A Hulking Muscle Beast!

As the long string of notifications rang out in his mind, the corners of Xu Tianyuan's mouth slowly lifted.

What was this called?

Survive a great calamity, and a cheat was sure to follow!

Mountains piled high and rivers wound on, seeming to leave no way forward-then, past dark willows and bright flowers, another village appeared!

Sixteen years of playing the groveling grandson, then one glorious turnaround to sing his triumph!

Xu Tianyuan's chest heaved.

Who could have imagined that a cheat would arrive at this moment, with his life hanging by a thread?

Sixteen years.

Sixteen whole years.

Growing up in the Sun Moon Empire's imperial palace, he had always played the ignorant, good-for-nothing wastrel.

He spent his days idling and indulging in pleasure, deliberately hiding his potential and sheathing every sharp edge, all to cling to life beneath Xu Tianran's watchful eye.

Countless days and nights had passed in torment as he carefully disguised himself, pretending to have no ambitions and no interest whatsoever in the struggle for imperial power.

All of it was merely to lower his crown prince brother's guard and barely preserve his own miserable life.

Xu Tianyuan had imagined countless times what it would be like to possess enough strength to stop living every day beneath death's shadow.

Now, the opportunity had finally landed in his lap.

Joy surged like a tide, filling him in an instant.

But soon, Xu Tianyuan realized there was a problem.

All these skills seemed to require the sun to work.

It was nighttime now.

Forget the sun-there wasn't even a sliver of sunlight.

Outside the window, everything was pitch-black, though the moon was rather round.

There was a mind-over-matter skill called "Sunshine."

But he had only just obtained it and had no idea how to activate it.

What did a sun in his heart even mean?

Was he supposed to imagine himself as a little sun?

Xu Tianyuan's mind raced as he worked through possible triggers for the skill, trying to mobilize the power that had just emerged within his soul, but there was no response whatsoever.

There was no time to keep pondering.

"Oh, crap!"

Watching the men in black draw closer, Xu Tianyuan's smile instantly turned downward.

The joy that had just flooded his heart vanished completely.

"You little bastard, you'd better pray I get my fill of beating you, or you're in for something truly miserable."

The three men in black advanced steadily, their steps in unison.

The fluctuations of Soul Power radiating from them were dense and condensed.

Their leader walked at the front with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes, hidden beneath the black cloth, held endless coldness and a depraved cruelty.

He had already decided to subject Xu Tianyuan to death by a thousand cuts, slicing off his flesh piece by piece. Nothing less would quench the hatred in his heart.

"You dared toy with me? You really don't know how the word 'death' is written."

Anger smoldered within the leader.

The three of them had received secret orders from the crown prince to infiltrate the sixth prince's chambers late at night. They had thought it would be a simple, easy assassination: disposing of a prince everyone knew was worthless.

Yet barely had they begun when their target toyed with them through a few exchanges of words.

Only blood could wash away this humiliation!

"Well, there's something I'd like to say, though I'm not sure whether I should."

Xu Tianyuan took a step back, then suddenly realized something, and the corners of his mouth lifted again.

His unusual behavior piqued the three men's interest.

The leader forced out a low chuckle.

"If you want to beg for mercy, kneel and kowtow three times first. How about that?"

"You rarely find such a spineless coward among the Sun Moon Empire's imperial relatives. Having the sixth prince kneel and kowtow to me should feel pretty good."

As far as he knew, the sixth prince before him was merely a rank twenty-nine Soul Grandmaster. Facing three Soul Kings, he had no choice but to beg for mercy.

Xu Tianyuan, however, shook his head.

"No, no, no. I think you've misunderstood."

"What I wanted to say was..."

"My Martial Soul is actually the sun."

The leader looked utterly bewildered.

He seriously suspected that he might have scared Xu Tianyuan senseless.

Wasn't it common knowledge that the sixth prince's Martial Soul was the sun?

Why go out of his way to remind them?

The leader knitted his brows, pondering silently.

Had terror muddled the sixth prince's mind and left him babbling nonsense?

Before he could think any further, Xu Tianyuan had already summoned his Sun Martial Soul.

A fireball slowly rose behind him, roughly a meter in diameter. It wasn't particularly large, and the heat it emitted was relatively low-at least, it posed no threat to the three men in black.

A faint orange-red glow instantly enveloped Xu Tianyuan as gentle waves of heat slowly spread.

"That's it?"

Feeling the temperature around them gradually rise, the leader wore a mocking expression.

"Sixth prince, all three of us are Soul Kings. What are you thinking?"

"If we were at the same cultivation level, I wouldn't deny that the Sun Martial Soul is powerful enough to contend with us."

"But the point is, you're just a rank twenty-nine Soul Grandmaster, and you still think..."

Before he could finish, the leader's expression changed.

Because he suddenly noticed that Xu Tianyuan's body was glowing.

It shimmered with golden light.

It was as though an extra enhancement buff had been applied to him.

"Just as I thought. The Sun Martial Soul works too."

Xu Tianyuan clenched his fists hard. Feeling strength many times greater than before, he was filled with satisfaction.

The Pride Sin Template required the sun to activate.

Without the sun, he was practically no different from an ordinary person.

But sorry-his Martial Soul happened to be the sun.

Even at night, he could still activate the Pride Sin Template.

It might not compare to the real sun during the day, and his strength might drop a few notches, but it was more than enough to protect himself.

Xu Tianyuan inwardly rejoiced at his good fortune.

This was the only opening in a hopeless situation.

Without the Sun Martial Soul, he would never have escaped death tonight.

"I never intended to act. You were the ones determined to come courting death."

Xu Tianyuan's gaze darkened. He casually swept his eyes over the three men in black, his tone utterly arrogant.

"Take a good look. This is the heavenly chasm separating you from me."

The instant his words fell, the muscles all over Xu Tianyuan's body began swelling rapidly.

In a mere moment, they burst through his clothes, sending scraps of fabric flying everywhere.

Originally close to one meter eighty, he now shot straight past the two-meter mark.

His muscles were like coiling dragons, brimming with power.

Each muscle bulged with hard, sharply defined contours; his chest was broad and thick, his arms massive.

He was a hulking muscle beast, through and through.

"Holy shit!"

At the sight of this bizarre transformation, the three men in black froze where they stood as though they had seen a ghost.

What the fuck kind of monster was this?

Was he on drugs?

The three men were shaken to their cores, their minds utterly blank.

The intelligence they had gathered clearly stated that Xu Tianyuan, sixth prince of the Sun Moon Empire, had a frail physique and meager Soul Power. How had his body undergone such an earth-shattering transformation in an instant?

"Just kill him!"

The leader was the first to recover and roared the order.

An intense sense of unease shrouded his heart. He no longer dared underestimate Xu Tianyuan in the slightest.

Then the leader immediately activated Martial Soul Possession, yellow fur sprouting all over his body as he transformed into a humanoid tiger.

Sharp fangs protruded from his mouth, his hands became razor-sharp tiger claws, and yellow Soul Power swept around his body.