The top floor of the Sea God Pavilion.
Inside the spacious loft, beside the long table carved from a ten-thousand-year-old Golden Tree, over half of Shrek Academy's strongest fighters had fallen utterly silent.
Outside the window, the simulated torrential rain was still falling over the Back Mountain.
Xuan Zi, a Level 98 Super Douluo and the Sea God Pavilion's second-in-command, was slumped in a chair.
His usually treasured purple-red wine gourd had rolled off to one side, and his greasy roast chicken leg had fallen to the floor and become coated in dust, but he did not even glance at them.
Yan Shaozhe stood nearby, watching the normally unruly Xuan Zi look so utterly lost, and felt wretched himself.
He knew that Su Xian's remarks-"people always die when he leads a team" and "Shrek's biggest cancer"-had ultimately stabbed into Xuan Zi's most vulnerable scar.
"Mu En..."
Xuan Zi covered his face with both hands, his voice terrifyingly hoarse. "The battle in the Star Dou Great Forest was the anguish of my life. Now even this spectator from another world sees me as Shrek's eternal sinner. If... if, during next year's Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Fighting Tournament, my carelessness really does leave one official team member dead and another crippled again..."
Xuan Zi raised his head, his eyes bloodshot and filled with terror. "How could I face Shrek's forebears then? I... I'll resign from every position and exile myself right now!"
"Nonsense!"
Mu En struck the floor with his cane from his reclining chair, producing a dull boom.
A gentle light aura swept through the room, forcibly suppressing Xuan Zi's emotions before they could run wild.
"Xuan Zi, you're hundreds of years old, yet when something happens, you're less composed than a blind child?"
Although Mu En was equally shaken, as the Sea God Pavilion's sea-steadying pillar, his thinking remained exceptionally clear.
"Have the things that young man spoke of happened yet?"
Xuan Zi paused, then shook his head. "The Soul Fighting Tournament is next year."
"Exactly!" Mu En said gravely.
"He carries the divine book Douluo Continent, which records the Sea God Ancestor's life, and his head is filled with things that won't happen until next year. Do you think Heaven sent him here to humiliate you?"
Yan Shaozhe's eyes lit up as he caught on. "Teacher, you mean the Sea God Ancestor's spirit in heaven is using this young man's words to warn us in advance?"
"What happens depends on what we do." Mu En's clouded eyes flashed. "Since we already know that this Evil Soul Master, the Death Messenger, will detonate corpses on the eve of next year's Soul Fighting Tournament, why should we keep following the same course?"
Xuan Zi shuddered, as though he had grasped a lifesaving straw in endless darkness, and stood up. "That's right! We can drag that beast out ahead of time, grind his bones to dust, and scatter his ashes!"
"But on this vast continent, where would we find an Evil Soul Master when we don't even know his martial soul characteristics?" Yan Shaozhe frowned.
Mu En pointed toward the Back Mountain. "Isn't the answer in the mouth of that blind fellow who thinks we're village chiefs? Starting tomorrow, you'll come with me to keep listening to his stories. Not only must we draw out the Death Messenger's exact location, but we must also question him, bit by bit, until we've uncovered every secret in his head about Shrek's future!"
Xuan Zi and Yan Shaozhe exchanged a look. Flames of hope rekindled in their despairing eyes, and they bowed together. "Yes, Pavilion Master!"
Late at night.
In two completely different rooms, people were tossing and turning alike.
Xuan Zi lay in his bed, his mind filled with Su Xian calling him a cancer.
Although Mu En had brought him to his senses, once something like the heart of one's path cracked, it was cracked. How could it be repaired so easily?
"One dead, one crippled... one dead, one crippled..." Xuan Zi kept muttering as though possessed, unable to sleep all night.
Meanwhile, in the disguised village house on the Back Mountain, Su Xian could not sleep either.
Outside, rain poured down in torrents (Shrek's water-type Soul Masters took shifts producing rain), and thunder rolled.
Alone in an unfamiliar land and unable to see, he felt a loneliness like being abandoned by the entire world, and fear of the future threatened to drown him like a rising tide.
He could only wrap himself tightly in his quilt and force himself to think about webnovel tropes to distract himself.
"Come to think of it, though..."
In the darkness, Su Xian felt the quilt covering him, his brows furrowing slightly.
The quilt felt silky smooth and unbelievably soft, and carried a faint, refreshing fragrance that could calm the mind.
In his previous life, Su Xian had at least slept on silk bedding in five-star hotels.
But he swore that this quilt's texture absolutely blew every premium silk in the world out of the water!
"Is Niulai Village... really this rich?" Su Xian muttered.
"Or is this some lost handmade fabric from our Yi people of Daliang Mountain's intangible cultural heritage?"
