Chapter 125: Elder Xuan Tries to Renege? Kneel Obediently!
"Damn it, Du Busi! You really are like a lingering ghost that just won't dissipate!"
Elder Xuan's body went entirely rigid at the very edge of the arena.
His aged face, already heavily lined with anxiety, contorted into a hideous mask of extreme shame and fury.
With his back turned to the Master of the Body Sect, his right hand clamped down on the sleeve of the unconscious Ma Xiaotao, his knuckles turning white from the sheer force of his grip.
He had calculated everything. He thought he could exploit the chaotic aftermath of the match—the deafening cheers of the audience and the Star Luo Emperor's preparations for the grand award ceremony—to quietly spirit his battered, frustrated team away from this disastrous place unnoticed.
As long as they slipped out of Star Luo Plaza and made it back to the safety of Shrek Academy, there would naturally be countless ways to make that absurd, humiliating bet fade into nothingness.
But he had miscalculated. He never expected Du Busi to have his eyes locked onto him from the very beginning, refusing to leave even a single shred of dignity for Shrek Academy.
This suffocating sensation of being intercepted in broad daylight, forced to confront the most embarrassing reality imaginable, caused Elder Xuan's mental defenses to completely fracture.
To him, Du Busi was no longer just a rival; he was a rabid hound that had clamped its jaws onto its prey. No matter how Elder Xuan tried to evade, the old monster would chase him to the ends of the earth just to tear a chunk of flesh from his bones.
Nearby, Huo Yuhao, Dai Yueheng, and the rest of the Shrek team were struggling to drag themselves upright under Elder Xuan's hasty pulling. When Du Busi's thunderous, penetrating voice echoed across the plaza, it was as if a physical blow had struck them all.
The preceding battle had been far too tragic, pushing their minds into a state of absolute numbness and exhaustion. Only now, jolted by that booming voice, did they suddenly recall the suffocating, catastrophic matter hanging over their heads.
Before the tournament had even officially commenced, right at the towering gates of Star Luo City, Elder Xuan—acting as their esteemed team leader—had brazenly made a bet of dignity with the Body Sect's Master, Du Busi, in full view of the public.
The terms were absolute. The losing side not only had to publicly acknowledge the victor's superior strength, but their team leader also had to kneel, kowtow, and offer a public apology.
"This time... we are truly going to lose everything."
Huo Yuhao lowered his head. His arms hung limply at his sides, trembling slightly as a heavy sigh of utter despair escaped his lips.
Beside him, Dai Yueheng, Bei Bei, and the others wore expressions of deathly pallor. The burning shame rising from the very marrow of their bones completely eclipsed the agonizing physical pain of their defeat.
Back when the bet was made, a faint sense of dread had tugged at their hearts. Elder Xuan's notoriously impulsive, irritable, and arrogant nature, clashing directly against the equally extreme and fiercely protective Du Busi, had turned a simple wager into a ticking time bomb.
But back then, Elder Xuan had brushed off their concerns. He had guaranteed it would be fine. He had guaranteed they would win.
But they lost.
And now, retribution had arrived right on schedule.
They simply could not fathom the impending reality. Elder Xuan, a senior elder of Shrek Academy's revered Sea God Pavilion, the very incarnation of their ten thousand years of absolute glory, was actually going to kneel and kowtow to Du Busi. And he would do it in front of hundreds of thousands of live spectators, broadcast across the entire continent by sixteen Class 7 panoramic imaging soul tools.
The sheer irony. The absolute disgrace.
Just visualizing the scene made them feel as though they were experiencing a living social death.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away within the hallowed halls of the Sea God Pavilion, the already oppressive atmosphere finally detonated.
The seated elders stared at the wretched, hunched back of Elder Xuan displayed on the massive light screen. Their long-accumulated frustration erupted into open fury.
"Elder Xuan actually agreed to such a bet?!" Elder Song shot up from her chair. Her usually kind, grandmotherly features were now covered in a layer of absolute frost, her voice trembling with incredulous rage.
