Yu Xiaogang sat upright in a grand armchair, his gaze sweeping coolly over the excited crowd around him. Then he shook his head in disdain and let out a cold snort:
"A pack of ignorant fools."
"To actually believe the absurd claim that a three-year-old child could possess a hundred thousand jin of strength."
"The Soul Master World of Douluo Continent has stagnated precisely because of people like these, who refuse to study theory and blindly follow the crowd!"
Hearing his teacher's rebuke, Tang San immediately chimed in respectfully:
"You're right, Teacher. These people were simply fooled by Su Chen's exaggerated rhetoric."
"Once Su Chen takes the stage, the moment he tries to explain away yesterday's lie about a hundred thousand jin, he'll be riddled with holes."
"When that happens, we'll have to rely on you, Teacher, to use your profound knowledge of Martial Soul Theory and expose his true colors."
Hearing this, Yu Xiaogang nodded slightly, clearly pleased. His stiff face managed to produce a faintly arrogant smile:
"Don't worry, Little San. Since I've come today, I won't let this sort of crooked doctrine continue poisoning Heaven Dou City."
"I'll show him what an unbreakable theoretical iron law looks like!"
While the teacher and disciple played off each other, brimming with confidence as they prepared to expose the fraud,
inside the Yellow-Grade Private Room on the second floor,
Xue Qinghe, dressed in fine brocade and disguised as a man, held a cup of tea and watched the scene below with keen interest.
"Your Highness, this inn is far too disorderly. Shall I clear out those commoners?" one of the guards asked in a low voice.
"No need."
Xue Qinghe waved a hand, but kept his gaze fixed on the space behind the raised platform. "It's often among the common folk that one hears the most interesting things."
"I'd like to see just what sort of person this Mr. Su is—the one who's stirred Heaven Dou City into a pot of porridge."
As soon as he finished speaking, accompanied by the faintest sound of footsteps, a figure in blue slowly emerged from backstage and stepped onto the platform.
In an instant, Listening Rain Pavilion fell as still as if under a restraining spell. Every last bit of chatter abruptly died away!
Over a thousand pairs of eyes turned as one toward the young storyteller, who held a folding fan.
"Mr. Su! You've finally come out!"
"Tell us what happened with that hundred thousand jin yesterday! I didn't sleep a wink all night. I worried myself sick!"
"Exactly! How can a three-year-old child lift a hundred thousand jin with one arm? It makes no sense at all!"
Looking at the eager faces below, each filled with doubt,
Su Chen didn't rush to speak.
He strolled unhurriedly to the long table, picked up a teacup to moisten his throat, and let his gaze pass over Yu Xiaogang, who sat in the front row with his hands clasped behind his back. It lingered for barely half a second before moving on.
"Smack!"
The next moment, the clapper came down hard on the table.
"Picking up where we left off!"
Su Chen snapped open his folding fan with a flick. His voice turned low, drawing everyone back into that vast and ancient world.
"Yesterday, I told you how the Little Milk Baby from Stone Village in the Great Wilderness could run about with a thousand-jin bronze cauldron raised in one hand at just three and a half years old."
"I also spoke of the Blood Moving Realm's ultimate limit: a physical strength of a hundred thousand jin!"
"I know that all of you, honored guests, are filled with confusion and doubt."
"You're wondering how a human body could possibly bear such terrifying strength. Wouldn't it crush the bones and burst the meridians?"
Su Chen's question struck right at the heart of every Douluo Spirit Master present.
Exactly!
Even if you were born with divine strength, your bone density and the resilience of your blood vessels still had limits!
That was an ironclad law of Martial Soul Theory!
Were the people in Perfect World made of iron?
Just as everyone pricked up their ears, ready to hear how Su Chen would defend himself,
Su Chen smiled faintly and explained without the least bit of haste:
"Ordinary flesh and blood naturally cannot bear a force of a hundred thousand jin."
"So, in Perfect World, especially in the vast Great Wilderness, the children had to undergo something in order for their bodies to endure the terrifying power they would gain in the Blood Moving Realm."
At this, Su Chen paused. He looked around the room, then spoke each word distinctly:
"Medicinal baths!"
Medicinal baths?
Hearing those two words, quite a few of the Spirit Masters below looked as if they'd expected as much.
Yu Xiaogang, seated in the front row, gave an undisguised snort of derision.
"I thought it would be some ingenious method. Turns out, after all that, it's just a medicinal bath."
Yu Xiaogang lifted his teacup and took a sip. He spoke with an air of utter arrogance, in a voice only those nearby could hear:
"Tempering the body with medicinal baths is nothing unusual among the great families of Douluo Continent."
