The First Soul Ring's Choice: Two Uses for the Datura Snake

At last.

He seized the instant the Datura Snake opened its mouth.

He viciously fired his final Sleeve Arrow into its upper jaw, piercing straight through its brain.

Boom!

The giant snake crashed to the ground.

Hei Tang San collapsed limply as well, gasping for breath.

A narrow escape from death.

Yu Xiaogang shakily crawled over. Looking at the dark yellow Soul Ring, wild joy burst from his eyes.

"Four hundred years! It really is four hundred years!"

"Xiao San, quickly! Absorb it!"

"According to my Martial Soul mimicry theory, although Blue Silver Grass is a plant, the Datura Snake's toughness can perfectly compensate for its fragility."

"Trust your Teacher. This is absolutely the perfect match!"

Hei Tang San did not doubt him in the slightest.

He sat down cross-legged and began absorbing the Soul Ring he had traded his life for.

Pain.

Torment.

A long while later.

Hei Tang San opened his eyes and raised his right hand.

A thick Blue Silver Grass vine coiled out, bearing faint patterns resembling snake scales.

"First Soul Skill: Entanglement!"

He displayed it excitedly.

The vine wrapped around a huge tree and abruptly tightened, making the trunk creak.

"It worked!"

"Teacher, your theory was right! Blue Silver Grass really has become tougher!"

Master and disciple embraced each other in tears, as though they had accomplished some great feat.

However.

A cold line of narration appeared upon the Sky Curtain, dousing their joy with ice water.

[They had forcibly trained the top-tier Blue Silver Emperor Martial Soul into a sturdy rope.]

[This was Master's masterpiece.]

[Real World]

"Idiots!"

The Clear Sky Sect's Second Elder was so furious that he tore out one of his own beard hairs.

"The Blue Silver Emperor! It is the sovereign of plant-type Martial Souls!"

"And you used it as a rope?"

"It is like using the Clear Sky Hammer to crack walnuts! What a waste!"

[White World]

The same forest.

The same Datura Snake.

But Bai Tang San did not charge in like a reckless brute.

He was lying amid a patch of shrubs, his body covered in medicinal powder that concealed his aura.

The Purple Demon Eye had been pushed to its limit.

Within his field of vision.

That Datura Snake did not possess any invincible pressure.

Instead...

It was full of weaknesses.

"Its scales are dull in color, its movements are somewhat sluggish, and there is old skin on its belly that has not completely shed."

Bai Tang San analyzed the situation calmly.

"It has just finished molting."

"It is at its weakest, and also its hungriest."

He did not use his Sleeve Arrows.

Instead, he took a small bottle from his robes. It contained a lure he had concocted from several poisonous plants that attracted prey.

He gently sprinkled it ten meters ahead.

Then.

He waited quietly.

Hiss—

The Datura Snake caught the scent of that deadly sweetness and instinctively slithered toward it.

It did not even notice that the grass beneath it was unusual.

Just as it passed through what appeared to be an ordinary patch of Blue Silver Grass.

"Now."

A cold glint flashed through Bai Tang San's eyes.

There was no Soul Skill.

Only the instinctive release of his Martial Soul.

Countless blades of Blue Silver Grass did not try to bind the enormous snake like they had in the Black World.

Instead, they became sharp steel needles.

They precisely stabbed into the gaps between the Datura Snake's old and new scales along its belly!

That was the tender flesh exposed after molting!

Puff! Puff! Puff!

Blood sprayed everywhere.

The Datura Snake shrieked in agony and rolled about madly, trying to break free.

But those blades of Blue Silver Grass seemed to have taken root, plunging deep into its flesh and holding fast.

"Entanglement?"

"That is the lowest-level application."

Bai Tang San stepped out from his hiding place, his expression as cold as ice.

He slowly raised his right hand as the Mysterious Heaven Skill began circulating in reverse.

"The first profound truth of Blue Silver Grass..."

"Parasitism and plunder!"

Boom!

A scalp-numbing scene unfolded.

The Blue Silver Grass embedded in the snake's body suddenly turned an eerie dark red.

They were not transmitting Soul Power.

They were... sucking blood!

Glug! Glug!

It was as if countless pumps had begun working.

The Datura Snake's prized venom, along with its enormous reserves of life essence and blood.

All of it surged madly into Bai Tang San's body along the veins of the Blue Silver Grass.

