When Jing Hongchen pushed the wheelchair in, he immediately felt an immense, indescribable force sweep over him. It pierced through his clothes and skin, and even into his internal organs. It was as if someone was peering through him from the inside out.
Though it only lasted a moment, a cold sweat broke out across his back.
The woman in the wheelchair, Xi Hongchen, looked ashen and kept her head lowered, unaware of anything.
Jing Hongchen immediately became alert. His hands tightened on the wheelchair handles, gripping so hard that the wood creaked, his gaze warily fixed on Di Feng.
The tall, blonde woman only curved her eyes at him with an ambiguous smile. The three golden scales on her brow shimmered faintly with a barely noticeable bloody glow. It didn't seem sinister, but it carried an inexplicable terror.
Under her gaze, the blood-red shimmer slowly faded.
"Interesting," Wang Rui said with a smile.
How did that saying go again?
Woman, you have piqued my interest.jpg
The fate surrounding Xi Hongchen was certainly intriguing.
Though Di Feng's body was sculpted from entirely organic plant material, it had been refined with the blood of an imperial auspicious beast. Naturally, it could exhibit some of the beast's abilities. Using a portion of the Eye of Fate's power was no issue.
Wang Rui had originally only been curious about Jing Hongchen's daughter, who hadn't appeared in the original story. That was why he peered into her destiny.
From the Eye of Fate's perspective, the threads representing her connections to others were still intact, but the light and mist from her body were in a state of collapse, only held together by a mirrored illusion of the sun and moon. It hadn't completely dispersed yet.
She had clearly died recently—very likely in the Extreme North. Her meridians were filled with soul power of a sharp, ice attribute, like blades. Even more striking was a blood-tinged connection that tied her to the Extreme North and the Snow Empress.
That link went deeper than simple karma of life and death—it was as solid as a preordained lifeline. But since the Snow Empress had been replaced by Lian Xue, the other end of that cord had split, with a large portion of bloody light falling into the Extreme North.
And yet, Xi Hongchen had been forcibly kept in the human world.
Normally, in the Douluo universe, any resurrection was tied to divinity. But in this world, gods were just humans with more power. If someone strong enough could do it, then with enough sacrifice, a human could do it too.
Over the span of tens of thousands of years, there had indeed been rare cases where the boundary between life and death was broken.
One such example was the martial soul passed down by the royal family of the Sun Moon Empire from another continent.
Sun and Moon represented Yin and Yang. The mirror reflected Yin and Yang, reversing life and death.
The Sun Moon Royal Family could, in rare instances, awaken a twin martial soul—Sun Shadow and Moon Shadow—enabling a powerful but nearly useless self-soul fusion skill called the Yin-Yang Mirror.
One side (white) represented life, the other (red) death. It could ignore power levels to resurrect or kill a person—reversing life and death.
It sounded outrageously mythic. But considering that Xuanwu, Golden Crow, and Qilin had all appeared, Wang Rui wasn't particularly surprised to encounter such a martial soul.
This kind of judgment over life and death was clearly overpowered. The cost of using it, naturally, was also extreme—it consumed the user's own life.
In extreme cases, a newly awakened child with the twin Sun-Moon martial soul who could use the fusion skill could trade their life to resurrect or kill a full-strength Ultimate Douluo.
Unfortunately, this soul fusion skill only worked on soul masters below god-level. Otherwise, Wang Rui might've gone mad trying to rope the entire Sun Moon Royal Family into Beast Sect's service to "buy lottery tickets."
This was the foundation that once allowed the Xu family to firmly claim the imperial throne—and the reason the continent was named after Sun and Moon.
However, as generations passed, the royal family began integrating stronger bloodlines, and the odds of awakening the twin martial souls grew slimmer.
Through successive power struggles, they began to discard some traditions—elevating the Sun martial soul to orthodoxy, and relegating the Moon soul to the sidelines.
Today's Sun Moon Emperor possessed the "Purple Radiance Extinguishing Dragon" martial soul, inherited from a powerful queen several generations ago—eclipsing the original Sun martial soul.