"It's just a matter of using some mild herbs to strengthen the body, together with a small amount of low-level Soul Beast blood, to slowly nourish a child's meridians."
"The method works, but thinking you could use a medicinal bath to push the body to a hundred thousand jin? That's pure fantasy."
Tang San nodded repeatedly beside him. "Teacher is absolutely right. Medicinal baths are meant to be mild and gradual."
"If the medicinal power is too strong, a child's fragile meridians will burst in an instant, and the child will die from the explosion."
Yet Su Chen's next words came like one heavy bomb after another, blasting Yu Xiaogang's freshly established sense of theoretical superiority to pieces!
"Everyone, don't use your impoverished imaginations to speculate about the medicinal baths of the Great Wilderness."
"They're not some gentle soak in a tub!"
"In Stone Village, every so often, the village chief would set up a huge black iron cauldron, light a roaring fire beneath it, and bring the water inside to a full boil, bubbling and churning!"
"And that boiling water was just the beginning!"
As he spoke, Su Chen thrust his folding fan forward, as if painting the horrifying scene in midair:
"Next, the adults would pour jar after jar of true blood from terrifying Ferocious Beasts they'd hunted into the boiling cauldron!"
"The blood was a glaring crimson. Within the cauldron, it even took the shapes of Ferocious Beasts, roaring and struggling!"
"Not only that, the old village chief would bring out all kinds of poisonous things the village had kept in reserve!"
"There were giant centipedes several feet long, covered in barbed spines, each capable of poisoning hundreds of people with a single bite!"
"There were also poisonous spiders as big as water vats, covered from head to toe in brilliant colors, their venom corrosive enough to eat through metal and stone!"
"And there were strange old herbs picked from the deep mountains and vast marshes, their shapes bizarre and their stench pungent!"
"All these poisonous creatures would be thrown into the boiling black iron cauldron together with the violent true blood of the Ferocious Beasts, then stewed into a pot of medicinal liquid!"
At this, wave after wave of sharp intakes of breath rang through Listening Rain Pavilion.
Everyone's faces changed. Quite a few nobles felt their stomachs roil and fought the urge to retch.
Boiling water? Poisonous centipedes? Venomous spiders? All mixed with the violent true blood of Ferocious Beasts???
What the hell kind of medicinal bath was this?
It was clearly a pot of life-taking poison!
"Madness! This is absolute madness!"
"Throw all that together, and forget soaking in it—even one breath of the fumes would probably make your orifices bleed before you dropped dead!"
"Exactly! Even Poison Douluo wouldn't dare bathe in that, let alone a child!"
In just a few minutes, the audience below had been thoroughly frightened.
But Su Chen showed no intention of stopping. His next words made everyone present's scalps tingle.
"Once the medicinal liquid had been prepared,"
"the village men would grab the five- and six-year-olds, the seven- and eight-year-olds, like little chicks, and toss them straight into the boiling black cauldron!"
"And the three-and-a-half-year-old Little Milk Baby was no exception. The old village chief personally put him inside!"
"The children were scalded until their skin split and their flesh peeled, screaming in agony. But the adults outside showed no mercy. They held down the lid and absolutely refused to let them out!"
"Because only through this kind of ordeal, with death waiting on every side, could the divine substances within the Ferocious Beasts' true blood and the poisonous insects' poison-neutralizing power shatter the children's originally fragile bones and force the fortune of heaven and earth into their marrow, rebuilding their bodies into forms that could never be broken!"
"This is the Great Wilderness's medicinal bath!"
"It is also the foundation of the first step of the Blood Moving Realm!"
As Su Chen's words fell, Listening Rain Pavilion erupted once again.
But it wasn't with amazement. They simply couldn't understand it.
Throwing a three-year-old child into a boiling pot of poisonous blood to stew? What kind of monstrous cruelty was that?!
"Utter nonsense!!!"
Just as the entire hall was on the verge of falling into chaos, an arrogant voice suddenly rang out from the crowd.
It was Yu Xiaogang. He could no longer sit still.
He sprang to his feet. His already stiff face twitched slightly with agitation.
Then he clasped his hands behind his back, lifted his chin, glared at Su Chen on the platform, and shouted furiously:
"Su Chen! You charlatan who deceives the world—there's a limit to how much you can make up!"
"Boiling poisonous insects with violent beast blood? That's a fatal dose of potent medicine!"
