All Forces, Attack

In the Heaven Dou Empire, deep within the imperial capital's lowest dungeon.

Crack!

A long, barbed whip sliced through the dungeon's dark, damp air and lashed the body hanging there like a dead dog.

The air reeked of blood so strongly it made people want to vomit.

Several torches burned in the walls, their flickering light illuminating Xue Ye's livid face.

Before him, two thick Black Iron chains had pierced Yu Xiaogang's shoulder blades, suspending him from a torture rack.

There was no trace left of the lofty "Grandmaster" who used to stroll around Notting Academy with his hands behind his back, putting on airs.

His cloth robe had long since been whipped to ribbons. His flesh hung open, exposing bone.

"Whip him! Whip him harder!"

Xue Ye roared and hurled a gunpowder formula copied from the Firmament, its pages covered in chemical symbols, straight into Yu Xiaogang's battered face.

"Yu Xiaogang, you ten-thousand-year-old fox! That other you in the Firmament made firearms with his bare hands that let ordinary people kill Soul Masters! Now the common rabble across the continent are waving your banner and hunting our empire's nobles in the streets with iron tubes!"

Xue Ye seized Yu Xiaogang's tangled hair and forced his head up. The emperor's eyes were full of fear. "And you're still playing the fool with me in this dungeon?! Speak! What exactly is the key purification ratio for Black Powder?! Where are the maximum pressure ratings for those Seamless Steel Pipes?! How many more rebel agents have you planted across the continent?!"

"Aaah!"

Yu Xiaogang screamed.

The agony had utterly shattered what little resolve he had left.

"Your Majesty! Emperor! I beg you, I really don't know! Sob..."

Snot and tears smeared Yu Xiaogang's face. Despair drove his voice into a shrill pitch. "Black Powder? Chemical formulas? I've never even heard of them!"

"I admit it! I'm useless! I'm trash who can't get past level twenty-nine no matter what I do!"

Yu Xiaogang thrashed against the chains, hoping that groveling might buy him a chance to live. "My Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul? I secretly copied the whole thing from the restricted archives when I was a librarian at Spirit Hall! I don't know a thing about science, and I can't make guns! That demon in the Firmament really isn't me!"

After Yu Xiaogang had cast away every shred of dignity, the dungeon fell frighteningly silent.

The elderly Soul Douluo who oversaw the interrogation lowered his whip. Frowning, he stepped forward and probed Yu Xiaogang's meridians with Soul Power.

A moment later, the old attendant turned around. His face was grim, with a hint of contempt.

"Your Majesty..."

"He's completely lost control of his sphincter, and his mind is on the verge of collapse! No one could keep up an act under this kind of terror and pain! His Soul Power is weak and impure. What little he knows bears no resemblance to the knowledge displayed by that Yu Xiaogang in the Firmament! He has only fragments of basic Soul Master theory in his head, most of it memorized by rote. There's no sign he worked any of it out himself."

The old attendant drew a breath and delivered his final judgment. "He isn't acting! This Yu Xiaogang... really is a cowardly, incompetent fraud."

At those words, Xue Ye staggered back two steps and slumped against the cold wall, all strength gone from his body.

He stared at the middle-aged man making such a wretched spectacle of himself on the rack. A sense of absurdity unlike anything he had ever known washed over him.

The Yu Xiaogang of the real world was utter trash.

That meant they had no hope of obtaining the technology to counter those firearms from him.

And the demon who truly possessed the power to overturn heaven and earth, who was toppling the gods from their altars step by step, remained safely in the Firmament's unreachable world!

Hum!

The Firmament's golden light passed through layer after layer of rock, heedless of walls, and shone directly onto the dungeon's dark stonework.

The story in the Firmament moved forward again.

In the world of the Firmament, at the Refugee Militia Base in Tack Town.

The thin morning mist had yet to clear, but two hundred ordinary youths and refugees in coarse homespun clothes already stood in neat ranks on the open ground before the forge.

After half a month of frantic construction and assembly-line forging, they no longer held hoes and wooden clubs. Every one of them carried a Smoothbore Flintlock!

At each person's waist hung a crude leather cartridge pouch stuffed with granular gunpowder and lead bullets.

Lin Fan stood beside the blast furnace, wiping the musket in his hands with a rag.

Just then, a prompt appeared in the game:

[Ding! Main-Line Defense Mission triggered!]

[The Spirit Hall Border Enforcement Team, led by one Soul King and composed of ten Soul Elders, has noticed unusual activity in Tack Town. Estimated arrival: three days.]

[Mission objective: Establish a secure defensive line, repel the enemy, and protect the industrial base!]

[Failure penalty: Base destroyed, NPC favorability reset to zero, game over!]

"Heh."

Lin Fan looked at the panel and gave a scornful laugh, his eyes sharpening. "So the main quest's finally here? This game really underestimates me. Does it think a few Soul Kings and Soul Elders can wipe me out?"

Lin Fan thumped the butt of his musket against the ground. The heavy impact silenced all two hundred ordinary people.

He raised his head and swept his confident gaze over everyone present. Unaware that his voice was being broadcast live to the real world, he was completely immersed in the game's pre-battle rally.

"Brothers!"

"Those Soul Master lords of Spirit Hall, those lofty bloodsuckers who squeeze us like livestock, have caught our scent! They're coming straight for us!"

"What do they want?! They want to smash our blast furnace! Confiscate our blueprints! Steal our food! Then grind us back into the mud and make slaves of us for generations!"

Lin Fan drew the iron sword at his waist and pointed it straight at the sky:

"Tell me! Will you let them?!"

"No!" The two hundred ordinary people, eyes red, raised their muskets and roared their answer.

"Good!"

Lin Fan swept out his hand and issued an order that would change the course of Douluo Continent's history. "Truth lies within the range of our guns! We won't stand here waiting to die!"

"On my command! Move all the gunpowder into position! Load your guns!"

"This time, we take the fight to them! We'll show those high-and-mighty Soul Masters the true fury of ordinary people! All forces, march!"

"Charge!"

As Lin Fan's order to attack rang out, the army of ordinary people in the Firmament unleashed a battle cry that could shatter the clouds. Marching in step, they set out beyond the town.