Compared to the impractical and costly Yin-Yang Mirror, the royal family chose to strengthen its bloodline through marriages with powerful soul masters possessing rare martial souls and no political baggage.
The Yin-Yang Mirror, capable of reversing life and death, had now faded into legend within the Sun Moon Empire.
The last known appearance of the twin Sun-Moon martial soul was in Princess Xu Jing—lover of Wen Qiang—who once led the empire against the Douluo Continent during a time of cataclysm.
As for how many times it had appeared before the Sun-Moon vs. Douluo collision, history no longer recorded.
…Human legacy, Wang Rui mused, was never designed to span tens of thousands of years.
Humans with martial souls were simply too powerful. When they turned that strength toward conflict, it became all too easy to destroy the physical records of history.
To destroy a library, normal humans would need firewood and time, and might even fail if there were fire-prevention measures. But a high-level soul master needed only one skill.
Perhaps this was why civilization in the Douluo World had stagnated.
Not all civilizations treated historical record-keeping as a top priority, the way Wang Rui's homeland did.
As for who this new twin martial soul user was—he didn't care. The person was already dead.
What concerned Wang Rui now was the relationship between this fleetingly reappearing "orthodox" twin soul master and the Hongchen family—whether this signaled a coming upheaval in the Sun Moon Empire, and how the Beast Sect could profit from it via the Holy Spirit Sect and the Silver Moon Chamber of Commerce.
His gaze toward Jing Hongchen turned markedly more "friendly."
On the other side, seeing Di Feng's unreadable expression, Jing Hongchen's heart started to pound.
He knew the Dragon Emperor Douluo had used some unknown method to examine him and his daughter, but couldn't tell if she had discerned Xi Hongchen's true state.
In fact, Xi Hongchen hadn't merely lost her left hand—her other injuries were severe. Most of her meridians were damaged, and her soul power was nearly unusable. The fact that she had crawled back alive from the Extreme North was a miracle.
She was still breathing only because of the combined efforts of top-tier healing soul masters and premium pills from the Emerald Pill Pavilion.
Jing Hongchen hadn't dared to spell this out—worried Di Feng might see it as troublesome and dismiss them entirely. If she was even remotely willing to inquire further, he was confident he could negotiate—even at a higher price.
But the question that came next caught him entirely off guard.
"You want to use the Advanced Soul Master Academy Tournament to help your daughter and grandchildren escape the Sun Moon Empire?"
"This…" Jing Hongchen's smile froze.
"The Sun Moon Emperor has been bedridden for years, hasn't he? The old man who seized the throne from his brother is getting more paranoid by the day… and Prince Xu Tianran is far too powerful and perfect," Wang Rui said casually, as if musing to himself, yet clearly with intent. "Surely you've already chosen a side. You want to send your blood relatives out of the dangerous fray and wait for the dust to settle. So you plan to agree to Shrek Academy's exchange proposal—this way, even if you backed the wrong horse and fall in the succession struggle, your grandchildren can remain at Shrek and avoid returning to the empire. Perhaps they could even leverage Shrek to avenge you."
A trace of fear flickered in Jing Hongchen's eyes as he looked at Di Feng.
Shrek's exchange proposal had only been known to a handful of senior staff. Jing Hongchen himself had never indicated his willingness to agree.
"Exchange with Shrek Academy?" Wang Rui smiled. "We of the Beast Sect are a better choice."
Now that the soul beast-soul master equality contract had been simplified, Wang Rui was confident he could perfect soul spirit development during the exchange.
He intended to recruit a batch of students from both Sun Moon and Shrek Academies, then, before the second tournament round, introduce the "soul spirit" concept to the elite circles of both powers.
Naturally, he couldn't let Jing Hongchen go.
Jing Hongchen froze and instinctively tried to refuse, "Well… the Beast Sect is still a sect, after all…"
"To be honest, we're not your typical sect. Our members simply share a common ideology, and we don't impose excessive rules. And we've been planning to establish a formal academy. We'd love to learn from an institution as research-focused as yours." Wang Rui smiled.
