Mo Lan's pupils constricted sharply, but she forced herself to stay calm, raising a hand in a placating gesture. "I agree to your terms, just don't hurt the hostages!"
She tossed aside the soul tool pistol in her hand and raised both arms above her head, walking step by step toward the rear of the train car.
The chief of security behind her was sweating bullets with anxiety, but with the criminals' threats hanging over them, he didn't dare make a rash move.
At that moment, Tang Wulin burst in.
Instantly, every gun in the criminals' hands swung toward him.
Tang Wulin froze.
Not out of fear, but because he'd spotted a familiar head of yellow hair that put him instantly at ease.
The hostage the criminals had their guns trained on was none other than Arthur.
"What are you doing?!" Mo Lan was both shocked and desperate, her voice trembling. She hadn't expected Tang Wulin to suddenly rush in like this. It was practically throwing himself onto the gun barrels.
"Get back here, now!"
Tang Wulin let out a strange laugh. "Sis, you can come back. No need to go over there."
He yanked Mo Lan back by the arm.
The criminals were rattled by this sudden turn of events. Their leader snarled, "I told you not to try anything clever. Don't blame me for what happens next. Heh. Let's start by killing one."
He aimed at Arthur and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
But the spray of blood everyone braced for never came.
The soul tool ray gun struck Arthur square in the head, producing nothing more than a faint ripple of pale golden light before fading away entirely.
Under the terrified stares of everyone in the car except Tang Wulin, Arthur scratched his head as if nothing had happened.
He even let out a yawn, and when he spoke, his tone had turned ice cold. "You bunch of Holy Spirit Cult scum. I hadn't even gotten around to hunting you down yet, and here you are, disturbing my sweet dreams instead?"
Carrying out a terror attack just to rack up a body count, what else could they be but Holy Spirit Cult scum?
Arthur had been waiting patiently until now purely to observe a little longer, to check whether there were any evil soul masters lurking in the shadows.
Well, would you look at that. He'd actually found one.
The moment those words left his mouth, the criminals' faces changed drastically. Before they could react, the Arthur in their eyes dissolved into a beam of light.
A phantom made purely of radiance.
In an instant, the light seemed to teleport, sweeping past every single criminal. Streaks of golden brilliance carved afterimage after afterimage through the train car.
The criminals saw only a flash of light before consciousness left them.
Tang Wulin cheered. "Brother Arthur is amazing!"
Mo Lan snapped back to her senses as well, just about to step forward and offer her thanks.
Then she saw a spear wrapped in coils of light materialize in Arthur's hand. He flung it toward her, and the Holy Lance shot straight at her.
Fwip!
The Holy Lance grazed past Mo Lan's ear and pierced with pinpoint precision into the seemingly empty air behind her.
A dark shadow materialized out of nowhere, letting out a bloodcurdling scream, the malevolent aura clinging to its body sizzling and crackling under the burn of the light beam, dissolving into wisps of black smoke.
"What is this thing!"
Even as it shrieked, six soul rings surfaced behind the evil soul master: two yellow, two purple, two black.
He thrashed with all his strength but couldn't break free by even an inch.
"Damn it, I am the Plague Envoy!"
He raised the scepter in his hand, and with a flash of soul ring light, a thick cloud of green mist came pouring out.
But in the very next instant, the Holy Lance flared with brilliant light.
The mist churned and surged, trying to spread outward, but it was pinned down and anchored within a tiny radius, unable to escape.
The evil soul master tried to make another move.
But Arthur had no intention of giving him any room to breathe.
All four elements erupted at once, weaving themselves into a net.
The instant it swept through the green plague mist, it purified it completely.
The mist dissolved into wisps of pale smoke and vanished, without leaving behind even the faintest trace of its rotten stench.
Just as the evil soul master tried to unleash his sixth soul skill in a desperate counterattack, he found his body suddenly twisting out of his own control.
Spatial power surged in from every direction like an invisible noose, binding his limbs, his torso, even his soul rings in a crushing grip.
His body shrank and contorted at a speed visible to the naked eye, the sharp crack of splintering bone mixing with the shrieking dissolution of his evil martial soul's origin.
In the end, he was utterly annihilated into the void, without leaving behind so much as a speck of ash or a single trace.
