Shrek's Biggest Cancer

At the end of the Sea God Pavilion's corridor, Mu En raised a hand and used his Soul Power to lay down a tightly sealed Soundproof Barrier.

Inside the barrier, Yan Shaozhe and Xuan Zi both looked grim.

"Teacher, just where did this kid come from? Douluo Continent... is a book? This is absurd!" Yan Shaozhe's brows knitted tightly.

Mu En's clouded eyes flickered as he lowered his voice. "Absurd? Yet judging by what he said, that country he mentioned treats our world as some sort of storybook for people's amusement."

Xuan Zi gulped down a mouthful of wine and raked his hair into a mess in irritation. "Who cares whether it's a storybook? Just search his soul! Look straight through his memories. Why bother pretending to be some village chief?"

"Nonsense!"

Mu En rebuked him in a low voice, planting his cane heavily on the floor. "What if that book carries Ancestor Tang San's divine consciousness? What if he has a restriction from the Divine Realm on him? One soul search from you could destroy Shrek's ten-thousand-year legacy in an instant! Since he now thinks we're in the mountains, follow his lead and draw him out. Make him reveal the future himself!"

Xuan Zi shrank back under the scolding, not daring to make a sound.

Inside the room, Su Xian started calling out again.

Mu En withdrew the barrier, took a breath, adjusted his hunched posture, and pushed the door open.

Yan Shaozhe and Xuan Zi concealed themselves and followed silently behind him.

"Village chief, is that you?"

Su Xian sat on the Soul-Nourishing Wood bed, fiddling with the phone with the black screen.

"It's this old man. Young fellow, what are you fiddling with?" Mu En replied in an aged, hoarse voice.

"Village chief, my phone's out of battery. Does the village office have a power strip? I need to charge it and let my family know I'm safe."

Su Xian sighed, feeling around in the darkness for an outlet.

Mu En glanced at the black rectangle, which gave off no Soul Power fluctuations, and silently speculated.

Charging? Could this Divine-Level Soul Tool require lightning-attribute Soul Power to activate?

Shrek did have quite a few lightning-attribute Soul Masters.

But he felt he should speak as little as possible. The less he said, the fewer mistakes he would make.

Keeping his role as an old village chief firmly in mind, he shook his head. "Here in our poor mountain backwater, we don't have that electricity you mentioned right now."

"Huh? You're not even connected to the power grid?!" Su Xian froze.

Logically, even villages in the deepest mountains of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan should have received electricity through the country's efforts over the past few years.

Then he reconsidered. He had run into a mudslide; it had probably swept away the base stations and power poles alike.

"Right, with thunder that loud earlier, the lines probably all got wrecked. It's fine. The infrastructure repair crews must already be on their way. We'll just wait here." Su Xian talked himself into an explanation and gave a bitter laugh.

Listening to the terms spilling from Su Xian's mouth, Yan Shaozhe was profoundly shaken in his hiding place.

This "country" could actually manufacture and even control lightning energy to connect an entire continent?

Compared to them, the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Guidance Technology was nothing but cavemen playing with mud!

Mu En pulled up a wooden chair and sat beside the bed, tentatively steering toward the main topic. "Young fellow, it's raining hard outside. We won't be getting out anytime soon. This old man has spent his whole life in these mountains and never seen the world. That leisure book you mentioned, Douluo Continent-what sort of story does it tell? Could you tell me a little to relieve my boredom?"

He'd taken the bait!

Hidden nearby, Xuan Zi and Yan Shaozhe pricked up their ears, even holding their breath.

"Oh, village chief, you like listening to fantasy webnovels too?"

Su Xian had been fretting over being blind with no one to chat with. Those words perked him right up. Sitting cross-legged, he began, "Really, it's just a monster-killing, level-grinding novel wearing a fantasy skin. But honestly, popular as this book is, reading it lately has been so frustrating. I was just looking for someone online to rant to!"

"Oh? Why was it frustrating?" Mu En narrowed his eyes.

"Because this author loves forcing tragedies and hardships onto the protagonist. It's practically shoveling shit into the readers' mouths!"

Su Xian swept a hand through the air, looking every bit the veteran reader holding forth on the affairs of the world. "Take Shrek Academy. The number-one academy on the continent, acting like it's hot shit. And what do we get? Its higher-ups are all muddleheaded fools. Especially that Xuan Zi, the Sea God Pavilion's second-in-command. That guy is really something else!"

At that moment, the air in the room froze solid.

Hidden in a corner, Xuan Zi's eyes contracted, and the flesh on his face twitched.

How did this suddenly turn to me?!

Yan Shaozhe swallowed and shot Xuan Zi a nervous glance, terrified that the ill-tempered old man would explode.

