A world where birth mattered more than effort

A year later, Holy Soul Village.

Holy Soul Village was one of the countless unremarkable little villages on the Douluo Continent. It could not compare with the neighboring Douluo Village at all.

Even though a god had emerged from this village in the original timeline, it had remained as unremarkable as ever. Apart from being renamed God Soul Village and receiving a few extra places for work-study students, nothing had changed.

The annual martial soul awakening day had arrived in Holy Soul Village once again. Qian Chongling watched quietly from a distant hill. Despite the distance, his strength allowed him to see everything as clearly as if it were right before his eyes.

Fortunately-and unfortunately-a child with rank-one innate soul power appeared at this awakening.

Fortunately, even with only rank-one innate soul power, he could still cultivate and become a Soul Master, changing the course of his life outright.

Unfortunately, just because the Goddess of Luck had sided with Holy Soul Village this time did not mean she would do so again.

Because this was a world where birth mattered more than effort!

In this world, being born into the right family was an art. If you drew a better lot, such as being born into a family belonging to a major sect, you were basically set for life!

Even Yu Dashi, whose martial soul mutation had left him practically ruined, could not serve as a counterexample to the benefits of a good birth.

The reason Yu Dashi was considered trash was that he had been born into far too good a family. After all, he was the son of the patriarch of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, one of the Upper Three Sects!

So many people had placed their hopes in him, wishing he would lead the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan to greater heights. Even when his uncle Yu Luomian called him trash, it was only because his lifelong inability to break through to rank thirty had disappointed them too deeply.

But from another perspective, in the eyes of commoners, becoming a rank-twenty-nine Soul Master was enough to bring glory to one's ancestors!

Yu Dashi was someone they could only gaze up at, never reach. After all, only a minority of people in this world could become Soul Masters. Otherwise, it would not have been the most prestigious profession.

That fact alone put Yu Dashi above the vast majority of people in this world.

If you had not been born into a good family, all you could do was hope for the other chance Spirit Hall offered you-your only chance.

That was the martial soul awakening at age six. The strength of your martial soul, the amount of your soul power, or whether you had any at all would determine whether you stood above others, remained an ordinary person, or lived worse than a husky kept by one of those elites.

Even if your parents had weeds for martial souls, you could still hope for a martial soul mutation. Someone like Oscar, whose ancestors must have saved the world, had been granted a food-system martial soul with innate full soul power. Even if you came from a great family, your martial soul could still mutate into a trash martial soul. There was no need to say more about Grandmaster Yu, who had fallen from the elite to the ordinary.

"There are no trash martial souls, only trash Soul Masters." To Qian Chongling, that theory was simply laughable. Without his cheat, without being reincarnated into the Qian Family and inheriting the Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul, he knew in his heart that he could never have reached the Titled Douluo realm. Even becoming a Soul Douluo would have been questionable.

Qian Chongling had no idea why Yu Dashi in the original timeline had proposed such a ridiculous theory.

Wasn't that theory saying that his inability to break through to rank thirty was not because Luo Sanpao was inadequate, but because Yu Dashi himself was trash?

So, in this world where bloodline determined practically everything, when you could not choose your birth, the only other chance you could hope for came from Spirit Hall: a free martial soul awakening, a chance to become a Soul Master and escape exploitation by the nobles.

The Heaven Dou Empire and the Star Luo Empire did not awaken commoners' martial souls for free, not because they placed too little importance on Soul Masters, but because they placed too much-so much that they feared them.

The imperial families and the imperial nobility shared the same interests. They satisfied their own needs by squeezing the commoners dry. After all, expecting nobles to toil, trade, or work was simply unrealistic.

Soul Masters possessed the strength to resist. They were not people the imperial families and nobles could bully at will. Thus, if too many Soul Masters emerged among the commoners, they would inevitably shake the very foundations of their rule.

Precisely because of this, Spirit Hall, which awakened commoners' martial souls for free, had become a sacred land in the hearts of Soul Masters. Sixty percent of the continent's Soul Masters were under Spirit Hall's control, and ninety percent of those had come from commoner backgrounds-in other words, they were low-level Soul Masters.

Spirit Hall, the greatest villainous faction in the original timeline, was also the Spirit Hall that represented the interests of Soul Masters.

Although quite a few of Spirit Hall's branch masters oppressed the people and even wallowed in the same filth as the nobles, honestly, adults did not see the world in black and white. They saw a world where the two mingled.

