Royal Fight (2)

With Bai Ge's assurance, Old Ao finally set his mind at ease.

Grandmaster frowned. "Xiao Bai, always doing this isn't good for their training."

Bai Ge chuckled. "I've said it before: if they don't kill and don't see blood, they'll forever just be children playing house.

It can't be considered real combat at all.

But making twelve-year-old children kill people means either you've got a screw loose or you want to ruin them.

For the sake of Spirit Rings and Spirit Bones, betrayals are far too common.

In those situations, the enemy is coming for your life.

That is real combat."

Bai Ge chuckled again and continued, "But a competition will always be a competition. The first rule is that no one is allowed to take a life.

That means that when you attack and unleash your spirit skills, you'll subconsciously hold back.

Because if you kill someone, you lose.

What you call fighting at full strength is only what you think is full strength.

So in my eyes, this so-called real combat has little value."

Bai Ge sneered. "The reason I forced the Berserker Team into a Life and Death Battle back then was so you could see what real combat looked like.

And what did you do? Embarrassing! Mu Bai barely held it in, then went back and threw up.

Oscar made it halfway before he couldn't take it anymore.

Fatty, what are you looking at? I'm talking about you. Close your eyes—honestly, you've got some nerve!"

Ma Hongjun had been scolded into resembling a quail, shrinking off to one side.

"You're an assault-type battle Spirit Master. Protecting your teammates is your responsibility!"

Bai Ge stared at them. "A man standing in front of a woman is only natural!

It has nothing to do with strength!

Even if you're an ordinary person without Soul Power, even if the enemy before you is a Titled Douluo!"

This was also why Bai Ge did not think much of Grandmaster. Damn it, he had abandoned Liu Erlong and run off by himself—what the hell was that?

Liu Erlong's father, who was also Grandmaster's second uncle, was even worse. After having his fun, he refused to take responsibility, pulled up his pants, and left.

Then, more than ten years later, he popped up and told Liu Erlong, "You're my daughter."

That turned Liu Erlong and Grandmaster from lovers into siblings.

But this was truly difficult to judge.

Even by Bai Ge's moral and legal standards from his previous life, marriage between close relatives was forbidden.

So, speaking in good conscience, Grandmaster did not deserve the title of Douluo Continent's number one scumbag. That honor should go to his second uncle.

As for Bibi Dong, eighty percent of the blame lay with Sealed Room Douluo Qian Xunji for being inhuman.

Bibi Dong regarded you as her teacher, as her father, yet you wanted to become her husband.

If not for Qian Xunji, Grandmaster might even have grandsons old enough to run errands by now.

So Qian Xunji and Grandmaster's second uncle, who had been brushed over in a single line without even having his name revealed, were the real scumbags.

Grandmaster's tragedy was, at its core, the sorrow of the weak!

As for that saying, "There are no useless martial souls, only useless Spirit Masters."

In Bai Ge's eyes, Ma Hongjun was trash compared to Ma Xiaotao from Douluo 2!

Ma Xiaotao cultivated all the way to Spirit Emperor and still refused to use that method to vent her Evil Fire.

That girl was truly admirable.

Grandmaster could not improve his cultivation, so he turned to studying theory. He was striving to prove himself.

They had worked hard.

But what about Ma Hongjun? He frequented brothels whenever he had nothing better to do, and only regretted it when he could no longer bring Bai Chenxiang to the Divine Realm.

The original novel made it very clear that Grandmaster's theories had been publicly published.

Ordinary commoner Spirit Masters, influenced by the great clans and sects, did not believe Grandmaster's theories.

Yet those clans and sects had privately memorized Grandmaster's theories inside out, then followed Grandmaster's guide to configure Spirit Rings for their descendants.

That was why, in the original novel, it seemed as though every top-tier Spirit Master knew Grandmaster's theories.

It was the same principle as ordinary people in the West attending public schools while the wealthy attended elite schools.

Before Grandmaster, the great clans had a so-called optimal Spirit Ring ratio: a hundred-year first ring, a second ring over five hundred years but under a thousand, and a thousand-year third Spirit Ring.

Grandmaster, however, proposed more precise numbers: 423 years for the first ring, 764 years for the second Spirit Ring, and 1,760 years for the third Spirit Ring.

Cultivation on Douluo Continent was far too crude. There were no cultivation methods, no pills, and even skills were limited to only nine. It was fucking speechless.

Dragon Lord Meng Shu was a typical tragedy. His first five rings were two yellow and three purple.

His fifth Spirit Ring was over nine thousand years old. He had probably feared dying from his body exploding, so he did not dare choose a ten-thousand-year Spirit Ring.