The spatial power slowly withdrew, and the Holy Lance dissolved into golden light and vanished as well.
Arthur stretched lazily. "Just a Soul Emperor. Not even worth the trouble."
Dead silence filled the train car.
Mo Lan's whole body had gone rigid, her back already soaked through with cold sweat.
There was relief that the crisis had passed, but also a deep sense of shock.
As the daughter of the Administrator of Heaven Dou City, she'd seen plenty of soul masters in her time, but never anything as terrifying as what she'd just witnessed.
This young man's strength was utterly unfathomable.
The chief of security and the staff members didn't even dare breathe too loudly, looking at Arthur as though gazing upon a god.
Arthur turned to look at Mo Lan and blinked, the picture of a perfectly innocent young man.
"You're safe now, big sister." His tone was light and breezy, as if he were mentioning the most ordinary thing in the world. "I'll leave the cleanup to you. I've still got an exam to get to."
Mo Lan, faced with such a jarring contrast in his demeanor, found herself momentarily at a loss for words.
Then she caught the word exam.
Come to think of it, Tang Wulin had mentioned something about being in the middle of an exam too.
She turned to look at him at once.
"Ah, he's the class president of our first-year class, Arthur." Tang Wulin, catching her confusion, explained.
"We're in the middle of our final exam right now."
"A first-year final exam?" Mo Lan's eyes went wide, and the look she gave Arthur was filled with disbelief.
Wait, hold on, are the students in the soul master world these fierce nowadays?
Arthur clapped Tang Wulin on the shoulder. "Didn't expect you'd be the first one to run into me, of all people."
Tang Wulin. Mo Lan. A train. An evil soul master.
He was reminded of how, in the original story, Tang Wulin had earned the title of the Train Killer through this very soul tool train incident.
A thought sparked in his mind. What would happen if he used Fate to weave his own destiny together with that of evil soul masters?
Would that mean he wouldn't even need to go hunting for evil soul masters himself anymore? They'd just come streaming toward him on their own, one after another?
Hmm. He'd need to experiment carefully with that. For now, he still had to keep things within reasonable limits.
Otherwise, if he ended up reeling in something too powerful, he might not be able to handle it.
Snapping out of his thoughts, he turned to Mo Lan. "By the way, I also took care of the bomb rigged on the train while I was at it. I'll leave the follow-up matters in your hands, big sister."
"It's, it's no trouble at all!" Mo Lan waved her hands quickly. "Classmate Arthur, classmate Tang Wulin, thank you both so much for this! If it hadn't been for you two, the consequences would have been unthinkable. Once you reach Heaven Dou City, if you ever need anything at all, please reach out to me!"
As she spoke, she hurriedly pulled two specially made communication badges from her pocket and handed them to Arthur and Tang Wulin. "These are exclusive badges from the Heaven Dou City Administrator's Estate. With these, whether you need to requisition resources or ask for help, you'll get the fastest possible response."
Arthur accepted the badge and casually tucked it into his pocket, offering a smile and a word of thanks.
Tang Wulin, meanwhile, turned his badge over curiously in his hands, eyes sparkling. "Wow, thank you, big sister! With this, our exam should go a lot more smoothly now!"
They arrived in Heaven Dou City.
"Brother Arthur. I'm so hungry." Tang Wulin rubbed his stomach. "Why don't we head over to the Blacksmith Association here and scrounge up some cash first?"
"Hm?" Arthur turned to him, puzzled. "You didn't get yours?"
"Get what?" Tang Wulin looked utterly lost.
"I had Gu Yue distribute the money. Didn't you get yours?"
"What!" Tang Wulin's face went pale with shock. "I, I left in such a hurry, I had no idea!"
He pounded his chest and stamped his foot, the very picture of anguish. "If I'd known there was something this good going on, why would I have gone through all that trouble dodging my ticket fare!"
"It's fine, I'll treat you." Arthur led Tang Wulin into a random shop by the roadside.
They'd just settled into a seat by the window when a painfully familiar shout rang out from the entrance.
"Boss, bring out one of every signature dish you've got!"
Arthur and Tang Wulin exchanged a glance, then turned toward the door in unison.
Xu Lizhi came striding in with big, confident steps.
The gears of fate had begun to turn.
Amid countless coincidences, the first-year students were destined to converge, one by one, in Heaven Dou City.