"Hisss—!!!"

The Datura Snake's struggles gradually weakened.

It discovered in terror that its strength was draining away and its body was shriveling.

Its four-hundred-year ferocity had turned it into a lamb awaiting slaughter.

In less than the time it took to drink half a cup of tea.

That once-arrogant Datura Snake had been reduced to nothing but an empty skin!

A dark yellow Soul Ring slowly rose.

Bai Tang San sat cross-legged.

This time.

There was no pain.

Only the invigorating sensation of perfect fusion.

Because before absorbing the Soul Ring, he had already used his Martial Soul's instinct to "eat" the Soul Beast's essence first!

This was plunder!

A quarter-hour later.

Bai Tang San opened his eyes.

His originally deep eyes had now turned an eerie ink green.

He raised his hand.

The Blue Silver Grass in his palm was no longer its previous pale blue.

It had become a translucent ink green. Fine serrations lined its leaves, and it exuded a sickeningly sweet stench of blood.

"First Soul Skill."

A cruel curve formed at Bai Tang San's lips.

With a casual flick of his hand.

A blade of Blue Silver Grass lightly lashed a massive tree nearby, so thick that it would take several people to encircle it.

There was no violent sound.

Nor was there a sight of the trunk breaking.

But the next moment.

Sizzle, sizzle—

That lush, vibrant tree began to blacken and wither at a visible rate.

Its leaves drifted down and turned into black ash.

Its trunk softened, oozing black pus.

In merely three breaths.

A great tree became a puddle of black water!

"Datura Poison Seed."

Bai Tang San looked at his handiwork and evaluated it calmly.

"It not only inherited the Datura Snake's neural paralysis."

"It also fused with Blue Silver Grass's Life Plunder characteristic."

"Once it enters the body, it instantly strips away life force."

"This is the path Blue Silver Grass should take."

[Real World]

A deathly silence fell.

Everyone was stunned by that terrifying sight.

If Hei Tang San's "Entanglement" had been child's play.

Then Bai Tang San's move was an art of pure slaughter!

Concealed.

Deadly.

And... tyrannical!

In a dark corner.

That despondent man who had once dominated the world but could now only hide from place to place—Tang Hao.

At this moment, his hand trembled violently.

The wine flask in his hand fell with a smack, shattering on the ground.

He stared fixedly at the ruthless youth on the Sky Curtain.

His eyes were bloodshot.

"Like... so alike..."

"This is the true essence of Ah Yin's Martial Soul!"

Tang Hao's voice choked with endless regret.

"Wildfires cannot burn it all away; spring winds bring it back to life."

"Isn't the other side of endless vitality plundering Myriad Things to nourish oneself?"

"Tyranny! This is the tyranny that belongs to a sovereign!"

"If only I had understood this back then... If only I could have let Ah Yin devour a few Titled Douluo back then..."

"Why would she have had to sacrifice herself?! Why would she have become a blade of grass?!"

Tang Hao clutched his head and wept bitterly.

He had always believed that the Blue Silver Emperor was gentle, supportive.

Until today.

In his son, he had seen the terrifying other side of the sovereign of the plant type.

And at Shrek Academy.

Yu Xiaogang had gone completely limp in his chair.

His face was ashen.

He looked at the great tree that had turned into black water.

Then at the "rope" in Hei Tang San's hand, which could only be used to tie people up.

An unprecedented sense of shame made him want to faint dead away on the spot.

"Wrong..."

"Everything was wrong..."

"Entanglement... that was like using a divine sword as a fire poker!"

The surrounding students' gazes toward Master had completely changed.

They no longer questioned him.

Instead... they pitied him.

It was the look one gave a clown.

Hei Tang San stood where he was, the Blue Silver Grass in his hand hanging limply.

He looked at the powerful, cold, all-controlling version of himself on the screen.

The belief in his heart that Teacher was invincible.

At that moment.

Completely collapsed.

"So..."

"Blue Silver Grass can kill people."

"And it can... kill instantly."

He muttered to himself, his voice filled with confusion and despair.

The choice of the First Soul Ring.

Was like a fork in the road.

Under Yu Xiaogang's guidance, Hei Tang San had taken the mediocre path of the control type.

But Bai Tang San.

Had set out alone on a towering blood-soaked path that devoured Myriad Things and forged the Peerless Poison Emperor!