Douluo Continent
Shrek City
Spirit Pagoda Headquarters
A few days later.
"You seem quite enthusiastic. Did something good happen?"
Fan Lin inquired the President of the Spirit Pagoda, Qiangu Donfeng, on his cheerful smile.
"Today's a grand day indeed. The Spirit Pagoda is going to get a future pillar (and I will get a pet), of course I would be happy." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng said with a smile. Today was the day of Fan Lin's Spirit Soul Tower challenge and he, Qiangu Donfeng, had been patiently waiting for Fan Lin... outside his room, for the past hour.
He had actually wanted to directly meet Fan Lin the moment he entered the Shrek City but was late due to overseeing the preperation for the successful Spirit Soul Tower challenge, aka, making sure that no Fan Lin supporting Elders were there to stop him.
Fan Lin, on the other hand, directly cut off any communication with the outside world the moment he reached the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters and had been holed in his room till the scheduled time. So much that he didn't even let Qiangu Donfeng inside his room but Qiangu Donfeng didn't care, he will have his revenge once Fan Lin became his slave labour.
Now Fan Lin had opened the door and Qiangu Donfeng tried to guess what Fan Lin could have been doing from the traces in the room.
"You seem to have lots of fruits lying in your room? Were you making something?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Those are for eating as I was late so couldn't eat on the way. Let's proceed for the trial, I have leave for my plantation work as well." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin emotionlessly replied while leaving Qiangu Donfeng behind. He knew the way to the Spirit Soul Tower facility already, so will he wait for Qiangu Donfeng?
Nah.
Qiangu Donfeng ignored the obviously rude behavioured Fan Lin and closed his room door, glancing one last time at the fruits. With just a glance, he knew that the fruits in his room were around 100-200 kg.
'That's for eating? My foot.'
"That's a lot of fruits to eat. Have you eaten properly or do you need to eat more?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Nah, not anymore. I feel like I would burst any moment if I eat even just one more apple. I don't wanna take any chances before I reach the Spirit Soul Tower." [Fan Lin]
Qiangu Donfeng's sarcasm filled words were met with the truth, except Qiangu Donfeng didn't know exactly what Fan Lin was talking about.
Soon they reached the Spirit Soul Tower and Fan Lin entered the tower while Qiangu Donfeng went towards the overseer's room.
A few moments later.
"So should we start the trial?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
He asked Fan Lin through the microphone, seeing that Fan Lin seem to have just sat down and wasn't wearing his Three Word Battle Armour or had activated his Boundless Ring.
"En." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin agreed.
"Okay, before we start. Three things - we are starting from floor 37, that is, the hundred thousand year old spirit beasts floor." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Secondly - We will stop the trial if you suffer a deadly blow, in that case, you lose the challenge." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Third - There would be a ten second break between each round, if you feel unable to fight, you can surrender during that time." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Shall we proceed then?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Hurry, don't waste my time." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin remarked, still sitting in the middle of the room without any preparations. His words ticked Qiangu Donfeng in all the wrong ways. The researchers alll decided to remember Fan Lin's face for future purposes. A person who could talk to their President like that must have to have some deep connections.
"Anything unusual?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng asked for the final time.
"His body is full of energy and there is no heartbeat."
One of the researchers said with visible doubt on her face.
"That's it? Nothing out of the norm then." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng calmly replied and took one final look at the data before starting the trial.
"Proceed." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"""Yes Sir!"""
...
37th floor.
A door opened in front of Fan Lin and out came a soul beast that immediately pounced on him and got atomised.
How?
Well everything around Fan Lin, including him, the room and the soul beast that attacked him, all got caught up in the energy storm that suddenly released from his Energy Body.
'From explosions, to implosions, to burst, to fission and now storm huh.'
Fan Lin thought as his body faded away in the torrential energy storm surrounding him.
<37th floor cleared>
....
"What happened? [Qiangu Donfeng]
[The reader base might be thinking the same]
"There seems to be a destructive energy field of pure energy in the room that is destroying everything in the vicinity... I think he died, we can't sense his body."
One of the researchers said while hastily checking all the system logs but Qiangu Donfeng mind wasn't on him, it was on the blob of flesh that was regenerating in the middle of the Spirit Soul Tower.
Soon the blob formed the body of Fan Lin who was calmy sitting on the floor while his Three Word Battle Armour became his clothes as his Boundless Ring finally floated around him, and weirdly, the surrounding energy seemed to be doing no harm to him now.
