Chapter 1: New Life Born from Corruption
Famine, plague, drought...
Chen Ming, thin as a skeleton, hid inside a crack between rocks, feeling the complete numbness in his body. Scenes from the past flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern.
He was a Transmigrator, someone who had crossed over from Earth in his previous life. As for why he transmigrated, it was the usual cliché: he had been dragged into another World during a massive collision.
During that collision, his body kept shrinking until he became an infant, then landed outside a village.
Sanhe Village was a village surrounded by 3 rivers. It prospered because of its abundant water source. Relying on the rivers, the villagers used water wheels driven by the current and irrigated their canals.
Although the village was not large, it was relatively wealthy, and the villagers were very friendly with one another. As a result, Chen Ming, who had become an infant, was picked up and brought into the village, growing up on the charity of a hundred families.
At first, he only thought he had arrived in some ancient World. But as he gradually grew up, Chen Ming heard the adults around him mention Martial Soul and Shrek, names that were extremely familiar from his past life. Only then did he learn that the village he was in belonged to the Heavenly Soul Empire.
10,000 years ago, Tang San defeated the Spirit Empire, and the Shrek Seven Devils ascended to godhood, leaving behind the foundation of Shrek. Several thousand years ago, the Douluo Continent and the Sun Moon Continent collided, and in the end, with Shrek's help, the 3 Douluo nations emerged victorious.
A legacy of 10,000 years, the strongest force on the continent, who among the 2 lands and 4 nations of the Sun Moon Continent and the Douluo Continent did not know Shrek's prestige? Even if someone did not know the name of their own Emperor, no one could fail to utter the name Shrek.
Whenever Shrek was mentioned, even the most ordinary farmer in the 3 Douluo nations would proudly puff out his chest.
Within the Heavenly Soul Empire, someone might not know the Emperor's name, but no one was unaware that the current dean of Shrek Academy was Yan Shaozhe.
It was through these stories passed down by the villagers and those familiar names that Chen Ming realized the World he was in was the Douluo world, famous for its unique Martial Soul system. The era he currently lived in was on the timeline of the second part of Douluo Continent, the Desolate Era.
After learning that he had arrived in a World, even a special World like the Douluo world, Chen Ming's heart was filled with a burning desire to grasp transcendent power.
Since Spirit Hall had completely disappeared 10,000 years ago, Martial Soul Awakening was no longer an obligatory matter. Awakening a Martial Soul had become an extremely extravagant affair for ordinary people.
Even though Sanhe Village was prosperous, only the Village Chief had ever awakened a Martial Soul, and even then, he was just an ordinary person without Spirit Power. After endlessly pestering the Village Chief, Chen Ming finally learned that in this era, hiring a Spirit Master capable of performing Martial Soul Awakening required at least 10 gold coins.
Ordinary children could awaken their Martial Soul at the age of 6, but even by the age of 7, Chen Ming had not saved enough money for the awakening. If everything went smoothly, he would need another 1 or 2 years to reach that goal.
But ever since the swamp upstream from Sanhe Village became shrouded in dense thunderclouds and a violent beast roar rang out, the peaceful daily life they once had was completely torn apart.
Countless Spirit Masters sensed the aura of a Vicious Beast appearing within the violent Lightning Tribulation. Soon after, several Spirit Masters wearing Shrek Academy robes arrived at Sanhe Village, led by a slovenly old man holding a chicken leg.
Chen Ming recognized him immediately. That old man was the Gluttonous Douluo, the second strongest figure in Shrek during the Desolate Era. At the time, Chen Ming had desperately wanted to curry favor with those Shrek Spirit Masters, but the group did not remain in the village for long before leaving.
Only a few short hours later, the ground began to shake violently, and the air turned scorching hot. Rays of multicolored light erupted on the distant horizon, while the angry roar of a giant beast echoed through the heavens.
Finally, accompanied by a roar full of fury, the earth yellow phantom of the Gluttonous Divine Ox rose high into the sky. As the Gluttonous One opened its massive mouth, the vitality of the entire land was continuously stripped away.
The Vicious Beast seemed to have perished, but because the Gluttonous Divine Ox had devoured the land's life force and released the Vicious Beast's power, the once peaceful land began to die.
