Shrek's sin of arrogance

In the early morning, a faint golden light filtered through the Golden Tree's branches and leaves into the Sea God Pavilion's hall.

Shrek Academy's routine Elder Council Meeting was underway.

As usual, these meetings often descended into endless arguments over the allocation of resources between departments.

"Pavilion Master! The Martial Soul Department has cut our Soul Tool Department's Rare Metals quota by thirty percent again this month without cause! Yan Shaozhe is cutting off the very roots of our department's development!"

Xian Lin'er, dean of the Soul Tool Department, slammed the table, her slender brows raised as she glared at Yan Shaozhe across the long table.

Ordinarily, Yan Shaozhe would already have been waving his folding fan, citing the classics as he debated the superiority of Martial Soul Orthodoxy with Xian Lin'er.

But today, Yan Shaozhe sat with his arms folded, turning a deaf ear to Xian Lin'er's accusations.

Xuan Zi beside him was even more outrageous. Usually, he gnawed on a roast chicken leg during meetings, leaving grease all over his mouth. Today, however, he slumped in his chair like a clay statue or wooden carving, two enormous dark circles beneath his eyes, his entire being exuding an air of having "seen through the mortal world."

Xian Lin'er frowned and turned toward the head seat. "Pavilion Master, please settle this fairly!"

Mu En slowly came back to himself on his reclining chair. He glanced at Xian Lin'er, then at the distracted Yan Shaozhe and Xuan Zi beside him. His mind was filled with the words "technology," "hypocrite," and "cancer" spoken by that blind young man on the Back Mountain.

"Let Lin'er have her way! Shaozhe, make up the Soul Tool Department's quota after the meeting." Mu En waved a hand. "If there is nothing else urgent today, we shall adjourn."

Xian Lin'er froze.

The Martial Soul Department and Soul Tool Department had fought over resources for more than a century. Why had she obtained them so easily today?

Could the Pavilion Master, Yan Shaozhe, and the others have fallen victim to some Mind-Type Evil Soul Master's technique?

Before Xian Lin'er could think further, Mu En had already risen with his cane.

Yan Shaozhe and Xuan Zi sprang up as though shocked by electricity. In a flash, all three vanished from the Sea God Pavilion and headed straight for the Back Mountain.

How could they spare any thought for Rare Metals now? Those few spoilers from the blind young man weighed more heavily than all of Shrek put together.

Outside the "Niulai Village" wooden cabin on the Back Mountain, rain was still pouring down.

Several Water Attribute inner court teachers were taking shifts in midair, using Soul Skills to produce artificial rainfall. Shrek's higher-ups had truly gone to painstaking lengths to maintain the lie that heavy rain had sealed off the mountain.

"Teacher Su, I've brought your breakfast." Mu En adopted that aged, rustic accent again.

Hearing the door open, Su Xian, who had been lying in bed bored out of his mind, immediately sat up. "Old village chief, you're finally here!"

Su Xian felt around and accepted the bowl of porridge, then suddenly asked, "By the way, chief, do you know what time it is? I can't see, so I can't even tell day from night anymore."

Mu En knew nothing about "what time it was." At Shrek, they normally judged the time by the sky or used hourglasses.

He coughed and deployed his unfailingly effective trick. "The village has no electricity."

"The battery's dead?"

Su Xian felt his wrist and held out his left hand. "Right, buying batteries isn't easy in the mountains. I have a mechanical watch here. It doesn't need batteries. Could you help me see where the hands are pointing?"

Mu En leaned closer and saw a round metal disc strapped to his wrist. Inside were intricate miniature gears, and a ring of strange symbols was printed on its face.

Although the Douluo Continent also had mechanical cores, Mu En had never seen the Arabic numerals on this watch face.

Still, with a Limit Douluo's powerful spiritual power, Mu En pinpointed the hands and ventured a description. "The shortest thin hand is pointing between eight and nine, and the longest one is pointing at six."

"Eight thirty, huh." Su Xian sighed, puzzled. "Old village chief, don't you recognize the numbers on the watch face?"

Mu En glanced back at Xuan Zi and Yan Shaozhe, who were holding their breath in concentration outside the door, and helplessly continued spinning his story along those lines. "Our village is poor. In all my years, I've never seen anything so finely made, and I can barely read."

"Ah, that makes sense." On reflection, Su Xian thought that was reasonable.

Many people assumed that because the country was developing rapidly, the mountain regions had all become prosperous.

But he had done his research before coming to volunteer as a teacher. Deep in the Daliang Mountain, people truly were poor. Some elderly people had never even visited a town in their lives. It was perfectly normal for them not to recognize a mechanical watch.

At that thought, Su Xian deeply regretted touching the old village chief's sore spot and hurriedly said, "Don't worry, chief. Once the road gets through, the country will definitely step up its poverty alleviation efforts. Life in our village will get better! Oh, you haven't forgotten about meeting the students this afternoon, have you?"

"I haven't, I haven't! I'll bring two children over this afternoon."

Mu En sat down beside him and unobtrusively steered the conversation back on track. "Teacher Su, yesterday you said that when that fellow named Xuan Zi led the team, one official team member died and another was crippled at the Continental Soul Fighting Tournament... What exactly happened?"

Outside the door.

Xuan Zi, who had still been somewhat listless from rising early and staying up late, instantly went rigid at those words.

He stared at the wooden door, not daring to breathe loudly.

Su Xian bit into the coarse-flour steamed bun in his hand and sneered. "What else could have happened? The reason was simple: they underestimated the enemy and charged in recklessly!"