Soon the rest of the researchers also saw his figure through the screen, sitting completely unharmed.
"Impossible!"
As the voice of his men matched his thoughts, Qiangu Donfeng looked at the extremely bone chilling calm figure who was patiently waiting for the next spirit beast like the world around him has ceased to exist and it was just him and whatever came from the door.
"How far could he go on like this?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng asked but his words were answered by another question. A question that was pressing on the researchers.
"Ah, what should we do about the next floor? Should we continue?"
The ten second break time was going to end and they have no idea on what to do since Qiangu Donfeng was the one at command today, he was the one and only who had to power to decide the next plan.
"Continue as normal." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng answered while forcefully calming himself. He glanced at the different energy readings of the destructive energy field and asked his men to run a quick simulation on his progress as he himself began to analyse the data that was being recorded by the Spirit Soul Tower.
<38th floor cleared>
While they were doing all this, another soul beast came and dissipated in the ferocious energy storm before it could reach Fan Lin and the floor was cleared.
"54th floor President. The simulation results have come, if he didn't use any other tactic, then just with the Energy storm, he could reach till 54th floor."
One of the reasearchers said while sending the detailed data to Qiangu Donfeng. Qiangu Donfeng quick read it and found out the reason why Fan Lin 'only' reach till the 54 floor.
It was due to the soul beast that was the challenge for that floor, aka, the Spirit Crystal Butterfly. The soul beasts that was the headache for quite a lot.
'Top 5 huh? We will see.'
"Assign the Spirit Crystal Butterfly to 40th floor an–"
<39th floor cleared>
Just as Qiangu Donfeng was about to finish his sentence, Fan Lin reached the 40th floor.
"Hurry!" [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Yes Sir!"
The researchers immediately got to work, they had a pretty strict time limit.
"Now I wonder what else do you have under your sleeves or was this all?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng silently whispered as he looked at Fan Lin with mild annoyance and even more greed.
Yeah, greed.
'On top of planting forest, he can also generate energy?'
'So we just need to make a machine to absorb the destructive energy and turn it into usable energy and then I could take the lead in the energy sector while also gaining the momentum of the environmentalist youths. Hmm...'
'I can even create special facilities in the previously hard to reach places and use him as an energy source for it. Hilly areas, stiffy cliffs, swamps, the areas that were previously out of reach of the normal logistics would become easier with a portable energy battery like him'
'But that's not all, there is so many other uses of just this ability, and if you add the forest maker, We could literally go beyond this planet with his help.'
'This kid is like a treasure trove, full of treasures but what is this uncanny feeling that I am having.'
'It's like he isn't a bles—'
"I didn't know that the Spirit Soul Tower challenge of the member Fan Lin was advanced by three hours. You should have informed me about it, PREsidenT. I nearly missed it."
Qiangu Donfeng's sweet thoughts were interrupted by the voice of someone he was sure shouldn't be there at this point of time.
He turned around to see the figure who was walking towards him.
"Wasn't Elder Yang attending his meeting with the Federation officials about the continuation of the forest plantation?" [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng inquired in a light tone, as if he didn't heard the previous words of the figure aka Elder Yang of the 36 council members and also the fervent supporters of Fan Lin.
Of all the Council members there were, Qiangu Donfeng truly didn't want to meet with Elder Yang because Elder Yang was the current in-charge of the Spirit Soul Tower facility, and mainly due to fact that he was the one who had the most knowledge and authority on it.
This was also the reason why Qiangu Donfeng had set up a fake task for him and had sent him away a few days ago along with the rest of the Fan Lin supporting Elders and if everything went well, he should have come to the Shrek City two days later, if everything had went well which obviously didn't.
If there was someone else, Qiangu Donfeng would have handled them but the situation had gone off rail now with Elder Yang's presence.
"Technology has come a long shot, nowadays you can held important conferences through a video feed, quite convenient, isn't it?" [Elder Yang]
Elder Yang quickly assessed the situation of the researchers and the Spirit Soul Tower while saying that.
"It is. It indeed is." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng said with a small smile although it was restrained. The presence of the Elder Yang ang meant that the other Fan Lin supporters were coming soon and considering that he just 'cheated' by assigning a hard challenge in an easy round, advancing the trial and faking it all, a boycott of the challenge might be on his way.
'Duck! Everything was going fine, why did he came! I was so close! I could have left with the kid in an hour and he would have started the plantation of the Bright City by tonight.'
'But all of that...'
As Qiangu Donfeng began to think of which countermeasure that he should use to salvage the situation, Elder Yang spoke.
