Zhang Lexuan's transformation

Over the past few days, the teachers of Shrek Academy's Inner Court had discovered something terrifyingly strange.

Yan Shaozhe, the usually suave and debonair dean of the Martial Soul Department, had become a powder keg that could explode at any moment.

Wherever he went, he stared through bloodshot eyes, his face livid as he scanned every Inner Court disciple and teacher.

That frightening gaze made it seem as though everyone he looked at was an enemy who had pointed at his nose and called him "useless mud."

No one knew who had enraged this Super Douluo so badly that his anger still lingered.

Sometimes, over the slightest oversight in teaching duties, Yan Shaozhe would give the teacher in charge a tongue-lashing that left them drenched in abuse.

Now, when the Martial Soul Department's teachers went to report on their work, they practically wished they could walk on tiptoe, their voices lowered to a whisper for fear of getting on the dean's bad side.

"What's going on? Dean Yan has been furious for days. The day before yesterday, it was a bald patch in the grass at the Inner Court assessment grounds. Today, it was a typo in the Outer Court's advancement roster. Did he really have to get that angry?"

Outside the Martial Soul Department's Academic Affairs Office, several teachers wiped away cold sweat, still shaken as they whispered among themselves.

"Shh! What do you know? I heard he ran into some tough opposition while wiping out Evil Soul Masters in the Ming Dou Mountain Range."

"That can't be right. I heard from an Inner Court disciple on enforcement duty that the dean went to the Ming Dou Mountain Range and evaporated an entire mountaintop, along with the Evil Soul Masters inside, with a single Phoenix Cloud-Piercing Strike. It couldn't have gone more smoothly. How could he have suffered a setback?"

"Then that's strange. Surely the pavilion master didn't scold him? The dean is the pavilion master's most cherished direct disciple."

They exchanged bewildered looks, unable to make sense of it no matter how hard they thought.

Meanwhile, inside the dean's office.

Bang!

Yan Shaozhe slammed his palm onto the broad desk made of ten-thousand-year-old purple sandalwood, making the teacups rattle.

"How could you put the decimal point one place off in this month's budget?! What does your Academic Affairs Office even do?! If you can't even get the numbers right, all of you can get out and guard the Outer Court gates!"

Yan Shaozhe roared at the trembling finance supervisor before him.

"That's enough, Shaozhe. It's hardly a big deal. Just have him take it back and revise it. Why get so angry?"

A gentle voice came from outside the door.

A graceful, beautiful woman walked into the office and waved a hand, signaling the finance supervisor, who looked as though he had been granted a pardon, to leave quickly.

The newcomer was none other than the Martial Soul Department's vice dean and Yan Shaozhe's current wife-Cai Mei'er.

Only after the office door closed did Cai Mei'er walk behind Yan Shaozhe and gently knead his tense shoulders, her face full of worry and confusion. "Shaozhe, what on earth has been wrong with you these past few days? No matter how rampant the Evil Soul Masters in the Ming Dou Mountain Range were, they shouldn't have left you this agitated. Did something go wrong with your cultivation? Can you no longer suppress your evil fire?"

"Stop asking!"

Yan Shaozhe brushed Cai Mei'er's hands away, slumped into his chair, and covered his face with both hands in anguish.

Something wrong with his cultivation?

If only that were the case!

These past few days, whenever he closed his eyes, his mind filled with that blind young man's curse-like words: "a puddle of rotten mud that won't stick to a wall," "a loafer who's never accomplished anything," and "a scheming, opportunistic scumbag."

Worse still, all of it had been said in front of his wife's former romantic rival, Xian Lin'er, and Xian Lin'er's current husband, Qian Duoduo!

Where was he, a dignified Super Douluo, supposed to put his face?!

"Mei'er, stop asking!" Yan Shaozhe's face was livid as he forced the words through gritted teeth. "If... if you must ask, I, Yan Shaozhe, am a puddle of rotten mud. I won't stick to a wall!"

"Huh?"

Cai Mei'er was utterly bewildered.

The dignified dean of the Martial Soul Department, Shrek's future successor, was actually calling himself rotten mud that wouldn't stick to a wall?

What kind of earth-shattering shock had he suffered?!

It wasn't only Yan Shaozhe in the Inner Court whose demeanor had abruptly changed. At that moment, equally jaw-dropping oddities were taking place in the Outer Court.

The Shrek Outer Court's Soul Fighting Zone.

The Outer Court disciples in the surrounding stands were utterly silent, all staring at the two people in the center of the arena as though they had seen ghosts.

Bei Bei and Xu Sanshi, the Outer Court's Twin Stars, were facing off again today.

