Quest Maker: 392 (Patreon)

Title: Spirit Terminator?

“Hahaha! You little shits soiled yerselves whenever you felt like it! Even Hua’er was no different when she was a pup!” Tang Peng, the Patriarch of the Clear Sky Clan, laughs with a glowing face as he holds a dark-haired, fair-skinned infant in his arms. There are two other kids around Tang Peng, watching the wide-eyed infant with their pair of heterochromatic eyes that the infant matches, too! The eyes of the royal White Tiger Line. On the other hand, Tang Xiao laughs in embarrassment while he hosts their guests—Dai Laohu and Zhu Yin—Dai Mu’s parents and her son—Tang San’s— grandparents.

Tang Hao, however, scoffs. “Every kid is like that, old man. I bet even you, Old Laohu and Aunty Yin used to shit all over the place.” He takes little effort to observe the stifling atmosphere based on his words as he stretches his arm and yawns. “Damn, I’m tired. Good thing Xiao San doesn’t cry like Mubai here.”

“I don’t cry!” Mubai, Dai Taiyin’s youngest son, pouts and crosses his arms, earning a sneer from his elder brother, Dai Weisi, and a subtle side-long glance from the infant, who purses his thin lips.

“Brother Hao?” Dai Mu calls out sweetly while gently nudging his shoulder. She looks more motherly than ever with a constant look of gentle mirth. Yet, the mischief in her eyes remained perennial ever since she was a young cub.

Tang Hao raises an eyebrow while looking at his wife.

“What is it?” He looks around the room at her gesture and finds his father and Dai Mu’s parents staring at him. Now Tang Hao isn’t afraid of Tang Peng or Dai Laohu. He is already ranked 89 and needs a little push to enter the next rank! A beating won’t filter his blunt honesty. But Zhu Yin’s stare is menacing. Not only did he accidentally call her old despite her refined and pridefully smashable looks, but he also commented on her embarrassing moment as a child.

---

“Uncle Hao! Uncle Hao! Tell us that story again!” Dai Mubai grins while Dai Weisi snickers, “Yeah, you already look like the monster Shrek! Please tell us his story!”

Tang Hao, sporting marks of multiple waves of facial abuse that are a testament to his elder’s ‘love,’ scoffs under his breath while changing his son’s cloth diaper, who is still squirming and looking anxious.

“What? Do you want to pee?” Tang Hao questions his son gently while raising him and pointing the boy at his elder cousins, “Let it loose on these little shits!”

“What? EW!”

Yet, the infant grows even more anxious, with a dusting of red on his cheeks. In desperation, the boy starts crying loudly and swiftly enters the picture of a wrathful mother, who snarls at her husband with not an ounce of mirth shown previously!

“What are you doing with Xiao San?! Put him down and change him like a normal human being!”

“Relax!” Tang Hao laughs, “I used to pee on my old man at every given chance, so I hear!”

“Put. Him. Down!”

Tang Hao, Dai Mubai, and Dai Weisi flinch as they slowly look back at the storm brewing in Dai Mu’s expression, while Tang San relaxes and stops crying.

---

“Fine,” sporting slightly more bruises of affection, Tang Hao sits with his nephews on either side as they look over the broad patches of cloud above which their clan sits.

“There was a terrifying monster in a nameless village long ago.”

“A spirit beast?” Dai Mubai questions.

“What else would it be?” Dai Weisi scoffs.

“You two need to shut up, or I’ll throw you down this cliff,” Tang Hao interjects, and seeing his passive look, the White Tiger siblings did not doubt he would do something like that to traumatize them.

“Hmm, so this monster terrorized the village. Green scales covered this monster’s gigantic body. His mouth was so vast that he could swallow the village in one bite! But he did not. Instead, he settled near the settlement and spoke human!”

Tang Hao stares at his wife’s nephews with barely-veiled mischief. He starts releasing his Spiritual Energy to create a stifling, baleful atmosphere around them while using the barest fraction of the killing intent earned from the now-destroyed Slaughter City. A chill rushes up the spines of the duo as Tang Hao’s voice gains a gravelly quality.

“That monster would demand sacrifices. Human men and women would barely fit the gaps of his sharp teeth, but he loved the taste of their flesh, blood, organs, and bones!”

The two siblings gulp simultaneously.

“That monster would let the villagers prosper only to feast on them. He had subdued the villagers to the point they threw celebrations on the day of sacrificing their children in the name of that monster! Can you imagine that?” Tang Hao stares at the boys seriously. His grim look, coupled with his bruises, makes him come off as even more haunting.

“And then, suddenly, a new monster arrived,” Tang Hao raises his voice. “This monster was blacker than coal, harder than diamonds, and more dangerous than the previous one! He killed the green monster with ease. He slaughtered the monster in front of the villagers and silently looked at the scared villagers who had fallen victim for countless years. This black monster’s eyes revealed a terror far worse than the previous monster.”

Tang Hao increases his slaughter intent by another fraction as the two boys shake in fright and the frigid chill of the vast height of the clan’s structure.

“But nobody knows what happened next,” Tang Hao whispers in a slightly hoarse voice, “Some say that the monster ate them all!”

“And some,” Tang Hao extends his hands behind the two boys quietly, “Call him Shrek, saying the monster still awaits a terrible opportunity to devour the entire world!”

His hand taps the two on their shoulders before issuing a soft growl, “Ruaahhhh!”

“AHHHHH!”

