On the streets of Northwind Town, Dai Youheng stood still as the crowd flowed naturally around him like water, utterly oblivious to his presence.
The merchant's angry curses seemed to linger in the air, making the strangeness of being ignored all the more apparent.
After a brief silence, the Snow Empress asked from within his mind, her voice thick with curiosity, "Youheng, was your presence this faint in your original world, too?"
She could hardly imagine that a boy with such a bizarre martial soul and such a composed temperament could have been a completely overlooked shadow in another world.
"No, of course not." Dai Youheng immediately denied it, his tone calm but certain. "In my original world, I wasn't someone who shone with dazzling brilliance or drew every eye, but I was an ordinary member of the teeming masses. I talked to people, my friends remembered me, and people didn't completely ignore me when I walked down the street. It was nothing like this."
He looked at the passersby who showed no reaction to him whatsoever. "It's as though I'm a transparent ghost."
"That's strange, then." The Snow Empress's voice grew thoughtful. "A person's presence is an innate quality of their soul. Even crossing into another world shouldn't cause such an earth-shattering change at the level of the rules themselves, unless..."
"Unless there's another 'me' in this world," Dai Youheng finished, a gleam of insight flashing in his eyes. "My presence hasn't disappeared. It's all been concentrated in someone else. He and I share the same source of 'existence.' As one rises, the other falls. So his presence might be unusually strong, while mine is practically nonexistent. In some theories I've read, this might be called a heteromorphic counterpart."
"Heteromorphic counterpart." The Snow Empress mulled over the unfamiliar yet precise term. "Different forms, yet essentially one person, occupying the same existential standing and sharing existence and fortune. That does sound like your current situation. But is the other you also a soul from another world? If this world already has an otherworldly visitor, what purpose did that monstrous hand behind the Heavenly Rift have in sending you here? Could it really have been to make you two heteromorphic counterparts kill each other?"
A cruel possibility occurred to the Snow Empress.
As she understood it, a state in which everything was shared was extremely unstable, and the two parties often could not coexist for long.
In the end, it was highly likely that only one could survive, devouring the other to become a complete existence.
"Kill each other?" A cold, sardonic smile curled Dai Youheng's lips. "Heh, that might really be it. Perhaps whoever sent me here thought the 'me' who arrived first was too useless, wasting his talent and martial soul as a transmigrator, so they tossed me over here to replace him."
His tone held an almost cruel indifference, as though he were discussing a tool that had nothing to do with him.
"What do you plan to do next, then?" the Snow Empress asked curiously. She found that this newly reborn Dai Youheng thought and acted in ways utterly unlike any living being she knew.
Dai Youheng did not answer immediately. He closed his eyes, seemingly sensing something in silence. A faint yet unmistakably clear pull came from the distant south, like a resonance deep within his blood.
"He's... in that direction." Dai Youheng opened his eyes and looked toward the Star Luo Empire, his gaze deep. "But there's no hurry. It's rare to have such a faint presence. Wouldn't it be a waste of this heaven-sent convenience if I didn't put it to good use?"
And so, over the next few days, a series of bizarre yet unnoticed thefts took place in Northwind Town.
A wealthy merchant in town had just withdrawn a thick stack of Gold Soul Coin notes from the bank and tucked them into his clothes. Humming as he walked home, he merely bent down to tie his shoelaces. When he reached inside his clothes again, the notes had vanished without a trace, as though they had never existed.
The jewelry shop's proprietress had spent the day showing off the jade bracelet her husband had just bought her. That night, when she went to take it off and put it away, she discovered that her wrist was bare. No matter how hard she tried, she could not remember when or where she had lost it.
Several local thugs had just finished collecting "protection money" and gathered to smugly count the Copper Soul Coins and Silver Soul Coins in their purses. A gust of wind swept past, and the purses in their hands vanished simultaneously. Terrified that they had encountered a ghost, they scrambled away, stumbling and crawling.
In contrast to these wealthy people's losses, the poor families struggling to keep themselves fed and clothed in the shantytown at the western end of town kept encountering good fortune, as though meat pies were falling from the sky.
A bedridden old man woke one morning to find a small pouch of Silver Soul Coins beside his pillow, just enough to hire a physician and buy medicine.
A little girl who had lost both parents and was raising her younger brother and sister alone discovered several gleaming Gold Soul Coins at the bottom of the rice jar just as it ran empty, left there by some unknown person.
