Douluo continent
Glorybound City
Fan Lin woke up the next day and went to attend his school like normal. The classes began like normal, so did the teacher's attitude towards him.
Everything was normal.
The same normal life continued for a few days until he saved a little girl because waiting for Tang Wulin to fend off the bullies from his sister everytime did sound heroic but it also showed that no one else was helping him in that.
Fan Lin wasn't weak. He even had a soft spot for weak and innocent creatures, so he broke the spine of the bully and got suspended for a week. He wasn't what you could consider as a good person in his past life.
It would have been a more severe punishment but he was a future soul master, there were quite a lot of eyewitnesses who plead for his situation and the bullies had no backing.
A week suspension it is then.
Fan Lin went into deep meditation regularly in his week long suspension and was steadily increasing his cultivation although his meditation wasn't that effective due to his Bluesilver Grass martial soul.
Blue Silver Grass was a plant type tool spirit soul and had an abundant vitality, you know what that means, a place with plants and trees around was a good cultivation spot for people with Blue Silver Grass or any plant type martial soul. It increases their cultivation speed by upto ten percent.
An environment full of plants and trees... was no where to be found except the Glorybound City park. So what should be the obvious choice in this situation.
Go to the Glorybound park to meditate but Tang Wulin was using the same park as well.
Although Fan Lin had saved his sister but personally Fan Lin really didn't want to have any relationship to the protagonist. Tang Wulin was a danger magnet wherever he went and he was the only survivor to benefit from that situation, the others were doomed to become the side character and be sidelined by his glory.
Their decision didn't seem to impact the plot in any big way.
Hence Fan Lin began to spy on Tang Wulin and decided to meditate on the other side of the park. He won't leave a good opportunity just because he was uncomfortable with someone.
After his suspension ended, no one dared to disturb him in his class, the classmates had distanced themselves from him, quite literally as the area around him was devoid of students as they sat on the other side of the class, away from him. The same happened in the cafeteria whenever he went to eat some fruits.
They had a reason for as well. Their parents told them to. A broken spine wasn't something that could be healed with a little amount of money and if not healed, your child is a cripple forever. A burden to both themselves and the others around them.
No parents wanted that and hence maintaining distance was the best answer.
How to avoid trouble? Just don't get near it. Simple.
Except one certain person didn't think so as he sat an inch away from Fan Lin.
Fan Lin was sure that if the school benches weren't two seater, Tang Wulin would have sat on his lap to talk about his gratitude for saving his sister. He looked that adamant on talking about his feelings of gratitude.
The day ended as the teacher ignored them as well and finally Fan Lin snapped on Wulin.
"One more word about how cute your sister is or how thankful you are to me and I will rip that tongue out of your mouth. I will."
Fan Lin said in near frustration as from the moment that Wulin had sat beside him, except for meditation, he talked and talked and continued to talk about his sister that and sister this along with his self introduction, what's her mother favourite speciality in food was, what he ate yesterday, what he ate today, what he liked and where he lived, where he practiced and even the time he went to his bed.
And it didn't seem like he was going to stop anytime soon.
'Just how stupid and lonely is this kid? What happened to the Class President and team leader Tang Wulin?'
Fan Lin asked a stupid question in his mind, the answer to which he knew all along.
Tang Wulin learnt all that later down the line. Wisdom comes from experience.
Wulin looked at the angry Fan Lin and his icy calm eyes and took a step back in fear. He said nothing as Fan Lin took his backpack and left for the Glorybound park to cultivate.
Three months later.
Fan Lin was eating scallions pancakes in Wulin's house as Wulin's mother prepared some veg ones specially for him.
'How did it come to this?'
Tang Wulin was persistent in his efforts and with his persistence, he was able to befriend Fan Lin as he reminded him of a certain kid.
Now he once in a while ate with Tang Wulin's family while helping them with some chores.
His relationship with Na Er also improved as time passed because Fan Lin realised that she was a stupid kid who would develop warm feelings for anyone who feed her food for a long time.
'Maybe, the humans aren't that bad. At least not all of them.'
Maybe that's why she had decided to experience the world of humans?
Two and a half years later.
On the top floor of the administrative building. A man was furiously typing on his tab. After some time, he stopped typing and looked at the reply that he got.
{Officer xxxxx, we have already read all the reports that you have sent in the past three years and your failures to subdue any of the perpetrators. Hence we are dismissing you from the investigation department but worry not, we have already given you recommendations to the three major military forces of the Sun Moon Federation and you will definitely get a job in one of them as your strength meets the criteria.
Thank you for your hardwork in all the years that you served for the parliament.
