"I'm going to burn him!!! I'm roasting him into beggar's chicken today, no matter what!!!"
On Back Mountain behind the Sea God Pavilion, inside a concealed barrier roughly three hundred meters from that "Niulai Village cabin."
Yan Shaozhe had just returned from smashing rocks and was now frantically clawing at his hair with both hands.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he resembled an active volcano ready to erupt at any moment.
"Yan Shaozhe, calm down! Take deep breaths!"
Beside him, Xuan Zi held Yan Shaozhe firmly by the shoulders, yet the corners of his mouth kept curling uncontrollably upward.
Yesterday, he had felt as though the sky had fallen. Today, looking at Yan Shaozhe's wretched state, so close to going berserk, Xuan Zi suddenly felt that this blind man's words were actually quite pleasant to hear.
"How am I supposed to calm down?!" Yan Shaozhe ground his teeth and lowered his voice. "Hypocrite! Scumbag! Pimping! Xuan Zi, listen to that! Is that anything a decent person would say? I've bent my back and exhausted myself for the academy, yet in his mouth, I've become some irredeemable piece of filth!"
Xuan Zi coughed and earnestly counseled him, "Yan Shaozhe, Teacher Su is, after all, a spectator from another world. He's only looking at us from the omniscient perspective of some novel. It's understandable that his language is a little crude. You need to learn to endure humiliation and shoulder heavy burdens, like me!"
"Endure humiliation and shoulder heavy burdens?" Yan Shaozhe laughed in anger and shot back sarcastically, "So because he hasn't called you an idiot or a cancer today, you can stand there talking as though your back doesn't ache, huh?"
Xuan Zi's old face reddened, and he awkwardly turned his head away.
Yan Shaozhe took several forceful, deep breaths, forcibly suppressing his soaring blood pressure as he hypnotized himself. "Fine! I'll endure it! As long as I don't go inside and just quietly listen for information outside, he can't get under my skin! Let's see what else this bastard can make up about me!"
Meanwhile, inside the cabin.
Mu En sat on a small folding stool, holding a battered little notebook he had found somewhere and furiously recording something in it with a charcoal pencil.
Over the past few days, this Level 99 Limit Douluo had practically become a knowledge-hungry elementary school student.
He had written down every novel term that popped out of Su Xian's mouth, stroke by stroke.
For example, "scapegoat" meant an honest man who shouldered someone else's romantic debts;
For example, "pimping" meant acting as a sleazy matchmaker;
And then there was "nuclear bomb"... When Mu En wrote down that it was a divine weapon capable of easily destroying a city of a million people, even his hand trembled slightly.
This is too absurd, Mu En thought with a bitter laugh.
The mighty Sea God Pavilion Master of Shrek was now like a clumsy actor, accompanying a blind man in this shabby cabin through an absurd comedy called "A Volunteer Teacher Came to the Mountains."
Still, for the sake of Shrek's ten-thousand-year foundation, all of this was worthwhile.
"Uncle Mu En, you're pretty diligent about taking notes. I can hear that charcoal pencil swishing across the paper." Su Xian sat cross-legged on the bed, drinking water to moisten his throat after teaching Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi a segment of basic physics.
"A good memory is no match for a worn-out pen. Though an old man like me doesn't really understand the science you teach, Teacher Su, there's no harm in writing it down," Mu En replied offhandedly.
And beside the bed, apart from the two "little left-behind children," Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi, there was another person today.
The inner court's senior sister, Zhang Lexuan.
Mu En had discovered that Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi were too young and inexperienced to ask probing questions touching on the continent's central situation, so he had simply dragged Zhang Lexuan out of secluded cultivation, had her change into coarse clothes, and made her play Bei Bei's older female cousin, "A-Xuan."
At first, Zhang Lexuan had been resistant and utterly baffled.
Only when Mu En solemnly told her that this blind man held the continent's future had she accepted this absurd assignment, her heart filled with shock.
During the break between lessons, Zhang Lexuan recalled the probing assignment Mu En had given her and asked in a deliberately lowered, rustic accent, "Teacher Su, when you were chatting with Party Secretary Mou Niu yesterday, you said that person named Huo Yuhao founded a great organization called the Spirit Pagoda."
"I don't really understand. Since Huo Yuhao belonged to Shrek, why didn't Shrek Academy keep such a powerful organization under its own control? Why did they let it become independent later, until it finally became a great cancer?"
This question was not merely something Zhang Lexuan wondered about. It was also something Yan Shaozhe outside and Mu En inside found profoundly baffling.
Logically, Shrek would never hand such a core source of power over to others.
"A-Xuan, you've hit the nail right on the head with that question!"
Su Xian slapped his thigh and sneered. "Why didn't Shrek take the lead? Because those old men in Shrek's upper ranks had heads filled with nothing but paste, compromise, and political balance!"
At those words, Mu En's charcoal pencil paused slightly in his hand, while Yan Shaozhe outside pricked up his ears.
