on her exquisite face.
She tightened her grip on her scepter, and terrifying ripples suddenly surged through the previously still air of the hall.
"Transmit my secret papal orders..."
Retracting the pressure around her, Bibi Dong flicked her slender fingers. A Black Iron Secret Order engraved with the Pope's Hall's exclusive Otherworldly Flower emblem shot through the air and landed securely in the palm of a black-clad Shadow Guard who silently emerged from the shadows.
"First, seal every record in the Nuoding branch of Fasinuo Province. Promote Ma Xiunuo and Su Yuntao by two ranks, and tell them to keep their mouths sealed. If they leak so much as half a word, execute their entire families immediately."
"Second, order the covert Shadow Guards to depart for Nuoding City at once. They are to conceal themselves a hundred zhang away from that boy and protect him in secret. Without my handwritten authorization, no one is permitted to approach him!"
"I want you to spare no effort in protecting him from the shadows. Once his wings have fully grown, I will personally welcome him to preside over the Pope's Hall!"
"Your subordinate obeys!" The black-clad Shadow Guard bowed his head, then dissolved into a wisp of insubstantial smoke and vanished into the shadows at the corner of the hall.
Leaning back against her cold throne, Bibi Dong lightly tapped her scepter. Her phoenix eyes gazed through the temple's many corridors toward the far west of the Heaven Dou Empire, and a meaningful curve lifted the corners of her lips.
"Su Chen... let me see how great a heaven-surging wave you can raise in this foul mortal world."
Spring gave way to autumn, cold followed heat, and six years passed in the blink of an eye.
For ordinary soul masters, six years of arduous cultivation meant little more than crossing the threshold from ignorant childhood into adolescence, struggling to advance between levels ten and twenty.
Yet in the remote Nuoding Junior Soul Master Academy, a legend had already been quietly forged.
In the bamboo sea behind the mountain, the first light of dawn glimmered.
A tall, slender figure stood silently on a blue-gray stone at the cliff's edge.
Twelve-year-old Su Chen wore spotless, snow-white brocade robes. His ink-black hair was casually tied behind his head with a pale-gold ribbon.
The years had stripped away his childish softness, carving handsome, majestic features as though with blades and chisels. As his purple-gold double pupils opened and closed, dark-gold divine radiance faintly flickered into being and vanished within them. His every movement carried the bearing of a sovereign who looked down upon the world.
Within him, pure yang dragon emperor soul power surged and roared like the raging waves of a vast ocean.
After six years of day-and-night tempering with the Ancestral Dragon Hegemony Body Art, the toughness of his body had long surpassed that of ordinary Soul Saints, and his bones gleamed like crystalline jade.
And his once-unfathomable soul power had quietly reached the terrifying threshold of level forty-a Quasi-Soul Ancestor!
"Brother Su Chen!"
A bright, delighted call rang out from deep within the bamboo grove. Accompanied by light footsteps, a lovely pink-and-white figure emerged through the bamboo.
At twelve, Xiao Wu had blossomed into a graceful young girl, her long, straight legs displaying their soft curves beneath white trousers.
Xiao Wu naturally slipped her arm through Su Chen's and nestled affectionately against his side.
Tilting up her fair, flawless face, she said with playful reproach, "I've already collected your graduation papers for you! Today, we're finally leaving this boring place for good. You promised to buy me the most expensive Carrot Sweet Cake in all of Suotuo City when we get there. Don't you dare go back on your word!"
Feeling the girl's soul-deep trust and tenderness beside him, Su Chen reached out and lightly brushed her pert little nose. "Of course I won't. Let's go."
Xiao Wu's eyes curved into crescents, and she obediently nodded.
After six years spent together day and night, the vast, rich pure yang dragon emperor bloodline within Su Chen had not only nourished the source of her hundred-thousand-year soul beast transformation to flawless harmony, but had also utterly captured her heart.
In Xiao Wu's heart, the white-robed boy who shielded her from every storm had long since become an inseparable part of her life-her everything.
They walked side by side out of the academy's main gate, crossed Nuoding City's quiet main street in the early morning, and turned into a narrow stone alley leading to the official road outside the city.
Just as they reached the middle of the alley, Su Chen's divine pupils shifted slightly, perceiving every flow of energy within thirty zhang.
Behind a low blue-brick wall on the right, more than half of which had collapsed, an icy killing intent mingled with venomous resentment, deathly stillness, and brutality clung to his and Xiao Wu's vital points like a poisonous snake.
"After holding back for six whole years... you crippled rat in the gutter finally couldn't resist crawling out." A cold, mocking smile touched Su Chen's lips, and his steps never faltered.
In the shadows behind the low wall, a gaunt figure huddled tightly in the filthy mud.
Twelve-year-old Tang San's face was waxy yellow, like that of a vengeful ghost, and his sunken eyes were webbed with scarlet veins.
For six years, the malignant mutation of his Blue Silver Grass caused by absorbing a ten-year Deadwood Vine had subjected him to endless contempt and ridicule from the academy's teachers and students.
Although his right arm had barely been reattached, it still ached whenever the weather turned rainy.
All that despair and humiliation had become a towering murderous hatred for the boy before him!
Seeing the beautiful, lively Xiao Wu at Su Chen's side, her eyes filled with devotion, the savagery in Tang San's chest utterly swept away his last shred of reason!
You stole my opportunity! Ruined my first soul ring! Took my beloved!
The first tenet of the Mysterious Heaven Treasure Record: all who obstruct my path have chosen the road to death!
I, Tang San, have borne humiliation for six years. Today, I will use your blood essence to reforge the supreme glory of my Tang Sect! Die!
A beastlike roar escaped Tang San's throat, and the refined-steel wrist guard hidden beneath the loose sleeve of his left arm jolted violently!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Three bone-piercing refined-steel bolts, coated in deadly poison and gleaming with an eerie green light, shot through the air straight at Su Chen's eyes and throat!
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