Chapter 65: Importance of communication
Shrek Academy.
Shrek Academy has existed for over 20,000 years. It started out as a very small and exclusive school that only accepted monsters. Shrek Academy, over time, became an independent organization, with its own city. It became the most respected and sacred academy in the entire Douluo continent, producing brilliant Soul Masters. Shrek Academy is situated in the center of Shrek City which is governed by the Academy.
The Academy is a neutral power. It does not participate in politics nor the hunting of spirit beasts.
Shrek Academy was very strict on its internal affairs. None of its students could participate in the continent's disputes. Even so, many of the restrictions were lifted after graduation. As long as they didn't tarnish Shrek Academy's name, the outer court graduates could choose their path without interference. Of course, becoming criminals was out of the question.
Shrek Academy uses contribution points as currency instead of Federation coins. Federation coins can be exchanged for points and vice versa. Shrek has the highest amount of Title Douluo and Hyper Douluo out of all the organizations on the continent. [Rumours]
Shrek Academy's campus was vast, a small town unto itself.
It actually used to be the original Shrek City until Spirit Ice Douluo Huo Yuhao, the Spirit Pagoda's founder, proposed an expansion. Only then did the city grew much larger.
In less than ten years, Shrek would fall, along with the Shrek City.
....
Qiangu Dongfeng was an ambitious person. His main goal at the moment is weird, to say the least, as he wants to make the Spirit Pagoda the sole powerhouse of the world.
For this, Shrek and Tang Sect are going to be in his way. They will even foil this plan to his grave.
He had realised that long ago and thus had made relations with the Holy Spirit Cult. Together, they were planning to destroy the Shrek Academy when they get their hands on something goldy weapon that Qiangu Dongfeng was somehow going to procure from the somewhere. I don't know about this part since it seems to be a private conversation between Qiangu and the holy Spirit cult.
Once he gets the weapon, the defence system of the Shrek would somehow fail(plot) due to the internal moles and betrayer that had long joined Qiangu Dongfeng or were Qiangu Dongfeng's men since the beginning.
Then boom, godly weapon, some really strong Evil Soul Masters, unpreparedness and the fact that at that moment, their strongest forces would be spread among other places, Shrek Academy would go poof. Everyone will most likely die.
Except some students who were lucky. They(he) will survive(plot).
Shrek and the small Tang Sect branch that's beside it would be both destroyed though
Spirit Pagoda could then slowly take control over the rest of the world. Or something like that, I don't know once again because the destruction of Shrek would happen but the reason behind it isn't that appealing to me.
Shrek would still be destroyed. Important things should be repeated.
Yun Ming will die as well. Ya Li would be fine by the way.
That's it. Shrek will meet its end. Some students will survive. Ya Li will survive. They might somehow, someway recreate Shrek but that's for another time.
....
Qiangu Dongfeng has a grandson who seems to be a genius in cultivation.
Qiangu Dongfeng wants to make him the next President.
There seems to be two problems to that. Fan Lin - male, and Gu Yue - Female.
After some planning and digging into the unknown family of Gu Yue which even I don't know, he had, once again, somehow decided to match his grandson with Gu Yue as marriage partners.
Adding to the fact that he has some information or knowledge that gave him the confidence that Gu Yue's family/Gu Yue would agree to this even if she didn't want to.
I can slightly guess what that could be but it's just a guess.
In summary, Qiangu Dongfeng is planning to marry his grandson to Gu Yue, thus completely negating the Danger of Gu Yue.
Even if Gu Yue were to become the President by then, she would be Qiangu Yue by then.
Fan Lin had been sidetracked though as Qiangu Dongfeng was confident that I am an easy target that could be taken down of whenever he wanted to.
How smart of him.
....
Leng Yaozhu read the two letters that came with the two files. The statements were once again, silly and without proof but she didn't care about them. Something else had caught her eye.
The two files had three folders each one contained one Fan Lin begginer trust building information letter; the second one was written testimony and the third folder was the video records of the said testimony and the research they were talking about.
It wasn't just research in the Spirit Pagoda but their illegal experiments that were happening throughout the Douluo continents.
It was the testimony reports of nearly 1500 Spirit Pagoda workers, along with more than 3000 unofficial Spirit Pagoda workers!
