Disgust.
Beyond disgust, Zhu Zhuqing felt nothing else.
Years ago, to escape the Star Luo Empire's brutal struggle for the throne, Dai Mubai had abandoned her like a homeless cur and fled alone to Suotuo City in the Heaven Dou Empire.
She had thought Dai Mubai was secretly biding his time and gathering strength, cultivating bitterly to better himself. That was why she had risked almost certain death to cross the sealed border and find him.
Yet what awaited her was the sight of him wallowing in wine and women.
Zhu Zhuqing's gaze slowly traveled up the stairs, settling on the tall, slender figure calmly entering the "Red Ocean" suite.
The young man wore spotless white, his bearing as straight and proud as a pine. He had never once released his martial soul. With nothing but a seemingly unremarkable punch of raw physical strength, he had shattered Dai Mubai's proud thousand-year soul skill, White Tiger Vajra Transformation!
The true intent of a Dragon Emperor that had faintly resounded with that punch had even sent the Nether Civet martial soul within Zhu Zhuqing into an unprecedented fit of trembling and resonance.
If I could be with him... could that cruel fate of death imposed by my family be trampled to pieces?
"Dai Mubai... you really are a hopeless coward."
Zhu Zhuqing's crimson lips parted slightly. Her voice rang like cold jade shattering, severing the last illusory bond in her heart.
She raised her head. Deep within her once cold, lifeless feline eyes, a fierce, resolute light quietly ignited.
Powerful, composed, looking down upon all beneath him-this was the peerless powerhouse she, Zhu Zhuqing, truly longed to follow.
Early the next morning, dawn's light glimmered faintly.
Outside Suotuo City's southern gate, golden fields stretched along both sides of the main road. A few miles down a muddy path, a shabby little village loomed indistinctly through the morning mist.
A crude wooden arch stood at the village entrance. A battered wooden plaque hung crookedly from it, carved with a green monster's head. Beside it were roughly carved words... Shrek Academy.
A line of more than a hundred people had already formed outside the village. Young soul masters from across the Heaven Dou Empire waited with their parents, full of hopeful anticipation as they prepared to register.
Behind a battered wooden table at the head of the line sat an old man of about sixty.
He wore coarse hemp clothes and had a gaunt face. His eyelids drooped, giving him the languid look of someone who had yet to wake properly.
On the table before him sat a large, chipped earthenware bowl, piled with gleaming Gold Soul Coins.
"Next." The old man lazily lifted his eyelids, his voice hoarse.
A plainly dressed middle-aged man hurried forward with his son. He took ten Gold Soul Coins from inside his clothes and carefully placed them in the bowl, then urged the boy to hold out his hand.
The old man reached out and squeezed the boy's wrist, his expression indifferent. "Thirteen years old, soul power at rank seventeen. Unqualified. Leave."
The middle-aged man pleaded anxiously, "Teacher, my son is still half a year shy of thirteen, and his soul power is among the best at his junior academy. Please make an exception... if that really isn't possible, could you refund our ten Gold Soul Coins? That's half a year of savings for our whole family!"
"A refund?"
The old man sneered. "The rules are posted at the entrance. Once you register, there are no refunds. You can't even bear to part with ten gold coins, yet you want to attend Shrek Academy? Get lost. Don't hold up the assessments."
"You... isn't this outright fraud?" His face flushed crimson, the middle-aged man demanded an answer, grief and outrage mingling in his voice.
"Fraud?"
The old man's gaze abruptly chilled. An overwhelming, domineering aura erupted from his body!!
Humm...!
With a low metallic hum, a thick, jet-black staff carved with coiling dragon patterns materialized in the old man's palm.
The next instant, white, yellow, purple, purple, purple, black!!
Six dazzling soul rings slowly rose from beneath his feet, pulsing over the muddy ground with a terrifying pressure as heavy as a mountain!!
A rank sixty-two Power Attack System tool Soul Emperor!
His martial soul was the Dragon Pattern Staff, and he was a Shrek Academy instructor... Li Yusong!!
"If you want to run wild at Shrek, first ask whether the Dragon Pattern Staff in my hand agrees!" Li Yusong flicked his wrist and slammed the heavy Dragon Pattern Staff into the ground.
Boom! It smashed a deep pit straight into the mud. The violent shock wave sent the middle-aged man and his son stumbling backward until they fell into the muddy water.
The noisy crowd instantly fell utterly silent.
To these commoners and low-ranking soul masters, the pressure of a Six-Ring Soul Emperor was like the might of heaven itself. The middle-aged man's face turned paper-white. Furious but afraid to speak, he could only hold back tears of humiliation as he pulled his son away in disgrace.
Li Yusong indifferently gathered the coins in the earthenware bowl. A flicker of satisfaction crossed his eyes as he snorted, "Next!"
"A grand Six-Ring Soul Emperor, hiding in a dilapidated village and scraping out a living by setting traps to extort commoners' meager savings. Such grandeur. Such might."
A mocking voice abruptly rang out from the far end of the main road.
The crowd erupted into an uproar, turning toward the source of the voice.
In the breaking dawn, a young man in robes whiter than snow approached at an unhurried pace. His bearing was upright as a deity's, his face strikingly handsome, and an air of nobility that looked down upon the world surrounded him.
