Desolate Youth

The autumn wind sighed bleakly, and the setting sun glowed blood-red, unable to tell all the cold and desolation of the mortal world.

A small burial mound stood forlornly amid the overgrown weeds.

"Old man, I'm back. It's been three years. How have you been?"

A boy in coarse hemp clothing pushed aside the weeds and approached the neglected grave, his expression unreadable-perhaps mocking, perhaps something else.

"Old man, you collected countless corpses in your life. Who knows how many people you buried? But you never expected this, did you? After you died, apart from me, there wasn't even anyone to clear the weeds off your grave!"

As he pulled out the weeds, the boy muttered to himself, "Over these three years, I've traveled across more than half the Star Luo Empire, trying to find the murderers who killed you that day. I know they're almost certainly in the Sun Moon Empire, but since they came to the Star Luo Empire, they shouldn't have left so easily. After all, the border between the two empires isn't easy to cross, especially for a pack of rats like them!"

"Unfortunately, I didn't find them."

The boy paused, then continued, "But it wasn't entirely fruitless. After three years, I've finally cultivated to rank ten."

As he spoke, the boy gave a self-mocking smile. "Rank ten. Laughable, isn't it? I think so too. Tell me, a transmigrator like me came to the familiar Douluo Continent, only to spend three years reaching rank ten. I must have disgraced every transmigrator out there, right?"

"Tell me, what difference does cultivating make for a useless fool like me? With my brains and the experience of two lifetimes, never mind great wealth and prestige-living comfortably would've been a breeze, right? I could've married a beautiful wife. Wait, this seems to be a feudal society, doesn't it? Then marrying two wives wouldn't have been too much, would it? The bliss of having both! When you got old, you could've enjoyed the happiness of grandchildren gathered around your knees. Wouldn't that have been better than spending your whole life with corpses?"

"And you, spending your whole life with corpses until your entire body gave off that eerie, deathly aura. Even your martial soul belonged in the underworld. Otherwise, people wouldn't have mistaken you for an Evil Soul Master's accomplice and denied you even a chance to live..."

"Forget it, forget it. I won't ramble on anymore. I know your favorite was the wine Widow Wang brewed at the village entrance, though I suspect you really had your eye on Widow Wang herself. I sneaked a sip of her wine, and the taste was simply beyond words. Still, Widow Wang is pretty, so it's only natural you liked her..."

The boy sat before the lonely grave, took out a jar of wine, and poured it onto the ground in front of the mound, his expression indescribably desolate.

He lifted the half-emptied jar and gulped down a mouthful. The fiery wine burned his throat, and he coughed loudly, as though he had never learned to drink. Wine and tears blurred his eyes.

The boy's name was Jiang Hai.

Eleven years earlier, he had been a boy in another world, full of adolescent fantasies.

Fate played cruel tricks.

While scrolling through Douyin, he had come across a question: if you could transmigrate into the world of Douluo Continent, which story would you choose?

Without even thinking, Jiang Hai had foolishly tapped Douluo Continent: Peerless Tang Sect. Then he had arrived in this world.

Unsurprisingly, Jiang Hai had transmigrated in soul alone. In a bewildered haze, he had somehow become an infant.

Jiang Hai did not know who his mother was. From the moment he became aware, he had never seen her. Later, the old man told him she had died in childbirth.

And Jiang Hai's father was the owner of this lonely grave.

A disheveled old man in his forties, Jiang Tian.

On the Douluo Continent, everyone had a martial soul. Although Jiang's Father had no soul power, he still had a martial soul—a coffin. Using its unique properties, he had opened a mortuary and earned a little money for his hard work collecting bodies.

Generally, when Jiang's Father collected a body, any surviving relatives would pay him a small fee. If the deceased had no family, he would donate part of whatever money they carried and keep the rest to live on.

But in this world, how many people whose corpses lay exposed in the wilderness were wealthy? Even if they had been rich, their possessions had usually been looted clean. What could possibly be left for Jiang's Father?

Thus, Jiang's Father lived in poverty and had hardly any savings.

Yet it was precisely that lack of savings that cost Jiang's Father his life.

Jiang Hai was Jiang's Father's only son, and he lavished love and care on him.

The departed could not be brought back, but what lay ahead could still be cherished!

Jiang Hai had also accepted his life in this world.

But when he was six, things changed.

On the Douluo Continent, everyone, male or female, could awaken their martial soul at the age of six under a Soul Master's guidance. If they possessed soul power, they could also cultivate and become a Soul Master, standing above ordinary people.

In the past, when Spirit Hall still existed on the continent, it had conducted everyone's martial soul awakening ceremonies. After its destruction, great families had their ceremonies performed by their own Soul Masters or those from the major Soul Master academies, while ordinary commoners went to their local city lord's residence.

At first, gods had stood in abundance on the Douluo Continent, and many of Shrek Academy's gods had come from commoner backgrounds. Their divine might still lingered, so although disputes arose in various places, no one dared act too openly. But after ten thousand years, abuses surrounding martial soul awakening had grown increasingly severe.

Gradually, awakening martial souls had become a business everywhere!