As he spoke, Yu Xiaogang strode forward, his voice ringing out as he tried to make sure everyone in the hall heard his flawless theory:
"The absorption of any energy must follow the principles of repulsion between different sources and gradual progression!"
"Mix different kinds of poisonous insect venom with the blood of different Ferocious Beasts, and all you'll get is an extremely violent rejection of energy!"
"Forget a three-year-old child—even a Titled Douluo with a powerful body would be torn to shreds in an instant by the rampant energy if he jumped into that boiling, mutually repellent poison. He'd be reduced to a pool of blood!"
"And yet you keep claiming that not only did that Little Milk Baby survive, he even used that poisonous water to rebuild his body?"
Yu Xiaogang sneered, then pointed a finger straight at Su Chen, utterly certain of himself:
"Utterly absurd!"
"The logic of your story has completely collapsed!"
"You're insulting Martial Soul Theory!"
As Yu Xiaogang's emphatic refutation rang out, the many Spirit Masters in the hall, still reeling from the shock, seemed to have found a pillar of support. They nodded and chimed in one after another.
"This gentleman is right! Even an ordinary physician knows that incompatible medicines cancel each other out!"
"Mix poison and beast blood together and boil them? That's not a medicinal bath—it's cooking meat!"
"I knew it! How could anyone survive in something like that? So Su Chen really was just making it all up!"
Beside Yu Xiaogang, Tang San looked equally proud.
Watching Su Chen on the platform, seemingly stumped by the question, he called out:
"Mr. Su, look at who's sitting below before you speak!"
"This is Yu Xiaogang, Grandmaster, the foremost authority on theory in all Douluo Continent!"
"Before my teacher's invincible theories, your lies—riddled with holes as they are—have nowhere to hide!"
The foremost authority on theory?
Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang?
Listening to Tang San's proud introduction, then looking at Yu Xiaogang below, his face haughty as if he'd completely seen through Su Chen,
Su Chen's mouth twitched for once.
He first froze slightly, then lowered his head. His shoulders began to tremble faintly.
"Pfft..."
At first, it was only a quiet chuckle. But then the laughter grew louder and more unrestrained.
Finally, the ethereal, unsmiling storyteller burst into wild laughter right there on the spot.
"Hahahahahahahahaha..."
"What are you laughing at?!" Yu Xiaogang frowned, feeling deeply insulted.
"What am I laughing at?"
Hearing this, Su Chen abruptly cut off his laughter and looked up at Yu Xiaogang.
"I'm laughing at how a good-for-nothing who can't even break through to Soul Grandmaster dares to claim his theories are invincible!"
"I'm laughing at how you're using the riddled, child's-play common sense of a low-dimensional world to judge a true high-dimensional world!"
Su Chen's voice drifted across the room, making Yu Xiaogang's eardrums ache. The entire hall fell instantly silent.
"Do you think what was stewing in that cauldron was just the ordinary poisonous insects and beast blood you know?"
Su Chen opened his folding fan, then regarded Yu Xiaogang below, whose face had paled, with renewed indifference. He added, each word distinct:
"Yu Xiaogang, do you know what the main ingredient the old village chief threw into that cauldron was—the one he'd drained completely of its true blood to lay the foundation for the Little Milk Baby's baptism?"
"And do you know whether those children who grew up in the Great Wilderness, each like a little humanoid tyrannosaurus, were the useless children you imagine?"
"You should know that the main ingredient was a Primordial Remnant—and among them was even a Suanni!"
"The Suanni was born with dominion over the thunder of the nine heavens, and its body was as vast as a mountain."
"A fully grown Pure-Blooded Suanni needed only to roar once to shatter the firmament, summon ten thousand bolts of lightning, and flatten every mountain range within a hundred thousand li!"
"Its true blood contained Thunder Runes, violent to the extreme, and the power of destruction itself."
After he finished, Su Chen looked down at Yu Xiaogang, whose face had grown even more ashen, with open mockery.
"Yu Xiaogang, you keep talking about energy rejection and bodies bursting apart."
"That's because you have no idea that the people of the Great Wilderness temper themselves in true blood infused with thunder capable of destroying heaven and earth. They shatter their own frail bones, then use the medicinal power to grow tougher flesh and blood anew!"
"They destroy themselves to be reborn; they face death and live!"
"In Perfect World, what a magnificent and boundless spectacle it was!"
"And you're using your feeble understanding—a mind that can't even defeat a Hundred-Year Soul Beast—to presume to judge laws of that level, laws from a higher dimension?"
"Tell me, aren't you just a frog at the bottom of a well?"
"Your theories? They're worth less than shit, you fucking idiot!"
Before you continue