"All right, I understand."
"You can go now. I'll be over in a bit."
Qing Linyun nodded. Ye Lingling licked her lips and gently poked out her pink tongue.
Before leaving, she couldn't resist wiggling her butt at Qing Linyun.
"Hmph, what a man with no sense of romance."
Ye Lingling muttered to herself, then turned and left.
Qing Linyun shook his head and paid her no further attention.
He leaned back gently, the soft leather enveloping his back and waist. It was very comfortable, and he felt quite relaxed.
He gazed at the distant Spirit Pagoda Headquarters, towering into the clouds, and sank into thought.
It had been fifteen years since he transmigrated to this world.
Much of the time, after learning that he had a system, Qing Linyun's ambitions grew even greater.
After he acquired his Martial Soul at six and could draw on more resources, Qing Linyun's ambitions truly began to show.
At first, he used his image as a young, naive child to ask the venerable elders on Sea God Island for money. Cunning as a fox, Qing Linyun spent most of it on Soul Spirits.
He had amassed quite a few, both thousand-year and ten-thousand-year ones.
When he grew a little older, Qing Linyun made a point of studying Soul Spirit technology, then released some thousand-year and ten-thousand-year Soul Spirits from time to time, presenting himself as a Soul Spirit genius.
That truly shocked the venerable elders of Shrek.
Even the Spirit Pagoda had yet to master the core technology for ten-thousand-year Artificial Soul Spirits. What it used were old Soul Spirits passed down from the past.
That was to say, Soul Spirits made from genuine ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts in earlier times.
That was how Qing Linyun obtained his first accumulation of capital.
After all, no matter how high the quality of a ten-thousand-year Soul Spirit, it could be bought for just a few million Federation Coins in the Daily Shop.
Of course, if you asked how much Qing Linyun sold them for-ahem... a high-quality thousand-year Soul Spirit from the Spirit Pagoda cost a hundred million Federation Coins even after a discount.
So it wasn't too much for me to sell a genuine ten-thousand-year Soul Spirit formed from a Soul Beast for over a billion, was it?
What? You said Qing Linyun was a capitalist? Never mind how much he made on the markup.
The Spirit Pagoda's costs weren't necessarily all that high either, yet didn't it still sell its products at high prices?
Those were all labor costs.
As for why word had spread within Shrek that Qing Linyun often cheated and swindled people, that was another matter.
After all, the daily system refreshed irregularly, and Soul Masters generally chose Soul Spirits that suited them best.
But not everyone was rich enough to pick Soul Spirits at will from the Spirit Pagoda.
So many people turned their attention to Qing Linyun.
After all, the Soul Spirits Qing Linyun offered were up to standard, and customers could even choose the attributes and direction of the Soul Skills. However one looked at it, it was a good deal.
But here was the most important part: Qing Lingyun couldn't make Soul Spirits himself. His Soul Spirits all came from refreshes in the system's Daily Shop; whenever he came across a suitable one, he bought it.
Although Qing Lingyun often bought out every Soul Spirit he could, even that couldn't keep up with demand.
Some people were too picky. Once the bloodline and Soul Skill direction were fixed, getting a matching one to appear in a refresh was somewhat difficult.
But Qing Lingyun wanted the money. What was he to do? Take the money first, of course.
As for not getting the job done, it wasn't that he wouldn't do it-the time hadn't come, and he couldn't do it yet.
His guiding principle was the art of delay.
Although he did eventually deliver in the end, the delays were long enough. Generally, people only had to look at Qing Linyun's reputation, and he really did have the strength back then. After all, Qing Linyun had spent no small amount of money on himself.
Otherwise, he couldn't have reached the Soul Saint level at fifteen.
He was a Two-Word Battle Armor Master, with a configuration of four black and three red.
So most people gritted their teeth and put up with it. After all, Qing Linyun was plainly very talented, and his backing at Shrek Academy was deep enough that people generally avoided provoking him if they could.
Of course, some inner-court students really weren't afraid of Qing Linyun. There was nothing he could do about that, so he had no choice but to shamelessly deny the debt.
If that were all, Qing Linyun's reputation for cheating and swindling would truly have been set in stone. And gradually, fewer people would have come to him to buy Soul Spirits.
