Right here, then. Let's bury him right here.
"I, I choose candy."
The barbecue restaurant owner had no idea what Xiao Qiang was up to. He had no clue whether the candy was poison or something else, but he knew for a fact that choosing the knife spelled nothing but trouble.
"Choosing the candy? You're a man of deep, unfathomable thoughts. You cannot be allowed to live."
Xiao Qiang frowned, then swiftly picked up the knife he had tossed to the owner. With a flash of blade light, the barbecue restaurant owner's right ear was sliced clean off in an instant.
"Ah! No, no, no, no! I don't want the candy anymore! I don't want the candy! I choose the knife! I choose the knife!"
The barbecue restaurant owner clutched the side of his head where his ear had just been, but right now, he couldn't afford to care about the pain. Driven by the instinct to survive, he hurriedly made a new choice.
"You're choosing the knife?"
"Yes, yes, yes, I'm choosing the knife! I don't want the candy anymore, no more candy! Spare my life!"
Before the owner could even finish, Xiao Qiang swung his blade once more, cleanly severing all four fingers on the man's left hand, leaving only the thumb. "Choosing the knife after all? Looks like you've got a heavy streak for killing. I knew it—you really can't be allowed to live."
"Ah! I'm not choosing! I'm not choosing anything! I don't want the candy or the knife!"
With a single swipe of his blade, Xiao Qiang destroyed the man's right eye. "When given a choice, you refuse to pick? You really are brimming with rebellious bones. Just as I thought, you cannot be allowed to live!"
"Ah! I'll choose both! I'll..."
The barbecue restaurant owner trailed off mid-sentence. He looked up at Xiao Qiang, who was staring right at him with a wide smile, wearing the expression of someone trying to figure out where to make the next cut. Suddenly, it all clicked.
"Because I'm too greedy, you think I can't be allowed to live, is that it?!"
"You said that yourself this time; I didn't say a word. But since that's how you feel, I have no choice but to oblige your wishes."
"You fu—"
……
In some remote wilderness in the middle of nowhere, Xiao Qiang dropped the sack he had been carrying all this way onto the ground.
"Even though you helped those Shrek bastards almost trick me to my death, I'm a man who... well, he's kind-hearted!"
"What I love most is conquering people with virtue. Now that you've been thoroughly conquered by my virtue, our past accounts are wiped clean."
"Look at this place—clear waters and lush mountains. As the Master said: 'Since you've come, you might as well settle down.' Which is to say, since you've arrived here, you might as well be buried here."
"Don't worry. Back then Tang Wulin had his thousand-day dragon burial, and today, within a thousand seconds, I'll bury you. Let you experience what it's like to get the dragon treatment."
With that, Xiao Qiang rapidly dug a pit, tossed in the sack, shoveled the dirt back, and stamped the earth down firmly until there was no give left. Only then did he turn and leave.
Deep underground, the barbecue restaurant owner—who should have breathed his last the moment the dirt was fully packed—was somehow still hanging on.
Because he had been stuffed inside a sack, combined with his sheer, overwhelming will to survive, he had contested the compressed earth alongside Xiao Qiang, managing to scrape together just enough air to keep himself breathing.
Yet before long, as Xiao Qiang thoroughly packed down the soil above, the air inside the sack reached its absolute limit.
"Why! Why is this happening! How did things turn out like this?!"
"I was supposed to join Shrek City, open a barbecue joint, marry a Shrek Soul Master, and reach the peak of my life!"
"Why! Why has it come to this! Why is a Spirit Elder capable of killing a Six-Ring Soul Emperor from Shrek?! Why was that Soul Emperor so utterly pathetic?! Why?!"
As oxygen grew scarce, his fierce survival instinct and towering resentment slowly transformed into power. Wisps of black Qi began to manifest around his body. If an Evil Spirit Master were here right now, they would instantly recognize that he was in the process of awakening a Martial Soul imbued with evil attributes.
This was a Martial Soul mutation brought about when grievance and resentment reached their absolute peak. As the oxygen finally ran out entirely, the mutation completed under the drive of his overwhelming will to live. His newfound power surged, finally hitting a critical threshold where he gained the strength to burst right out of the earth.
A blue hand thrust upward from the soil. The transformation was complete.
"A zombie Martial Soul! Hahaha! Is this the power that Martial Soul awakening brings?!"
"Just you wait, Shrek—the place that screwed me over and nearly got me killed! And you, the bastard who tortured me! You'll all pay the price!"
"My past was defined by failure, by being scammed to death. But from now on, I will control everything!"
"This is the true zombie Martial Soul, the true Wang Xiaodong, the true... me!"
Having awakened his Martial Soul and feeling that abundant Soul Power coursing through him, Wang Xiaodong felt as though he were the greatest being in existence. However...