"Has he completely lost his mind? Once he goes through with this, he won't just be throwing away his own face; he will be dragging Shrek's ten-thousand-year pristine reputation straight into the mud!"
Yan Shaozhe's breathing grew ragged and heavy. He stared fixedly at the glowing screen, his jaw locked so tight his teeth ground together.
"Kowtow to Du Busi in public?" Yan Shaozhe roared in a low, dangerous register. "If a senior elder of Shrek actually drops to his knees, how will we ever establish a foothold on this continent again? What qualifications will we have left to call ourselves the number one academy in the world?"
"Are we... are we going to renege on the debt?" Xian Lin'er interjected, her tone laced with deep conflict and mounting anxiety.
"But if we back out now, Du Busi will undoubtedly tear the heavens apart making a scene. Breaking a formal bet while being broadcast live across the entire continent... wouldn't the backlash be even more shameful than the kowtow itself?"
Amidst the chaotic, escalating arguments of the pavilion elders, Elder Mu remained seated in the main chair, maintaining an eerie, suffocating silence.
His deep, ancient eyes remained fixed on Elder Xuan's projected image. The sheer disappointment and dissatisfaction swimming in his gaze had reached an absolute zenith.
In Elder Mu's eyes, Elder Xuan's recent string of catastrophic failures could no longer be brushed off with the simple word mistake.
First, blinded by his own arrogance, he had driven away Liu Yuan—a peerless genius with the Double Pupils Body Martial Soul, a talent rarely seen in ten thousand years—costing Shrek a guaranteed future pillar.
Then, due to his abysmal command and negligent protection, Shrek's flawless ten-thousand-year streak of glory had been thoroughly severed under his leadership.
And now, he had dug a pit so massive it threatened to swallow the academy whole.
Elder Mu slowly closed his eyes, refusing to look at the screen any longer.
For Elder Xuan, the so-called pillar of Shrek Academy, the Dragon God Douluo felt an unmatched, chilling sense of disillusionment.
Back at the edge of the competition arena, Du Busi's suffocating pressure continued to mount.
The Master of the Body Sect walked through the air, his hands clasped behind his back. With every step he took, violent ripples of dark green soul power distorted the space around him.
His tyrannical aura locked entirely onto Elder Xuan. His tone was cold, dripping with venomous mockery.
"Elder Xuan, speak! Where did all that energy to run away go? This old man is still standing here, waiting for you to fulfill your grand promise!"
Enduring the scorching scrutiny of hundreds of thousands of gazes, Elder Xuan felt as though he were being roasted alive over an open flame.
His deeply ingrained pride roared in rebellion. He did not want to kneel. To a man of his stature, such an act of submission was a humiliation far worse than death itself.
Crushed under this extreme psychological pressure, Elder Xuan chose the most despicable, cowardly route available: outright denial.
"What nonsense are you spouting? What bet?!" Elder Xuan whipped around abruptly. He forced a mask of righteous indignation onto his weathered face, shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Du Busi, don't you dare slander me in front of the world! As a senior elder of Shrek Academy, when would I have ever made such an absurd, childish wager with a brute like you? It is clearly your Body Sect trying to use this tournament to step on our heads, deliberately fabricating lies to humiliate me and Shrek!"
His brazen words actually caused Du Busi to pause in mid-air.
Then, as if he had just heard the most spectacular joke in the history of the world, Du Busi threw his head back and laughed. The wild, booming laughter shook the clouds, filled with a mixture of sorrowful pity and absolute derision.
"Fine! You really have guts, Elder Xuan. Reneging on a blood debt, are you? You think just because time has passed, there's no one left to testify?!" Du Busi's laughter snapped off instantly. His eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits as he barked an order over his shoulder without even turning his head.
"Liu Yuan! Bring that item out. Let our forgetful Elder Xuan properly refresh his memory!"
Under the suspicious, murmuring gazes of the massive audience, Liu Yuan stepped forward. His expression was a mask of absolute, chilling calm. With a flick of his wrist, he retrieved a small, exquisitely crafted metal sphere from his storage soul tool.
