Northwest of Star Luo City, at the Duke of White Tiger's Estate.
On this day, just as the sky was beginning to brighten, a youth of average build dressed in grey cloth clothes, appearing to be eleven or twelve years old, slipped out from the rear northern gate of the Duke's mansion.
After muttering a few low words to himself—phrases like "Mother, I will definitely return to avenge you"—he cast one last resentful glance at the estate, turned, and headed resolutely toward the Star Dou Great Forest.
Meanwhile, in a thicket about a kilometer away from the Duke's estate, a black figure partially revealed itself. Watching this scene from afar, his body began to tremble uncontrollably. His long, powerful hands gripped the hem of his clothes, tugging at them repeatedly as if they were an enemy; fortunately, the material was high quality, or it would have been torn apart. Then, he turned and vanished into the woods.
A moment later, from another direction outside the thicket, a different youth emerged.
This youth appeared to be of a similar age to the one who had just left the Duke's estate—perhaps slightly older, but not by much. He had large, clear eyes, meticulously shaped eyebrows, a fair and refined complexion, thin lips, and a straight bridge of his nose. He carried an elegant aura, with long black hair draped casually behind him in a way that didn't seem unrefined. He wore a set of luxurious combat robes, primarily black with gold silk embroidery along the edges. A large black hooded cloak hung from his back, accentuating his lean and slender frame.
He looked exactly like a noble young master from ancient times.
His features and physique were near perfection; had he been on Blue Star, any person who saw him would likely have lost themselves in a momentary daze.
The youth was named Feng Piaoling, and he held two identities.
In one identity, he was an orphan adopted by Xu Tianran, the Crown Prince of the Sun Moon Empire. Because of his extraordinary talent, he possessed remarkable aptitude in both Soul Master cultivation and Soul Tool research, earning Xu Tianran's high regard from a young age. Along with Ju Zi, the future Empress Dowager who would nearly unify the Douluo Continent, he was treated as one of Xu Tianran's closest confidants.
This time, he was ordered to head to Shrek Academy as an undercover agent to investigate news regarding the former Crown Prince, Xu He, and if possible, find an opportunity to eliminate him.
As for why Xu Tianran knew about Xu He's identity at Shrek, that involved Feng Piaoling's other identity.
He was a transmigrator.
In his previous life, he had unfortunately died from exhaustion after staying up late reading webnovels. When he woke up again, he had been reincarnated into this world ten thousand years after Tang San's ascension to godhood. He was born in a small border town of the Sun Moon Empire.
There was no "tragic death of parents," no "broken engagement," and no "humiliation from others" at the start. His mother ran a restaurant and had a Talisman martial soul with no soul power. His father was a Soul Master with a Green Lotus Sword martial soul; though not a top-tier soul, he had reached nearly the level of a Soul Ancestor by his early twenties.
However, in his sixth year, everything changed.
Evil Soul Masters attacked his city. Every civilian, including his parents, died a tragic death, leaving him as the sole survivor.
Watching the youth from the Duke's estate gradually receding into the distance, Feng Piaoling felt a surge of complex emotions. Unknowingly, it had been nearly twelve years since he transmigrated to this world. The things he had experienced were more intense than the decades of his previous life combined. He had gone from the high-spirited ambition of his early transmigration to his current state of inner stillness; from the terror of vomiting while hidden in a rice vat watching his parents be murdered, to his current calm endurance when facing his enemies.
At this moment, the culprit behind his parents' death was practically obvious.
The people who killed his parents were indeed Evil Soul Masters, that much was true. But the true mastermind behind the scenes was likely someone else. And the prime suspect was undoubtedly the very man who had adopted him: Xu Tianran, the Crown Prince of the Sun Moon Empire.
As for why it was him, the logic was simple. First, Xu Tianran was in league with the Holy Ghost Cult. Second, the Evil Soul Masters had pillaged the small city for three days, slaughtering every living thing on the street where his family lived—the kind of massacre where even an earthworm would have been sliced in half. Yet, they miraculously failed to find him hidden in the rice vat.
When he was finally "found," Xu Tianran had personally traveled thousands of miles to bring men and kill all the Evil Soul Masters. Anyone with a bit of intelligence could see the problem with that sequence of events.
As for why Xu Tianran had targeted him, that was also simple. It was because he had a "cheat."
The cheat was named "Heaven Rewards the Diligent." As long as he found the right method and direction for a skill or cultivation technique and persevered, he would eventually succeed. Depending on the difficulty—for example, before his martial soul had even awakened—Feng Piaoling had sat in meditation to sense soul power every day starting from age one. He persisted for two and a half years, finally sensing soul power by age four.
In the two years that followed, through trial and error in absorption, he created a cultivation technique perfectly suited to himself. Relying on this technique, he not only cultivated innate full soul power but also sensed the Green Lotus Sword inherited from his father's bloodline and the Talisman martial soul from his mother's. While neither was an exceptionally powerful martial soul on its own, it was a magnificent beginning.
With his self-created technique, he managed to prevent the Green Lotus Sword and the Talisman from consuming each other during the awakening, thereby successfully awakening twin martial souls.
Out of caution, when his father took him to the City Lord's manor for the awakening ceremony, he only displayed the Talisman martial soul. To his surprise, by sheer bad luck, the local City Lord had actually attended Shrek Academy and was a fan of that fraud from ten thousand years ago, Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang.
Upon learning that Feng Piaoling had awakened a Talisman martial soul with innate full soul power, the City Lord asked if he possessed a second, more powerful martial soul. Though he flatly denied it and didn't even tell his parents, it still brought disaster upon his home.
Thus, it wasn't hard to explain why Xu Tianran would travel so far to find him in a godforsaken border town. If Xu Tianran had recruited him normally, for the sake of his parents' future, Feng Piaoling might have considered serving him faithfully to help him unify the continent. But that madman should never have incited Evil Soul Masters to kill his parents.
Now, his revenge was beginning.
After leaving the Sun Moon Empire, he had come directly here to stake out "Huo the Dog" and intercept the Skydream Ice Worm and Electrolux.
As for why he called him "Huo the Dog"? Aside from being trained into a dog by Tang San in the middle and late stages of the story, it was inseparable from his own "dog-like" behavior—those who know, know.
To intercept Skydream and Electrolux, he had made extensive preparations. In the five years since his awakening, aside from raising his soul power to level thirty early on, he had specifically tempered his mental strength, successfully expanding his spiritual sea.
The method for expanding the spiritual sea was also simple: first, he had the servants of the Crown Prince's estate throw pebbles at him, then gradually increased the difficulty by using Soul Tools to attack himself. He would release his mental power to dodge. At first, he was left bruised and battered, but with continuous application, his mental strength grew steadily, expanding his spiritual sea in the process.
During this period, he also created a mental cultivation and eye-refining technique called "Heaven-Reaching Demon Eye" and a footwork technique called "Phantasmagoric Shadow." The Heaven-Reaching Demon Eye could temper mental strength and see through an enemy's weaknesses. The Phantasmagoric Shadow offered incredible speed and evasion, allowing him to create soul power afterimages to confuse his foes. Either of these would provide immense support in combat.