(Basically 2 files, 1 file had - 1 letter, 1500 Spirit Pagoda staff testimony and video records. 1 file had - 1 letter, 3000 unofficial workers testimony and video records.)
(The content of the file was seperated into three parts, first letter, second written testimony and third video records.)
All of them somberly looking at the camera and repeating the exact same lines like they were puppets. Except there eyes weren't blank or emotionless.
If you were just saw any of the testimony without knowing about the others, you might not even find any fault in their behaviour. There were no signs of listlessness or force control. They seem fine, living their everyday life. They appeared to havd made the testimony in their complete conscious state and without any form of coercion or bribery.
It was as if one day, they suddenly had a change of heart and began to record their testimonies from their office.
Truly an absurd situation.
How Fan Lin had gotten the testimony was beyond Leng Yaozhu's thinking but she could easily guess how he must have gotten the research reports and the involved personal in it. It was definitely due to the insider information provider that was leaking Spirit Pagoda's file to Fan Lin. This further proved her inner mole scenarios to be the one closer to the truth.
Yet once again, Leng Yaozhu had gotten further away from the truth. If Gu Yue was there, she would have told her about how Fan Lin controlled 2/5 of the Spirit Pagoda's staff, so him getting the testimonies and other information from them was apparently normal. He had done far more outrageous things with them
Except Gu Yue wasn't there. There was no one who could tell Leng Yaozhu of this and Fan Lin was definitely not going to admit it to her.
Leng Yaozhu saved a copy of the file and then deleted the files that he had sent.
She looked at the camera feed that showed his departure from the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters and decided to inform Yun Ming about what she knew.
...
Five minutes later.
She finally took out her personal soul communicator to call Yun Ming after some internal struggle and gave him a brief but conscise info on the possibility of Shrek's destruction, about Qiangu Dongfeng and about the source of the information aka Fan Lin.
She didn't tell him about Fan Lin being a killer though. Yun Ming would definitely kill him if she did tell him and she had a really high avertion to that idea.
Fan Lin was giving her a bad vibe and considering how calm Fan Lin was, there must be some plan of action that he must have and truthfully she was right to do that.
If Yun Ming knew about Fan Lin, he would immediately act as he was the one who had disregarded the words of the former Headmaster of the outer court on Fan Lin's unstable heart and allowed Fan Lin to leave for Spirit Pagoda.
That meant that the killings done by Fan Lin after he entered Spirit Pagoda could have been avoided if he had listened to the former Headmaster.
A lot of people had died since Fan Lin had joined the Spirit Pagoda. Yun Ming wasn't Leng Yaozhu, he would not be calm about this and Fan Lin's life was in danger regardless of where he was in the Shrek city at that moment.
But if Yun Ming attacked Fan Lin with the intention to kill, two certain stalkers would intervene at that moment because Fan Lin had to live for the spirit beasts and the Moon Forest.
A battle would ensue with Yun Ming thinking that the people protecting Fan Lin were either his comrades or Evil Soul Masters and Di Tian who would restrain Yun Ming while Gu Yue would safely transfer Fan Lin to a safe place, all the while protecting their identities.
But the problem would rose from this moment as the rest of the superpowers from the Shrek Academy, Tang Sect and Spirit Pagoda would arrive as a commotion had occurred in the SHREK city!
Di Tian would then disappear with Gu Yue and they would all be left alone, floating in the sky or whatever the background was.
The next day would mark the wanted order for Fan Lin being sent to all the hidden agents of the Tang Sect and Shrek inner court students while Spirit Pagoda would also participate in it to save their image. They had raised a monster and even equipped two hundred thousand year old Spirit Souls to him, that needed explanation, so duck it and kill him
Then Fan Lin would destroy humanity and gobble up the abyssal realm and lay waste to the Planar Lord and such but this is a story for the What if. This will be discussed later by the way.
For now, Leng Yaozhu did the right thing by not telling Yun Ming about Fan Lin being a killer and Yun Ming quietly finished all the work of that day, made a small excuse to Ya Li and went to have a discussion with Fan Lin about his claims.
Leng Yaozhu could have just kept the source to herself for all the sake of the God but she had decided to involve Yun Ming because she was in another continent and she needed someone to keep an eye on Fan Lin.