Even the cheap porridge shop by the town entrance, which was on the verge of closing down, opened one morning to find a large anonymous sack on its doorstep, filled with enough grain to last half a month.
All of Northwind Town was enveloped in rumors of "ghostly tricks," or perhaps a "chivalrous thief." Yet no matter how furiously the wealthy investigated or how quietly the poor gave thanks, no one could find the mysterious "shadowless master thief."
For no one had noticed that a boy whose presence was nearly nonexistent had calmly walked past them and accomplished it all.
In truth, Dai Youheng was no great philanthropist overflowing with compassion for the suffering of the world. His motives for "robbing the rich to help the poor" were rather complicated.
Part of it satisfied a childish yearning and vanity he had felt toward the image of the "chivalrous thief" while reading novels in his previous life. The other part was more like a casual handout bestowed from on high.
He seemed to enjoy the thrill of secretly controlling other people's fates without anyone knowing, which suited the Heavenly Demon-like wickedness within his martial soul.
Perhaps these were precisely the two sides of Dai Youheng's character: on one side, a cold, selfish "evil" that would stop at nothing to achieve its goals; on the other, a "false benevolence" laced with vanity and a desire to toy with others.
A few days later, Dai Youheng left Northwind Town and followed the direction of that pull toward the heartland of the Star Luo Empire. Along the way, he continued exploiting his faint presence, crossing prefectures and provinces as though walking through uninhabited territory, conveniently "raising" a considerable amount of money.
By the time they had traveled a thousand miles and entered a bustling city, Dai Youheng took stock of his gains. The cash and various Gold Soul Coin cards alone amounted to nearly a million Gold Soul Coins! And that did not include the wealth already inside the storage ring he had obtained from the Level 9 Soul Engineer.
He found a large bank and verified the special Gold Soul Coin card from the Sun Moon Empire. When he sensed its staggering balance, even he was slightly moved.
"Nine million. That fellow really was rolling in
money," Dai Youheng murmured. A Level 9 Soul Engineer's savings were truly no small matter.
The Snow Empress could not help asking again from within his mind, "Youheng, you already have such an enormous sum, more than an ordinary Soul Master could earn in several lifetimes. Why do you keep doing those things?"
She was referring to how Dai Youheng still casually "robbed the rich to help the poor" along the way.
"No one complains about having too much money." Dai Youheng's answer was simple and direct. "In this world, money can be exchanged for all kinds of resources, soul bones, soul tools. And the reason money is valuable is that, as long as you have enough of it, you can turn it into strength."
He recalled the treasures with astronomical prices that had appeared in the original story: the Golden Earth Dragon Soul Bone, the Spirit Devouring Fierce Blade, all manner of Level 8 and Level 9 soul tools, and even the Snow Empress Embryo that should originally have been auctioned off... Every one of them had a listed price, and those prices were enough to leave anyone speechless.
If he wanted to grow stronger quickly, simply burying himself in cultivation was nowhere near enough. He needed resources-vast quantities of resources! And money was the most direct key to obtaining them.
During this time, under the Snow Empress's guidance, he had already begun cultivating this body's soul power anew. His demon core martial soul matched his soul perfectly, and with the nourishment provided by the Seven Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring, his cultivation speed far surpassed that of ordinary people,
advancing a thousand miles in a single day. Even so, by normal means, reaching the Titled Douluo Realm without twenty or thirty years of painstaking effort was nothing but a fool's dream.
Yet look at Tang San, Huo Yuhao, and the others in the original story. Hadn't every one of them become a Titled Douluo in his twenties?
Their talent was certainly important, but even more important were those endless, envy-inducing "fortuitous opportunities." Huo Yuhao in particular was, to put it bluntly, using "cheats" in every conceivable form.
Dai Youheng's gaze sharpened. Thus, he too needed those opportunities to give himself cheats. And he would use every means at his disposal to obtain them.
His gaze turned south once more, toward the location of that heteromorphic counterpart. Devouring the other party and making himself whole might itself be one of the greatest opportunities, one he absolutely could not afford to miss.
His journey was destined to be anything but peaceful. His faint presence was his finest disguise, while the Fate-Reversing Heavenly Demon Pill and his cold heart, willing to stop at nothing to achieve his goals, would be his sharpest weapons.
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