"Why is this world so deranged?!!"
On the outskirts of the Great Star Dou Forest, a little boy who looked to be about eleven years old was frantically clutching a mop of messy black hair, his entire face a picture of utter despair.
His name was Lin Mo, a transmigrator.
Back on Blue Star, his dear son had recommended that he read a novel called Dou Er, telling him that after reading it, he would gain a brand-new understanding of love, such as:
"All you lost was your life, but what I lost was love!"
At the time, Lin Mo had been completely stunned by what he heard; a novel this deranged meant he simply had to go check it out.
Finding the novel at home after he got back, the moment he clicked on the synopsis and even before seeing the protagonist's name, he transmigrated right into it.
After merging with the memories, he learned that the place he had transmigrated to was called the Douluo Continent, and his identity was that of a fallen aristocratic descendant of the Dou Ling Empire, rumored to have imperial blood in his ancestry.
Transmigrations happen every year, and this year it came to his house.
Three minutes ago, Lin Mo was ecstatic.
Was he finally going to be the protagonist for once and suppress an entire era?
Three minutes after, Lin Mo was emo.
No golden finger, no knowledge of the plot, and even his so-called Martial Soul was just an ordinary, fire-breathing crow.
But he had to survive first, didn't he?
And so, drifting from place to place through all sorts of hardships, he finally arrived in the Sun Moon Empire, and because of decent talent, was invited to join an organization called the Holy Spirit Church.
Upon hearing the name, Lin Mo figured an organization called Holy Spirit should not have any major issues, right?
As a result, only after joining did he realize...
Damn it, he had walked right into a Myanmar den!
It was a bona fide evil cult!!
Fortunately, those higher-ups in the Holy Spirit Church all had a few screws loose; every day they were either going "heh heh heh" or "you love me, I love him, he loves you", and they simply didn't have the spare time to manage small fries like them.
Because of this, he managed to eke out a living.
Later on, two more saintesses arrived at the Holy Spirit Church.
One was named Tang Ya, with the Dark Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul.
The other was named Ma Xiaotao, with the top-tier beast martial soul Evil Fire Phoenix.
Originally, these two had nothing to do with him, but as a result, the higher-ups assigned him to follow Tang Ya and participate in some youth soul master tournament.
As the matches went on, their own saintess Tang Ya hooked up with the captain of the Shrek representative team!
After a passionate confession from the opposite side's Shrek team captain named Beibei, their own saintess came to her senses, shouting things like "I remember now!" and "Beibei, I love you!" before happily running off with the guy.
Even that was fine.
Later on, during another operational mission, the saintess Ma Xiaotao led the team.
Because he didn't want to kill and create bad karma, he followed at the very tail end of the team and tried to slack off and idle, only to watch their own saintess Ma Xiaotao shout for the enemy reinforcements' younger brother and embrace the guy.
Without needing to think, in the end, Ma Xiaotao also retreated millionfold along with her so-called younger brother.
Later on, Lin Mo found out.
These two so-called saintesses of his had all been poached from Shrek Academy!!
After that, he managed to struggle along to the age of twenty-four, following the Holy Spirit Church's chief patron Long Xiaoyao and supreme sect master Ye Xishui on an operation, thinking that with two Limit Douluo backing them up, nothing would go wrong this time.
The first half actually went quite well, beating those people called Huo Yuhao and Tang Wutong quite miserably, but at the crucial moment he was backstabbed by his own people of the Sun Moon Empire.
Then, listening to the conversation among the four-Long Xiaoyao, Ye Xishui, Huo Yuhao, and Tang Wutong-
Lin Mo's CPU crashed on the spot.
What did it mean that his own chief patron was sworn brothers with the former Sea God Pavilion Master of Shrek?
What did it mean that his own supreme sect master's grandson served as the Martial Soul Department Dean at Shrek?
Was this also a Douluo-version Burning Winter, dammit?!
The most outrageous thing of all was!
If the two of you want to die, just die, okay, hey! It's one thing not to self-detonate and drag your opponents down with you, but what is the meaning of proactively passing your cultivation to the enemy??