"That man called Xuan Zi... how is he something else?" Mu En asked without a change in expression.

"He's Shrek's biggest cancer!"

Su Xian slapped his thigh in bitter dismay. "Think about it, village chief. A Level 98 Super Douluo takes a bunch of students barely into their teens into the Star Dou Great Forest to fight Soul Beasts. By the book's power scaling, that should be as safe as a max-level character going back to the beginner village, right?"

"Under normal circumstances, indeed, no one could harm them." Mu En nodded.

Xuan Zi's breathing grew heavy. A bead of cold sweat slid down his forehead.

The Star Dou Great Forest... that was a wound in his heart that would never heal.

"And what happened? Just to gnaw on a roasted chicken leg, that old man actually left the group, and the students ended up running into a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast! Guess what? More than half the Inner Court's most essential geniuses died. In the end, he came running back, wailing to heaven and earth, saying he was guilty. What the hell was that? It was the author forcibly dumbing down this Level 98 powerhouse just to kill off supporting characters!"

Boom.

Thunder exploded in Xuan Zi's mind.

The horrific scenes of that battle, those Inner Court disciples lying in pools of blood and crying, "Xuan Zi, save me!"-like a nightmare, they tore at his heart once more.

What made his hair stand on end even more was... in this young man's telling, that tragedy he would regret for the rest of his life was merely the product of a so-called author forcibly dumbing him down to kill off supporting characters?!

Their lives, their deaths-were they all merely a passage of settings beneath someone else's pen?!

"That's not even the most ridiculous part. Listen to what comes next. The Continental Advanced Soul Master Soul Fighting Tournament is about to begin, and once again, Xuan Zi leads the team." Oblivious to the plummeting temperature in the room, Su Xian continued pouring out the future plot.

Yan Shaozhe clenched his fists. The Continental Soul Fighting Tournament? That wouldn't happen until next year!

"This time is even more bullshit. As their guardian, he actually sends a bunch of Official Team Members after an Evil Soul Master called the Death Messenger or something. That Evil Soul Master detonates the corpses on the spot, and Xuan Zi, such an awesome Super Douluo, actually fails to protect them! The blast kills one and cripples another, leaving everyone else badly injured. In the end, they can only rely on the protagonist, Huo Yuhao, a Reserve Team Member, to grit his teeth and carry them through the tournament!"

His rant leaving his mouth parched, Su Xian smacked his lips. "You tell me, village chief. This walking jinx gets someone killed every time he leads a team, and Shrek still lets him be second-in-command! In a company today, he'd have been fired eight hundred times over! I seriously suspect the author deliberately wrote the higher-ups as morons just to prop up the protagonist!"

Everyone fell silent.

No one in the room spoke. Only the pounding rain outside the window could be heard.

Xuan Zi's eyes were bloodshot. He clamped a hand over his mouth, his body trembling.

According to Mu En's arrangements, he was indeed supposed to lead the team to the Star Luo Empire for the tournament next year.

In his original plans, he had indeed intended to have the Inner Court disciples wipe out a group of Evil Soul Masters along the way as training.

If... if this blind young man hadn't spoiled the plot today, would that tragedy of one dead and one crippled really have happened?!

So he, a so-called Super Douluo, was nothing more than a clown in this story, constantly making idiotic mistakes to clear the way for the protagonist?!

Crack...

A crack split the premium Golden-Thread Phoebe Wood floor beneath Xuan Zi's feet under his uncontrolled Soul Power.

A trace of violent Soul Power rippled through the air.

"Brr... old village chief, is this village at a pretty high altitude? Why did it suddenly get bone-chillingly cold, like someone turned on a freezer?" Su Xian shuddered, reaching out to rub the goose bumps on his arm.

Mu En realized that Xuan Zi's heart of cultivation was on the verge of collapse.

If he let this kid keep talking and Xuan Zi's Soul Power went completely berserk, not only would the room be destroyed, but the kid would also be crushed into pulp.

"Ahem... yes, it gets very cold in the mountains at night. Well... this old man just remembered there's something to take care of in the village. Get some sleep. I'll come listen to your story tomorrow!" Mu En stood, his voice sounding somewhat stiff.

Without giving Su Xian any time to react, Mu En swept his sleeve. A gentle surge of Soul Power swept up the nearly collapsing Xuan Zi and the horrified Yan Shaozhe, and they vanished from the room.

Bang.

The door slammed shut.

"That old village chief... why did he just up and run? Did he think I was ranting too harshly? Ah, I should've told him about Tang San's history of cheating his way through instead." Sitting in the darkness, Su Xian scratched his head in bewilderment.

He felt his way down to lie on the bed, utterly unaware that his webnovel rant had just shattered the heart of cultivation of the continent's number-one academy's second-in-command and left him questioning his life.