Chapter 124: The Sea God Pavilion's Pride Shattered! Du Busi Corners Elder Xuan
The final, stubborn embers of crimson evil fire hissed and died against Ma Xiaotao's battered form. For a fleeting second, a suffocating silence gripped Star Luo Plaza.
Then, the stillness shattered. An unmatched shockwave of sound erupted from the stands, shaking the very foundations of the arena.
The head referee stood frozen at the edge of the ruined stage. He drew in a long, ragged breath, fighting to suppress the wild thumping of his heart. He was a veteran, a man who had presided over countless high-stakes tournaments, yet as he lifted his voice amplification tool to his lips, a faint tremor betrayed his composure.
He raised his right hand high into the air, his fingers pointing rigidly toward the bruised but standing figures of the Heavenly Soul Imperial Academy team.
"The Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Elite Tournament final has been decided!" His magically amplified voice boomed across the roaring stadium, cracking slightly on the final syllables. "The winner of this match... is the Heavenly Soul Imperial Academy! Let us congratulate the Heavenly Soul Imperial Academy on their historic championship victory!"
A tsunami of cheers swallowed his final words. Hundreds of thousands of spectators leaped to their feet, their voices merging into a deafening roar that threatened to tear the clouds apart. Confetti and banners in the Heavenly Soul Empire's colors began to rain down from the VIP boxes.
This was no ordinary celebration. Every single person screaming themselves hoarse knew exactly what they were witnessing. They were watching a ten-thousand-year dynasty crumble into dust. They were watching the end of an era.
Down in the center of the cratered ring, the dust began to settle around seven figures. Long Aotian threw his head back, letting out a long, cathartic shout, before pulling Vina and Chen Lu into a crushing embrace. The rest of the team piled in, their dirt-streaked faces wet with tears of sheer disbelief.
"We did it... we are the champions!" Chen Lu choked out, burying his face into Long Aotian's shoulder. His frame shook violently.
Back during the preliminary rounds, none of them had dared to dream this big. Their original goal had been simple survival—to advance far enough to avoid embarrassing their empire. Shrek Academy had always been an impossible mountain, a shadow looming over every other institution. But match after match, as Liu Yuan and Long Aotian tore through their opposition with absolute, terrifying dominance, a dormant hunger had awakened within them. That tiny spark of hope had ignited into a raging inferno of ambition. Now, standing atop the ruins of Shrek's invincible reputation, that ambition had crystallized into reality. The shared blood, sweat, and exhaustion forged their bond into unbreakable steel.
Liu Yuan stood slightly apart for a moment before the others dragged him into the center of the huddle. He did not resist, allowing his teammates to clap his back and shake his shoulders. The terrifying, oppressive purple-gold brilliance that usually dominated his Double Pupils slowly faded, receding into the calm, abyssal depths of his natural gaze.
He looked at the tear-stained, ecstatic faces surrounding him. A rare, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his lips. A heavy, grounding sense of satisfaction settled in his chest. He had not just won a tournament. He had taken a sledgehammer to the established order of the world. This victory was a high-yield explosive he had personally planted and detonated beneath Shrek Academy's golden throne.
Up in the sprawling spectator stands, the shockwaves of the upset were mutating into frenzied, feverish debates. Strangers grabbed each other by the collars, pointing frantically at the arena.
"I can't believe it. I actually can't believe my own eyes. Heavenly Soul actually pulled it off! I swore on my life that once Shrek's main squad recovered, they would sweep the finals."
"Ten thousand years..." an older soul master muttered, staring blankly at the ruined stage. "Shrek's ten-thousand-year reign just died today. That monster, Liu Yuan... he just grabbed the entire soul master world by the throat and forced it to bow."
"Does this mean what I think it means?" another spectator whispered, glancing nervously toward the Shrek Academy viewing area. "From today onward, Shrek is no longer the undisputed number one. The crown has fallen."
Every single whispered doubt, every shout of disbelief, drifted across the stadium and drove like rusted steel needles into Elder Xuan's ears.
The Taotie Douluo sat paralyzed in the Shrek Academy team leader's seat. His complexion had turned a sickly, mottled shade of liver-purple. His breathing came in ragged, uneven hitches, sounding like a broken bellows. He gripped his knees so tightly that his thick, calloused fingers dug through the fabric of his trousers, his knuckles bleached bone-white from the sheer, trembling force.