The turning point came when Qing Linyun was twelve. That year, he spent a billion Federation Coins.
He bought something from the system's Daily Shop, something that could be called his ultimate trump card for dominating the Soul Spirit market in the future.
It was the ultimate Artificial Soul Spirit formula. All he needed was a trace of a Soul Beast's bloodline, combined with a few other materials, to create the corresponding Artificial Soul Spirit.
The results were excellent, too.
The key was that it was cheap.
From that point on, Qing Linyun never lacked money again.
At the same time, he used it to build a formidable network of connections, radiating outward from Shrek Academy to encompass the various powers across the entire continent.
Qing Linyun's wallet was bulging too.
That was why he could pour over ten billion Federation Coins into his Two-Word Battle Armor. The sheer extravagance of Qing Linyun's Two-Word Battle Armor was staggering.
It was made entirely from materials produced by the system: divine-grade gold crystal with one hundred percent fusion compatibility.
Normally, it would have been difficult enough for Qing Linyun to craft Battle Armor suited to him at all. After all, his Dark Demon Evil God Tiger Martial Soul had six attributes: evil, space, time, wind, lightning, and strength.
For an ordinary Soul Master's Battle Armor, accommodating all six attributes in Two-Word Battle Armor was simply impossible. After all, making them compatible required a blacksmith capable of forging metals of all six attributes at once.
And a blacksmith like that would either be an eighth-rank Saint Craftsman, or he would have to personally enlist the Divine Craftsman Zhen Hua.
Clearly, no one on the Douluo Continent had yet been extravagant enough to go that far.
Only Qing Linyun had the patience to spend several years and over ten billion Federation Coins equipping himself with this set of Battle Armor.
Not to mention Qing Linyun's two Soul Spirits, both of which were perfectly suited to him-the finest of the finest.
At the thought, a smile curved Qing Linyun's lips.
"Ah, when I think of these past fifteen years, all the twists and turns I've been through, I've finally made it to where I am today."
Qing Linyun sighed with emotion.
As he reflected, Qing Linyun raised his right hand and gently pinched the tips of his index finger and thumb together. A gilt-edged card, dark purple all over, instantly appeared between his fingertips.
The card turned gently until its face was directly before Qing Linyun's eyes.
On its face, a blurry figure wearing a crown slowly emerged. Blood-red colors interwove across the card like countless streams of flowing magma, while all living beings knelt in submission.
[Divine artifact: Devil Card] [Salvation is also destruction] [Effect: Once the user signs a contract with a contracted party, that party will offer everything they have to the host. They may not betray, resist, or disobey.] (Note: Salvation means that the contracted party can be resurrected even after death. This is salvation, and also destruction.) Takes effect forcibly and cannot be interfered with. [Description: This is the devil's salvation, and also the devil's destruction. Offer everything you have to the devil. As for the price... you know.]
"This thing really is useful."
"Who came up with it? No wonder it cost me ten billion Federation Coins back then. It was damn well worth it."
A smile curved Qing Linyun's lips, and he nodded in satisfaction.
Long ago, Qing Linyun had realized that with a piece of black technology like Artificial Soul Spirits in his hands, it was only a matter of time before someone set their sights on him-especially the Spirit Pagoda, watching him like a tiger eyeing its prey.
And Shrek Academy would never send people to protect him all day.
Qing Linyun didn't want to stay on Sea God Island all day either. For one thing, he would have no freedom; for another, the secret of his system was too great to let anyone know.
So it was essential for him to have an armed force of his own.
Of course, he could gather capable and dedicated people to serve under him.
Qing Linyun had the ability to do that too.
After all, if he started training people from childhood and raised them as deathsworn,
he could trust them more, and they would be more loyal, but it would take too long. Perhaps by the time Qing Linyun had grown strong, those people still wouldn't have, and they would be of no use at all.
If he recruited Titled Douluo, they might not obey Qing Linyun, and he wouldn't be able to trust them either.
That left Qing Linyun in a dilemma.
But a solution soon appeared: the divine artifact, the Devil Card. Ye Lingling was the first person to contract with the card.