Old Jack's Tears-Now That Was the Holy Son Humanity Deserved!

In the Firmament's time and space, before the Blacksmith Shop in Holy Soul Village.

Dawn had barely broken.

Old Jack leaned on his cane, worn smooth and shiny, and hobbled down the muddy road toward the most dilapidated Blacksmith Shop at the edge of the village.

Tucked inside his coat was a crumpled piece of paper.

It was Holy Soul Village's sole work-study place at Notting Academy that year.

Old Jack took a deep breath.

He had made up his mind. Even if he had to face Tang Hao's sour expression and endure the drunkard's curses, he had to send little San away.

The boy was too sensible to spend his whole life forging iron beside a good-for-nothing father. He deserved a wider world.

"Tang Hao! You bastard, get your sorry hide out here!"

Old Jack shouted from outside the yard and raised his cane to knock.

But the battered wooden door was not shut tight as usual.

"Creak—"

The door was gently pushed open.

Out came little Tang San, only six years old.

On Lin Fan's young face, there was none of the gloom or old-beyond-his-years air that came from living two lives in the original story.

He hurried forward and naturally took Old Jack's calloused hands in both of his.

"Grandpa Jack, it's so chilly. Why did you come all this way yourself?" Lin Fan's voice was young, but warm.

Old Jack froze. Looking at the child before him, who seemed to give off a faint glow, he felt his eyes grow hot for no reason.

He quickly pulled the admission paper from his coat and pressed it into Lin Fan's hand. "Little San, Grandpa got you the work-study place! Take it. Go study in Nuoding City and become a Soul Master! You'll never have to suffer at the forge again!"

Lin Fan looked at the proof of admission, still warm from Old Jack's body.

Inside, he rolled his eyes furiously. Tch. Go to Nuoding City and take that useless Yu Xiaogang as my teacher? Then start down the original story's hypocritical, double-standard-ridden path? Like hell I'm following that sickening plot!

Though he was cursing up a storm inside, Lin Fan's acting instantly soared to Oscar-winning heights!

He did not take the paper. Instead, he gently pushed it back toward Old Jack's chest.

Then, under Old Jack's bewildered gaze, Lin Fan turned and dragged several huge wooden crates out from a corner of the Blacksmith Shop with considerable effort.

Bang!

The crates opened.

In the morning sunlight, exactly one hundred defensive Silent Sleeve Arrows lay neatly packed inside! Handmade from roughly worked scraps of iron and wood, they were crude but precisely constructed.

"Wh-what are these?" Old Jack and the villagers who had gathered to watch were all stunned.

Lin Fan turned to face the rising sun.

In his clear eyes shone a godlike love for all.

"Grandpa Jack, these are called Silent Sleeve Arrows."

"I made them overnight from Dad's discarded scraps. They're weapons for self-defense."

Lin Fan picked up a Sleeve Arrow, cocked it, and pulled the trigger.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Three sharpened iron nails instantly sank deep into a wooden post ten paces away!

The villagers gasped. Such force could pierce a wild beast's skull and even gravely wound a low-level Soul Master!

"Little San, wh-why are you bringing out something so valuable?" Old Jack's voice trembled.

Lin Fan sighed. His six-year-old face took on the weathered sorrow of one who grieved for all beneath heaven.

"Grandpa Jack, give the work-study place to another child in the village who needs it more. I can't go."

"There are too many Soul Master nobles who sit high above everyone else. They don't see commoners as people. To them, we're no more than grass underfoot. If I become a Soul Master, even a Titled Douluo, how many people could I save?"

Lin Fan reached out his little hand, picked up a Repeating Crossbow, and solemnly placed it in Old Jack's hands.

"The Tang Sect Secret Arts and the gifts of heaven and earth were never meant to be hoarded by selfish people as tools to lord over others!"

"This Repeating Crossbow may be crude, but in a commoner's hands, it can protect a life! If everyone has a weapon, if everyone can defend themselves, then no one in this world will ever dare trample on our dignity at will again!!!"

"Grandpa Jack, these hundred Repeating Crossbows and these blueprints are my gift to Holy Soul Village! Let everyone use them to protect themselves—from wild beasts, from bandits, and from the Soul Masters who oppress us!"