What actually covered him was a Supreme Ice Silkworm Silk Quilt from the Shrek Inner Court. This quilt alone could fetch an astronomical price of hundreds of thousands of Gold Soul Coins at an auction house outside.
But dulled by his head injury and loss of sight, Su Xian did not think much of it. With his head full of wandering thoughts, he drifted groggily off to sleep.
Not until the following morning.
Creak-
The sound of the door being pushed open rang out.
Su Xian sprang out of bed like a spring and shouted excitedly, "Village Chief!"
In this place where he had no one to turn to and could not see his hand before his face, that aged voice was practically his only emotional anchor.
Mu En walked in carrying a wooden tray holding two coarse-flour steamed buns and a bowl of vividly green wild vegetable porridge.
Of course, this was not the Sea God Pavilion mistreating him. Rather, to fit the "impoverished mountain village" setting, Yan Shaozhe had specifically instructed the Inner Court dining hall to take premium medicinal herbs used to strengthen the foundation and cultivate the origin and cook them down into this rough-looking fare.
"Teacher Su, time for breakfast." Mu En continued to maintain his old village chief persona.
"No rush!"
Su Xian waved a hand and sat cross-legged on the bed.
He recalled how he had trashed Shrek Academy yesterday, only for the old village chief to leave without a word. He probably thought Su Xian was too full of venom.
To ease the atmosphere and grow closer to the village chief, Su Xian cleared his throat and spoke toward the doorway. "Old Village Chief, I know that after hearing me curse that Xuan Zi yesterday, you might think I'm too extreme. Actually, I'm still very fond of the book Douluo Continent!"
Mu En had just been about to set down the porridge, but his movements paused at those words.
Meanwhile, Xuan Zi, who had stayed awake all night and now sported two dark circles under his eyes, was pulling Yan Shaozhe along as he tiptoed up to the door, preparing to listen in on today's intelligence.
At the sound of Su Xian mentioning him, Xuan Zi's heart lurched, and his steps froze outside the door.
"To liven things up, I've prepared a dark joke about Shrek Academy's first-generation Grandmaster. Have a listen and see if it's funny," Su Xian said enthusiastically.
Mu En vaguely sensed something ominous, but to draw information out of him, he could only steel himself and play along. "Oh? A joke about Grandmaster? Let's hear it."
Outside the door, Yan Shaozhe pricked up his ears too.
Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang was the revered teacher of the First-generation Shrek Seven Devils, Shrek Academy's honorary dean, and the legendary, unrivaled theoretician who had proposed the "Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul."
A joke about him?
Su Xian spoke in the rising and falling cadence of a storyteller:
"So, one day at the opening ceremony, Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang stood with his hands behind his back and proudly announced to all the teachers and students, 'Students, remember! There are no worthless martial souls in this world, only worthless Soul Masters!'"
Mu En nodded. This was Grandmaster's famous saying, passed down for ten thousand years, which had inspired countless commoner Soul Masters. There was nothing wrong with it.
Su Xian continued, "At this point, a student in the audience raised a hand and asked, 'Grandmaster, then why have you been stuck at Level 29 for most of your life, unable to beat even an ordinary Soul Elder, and remained a complete and utter good-for-nothing?'"
Outside the door, Yan Shaozhe sucked in a breath.
Good grief, this kid really dared to say anything!
Exposing their founding master's shortcomings in public?!
Su Xian slapped his thigh and delivered the lethal punchline. "Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang felt around in his pocket, coughed, and said awkwardly, 'Sorry, I picked up the wrong script just now. I forgot to add a prerequisite-you first have to take in a transmigrator disciple who comes with twin martial souls, has a Hidden Weapon Encyclopedia in his head, and can even give you an Immortal Herb gift pack later on, so he can carry a good-for-nothing like you to the skies!'"
"What do you think, Old Village Chief? Pretty dark, right? Without Tang San, wouldn't Yu Xiaogang just be an absolute waste? Hahaha..." Su Xian rocked back and forth on the bed, laughing away to himself.
The room fell silent, leaving only the sound of torrential rain battering the window.
Mu En's hands trembled around the tray, nearly spilling the precious medicinal herb porridge onto the floor.
As for Xuan Zi and Yan Shaozhe, who had just stepped halfway over the threshold, their feet seemed frozen in place, and their faces flushed purple-red.
The spiritual mentor of the First-generation Shrek Seven Devils...
Sea God Tang San's most respected teacher...
The legendary figure enshrined in Shrek Academy's Ten-Thousand-Year Hall of Honor...
In this blind fellow's mouth, he had actually become the ultimate clown, relying entirely on his disciple to carry him to the skies while desperately trying to salvage his own dignity?!
Before you continue