Upright and Kind

PS: The first ten chapters are a bit hard to stomach; feel free to skip them.

Three years passed in the blink of an eye. In the Papal Palace, a stunning woman sat beside a stone table in the garden, watching a boy of only three playing nearby. That boy was Qian Chongling.

The woman was not Qian Chongling's birth mother, but Luo Xue, the wife of his elder brother, Qian Chongguang. She was already forty.

Yet the years had left no trace on her face, and she looked as beautiful as a young woman in her twenties. As for Qian Chongling's mother, Zhou Yun, she had reached the end of her life two years earlier.

Strangely enough, although Qian Chongling was only three, he was exceptionally bright and picked everything up quickly. At three, he already understood things that most children only learned at seven or eight.

At that moment, he was having a wonderful time playing with several maids in the garden. Though his head was covered in sweat, he was still delighted. Watching him, Luo Xue called, "Little Ling, come here and rest for a while!"

Qian Chongling immediately ran over. "Sister-in-law, I'm not tired. I want to play a little longer!"

Luo Xue took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from Qian Chongling's face. "Rest for a bit before you go back to playing."

The night lay still as water. Silence filled the Papal Palace, where most people had gone to sleep. Only a few night guards continued walking to and fro.

Inside Qian Chongling's room.

He sat cross-legged on his bed, sank his breath into his dantian, closed his eyes in meditation, and regulated his breathing to gather energy, silently circulating the Qian Family Ancestral Meditation Method-the meditation method passed down by the Angel God.

His posture looked convincing enough, but his thoughts had long since drifted off to who knew where. Consequently, Qian Chongling did not feel even a wisp of soul power enter his body.

Qian Chongling's original name was Qian Ling. He had been an ordinary office worker on Blue Star, working nine to six, and usually enjoyed listening to a few tunes or reading webnovels.

Indeed, he initially had no idea where he had transmigrated. That changed one day when his sister-in-law took him shopping in Spirit City, and he heard an older woman shouting in the street.

"I've got a big steamed bun!"

Then a fragrant steamed bun appeared in her hand. Naturally, the sight felt rather familiar to Qian Ling, and he soon remembered why.

Back on Blue Star, he had read a novel called Douluo Continent. That novel seemed to have precisely this setting.

While he was working on Blue Star, a colleague surnamed Wang had recommended Douluo Continent to him. According to Old Wang, it was a novel brimming with positive values.

It told the story of a child born into poverty who learned and grew, met many like-minded friends, and gradually became an upright, kind, courteous gentleman who repaid the kindness he received.

Ultimately, he became a fair and impartial deity who governed order, uprooted the continent's most vicious and evil force-the very culprit responsible for his mother's death-and brought blessings to the continent.

Although the story sounded rather clichéd, a friend had recommended it, so naturally he gave it a look.

First, at the beginning, the protagonist secretly studied numerous inner-sect texts belonging to a hidden-weapon sect, was forced to jump off a cliff, and then transmigrated into another world.

Qian Ling froze when he read this. Taking without asking makes you a thief!

Wasn't that simply theft? Whether anyone eventually forgave you or not, stealing was still stealing. Nothing could change that act! How did a thief qualify as a gentleman?

With these questions in mind, Qian Ling kept reading. Soon, the protagonist, Third Brother, went off to school, and then came a shocking scene!

Because he came from a poor background, Third Brother and the village chief were both dressed rather shabbily. The gatekeepers looked down on them and mocked them! And so our upright, kind, courteous Third Brother, who always repaid kindness, prepared to kill those two gatekeepers!

One disagreement, and he wanted your life. Wasn't that something only a murderous fiend who killed without blinking would do?

Granted, the gatekeepers were wrong to look down on people, but surely their offense didn't warrant death? Teaching them a lesson would have been enough. After all, if you dressed like a beggar, who else were they supposed to stop?

After reading that scene, Qian Ling thought that perhaps the boy was simply young and would eventually find his way back from the wrong path, so he continued reading.

In the next scene, Douluo Continent's foremost king of all talk, Jade Mouth Cannon, made his entrance. With a torrent of smooth talk, he saved the gatekeepers and took the protagonist, Third Brother, under his wing.