The wording was clever. Jing Hongchen stroked his beard, secretly pleased—he was quite satisfied with Mingde Hall's current research competition system.
If Di Feng had claimed Beast Sect wanted to study soul tool technology, he'd be far less impressed. Mingde Hall still hadn't figured out a few civilian soul tools from the New City.
Seeing Jing's reaction, Wang Rui smiled even more warmly. "For starters, our history is not much shorter than Shrek's. In martial soul research—especially beast souls—we're no worse. And unlike Shrek, we don't care about family background or influence. Also, our lodging is far superior. Each guest student gets a private residence with a personal bathroom—not like Shrek, where the prestigious students still have to share one toilet with 400 others."
Uh-oh, he did go to Shrek.
Jing Hongchen: …?
"My juniors are studying at Shrek," Wang Rui said. "I was genuinely shocked by the living conditions."
"…If our academy agrees to this exchange, will students be allowed to visit all five cities of your sect?"
Jing Hongchen was indeed tempted.
Not because of the "400 people to one toilet" comment—though it echoed like a curse in his mind. He knew full well that in places like Shrek, conditions for upper and lower grades varied dramatically. But still—400 people sharing a toilet…
He forcibly stopped thinking about that.
Beyond soul tools, the Beast Sect's other advantage was also deeply attractive:
Pills.
The Sun Moon Empire heavily relied on pills for cultivation, but theirs had severe side effects and were inferior to those in the Douluo nations—let alone those from the Emerald Pill Pavilion.
Each year, the empire paid large sums to buy pills from the Moon Shadow Chamber of Commerce. Fortunately, Moon Shadow also had a high demand for rare metals, and trade remained fairly balanced—so far.
No one in the Douluo world (except perhaps one transmigrator) had yet conceptualized trade deficits or surpluses. But that was enough to make Jing Hongchen uneasy.
"If Mingde Hall wants to learn alchemy, our sect would gladly share. Alchemy exists to ease suffering—it should not be hoarded." Wang Rui said.
Of course, the Sun Moon Empire's soil was rich in metal, making its herbs unbalanced. Even if they learned alchemy, they'd still need to import ingredients from Douluo.
"Then, on behalf of the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy, I agree. We'll select candidates after the tournament." Jing Hongchen nodded.
"In that case, I hope you won't mind one minor, mutually beneficial request," Wang Rui said.
"Please speak."
"I want three tournament slots from your academy." Wang Rui narrowed his eyes. "I have an old friend with grievances against Dragon God Douluo. She wants to defeat Shrek, but cannot appear herself—so she wants to send her disciples."
Jing Hongchen thought: You're really going to play the 'old friend' card? Everyone knows about your beef with Mu En.
But he maintained his composure, saying the team didn't have time to train coordination.
Wang Rui scoffed, "Among them is a twenty-year-old Soul Sage and a Soul Ancestor under fifteen."
A twenty-year-old Soul Sage—could only mean one person.
Lan Fozi, disciple of Bright Phoenix Douluo Ye Xishui, and Saintess of the Holy Spirit Sect.
Ha. What an "old friend." What a "grudge."
Jing Hongchen wiped the sweat from his forehead and changed his tune: "There's certainly enough time left. They can start training with our team at Mingde Hall right away."
"As for your daughter," Wang Rui glanced at the unconscious Xi Hongchen in the wheelchair, "the Emerald Pill Pavilion can rebuild her meridians. But to regenerate a limb, we'd need the Emerald Swan Bi Ji herself. And even with Bi Ji's help, the required rare resources would be tremendous."
The karmic bond between Xi Hongchen and the Snow Empress was unnaturally stable. The simultaneous appearance of the Snow Empress embryo and Ice Jade Scorpion soul bone at a Star Luo auction, the condition of Xi Hongchen's shattered left arm and meridians—all pointed to something.
It meant Jing Hongchen had something Huo Yuqing must obtain.
"I also want your daughter's harvest from the Extreme North."
(End of Chapter)