As for the Spirit Pagoda, she truthfully didn't know who to trust, considering that Fan Lin just showed her how fragile the information privacy in the Pagoda.
Hence Yun Ming was the right person to entrust Fan Lin's espionage because he was the Leader of the Seagod pavilion and could easily direct the secretive forces of the Tang Sect and the inner court students with ease.
....
{I had a small chat with him. He had finally reached a conclusion on what he wants to do.} [Yun Ming]
Yun Ming said to Leng Yaozhu over the soul communicator.
"Didn't I tell you to keep on an eye on him without alerting him?" [Leng Yaozhu]
Leng Yaozhu asked, unconsciously recalling their previous joyful days once again.
{Well, I had some stuff that I wanted to talk to him. He said he will help us when the needs arise. His stable mindset seems to pushed him into finally making his mind on taking the side of the spirit beasts though.} [Yun Ming]
"What are you talking about?" [Leng Yaozhu]
She asked in confusion. She didn't know he loved the spirit beasts.
{When he was in Shrek, he seemed to be torn apart between the choice of hating humans on what they did to the spirit beasts and not hating humans for what they did to the spirit beasts. The current him had now chosen a different approach, to help the spirit beasts while ignoring the humankind.}
"That's a danger to humankind then." [Leng Yaozhu]
'He hates the humans for harming spirit beasts? Since when!'
{Not for now. His goals takes priority over his apathy towards humans. He will fulfill his goals and by the end, most likely just stay cooped in one place, avoiding human contact. That kid really hated socializing.} [Yun Ming]
"So you are saying that if we didn't provoke him first, he would do nothing?" [Leng Yaozhu]
Leng Yaozhu's thoughts wandered towards the targeted slaughters of the Spirit Pagoda research facilities in the past years by the mysterious death and the various things that they were doing without anyone's knowledge.
'The Spirit Pagoda's provocation seemed to have been sent a long time ago.'
{You can say that.} [Yun Ming]
"Why did he join the Spirit Pagoda then?" [Leng Yaozhu]
{...I don't know. I thought you would know that since you were the one who enticed him into joining the Spirit Pagoda. Am I somehow mistaken about this?} [Yun Ming]
"I did offer him to join the Spirit Pagoda but it was the same as the one that I gave to the kids before him. He hadn't even accepted it at that time. He had asked for some time before leaving for Shrek and then I got the news that he had accepted to join the Pagoda a few hours later. We had offered him nothing special at that time. It was the same as anyone else." [Leng Yaozhu]
{That's concerning then. Either he joined the Spirit Pagoda for the replantation or something unknown. You can count out the possibility of him joining due to the loss of his skills. He never cared about fighting and he had faster ways of cultivation as his physique hadn't changed even after he was found to have lost his skills.} [Yun Ming]
"He was lying about his loss of skills then? Why though?" [Leng Yaozhu]
"He could be or he didn't. As I said, his skills never mattered much to him as he seldom fought. So even if he had lost then, it wouldn't have matter to him. He... He was a little different than the other kids, his priorities were not the same as the rest of his peers. His cultivation was just a way to getting closer to his goals because if he truly wanted to be powerful, with his intellect he would have not made even half the decisions he had taken till now.} [Yun Ming]
{He wouldn't have left Shrek or joined the Spirit Pagoda or got his Three Word Battle Armor. He always has a reason behind his actions so he must have one for joining the Spirit Pagoda as well.} Yun Ming]
{I will close our conversation here. I have something important.} [Yun Ming]
Yun Ming cut the call but Leng Yaozhu was sure than she definitely heard the voice of Ya Li for a split second.
Still bitter about the situation, she decided to think about the new information on Fan Lin that Shrek had protected from the claws of the Spirit Pagoda for all this time and called Fan Lin to confront him about it.
'Nothing's better to get the answers from the source.'
Fan Lin didn't pick her call though because he was sleeping in the train at that moment.
"..."
"Let's finish the work in this continent first."
She whispered to herself and put aside Fan Lin's matter from her mind. She will get her answers and she will take Fan Lin's life the moment she reached the Douluo continent.
The unknown was the most scary and Fan Lin seem to fit the saying to a frightening degree.
(Better title suggestions accepted.)
(I am not giving any notice as I seem to jinx it)