Douluo: Expelled From Shrek, I Awakened The Double Pupils! — Chapter 208

Chapter 208: The Powerless Shrek

At this exact moment.

Deep inside the Sea God Pavilion of Shrek Academy.

The lighting in the grand meeting room was unusually dim, casting long, distorted shadows across the ancient wooden floorboards. Seated around the massive oval table were all the core elders Shrek Academy could currently muster. The air in the room felt thick, heavy with an unspoken anxiety that pressed down on everyone’s shoulders.

Elder Xuan was notably absent. He was currently in deep, secluded cultivation, standing at the critical juncture of pushing toward the legendary Rank 99 Limit Douluo realm. Without his overwhelming presence to anchor them, the atmosphere of the entire gathering was even more stifling than usual.

Yan Shaozhe sat at the head of the table. His expression was dark, his jaw locked tight as his knuckles turned a bloodless white. In his hands, he tightly clutched a crumpled parchment record that had just been transmitted back from the Sun Moon Forest.

“Shaozhe, why have you called us here so urgently? What exactly happened?” An elder finally spoke up to break the suffocating silence. He furrowed his brow, his tone laced with clear dissatisfaction at the sudden emergency summons. “The Academy has been stretched incredibly thin lately. If this is not a major crisis that threatens our very foundation, I would prefer this kind of disruption does not happen again…”

“Ma Xiaotao was taken away by the Body Sect,” Yan Shaozhe interrupted him, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

He spoke softly, yet the words echoed like a thunderclap in the ears of every elder present.

The meeting room instantly fell into a dead, absolute silence.

“What did you just say?” Another elder stood up so abruptly that his heavy wooden chair scraped harshly against the floorboards, the screeching sound grating against the quiet room. “Ma Xiaotao? How could this be? Has she not been missing for months? Why would the Body Sect suddenly appear and take her away?”

Yan Shaozhe did not answer immediately. Instead, he smoothed out the crumpled parchment and gave a grim, detailed account of the battle exactly as Huo Yuhao had reported it. He hid nothing. He laid bare the horrifying reality of Ma Xiaotao’s mutation into an Evil Soul Master, the sudden intervention of Liu Yuan, and the terrifying, surgical precision with which Liu Yuan used his strange abilities to completely sever her spirit power circuits.

As the gruesome details of the report settled over the room, the initial shock morphed into explosive outrage. The anger of the Sea God Pavilion was completely ignited.

“What arrogance from the Body Sect! They are openly provoking Shrek Academy!” An elder slammed his hand against the table, the sheer force leaving a distinct, indented palm print in the ancient wood. “How dare they intercept and attack our students in the Sun Moon Forest? And to actually kidnap Shrek’s number one genius in centuries and drag her back to their sect? This is absolute lawlessness!”

“We must dispatch a team to bring Xiaotao back immediately!”

“Yes, we must bring her back! Not only do we need to retrieve Xiaotao, but we must also teach the Body Sect the price of offending Shrek!”

The elders grew increasingly agitated, their voices overlapping in a chorus of self-righteous fury. As a core disciple of Shrek Academy, Ma Xiaotao was the absolute focal point of their future cultivation plans., she carried a unique and powerful Spirit Legacy. No matter the cost, the Academy simply could not allow her to remain a prisoner in the hands of the Body Sect.

Yan Shaozhe sat quietly, listening to the furious roars echoing around him. He slowly closed his eyes and took a deep, ragged breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked around the table, his gaze sweeping over the flushed faces of his peers. “Since everyone is in agreement that we must go,” he asked loudly, his voice cutting through the clamor, “then tell me… who will go? And exactly how do you propose we do this?”

The noisy, chaotic shouting in the meeting room came to a screeching halt.

The fierce, angry expressions previously plastered across the elders’ faces froze instantly. Yan Shaozhe’s simple question acted like a bucket of freezing water, ruthlessly extinguishing the blazing fire of their righteous indignation.

The very same elders who had been shouting passionately just seconds ago suddenly found the grain of the wooden table incredibly interesting. They all chose to remain completely silent.

Every single one of them suddenly recalled their last disastrous expedition to the Heavenly Soul Empire.

During that incident, Yan Shaozhe, Elder Song, and Xian Lin’er had marched into the Heavenly Soul Empire to negotiate with the Body Sect. The result had been a catastrophic humiliation. Not only did they fail to retrieve Fan Yu, but they were also brutally suppressed and mocked by Du Busi in front of numerous major powers.

The memory of that crushing defeat still hung over the hearts of these elders like a suffocating shadow. Faced with the prospect of confronting that monster again, this group of exalted Sea God Pavilion elders suddenly felt a cold grip of fear tightening around their throats.