After being fed that spiel, Third Brother accepted him as his master. Although his innate full soul power had come from cultivating the Mysterious Heaven Skill, perhaps he simply knew too little about this world, so Qian Ling did not dwell on it.

After taking Third Brother as his disciple, Jade Mouth Cannon found time to take him hunting soul beasts, intending to get him a soul ring! Thus, the two headed for the Soul Hunting Forest.

Although Jade Mouth Cannon was good at running his mouth, his actual fighting ability was an utter mess. A hundred-year soul beast in the Soul Hunting Forest beat him into agonized ecstasy, and in the end, Third Brother had to step in and finish it off.

What happened next shocked Qian Ling once again!

Third Brother had used a hidden weapon to kill the soul beast, but he feared Jade Mouth Cannon would discover his secret, so he considered killing him to silence him!

That was right. He wanted to kill Jade Mouth Cannon—the man Third Brother himself had only recently described with the words, "A teacher for a day is a father for life!"

Well, damn! Qian Ling could only exclaim at the scene. He's planning "patricide"! How on earth is this vicious child supposed to become an upright, kind, courteous gentleman who repays kindness?

Fortunately, Jade Mouth Cannon did not discover Third Brother's secret, so he escaped disaster!

Time rolled on, and Third Brother soon graduated from the junior academy. With Xiao Wu, the girl he had taken as his younger sister, he followed Jade Mouth Cannon's arrangements and went to a place called the Monster Academy for further study.

There, Third Brother met five more companions: Dai Mubai, Oscar, Ma Hongjun, Ning Rongrong, and Zhu Zhuqing! Together, they formed the little team known as the Shrek Seven Devils.

Once the later plot revealed these five youngsters' personalities and conduct, something of Qian Ling's had already dropped to the floor.

The eldest of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Dai Mubai, was known in Suotuo City as the Peerless Silver Tiger and the Time Management Expert.

His favorite daily pursuits were young models at clubs, drinking and debauchery, stirring up trouble, and strutting around with insufferable arrogance. He even fought Third Brother over a room. Still, he was a prince of the Star Luo Empire, so such hobbies were actually pretty normal.

The problem was that princes of the Star Luo Empire had to compete for succession to the throne. Failure meant either death or being crippled. Feeling he had no hope and his chances of winning were zero, our Peerless Silver Tiger abandoned his fiancée and ran off alone to become the Time Management Expert, leaving Zhu Zhuqing to suffer through deep waters and scorching fire in the Star Luo Empire. At the very least, he should have brought his fiancée along when he fled.

Putting all that together, the Peerless Silver Tiger certainly lived up to the "Silver Tiger" name: a paragon of scum and a model for every player.

The second of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Oscar, was known as the Perverted Uncle and the Sausage Specialist. He was one of only two relatively normal people among the seven. His flaw was that he was a little perverted, but that was understandable, wasn't it? After all, who wasn't a "gentleman"?

The third of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Third Brother, was the gentleman known for being "upright and kind," "courteous," "grateful for kindness," and "pure as ice and jade." Did that need any further explanation?

The fourth of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Ma Hongjun, was known as the Brothel Phoenix. He was the most disgusting of the seven, exceptionally vile and vulgar, drooling whenever he saw a woman who was even slightly pretty, with a deeply perverted heart.

The fifth of the Shrek Seven Monsters was Xiao Wu. Despite the "little" in her name, she was not little at all. She was a hundred-thousand-year soul beast from the Star Dou Great Forest, a Soft Bone Rabbit that had taken human form. She was not even human.

The sixth of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Ning Rongrong, was the little princess of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. She was unreasonable and overbearing, outrageously spoiled, and even more arrogant than Dai Mubai, wearing an expression that declared the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect supreme beneath heaven.

She was practically the textbook example of terminal princess syndrome. Still, there was nothing to be done about that. She really was a princess, so being spoiled to the heavens was only natural. Her personality simply did not endear her to people outside.

Still, having an illness was fine if you were willing to seek treatment. Later on, this Little Demoness became relatively normal.

The youngest of the Shrek Seven Monsters, Zhu Zhuqing, was the second young lady of the Zhu Family in the Star Luo Empire, and the last of them who met the standard for a normal person. All she sought was to stay alive.

She had a good disposition and unyielding tenacity. She could even endure everything the Peerless Silver Tiger did, though wasn't that also because she had no other choice?