"Wang Xiaodong, zombie Martial Soul. Well, well. You accused me of being an Evil Spirit Master, but it turns out you're the real Evil Spirit Master here."
A voice he loathed hearing more than anything else rang out from behind him. When he whipped his head around, he found that the source of the voice was none other than Xiao Qiang—the very man who had made him choose between candy and knives, and told him that since he had arrived, he might as well settle down.
"You, you, you... how are you here? Didn't you leave?!"
Having just awakened his Martial Soul and reached Rank 10, logically speaking, this should have been the peak of his arrogance. But the moment he remembered Xiao Qiang's terrifying strength—taking down a Six-Ring Soul Emperor in a single blow—Wang Xiaodong's delusions of grandeur vanished completely.
"About that. After I left just now, I had a thought. I figured I might have gone a little overboard. You only *almost* tricked me to death, after all; how could I just bury you here directly? So I decided to dig you back up."
"And then reduce me to ashes?"
Xiao Qiang shook his head. "I wouldn't go that far."
It was just that halfway down the road, Xiao Qiang had suddenly remembered this was a fantasy world. While accidents were rare under normal circumstances, the very reason accidents were called accidents was that out of ten thousand people, one might just defy the odds.
Xiao Qiang didn't want a moment of carelessness to result in some mutated Martial Soul holder suddenly popping up behind him one day and delivering a fatal blow.
There were no do-overs in this world. Once you died, you probably weren't coming back. Even if Xiao Qiang miraculously retained the memories of his past life in his next incarnation, the privileged status of a Soul Master would most likely be gone—after all, ordinary folks at the bottom of the ladder were always the majority.
Therefore, Xiao Qiang had no intention of gambling here, nor did he want to regret a decision made today. The moment he sensed something could go wrong, he turned right back around.
"Let me tell you, my Martial Soul has already awakened! It's a top-tier, unkillable zombie Martial Soul! Even if I don't have a Soul Ring yet, you can't kill me!" Wang Xiaodong yelled. Facing Xiao Qiang, his tone was fierce, though his words carried more than a hint of cowardice.
"Oh, it's fine. Anyway..."
Xiao Qiang silently pulled a three-meter-long iron rod out of his storage Soul Tool. "The Master did not speak of ghosts, powers, disorder, and gods. In other words, as long as my strength is mighty enough, I can beat even ghosts and deities to death, let alone a ghost-grandson like you."
Wang Xiaodong: "..."
13. Chapter 13: Brother Tianmeng, Become a Soul Engineer
Chapter 13: Brother Tianmeng, Become a Soul Engineer
"Finally back in the Sun Moon Empire."
It took Xiao Qiang half an hour to beat Wang Xiaodong into a pulp of flesh, divide the corpse into fifteen portions, and either bury them in various spots or toss them into the river to feed the fish. He had practically eliminated any possibility of the man coming back to find him alive.
If Wang Xiaodong could somehow still return to exact his revenge after all that, then Xiao Qiang would simply be out of options. The man was practically reduced to dust and ashes; what more could Xiao Qiang possibly do? He had done everything that could be done. If this plane insisted on letting the guy resurrect endlessly just to bother him, then Xiao Qiang truly had no other solutions left.
You do your best and leave the rest to fate. If hundreds of bolts of lightning suddenly struck out of the clear blue sky straight onto your head, what could you do besides wait for death? Even if you locked yourself inside a Faraday cage, an earthquake would still come along and bury you. That was no longer a problem Xiao Qiang could solve.
"Brother Tianmeng, take a look and tell me which of these things are actually useful to me."
Upon returning to the Sun Moon Empire, Xiao Qiang finally felt a measure of peace. He took out the Soul Tool weapons he had previously acquired from Yang Peng, and with a trickle of Soul Power, hauled everything inside right out.
"Let's see... Birch heart, green wood sap, wisteria, a 2,000-year-level Netherworld Wolf beast meat, a mere thousand-year-level Beast Blood Fruit, and a few thousand Soul Gold Coins from you humans. Hmm..."
"This Soul Emperor is too damn poor! Could you at least have something that defies description?! What even are all these scraps!" Tianmeng complained grumpily.
"Alright, Brother Tianmeng, can you really expect a Soul Emperor to be rich? The point right now is whether these things are useful to me. And how should I use them to maximize my benefits?"
Xiao Qiang didn't mind that the murdered Soul Emperor hadn't dropped anything particularly amazing. He wasn't a child of destiny like Huo Yuhao; lacking the protagonist's halo, expecting a random Soul Emperor he killed on the road to drop a mountain of incredible treasures was obviously unrealistic.
Therefore, Xiao Qiang had been mentally prepared for this from the start. He had prepared himself to settle for the bare minimum, which was precisely why he hadn't bothered opening that Shrek Soul Emperor's storage tool right away.
He already had a pretty good idea of what kind of loot to expect. Having no expectations from the beginning meant he wouldn't be disappointed either.
