Chapter 129: Electrolux's Guidance, A Humiliating Return to Shrek
The Body Sect's mountain gate stood as an imposing monolith against the sky, its precipitous peaks shrouded in swirling, eternal clouds.
The moment Liu Yuan stepped through the grand archway, he did not spare a single glance toward the main hall. He did not go to browse the towering mountains of congratulatory letters sent by the Heavenly Soul Empire's nobility, nor did he linger on the Sect's bustling training grounds to bask in the admiration of his peers.
He offered a crisp, respectful bow to Du Busi, then turned and walked straight toward his personal closed-door cultivation chamber.
To Liu Yuan, the deafening cheers of Star Luo Plaza and the lavish red carpets of the Heavenly Soul Imperial City were certainly proof of his overwhelming strength. Yet, as a transmigrator who viewed the world through a lens of absolute pragmatism, he knew such worldly clamor only consumed his energy and drained his focus. Fleeting glory meant nothing. Absolute power meant everything.
What he needed most right now was absolute tranquility. He had to cross that fiftieth-rank threshold that had hindered his progress for far too long.
With a low, grinding rumble, the heavy stone door of his chamber slowly slid shut, sealing away the outside world. Liu Yuan sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, steadied his breathing, and instantly entered a state of deep meditation.
His behavior, which bordered on that of a complete cultivation maniac, instantly caused a massive stir among the younger generation of the Body Sect.
"It seems I cannot afford to slack off either."
Long Aotian stood at the edge of the sprawling training grounds, his gaze fixed on the heavy stone doors of Liu Yuan's seclusion chamber. The slight relaxation that had settled into his shoulders after winning the championship vanished, replaced by a razor-sharp intensity.
He slowly clenched his fists, feeling the restless, surging soul power within his own meridians. "If I don't push myself to the absolute limit, I'm afraid it won't be long before I am completely left in the dust by my Junior Brother. As the Chief Disciple, that is an outcome I absolutely cannot allow."
"Senior Brother Liu Yuan works entirely too hard." Chen Lu sat on the stone steps nearby, carefully wiping the gleaming shaft of his martial soul spear. He let out a long, heavy sigh. "If he's pushing himself this far, I have no choice but to follow suit! I was actually dreaming about following you all to win another championship in the next Continental Advanced Soul Master Academy Duel Tournament. If my soul power rank falls too far behind, I won't even have the qualifications to step onto the stage."
"Let's go, let's go! Get to your cultivation chambers, stop wasting breath out here!"
Wang Yanfeng pushed himself up from the ground, aggressively patting the dust off his trousers.
Led by his sudden burst of energy, Gu Tong, Chen Lu, and the rest of the core team members—who had originally planned to rest and celebrate for a few days—threw away their playful thoughts. One by one, they scattered across the peaks, each claiming a secluded spot to begin their own closed-door training.
This spontaneous wave of fierce diligence made Du Busi, who had originally intended to let the children relax and enjoy their victory, feel a deep sense of gratification.
Standing with his hands clasped behind his back on the high platform of the Sect's main hall, the Body Sect Master overlooked the training grounds. He watched his disciples sweating profusely under the sun or sinking into deep meditation.
A deeply satisfied light flashed through Du Busi's emerald-green eyes.
'To remain humble and composed after achieving a victory of this caliber, and to return even more diligent than before... Such a rock-solid Dao Heart is truly the greatest fortune of our Body Sect,' Du Busi praised inwardly.
He had genuinely worried that these youths would ruin their mental fortitude, blinded by the sudden influx of fame and fortune. Yet, Liu Yuan's leading example had shattered those concerns, exceeding his wildest expectations.
Seeing the younger generation displaying such immense promise, Du Busi finally set his mind entirely at ease. He turned around, his robes billowing in the mountain wind, and retreated into the deepest sanctums of the Sect to contemplate his own elusive opportunity for a breakthrough past rank 98.
However, inside the silent, dimly lit closed-door cultivation chamber, Liu Yuan's situation was not progressing as smoothly as the outside world assumed.
