Teacher Su, we're here for class

At four in the morning, the darkest hour before dawn, the square outside the Sea God Pavilion was ablaze with lights.

A group of core disciples from Shrek's Inner and Outer Courts, urgently dragged out of bed, were staring blankly at the mountain of shabby cloth clothes before them.

Standing in front of them were Sea God Pavilion Master Mu En and the Inner Court's senior sister, Zhang Lexuan, who held a stack of "Niulai Village Scripts."

"Time is short, so I'll only say this once!"

Zhang Lexuan raised the scripts in her hand. "Starting now, put away every last bit of that Shrek pride! Change into these clothes and forget your names and Soul Power! If anyone dares show so much as a crack in front of Teacher Su..."

Zhang Lexuan paused, glanced at Mu En beside her, and added coldly, "The Pavilion Master will personally beat him to a pulp, then throw him into Sea God Lake to feed the turtles!"

All the disciples shuddered.

"Now, let's assign the roles!"

Zhang Lexuan began calling names with brisk efficiency. "Bei Bei, Xu Sanshi, Tang Ya, Jiang Nannan, He Caitou! You five, get those patched jackets! Smear soot on your faces. In a moment, you'll be Niulai Village's left-behind children! Remember, show that simple innocence of children who've never seen the world, and eyes hungry for knowledge!"

"Yes!" Bei Bei and the others collected their ragged clothes, wanting to cry but finding no tears. All they could do now was obediently smear black soot on their faces.

"Ma Xiaotao!" Zhang Lexuan called the next name.

"Here, senior sister!" The voluptuous Ma Xiaotao stepped forward.

Zhang Lexuan picked a thin quilted jacket with large red flowers on a green background and a pair of baggy black trousers from the pile, then tossed them straight into Ma Xiaotao's arms. "Put these on! Mess up your hair a little later, preferably in two rustic braids. Your role is a fiery village girl who's just returned from working at an electronics factory in the county town-Ma Cuihua!"

"What?!"

Ma Xiaotao stared at the hopelessly tacky floral jacket in her arms. The extreme Evil Fire inside her nearly erupted out of control.

She, the captain of this generation's Shrek Seven Devils and inheritor of the Fire Phoenix, actually had to wear something like this to play Ma Cuihua?!

Hiding in the distance, Yan Shaozhe watched his disciple about to undergo such inhuman torment in the name of styling, his heart dripping blood.

But he gritted his teeth, not daring to let out so much as a fart.

"What? Any objections?" Mu En glanced at Ma Xiaotao.

"N-no! Cuihua promises to complete the mission!" Ma Xiaotao trembled with fright and hurried behind a tree with the floral jacket to change.

"Dai Yueheng!"

"Here!"

Zhang Lexuan handed him an undershirt with several holes and a pair of straw sandals, then casually grabbed a handful of yellow mud from the ground and smeared it across Dai Yueheng's handsome face.

"Your role is the village's most simple, honest bachelor farmer, who's never seen anything of the world-Dai Dazhu! Remember to hunch your back later and speak in a thick, muffled voice!"

"..."

Dai Yueheng wiped the yellow mud from his face. The pride of the illustrious White Tiger Duke's Mansion shattered at that moment.

In less than an hour, the inhuman, disfiguring makeover was complete in the square.

Those handsome men and beautiful women, Shrek's geniuses with their extraordinary bearing, had all become a bunch of rustic village wives, rough men, and left-behind children.

"Move out. To the back mountain!" Mu En nodded in satisfaction.

Half past six in the morning.

Inside the wooden cabin on the back mountain.

Su Xian, who had been lying in bed still wondering whether he had fallen into a pyramid scheme, was suddenly jolted awake by a deafening noise.

"Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-!"

It was the roar of a tractor with an aging diesel engine, a sound heard only in remote villages.

Immediately afterward, the Village Head Loudspeaker rang out, its microphone crackling with electrical interference. "Ahem! Hello, hello? Testing... Well, attention, every household! We've got good sunshine this morning, so bring out your wheat to dry..."

"Woof, woof, woof!"

"Cock-a-doodle-doo-!"

The fierce barking of village dogs fighting over bones at the village entrance and the vigorous morning crowing of roosters rose and fell outside.

Su Xian froze for a full three seconds. The great stone that had hung over his heart for more than half a month finally dropped.

"Fuck, that scared me to death." Su Xian let out a long breath and patted his chest. "I knew it. What pyramid scheme or human traffickers would have a tractor and a loudspeaker? That dog's barking so fiercely, you can tell it's a pure Chinese Rural Dog just by listening. No question, this is Niulai Village in Daliang Mountain!"