"Huo Yuhao developed artificial soul spirits. That was a miracle capable of overturning the rules of Soul Master cultivation that had stood for tens of millions of years! Whoever controlled artificial soul spirits would have the lifeline of every Soul Master on the continent in their grip!"
Su Xian spoke fluently and confidently. "And what happened? For the sake of their so-called continental balance, to win over the Star Luo Empire and the Heaven Dou Empire, Shrek's leaders actually agreed to establish the Spirit Pagoda as an organization jointly managed by multiple parties! They took such essential technology and handed it out to share the benefits!"
"What do you call that? Handing a nation's greatest strategic weapon to someone else on a silver platter! Shrek spent every day perched high above everyone, proclaiming itself the continent's overseer, absolutely neutral. Yet when faced with a historic opportunity that could truly control the continent's direction, they backed down and played their ridiculous games of political checks and balances!"
"It was precisely those old fossils' early shortsightedness and compromises that allowed the Spirit Pagoda to rapidly slip free of Shrek's control once Huo Yuhao ascended. It grew unchecked until the tail became too big to wag, and it turned around and bit the entire continent!"
Listening to Su Xian's analysis, which struck blood with every needle, Zhang Lexuan and Mu En both felt their scalps tingle.
Because... the approach Su Xian described, "compromising for neutrality and surrendering benefits for balance," truly was the Sea God Pavilion's consistent way of doing things over the past ten thousand years!
If he had not heard these words today, if Huo Yuhao really did establish the Spirit Pagoda, Mu En searched his conscience and knew he would most likely make the same decision-joint management by multiple parties.
Thinking of the corruption and backlash ten thousand years later, Mu En felt a chill run down his back.
"Of course, you can't blame this entirely on those old fossils in the Sea God Pavilion with one foot in the grave."
As Su Xian continued, he picked up his water bowl, took a sip, and smacked his lips out of habit. "The main problem was that the middle-ranking core members were too useless! When the leaders made their decision, there wasn't even anyone beneath them who dared argue their case."
"For example, that Martial Soul Department dean, Yan Shaozhe."
Outside.
Leaning against a tree trunk and eavesdropping, Yan Shaozhe felt his heart violently spasm when he heard his name.
What the fuck?! Why is it me again?!
I've fucking hidden all the way out here at the edge of the barrier, three hundred meters from the door! Why can you still drag me out and flog my corpse?!
Su Xian had no idea that the Super Douluo outside was close to falling apart and continued his furious barrage. "As the head of the Martial Soul Department and a leading candidate to become the next Sea God Pavilion Master, this guy couldn't even show a little backbone over something like the Spirit Pagoda, a matter that would determine ten thousand years of national fortune!"
"Whenever he fought the Soul Tool Department over funding, he guarded his food as viciously as a rabid stray dog! But when it came to actually fighting for a voice on the continental stage, he went limp! All he fucking knew how to do was trail after the Pavilion Master, babbling away, not even daring to let out a fart!"
"If you ask me, that useless scumbag Yan Shaozhe, warming his seat and drawing his pay, deserves at least thirty percent of the blame for the Spirit Pagoda eventually going out of control! Apart from chasing women and playing office politics, when it came to major questions of right and wrong, he was a textbook opportunist."
"If I were Huo Yuhao, on the very first day the Spirit Pagoda was founded, I'd sacrifice that old lecher Yan Shaozhe to consecrate the banner!"
Outside the cabin.
A suffocating, deathly silence.
In that instant, Yan Shaozhe's eyes became bloodshot, turning a terrifying red.
Every bone in his body creaked, and the Bright Phoenix's ultimate flames evaporated the raindrops landing on his head into nothingness.
Motherfucker!!! I haven't even been through this Spirit Pagoda business yet!
How has the blame for some future affair that hasn't even had its first stroke written already been clamped firmly onto my head?!
Fighting over funding like a stray dog?! Trailing after the Pavilion Master, babbling away?! And sacrificing me to consecrate the banner?!
Yan Shaozhe!! Even breathing is a crime for you!!! This was the only grief-stricken, indignant cry left in Yan Shaozhe's mind.
"Yan Shaozhe! Steady your mind! Don't act rashly!"
Seeing that Yan Shaozhe was about to explode on the spot and charge inside to perish together with Su Xian, Xuan Zi reacted swiftly. He lunged forward, locked both arms around Yan Shaozhe's waist from behind, and even unleashed the full force of his Level 98 Soul Power to suppress him.
"Xuan Zi, let go of me! I'm going in there today to ask him exactly what I ever did to offend him!!!" Yan Shaozhe growled, wanting to cry but finding no tears, as he struggled desperately in the mud.
Meanwhile, inside the cabin.
The three Shrek prodigies, Zhang Lexuan, Bei Bei, and Xu Sanshi, all had their heads lowered, biting their lips and pinching their thighs with both hands.
Their shoulders shook violently from suppressing their laughter, and their faces were nearly purple.
In Teacher Su's mouth, the mighty dean of the Martial Soul Department was not even as good as the village mutt at the entrance, barking wildly over a bone!
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