Dugu Yan and Yu Tianheng (changed the earlier time to yesterday evening, added two characters)

Hmm? Birdman?

After hearing that, Xiang Yang calculated the timing, then deliberately asked, "Were the opponents you ran into today strong?"

"Huh?" Ma Hongjun hadn't expected him to take an interest in that all of a sudden. Caught off guard, he stumbled over his words. "Th-they were all right, I guess. Nothing special. They couldn't beat us anyway. Those two are almost twenty, and their levels are only about the same as ours."

"What were their Martial Souls?" Xiang Yang asked.

"That?" Ma Hongjun frowned, struggling to remember.

"I know! One was a Wind Chime Bird, and the other was a Ghost Leopard." Xiao Wu raised her hand as she spoke, leaning sideways to give Ma Hongjun a disdainful look. This little chick has a terrible memory.

"Mm." Still shaken, he rubbed his chest, where he had just been punched several times. Not daring to speak up, he picked up his bowl and chopsticks and dug in.

Mm, that matches. Looks like the Huang Dou group has finally arrived. But now we have two Soul Ancestors, so a fight probably won't happen. Luckily...

As Xiang Yang thought about this, his hands didn't stop moving. He picked up another piece of red-braised pork.

Back in the present, Xiang Yang had just finished a round of "watering" play and was about to do his daily exercise with Dai Mubai and the others when he saw Yu Xiaogang walking through the academy with two people.

He took a closer look. Purple hair. Sure enough, here they were!

The two people beside Grandmaster were his nephew Yu Tianheng and Poison Douluo's granddaughter, Dugu Yan.

Xiao Wu often went to the Soul Fighting Arena, but its rules allowed each person to fight at most once a day in each format. In other words, she could only fight three matches a day altogether: an individual match, a doubles match, and a team match.

She had a hard time finding opponents for individual matches. Her second Soul Skill, Vision Deprivation, made it impossible for her to find a match among Soul Masters of her level in Suotuo City in one-on-one combat. If she deliberately refrained from using it, she might as well fight her own people.

And she couldn't just fight a team match whenever she wanted, so she tried every way she could to drag someone along for a two-on-two. Apart from Dai Mubai, whose Soul Power Level had always been a tier above everyone else's and who therefore fought fewer matches, the others might as well have been on a rota for her.

The one who had gone with her yesterday was Ma Hongjun. Yu Xiaogang spent nearly half of every day at the Soul Fighting Arena gathering information on various Soul Masters, so he naturally saw their fight.

At the time, he had thought nothing of it, only to see his nephew, whom he hadn't seen in years, take the stage next with a Poison Soul Master. The two were clearly very close.

But as far as he knew, the girl's hair...

Because Xiang Yang had taken the initiative to share, Tang San likewise didn't deliberately keep things hidden in their usual conversations. He also mentioned the Tang Sect Secret Arts he was most skilled in, such as poison and Hidden Weapons. Exposed to all this, Yu Xiaogang had gained considerable knowledge of poison. What was more, he already knew some Pharmacology from medicinal baths, and once he connected the two, he made great progress.

So he could tell at a glance that something was wrong with her!

Afterward, Yu Tianheng met the uncle he remembered from childhood. When they met, he was full of praise for his uncle's current fame and, as before, suggested that he return to the family.

Yu Xiaogang naturally refused. Leaving aside the fact that his most important task now was training his disciple, he had long known exactly what the people in his family were like. The fact that Yu Tianheng's current Soul Skill combination was exactly the same as the one he knew told him that those people didn't care at all about his so-called new theories.

But there was the young woman beside him. "Tianheng, who was that girl who fought alongside you in the arena just now?"

He had his suspicions, and sure enough...

Yu Tianheng replied without hesitation, "Yanyan and I are a couple. She's Poison Douluo's granddaughter."

"I see." He nodded, seeming to understand something. Yu Tianheng tilted his head and looked at him in puzzlement.