Every word Lin Fan spoke seemed to weep blood; every sentence rang with tragic resolve.

A six-year-old child with a grand dream of protecting all the downtrodden beneath heaven—at that moment, he acted it out with absolute conviction!

"Clatter."

Old Jack's cane fell to the ground.

The old village chief had been stubborn all his life. Noble Soul Masters had looked down on him all his life, leaving him no choice but to pin his hopes on the distant dream of becoming a Soul Master.

He stared at the child before him, who had freely offered up blueprints and weapons that could change people's fates.

Old Jack trembled from head to toe. Two streams of clouded tears burst from his eyes and ran down the deep furrows of his cheeks.

"The Holy Son..." Old Jack wept openly, his cry tearing from the depths of his heart. "Heaven has sent us commoners a Holy Son!!!"

"We owe the Holy Son a debt we can never repay!!!"

The dozens of villagers around them—blacksmiths, farmers, washerwomen—were all shaken by such selflessness and greatness. One after another, they bowed in reverence before a six-year-old child!

And Lin Fan stood before them.

While he put on an alarmed expression and helped Old Jack up, he listened to the system notifications chiming frantically in his ears.

[Host detected distributing defensive weapons and selflessly protecting the weak!]

[Your persona is flawless! Your actions show boundless love!]

[Sage Roleplay Level skyrocketing!]

Watching the progress bar shoot up, Lin Fan was so delighted he nearly laughed aloud.

Holy shit, this level is way too easy! All I have to do is play the bleeding-heart do-gooder, hand out charity, and wrap myself up as a pure white lotus. My roleplay level shoots right up!

That stingy bastard Tang San in the original story treated Repeating Crossbows as a core secret and even made people sign away their freedom before they could use them. I'm handing out the whole lot for free. Nothing beats this point-farming speed! Hahaha!

Lin Fan played his part in the Firmament without the slightest qualm, convinced he had found a bug that would let him clear this single-player roleplay game.

He had no idea.

His Oscar-worthy performance as a Saint, or his furious declaration that "the Tang Sect Secret Arts belong to no one, and no one has the right to hoard them"...

After crossing ten thousand years of time...

Would bring such devastating judgment upon the real world outside the Firmament!

Ten thousand years later, outside the Firmament, in the era of the Peerless Tang Sect.

Old Jack's long, kneeling sobs and Lin Fan's roar for commoners' dignity struck every leader of the modern Tang Sect and Shrek Academy like a colossal thunderbolt splitting the night!

Shrek Academy, the Sea God Pavilion.

This sacred hall symbolized the highest power and glory on Douluo Continent. Now, however, a terrible atmosphere gripped it.

The elders of the Sea God Pavilion and several leaders and senior figures of the modern Tang Sect had gathered there.

They stared fixedly at the young Tang San in the Firmament, who had made the Repeating Crossbow blueprints public for the commoners' sake and shouted that "everyone should be able to defend themselves."

Then they looked at the mountains of Gold Soul Coins in the Sea God Pavilion's underground vault.

They thought of the Hidden Weapons in the Tang Sect treasury, marked with sky-high prices and sold specifically to the armies of the Three Great Empires to profit from war.

And they thought of their sect's ironclad rule: "Any disciple who is not part of the inner circle and dares secretly learn the art of mechanical Hidden Weapons shall have their Martial Soul destroyed and the tendons in their hands and feet severed!"

"Clink."

A Tang Sect Elder's teacup slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.

His face turned white as paper in an instant, utterly drained of blood. Cold sweat poured down him like a waterfall, soaking through layer after layer of clothing.

"H-how is this possible..."

The elder's voice shook like a leaf in the wind. His eyes were full of terror as everything he believed came crashing down.

"Back then, at the very beginning, our ancestor was such a selfless Saint? He made Hidden Weapons so commoners without Soul Power could protect their dignity?!"

"Then what... what have we been doing for the past ten thousand years?!"