As a Soul Master's rank climbed higher, the barrier between each major realm grew exponentially thicker and tougher.
Liu Yuan had sat completely motionless in the stone chamber for half a month. The soul power within his meridians had long since reached a boiling, critical mass, yet he remained entirely unable to pierce through that final, stubborn membrane to step into the rank 50 Soul King domain.
This suffocating sense of stagnation made even the usually calm and calculating Liu Yuan feel a rare trace of vexation.
The rhythmic pulsation of his Double Pupils beat hotly against his eye sockets. Because he lacked that specific catalyst for a qualitative change in his soul power, he was unable to initiate a deeper level of his martial soul's awakening.
"There is no need to be so impatient."
Just as Liu Yuan's mental state began to fluctuate, a voice echoed directly within the deepest recesses of his spiritual sea. It was ancient, sacred, and carried an unmistakable undertone of deathly stillness.
Liu Yuan's breath hitched slightly. He immediately directed his focus inward, plunging into his own spiritual sea.
Above the vast, gray ocean constructed from the pure gold of life, a translucent figure was slowly coalescing. It was the divine sense of the Calamity of the Undead.
"Elder Electrolux, you have awakened," Liu Yuan responded in his heart, his mental tone laced with genuine respect.
Electrolux nodded slowly. His ethereal eyes, brimming with an unfathomable wisdom that had witnessed the rise and fall of entire worlds, gazed down at the swirling soul power vortex within Liu Yuan's body.
"Since you cannot shatter the soul power threshold from the front for the time being, why not shift your cultivation direction?" Electrolux spoke gently, his voice smoothing out the turbulent ripples in Liu Yuan's mind. "Forcibly charging at a barrier blindly can sometimes be counterproductive. A river does not smash through a boulder; it flows around it, gathering strength until the stone simply washes away."
Liu Yuan's eyes snapped open in the dark chamber, a sharp light flashing within his layered pupils.
Ever since Electrolux had taken up residence in his spiritual sea, the former Holy Necromancer had mostly remained in a state of deep slumber, passively repairing his fractured divine sense. Now that Electrolux was taking the initiative to offer his teachings, this was undoubtedly a monumental opportunity.
After all, Liu Yuan knew very well that the knowledge Electrolux possessed—a system he called "magic"—was essentially the ultimate, microscopic application of spiritual power and the laws of life and death. It possessed a terrifyingly high degree of compatibility with the innate ocular prowess of his Double Pupils.
"Please guide me, Elder Electrolux," Liu Yuan said solemnly, adjusting his posture.
"Hehe... as it happens, I haven't truly taught you anything of substance yet," Electrolux smiled, a calm, grandfatherly warmth radiating from his spectral form.
"Your innate talent regarding spiritual power is the absolute best I have ever seen in my long life, but your current method of application is still far too crude. While this world's Soul Master system certainly has its unique merits in physical enhancement, it remains in a primitive, barbaric stage regarding the micro-manipulation of spiritual power and the art of borrowing power from the undead plane."
In the days that followed, Liu Yuan completely abandoned his forced assault on his soul power rank. Instead, he devoted every ounce of his focus to Electrolux's teachings.
Electrolux did not start by handing him world-destroying forbidden spells or apocalyptic curses. Instead, he began with the absolute fundamentals: the microscopic control of spiritual power ripples.
He taught Liu Yuan how to peel the vast spiritual power in his sea of consciousness into thousands of individual threads, each as fine as a single strand of hair. Every individual thread needed to independently perceive the subtle traces of death energy and vitality drifting through the ambient space.
Following that grueling exercise came the basics of necromantic summoning.
In the dim, silent chamber, guided by Electrolux's ancient voice, Liu Yuan began to trace complex, multi-layered undead contract formations in the void, using nothing but his raw spiritual power as the ink.
"The undead are not purely evil," Electrolux's voice echoed like a great, tolling bell, shaking Liu Yuan's very soul. "They are simply another form of existence after the physical vessel withers. What you must do as a necromancer is not to enslave them with tyranny, but to guide them with absolute law."