Su Xian completely let down his guard.

Little did he know that, three hundred meters from the cabin at that very moment...

Qian Duoduo was sweating profusely as he slapped a huge black metal box, cursing, "This lousy Simulation Sound System nearly jammed!"

Meanwhile, in the bushes at the village entrance, four or five Soul Saints and Soul Douluos from the Agility Attack Department were lying in muddy water.

One Soul Saint responsible for imitating a dog barked wildly, so aggrieved that tears nearly fell.

To think that I, a mighty Seven-Ring Soul Sage, with the noble Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear as my Martial Soul, am now being forced to imitate wild dogs fighting over food!

What a sin!

At eight in the morning, the sun had just risen.

"Creak-"

The cabin door was pushed open.

"Teacher Su, we've come to see ya!" Mu En led the great crowd of "villagers" and "left-behind children" into the courtyard.

"Good morning, Teacher!"

Bei Bei, Xu Sanshi, and a dozen or so other children with soot smeared on their faces shouted at the top of their lungs in perfect unison.

Hearing the children's spirited young voices, Su Xian immediately broke into a brilliant smile.

"My, Teacher Su sure is handsome. Even fairer and cleaner-looking than the boss at our county electronics factory."

Among the crowd, Ma Xiaotao, wearing two rustic braids and the red-flowered quilted jacket, forcibly suppressed the urge to kill, pitched her voice high, and called out in a stiff rural accent.

"Same here." Beside her, Dai Yueheng chimed in with a thick, muffled voice, scratching his head foolishly as the script required.

"That's right, that's right! Teacher Su's a university graduate from the big city!" The other Inner Court disciples chimed in with all manner of clumsy rural accents.

Listening to those male and female voices, rough men and fiery village wives alike, all brimming with rustic flavor, the last trace of doubt in Su Xian's heart vanished like smoke.

He felt his way off the bed, faced the direction of the crowd's voices, and bowed very politely.

"Hello, everyone. Hello, children! I'm Su Xian. For the next two years, I'll be Niulai Village's volunteer teacher. You can all just call me Teacher Su," Su Xian said gently.

"You're too polite, Teacher Su."

"Come sit on the bed. You're still injured!" Several female elders playing "old village women" hurried forward and helped Su Xian back onto the bed.

Su Xian settled cross-legged, felt for the zipper of the backpack beside his bed, rummaged inside, and pulled out a black rectangular object.

It was what he had brought to Daliang Mountain to prepare teaching materials-an XX-brand tablet computer.

Fortunately, it had not been damaged in the mudslide, and he had fully charged it before leaving.

"Beep-"

Su Xian felt for the power button and pressed it. The tablet computer's screen lit up, accompanied by a faint electronic startup sound.

The moment Su Xian pressed the power button, the temperature inside the cabin seemed to plunge.

Under the gazes of everyone from Shrek present, they discovered to their horror that this glowing black glass slab had no Soul Power!

Nor was it engraved with any Soul Tool Core Array known on the Douluo Continent!

Yet it had lit up!

And its light was steady, while its interior seemed to contain complex structures!

"Th-this is a... divine-grade Soul Tool from ten thousand years in the future?!"

Qian Duoduo stared at the tablet computer, feeling his entire understanding of Soul Tools suffer a terrifying blow.

A creation that could operate without Soul Power completely defied the common sense of the Douluo Continent!

Everyone held their breath, staring at the tablet in Su Xian's hands as though it were an unparalleled divine artifact.

Of course, Su Xian could not see their horrified gazes.

He laid the tablet computer flat on his lap and cleared his throat. The casual smile from before disappeared from his face, replaced by a solemn expression.

"Originally, for today's first lesson, I wanted to teach the children to read, or have them memorize a few ancient poems."

"But in the half month since I went blind, I've thought about a great deal! I think there's no rush to teach that basic knowledge. We can take our time with it later."

"Since all the villagers and children are here today..."

"For this first lesson, I won't teach you how to farm, and I won't teach you how to read."

"I'm going to tell you about the mysteries of the universe, of heaven and earth!"

"I'm going to tell you just how tiny we humans are in this vast, boundless universe!"

"I'm also going to tell you why we humans must abandon those feudal, ignorant superstitions and embrace science!"

"I'm going to show you exactly where those terrifying powers that can destroy heaven and earth and reduce tens of millions of people to ash... come from!!!"

At those words...

Everyone in the cabin, the entire Shrek all-star lineup including Limit Douluo Mu En, obediently brought over little folding stools and straightened their backs like the best-behaved elementary school students.