Another Shrek elder covered his face in anguish, his voice steeped in shame. "We used Hidden Weapon technology to monopolize the continent's arms trade! We turned the weapons our ancestor gave commoners for self-defense into tools for squeezing every drop of their hard-earned money from them!"

"We stood above everyone else in our ancestor's glory. We became... became traitors for the ages, lining our pockets off our ancestor's legacy and betraying a Saint's great dream!!!"

Lies could not withstand true selflessness.

Every selfless gift Lin Fan made in the Firmament was another cut from a blunt knife, slicing away at the hollow monument to justice the Tang Sect and Shrek Academy had built over ten thousand years!

If the Tang Sect's leaders felt terror, however...

Then the commoners at the bottom of the world ten thousand years later felt their entire worldview shatter—and rage that surged skyward like an erupting volcano!

Without comparison, the wound had never seemed so deep.

Heaven Dou City, Star Luo City, the capital of the Sun Moon Empire, and even Shrek Outer City.

Hundreds of millions of poor commoners, refugees, and low-level wandering Soul Masters.

The Tang Sect's Hidden Weapons had been used to oppress them all their lives. Even if they emptied their homes and savings, they could not afford the most ordinary Godly Zhuge Crossbow to defend themselves against wild beasts.

Shrek Academy's "only monsters, not ordinary people" policy had locked them into their place and squeezed them so hard they did not even have the right to lift their heads and look at the sky.

For ten thousand years, they had been taught to believe these were the rules the Sea God had set, that commoners were meant to be stepping stones for Soul Master nobles.

But now...

They raised their heads and stared blankly at the Firmament.

There, they saw the true Saint Tang San, who treated commoners as people, gave selflessly, and even refused a work-study place for their sake.

Then they looked higher, into the boundless night sky overhead, toward Sea God Tang San himself. He had been a god for ten thousand years, watching Shrek and the Tang Sect suck the marrow from people's bones while he remained high above, enjoying their worship.

"Lies... It was all lies! We've been deceived for ten thousand years!!!"

In a Slum in Shrek Outer City, a beggar whose legs had been crippled by a Tang Sect steward's Hidden Weapon grabbed a handful of muck and hurled it at the towering statue of the Sea God in Shrek Square!

"The Tang San in the Firmament is the real savior! He's the Holy Son who gave us weapons!"

"That one up in the Divine Realm... he's no Sea God! He's nothing but a hypocrite who hoards everything, monopolizes the resources of the human world, and watches us die!!!"

Rumble—!!!

A single spark could set a prairie ablaze.

And this was ten thousand years of accumulated resentment and hatred of class oppression!

Across the continent ten thousand years later, furious cries began rising from countless Slums, Black Markets, and sewers!

It was a force more terrifying than any Soul Skill.

The black Karma of shattered faith spread wildly across the skies of Douluo Continent, then became a hurricane flowing backward, hurtling toward the Divine Realm above the nine heavens!

The Divine Realm, the Sea God Temple.

Buzz—!!!

An invisible but terrifying force of backlash slammed into Sea God Tang San's flawless Divine Core.

It was the ultimate backlash of hundreds of millions of believers abandoning their faith at once and turning it into the bitterest curses!

Tang San himself sat high on his throne, staring at Lin Fan giving away Repeating Crossbows in the Firmament, his whole body shaking with anger.

He could not understand why the heretic in the Firmament would be so stupid!

Why give up such enormous profits just to play a hypocritical Saint?!

But before he could work it out...

The backlash of Karma struck his Divine Soul!

"Ugh!"

Tang San's face stiffened. For the first time, a trace of pent-up humiliation flashed through his Divine Eyes.

His chest heaved violently.

Pfft—!!!

Under the utterly stunned gazes of the God of Destruction, the Goddess of Life, and the other giants of the God Realm Committee...

God King Tang San, who had always claimed the moral high ground...

Was so stung by the selfless justice his "other self" had flung before the world in the Firmament, and by the collapse of faith in the human world ten thousand years later...

That he spat out a mouthful of precious golden Divine Blood!!!

Divine Blood splashed across the God King Throne, where a crack had already appeared. It looked glaringly bright—and bitterly ironic.

The blade that struck at the heart had pierced the God King's ribs!