From: XXXX }
The man looked at the mail and stopped typing. He looked at all the reports that was posted on the wall; along with all the information that they had collected from the incidents.
He started to type once again as if he wasn't given a final denial and was stripped of his rank.
The report read:
{ Report xxXxx-13
It has been nearly 3 years since the beginning of the serial killings and this is the 17th incident. All the crime spot investigation and the way the crime was done, unfortunately, points towards the same child killer.
The murder victim was a bar owner who also had his hands in the filthy side of the society. He was a smuggler who smuggled anything that the client wanted. [Read the attached files for more details]
Cause of death: Suicide. The autopsy of the victim showed that the victim committed suicide due to the increased pain reception that he felt. We still haven't been able to identify if the cause of the increase in pain reception of the victim was due to a soul skill or something else.[ Read the attached file for more details.]
Conclusion: This is the seventeenth incident and I sincerely plead the parliament to pay attention towards it.}
He looked at the other reports that were the collection of the failed efforts of the past 2 years and his eyes went towards a specific report. The one that changed the whole case.
{ Report xxXxx 08 Gloomy Forest
We have found engravings on a language unknown to us. Since the serial killings in this city has been causing many ripples in the parliament and the army as the public unrest around the other cities continue to grow at a rapid rate. The people were beginning to raise voices on the incapability of the Parliament and the Federation's armed forces.
The War God Temple finally agreed for the plea of reinforcement and sent a rank 89 Soul Douluo who had mastery in languages.
The esteemed Douluo was able to decipher the language in a few months and this is the deciphered data that we got.
[ I am your Salvation – ⟨Name Erased⟩
I am the keeper of forests.
I am the slayer of Evil... humans.
I am the protector of the innocent.
By Gloomy Forest of the End. ]
We don't know who the above mentioned people or organisation was.
We still haven't been able to identify if this engraving had to do anything with the child killer. The Glorybound City police force has been monitoring all the soul scholars between the ages of 6 to 10. No results were found even after the officers were monitoring the students for the past 6 months as three more incidents have happened. I think there is a mole among us.]
And then they were all dismissed.
There was an old woman that claimed that she had seen him, yes, she claimed that the killer was a male, and that the person wasn't like a child at all but felt like a adult human, when she talked with him.
At first the Police force and the townsman were taking it as a joke as she was death patient who was going to die anyday but her next words shocked everyone.
"I am not lying, I asked him to tell me what he had written on the rock on the banks of the South Glorybound City and he gave me this, I could not read properly but I know that he is the one... he really is the one. Hahahaha, he is here to kill the perpetrators of my daughter and son-in-law, he is here to bring me salvation... Hahahahhaha "
She died a few hours later that day, leaving us a paper that had a transcription that was 90% similar to the one that the Soul Douluo from the War God Temple deciphered.
It read:
I am your Salvation – Dev (It means God if you don't know)
I am the keeper of the forests.
I am the eradicater of Evil.
I am the hunter of humans.
I am the protector of the innocent(the meaning isn't the same as you think)
(My oath that I took when I left the forest.)
By Gloomy Forest of the End. ]
We have already checked on our side and no one has hacked or stolen any data from us regarding the encryption and the language. The Soul Douluo himself said that the translation was on point.
The child that talked to her was the killer that we have been trying to find.
Currently we have no extra information except that he is a either a child or an evil soul master that has a martial soul that doesn't cause aging or some vile evil soul master who can transfer bodies and has a really powerful/adept soul skill/art that lets him hide his evil cultivation.
End of report.}
And then suddenly we were all dismissed from the case. Something seems wrong about the situation but who to plea.
....
{ Final Conclusion
The child killer with 19 mass serial killings and a total of 1729 murders is still roaming the world.
Except his gender and a rough estimation of his age, all things about him are unknown. And now they are proved to be false. A new report came saying that the old woman was manipulated into saying those words to cause more unrest.
This was all a work of an Evil Soul Masters that has been taken care off.
But he was not an evil soul master. Multiple tests that were done by both the Spirit Pagoda and War God Temple, indicates that no foul spirit or soul energy was found near the whole Glorybound City.
Then what happened so suddenly?
.....
Fan Lin looked at the passing people in the soul train. Time seemed to have passed and he killed more. He just couldn't help.
Something's he didn't happen. He hadn't changed much from his past life.
He did a few things again and now his relationship with Tang Wulin and his family had worsened.
'She was the one at fault.'
He brought a newspaper and got on the soul train.
His destination was the Eastsea Academy. He, Fan Lin had reached rank 10 and was going to the Eastsea Academy for further schooling.
The past three years had changed many him many times, now he wasn't sure about the things he wanted.