Fooling Others Is One Thing

Free martial soul awakening had actually been attempted by the Two Empires for a time after Spirit Hall's destruction ten thousand years ago, but they gave up after only a few years.

The reason was that it took great effort for little return. While soul masters could indeed play a greater role in war, the odds of an ordinary person awakening Innate Soul Power were pitifully low.

In the year Tang San awakened his martial soul in his previous life, among several villages around Notting City, only he and Xiao Wu enrolled as work-study students. Xiao Wu was a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Beast, while his father, Tang Hao, was a Titled Douluo, his mother was a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Beast, and he also had the Mysterious Heaven Skill. He was utterly beyond the scope of ordinary commoners.

Among true commoners, having even one out of twenty awaken Innate Soul Power was enough to burn incense in gratitude.

That was the first reason. The proportion of people able to awaken Innate Soul Power was far too low. Without Innate Soul Power, awakening a martial soul was entirely pointless, and their combat strength was nearly no different from that of ordinary people.

Second, even if they truly had Innate Soul Power, their future achievements would be extremely limited.

A soul master's talent, like their martial soul, was hereditary. Unless their martial souls mutated, children born to two commoners without soul power would not possess much Innate Soul Power either.

With the commonly seen talent of one or two levels of Innate Soul Power, it was entirely foreseeable that they would stop at one or two soul rings in the future.

One had to know that the Grandmaster from ten thousand years ago had been the biological son of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan's Sect Master. Even the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, one of the Upper Three Sects and such a powerful faction, had been unable to use resources to raise that waste with half a level of Innate Soul Power to the rank of Soul Elder. By comparison, ordinary people without a sect's resources supporting them would likely achieve even less.

Even at level twenty-nine, the Grandmaster had struggled to fight a hundred-year soul beast. In an actual war, he would not have been much stronger than well-trained soldiers formed into an army. After all, soul masters possessed all manner of martial souls, and their coordination was hardly much better.

A unit of one hundred Soul Kings might be able to rival an army of several thousand, but a unit of one hundred Great Soul Masters was nothing.

Third, soul masters would not necessarily obey orders.

The Two Empires had naturally offered free martial soul awakenings in preparation for war, but soul masters would not necessarily join the military. Making them risk their lives cost far more than employing ordinary soldiers, further shrinking the benefits brought by free martial soul awakenings.

With all these factors combined, the Two Empires naturally no longer awakened martial souls for free, village by village, as Spirit Hall once had.

Of course, completely cutting off the path to becoming a soul master might provoke backlash from commoners, so paid awakenings naturally came into being.

They only needed to price this seemingly essential service at a level that required most people to save and scrimp for a long time, exhausting every effort before they could afford it. That would greatly ease the backlash and divide the commoners.

Whenever someone objected that the cost of awakening a martial soul was too high, another group who had already paid for their awakenings would jump out to condemn them. After all, they had already spent the money. If the price were lowered, would they not be the ones losing out?

The moment they compromised, their stance had already changed.

And to allow the nobility and imperial family to better control the group known as soul masters, the two methods of free martial soul awakening—joining the nobility as household servants or joining the military—came into existence as well.

Even so, a considerable number of ordinary people still had not awakened their martial souls. Among them were those like Tang San, who had lucked into good parents, as well as those whose parents had both died while their grandparents lay bedridden. Such situations were not uncommon in remote villages. The burden of the entire household rested wholly upon the children. Even if they did not need to pay anything, they could not leave their villages for several days to travel to a town and awaken their martial souls.

Of course, Tang San did not care about any of that. His mood was far from pleasant at the moment.

If it had been his previous-life self, he never would have imagined that he would be reborn again, and that even awakening his martial soul would prove difficult.

Joining the nobility as a household servant or entering the military was naturally out of the question. The only option left was a paid awakening. He could not count on his biological father for the money, so he could only go out and see whether he could earn some himself.

Thinking of this made him feel a wave of irritation. This body was far weaker than the one from his previous life. Although he had not awakened yet, he could vaguely sense that his Innate Soul Power was only around one or two levels. Starting to cultivate the Mysterious Heaven Skill at six was already late enough, yet he still had to devote energy to making money.

Fortunately, after everything he had experienced in his previous life, his understanding of the Mysterious Heaven Skill had improved somewhat. Now that he was in a large city, he could buy some medicinal herbs to aid his cultivation and speed it up considerably.

There are no useless martial souls, only useless soul masters!

At that moment, his teacher's teachings from ten thousand years ago echoed in his mind. Like a powerful stimulant injected into his heart, they rekindled his blazing fighting spirit.

So what if he had been reborn again? He, Tang San, would still climb to the pinnacle of the world!

Although Huo Yuhao had caused all this, becoming a god again was more important than taking revenge on Huo Yuhao. After all, even if he avenged himself, without a godhood, his lifespan would be no more than a few hundred years. That was something he could never accept.

Even with that thought, he currently had no idea how he could become a god.

One had to know that the path for the Douluo Plane to ascend to the Divine Realm was now controlled by his former self. Becoming a god through normal means was simply impossible.

Could he reveal his identity and make Divine Realm Tang San notice him, then have him pass down a godhood to him?

The moment this method surfaced in his mind, Tang San rejected it. What a joke. On the surface, that man acted righteous and spoke of how exhausting it was to govern the Divine Realm, claiming that he wanted to pass on his position.

He might fool others with that, but he certainly could not fool himself.

Forget the Asura Godhood—even the Sea Godhood was something he would never relinquish.

If Divine Realm Tang San learned that he was Tang San from the future, the only thing he would do would be to find every possible way to have him die in the lower realm. He would absolutely never allow another version of himself to exist.

He did not know whether he could return to his original time and space, but the chances were likely slim. He had to prepare himself to remain in this time and space forever.

If he became a god, was he supposed to watch another version of himself be intimate with Xiao Wu?

Impossible.

He would never share Xiao Wu with another person, even if that person had once been himself. From the very beginning, he and Divine Realm Tang San would never be on the same side.

To become a god, to take Xiao Wu back, he had to kill Divine Realm Tang San of this time and space and replace him.

With that thought, he looked inward into his Spiritual Space. When he saw a golden trident quietly floating within it, the irritation in his heart grew even stronger.

Before his rebirth, during his great battle with Huo Yuhao, his Asura Divine Power had been completely depleted. He had temporarily exchanged godhoods with Xiao Wu, causing him to enter the Spatial-Temporal Turbulence with the Sea Godhood. The Golden Trident had also been reborn here alongside his soul.

If only I had been reborn with the Asura Godhood. Perhaps then I would have possessed an even more powerful Asura Sword.

But what had happened had happened, and there was no use blaming heaven or others. Even though he possessed a divine weapon, he did not dare use it lightly. Once Divine Realm Tang San discovered that he also possessed a trident, the worst possible outcome would be for him to realize his identity.

Even if he was restricted by the Divine Realm's rules and unable to act openly, he would certainly employ other methods. Before Tang San truly possessed the ability to protect himself, he absolutely could not use this divine weapon.

Contract signed successfully, an extra chapter added.