“Shaozhe, you ask us who will go…” An elder spoke up, his voice lacking all its previous bravado as he awkwardly avoided Yan Shaozhe’s piercing gaze. “Elder Xuan is currently in deep seclusion. Look around this table. Among those of us sitting here, in terms of spirit power rank and raw combat strength, who can actually defeat Du Busi?”

He swallowed hard before continuing. “The lesson from our last encounter was painful enough. If we march over there rashly right now, the outcome will only be far worse than last time.”

“He is right,” another elder chimed in, eager to find an excuse. “When that lunatic Du Busi goes crazy, he even dares to throw hands with a Limit Douluo. What exactly are we supposed to do against him?”

“If we move out without a proper plan and end up heavily injured by him again, the Academy’s overall defensive strength will be severely compromised. That would trigger a true crisis for Shrek.”

The elders spoke one after another, their tones shifting from furious demands for justice to careful, cowardly analyses of the ‘objective situation’.

Listening to their endless excuses, Yan Shaozhe felt a bitter chill seep into his very bones. He had originally hoped that the collective wisdom of the Academy’s elders could formulate a viable solution. Perhaps they could offer trading terms to the Body Sect, or seek military pressure from the Empires—anything was better than just sitting here doing nothing.

But the harsh reality laid bare before him was that they truly had no solutions.

With Elder Xuan locked away in seclusion, the mighty Shrek Academy had actually deteriorated to the point where they did not have a single person capable of standing up to Du Busi.

Yan Shaozhe’s shoulders slumped. The fight seemed to drain out of him all at once. His chest tightened painfully, and a deep, suffocating sense of powerlessness—an emotion he had never experienced in his entire life—spread through his veins.

As the Dean of Shrek Academy’s Martial Soul Department, he could not even muster the strength to rescue his own student, nor did he even possess the courage to try.

“Since when has our glorious Shrek Academy fallen to such a pathetic state?”

“Are we really just going to sit here and watch?”

Yan Shaozhe’s voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

No one answered him.

The meeting room plunged back into a dead, heavy silence. The only sound was the cold night wind whistling past the windows, making the grand, historic Sea God Pavilion feel incredibly desolate and hollow.

The silence caused Yan Shaozhe’s heart to turn completely cold.

…

At the exact same time.

Far away at the Body Sect headquarters.

After several days of relentless, high-speed travel, Liu Yuan, Du Busi, and Long Aotian finally crossed the mountain boundaries and returned to the sect.

The massive compound was as disciplined and quiet as ever. The only sounds echoing through the mountain peaks were the sharp cracks of fists breaking the air from the distant martial arts training fields.

After taking a brief moment to wash up and rest, Liu Yuan returned to the quiet isolation of his own courtyard. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, he began a final, careful organization of his gains from the expedition to the Sun Moon Forest.

Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, the dark, chaotic energy of the Destruction Beast’s Soul Spirit had completely stabilized. Following this period of intense integration, he could now effortlessly command that terrifying attribute, using it to surgically dismantle and shred enemy spirit power circuits with a mere thought.

Just as he was preparing to dive deeper into his meditation to map out the advanced application rules of the ‘Destruction’ attribute, a soft knock echoed from his door.

Du Busi pushed the door open and walked in.

The towering sect master looked down at Liu Yuan, who slowly opened his eyes, the faint glow of his Double Pupils fading into the darkness. Du Busi did not offer any flowery praise for Liu Yuan’s flawless combat performance against the mutated Ma Xiaotao. His gaze remained steady and pragmatic.

“Although your spirit power rank did not experience a direct breakthrough during this trip, the overall density of your spirit power and your practical combat experience have made significant strides.” Du Busi walked over to the window, clasping his hands behind his back as he looked out over the rugged, mist-covered mountains that housed their sect.

“In the coming period, the Sect will enter a brief phase of internal stabilization. This is necessary to prepare our foundation for the upcoming, large-scale promotion of the Soul Spirit system.”

He paused for a moment, the silence stretching between them. Then, he turned his head to look back at Liu Yuan, his expression turning noticeably more serious.

“But, how exactly do you plan to handle the matter of Ma Xiaotao?”

“Ma Xiaotao is currently locked securely in the Sect’s underground confinement room. She is a fully corrupted Evil Soul Master, and her identity as a Shrek core disciple makes her a highly sensitive variable. Keeping her locked up in our Body Sect indefinitely is not a viable long-term option. Did you not mention before that you wanted Shrek Academy to resolve her fate personally? The timing for that should be about right, shouldn’t it?”

Du Busi locked eyes with Liu Yuan, a faint, dangerous smirk playing at the corner of his lips.

“If your preparations are complete, then we will make a trip and force them to settle this matter.”