Douluo: Emerald Poison King

Chapter 508 - Taking and Eating
The God of Destruction dared not predict how far Chen Ming would go in the future, nor did he dare to say whether he would be able to create miracles like before and wield the true Sword of Judgment of the Three Realms on his own.

But
Sensing the peculiar divine energy fluctuations lingering in this space, the God of Destruction's eyes still held a hint of something inexplicable.

Just as he had casually mentioned to Xiao Lü (the God of Life), Chen Ming possessed both his own and life's power within him, and the two had combined to further generate the power of creation. In a sense, this was already very close to the situation of the "child" between the two of them.

Thinking about how the God of Destruction had suddenly become close to the Sea God in the past few days, and how the God of Destruction usually hid in his temple doing who-knows-what, a savage look flashed in his eyes.

"Shura, you'd better be sensible. I, along with Life, Good and Evil, are all watching you. Let's hope you don't disappoint us. And Dragon God, you'd better die a clean death, otherwise, if you want to cause harm to the God Realm, I don't mind fighting you again."

"Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King, Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King, I don't believe that the reason why this former Dragon God's bodyguard approached Chen Ming was really just a coincidence."

The God of Destruction is neither good-tempered nor a good person. He is essentially the embodiment of the universe's rules of destruction, only becoming part of that order because of emotions and love. If all shackles were removed, and the emotions that he perceives as "obstacles" were discarded, his power would likely increase even further.

After all, in terms of the strength and purity of destructive power, the God of Destruction, whose true form is a droplet of destruction, is actually superior to the former Dragon God. Perhaps he cannot ultimately win, but if he wanted to, he has the ability to overturn the table and prevent everyone from winning.

As time passed, another year went by in the Douluo world. With Chen Ming's initial promise that "paying taxes for three years" would allow his children to attend the academy, Chen Ming's territory began to show new vitality.

Unlike the normal nine-year compulsory education, due to the limitations of the development of the Douluo World itself and various circumstances, compulsory education in Chen Ming's territory only lasts for four years, and the content of the education is also somewhat different from that in his previous life.

Even though there's only a four-year compulsory education system right now, Chen Ming still managed to accumulate the necessary resources little by little during the three-year gap between years. Otherwise, he wouldn't have set a requirement of "paying taxes for three years" for children to enroll in school.

The first year focuses on teaching students basic writing and mathematics. The second and third years cover general knowledge and history of the continent. The fourth year introduces advanced courses such as physics and biology. Outstanding students receive additional financial subsidies from the territory, and their families may even receive a certain amount of tax revenue.

Those who excel within four years can continue their studies at higher-level vocational schools, where their education is free. If given the opportunity, they can even be transformed into artificial soul masters, gaining extraordinary power.
Well, Chen Ming didn't deny that he also had the intention of making the most of those who were useful, and one of the reasons for modifying them was to make the technical talents more hardworking and resilient.

With the formal operation of the educational institutions, the two great empires, which had been silent for more than three years and had been selectively copying Chen Ming's territory's development, finally couldn't hold back any longer.

In just over three years, Chen Ming's territory grew to a population of approximately two million. This number is equivalent to that of some small duchies, but the terrifying speed of development and the sheer number of Soul Masters were enough to make the two great empires wary and on guard.

In particular, the reality of those who refused to obey orders, refused to pay taxes, and were out of control was seen by the two great empires as the very prototype of the rising Third Reich.

Behind the scenes, Xue Ye of the Heaven Dou Empire had secretly reached some kind of agreement with Dai Tianfeng, the emperor of the Starfall Empire. They were simultaneously creating obstacles for Chen Ming while secretly copying his work. The fallen soul masters who had been forced into high-risk jobs like slaves in recent years were a form of copying Chen Ming by the two empires.

But this education system is something that neither of the two great empires dares to copy, nor can they afford to.

Chen Ming's territory has a population of over two million. Due to preferential policies, minors account for 30% of this population, nearly 600,000 minors. Among them, about 250,000 are minors aged six to twelve according to the Douluo World's definition of minors. Of these 250,000 school-age children, only half have fulfilled the three-year tax payment requirement.

but.
To put it simply, even the teaching staff and materials that Chen Ming spent three years assembling were far inferior to the normal standards of his previous life.

