"Those Insects of the Dou Ling Empire's Imperial Family!" (Please Follow Along, It's Very Important)

"Hiss—It hurts!"

A young boy sat in the Medical Hall's chair, his face bruised and swollen. Huo Yuhao squeezed his left wrist, and upon hearing his cry of pain, shifted slightly downward.

"How about here?"

"Hall Master Huo, I can't feel anything."

Huo Yuhao nodded, picked up a pen and paper to make a record in his notebook, then said, "Your wrist bone is fractured."

"The crack isn't deep. I'll treat it right away."

After confirming the injury, Huo Yuhao used a localized Reversal Technique on the boy's left wrist.

Huo Yuhao was becoming increasingly adept at using this technique.

At first, he could only use the Reversal Technique on an entire person. Now, he could reverse just a specific area.

The bodily energy generated after the reversal affected only one region. Not only did this greatly reduce the user's consumption, it also lessened the patient's suffering.

The young boy gritted his teeth and endured the agony of his flesh churning. An unbearably itchy sensation came from his left wrist, making him want to claw at it.

This was not his first time receiving treatment here, so he had long been mentally prepared.

"Done."

Only after hearing Huo Yuhao's words did he feel as though he had been granted amnesty. He panted heavily and turned his left wrist over several times to inspect it.

"Hehe, your medical skills are still the best, Hall Master."

"If I'd gone to those healing Soul Masters at the Battle Arena, this hand probably would've needed several days of rest before I could fight again."

Huo Yuhao felt a little helpless when he heard that fighting was the first thing on the boy's mind.

"They have a point. You should rest for a few days."

The young boy shook his head. "That won't do. I'm counting on Soul Fighting Competitions to make money."

"You know, I'm already Level Twenty. I only need one more Soul Ring to become a Soul Grandmaster."

"My second Soul Ring has to be a Hundred-Year Soul Ring, no matter what."

"Otherwise, I won't even have any hope of breaking through to Soul Elder."

"If I fight another ten Soul Fighting Competitions, I'll have enough money to hire a soul-hunting group."

"All right, Hall Master, I'll be leaving first."

The young boy sprang up from the chair, placed the money on the table, then excitedly left the Medical Hall and headed straight for the Battle Arena.

In truth, Huo Yuhao knew that even if this boy absorbed a Hundred-Year second Soul Ring, it would still be difficult for him to break through to Soul Elder.

His first Soul Ring was a Ten-Year Earth Attribute Soul Ring. Not only was its age too low, it also conflicted with his Martial Soul's attribute.

The Wind Attribute Swift Wolf was not particularly powerful to begin with. The incorrect Soul Ring had contaminated the source of his Martial Soul, and coupled with the hidden injuries left from years of fighting at the Battle Arena, it had essentially doomed him to never break through to Soul Elder.

Huo Yuhao had already seen more than a dozen people in situations similar to his.

For Soul Masters, this was the norm. Or rather, the Soul Masters in the original story who casually had optimal configurations or even outrageously overpowered ones were the true rarity.

At the very least, after watching Soul Fighting Competitions in Xuanfeng City for so long, Huo Yuhao had basically never seen anyone obtain Soul Rings with an optimal configuration.

Either their first ring was Hundred-Year but mismatched in attribute, or it matched their attribute but was too low in age.

Jiang Nannan's Martial Soul and Soul Ring configuration placed her among the elite of the elite in Xuanfeng City.

"Or perhaps this is simply what the world truly looks like."

After seeing off the first customer of the morning, Huo Yuhao returned to the counter and sorted through the Medical Books, continuously using pen and paper to combine his recent practical experience with drawings of the human body's meridian pathways.

During this period, Huo Yuhao had discovered through the Mysterious Heaven Skill and anatomical diagrams accumulated over ten thousand years on the Douluo Continent that every Soul Master capable of cultivation had three meridians that were always open.

Even if they were not open before the age of six, once they awakened their Martial Souls and gained Soul Power, those three meridians would certainly open.

Some Medical Books referred to those three meridians as the main meridians. Some even believed that all meridians were derived from the main meridians.

Huo Yuhao was overjoyed when he saw this. Someone in this world had already found the path for him.

But when he eagerly searched for the later portions, a bookstore owner who frequented the shop told him that the Grandmaster who had researched this field had been executed by the Dou Ling Empire's imperial family a thousand years ago.

The reason was that his research had offended the authority of the imperial nobles. They had not only ordered him burned to death, but also confiscated all his books.

The copy Huo Yuhao could read now had been bought from the Sun Moon Empire.

It was said that the Sun Moon Empire had been extremely interested in this theory at the time. Mingde Hall had wanted to bring the man to the Sun Moon Empire, but unfortunately failed.

In the end, they forcibly sent people to seize a complete collection of that Grandmaster's works from the Dou Ling Empire.

After the Hall Master of Mingde Hall from that generation finished reading the entire book, he was immediately overcome with grief and indignation.

The entire Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy could hear him cursing the Dou Ling Empire.

It was said that his insults had been especially vicious. He had even cursed out the Dou Ling Empire before the Sun Moon Empire's emperor for an entire day and night.

He repeatedly said that the Dou Ling Empire could not recognize talent, that they had forcibly destroyed an unmatched genius and buried the best chance for the Soul Master world to unravel the mystery of the meridians.

And that was indeed the truth. A thousand years had passed on the Douluo Continent, yet there had not been the slightest progress in meridian theory.

It was also said that the Dou Ling Empire had felt that simply killing the man was not enough, so they scattered the Grandmaster's ashes at the city gate for everyone to trample.

That Mingde Hall Master had truly been red-hot with rage. He had never seen such an ignorant nation.

Right then and there, disregarding the Sun Moon Empire emperor's attempts to stop him, he brought the Level Nine Soul Tool he had developed and a large group of Soul Engineers who shared his outrage, flying across half the continent overnight to attack Lingdou City, the Dou Ling Empire's capital.

The Hall Master stormed into the imperial palace, dragged the bewildered Dou Ling Empire emperor from his sleep, and furiously slapped him several times.

Then, after a fierce battle, he seized the Grandmaster's urn and brought all of his manuscripts from before his death back to the Sun Moon Empire.

The Dou Ling Empire was furious but dared not speak, helplessly maintaining its silence.

That generation's Mingde Hall Master then personally supervised the widespread printing of the Grandmaster's posthumous work, hoping to preserve this inheritance of meridian studies within the Sun Moon Empire.

He also wrote a line on the book's title page.

"Those who come after us, this book is the greatest regret of our era. I hope you can take up the Core Flame of those before you and successfully climb the mountain of meridian theory."

"Signed: Yi Hongchen."

After finally finding and finishing the book from the bookstore, Huo Yuhao finally understood how that Mingde Hall Master had felt at the time.

That Grandmaster had practically laid out the three main meridians and their derivative meridians through rigorous methods and illustrations.

He had been just one step away from extending meridian theory toward the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and had even predicted their specific functions.

Yet after writing only the title and preface for the Eight Extraordinary Meridians chapter, the book abruptly ended.

It made Huo Yuhao feel as though he had taken part in an edging challenge.

"Fuck the Dou Ling Empire's imperial family! A bunch of insects! What era is this, and they're still burning researchers to death!"

"When will Soul Masters ever be great again if we have to live with these insects?!"

The moment Jiang Nannan entered, she heard Huo Yuhao's complaints, and her eyes were filled with confusion.

She stood prettily in the doorway, pursed her lips, and tightly clutched a repaired bag behind her back with both hands.

Readers, please follow along. This little mouse really needs it.