"But... that Xuan Zi was a Level 98 Super Douluo, after all. How could he fail to protect a few children?" Mu En pressed.

"The problem lay with that very Super Douluo."

Su Xian spoke at length. "In the second year after the book's protagonist, Huo Yuhao, entered the academy, Shrek was going to send a team to the Star Luo Empire to compete in the Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Soul Fighting Tournament."

"Reasonably speaking, a competition should just be a competition. But Shrek insisted on some tradition of taking an Inspection Corps mission along the way, dressing it up as letting the reserve team taste blood. Their target this time was a band of Evil Soul Masters in the Ming Dou Mountain Range calling themselves the Death Messengers. Their leader was a Soul King with an evil Martial Soul that could control corpses."

Corpse Manipulation? A Soul King?

Outside, Yan Shaozhe swiftly searched his mind for intelligence from the Inspection Corps' network. There was indeed a small band of Evil Soul Masters roaming the Ming Dou Mountain Range and the Star Luo Empire's border, but their precise abilities had never been established.

So it was controlling corpses!

The more Su Xian spoke, the angrier he became. Slapping his thigh, he cursed, "Think about it, old village chief. As a Level 98 powerhouse leading a team somewhere like the Ming Dou Mountain Range, Xuan Zi only had to sweep the place with his spiritual power, drag those Evil Soul Masters out, and slap them dead. That would've settled it. But he just wouldn't!"

"For the sake of supposedly giving the students practical experience, that old man stubbornly refused to act. He let a bunch of official team members and reserve team members under twenty charge straight into caves with complicated terrain to fight those desperate criminals to the death! And what did he do? He went outside the cave to leisurely drink wine and eat chicken legs, thinking nothing serious could happen with him there to back them up."

"And the result? When that Death Messenger saw he couldn't beat Shrek's geniuses, he directly detonated the corpses filling the cave! That move was called Corpse Explosion. Inside an enclosed cave, its power was practically enough to destroy heaven and earth!"

Su Xian paused for breath, his voice dripping with scorn. "By the time Xuan Zi heard the explosion, reacted, and rushed into the cave, even the daylilies had gone cold! Official team member Yao Haoxuan was blown into scraps of flesh on the spot. Chen Zifeng lost an arm and was crippled, and everyone else was severely injured and unconscious! The teacher leading the team couldn't even react as quickly as an Evil Soul Master. If that wasn't useless, what was?"

Like peeling an onion, Su Xian's words tore to shreds the fig leaf Shrek's higher-ups called "practical experience."

Outside, Xuan Zi was already drenched in cold sweat.

Because he had realized to his horror that if he really accepted this mission next year, given his usual temperament and confidence in the inner court disciples, he would absolutely make the exact decision Su Xian had described-drink outside and let the youngsters get some practice themselves!

This was no longer merely a prophecy!

Had he not heard these words today, next year's tragedy would have been as certain as a nail driven into iron!

Yet Su Xian's tirade was not over.

"Old village chief, don't think Xuan Zi alone was to blame."

Su Xian pushed his bowl aside and said, brimming with righteous indignation, "This was the original sin of arrogance that the whole of Shrek Academy had nurtured over ten thousand years! They thought Shrek was invincible, thought all their students were monsters. Outsiders were directing experts, and they treated students' lives like child's play!"

"In our modern society, even when a school organizes a spring outing for elementary school children, the principal has to inspect the site half a month in advance and write over a dozen pages of safety emergency plans. If something happens, the person bearing primary responsibility gets dismissed outright. But Shrek? They sent students to fight terrorists and dared to charge in without even establishing the terrain or the enemy's details."

"No risk management, no emergency plans, just blind confidence! An academy without the slightest sense of modern educational responsibility would've been wiped out eight hundred times over if it weren't protected by the protagonist's halo! If an educational institution can't even do the most basic thing and protect its young, if all it knows is shouting slogans, then it deserves to be swept into history's garbage heap."

Every sentence of Su Xian's was a blade, and every blade drew blood.

Though he was no Soul Master, he used modern society's most basic safety management principles to tear Shrek's life-and-death training apart until it was worth nothing.

The air outside the door had frozen utterly still.

Yan Shaozhe clenched his teeth, his face ashen.

He had always believed Shrek's teaching methods were the most perfect on the entire continent. Yet under Su Xian's analysis from a broad perspective outside their system, they appeared riddled with holes. It could well be called treating human lives as worthless grass.

Mu En sat inside without speaking for a long time.

After a long while, he slowly rose and collected the empty bowl, his voice somewhat hoarse. "Teacher Su is right... Human lives are of paramount importance. This truly is treating them as worthless grass."

He pushed open the door and stepped out of the room.

Mu En closed the door behind him. The instant he erected a Soundproof Barrier, his aged, gentle expression turned cold and stern.

Rather than looking at the trembling Xuan Zi, he fixed his gaze directly on Yan Shaozhe.

"Shaozhe."

Through gritted teeth, Mu En issued the Sea God Pavilion's highest-level directive.

"Go to the inner court immediately and assemble every elite teacher from the Martial Soul Department and Soul Tool Department. You will lead them personally. Set out today for the Ming Dou Mountain Range on the Star Luo Empire's border!"

Yan Shaozhe's expression grew solemn, and he straightened his back. "Teacher, you mean..."

"Find the base of that Evil Soul Master called the Death Messenger! No training, no probing, and no holding back!"

Mu En's cane struck a deep crack into the ground, his voice carrying thunderous fury.

"Blast those Evil Soul Masters into rubble! Grind their bones and scatter their ashes. Don't leave so much as a single strand of hair!"