No powerful faction could possibly be as spotless as it appeared on the surface. Were the so-called Upper Three Sects truly pure and flawless? Had the Clear Sky Sect never once bullied a commoner? The two great empires hardly needed mentioning!

Even a morally gray Spirit Hall had still given commoners a chance, whether that gesture had been intentional or not.

In the original timeline, Third Brother, together with the Upper Three Sects and the forces of the two great empires, had destroyed Spirit Hall, destroying the commoners' only hope.

Without Spirit Hall to awaken their martial souls for free, commoners who wanted an awakening could only pay nobles to perform it.

If they could not become Soul Masters, that money was wasted, piling snow atop the frost of their already straitened lives.

If they could become Soul Masters, would the nobles let them rise up and escape exploitation?

Naturally not. The only outcome was to put their lives on the line for the nobles! To keep being squeezed dry until death!

The Tang Sect? Wake up and stop dreaming. An organization that sold hidden weapons while looking so righteous and upright could, at most, donate a little money and build a school.

If everyone across the continent lived in harmony, leaving their doors unbarred at night and never pocketing anything lost on the roads, who would buy the hidden weapons it manufactured? Was the entire Tang Sect supposed to live on the northwest wind?

Just like an arms dealer, would it choose to rake in war profits, or hope for world peace and then starve to death?

Suddenly, Qian Chongling remembered what Third Brother, that kind and upright God of Order, would do in the original timeline. Especially when he thought of the destruction of Spirit Hall, the fruit of his painstaking efforts, his desire to slaughter Third Brother grew even stronger. He murmured to himself:

"Third Brother, the Douluo Continent may lack other things, but it certainly has plenty of train tickets to hell. And they're one-way tickets, too."

"Old sir, there you are."

Suddenly, Feng Yuhan's gentle voice rang out. Dressed in coarse hemp clothing, she supported her waist with one hand as she climbed the little hill with some difficulty, her belly looking four or five months along, and called to Qian Chongling at the summit.

On the journey to Holy Soul Village, the three had traveled together for over half a month and gradually become familiar with one another. Feng Yuhan and Xiao Huo had slowly set aside their fear of a Titled Douluo, though their respect had never faded.

After arriving in Holy Soul Village, Qian Chongling had also built a little cottage next door to their home with Feng Yuhan and Xiao Huo's help, becoming Old Qian Next Door.

Over the past year, Feng Yuhan and her husband had naturally invited Qian Chongling over for meals from time to time. Though the fare was simple, Qian Chongling had never found it hard to swallow, which also showed that Feng Yuhan was a good cook.

Of course, most importantly, the child in Feng Yuhan's belly was not his, Qian Chongling's. It was the fruit of Xiao Huo's diligent plowing. Old Qian Next Door was not Old Wang Next Door.

"Little Feng, not to nag you, but why aren't you resting properly when you're pregnant? Instead, you're running all over the place. That Xiao Huo really deserves a beating. He doesn't know how to cherish his wife at all," Qian Chongling said with a chuckle when he saw Feng Yuhan arrive.

Feng Yuhan smiled sweetly as well. "You do love to joke, old sir. I'm a Soul Master, you know. I'm not that delicate."

"Even Soul Masters need to take care," Qian Chongling said with a smile.

"All right, all right. Oh, by the way, old sir, those two twenty-thousand-year Soft Bone Rabbits you hunted a few days ago have been stewed until they're nice and tender today." After chatting with Qian Chongling for a while, Feng Yuhan remembered that she had come to call him over for a meal.

"Really? Then let's go. It's been ages since I last ate a soul beast over ten thousand years old."

The moment he heard that the rabbit meat was tender, Qian Chongling strode off as though the wind blew beneath his feet. Feng Yuhan merely smiled without a word. After spending this time together, they all knew that the old man cared for little else; eating was what he loved.

Whether it swam in the sea, flew in the sky, or climbed trees, the older it was, the more he liked eating it.

In the old man's words, soul beasts were no different from wild beasts: they were meant to be eaten. The only difference was that soul beasts came with a soul ring, and sometimes a soul bone as well.

Leaving everything else aside, she still had a ten-thousand-year Black Water Snake and a twelve-thousand-year Variegated Black Tiger at home, just waiting to be made into Dragon-Tiger Struggle.