Ten Core Competencies? That Was Pure Garbage That Led Students Astray!

Within the Firmament, at Notting Academy.

The grand auditorium was packed.

Every teacher and student, including the noble children, sat up straight, their eyes fixed on the high podium at the front.

Yu Xiaogang stood on the podium with his hands behind his back, holding forth with an air of pride.

"I've studied Martial Souls for decades and distilled my findings into the Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul."

Yu Xiaogang's voice echoed through the vast auditorium. "The first, and most important: there are no useless Martial Souls, only useless Soul Masters!"

"Second, absorbing Soul Rings is subject to strict limits. The First Soul Ring must never exceed 423 years. Anyone with a Trash Martial Soul, and any commoner, must submit to their Martial Soul's natural rank and fate. Attempting to absorb a Soul Ring beyond that rank will make their body explode!"

The teachers and students below nodded along. To them, this was more than theory. It was an iron law that had governed Douluo Continent since time immemorial.

But just as Yu Xiaogang was about to continue expounding his earth-shaking "Grandmaster theory"—

"Enough!"

A young, furious shout tore through the auditorium's silence of blind reverence!

Everyone turned in shock.

In the last row stood Lin Fan, only six years old, wearing coarse clothes patched in several places.

There was no childish timidity in his clear eyes, only a radiance as sacred as a god descended to earth!

Under the stunned gaze of hundreds of teachers and students, Lin Fan climbed the steps to the podium, one step at a time.

"You... you're one of this year's work-study students? How dare you! Who gave you permission to interrupt my lecture?!" Yu Xiaogang frowned, assuming the stern authority of an elder.

Lin Fan ignored his rebuke.

He walked straight up to Yu Xiaogang, reached out with his small hand, and snatched away the manuscript of the Ten Core Competencies that Yu Xiaogang treasured so dearly.

Then, before Yu Xiaogang's horrified eyes—

Riiip!

In front of hundreds of teachers and students, Lin Fan tore the priceless manuscript, supposedly the pinnacle of Martial Soul theory, clean in half!

Then he tore it again!

He shredded it into scraps that fluttered through the air and flung them into Yu Xiaogang's rigid face!

"You... you've gone mad! What are you doing?!" Yu Xiaogang shrieked, beside himself with rage.

"What am I doing?"

Lin Fan stared at the pale-faced Yu Xiaogang. From that tender six-year-old face came a terrifying pressure that could overturn every belief of the old era!

"Stop leading students astray with this poison weed you call a theory, riddled with holes!"

"Grandmaster! You keep saying, 'There are no useless Martial Souls, only useless Soul Masters,' dumping all the blame for being unable to cultivate on commoners who supposedly don't work hard enough!"

"But look at the garbage you've written! Every one of your theories is a shameless defense of the old sects, the great nobles, and their monopoly on bloodlines!"

Lin Fan planted a foot on the scraps of paper, each word cutting to the heart. "You decreed a so-called Soul Ring Limit. With one claim that exceeding it means certain death, you shut off every chance for commoners at the bottom to test the limits of their bodies! You made ordinary people bow to fate for generations!"

"You divided Martial Souls into ranks and placed Soul Masters and ordinary people in classes separated by an impassable gulf! You go on at length about how nobles can choose the strongest Soul Rings, but won't say a word about how ordinary people can change their fate with their own hands!"

"This is no Grandmaster theory meant to benefit all living beings!"

Lin Fan pointed straight at Yu Xiaogang's nose and roared with enough force to tear through ten thousand years of feudal shackles. "This is nothing but the dregs of garbage the ruling class uses to brainwash the world and forever bar ordinary people from rising!"

At that moment, every work-study student in the Notting Academy auditorium heard Lin Fan's thunderous roar and felt the shackles called "inferiority" in their minds shatter!

Lin Fan stood on the podium.

The system's pleasant voice rang out in a frenzy:

[Host detected dismantling the old order in public and breaking the shackles of class!]

[You have perfectly proclaimed true Equality for all living beings and rejected bloodline supremacy!]

[Saint roleplay rating soaring!]

Hahahaha!

Lin Fan laughed wildly to himself. It felt incredible.

Scoring points is too damn easy! That idiot Tang San in the original story actually treated this poison weed, meant to imprison commoners' minds, like treasure. He even devoted himself to studying under a fraud like this. How spineless can you get?

As long as I stand on the moral high ground and keep hammering them with arguments, that SSS clear rating is mine!

Within the Firmament, Lin Fan was having the time of his life chasing his clear reward.

To him, it was simply a single-player power fantasy about smashing a facade with absolute justice.

But he could never have imagined

what his point-scoring roar, his public shredding of the Grandmaster's theory,

would unleash after crossing ten thousand years of time:

an awakening of thought that would sweep away everything in its path!

Outside the Firmament, in the real world ten thousand years later, during the era of the Peerless Tang Sect.