"Damn it..." Elder Xuan hissed through ground teeth, the curse barely audible over the roaring crowd.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to unleash his Level 98 Super Douluo aura and crush the insolent mouths of the spectators. But his legs felt like lead. He did not dare stand up to refute a single word.
He had lived entirely too long not to understand the cruel, unyielding law of the soul master world. The winner takes all. The loser eats dust. High above the arena, sixteen Class 7 panoramic soul tools hovered like silent, mocking vultures, their crystal lenses glowing as they broadcasted this humiliation to every major city on the continent. Millions of eyes were watching Shrek's crushing defeat in real-time. Any excuse he made now, any display of temper, would only cement Shrek's new image as a pathetic, sore loser.
Yet, the loss of the championship was only the beginning of his nightmare. A far more terrifying, fatal detail began to claw at the edges of his panic-stricken mind.
The bet.
The memory surfaced with sickening clarity. Back at the gates of Star Luo City, before the tournament had even begun, he had allowed his arrogance to dictate his mouth. He had stood face-to-face with Du Busi, the Master of the Body Sect, and made a public wager. If the Shrek team lost to the Heavenly Soul team, he, Elder Xuan, would drop to his knees and apologize to Du Busi and Liu Yuan in front of the entire world.
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, tracing tracks through the grime on his face. He was over a hundred years old. He was a Level 98 Super Douluo. The title of Taotie Douluo commanded fear and respect across three empires. His pride, his 'face', was worth more to him than his own life. The mere thought of bending his knees, of pressing his forehead against the dirt in front of hundreds of thousands of jeering spectators, made his stomach violently churn. It was a humiliation a hundred times worse than having his heart pierced by a blade.
'I have to run. I have to deny it!' Elder Xuan's inner voice shrieked in frantic, desperate panic.
His eyes darted wildly around the stadium, calculating his escape route. If he could just find a brief window of chaos before the official awards ceremony commenced, he could grab his unconscious students and flee. As long as he made it back to the absolute safety of Shrek Academy, he would be untouchable. Du Busi was an arrogant lunatic, yes, but even the Body Sect Master would not dare launch a suicidal assault on the Sea God Pavilion while Elder Mu stood guard. No one could force him to kneel if he was hiding behind the Dragon God Douluo.
'Damn it all, why are those useless brats still lying there?!' Elder Xuan glared down at the ruined arena.
Ma Xiaotao remained slumped in a blackened crater, her breathing shallow. Nearby, Huo Yuhao and the rest of the Shrek main squad lay scattered across the rubble, completely incapacitated by Liu Yuan's ruthless assault. A surge of irrational, bitter resentment flared in the old man's chest. In his panicked state, he felt no sympathy for their severe injuries. To him, these defeated students were nothing more than glaring, embarrassing anchors tying him to this stage of humiliation.
'Get up, you trash! Are you waiting for the whole continent to laugh at us?' Elder Xuan cursed viciously in his mind.
Throwing away the last shreds of his dignity as a Super Douluo, he hunched his shoulders and slipped out of the team leader's seat like a common thief. Soul power surged through his meridians. In a blur of motion, he materialized at the edge of the shattered ring. His movements were jerky, stiff with paranoia. He reached down, grabbing the collars of his unconscious students and hauling them up with rough, undignified yanks, desperate to drag them into the shadows before anyone noticed his retreat.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, a suffocating, deathly silence had descended upon the Sea God Pavilion.
The grand conference hall, decorated and prepared to celebrate yet another glorious Shrek victory, felt more like a tomb. The golden light filtering through the ancient windows illuminated the terrifyingly grim faces of the academy's highest-ranking elders. The live audio feed from the Class 7 panoramic soul tool crackled through the hall's amplification array, broadcasting the brutal reality directly into their sanctuary.
"Shrek is no longer the number one academy..."
The spectator's amplified whisper echoed off the wooden walls. It landed like a vicious, open-handed slap across the face of every elder present. For their entire lives, these men and women had stood high above the clouds, looking down upon the mortal world with absolute, unquestioned superiority. They had gorged themselves on the peak glory of a ten-thousand-year legacy. Now, watching that golden pedestal shatter into a million pieces, their minds simply short-circuited. Denial warred with raw, bleeding pride.
