Douluo Continent
Shrek City
Spirit Pagoda Headquarters
Qiangu Donfeng was sitting in his office, overlooking his various plans and their completion rate when his secretary came to his office once again.
"Sir, we have a problem!"
The Secretary said with visible fear and dread on his face. Qiangu Donfeng glanced at him and signalled to continue talking while still looking at the various reports.
"The 'Mysterious Death', it has started again in the Eastern coast with two people already on their deathbeds."
The secretary spoke in fear. The week felt catastrophic to him as it was one problem after another and he was the one who had to report it all to Qiangu Donfeng.
The secretary was truly afraid that Qiangu Donfeng might use him to divert his rage from the other events.
"Them? When did it start and who reported it?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng inquired calmly, completely unlike what the secretary thought.
Not even three hours have passed since Qiangu Donfeng and Fan Lin had made a deal and he was finally feeling his goal in the graspe of his hands but new problems seem to arrive from his old enemy.
But the happiness of acquiring Fan Lin still exceeded the bad news, hence becoming the reason for his calmness. He had Fan Lin, sooner or later, he will crush all that stand in his way.
"The Federation was the one who reported this news and had pleaded the Spirit Pagoda, Tang Sect and Shrek Academy to help in this matter."
"They are requesting for immediate assistance as they have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with the mysterious death phenomenon this time as the time lapse between each attacks in the past few months seem to be decreasing at a rapid rate."
"The previous attack had happened less than two months ago and the one before that happened less than three months ago."
"The Federation officials have speculated that it could be an Evil Soul Master who is near his Title Douluo breakthrough and there is a high chance that the current or the upcoming killings will be his final sacrifice before he will become underground again to consolidate his strength."
"The Federation had already deployed the Wargod temple but requires further assistance from us as they didn't want a situation like Ha Luosa's massacre to repeat again..."
"Along with the deployment, the Tang Sect has asked for our help as well and..."
The secretary provided all the intel about the incident that he could gather in the small timeframe he had. The more he proved his worth, the more reluctant Qiangu Donfeng should feel about killing him. Right? Fear could even make a rational person stupid.
Qiangu Donfeng ignored the silly and stupid look on his Secretary's face and silently thought about the situation while checking the recent information that was sent by the Tang Sect and Wargod Temple to him personally.
According to the information, the victims of the Mysterious Death happened sometime around five to seven hours ago.
The two victims were far apart and originated from the east coast of the Douluo Continent. They had no relation to each other and the cause of death was the same as the mysterious death, hence the claim went towards it.
And as usual, the cause of death was quite untraceable as the victims just seem to die after experiencing pain for some time.
The officials and the other members of the various forces still haven't been able to find an answer to the sudden deaths of the people, also the reason why it was termed the'mysterious death' in the first place.
The inability to find the reason, along with the pressure from the public and various other forces, the federation just decided to go with the norms and blamed it all to the irregularity of Evil Soul Masters.
They were a group of mysteries terrorists who defied the common sense to begin with, and adding a few more incidents to their name wasn't going to change their fearsome reputation. So why not, it's not like they had any other answer to begin with.
They can't just say that another child killer is on a rampage when they were the ones to proclaim with great zeal about his eminent demise and death.
As he thought about the mysterious death, Qiangu Donfeng recalled a certain piece of information that he had on Fan Lin and how his poisons were untraceable and could be set for a later time and what not.
He shook his head at his mundane thoughts. He had seen Fan Lin's abilities and it wasn't that profound. He had been creating low level stuff from the grass and leaves that could be found anywhere in the Shrek City.
Heck, he even took the grass and leaves in the Shrek City to create them for all this time, spending not a cent of his to buy the raw materials for his products.
And although he had been shunned by the Inner Court of the Shrek Academy and it's Elders, after some detailed digging, the reason was nothing out of the norm.
He offended his teacher, five elders and half the student body while the official reason was: Fan Lin doesn't have a martial soul foundation required for the inner court.
And they were right in that. His Blue Silver Grass and its cultivation potential was lower than other rank 1 martial souls with little to no chance of further mutation or evolution of his martial soul and the only reason why Fan Lin was able to reach that higher in his cultivation was because of his soul skills.
Skills that will become obsolete when he progresses his cultivation as the demerits of the Blue Silver Grass will finally show their final potential into ruining him into oblivion.
Such was the fate of all who had the Blue Silver Grass martial soul, thus eternally entitling them as the most trashiest martial soul in history.
(I know most doesn't need to be added with superlative forms. I know.)
And just becoming aware of Fan Lin's actual temper a few hours ago, Qiangu Donfeng could understand how Fan Lin may have offended the people at Shrek.