The Sun Moon Empire. Mingdu. The Royal Soul Engineering Academy.

This was the foremost institution for Soul Guidance Technology on the entire continent.

Before an enormous holographic screen stood

Jing Hongchen, master of Illustrious Virtue Hall and a Soul Engineer at the peak of Level 9.

Behind him stood hundreds upon hundreds of top Soul Engineers. Limited by their Martial Soul talent, they could never become Titled Douluo and had instead forged a new path by researching Soul Tool technology.

They heard the six-year-old Tang San within the Firmament condemn, word by blood-soaked word, that doctrine of Martial Soul bloodline supremacy as garbage designed to bar ordinary people from rising!

Whoosh!

Thousands of Soul Engineers throughout the hall rose from their chairs as one!

Every breath grew heavy. Every pair of eyes reddened as though filled with blood!

"Well said... So well said!"

Jing Hongchen, that calculating Level 9 Soul Engineer, had tears streaming down his aged face!

"Ten thousand years... A full ten thousand years!"

"Shrek Academy has clung to those so-called iron laws, treating talent and bloodline as the measure of everything! They look down on us Soul Engineers who try to change our fate with tools and technology. They call us heretics! They call us cheats!"

"But today... do you see?!"

Jing Hongchen pointed at the six-year-old boy glowing with sacred light within the Firmament and roared at the academy's teachers and students:

"Ten thousand years ago, Shrek's founder, the ancestral Sea God, personally tore that garbage doctrine of bloodline supremacy to shreds!"

"He vindicated us! What broke the shackles of Trash Martial Souls was never some intangible divine bloodline. It was our unyielding wisdom and sweat!"

"Tang San wasn't wrong! The ones in the wrong are Shrek's cancers of today, who stole his legacy and forgot their own origins!"

And it was not only the Sun Moon Empire.

Across the Three Great Empires of the original Douluo Continent, countless Soul Masters at the bottom had spent their lives toiling in the Shrek Outer Court because of flawed Martial Souls, enduring whatever humiliations the nobles chose to inflict!

In their hearts, Lin Fan's denunciation blazed like a wildfire across the plains, igniting anger suppressed for ten thousand years!

As they listened to Lin Fan's voice, backs bent by years of bowing their heads straightened that night!

The blind obedience and cowardice in their eyes turned into flames ready to burn everything down!

"To hell with the Soul Ring Limit! To hell with 'there are no useless Martial Souls'!"

"Tang San in the Firmament is right! It's poison the ruling class uses to brainwash us!"

Once the shackles on their minds were smashed, the power they unleashed was enough to overturn the entire Divine Realm!

This awakening of thought swept across the continent.

It severed the foundations of Sea God Tang San's authority in the mortal world ten thousand years later!

Above the Divine Realm, seas of cloud churned as though boiling.

Inside the Sea God Temple,

Sea God Tang San himself had just spat out a mouthful of golden divine blood. Now his towering golden body, that of a God King, trembled violently!

How could this happen?!

He had always held up "respect your teachers" and "a teacher for a day is a father for life" as the spotless facade of his righteousness.

Never had he imagined that his younger self within the Firmament would so decisively dig up his teacher Yu Xiaogang—and the grave of ten thousand years of Shrek theory—before the eyes of the entire universe!

In the original story, even ten thousand years after becoming a god, Tang San had kept the mortal world worshipping Shrek's monster theory. He used that bloodline doctrine to raise Douluo Continent's gifted elites like livestock and harvest their fortune, reinforcing the Divine Realm's rule.

But now, with the unassailable logic of a selfless Saint, Lin Fan within the Firmament had pierced Shrek's mask of ten thousand years!

He had stripped Tang San's selfish rule bare!

"You... what kind of monster are you?!"

Tang San himself pointed at Lin Fan within the Firmament. For the first time, true fear appeared in his divine eyes.

He realized that another version of himself was grinding his ten-thousand-year mask of hypocrisy into the dirt!

Two worlds, two eras.

One true Saint and one false God King.

Before billions of viewers, two utterly opposed theories were carrying out a public execution in the bloodiest terms!

Shrek City.

At the center of Shrek Square stood a colossal statue, a hundred meters tall, symbolizing the Sea God's supreme authority and ten thousand years of glory.

The moment the final word of this chapter fell,

the furious revolt of Soul Engineers, low-ranking Soul Masters, and commoners across the real continent sent faith rebelling and karmic forces surging backward!

Crack!

A terrifying sound of fracture exploded over Shrek City, enough to make every Shrek elder's heart nearly burst!

Before countless horrified eyes,

the divine statue carved from Supreme Sea God Crystal split from its proudly raised shoulder down to its imperious waist.

With a thunderous crack, another devastating fissure tore across nearly half its body!

Stone chips flew. Its divine light dimmed.