This was precisely the significance of Grandmaster's precise figures for the upper limit of Spirit Ring absorption.

If Grandmaster's theories had truly just been plagiarized, and Spirit Hall and the great clans had all known them perfectly well, then there was no reason the Peerless Dragon Snake family would not have known.

With a Martial Soul Fusion Skill, they could not possibly have failed to handle a ten-thousand-year spirit beast.

There was only one explanation: when Dragon Lord became a Soul King, Grandmaster had just been born.

One was over eighty, while the other was over fifty. The difference was around thirty years, which matched up.

Thus, without theoretical support, the fearful Dragon Lord chose a nine-thousand-year fifth Spirit Ring for safety.

Think about it. If Grandmaster's theories had been useless, the upper echelons of the Spirit Master world would not have remembered them.

As for the Star Luo Empire's royal family and their optimal martial soul and Spirit Ring ratios, please, be sure to note one thing: their family had always possessed the White Tiger Spirit. They had produced Titled Douluos, and their ancestors had already stepped into every pit before them.

If they still could not figure it out under those circumstances, that could only prove they were pigs.

Incidentally, the Star Luo Royal Family had studied the White Tiger Spirit for thousands of years, generation after generation.

Grandmaster, meanwhile, was just one man in his fifties. He met Bibi Dong in his twenties and began devoting himself to theoretical research.

He had only had a little over thirty years.

The difference between the two was obvious at a glance.

Right and wrong were clearly defined. That was Bai Ge's principle in life.

In truth, the first person to prove Grandmaster's theories was not Tang San, but Bibi Dong.

Bibi Dong's Spirit Ring ages had all followed Grandmaster's theories.

Moreover, Grandmaster's theory also stated that the upper limit of Spirit Ring absorption was directly proportional to one's physical condition.

Tang San's physical constitution far surpassed that of ordinary people, which was why his Spirit Rings exceeded the limits.

This likewise proved that Grandmaster's theories were correct.

As for the claim that Grandmaster plagiarized, it was just like the claim that thirty-year-old Xiao Yan molested Xun Er. Both were fanfiction additions invented by certain people who picked up their bowls to eat, then put them down to curse their mothers, all for the sake of attracting attention.

In the original Douluo novel, Grandmaster had always been the foremost authority on theory.

Third Young Master's characterization of Grandmaster was somewhat lackluster, but the only supposed evidence for plagiarism was probably that Pope Bibi Dong had been Grandmaster's ex-girlfriend.

The same was true for Xiao Yan. The original novel stated that when he first encountered Dou Qi, he felt it resembled internal energy and true qi. He found it unbelievable and was extremely excited.

So, following the tropes of martial arts novels, he used Xun Er as an experimental guinea pig and tried warming her meridians, but he had no improper thoughts whatsoever.

And under the influence of the protagonist's plot armor, he successfully won himself a wife.

Later, after some fanfiction called Battle Through the Heavens: Dragon Emperor spread around, he became a middle-aged man who molested little girls.

Fuck, the original novel never mentioned Xiao Yan's age before he transmigrated—not a single word!

The same went for claims that Grandmaster's theories were plagiarized. The original novel never mentioned it, and no one knew where people had imagined it from.

PS: After several waves of internet purges, it has become almost impossible to find the complete original novels from back then.

And many details are missing from pirated websites, along with plenty of typos.

The reason I began writing this story was to let a new generation of readers join us in remembering the emotions we felt back then.

Online literature has endured upheaval after upheaval, and the brilliance of its golden age has long since become a memory.

Whitebeard once said, "I am a remnant of the old era. There is no ship in the new era that can carry me."

As readers from the older generation of online literature, passing on the excitement and emotion of the online novels that belonged to us back then to the next generation of readers is, in a sense, a duty we are bound to shoulder.

Readers continuing from generation to generation are the true foundation of online literature.

If there are no readers, heh, then online literature really will be finished.

A reader commented that they did not know what the Mebius Aura and Knight Aura from the first chapter were.

I wanted to cry. Are children today so pitiful that they have not even watched Ultraman?

This was the consequence of a generational disconnect among readers, viewers, and fans.

It was also because I saw that comment that I restored some widely circulated misconceptions from my memory in this chapter.

Just because something becomes a trend does not mean it is correct.

Going along with the crowd is easy, but I do not want to, nor am I willing to become what I hate.

Would that be any different from what we despise?

If online literature becomes like this in the future, that will be the day it dies.

Please do not bring up fanfiction additions from other works in my story. I do not acknowledge them.

PS: This chapter was padded, so there will be three updates today. There will be one more in the afternoon and one more tonight.