Beside him, Xiao Wu playfully hooked her arm through his, dressed in a pink skirt. Her lively eyes were filled with contempt and distaste.
Meanwhile, two eye-catching young women in the nearby registration line reacted differently.
Zhu Zhuqing stood beneath a tree's shade in a tight black leather outfit. Once she recognized Su Chen, a ripple stirred in her cold feline eyes, and her heartbeat quickened beyond her control.
Near the front of the line, Ning Rongrong, a girl in a pale green dress whose delicate beauty resembled an immortal maiden in a painting, also brightened. She studied the white-robed young man who dared openly challenge a Six-Ring Soul Emperor with some surprise.
Li Yusong's drooping eyelids snapped open. Two fierce, icy gleams shot from his clouded eyes as he fixed them on Su Chen. "Boy, what did you just say? You dare insult Shrek Academy? Are you looking to die?"
"Insult?"
Su Chen continued forward, stopping ten paces directly in front of the wooden table.
His profound Purple-Gold Double Pupils swept briefly across the large earthenware bowl piled with coins. Unconcealed mockery and coldness curled at the corners of his lips.
"I merely stated the facts. Under the pretense of 'accepting only monsters, not ordinary people,' you trick commoner families into paying ten Gold Soul Coins to register."
"You know full well that more than ninety percent of them won't pass, yet you impose the tyrannical condition of 'no refunds on registration fees.' In a single day, you rake in hundreds, even thousands of Gold Soul Coins for nothing. How is that anything but a blackhearted racket of fraud and extortion?"
At those words, the hundreds of parents and applicants present instantly boiled over!!
"That's right! A touch tells you their bone age and soul power don't qualify. Why not explain beforehand? Why take ten gold coins before chasing them away?"
"Ten Gold Soul Coins! That's a whole year of our hard-earned wages!"
"Refund our money! You shameless scam academy, give it back!"
Su Chen's exposure ignited the anger of the crowd that Li Yusong's Soul Emperor pressure had cowed. Wave after wave of condemnation surged through the air!!
Ning Rongrong covered her mouth, her eyes full of shock and dawning realization. As the little princess of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, she cared little for a few dozen gold coins, but Su Chen's words had laid bare this ramshackle academy's ugly face.
Zhu Zhuqing clenched both fists, the admiration in her eyes growing even stronger.
Li Yusong's face turned from livid to black, veins throbbing at his temples!!
Without financial allocations from the empire or Spirit Hall, Shrek Academy's Flender and its other old fellows lived in considerable hardship. Every year, they relied on this "shameless profiteering" during enrollment season to cover the academy's operating expenses and cultivation supplies for the entire year.
They had played this unspoken game for over a decade, all tacitly accepting it. Now, a boy had torn their veil of decency to shreds before a public audience!!
"Utter nonsense!!" Li Yusong laughed in fury. He violently shook the Dragon Pattern Staff in his hand, producing a piercing shriek. "Shrek Academy is the Monster Academy! Dean Flender is a rank seventy-eight Power Attack System Battle Soul Saint! Every student we've trained is a powerhouse renowned across the continent! What does a brat like you know about educating monsters?!"
"Educating monsters? What an absurd joke."
Su Chen smiled coldly, his eyes filled with lofty disdain. "Your so-called monster education is nothing but a fig leaf for a few down-and-out soul masters to hide their own incompetence."
"As far as I know, in its twenty years of existence, Shrek Academy has never registered with the Balak Kingdom's Ministry of Education, nor obtained official authorization to operate from the Heaven Dou Empire! You don't even have the most basic Mimicry Cultivation Environment or mimicry training facilities. You're nothing but an unlicensed, makeshift outfit renting rural farmhouses!"
"The students you recruit are already supreme talents nurtured with all the resources their sects and families could pour into them. Throw them into any legitimate academy, and breaking through to Soul Ancestor before twenty would come as naturally as water flowing into a channel! All you do is slap a 'Shrek' label on them and proclaim their accomplishments the fruits of your teaching!"
"You borrow the gifts of geniuses to build your hollow reputation and suck commoners' blood to fill your empty pockets. Ruining students' futures and swindling people under false pretenses-is this the Shrek you're so proud of?"
Every applicant's expression changed completely. They had thought this was a secluded sanctuary hidden among ordinary folk, only to discover a fraudulent diploma mill that lacked even the qualifications to operate a proper school!!
"Good! Well said!!" Someone at the back of the line shouted first. Then the crowd erupted in fury, hundreds of people roaring in unison for their registration fees to be refunded!!
"You little bastard! Today, I'll discipline that foul mouth of yours on your elders' behalf and teach you how high heaven is and how deep the earth runs!!"
Li Yusong's humiliation boiled over into rage, naked killing intent filling his eyes. If Su Chen continued, Shrek Academy's reputation would be trampled into the dirt today, and even maintaining a foothold in Suotuo City would become a problem!
Boom...!!
The formidable soul power of a Six-Ring Soul Emperor erupted in full force! Six soul rings-yellow, yellow, purple, purple, purple, black-pulsed wildly!
Li Yusong kicked off the ground, becoming a dark blur. The Dragon Pattern Staff in his hand howled through the air as he smashed it straight toward Su Chen's face!
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