The compulsory education system only has six classes a day, each lasting forty minutes, with a ten-minute break. From eight in the morning to four in the evening, lunch is provided, and there is a one-hour lunch break, totaling only six hours a day. Moreover, it's one day on, one day off, with one teacher managing nearly a hundred students in each class. No matter how you look at it, it's a makeshift operation.

Unless one is a prodigy, even if an average child studies for four years, it is still difficult to achieve a social class leap in the Douluo world; at most, they can only live a "slightly" better life.

Can.
This is nearly 130,000 children at once? Everyone can write, do arithmetic, and even knows a little history. They know that there are other cities on the continent besides their own village and nearby cities. The scariest thing is that they can even calculate how much tax to collect and know some of the empire's laws.

This is no longer a question of whether or not to expose past misdeeds; it's a much more fundamental issue.

The Douluo Continent is sparsely populated, with vast plains. Due to the scarcity of various problems, it has a large population. The combined population of the two feudal states exceeds two hundred million.

However, the problem is that the literacy rates in both countries are similar to those in the Qing Dynasty. More than 99% of the population is illiterate. In a village of several hundred people, it is considered excellent if one or two people in each generation can write their own names.

Even if you add up all the intellectuals in the world, the number wouldn't exceed three million. More than half of them were Soul Masters, nobles, or merchants.

Each of the two great empires adds no more than 100,000 new "cultured people" annually. However, if Chen Ming's territory operates normally, it will likely continue to add tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of literate and arithmetic-skilled individuals each year. Moreover, this number will only gradually increase along with the territory's population, not decrease.

Indeed, the people in the Douluo world are a bit dim-witted and prone to overthinking. But once this data is presented here, anyone who can do math will find it hard to relax. This ratio is no longer just a potential problem; it's equivalent to a fist-sized tumor growing on one's chest.

If they weren't outmatched, and if their sheer numbers weren't completely ineffective against powerful poison-attribute soul masters, then the two great empires, along with a dozen or so duchies, would have long ago set aside their differences and launched a full-scale attack on Chen Ming's territory, determined to shatter the eggs and slice the earthworms vertically within his domain.
Finally, all information about Chen Ming was completely erased from history books.

Unfortunately, while the idea was good, as I said before, we couldn't win.

The two great empires have watched helplessly as Chen Ming's territory has developed into the Third Empire in recent years. Is it because they don't want to stop it?
No, no, no, the offerings of the two great empires have been dying suddenly quite frequently in recent years. Among them, in addition to those who "died suddenly" while exploring Chen Ming's territory and those who claimed to have "died suddenly" to the outside world, there are also those who "died suddenly" and then had a being with the exact same martial soul and a similar soul power level appear in Chen Ming's territory.

To put it bluntly, if you were to carefully examine the teams in Chen Ming's territory, it wouldn't be hard to find several martial souls that theoretically shouldn't be present in his teams, such as Star Crown, Netherworld Cat, and Blue Lightning Tyrannosaurus. Even a few years ago, there were individuals who claimed not to be disciples of the Clear Sky Sect, but whose martial soul was indeed the Clear Sky Hammer and who even knew the Nine Absolutes of Clear Sky, who tried to join him, only to be ultimately driven out by Chen Ming.

The reason why the Swan and White Tiger Martial Souls are so easily recognizable and closely guarded is that it would be quite normal for several Soul Masters who have no connection with the royal families of the two great empires but have the exact same Martial Soul to sneak in.

After all, no one can guarantee that they are the only voice in their own faction, right?
Moreover, to put it bluntly, apart from the royal families of the two great empires and those who are so tightly bound to them that they can't get off the war chariot, everyone else is prepared to hedge their bets on multiple fronts.

Most importantly, the people Chen Ming is looking for don't necessarily have exceptionally high talent; their arrival might even improve their natural abilities. Ordinary sect disciples are simply lost, and the sects don't care much. But if they can be reborn, they've actually gained something.

Just as the two empires were discussing how to use subtle tactics to get Chen Ming to temporarily abandon his act of passing on his precious knowledge to the common people, a figure who had disappeared from the continent for several years quietly appeared in the palace on a snowy night.