"Useful, they're useful enough. Though none of these things are particularly grand—for a Six-Ring Soul Emperor, they're basically just auxiliary aids for cultivation—luckily you aren't a Soul Emperor yet, just a Rank 33 Spirit Elder."
"Later on, use the Heaven-Swallowing Divine Art I created to devour them, and increasing your Soul Power by a rank in a short time won't be a problem. Plus some lingering benefits, your Soul Power should be able to push to Rank 34 in about two months."
"Damn it! A dignified Six-Ring Soul Emperor, and his storage Soul Tool only has this little junk in it! What has he even been doing all these years?!" Tianmeng grumbled angrily, clearly displeased with Yang Peng for dropping such meager pickings.
"Alright, Brother Tianmeng, having something is better than nothing. After all, he was just a Soul Emperor. How many resources could an average Soul Emperor possibly possess, and how much can they carry around on their person? It's not like he walked around carrying his entire net worth just waiting for someone to rob him."
Xiao Qiang said nonchalantly. This Shrek Soul Emperor was a windfall to begin with; anything that could offer him even a modest boost was already great. At the very least, the difficulty of his future progression had dropped a notch.
Originally, he needed less than a year to raise his Soul Power by eight ranks. Now, the timeframe hadn't changed much, but he only needed to raise it by seven ranks. The difficulty had already decreased significantly.
"What you're saying is true, but to force big brother here to use his foundational power only to get this little return... big brother is still very unhappy."
"Don't be mad, Brother Tianmeng."
Xiao Qiang coaxed the Tianmeng Ice Worm. In the original timeline, when the Tianmeng Ice Worm used his Tianmeng Finger to freeze Ma Xiaotao, the ultimate reward Huo Yuhao got was just a Soul Elevation Pill given by Shrek Academy, which could raise a Spirit Elder's power by one rank.
Right now, he had similarly acquired items capable of boosting his rank by one. Granted, he didn't have Wang Dong on his side, but he also didn't have that crazy woman Ma Xiaotao either. He didn't have to worry about freezing Ma Xiaotao only to receive a life-threatening beating afterward. All things considered, it was still a net positive.
"Right, let's drop this, Brother Tianmeng. What's done is done. For now, we should make the most of these items. Tell me how to consume them for the best results."
"Oh. That 2,000-year-level Netherworld Wolf meat is best roasted and eaten. Of course, if you want, you can make hot pot out of it, or prepare it any other way you like. Since the meat is already frozen anyway, there aren't many nutrients left to lose."
"The birch heart, green wood sap, and wisteria can be eaten directly; those things don't have very dense energy. The main event is that Beast Blood Fruit. Even though it's a Beast Blood Fruit and not a Dragon Blood Fruit, that's the real big ticket item among these. When you eat that thing, you need to pay attention to..."
……
A day later, relying on the loot dropped by Yang Peng before his death, Xiao Qiang successfully transitioned from a Rank 32 Spirit Elder to a Rank 33 Spirit Elder.
"Thank you, Mother Nature, for your bounty." Xiao Qiang brought his hands together in a clasp. He could now fully understand the sheer thrill of taking performance-enhancing drugs to boost one's strength.
"Huh? What did you say?" Tianmeng, who was just about to go back to sleep, blinked in confusion at Xiao Qiang's words, failing to understand what he meant or why he was suddenly dragging Mother Nature into this.
"Nothing, don't worry about it, Brother Tianmeng. Just mumbling to myself, nothing important."
"Oh, then I'm going back to sleep. Wake me up when it's time to eat."
"Got it."
The moment Xiao Qiang agreed, the Tianmeng Ice Worm collapsed inside Xiao Qiang's Spiritual Sea and fell fast asleep without a single pause, making Xiao Qiang immensely envious of the worm's formidable sleep quality.
With the Tianmeng Ice Worm out cold, Xiao Qiang made preparations for his journey to the imperial capital. He bought a large stack of books needed by Soul Engineers, and then boarded the Soul Express train heading for Mingdetang.
On the train, Xiao Qiang and Tianmeng shared a hot pot. Naturally, there was no singing involved, nor were they suddenly ambushed by bandits.
Just as Tianmeng finished eating his fill and prepared to nod off again, Xiao Qiang cut him off to kick off his next step.
"Brother Tianmeng, don't go to sleep just yet. A question suddenly popped into my head."
"Huh? Is it about what to eat tonight? Just handle that yourself; I trust your palate. But pay attention—next time, don't make it quite so spicy. I'm not a huge fan of spicy food."
Xiao Qiang: "..." Eat, sleep, sleep, eat! That's all he does!
"Brother Tianmeng, it's not about food. I'm thinking about something else."
"What is it?"
"Brother Tianmeng, how about you become a Soul Engineer?"
"Oh, got it. Then let's do as you say and be... wait, what?"