Even he, Qiangu Donfeng, was feeling offended enough to kill Fan Lin from a thirty seconds conversation that happened via a soul communicator, much less the thoughts of people whom had an actual face to face conversation with Fan Lin.
As Qiangu Donfeng began to focus on the other factors and how he can deal with his old time nemesis (mysterious death phenomenon) while reaping away huge benefits, he decided to sit back for the meantime and test out one of his speculations.
In all the previous mysterious deaths, the loss to the Spirit Pagoda's illegal activities felt specially targeted.
But that brought up the question of how the did the person behind the mysterious deaths was pinpointing and taking care of the Spirit Pagoda's 'special' facilities. They were off record, unknown to many and were specifically selected by him and his trusted men, then how?
The answer could be of the most basic and also the one with the most chances, a mole on the inside was helping in it.
He had been keen on finding out the mole, if any, and to use that mole to try and get to the perpetrator of the Mysterious deaths.
Now he can try that.
Qiangu Donfeng telepathically informed his men to send some 'special' researchers near the areas of the two victims.
After that... There was no after that, he was going to sit down by the sidelines and see the situation unfold.
That meant that the Spirit Pagoda wasn't going to help to the current pleading of the Federation.
They will act like they are working and doing their best to solve the problem though. PR was tough.
He can't let the relations between Spirit Pagoda and general public to sour down at the moment, more so when his popularity seen to be increasing among the young soul masters.
As Qiangu Donfeng relayed his orders to the other council members and staff persons, they all went ahead to execute the orders and he put his attention to Fan Lin's Spirit Soul Tower attack.
Qiangu Donfeng smiled once more as he recalled his conversation with Fan Lin.
To him, Fan Lin was still green in some places when he thought that he could have an upper hand against Qiangu Donfeng.
It didn't matter the result, whether Fan Lin lost the bet or not, Qiangu Donfeng was going to win in the end.
Why?
If Fan Lin won the bet and got into the top 5 of the Spirit Soul Tower, then the Spirit Pagoda will have a guaranteed brand new future pillar and powerhouse of the youth's generation that was above and beyond any of the Shrek's students in the same generation and even higher.
On the other hand, If Fan Lin lost, Qiangu Donfeng will have the specimen that he had been desiring for the past months; without doing anything at that.
This would also made his 'get Fan Lin into the family' plan easier as how could a puppet resist what his master wanted.
If Qiangu Donfeng wanted the defeated Fan Lin in his family, then defeated Fan Lin would have no choice but to become a part of his family. That's the crux of the matter.
That was the ultimate fate of the defeated - To do anything the winner wanted.
*Chuckle*
"Hmph!"
Days passed and three days later.
Qiangu Donfeng was smiling with mirth and anger in his eyes as he finally got to know about the council members who were secretly supporting and helping Fan Lin from the shadows.
They were the same ones who objected Fan Lin's Spirit Soul Tower attack by giving away reasons like not enough preparation or that Fan Lin should not work under Qiangu Donfeng and such.
Although Qiangu Donfeng didn't actually find the actual supporters of Fan Lin through this but had to do some heavy digging into the various activities of the council members and their past meetings and such to finally pinpoint them.
And that's how he had finalized the list of the council members that were going to be removed in the next few years, maybe months from now on.
"They are all old people, some chances should be given to the young talents as well, that could also be used to showcase that Spirit Pagoda is embracing the new and better ideologies instead of the old, rigid ones."
That's another good plan.
"Where is he now?"
He asked his secretary, once again looking at the various reports that he got.
"Absolute North. He is in there for the past two days."
The secretary answered while rechecking Fan Lin's current position.
"Hmm, he did say that his Boundless Ring is showing different skills in different terrain. Is he there to check it out or..."
"His fourth soul skill had something to do with cultivation in the ice attribute environment..."
"That unknown ring of his is carrying more mysterious that I thought... If he can have a different skill in each different terrains, I truly want to know what are the others and how many skills would that make."
"Contact the Heavenly Blacksmith and see when he has free time." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"On it, President."
The secretary said and left the room.
'If he does have a way to cultivate, then let's get him armed with auxiliary skills and make him reach the Titled Douluo rank as soon as possible.'
'That way, the other council members would not be able to interfere in his matter, he would not be too strong on his own and he would have no other choice but to become the helper of my grandson.'
'Once I ruin his skill acquisition, his strength wouldn't be that high and the council members would ignore him on their own.'
'Then finally I can focus on that girl, her family's the problem though. Got to think of some way to get them on board.'
Qiangu Donfeng continued to think about the future he was going to prepare while overlooking the entirety of the Shrek City.
'Soon it all will be mine, no not mine but ours. The Spirit Pagoda would be the sole salvation of the humanity.