The air became drier and hotter, while the rivers that flowed into Sanhe Village from 3 different sources evaporated under the abnormal heat.
In a year of great drought, fish turn into locusts.
In Chen Ming's previous life, this saying had merely been a misunderstanding caused by the ancients' lack of knowledge. They had mistakenly linked the fish in the water with locust plagues, believing fish transformed into locusts.
But in the Douluo world, Chen Ming truly witnessed what it meant for fish to become locusts.
The clumsy yellow fish shed their scales in the water and transformed into locusts. Plants quickly withered in the extreme heat, and the locusts born from the Locust Fish began reproducing without restraint, devouring the last traces of green.
Vegetation was swallowed clean. Even the resilient Blue Silver Grass was ripped from the ground and eaten down to the roots. The overwhelming number of locusts blotted out the sky, and even natural predators like chickens and ducks were gnawed to death by giant locusts the size of a palm.
Not only were plants and tree bark chewed apart, but even the heartwood of the trees, along with timber already used for houses and daily utensils, was gnawed away by the locusts. Potatoes and other crops buried deep underground were also devoured by locusts tunneling through the soil.
Anything that could be chewed was completely devoured beneath that sky covering swarm.
When the Spirit Power within the locusts gradually became abundant and Spirit Beast locusts began to appear, even large livestock and humans became targets of consumption.
Those locusts also carried powerful toxins, and they themselves seemed to be the source of some special plague. Not only could the locusts not be eaten, but even the things they had contaminated became sources of infection capable of easily taking lives.
Great drought, famine, plague... natural disasters that could effortlessly claim countless lives descended in such an unstoppable way.
After struggling to flee with the remaining villagers for a long time, Chen Ming finally saw the people who were supposedly here to deal with the famine and plague.
They were a group of fully armed Shrek Spirit Masters wearing Shrek attire. They gave Chen Ming and the villagers food and water, gathering victims from many different villages together.
Just when Chen Ming truly thought everything would pass, when it seemed things were slowly becoming stable again, the Shrek Spirit Masters revealed their fangs.
Their method of dealing with the famine and plague was not to solve the problem itself, but to eliminate every potentially living thing within the plague zone, resolving everything in the simplest way possible.
They would kill every disaster victim, famine victim, and possible carrier of the plague without exception.
"This is for the greater good. Your death has meaning."
Chen Ming still remembered the matter of fact voice of the Shrek Spirit Master who had smashed a fist into his chest.
Unexpectedly, Chen Ming, whose ribs had been shattered more than halfway by that blow, did not die immediately. Instead, after lying unconscious for a very long time, he crawled out from the pile of corpses. Somehow, he recovered a trace of strength, then stumbled onward, searching for a chance to survive.
But how could a starving and injured child escape this dead land filled with famine and plague?
"Am I going to die?"
Chen Ming leaned weakly against the rock wall as every function in his body gradually came to a halt. Death seemed to grip his throat like an invisible giant hand.
His once black short hair had become dry and tinged with white from emaciation and weakness. His eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were long since cracked apart. The coarse cloth clothes on his body had already turned into tattered rags barely hanging off him.
His limbs were as thin as a skeleton, and his skin was dry like a mummy, yet his belly bulged outward, exaggerated like that of a woman 10 months pregnant. Though he was still only a child in age, he had clearly already reached the final stage of life.
Pain, powerlessness, confusion?
At first, those pessimistic emotions had certainly existed. But once they reached an extreme, Chen Ming could no longer feel such intense emotional fluctuations. It was as though everything had become separated from him by a hazy layer of illusion, losing all sense of reality.
Chen Ming felt that the organs in his stomach had completely blocked his intestines, that his sunken ribcage was pressing down on every beat of his heart, and that his limbs could not produce even the slightest trace of strength.
After more than 10 days without food or water, while also being ravaged by disease, he should have died many times over according to the limits of the human body. Although he did not know why he was still stubbornly clinging to a final breath, Chen Ming was certain that everything inside him had long begun to rot in silence.
If there was anything left in him now, it was only an extreme unwillingness to accept death.
"I could have saved money for another year and awakened my Martial Soul. I clearly came to the Douluo world, yet I didn't do anything at all and just ended up dying by the roadside in some corner. Truly... I can't accept this..."