Liu Yuan absorbed every word, benefiting immensely.
He quickly discovered that as he learned this complex knowledge from another plane, the terrifying observational abilities of his Double Pupils became even sharper.
When he activated his martial soul, the world stripped away its mundane colors. He could clearly see every single microscopic node where undead energy flowed within his drawn formations. If a line was slightly off, his eyes caught it instantly, allowing him to perfect the ancient runes through the flawless fine-tuning of his spiritual threads.
Immersed in this highly focused, cross-system cultivation, the vexation that had previously clouded Liu Yuan's mind vanished. His state of mind became incredibly calm, as unruffled as an ancient, frozen lake.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Douluo Continent.
While Liu Yuan was swimming through a boundless ocean of ancient magical knowledge, Elder Xuan finally arrived at the outskirts of Shrek City. Trailing behind him were the thoroughly dejected figures of Huo Yuhao, Ma Xiaotao, and the rest of the Shrek Academy team.
The setting sun bled across the horizon, casting long, distorted, blood-red shadows from the magnificent, towering walls of Shrek City.
Elder Xuan stood on a small, grassy hill not far from the main city gates. He stared at the colossal city he had guarded for over a century. The habitual arrogance and casual confidence that usually defined his features had been completely stripped away, leaving behind only a hollow touch of desolation and an agonizing loneliness.
In the past, whenever the Shrek Team returned from defending their championship, the massive gates of Shrek City would be thrown wide open. Countless civilians, merchants, teachers, and students would spontaneously pour out, lining the roads for miles just to welcome their glorious heroes back home.
Showers of fresh flowers, deafening cheers that shook the clouds, and the booming, ceremonial salutes of the city defense soul cannons—that was the royal treatment they were accustomed to. It was their birthright.
But today, the city gates were cold, quiet, and suffocatingly desolate.
The armored guards stationed atop the high walls still stood perfectly straight, but their reactions betrayed everything. When they spotted Elder Xuan's iconic, tattered wine gourd, and the battered team members limping behind him—nursing heavy injuries and hanging their heads in absolute silence—the look in the guards' eyes shifted.
There was no fanatical worship. There was no awe. Instead, there was an extremely complicated, heavy silence, mixed with scrutinizing stares and a painful, second-hand embarrassment.
This stark, brutal contrast slammed into Elder Xuan's chest like a physical hammer blow.
"Elder Xuan..." Ma Xiaotao called out. Her voice, usually so fiery and dominant, was reduced to a fragile, trembling whisper.
Elder Xuan did not turn around. From behind, his broad shoulders appeared visibly hunched, as if the weight of the sky had suddenly crashed down upon him.
He didn't need to look back to feel the suffocating emotions radiating from the children behind him. The absolute despair of falling from the highest, untouchable clouds straight into the filthy mud was spreading like a plague through the heart of every single team member.
They were terrified.
They feared facing the ordinary civilians of Shrek City who had once worshipped them as infallible gods. They feared facing the teachers and students in the outer and inner academies who had placed the weight of ten thousand years of glory on their shoulders. And above all else, they feared facing the veteran elders residing within the Sea God Pavilion, who were undoubtedly waiting to judge their catastrophic failure.
Elder Xuan gripped the large wine gourd in his hand so tightly that the wood groaned. His knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white from the excessive force.
He knew the truth. He knew it with sickening clarity. The moment they stepped through those towering gates, the soul tool recordings and visual footage of him—a Level 98 Super Douluo—kneeling and kowtowing like a broken dog at Star Luo Plaza had likely already spread through every tavern, street corner, and household in the city.
They were no longer the continent's shining heroes. They were the greatest sinners in the ten-thousand-year history of Shrek Academy.
"Let's go."
Elder Xuan's voice was so hoarse and broken it was barely audible over the evening wind.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. Leading this defeated, shattered remnant of an army that had returned in absolute humiliation, he forced his legs to move. With heavy, leaden steps, they marched toward the grand city that had once given them infinite glory, but now only made them feel as though they were walking to their own executions.
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