The Legend of Soul Beasts Eating People!

In the blink of an eye, it was noon.

Tang San took the rice ball from Zhou Qing's home back to give Tang Hao.

Tang Hao did not mind. He snatched it away without even asking a question, and after finishing it, he planned to go back to sleep.

But this time, Tang San stopped him.

"Dad."

"Hm?"

Tang Hao halted without turning around and asked, "What is it? If you want to play, go out and play by yourself. Don't bother me!"

"I want to ask, what is your Martial Soul?" Tang San asked cautiously.

At once.

Where Tang San could not see, Tang Hao's murky eyes sharpened slightly, but he still said in a hoarse voice, "What does that have to do with you?"

Tang San's expression darkened, but he still gave the reason Zhou Qing had mentioned. "...So, Dad, what are your and Mom's Martial Souls?"

At that moment, Tang Hao looked slightly surprised. That Zhou Qing has quite the sharp mind... Then he walked into the room, lay down, and said, "In a couple of years, when you awaken your Martial Soul, you'll naturally know what your own Martial Soul is. What's the use of knowing early? If you've got nothing to do, go gather firewood. Don't bother me!"

Faced with Tang Hao's muddle-through yet stubborn temperament, Tang San could only leave the house helplessly and go look for Zhou Qing again...

After Tang San left, Tang Hao, who was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them. A cold glint and confusion surfaced in his gaze. "Little San, are you really my son?"

Tang Hao knew about Tang San's cultivation.

To a Titled Douluo like Tang Hao, the internal energy cultivated through the Mysterious Heaven Skill was Soul Power. It simply lacked the corresponding attributes imbued by a Martial Soul because Tang San had yet to awaken one.

But what child could cultivate before awakening a Martial Soul?

Not even a Hundred-Thousand-Year Shapeshifted Soul Beast could do so!

Still, Tang Hao was not sure whether a child born between a Hundred-Thousand-Year Shapeshifted Soul Beast and a human might naturally possess a cultivation method. Besides, he did not particularly care about that sort of thing.

The only thing that puzzled him was that Tang San seemed far too mature for his age, as though an adult had been stuffed into a child's body.

"Ah Yin, I hope I'm wrong."

Tang Hao murmured, then thought of Spirit Hall again. His eyes reddened. "Spirit Hall! Spirit Hall... What can I do now besides hate? For now, this is how it will be..."

Elsewhere.

Tang San followed the stream beside the Blacksmith Shop to a pool, beside which stood a small waterfall. It was not tall, only around three or four meters high.

Zhou Qing was bathing beneath the waterfall.

Calling it a bath was not entirely accurate. He was undergoing "Waterfall Body Tempering."

Though he was still only four years old, the waterfall was merely four meters high. The falling water splashed against Zhou Qing's body without causing pain.

Although he did not have the Mysterious Heaven Skill, Zhou Qing often used his body to sense this real world—according to the descriptions in those books about Martial Soul cultivation, Soul Masters also needed to absorb a kind of energy from the outside world and transform it into their own Soul Power.

Therefore, Zhou Qing believed that this world must contain energy similar to spiritual energy.

Although he could not sense it yet, he guessed that relying on his body to experience nature from a young age would still yield something—swimming in the water and feeling its currents, enduring the waterfall's pounding, sensing the movements of his muscles and skin.

Besides that, Zhou Qing would lie on the grass, close his eyes, and do his best to sense the fresh aura brought by the surrounding Blue Silver Grass, Wolf Bristle Grass, and other plants.

He would even run into the wind, personally testing how to run faster against it, or what running posture would let him move faster with the wind at his back.

Since he had no cheat, he could only explore and understand everything by every possible means.

So what if his Martial Soul had yet to awaken?

This method of learning from nature did not require a Martial Soul.

Of course.

In Martial Soul cultivation, one also needed to create a Mimetic Cultivation Environment to speed up cultivation. This was experience already summarized across Douluo Continent.

With the support of a Martial Soul, one could perhaps simply sense nature better.

"Qing Ge, you're bathing here again?"

Tang San took off his clothes as well and jumped into the pool, which was only about a meter deep.

To be honest.

Tang San could vaguely sense that Zhou Qing was tempering his body in a peculiar way, but he did not find it strange. After all, the books on the second floor of Zhou Qing's home included an introduction to cultivating in mimetic environments.

Different types of Martial Souls cultivated at different speeds in different environments.

For example, someone with a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul would cultivate faster in an environment lush with Blue Silver Grass and natural vegetation. Their cultivation speed could also increase in suitable conditions involving water, sunlight, and so on.

Perhaps even without awakening a Martial Soul, one could use such methods to sense changes in the body. After all, the Martial Soul was already inside the human body; it simply had not awakened yet.

Moreover, after Tang San began exercising in Zhou Qing's manner, the Mysterious Heaven Skill's cultivation progress improved as well. He even felt that he would reach a bottleneck in less than a year.

"Please, I'm not like the other children in the village. This pool isn't deep, and there aren't many people around, so of course I bathe here." Zhou Qing explained, "Don't try to scare me with stories about Soul Beasts catching children to eat them. In villages near towns, people from the local Spirit Hall and the City Lord's Mansion come to inspect the area regularly to prevent Soul Beasts from attacking people."

Soul Beasts generally existed only within Soul Beast Forests, though some occasionally escaped.

Besides that, ordinary plants and animals might also transform into Soul Beasts because of certain accidents.

However, it was not so easy for ordinary animals to transform into Soul Beasts. A tree or a bird would not become a Ten-Year Soul Beast simply by living for ten years.

Otherwise, human logging alone would result in tens of thousands of Soul Beasts dying every day.

According to books concerning Soul Beasts, ordinary plants and animals needed extremely harsh conditions to transform into Soul Beasts. Living long was not enough; they required a vast supply of Heaven and Earth Energy, the energy Zhou Qing called spiritual energy.

Furthermore, once they transformed into Soul Beasts, even Ten-Year Soul Beasts from carnivorous species such as tigers, wolves, and leopards were not something an ordinary farmer could handle. However, if those ordinary people were well-trained soldiers who understood the type of Soul Beast they faced, they could find a Soul Beast's weakness through cooperation and kill it in a single blow.

There was even a terrifying legend of ordinary people defeating a Hundred-Year Soul Beast in Holy Soul Village and the surrounding villages—

It was said that fifty years ago, a Hundred-Year turtle Soul Beast crawled out of a stream and entered a village near Holy Soul Village to steal corn. It even bit off a child's arm. The strong young men of that village grabbed their hoes and pounded relentlessly on the turtle Soul Beast's shell. They hammered at it for three days and three nights before finally breaking its shell.

Upon realizing that its shell had broken, the old turtle no longer hid inside it. It extended its limbs and made its way toward the stream.

But it was too slow, and with its legs exposed, the villagers found their chance and struck with all their strength.

In the end!

The old turtle escaped back into the stream...

From then on, farmers in the nearby villages warned their children not to play by the stream alone, or the old turtle would carry them away and eat them.

Some people also said that, at the time, the Hall Master of Spirit Hall and the City Lord of Nuoding City personally sent people to search for that turtle Soul Beast. In the end, they killed a Hundred-Year Soul Beast known as a Spirit Rhyme Turtle, but that Spirit Rhyme Turtle's shell was completely unscathed...