Ming Zhao felt a little regretful.
He had stirred up quite a lot of trouble, and the butterfly effect had changed many events. Otherwise, Huo Yuhao and Wang Dong should have been on this team too.
If that blast had sent God King Tang's dog and leash flying as well, that would have been a real spectacle.
But the odds of that were actually slim. Wang Dong definitely had a God King's divine sense within her. During the Soul Fighting Tournament, someone had tried to launch a mental attack on her, and the God King's divine sense had intervened immediately. If she had truly faced a threat to her life, that divine sense would have had no reason to stand by and watch.
If Wang Dong had been there, Ming Xiang really would not have been able to give Xuan Zi another total team wipe this time.
But it did not matter.
There would be plenty of chances to strike.
"Now that all the contestants have been wiped out, will Shrek still go to the Soul Fighting Tournament?" Ming Zhao smiled faintly, withdrew his Martial Soul and domain into his body, and stepped into space, vanishing from where he stood.
Once the domain was withdrawn, the city he had concealed with it and his spiritual power was exposed. No longer sealed off, the deathly air, resentment, smell of blood and stench of decay shot skyward as a tangible black mist visible to the naked eye.
In just a few days, the once orderly and peaceful little border city had been turned into a hell by Ming Zhao's game.
Its population of nearly a hundred thousand had been reduced by two-thirds. Severed limbs and rotting corpses lay everywhere in the city, and even the survivors wore the frenzied expressions of madmen.
Ming Zhao's death game was essentially a Shura field that combined a large-scale game of Werewolf with a battle royale in the city.
You did not know who around you had reached the limit of their fear, whether he would use your life to reset his fear progress, or whether he would count your life toward the one-percent admission ticket so he could escape the city.
Apart from the first two or three days, when Ming Zhao's paper figures and female ghosts had taken the heads of a few people who saw them, most of the fifty or sixty thousand others who died in the city had killed one another.
Fear made them see ghosts, and seeing ghosts made them even more afraid.
At that point, only by using someone else's life in place of their own could they stop seeing ghosts and become safe again.
Eighty percent of the people had died that way.
The other twenty percent had been slaughtered by those who wanted to escape the ghost city, as they carried out their plan to collect enough ticket fragments.
But in the end, not a single person had managed to escape the city, not even its three strongest Soul Kings.
When they had collected eighty or ninety percent of their tickets, they had all very "unfortunately" run into Red and White Colliding Calamities and fallen just before they could leave the city. It was truly a pity.
But it did not matter.
Ming Zhao was tired of playing and did not intend to continue, so the others would naturally be able to live.
As for what would become of those who had spent several days in the city of hell once they returned to normal life?
That was none of Ming Zhao's concern...
Shrek Academy.
Xuan Zi knelt before the Sea God Pavilion, looking like a piece of rotten wood. Beside him stood members of the Sea God Pavilion, each wearing a complicated expression, among them Mu En, who sat in a wheelchair.
His eyes vacant, he took skeletons out of his Soul Tool one after another. With each one he took out, the elder veterans around him looked a little worse.
When Xuan Zi took out the last broken skeleton, Mu En sensed the blood connection between himself and the remains. His expression changed abruptly, and a piercing golden light began to shine in his clouded eyes.
But beneath the golden light, they were bloodshot.
"Speak...! What happened?!" Mu En's withered right hand clenched into a fist, his bones cracking as he forced the words through his teeth.
Mu En was guilty.
He had committed wrath, one of the seven deadly sins.
Right now, he wanted nothing more than to kill Xuan Zi's whole damned family. He wished he could beat this freeloading old beast to death on the spot!
Bei Bei!
Mu En's only descendant! The sole surviving shoot of his bloodline had been led to his death just like that by the old beast Xuan Zi. Mu En had been wise all his life, yet he had misjudged Xuan Zi again and again, and now Xuan Zi had even brought his bloodline to an end!
The fact that Mu En had not immediately slapped Xuan Zi to death was already proof of his extraordinary self-restraint.
Xuan Zi did not speak. Instead, he first kowtowed heavily to Mu En three times, then described the entire course of the operation in detail.
"That's what happened... I simply didn't have time to save them before the whole cave collapsed in the explosion."
After hearing Xuan Zi out, Mu En and the others looked even worse, because they really could not find fault with Xuan Zi this time!
Anyone else leading the team would likewise have followed behind, keeping an eye on the group and watching for powerful enemies the students could not handle. That way, they would neither interfere with the students' training nor let them face enemies beyond their ability to deal with.
But this time, Dai Yueheng and the others had been careless themselves, charging headlong into the middle of the Evil Soul Master's Corpse Explosion. The Corpse Explosion that Evil Soul Master had set off had even killed him.
It was perfectly normal that Xuan Zi had not been able to react to a move that took both sides down together!
In other words, even if Xuan Zi volunteered to take the blame this time, they could not pin it on him. They would even have to comfort him.
No wonder their expressions were so ugly!
Oh, there was one exception.
Yan Shaozhe looked just as grim, but he felt somewhat relieved. He was among the people in that comparison: if he had led the team, he too would have followed at a distance like Xuan Zi and watched helplessly as the students were blasted to ashes.
Unlike Xuan Zi, Yan Shaozhe would not even have been able to use his Soul Power to save their remains as he had. The children's bones could only have been buried in the death cave.
Because he had to look after Ma Xiaotao, the blame had by pure coincidence landed on Xuan Zi's head again. How could Yan Shaozhe, who had narrowly escaped disaster, not feel relieved?
If this had happened to him, the dean of the Martial Soul Department, his life would have been ruined!
But what no one, including Mu En, had expected was that Xuan Zi snapped!
As they saw it, Xuan Zi had already caused this kind of trouble several times and become a habitual defaulter, with a credit score too low to rent even a power bank. Even though something had gone wrong again, since he was not chiefly responsible, he should only have been dejected for a while.
Who would have thought...
Xuan Zi abruptly raised his head and looked toward the Golden Tree, his eyes filled with resolve to die.
"I have failed Shrek's ancestors, and I have failed those children. My sins can only be repaid with my life!"
Mu En's expression changed drastically once more. "Xuan Zi, don't do anything foolish..."
Before he could finish, Xuan Zi shattered his own Soul Core. His body dissolved on the spot into an earth-yellow starlight that filled the sky, all of it pouring into the Golden Tree.
Alas and alack! Today the supreme elder fell by his own hand before the Sea God Pavilion, using his broken body to declare his unfulfilled resolve!
A legend had fallen!