"Haotian Douluo, you have to understand that I'm only a Level 29 Soul Grandmaster! There's no way I could access Spirit Hall's highest secrets. All my conclusions were actually reached through deduction."
"Deduction?" Tang Hao furrowed his brow. "Little Friend Su, I know you're very good at deducing things. You can glean a wealth of information from the tiniest clues in basic records. But there's no way you could deduce anything about Ah Yin and me!"
"Haotian Douluo, my usual process is to make all sorts of hypotheses. Then I use clues and logic to rule them out one by one. Once I've settled on the hypothesis I find most convincing, I look for ways to verify it through various channels. That's the basic process behind my deductions!"
Su Yuntao hadn't called Spirit Hall "our Spirit Hall" because, in this timeline, he hadn't joined Spirit Hall.
Su Yuntao continued slowly, "Six years ago, Haotian Douluo fought an earth-shattering battle against Qian Xunji, the former Pope of Spirit Hall. At the time, you faced three Titled Douluo from Spirit Hall. Though you were only a Soul Douluo then, you advanced to Titled Douluo in the middle of the fight! You also managed to mortally wound the former Pope, while one elder died and another was injured!"
"Most people were simply amazed by your strength when they heard this news that shocked the entire Soul Master World. But I noticed all sorts of suspicious details!"
Tang Hao's expression grew solemn, but he didn't interrupt Su Yuntao's moment of showing off. Although Su Yuntao was only a Level 29 Soul Grandmaster, everything about him made Tang Hao reluctant to underestimate him!
"First, even if you broke through Level 90 during the battle, how did you obtain a Soul Ring in the middle of the fight? A Soul Master has to personally hunt down a suitable Soul Beast to obtain a Soul Ring. And at your level, it certainly wouldn't have been easy to find a Ninth Spirit Ring. Besides, absorbing a Soul Ring takes time. Would the three Titled Douluo from Spirit Hall have given you that time?"
"Second, even if you broke through Level 90 and successfully absorbed a Soul Ring to become a nine-ring Titled Douluo, Qian Xunji, the former Pope of Spirit Hall, had been a Titled Douluo for years! His Martial Soul was not only the Six-Winged Archangel, which surpassed the Clear Sky Hammer, but he also had two elders from the Pope Palace fighting alongside him!"
"Against three veteran Titled Douluo working together, how could even someone as talented as you possibly have been their match? Yet the result shocked everyone: the former Pope, Qian Xunji, was mortally wounded, and one elder died while the other was gravely injured. Your combat strength simply defied common sense! That made me wonder: just what sort of existence was your Ninth Spirit Ring?"
"Fourth, this is the part I've never been able to figure out! Why did Spirit Hall attack you? If they simply wanted to destroy the Clear Sky Sect and drag you, one of its promising younger generation, into the conflict, that wouldn't have been impossible. But Spirit Hall's later actions ruled that out for me, because everything happened so abruptly. Spirit Hall hadn't plotted it in advance!"
"Over the past few years, I've gathered a great deal of information. One rumor claimed that you possessed a supreme treasure, and that was why Spirit Hall attacked you."
"Considering how events unfolded, I think that rumor comes closest to the truth. I can't know the rest, but looking back, the conflict and hostility between Spirit Hall and the Clear Sky Sect seem to have arisen very suddenly."
"If Spirit Hall had wanted to wipe out the Clear Sky Sect from the beginning, the sect would probably no longer exist by now! But it does, which means Spirit Hall never planned to start an all-out war with the Clear Sky Sect."
The shock on Tang Hao's face finally broke through his composure. He never would have imagined that Su Yuntao could deduce things this far!
Su Yuntao continued, "So, Douluo, the reason Spirit Hall attacked you was that you possessed a supreme treasure—one powerful enough to drive even the Pope of Spirit Hall mad!"
"Then I remembered another rumor. Before your battle with Qian Xunji, the former Pope, you were still a Soul Douluo when you encountered an elder of Spirit Hall and got into a fierce clash with him. The elder lost to you, and you even crippled his leg."
"That raises another question: why would a Titled Douluo act that way when he encountered you? At the time, the Clear Sky Sect and Spirit Hall had good relations. For an elder to brazenly attack the Clear Sky Sect's future heir would inevitably provoke a fierce confrontation between the two great powers. The elder couldn't have been unaware of the consequences, yet he still chose to attack. That makes the rumor that you possessed a supreme treasure all the more convincing!"
"And in the battle against Pope Qian Xunji—around the time your son, Tang San, was born—your wife mysteriously disappeared. That's yet another question full of suspicious details."
Su Yuntao said gravely, "A mysterious genius Soul Master with a Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul; a Titled Douluo; a supreme treasure that drove even the former Pope mad; a Soul Ring you obtained right in the middle of battle; an unimaginable Ninth Spirit Ring; the Clear Sky Douluo, left despondent after a peak battle; and Tang San, a genius with Blue Silver Grass, Innate Full Soul Power, and no mother!"
"Douluo, once I linked all these things together, I reached an astonishing conclusion! Your wife, Ah Yin, was a hundred-thousand-year-old Blue Silver Grass—no, to be precise, she was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Blue Silver Emperor who had taken human form!"
Tang Hao stared blankly, no longer able to contain the shock on his face. A tempest raged in his heart. This seemingly insignificant Level 29 Soul Grandmaster before him had made his skin crawl.
Such a gifted man—though weak in strength, his intelligence and strategic insight had shaken Tang Hao more than those of some Titled Douluo.
"Douluo, if your wife was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, then everything else makes sense!"
"Why was your wife so exceptionally gifted, yet had a Martial Soul that looked like Blue Silver Grass?"
"Why did that elder from Spirit Hall brazenly attack you?"
"Why did the former Pope, Qian Xunji, insist on hunting you down?"
"Why could you obtain a Soul Ring right in the middle of battle and advance to Titled Douluo?"
"Why could you defeat three veteran Titled Douluo, including Qian Xunji, as soon as you became one?"
"Why did your wife disappear after that battle, while you were left so despondent?"
"The only explanation for all of this is a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast! Your wife was discovered by an elder of Spirit Hall, and that was what set everything else in motion!"
"At the moment you were on the brink of death, your wife sacrificed herself for you, using her life to create the greatest miracle in the world! That was how you made your name across the continent, shook the world, and forged an immortal legend!"
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