It was all right if one encountered a city lord with some sense of justice left, but if the city lord's demands knew no bounds...

Without money, even awakening a martial soul became an unattainable dream...

Care for the living, a resting place for the dead!

Jiang's Father could be said to have spent his life doing good and accumulating virtue, yet he had never expected to fall at the hurdle of having no money.

Even at eight, Jiang Hai had yet to awaken his martial soul.

Though Jiang Hai said nothing, how could Jiang's Father fail to see his longing to become a Soul Master?

Having come to this wondrous world, who would not want to awaken a martial soul and command extraordinary power?

Over those two years, Jiang's Father had collected corpses as though his life meant nothing, traveling farther and farther afield.

But was the Douluo Continent truly a peaceful, prosperous world?

A band of Evil Soul Masters appeared in the area around Dujing City, neighboring Pinghai City, and many people died.

Jiang's Father saw an opportunity and set off for Dujing City alone.

He was not even a Soul Master. How could he have been fortunate enough to turn danger into safety in territory haunted by Evil Soul Masters?

And his work was collecting corpses, no less.

Sure enough, when Shrek Academy pursued the Evil Soul Masters, they captured Jiang's Father and used him to threaten the academy's students.

But Jiang's Father carried a large coffin on his back. Having spent years among corpses, he naturally bore a considerable trace of their aura.

Shrek's teachers and students immediately concluded that Jiang's Father, too, was an Evil Soul Master, and that this was merely a ruse in which the Evil Soul Masters sacrificed one of their own to win sympathy.

Jiang's Father died.

Jiang Hai kept wondering whether Shrek Academy's people would have shown mercy if Jiang's Father had recalled his martial soul at the final moment.

But inside that coffin lay his son's hope of awakening his martial soul!

If he could bring back the corpse inside, then together with his savings from the past two years, he would have enough money for Jiang Hai's martial soul awakening.

Jiang Hai clenched his fists. A sharp, fierce aura burst from him, and a Bronze Coffin appeared behind his back.

The Bronze Coffin was half-covered in rust, but its ancient, imposing patterns were still visible.

This was Jiang Hai's martial soul, the Bronze Coffin!

"Old man, you collected corpses your whole life. I'll carry on your life's work and use this Bronze Coffin to gather the bodies of every monster in human skin beneath the heavens!" A thick aura of murderous menace now shrouded the boy, though his face remained calm.

"You had better remember what you just said. If one day you become an Evil Soul Master, or I discover that you've practiced their methods, I will personally arrest you and bring you to justice!"

An icy voice came from behind Jiang Hai.

"You're here!" Jiang Hai's expression remained utterly calm.

A woman in a white dress walked over, a touch of surprise now showing on her exquisite face.

"I never expected you to truly cultivate from half a rank of soul power to rank ten in three years. If I hadn't conducted your martial soul awakening myself, I would honestly suspect that your innate soul power wasn't really just half a rank."

Gaining ten ranks of soul power in three years, especially at the Soul Scholar stage, was not particularly fast. It was even rather ordinary-but only if one's innate soul power was not merely half a rank.

The strength of a Soul Master's innate soul power determined their talent.

With only half a rank of innate soul power, even becoming a Soul Master was uncertain.

Had a Soul Douluo like her not awakened Jiang Hai's martial soul, his half-rank of innate soul power might not even have been detected. There were plenty of people in the world with only half a rank of innate soul power, but unless they came from great families, they would all be deemed to have none.

Ordinary Soul Masters and soul tools simply could not detect half a rank of innate soul power.

Unfortunately, Jiang Hai's innate soul power was exactly half a rank, leaving him almost no possibility of becoming a powerful Soul Master.

Yet despite having only half a rank of innate soul power, Jiang Hai had cultivated to rank ten in three years. It was simply inconceivable.

Even Zhang Lexuan, a Soul Douluo who was herself an exceptional genius of Shrek Academy, had to admit that Jiang Hai was a truly peculiar person.

Three years earlier, during the incident involving Jiang's Father, Zhang Lexuan had been the leader of Shrek Academy's inner court group.

Afterward, Zhang Lexuan had also performed Jiang Hai's martial soul awakening ceremony and promised to help him obtain his first soul ring.

In a Soul Master's cultivation, a bottleneck appeared every ten ranks. They had to obtain a soul ring from a Soul Beast to break through.

Soul Beasts were powerful. A Soul Scholar without any soul skills was not necessarily much stronger than an ordinary person, and naturally could not hunt Soul Beasts alone to obtain a soul ring.

Zhang Lexuan recalled that graying man of fifty. Perhaps she had been moved by the weight of his fatherly love, or perhaps her heart simply could not bear it. Three years earlier, she had promised to obtain this boy's first soul ring.

"Heh!" Jiang Hai gave a self-mocking smile. "Compared with geniuses from Shrek Academy like you, I'm probably not even worth mentioning!"

Naturally, he knew who Zhang Lexuan was: the senior sister of Shrek Academy's inner court, who had reached the Soul Douluo realm above rank eighty while still in her twenties-a true darling of the heavens.