Yu Xiaogang said nothing more on that subject and only asked, "Tianheng, what do you two young people think of your relationship? Is it just a passing thing, or..."

Before Yu Xiaogang could finish, he said excitedly, "Of course my feelings for Yanyan are genuine! There'll never be anyone else for me!"

"All right, then let me tell you. She..."

"What? Poisoned! How is that possible?"

If the person before him hadn't been his uncle, and the much sought-after "theory grandmaster" at that, Yu Tianheng would never have believed such an absurd claim. After all, this was a Cultivation Path personally verified by a Titled Douluo.

Suddenly, amid his confusion, he thought of something and seized Yu Xiaogang's hand. "Uncle, you're a theory grandmaster the Soul Master World has long acknowledged. You must have a way to cure Yanyan, right?"

Hearing that title, Yu Xiaogang couldn't help shaking his head with a bitter smile. "Let's forget that title. Back then, I..." had simply been arrogant and ignorant.

But his reaction gave Yu Tianheng the wrong idea. As if all his strength had left him, he stumbled backward and collapsed onto the ground.

"Even you can't do anything?"

Yu Xiaogang hurriedly pulled him up and said with a hint of pride on his stiff face, "I can't, but I know someone who can!"

"Who? Could it be...!"

Who else could it be besides Uncle? In a daze, Yu Tianheng thought of the other grandmaster whose name appeared alongside his in the Martial Soul Newspaper.

Of course not! Although Yu Xiaogang had to admit that Xiang Yang's research into Soul Masters had long surpassed his own, when it came to poison, his fine disciple Tang San was still the one.

Besides, to protect Xiang Yang, he couldn't tell Yu Tianheng about him, even if he was his nephew.

So when Yu Xiaogang ran into Xiang Yang, he merely nodded and greeted him before taking the two to Tang San's blacksmith's shop. For Tang San, unless he was fighting or doing some special training, ordinary smithing and forging were the most useful forms of training. He could work and exercise at the same time.

At lunchtime, Grandmaster introduced the two, and Tang San invited them to join the meal. They enjoyed the cooking of a genius Food System Soul Master with Innate Full Soul Power and praised it repeatedly. Everyone got along fairly well.

Oscar's cooking had grown better and better over the years, and his Soul Power cultivation hadn't fallen behind at all. In fact, it had exceeded their original expectations.

According to him, whenever he did something related to it, his Martial Soul would spontaneously draw the Soul Power in his body into circulation. The effect depended on how closely related the task was. For example, the effect was negligible when he was cleaning ingredients, such as picking and washing vegetables. But once he started stir-frying, deep-frying, or boiling at the stove, the speed seemed to be two or three times faster than his normal cultivation. If his body could stand it, he would have wanted to open a restaurant. Gaining four or five levels a year would be no dream!

After eating and drinking their fill, Yu Tianheng and Dugu Yan returned to the guest room Yu Xiaogang had arranged for them, while Xiang Yang took Tang San back to his own room.

"What's going on with those two?" he asked, even though he already knew.

Tang San didn't understand what he meant, but at Xiang Yang's urging, he told him what his teacher had said and what he had learned from examining her himself.

"So you don't have much of a solution right now either?"

"Mm. The cause of her illness lies in her Martial Soul, the Jade Phosphorous Serpent. Its poison attribute is extremely strong, but while a Martial Soul can store poison, the human body can't. I can use Medicinal Herbs for Detoxification, but she refused. She said she was cultivating a Poison Cultivation Technique."

Tang San spoke with some resignation. If his teacher hadn't introduced her, he wouldn't have bothered with a patient who refused to listen to advice.

"And then?"

"Apart from treating her regularly, we'd have to find her something that can store poison. Something that can both store her Martial Soul's poison and merge with her body—I think only a Soul Bone would do."

The former took time and effort and could be said to last a lifetime. As for the latter, that would depend on the Soul Bone's age, completeness, and size.