Looking at the tall figure, the weary Xueye let out a long sigh, unsure whether it was excitement or helplessness, but he was clearly not surprised by the sudden appearance of this person.

He waved his hand to dismiss those around him, and Xueye led the visitor into a secret room, personally brewing a pot of tea for him.

"I wonder what brings Haotian Douluo here?"

Looking at Tang Chen, Xue Ye's lips moved for a long time, but she did not utter the title of "Invincible on Land" that once belonged to him. Instead, she simply called him Haotian Douluo.

Tang Chen felt somewhat helpless about this, but he wasn't angry. He simply drank the scalding hot tea in his cup in one gulp, wiped his mouth casually with his sleeve, and then stared into Xue Ye's eyes.

"Emperor Xueye, do you know that your Heavenly Dou Empire is facing imminent disaster!"

"Is disaster looming?" Xue Ye paused for a moment, then asked in return.

"May I ask which impending calamity Haotian Douluo is referring to? Is it the Spirit Hall's wolfish ambitions in recent years and the Star Luo Empire's restless actions, or the various sects and nobles' growing disloyalty to the empire, or the development of Chen Ming's so-called 'hopeful expansion' territory?"

"So many? It sounds like the Heavenly Dou Empire is about to collapse!" Tang Chen muttered to himself as he listened to Xue Ye's detailed and knowledgeable retort. He then continued speaking.

"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Crown Prince of your Heaven Dou Empire. Do you know that your current eldest son, the Crown Prince Xue Qinghe who wields a great deal of power in the Heaven Dou Empire, is not your biological son, but someone from the Spirit Hall in disguise?"

"Your Highness," Xue Ye, who should have been furious according to Tang Chen's plan, only sighed softly upon hearing this.

"I knew about it a few years ago, but it didn't matter. At first, I thought the Crown Prince was targeting the nobles because of the assassination attempt. Later, I gradually realized that the Crown Prince was too close to the Spirit Hall and his ideology was not like that of a royal. Instead, he seemed more like a member of the Spirit Hall."

"My Heaven Dou Empire was never a monolithic entity. Its existence on the Douluo Continent was only possible because of the Spirit Hall, which allowed it to survive the attacks of the Star Luo Empire. Internally, it was in complete chaos."

"To put it bluntly, I've been emperor for so many years, how could I not know what the situation of the Heavenly Dou Empire is like? Apart from the first few years after I took the throne when I had some ambition, my greatest wish for the next few decades is that the Heavenly Dou Empire doesn't fall in my hands, and that I don't become the ruler of a fallen country."

"The continent is currently beset by internal and external troubles, and there is much turmoil. I, the emperor of the Heaven Dou Empire, have long been unable to stabilize the situation in the Heaven Dou Empire. If it weren't for the Crown Prince relying on the Spirit Hall's manpower over the years, the Heaven Dou Empire might have already begun to split apart."

Xueye acted like a dead pig that wasn't afraid of boiling water, completely lacking the composure a ruler should have.

This is normal, though. Most emperors of the Heavenly Dou Empire are like this, with only average personal abilities and combat power. Xue Ye is just one of the more self-aware individuals among them.

Under normal circumstances, he can serve until he steps down without any problem, but if there is any major change, then it's as if he never existed.

Tang Chen resisted the urge to hit Xue Ye with a hammer and stared into Xue Ye's eyes.

"That sounds nice, but are you really willing to let the legacy of the Heavenly Dou Empire fall into the hands of outsiders?"

"Of course I'm unwilling, but I simply don't have the ability," Xue Ye replied calmly, looking directly at Tang Chen.

"Haotian Douluo came to my palace today and mentioned the Crown Prince. He must have his own ideas, right? What does Haotian Sect want to get from the Heaven Dou Empire? And what is Haotian Sect's purpose in getting rid of the Crown Prince for me? I'm sure His Majesty Haotian, who has been hiding for many years, will not let this opportunity pass."

"You see things very clearly," Tang Chen said bluntly.

"I'll help you get rid of the Crown Prince, and in return, your Heaven Dou Empire will protect the last flame of my Clear Sky Sect. I'll also select something from your Heaven Dou Empire's treasury, and finally, I'll have your daughter Xue Ke marry my great-grandson Tang San as her principal wife. How about it?"

(End of this chapter)