Yu Xiaogang was not the only one whose patience had nearly been ground away; Tang San's was almost gone too.
No matter how deep the bond between master and disciple, it could not withstand two years of running around. Wasn't there a saying that no filial son remained by the bedside of a chronically ill parent?
The ancients had not deceived him.
According to the original story, Tang San would be level twenty-nine when he went to Shrek next year. His cultivation was probably only one or two levels behind the original, so the gap was not particularly large.
But in the original story, Tang San had spent much of his time forging and making Tang Sect Hidden Weapons. That was not wasting time; at most, he had simply failed to use his time in the most appropriate place.
Yet over these past two years, he had truly accomplished nothing. His cultivation had barely improved, his forging skills had stagnated, and he could hardly even find the chance to strike iron a few times to keep his hand in.
How could he not be angry?
At this point, he even felt somewhat regretful.
He had known full well that Yu Xiaogang had lived most of his life without managing to achieve Martial Soul Evolution. What confidence had he, a greenhorn who had just set out and knew nothing about Douluo Continent, to help Yu Xiaogang evolve his Martial Soul?
But once he had made such a boast, he could only grit his teeth and follow through. Fortunately, Yu Xiaogang had "returned from the wrong path" and stopped dragging him down. Otherwise, the loving master and filial disciple might truly have become a hilarious farce.
Never mind how Tang San was doing; Chen Yumo, at least, was having the time of his life.
His cultivation rose by the day, and he had the entertainment of watching Tang San and Gangzi. In his good mood, even cultivating the Bloodline Secret Technique became much smoother.
So much so that when he saw Gangzi return to Nuoding Academy in a miserable state with his legs broken, Chen Yumo laughed so hard that he developed Spiritual Detection. He had never even considered developing this sort of ability, yet he learned the skill as naturally as water flowing into a channel.
Thanks, Gangzi.
Tang San, having resumed a normal life, also immersed himself in this long-lost atmosphere of cultivation and failed to notice that Chen Yumo had disappeared again.
He had gone hunting for Spirit Rings.
Having already reached level twenty, Chen Yumo had always been brimming with vigor and had no need to adjust his condition. With a recurve crossbow and level-five Fixed Soul Guidance Cannonballs in his Portable Space to maintain his abundant martial virtue, naturally, once he reached a bottleneck, he went straight to obtain a Spirit Ring.
This time, however, Chen Yumo did not return to the Soul Hunting Forest he had visited before.
The Soul Hunting Forests enclosed by Spirit Hall and the two great empires could be considered rich in species, but they were ultimately Spirit Beast Forests cultivated by humans and did not contain overly powerful Spirit Beasts.
Nor did they have the Spirit Beasts Chen Yumo needed.
The gold-element White Tiger Spirit Beasts he required could only possibly be found in three places across Douluo Continent.
Star Dou Great Forest, Sunset Forest.
And Meteor Forest within the Star Luo Empire.
The first two needed no introduction. They were the two largest Spirit Beast gathering places on land.
Star Dou Great Forest in particular contained all kinds of strange and powerful Spirit Beasts; nothing Chen Yumo found there would surprise him. Sunset Forest was smaller, but before Tang San destroyed it, it had likewise been a Spirit Beast habitat rich in species.
Meteor Forest was less famous than the first two, smaller even than Sunset Forest, and not as biologically diverse. But it was a place the Star Luo Imperial Family specifically used to add Spirit Rings to White Tiger Martial Souls, and it was home to large numbers of tiger-type Spirit Beasts from many different races.
If Chen Yumo wanted to hunt a powerful gold-element tiger-type Spirit Beast, Meteor Forest was undoubtedly the right place.
After deciding on his destination, Chen Yumo traveled day and night, taking nearly half a month to enter the Star Luo Empire.
Compared with his previous outing—a stroll close to home that took only one day there and back—this was a genuine journey far from home. And long journeys inevitably brought unexpected trouble, especially for a child like Chen Yumo, who looked so easy to bully.
Even with Spirit Hall maintaining order across the continent, there would inevitably be idiots who would say, "Whose kid is this?" before trying to pick Chen Yumo up for themselves.
If they were merely ordinary people without Soul Power, it was no problem. Chen Yumo scared off several groups simply by displaying his Spirit Rings. They did not even dare look back, and Chen Yumo could not be bothered to chase them down to uphold justice and eradicate evil.
The problem was that he also encountered one or two groups led by Spirit Masters. The strongest was a Soul Elder with a white-yellow-yellow Spirit Ring configuration, even stronger than Gangzi.
Had Chen Yumo not been proficient in American Iaido, producing a recurve crossbow from thin air amid the other man's dumbfounded stare before shooting an arrow through his head, the only way to deal with him would have been to use Fixed Soul Guidance Cannonballs and injure himself eight hundred to hurt the enemy a thousand.
Those incidents also made him take the skills of Simulation and Spiritual Detection seriously.
Spiritual Detection could be used to avoid danger, while Simulation could be used to avoid trouble. Although his spiritual power was still weak, it was already sufficient against people whose spiritual power was even weaker than his.
After emptying a magazine into that Soul Elder, Chen Yumo frequently used Spiritual Detection and Simulation during the rest of his journey to avoid trouble.
It had to be said—they were truly useful.
From the moment he began using those two spirit skills, he basically never encountered any trouble again.
The only drawback was that his pace slowed, since he needed to rest often to recover his spiritual power.
Using these two spirit skills for extended periods still placed a considerable drain on his mind.
But when he thought of how spirit skills could reduce so much trouble, and how repeatedly exhausting and recovering his spiritual power would help strengthen it, Chen Yumo endured the dizzy, lightheaded sensation of mental exhaustion and persisted.
And so, another three days passed.
Having entered the Star Luo Empire, he spent another three days before finally reaching Meteor Forest.
Though he encountered plenty of trouble along the way, it had indeed taught Chen Yumo some things. Staying at Nuoding Academy with his head buried in books all the time could easily turn him into someone like Gangzi—a giant in theory and a dwarf in practice. Taking a long journey made him feel as though his state of mind had changed.
Some things written in the Encyclopedia also needed to be combined with practical experience to leave a deeper impression.
Nor had he forgotten his real objective.
To hunt his second Spirit Ring.
Meteor Forest contained a great many tiger-type Spirit Beasts, and this kind of Spirit Beast possessed exceptionally strong territorial instincts and an extremely keen sense of smell.
After entering the forest, Chen Yumo had no choice but to use the Simulation Spirit Skill for long periods to conceal his aura and hide his presence.
Alternating the Simulation Spirit Skill with special medicinal powder, he entered Meteor Forest without incident.
There were basically no powerful Spirit Beasts in the outer regions. Therefore, Chen Yumo only familiarized himself with Meteor Forest's terrain and environment at the edge of the forest. Once he had put himself into the alert state needed for wilderness survival, he began slowly advancing inward.
According to the Meteor Forest map in the Encyclopedia, it was called a forest, but in reality, it resembled an enormous mountain range, with peaks rising one after another.
Only at the very core of Meteor Forest was there a ring-shaped valley, resembling a meteor crater. It was presumed that, at some unknown point in the past, a massive meteorite had fallen from the sky and struck this place, hence the name Meteor Forest.
Chen Yumo was rather curious about the meteor crater at its core.
After all, in a fantasy world, something like Extraterrestrial Meteor Iron was extremely high-end.
Who knew? Maybe he would pick up a piece.
Before you continue