He watched with his own eyes as their two big shots used a direct empowerment technique, giving both Huo Yuhao and Tang Wutong a breakthrough, and then the two of them turned around and wiped out all the surrounding evil soul masters, including him.
His twenty-four years of life can be summarized as follows:
The unfortunate scream, the free struggle, the suffering fight one another, and the angry launch fierce attacks.
Whatever couldn't kill him in this world kept hitting him.
Finally, crunch.
Before his consciousness faded, Lin Mo had only one thought in his mind:
This world is too damn deranged!!!
Opening his eyes once again, he found that he had been reborn right back to when he first transmigrated.
After living another life, he had completely abandoned the tiny bit of protagonist-dreaming he'd still had before: "Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river; don't bully a poor young man."
Being the protagonist in such a crazy world...
That protagonist probably wasn't normal either.
If he couldn't afford to provoke them, couldn't he at least avoid them? A bunch of hopeless romantics. Even if zombies ate them, they'd still cry, "Long live love!"
At the thought, Lin Mo jolted and scrambled up from the ground, brushing the dust off himself. The corner of his eye suddenly caught a dark, patterned ring on the middle finger of his right hand.
The ring had a black base and silver patterns. Its design wasn't flashy, just a circle of dark color coiled around the face of the ring, giving off a faint, chilly gleam in the sunlight.
He froze, then instinctively poured a thread of Soul Power into the ring.
In an instant, a space unfolded before his eyes. Inside, fifty gold soul coins and a letter were arranged in neat rows.
When he saw the monster emblem on the envelope, Lin Mo's eyes widened.
It was actually a recommendation letter for Shrek Academy!
Sure, the people at Shrek Academy had a few screws loose, but at least it was a lot safer there than in the Sun Moon Empire or the Holy Spirit Church. They also wouldn't just grab students and cut them open for research.
Looking at the letter, Lin Mo suddenly laughed.
He was laughing in exasperation.
If only he'd searched himself a little more carefully in his previous life, he wouldn't have been kidnapped into the Holy Spirit Church and forced to make a living under Xu Yuwan, that lunatic emperor of the Sun Moon Empire.
He'd had a recommendation letter for Shrek Academy and hadn't used it. So, in his previous life, he'd just been insisting on suffering for no reason?
Enough said. Off to Shrek Academy!
But Lin Mo's foot, which he'd just lifted, came to an abrupt stop.
He was definitely going to Shrek Academy, but he remembered that Huo Yuhao, who'd dominated the age in his previous life, had come from Shrek Academy-and that guy was absolutely the protagonist.
Reaching Soul Sage at twenty-four already counted as a genius.
But that guy was already a Level 98 Super Douluo, titled Spirit Ice.
In his previous life, he'd died at Huo Yuhao's hands. What if they crossed paths again in this life?
Steal his opportunities?
Kill him before he could act?
Lin Mo had never read the novel and didn't know the plot, so he had no idea where Huo Yuhao's opportunities were. And killing someone at Shrek Academy...
Bro, are you serious?
"Forget it. I'll take things one step at a time."
He put the letter away again, then hurried toward the place where Shrek Academy stood in his memories of his previous life.
The moment Lin Mo left, a pair of scarlet beast eyes opened deep in the forest. As the bushes rustled, a soul beast resembling a golden lion, with blue-jade-colored antlers growing from its head, stepped out one pace at a time.
The Emperor Auspicious Beast, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion!
The Three-Eyed Golden Lion sniffed the ground. The third vertical eye on its forehead suddenly snapped open, gazing in the direction Lin Mo had gone.
A trace of confusion and stir appeared in its scarlet eyes, and an androgynous voice rose from its throat:
"Auspicious aura... one of my kind?"
The Great Star Dou Forest wasn't far from Shrek Academy. On top of that, Lin Mo was already a two-ring Soul Grandmaster, so a few hours later, he saw where Shrek Academy was located.
Looking down at Shrek Academy from above, he was truly stunned.
What kind of academy was this?
It was clearly a city within a city, a country within a country!