"Turtle Xu, take my Thunderous Might!" Bei Bei shouted. His right arm underwent Dragon Transformation, and violent blue lightning surged out.

Facing this thunderous blow, Xu Sanshi did not roar and raise his Xuanming Turtle Shell Shield to take it head-on as he usually did.

Instead, Xu Sanshi muttered like someone possessed, "Forces act mutually... tangential contact area determines pressure... transmission path of reaction force..."

Bang!

Bei Bei's lightning dragon claw slammed hard into the Xuanming Turtle Shell Shield.

But Xu Sanshi did not retreat even half a step. Instead, he tilted his shield slightly at a bizarre angle that defied human biomechanics and flicked his wrist.

"Physics-Based Force Dissipation: Xuanming Shock!"

Bei Bei felt an overwhelming force, entirely generated by his own strike, rebound along the shield toward him, and that force had been focused onto a single point.

"Holy shit!"

Bei Bei cried out, staggered more than a dozen steps back by his own reaction force, his right hand tingling with numbness.

"Hahaha! Bei Bei, did you see that?! This is Scientific Defense! Forces act mutually. However hard you hit me, that's how strong your own reaction force will be!" Xu Sanshi held up his shield, looking immensely pleased, as though he had pushed open the door to a new world.

Bei Bei shook his numb arm. Rather than getting angry, his eyes shone with a thirst for knowledge.

"So that's it... Energy can neither arise from nothing nor disappear. The instant the electrical heat energy from my strike touched your shield, you converted it into kinetic energy through a physical angle and bounced it back!"

Bei Bei took a deep breath. "If it's energy conversion, then what if I compress it at high frequency before the lightning makes contact, changing the peak energy density..."

The Outer Court disciples below the arena were all dumbstruck.

"What incantations are those two chanting?"

"What force? What energy conversion? What kind of soul skill incantation is that?"

"They've gone mad. Definitely mad! I heard Dean Yan took them to the back mountain for special training a few days ago. Did they run into something evil back there?"

Ever since these two Outer Court stars had attended a lesson in "basic physics" from that blind village teacher, they had strayed farther and farther down the great road of science, to the point of utter obsession.

Meanwhile, within the Sea God Pavilion, another undercurrent concerning Shrek's institutional structure was quietly stirring.

Today was a rare sunny day, except on the back mountain, and several elders staying at the Sea God Pavilion had gathered to enjoy tea in the tearoom on its second floor.

Among them were the highly senior Elder Song and Elder Zhuang.

Elder Song set down her teacup and looked toward Zhang Lexuan, the Inner Court's senior sister, who was replenishing their tea nearby.

"Lexuan, how has your recent secluded cultivation been progressing? Has your soul power improved?" Elder Song asked kindly.

Normally, upon hearing such a question, Zhang Lexuan would respectfully report her soul power level and insights into cultivation.

But today, this senior sister, regarded as the Sea God Pavilion's most perfect successor, paused slightly with the purple clay teapot in her hand.

The blind young man's words echoed in her mind:

"Shrek is rotten at the roots!"

"The supremacy of martial souls they've upheld for ten thousand years is nothing but self-castration!"

"When faced with a major event that determines ten thousand years of national fortune, they actually retreat and compromise, playing at some ridiculous political balancing act!"

"No performance appraisals, just monopolies maintained through master-disciple relationships. They're doomed sooner or later!"

Zhang Lexuan set down the teapot. The blind obedience of the past was gone from her eyes, replaced by clarity.

"Elder Song, Elder Zhuang! My soul power has improved slightly, but... there is something I don't understand, and I would like to ask you both for guidance."

"Oh? What is it? Go ahead." Elder Song smiled and stroked her beard.

Zhang Lexuan looked straight into Elder Song's eyes, her voice firm. "Do you believe it is truly right for our Martial Soul Department to keep suppressing the Soul Tool Department through its monopoly on resources, following these ancestral laws that keep us shut inside our own old ways? If we face the Sun Moon Empire's fully organized Ninth-Level Linked Soul Engineer Legion on a battlefield in the future, can our handful of Titled Douluos truly protect Shrek and the continent's common people?"

The moment she spoke, the atmosphere in the tearoom dropped to freezing point.

Elder Zhuang froze.

The smile on Elder Song's face stiffened, then turned stern.

"Insolence!"

Elder Song slapped the table, sending tea splashing everywhere. "Lexuan! You are the designated successor to the Sea God Pavilion, the disciple Mu En values most! How could you utter such treasonous words, bolstering others' ambition while destroying our own prestige?!"

"Martial soul orthodoxy is the foundation of Shrek's ten-thousand-year legacy! It is the supreme glory left behind by our ancestor, the Sea God! Soul tools are merely external objects, ingenious but frivolous contrivances. How can they compare to the strength of one's own abilities?!"

