Tang Hao's Regret and Forbearance

The bustle and cheers in Spirit Hall's Awakening Hall lingered for a long time. The four children were surrounded by a group of Title Douluo, the most dazzling young prodigies on the entire continent.

Meanwhile... pfft, Tang Hao and Tang San were having a miserable time.

In Holy Soul Village, south of Nuoding City in Fasinuo Province of the Heaven Dou Empire, only the ruined Blacksmith Shop at the western end of the village remained steeped year-round in the smell of alcohol and rust, wrapped in an inescapable chill and desolation.

The Blacksmith Shop was divided into an outer and inner room. In the outer room stood a rusty forge, while scattered chunks of iron and farm tools awaiting repair lay piled in the corner. Years of hammering had left the floor riddled with dents. The inner room contained only a hard plank bed, a wooden table with one missing leg propped up by a stone, and two chipped coarse porcelain bowls. The air reeked of harsh, cheap liquor, and dozens of empty wine jars had been tossed haphazardly against the wall.

A bald man with a burly frame yet a permanently hunched back slumped in a chair beside the forge, clutching a wine jar and gulping down its contents. His face looked as though it had been repeatedly corroded by acid and fire, pitted and covered in vicious scars. His once resolute, handsome features had been utterly destroyed. Only a pair of cloudy eyes remained, occasionally flashing with a ferocity and sharpness utterly at odds with his bedraggled appearance when the drunken haze briefly faded.

No one knew that this down-and-out blacksmith, called "Tang Hao the Hammer" by the villagers of Holy Soul Village, was Tang Hao, the Clear Sky Douluo—six years ago, he had shaken the continent, and now he was the number one traitor of the human race, wanted across the entire continent for one million Gold Soul Coins and two Ten Thousand Year Soul Bones.

To survive and evade the relentless pursuit, he had not only ruined his own face and adopted a common name no one would associate with the Clear Sky Sect, but had also carved a fake arm from hard Iron Birch Wood and fitted it seamlessly onto his severed right shoulder.

He usually wore baggy, grease-stained blacksmith's clothes that completely concealed the false arm. When forging, he tied the fake arm and the iron block together with cloth straps, then swung the hammer with only his left hand. He looked no different from any one-armed blacksmith found throughout the continent, perfectly concealing the most distinctive mark from that great battle—the right arm severed by the Angel Holy Sword.

And Holy Soul Village, the place he had chosen to hide, concealed a calculation he had staked his life on.

The Barren Ridge War that had ruined his reputation six years ago had taken place only three mountains away from Holy Soul Village, less than half a day's hard ride away.

Everyone on the continent assumed he would flee with his child to remote wildernesses like the Far North Ice Plains or Star Dou Forest. No one would have imagined that he was hiding right beneath the nose of the place where it had all happened.

The most dangerous place was the safest place.

When Tang San had just turned one and was still swaddled in cloth, Tang Hao had brought him to this remote little village. He had remained hidden there for five years.

The young master of the dignified Clear Sky Sect, the youngest Title Douluo on the continent, now had to mingle with peasants he regarded as mud-legged yokels, read the faces of commoners, and forge hoes and sickles in exchange for cheap liquor.

A tiger fallen to the plains was bullied by dogs. Nothing could have been more fitting.

But he had no other choice. He had to endure.

In that battle six years ago, not only had he lost an arm, but the fundamental injuries left behind by Ring Detonation had still not healed. Only alcohol could barely numb the pain that had seeped into his bones.

More importantly, the entire continent was hunting him. The slightest trace of the Clear Sky Douluo would bring an endless siege meant to kill him.

To survive, to take revenge, he could only endure.

Endure!

After pouring down more than half a jar of cheap wine, Tang Hao suddenly smashed the jar against the ground. Ceramic shards and leftover liquor splashed everywhere.

He panted heavily, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the window. A low growl like that of a wounded beast rumbled from his throat. Countless resentments and unwillingness churned within his chest, nearly tearing him apart.

He could not understand. He truly could not understand.

In that battle six years ago, he had only wanted to protect his beloved Ah Yin. He had only wanted to protect his wife and child from Spirit Hall, from those wolves greedy for a hundred-thousand-year Soul Ring.

He believed himself upright and unyielding. He had dared to become enemies with the entire world for his beloved, and should have been praised as a devoted hero. How had he become, overnight, an eternal sinner who betrayed humanity, colluded with soul beasts, and Fallen into Demonic Path?

Damn it! They all deserved to die!

Those hypocrites from Spirit Hall had clearly coveted Ah Yin's hundred-thousand-year Soul Ring and Soul Bone. They had been the ones to set the trap and launch the ambush, yet in the end, they turned around and pinned all the filth on him!

And those sects that followed the crowd, along with the two great empires—each one sanctimonious, yet all they wanted were Ah Yin's Soul Bone and Soul Ring. They had merely joined in to loot a burning house!

And then there was the Clear Sky Sect! His sect! The place that had raised him!

Before the entire continent, they had expelled him from the sect and drawn a clear line between themselves and him! Those old bastards spoke endlessly of sect glory and brotherly bonds in ordinary times, yet when disaster struck, they did not dare utter a single word in his defense. They only knew how to protect themselves!

Tang Hao slammed a fist into the forge. The heavy iron furnace instantly caved in, sending sparks flying everywhere.

His gaze fell upon the small figure by the bed in the inner room, standing on tiptoe as he tidied the bedding. An intensely twisted emotion surged into Tang Hao's eyes—ferocity, resentment, and a trace of fear he refused even to acknowledge.

If not for this child, if he and Ah Yin had not given birth to him, how could Ah Yin have been forced into sacrifice? How could he have fallen to such a state?

But the thought had barely surfaced before an even deeper dread suppressed it.

In truth, he had never held much hope for this child's Martial Soul awakening.

Ah Yin was a hundred-thousand-year Blue Silver Emperor. Even after taking human form and gaining a human body and soul, the soul beast origin within her bones had never disappeared.

On Douluo Continent, unions between humans and soul beasts had always been taboo. There had been precedents.

Those Wolf Bandits that ran rampant through the countryside were wolf-headed, human-bodied monsters born from humans breeding with Gale Demon Wolves, were they not?

They looked human, but soul beasts' bloodthirsty nature lay in their bones. They possessed not the slightest shred of humanity and knew only slaughter and destruction. Everyone across the continent considered them deserving of death.

More than once, Tang Hao had stared at the sleeping Tang San in the dead of night. The child looked no different from a human child, but the weight in Tang Hao's heart had never eased.

Six years had passed. The child had grown safely to the age of six, but who knew what would appear at the moment of his Martial Soul awakening?

What if he truly awakened a half-human, half-beast Martial Soul? What if he really was, as people cursed, an innately vile bastard, a monster?

Then not only would the charge of "human-beast fornication" against Tang Hao be completely confirmed, but this child would also be cut down on the spot.

Not to mention that he had secretly begun cultivating at the age of three or four, using a cultivation method Tang Hao had never seen before.

He had even considered what he should do if that moment truly came.

Should he personally end this child's life, or take him and fight their way out of the encirclement, continuing their life on the run?