God Realm.
Soft, hazy light twisted in the void, vaguely reflecting a magnificent, resplendent palace. Countless divine officials stood to either side like servants, while a single figure stood at the front of the palace.
Tang San stood with his hands clasped behind his back, brows tightly furrowed.
Just now, he seemed to sense a strange fluctuation—like someone had forcibly torn something out of his body, then stuffed it back in again. That pull-and-shove feeling was extremely unpleasant.
It was very similar to the sensation of him manipulating his daughter.
But this feeling came and went too strangely. It quickly settled back into stillness, and even as a God King, he had no clue what that power's source was.
"Oof, I really wandered a bit far today…"
The God of Destruction strolled past the entrance of the Sea God Palace, lazily stepping on clouds, leading along a three-headed divine hound. The smile on his face was infuriatingly smug.
"My wife told me to walk around after dinner to digest. Figured I'd swing by the Sea God Palace on the way. Sigh, the Sea God shouldn't mind, right?"
"…"
Tang San stared coldly at Destruction, his fists quietly tightening.
Behind him, the divine officials were all on high alert.
The atmosphere felt like a bowstring pulled taut, ready to snap—yet the God of Destruction simply sauntered away in the direction he came from, not bothering to look at Tang San at all.
As if this were a daily quest: stop by Tang San's divine residence and harass him once.
Having always suffered under Tang San's hand before, now that he had found an opportunity, how could the God of Destruction possibly let it go?
"He definitely sensed something…"
Watching Destruction's figure fade into the distance, Tang San's eyes narrowed, his voice turning cold.
The persona he carefully built in the God Realm was that of a doting husband and loving father, gentle and easy-going, with a faint elegance. With that, he easily drew the Goddess of Life and the other neutral elemental gods over to his side.
Once that persona collapsed, it wouldn't just be the Goddess of Life turning on him immediately—chances were the elemental gods would likewise be impossible to keep. His foundation in the God Realm was still not stable. Among the Shrek Seven Devils, only he was at the peak; the others barely scraped into the ranks of second-tier gods.
So, if he wanted to rise to the very apex of the God Realm, he still had to plan for the future… For example, the Silver and Golden Dragon Kings—two natural, fat cuts of meat. No one in the God Realm was claiming them, so they were his to feast on.
He just didn't know how well his divine-sense micro-control down in the mortal world was going.
He still had plenty of confidence in his avatar. After all, aside from raw power, its intellect and way of thinking all came directly from him, the God King.
Thinking of this, the corner of Tang San's mouth hooked up slightly.
"Time to show you what dimensionality reduction strike really means, kid."
…
As if overlapping into another space-time.
A black-haired man sat upright on an ancient-looking seat, eyes half-closed. Suspended directly before him was a gigantic golden wheel. Its entire surface flowed with molten-gold light. With a diameter of ten thousand meters, its form was ancient and solemn, like an eternal coordinate of the cosmos. Complex patterns were etched across its face, yet they turned and shifted like flowing water, the lines constantly evolving.
Then suddenly, on one portion of the huge wheel, a faint, obscure dark light flashed past, drawing the man's attention.
"Hm?"
The black-haired man let out a soft sound of surprise, a brief fragment seeming to flicker through his deep pupils.
"Hahahaha…"
He burst into hearty laughter, a hint of excitement on his face.
"Interesting little fellow. Not bad. You can actually shuttle through time and space before even becoming a god? Trying to steal my job, are you?"
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Forget it. You're still too weak right now. You can't bear the karmic backlash of meddling with time. I'll straighten it out for you—for the time being."
As he spoke, he lightly tapped a finger against the golden wheel.
That erratic, dusky glow gradually faded, and the surrounding patterns seemed to return to their proper trajectory. Accompanied by that distant, unending hum, the wheel continued its orderly rotation.
"Buzz…"
The black-haired man glanced at the enormous golden disk in bored fashion, fingers quietly tapping.
"I hope you don't let me down. Those old fossils in the God Realm have all run off one by one. I'd like to retire too. I really don't want to clock in at this crappy job for even one more second…"
…
"Ninth-level soul tool core arrays are really hard…"
Inside the laboratory.
Su Wen leaned back, head resting on the chair, his face full of despondence. Only now did he realize that Jing Hongchen's Hongchen's Blessing was actually very simple—nothing with real core technology at all. No wonder he'd dared to send it to Shrek Academy.
But when he ran into a genuine level 9 soul tool—even just a relatively basic long-range soul cannon—his scalp went numb.
"Hard, huh…"
Xuan Ziwen's mouth twitched.
"Twelve linked core arrays in total, and you've managed to crack three of them in just a week—plus the three hardest ones at that. You call that hard?"
"Time is money…" Su Wen shook his head and sighed.
Only after disassembling the humanoid soul-tool mecha did he realize how lacking he was in array theory. Just as he'd predicted, the real difficulty of humanoid soul tools lay in fusion—that is, the classical linkage arrays.
The more advanced the humanoid soul-tool armor, the more power and arrays had to be crammed into a smaller and smaller space. The first humanoid mecha he'd copied together—never mind matching a battle armor's streamlined size—just the few linked core arrays alone were absurdly bulky…
Soul tools below level 9 were actually more about independent systems. A single core array could support the power of an entire soul tool. Even when there were innovative linkages, they were mostly incremental optimizations built atop a basic core.
Level 9 soul tools were different.
Their starting point was at least five or more level 9 core arrays. For someone like Su Wen, who had cheated his way up all along—like acing exam after exam purely by insane rote practice—this was more than a little annoying. All the way up, he'd relied on single core arrays, carving each individual structure to nigh perfection, but hardly ever touching linked systems.
His goal back then had just been to understand soul tools. He'd never planned on really extrapolating and iterating.
So his knowledge reserve in linkage theory was pitifully small, and his experience nearly nonexistent.
"Why didn't you remind me back then…" Su Wen scratched his head.
Xuan Ziwen: "…"
"To be honest, I didn't even get the chance. Who would've thought you'd already bulldozed your way to level 9 Soul Engineer by the time I turned around."
"This humanoid soul-tool mecha might only be level 8, but it's more than enough for our research." Xuan Ziwen glanced around, saw no one else nearby, and leaned in to whisper.
"Its sophistication in linkage is enough to represent the cutting edge of current Sun Moon Empire technology—but that also means it's hard. It's even more complex than many level 9 soul tools. If we can fully digest this thing, I think the battle armor you mentioned before can still be made. Worst case, we first come up with a first-generation suit, then slowly upgrade it."
"Right, when you got called over to Mingde Hall, you didn't… show anything?" Su Wen asked with a bright smile.
"Heh. It was just a perfunctory investigation, what trouble could there be?" Xuan Ziwen shook his head.
"And about the metal-forging data—I tweaked a set and turned it in."
"They skimmed it twice and tossed it aside…"
A black-bellied smile crept onto Xuan Ziwen's face.
…