It was a Class 6 soul tool, specifically engineered for high-fidelity, long-distance audio recording.
As Liu Yuan injected a stream of his soul power into the device, the metal sphere flared with a faint blue light. An instant later, a clear, resonant voice blasted through the massive amplification soul tools surrounding the arena.
"...Du Busi, if you're afraid, take your trash and get out of Star Luo City now! Today, I, Elder Xuan, will put it on the line right here: if your Heavenly Soul Team can win, I, the Taotie Douluo, will kneel and kowtow to apologize to you in public! But if you lose..."
It was Elder Xuan's exact voice. The audio perfectly captured the arrogant, total pride he had displayed that day at the city gates.
In a fraction of a second, Elder Xuan's face drained of all color, shifting from a sickly pale green to the ashen gray of a corpse.
He stared fixedly at the glowing blue sphere resting in Liu Yuan's palm, his lips trembling violently as he stammered out a question.
"You... doesn't your Body Sect always pride itself on being traditional? You claim to be noble and refuse to use soul tools! Why... why would you have such a thing?!"
Liu Yuan let out a low, cold scoff. His striking purple-gold Double Pupils looked down at the trembling elder with absolute zero warmth. His tone was perfectly even, yet laced with lethal sarcasm.
"To deal with a gentleman, we naturally employ a gentleman's methods. But to deal with certain hypocrites who eagerly go back on their word, we naturally have to prepare some special countermeasures."
Liu Yuan did not stop there. He swept his piercing gaze across the sprawling audience, channeling his soul power once more to project his voice into every single corner of Star Luo Plaza.
"Dear friends in the audience! Citizens and colleagues of the Star Luo Empire!"
"I clearly remember that when we established this bet with Elder Xuan at the city gates that day, there were quite a few friends present who witnessed the exchange firsthand."
"Now, I would like to ask everyone to serve as our witnesses."
"To the friends who were at the scene that day—if you heard this conversation, please stand up! Tell everyone here, loudly and clearly, if this event truly happened!"
As Liu Yuan's commanding voice faded, a heavy silence blanketed the stadium for a single heartbeat.
Then, like a spark hitting dry tinder, responses erupted from dozens of different directions simultaneously.
"Yes! I was at the city gate that afternoon! I heard every word clearly!"
"That's right, I heard it too! Elder Xuan explicitly said he would kowtow himself!"
"To think Shrek Academy actually wants to renege on a public debt... how utterly disappointing!"
The voices of the crowd swelled, merging into a roaring tide of condemnation that completely obliterated any remaining path of retreat for Elder Xuan.
Elder Xuan's body shook violently, as if he were standing naked in a blizzard. He looked at the countless pairs of eyes surrounding him—eyes brimming with contempt, mockery, and a hungry desire to watch a mighty figure fall. He listened to the ordinary commoners, people who would have once looked upon him with god-like reverence, now loudly cursing him for his shameless injustice.
The crushing weight of reality finally settled over him. He knew that today, this hurdle could absolutely not be bypassed.
If he refused to kneel, his personal reputation as the Taotie Douluo, alongside Shrek Academy's sacred ten-thousand-year legacy, would completely disintegrate right here and now. They would become the laughingstock of the entire continent for centuries to come.
Worse still, if he didn't kneel, Du Busi's murderous intent suggested he might not even leave Star Luo Plaza alive.
He had to kneel.
Under the chilling, absolute gaze of Liu Yuan's Double Pupils. Amidst the wild, victorious laughter of Du Busi. And under the collective, unforgiving witness of hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Elder Xuan's knees, which had stood tall and unbending for nearly a century, finally gave out.
They smashed heavily onto the hard stone edge of the arena, producing a sharp, sickening sound of bone grinding against rock.
Thud—!
That was the sound of Elder Xuan's knees hitting the ground.
And it was also the deafening sound of Shrek Academy's invincible, ten-thousand-year myth completely shattering into dust.
This Rank 98 Taotie Douluo finally lowered his head, a head he had always considered supremely noble, under the watchful eyes of the entire continent, and knelt in absolute submission before Liu Yuan.
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