Both of them practically jump from their butts and find themselves falling beyond the cliff, only for Tang Hao to laugh and catch them before they plummet to their deaths, “Pfffttt! Hahahaha! Can’t wait to do the same to my Xiao San!”

“Bullying the weak as always, I see,” A snicker cuts Tang Hao’s laugh short as the hammer-wielding Spirit Douluo and his two nephews look behind them to find a rather dashing-looking, greenish-haired man with slightly open robes and a young teal-haired girl over his shoulder, whose wide eyes stare Tang Hao indignantly.

“Oh, Brother Xin,” Tang Hao shrugs at Dugu Xin while setting the Dai-Siblings on the ground as he eyes Xin’s daughter, Dugu Yan, “Heh, Xiao Yan, still angry I did the same to you as these two boys?”

“Hmph,” The girl snorts cutely and crosses her arms, “Don’t talk to me, Uncle Hao!”

“And who’s going to stop me? Your dad?” Tang Hao scoffs equally rudely.

“I’ll tell my grandfather to poison your wine and give you diarrhea!” The girl scrunches her nose slightly as Tang Hao grows silent while Dugu Xin gently lets his daughter on the ground.

“Play with Xiao San, alright?” Dugu Xin smiles and nods at the two boys, “It’s a pleasure meeting one Prince of the White Tiger Clan and the other failure.”

Dai Weisi and Mubai’s expressions cramp as they look at each other before leaving in different directions without saying a word. Since Qian Xunji is the continent’s god, technically, there is only one Empire—Spirit Empire. There is still a White Tiger Clan and a Star Luo City, but people are slowly recognizing the new God as their one true monarch, too.

“Did you have to do that?” Tang Hao groans as he looks at his nephews, knowing the tradition of the White Tiger Clan all too well.

“Why not? Their own family will encourage the competition. Others should keep things real for them, too,” Dugu Xin sighs and sits beside Tang Hao as he questions his daughter, who hasn’t left.

“Dear Yan, did you need something?”

The girl pouts, “I still don’t know the truth about Shrek.”

“It’s a myth,” replies Tang Hao with a short chuckle as he looks at the supposed betrothed of his newborn—thanks to the efficiency of their single grandparents, who have no other job than to ship their grandson and granddaughter with others.

“If Shrek were half the monster the villagers called him to be, they would not have survived to tell his tale. Shrek is nothing more than a badly written story treasured by the masses to scare their children to sleep.”

The girl exhales from her nostrils before scoffing, “Boring! I’m going to play with Little San!”

Dugu Xin’s and Tang Hao’s expressions stiffen visibly before the two fathers stare at each other awkwardly.

“So, why are you here?” Tang Hao grunts and sweeps away the awkwardness in the air.

“Things finally became calm in the western seas, or so my Old Man says,” reveals Dugu Xin, “So, I wanted to take Yan’er out. She was feeling unwell and cooped in all this time.”

“The sea,” Tang Hao frowns at the mention of it as he worries for his sister. The fact that there is another someone who has surpassed him in terms of cultivation to face an injured God in equal terms—Bibi Dong—really salted Hao’s nuts as he continues to work on tasks given out by Xunji to develop his skills in Arrays and Smithing.

“I think your sister is fine,” Dugu Xin pats Hao’s back, “When our group confronted Ja Sun’s group, all of us, including the surviving Titled Douluos, was put into a comatose state. I think there are things Blood God did not want us to see. But man, you should have seen Xiaogang’s face after that. He was pissed!”

“I’m not letting another one near my age become a Titled Douluo before me,” Tang Hao narrows his eyes. “I need to become a God. To save Yuehua and others if they need assistance.”

He materializes his pitch-black war Sky Hammer as he stares at the sky with a resolute expression, “I don’t want to be helpless.”

However, a strange pressure descends on everyone beyond the massive continents, oceans, and sky!

Tang Peng and Dai Laohu appear on top of the clan building as Dugu Bo arrives not a second later, meanwhile, others below the stage of Titled Douluo, including the Elders of the clan, arrive at the western cliff of the clan.

They watch in awe and shock as bold letters carve the wide blue sky in venomous purple.

A haunting message for God knows who appears in everyone’s sight.

Even the infant Tang San in the young Dugu Yan’s arms watches the sky in shock.

—I am Coming For You.

- Beast God, the Devourer of the Mythical Shrek—

Dugu Yan, Dai Mubai, Dai Weisi, and many other children traumatized by their elders because of Shrek feel their hearts skip a beat as another monster takes the stage.

***

Alternate Title: Shitty Children; Tang Hao Casually Slapping his Mother-in-Law’s Face; Pee Laser San; The Rambunctious Nephews; Scaring Shitless; Using a Slaughter Domain—Now That’s Dedication to the Craft; Granddaddy Shippers; Annoyed Fathers; Happy Children; Shrek’s a Lie?; The New Child Beater in Fanharem’s Verse Makes His Debut; Skywriting; Beast God’s Return; The Alleged Devourer of Shrek; Every Child’s Final Boss

***

A/N: So, I just realized that Ja Sun has somehow rooted himself in the love interest of all four protags of the Soul Land. Xiao Wu here is an innocuous bunny waiting to mount him after reaching rank 60, the second protag’s wife won’t be born probably because of this, the third protag’s love interest is going to face Ja Sun pretty soon, and the fourth protag’s hookup is the shark girl’s descendent and we all know how that will go~!