"That's a Spirit Crystal Butterfly, right? A spirit beast with a base cultivation of 155,000 years and immunity to physical and energy attacks. That should not be on the 40th floor trial. What do you all think?" [Elder Yang]
Elder Yang said and as he finished speaking, dozens of voices began to show their displeasure and disagreement but the owners of the voices weren't present there.
'That fucker is doing a video conference!!!' [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng's anger and trepidation rose with his internal scream.
Using recording equipment of any kind was prohibited in the Spirit Soul Tower and measures were taken to prevent that so Qiangu Donfeng didn't think that Elder Yang would do so and the other side of the video conference were the other Elders nd the two Vice Presidents!
[*See the last section for more info on this.*]
Looks like no one wanted Fan Lin to go to Qiangu Donfeng.
"So as I was asking, why did no one informed me about the advancement of the Spirit Soul Tower challenge of the challenger Fan Lin?"
Elder Yang looked at all the researchers who usually were at his beck and call now following the orders of someone else.
"That kid was in a hurry and wanted to get done with the trial. I thought about it and agreed to his demands." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"Okay. So why is he facing the Spirit Crystal Butterfly on the 40th floor? That's not something that is easy to defeat." [Elder Yang]
<40th floor cleared>
Just as he had finished speaking, the clearing sound resounded throughout the observation room as the room turned silent.
Elder Yang was sure that he heard someone trying to control their laughter from the video conference and really wanted to lash out on the person.
<41st floor cleared>
"( •_• )" [Everyone]
While everyone were still silent about the previous situation, the 41st floor trial started and ended in the same second.
"Stop the trial." [Elder Yang]
Elder Yang said with a tinge of anger in his voice.
The various other Councilmen and Vice Presidents chose to remain silent and observe the situation. If things turn wrong, they will all return to the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters and deal with the cause through a mutual voting later.
The staff, on the other hand, had already stopped the trial when Elder Yang said so.
Qiangu Donfeng looked at Fan Lin and then at the battle data and an sudden idea came to his mind.
"Let's put the previous matter aside for later when all the council members get together by the end of this month,"
"For the matter at hand, all of us know that Fan Lin does not possess the strength to go beyond the 90th floor. Those floors were never made for single challengers to begin with,"
"You know just how important he is to us at the moment, if he gets seriously injured in there and was unable to continue his work, even your position might not be able to save you, you should know that, right?" [Elder Yang]
"So, stop your plan of poaching him to your side. Let him become a Soul Saint first and then he should have the right to choose whichever faction he wanted to choose." [Elder Yang]
"As for your actions today, we will see." [Councilman Tang]
Elder Yang calmly spoke. There were some things that he couldn't allow Qiangu Donfeng to ruin, Fan Lin was one of them.
At the current moment, Fan Lin was an asset to the Spirit Pagoda and that means, no one should held a monopoly on him, be it through familial connections, force or trickery.
He was the property of the Pagoda, the whole Pagoda and he should serve in the interest of the Spirit Pagoda. That's it. He can do whatever he wanted in his meantime and he had no limitation on him.
But Qiangu Donfeng seemed to have other plans considering that he had made his move on Fan Lin. That's a no no. They can't allow this.
The Council won't all this, nor would the Vice Presidents.
"I won't beat around the bush then. I just want the better for the Spirit Pagoda." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng weighed the situation and finally spoke but Elder Yang seemed to have other plans as he was not going to allow Qiangu Donfeng to have any chance of a comeback.
"We will come to that later. For now what was your next plan after he fails the challenge. You are not allowed to take him under you, he is the Pagoda's mutual asset, but you did make the bet, a punishment had to be decided on. We also have to find the best suited spirit soul for him." [Elder Yang]
"He is quite worthy of it for all the work he had done in the past few months." [Elder Yang]
Elder Yang spoke what all the council members had already agreed upon. A motivational gift for Fan Lin hard work and they were going to give it to him without any trials and all. Such good people.
"I have thought about giving him the Verisimilar Entroclasmatic Moth. Being a space and darkness typing with three different teleportation skills, it has a decent chance of providing the teleportation skill to Fan Lin." [Qiangu Donfeng]
Qiangu Donfeng said while presenting the data of the spirit soul on the screen behind him.