Had Zhang Lexuan faced Elder Song's thunderous wrath in the past, she would long since have knelt in fear to admit her fault.

But the Zhang Lexuan of today simply stood there quietly.

Looking at this stubborn elder before her, she felt not fear, but profound sorrow.

Teacher Su was right.

These old fossils had nothing in their heads but paste and ancestral laws. There was no waking them.

"Please calm your anger, Elder Song. I spoke recklessly and have not cultivated enough. I will return and face the wall to reflect on my mistakes."

Zhang Lexuan did not argue. She simply lowered her head obediently and admitted her fault, then turned and left the tearoom.

That night, the sky was dark and the wind high.

Avoiding everyone, Zhang Lexuan went alone to Mu En's residence on the Sea God Pavilion's top floor.

Pushing open the door, she found that this level ninety-nine Limit Douluo was not meditating. Instead, with a soul guidance lamp raised, he was pondering something in that battered notebook, muttering, "KPI... performance... tying the interests of those at the bottom to the promotions of those at the top..."

"Pavilion Master," Zhang Lexuan called softly.

Mu En raised his head. As he looked at this female disciple whose bearing seemed to have transformed overnight, a trace of gratification flashed through his eyes.

"A-Xuan, how have Teacher Su's science and history lessons been?" Mu En set down his pen and asked with a broad smile.

Zhang Lexuan strode up to Mu En. "Pavilion Master, Teacher Su is right! Shrek's system must change! If we remain trapped in our old ways like Elder Song and the others, sooner or later Shrek will be crushed beneath the wheels of the age!"

Mu En sighed and helped Zhang Lexuan up. "How could I not know that? But accumulated problems are hard to reverse. Tug a single hair, and the entire body moves! If I force through reforms, it will inevitably cause turmoil in the Inner Court. Yan Shaozhe is far too conservative, and most of the other elders are stubbornly set in their views."

"Pavilion Master, it is inconvenient for you to step forward and break the ancestral laws yourself, but... Teacher Su can!"

Lowering her voice, Zhang Lexuan proposed a bold plan to "kill with a borrowed knife." "I want to keep being A-Xuan in the Mountains. I'll disguise Shrek's most central institutional contradictions and tangled interests as plot holes in a novel and ask Teacher Su about them!"

"Teacher Su's vision and wisdom are thousands upon thousands of years ahead of our Douluo Continent. As long as he can provide a way out through those broad analyses, and use the opportunity to scold those stubborn elders awake..."

Zhang Lexuan took a deep breath, her voice ringing with conviction. "I, Zhang Lexuan, am willing to be the first to wield the blade of Shrek's reform!"

Mu En looked at Zhang Lexuan in silence.

After a long while, a brilliant smile blossomed across the face of this old man nearing the grave.

"Good, good, good!" Mu En said "good" three times in succession. "Shrek's future belongs to you young people, after all! Go ahead and do it. Even if the sky falls, I'll bear it for you!"

Early the next morning.

In the Shrek Inner Court, Cai Mei'er walked along the path to the Martial Soul Department's office building, weighed down with worry.

Her husband Yan Shaozhe's irritable, self-abasing mood over the past few days had left her utterly baffled.

She decided to visit the Sea God Pavilion again today and ask the pavilion master for a clear answer.

She was only halfway there when a hand suddenly reached out from the grove beside her and dragged her inside.

"Who?!" Cai Mei'er paled in shock and was about to release her martial soul, only to discover that the person pulling her was Zhang Lexuan, the Inner Court's senior sister.

Even more absurdly, Zhang Lexuan was wearing coarse hemp clothes covered in patches, with a little ash smeared on her face.

"Lexuan? What are you doing? Experiencing commoners' lives?" Cai Mei'er was utterly bewildered.

Without wasting words, Zhang Lexuan took an even shabbier floral-print cloth dress from her Storage Soul Tool and forcibly stuffed it into Cai Mei'er's arms.

"Dean Cai, there's no time to explain! Hurry, take off that gorgeous silk dress and change into these rags."

"Have you gone mad?! I'm the dignified vice dean of the Martial Soul Department! What propriety would there be in wearing clothes like these?!" Cai Mei'er's eyes widened as she resisted desperately.

"Dean Cai, don't you want to know why Dean Yan has seemed out of his mind these past few days, calling himself rotten mud every day?" Zhang Lexuan smiled faintly, with a slyness she herself did not notice.

"Put it on, suppress your soul power, and come with me to the back mountain. I'll take you to hear... the unknown historical truth about Dean Yan."