"Shrek, I hate you..."
As his life was about to end, Chen Ming felt as if all the pain in his body was leaving him. He was no longer powerless, no longer hungry, no longer even in pain... A surge of power seemed to erupt from within him, sweeping away every negative sensation.
Just as Chen Ming closed his eyes and unwillingly accepted death, a formless power finally began to gestate inside his body.
Like a balloon, Chen Ming's body began swelling, bulging like a pregnant woman. His intestines, already completely blocked by Guanyintou, began writhing more violently than ever before.
Even though he had gone nearly a week without a single drop of water or grain of food, an unreasonable and unprecedented power burst forth from within Chen Ming.
The plague and disease that had tormented him had already seeped deep into his marrow, but they were no longer fatal. Instead, they transformed into some kind of component in the functioning of his body, becoming a necessary factor supporting his life, much like oxygen.
A green light burst from Chen Ming's body. His form began to expand continuously, transforming into a monster whose waist and abdomen made up nearly half of its height, completely covered in dark green skin and giving off a foul stench from within.
Power and hunger erupted together. That sensation instantly stabbed through every one of Chen Ming's nerves, reminding him that he was not dead, that he was still alive, and that he was living in a completely unprecedented form.
"Ugh..."
Chen Ming pushed himself upright with his thick arms braced against the cave wall. A wave of nausea churned through his abdomen, and the mud that had dried and hardened into solid clumps was vomited out of his mouth.
There was no pain, only hunger and power. Though he had no idea why, Chen Ming could clearly feel that his condition was excellent, and an energy he had never felt before was constantly circulating throughout his body.
Driven by hunger, Chen Ming smashed apart the rocks around his hiding place and began searching for anything edible.
Plants? None!
Animals? None!
Grain? Even less!
Everything had already been eaten by the Locust Fish. All that remained on the yellow earth were locusts that had just burrowed out of the soil and had not yet begun to migrate.
"I'll eat you, I'll eat you!"
Chen Ming's 2 thick legs moved. His seemingly bloated body erupted with incomprehensible speed. Like a giant ball of flesh, he pounced onto the juvenile locusts. His 2 large hands scooped them up along with the dirt and brutally stuffed them into his mouth.
Crunch, crunch.
As he chewed, juice burst out inside Chen Ming's mouth. Although these newly hatched locusts were very weak and contained very little energy, even that small trace of vitality was enough to make Chen Ming, who was completely ruled by hunger, feel intoxicated.
That giant ball of flesh kept moving, grabbing locust after locust and stuffing them into his mouth. Faced with the threat of a natural predator, the finger thick locusts flew up and began biting Chen Ming. But their mouthparts, which could chew through solid heartwood, could not even scratch his skin.
And as those locusts landed on Chen Ming and bit him without stopping, a hidden power also flowed into their bodies through contact.
Gradually, the locusts surrounding Chen Ming were either shoved into his mouth by his massive hands or dropped to the ground after being affected by the toxin, only to be picked up and thrown into his mouth afterward.
The more he ate, the hungrier he became. The hungrier he became, the more he ate. The more he ate, the hungrier he became...
Chen Ming wandered across the dry yellow earth like a starving ghost, using a thirsting gaze to scan everything that could possibly be swallowed.
Whether it was leftover deadwood, animal hides, adult Locust Fish as large as fists, or newborn Locust Fish only as thick as fingers, anything above the soil was stuffed into Chen Ming's mouth.
He did not know how long he had eaten, how far he had walked, or how many Locust Fish and scraps that even the Locust Fish could not fully consume he had devoured. But in the end, Chen Ming finally felt a faint sense of fullness in his stomach.
The boundless hunger receded like a falling tide. Chen Ming, who had long lost his reason and been ruled by instinct, slowly recovered the ability to think.
He had neither water nor a mirror, so Chen Ming could not see what he looked like now. However, after lowering his head to look at his swollen green body and sensing the special energy flowing within himself, Chen Ming realized an important fact.
"I awakened my Martial Soul while I was on the verge of death. It's just that my Martial Soul seems to be some kind of very powerful, evil type of Martial Soul."