Yan Shaozhe sat rigidly in his high-backed chair, his chest heaving with heavy, labored breaths. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared at the glowing projection screen. He watched his prized disciple, Ma Xiaotao, being unceremoniously dragged through the dirt by a panicked Elder Xuan. Then, his gaze shifted to the calm, uninjured, and utterly dominant figure of Liu Yuan. A dark, venomous fury seized Yan Shaozhe's throat, choking off any words he might have spoken. The only sound he made was the sharp, rapid cracking of his knuckles as his fists clenched tight enough to draw blood from his own palms.
Back at Star Luo Plaza, the atmosphere in the imperial viewing platform was entirely different.
Emperor Xu Jiawei rose slowly from his golden throne. He leaned against the velvet-draped railing, his gaze fixed intensely on Liu Yuan and Long Aotian. There was no anger in the emperor's eyes—only a deep, burning, and utterly undisguised envy. To possess just one genius of that caliber was a blessing. To possess two? It was enough to secure the absolute martial supremacy and destiny of an empire for the next century.
"The Heavenly Soul Empire is truly blessed by the heavens..." Xu Jiawei murmured, a heavy sigh escaping his lips.
He shook his head, clearing the jealousy from his mind, and carefully smoothed the wrinkles from his golden dragon robe. A practiced, warm smile bloomed across his face. It was time for him to step onto the ruined stage. In front of the entire continent, he would personally hand over the championship trophy—the ultimate symbol of supreme glory—to the team that had just rewritten history.
But before the emperor could take a single step, the solemn atmosphere was violently ruptured.
Du Busi, who had been sitting in the VIP section with his arms crossed, finally made his move. The Body Sect Master's eyes gleamed with a vicious, predatory light. He had been tracking Elder Xuan's pathetic, thieving movements from the very beginning. Watching the Taotie Douluo attempt to scurry away into the shadows with his defeated students, Du Busi let out a dark, booming sneer.
Without warning, the abyss-like soul power dormant within his massive frame erupted outward like a volcanic explosion.
Buzz—!
The very air warped and groaned. A terrifying, suffocating pressure descended from the sky, locking onto Elder Xuan's exact coordinates with the weight of a falling mountain. Du Busi did not bother with discretion. He deliberately channeled his vast soul power into his vocal cords, projecting his voice so loudly that it rattled the teeth of every single person in Star Luo Plaza.
"What's the rush? Elder Xuan, are you planning to tuck your tail and run just like that?"
Du Busi's voice dripped with raw, undisguised mockery. His towering, burly physique levitated slowly into the sky, casting a massive shadow over the cowering Shrek group below.
"Can't afford to lose, is that it?" Du Busi laughed, the sound echoing like thunder. "My memory might be getting old, but I remember things very clearly. Back at the gates of Star Luo City, it was you who puffed out your chest and made a wager with me. You swore, in front of everyone, that if your precious Shrek team lost to our Heavenly Soul team, you—the great Taotie Douluo—would drop to your knees and apologize to me and my disciple, Liu Yuan, in public."
The words struck the stadium like a second meteor. The deafening celebrations instantly flatlined.
A heavy, suffocating silence swept over the hundreds of thousands of spectators. As if controlled by a single mind, every pair of eyes in the plaza—along with the glowing lenses of all sixteen Class 7 panoramic soul tools—snapped away from the victorious Liu Yuan. They locked dead onto the pathetic, hunched figure of Elder Xuan, who was still awkwardly clutching the collars of his unconscious students.
Du Busi's booming laughter rolled across the silent plaza, thick with cruel satisfaction.
"What's wrong? Now that the match is over and Shrek has been wiped clean off the floor, are your words nothing more than passing wind? Where did all that high-and-mighty arrogance go, Elder Xuan? Don't tell me you're backing out now!"
Down in the dirt, Elder Xuan's body went completely rigid. The collars of his students slipped from his trembling fingers. He could feel the weight of millions of gazes hitting his back like concentrated sunlight through a magnifying glass, burning through his clothes, searing his flesh, and incinerating the last remaining shreds of his dignity.
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