"Care to explain why you chose that?" [Elder Yang]
"I know Fan Lin's importance to us and that's why I want him to come under me as my student. That way, he would have a background that he his lacking and others will dare not attack him." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"He is weak, has just a single skill that is useless in combat and he had already lost the strongest skill of his martial soul: Blue Silver Spear, I don't think there is another chance to gain it again." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"No matter how you see, his future in the path of the strength, defence or crowd control Spirit Master is either bleak or simply non-existent. And that is when you disregard his martial soul," [Qiangu Donfeng]
"His Blue Silver Grass martial soul is a weak mutation and there is a high chance that he too will be struck at level 60-70 for the rest of his life like the other possessors of the Blue Silver Grass." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"We all seem to have forgotten about his Martial souls grave weaknesses due to all the feats that he had achieved." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"He has the Blue Silver Grass, the martial soul that is pure garbage on its own. He was the only exception but we all know why." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"And the biggest flaw that made me realise that giving him an attack or defence skill is a waste, the Martial Soul suppression; that he will literally face from any of the decent martial souls, rendering the attack or defence skill not that effective. He may not even have a chance to use it if the suppression is high." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"So after a lot of thinking, I thought of providing him with an escape type soul skill. If he faced something he couldn't fight, woosh and he had escaped to a safe place. [Qiangu Donfeng]
"And his martial soul is weird, maybe we can get another skill like the Boundless vitality, So I was thinking of letting his next Spirit soul to be an auxiliary one. The Blue Silver Grass martial soul's only usable factor come to play here as it is compatible with literally anything. Plus a hundred thousand year old spirit soul will give him two chances of getting the desired skill." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"He won't be the strongest of his generation, but I could make him a good auxiliary support for the others." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"That way we can make him the auxiliary support specialist, along with his public identity as the forest maker, we can make him the morality support of the Pagoda." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"The public may not like him now but in the future they would appreciate him and the Pagoda. So what do you think would they do when they realise that the the person who was on the heavy task of planting trees in the Douluo Continent had sacrificed better soul skills, all for the sake of the public! What would be their reaction? With a little bit of tempering here and there and managing the public rumours, we could have the entire population with us." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"We are old already, think about the future, he can become the best aid of Leng Yaozhu's discipline, they are also around the same age. Both of them combined could literally make the Spirit Pagoda hail above all." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"With him as the compassionate face of the Spirit Pagoda and her as the strength and glory of OUR Spirit Pagoda. What Shrek Academy, Tang Sect or Federation? Those will all fall beneath us in reputation, historical achievements and reverence." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"And lastly, if he is with us, we could even try to replicate his skill." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"I know he is important, far more important than any human asset that we have but that also means that he is in far more danger as well. We need to protect him but we always can't. The spirit soul that I have selected for him is the best in that regards. From the bottom of my heart, I want the best for him and that's why I have even began preparing for his Four World Battle Armour." [Qiangu Donfeng]
"!!!" [Elder Yang]
Qiangu Donfeng said while looking at the reaction of the Elder Yang and just as he had thought, Elder Yang was silent, so were the other people.
What could they even say? Qiangu Donfeng was right about Fan Lin.
No one has seen the future but they all have read about the past and Blue Silver Grass without any external support or twin martial soul, was the trashiest martial soul to ever exist.
It was completely weak, could be easily suppressed by anyone with a strong martial soul, had lots of weakness be it fire, ice, lightning, inertia and force etc while being really brittle.
And it wasn't all that, the one they were dealing with was a special case who just had a single non combat skill at Rank 50 Soul King.
Fan Lin's glorious past had been glorious because of his second unknown soul skill that allowed him the ability to control those green crystals. The rest of his skills were passives or useless in self protection or combat.
Now that he had lost that ability, he had lost a huge margin of his strength.
The soul skills were a crucial part of the strength of the Spirit Masters and Fan Lin was like a Rank 50 Soul King with no skills.
So regarding all that and knowing Fan Lin's importance, Qiangu Donfeng was kinda right.
Elder Yang truly didn't know what to say in this situation, although he knew that Qiangu Donfeng just wanted Fan Lin for himself and most of what he had said was actually BS but the bits of truth that he spoke of were undeniable.
It was the same with the other council members as well. Despite the fact that they didn't want Fan Lin to join Qiangu Donfeng, they really didn't have a suitable counter argument as Qiangu Donfeng was offering a Four World Battle Armour to become his student.
The council members couldn't fetch out a Four Word Battle Armour and would Fan Lin, the person hungry for resources, disagree to this offer of Qiangu Donfeng?
The situation remained silent for a while until a voice took hold of everyone's attention.
"When are we starting or should I take this as you surrendering to me, I win in that case, right?"