Three Years Later, Happiness and Gloom, Purple

The next morning.

Tang Wulin was out of bed as soon as the sun rose, brushing his teeth, washing his face, and even wiping down his hair with a damp towel.

It seemed he was heading to an important location to handle a major life event!

Watching his son darting around the house and acting so restless that he only managed a few bowls of breakfast, Tang Ziran couldn't help but laugh and ask, "Can't stay calm? Don't rush, the Spirit Pagoda isn't even open yet at this hour."

But for Tang Wulin, today was the day he would purchase his Soul Spirit, so how could a nine-year-old boy possibly stay calm?

"Dad, what kind of Soul Spirit do you think I'll be able to buy?" Tang Wulin asked, his face full of smiles and extreme excitement.

After three years of silent, solitary effort, he had finally saved up the thirty thousand Federal Coins needed for his starting capital.

Yesterday, he had also advanced by one level of Soul Power, reaching the first bottleneck of his career as a Soul Master.

It was a double blessing!

Although Na'er had said some inexplicable things to him on the beach yesterday evening, it couldn't dampen his drive or joy for the day.

He hugged his mother and trotted out the door—

He was met with a refreshing morning breeze, carrying the crisp, sweet fragrance of Blue Silver Grass.

Tang Wulin suddenly felt enveloped by happiness.

He knew this was a sense of happiness he had earned bit by bit through tears and sweat over the last three years.

If he could obtain a suitable, high-quality Soul Spirit today, Tang Wulin would consider his life to be nearing perfection.

The morning sun wasn't overly bright, and the vegetation along the road made the very air feel sweet.

The father and son didn't choose to take a vehicle, opting instead to walk to the central street of Proud Arrival City.

Bouncing and skipping along the city streets, Tang Wulin turned back from time to time to urge his father on.

"Dad, hurry up, come on, a little faster."

Childhood always had an endless supply of energy, especially for a big eater with a healthy appetite.

Finally, they arrived during the morning-to-noon window, which was the start of the workday for federal officials.

A three-story octagonal building appeared at the end of the main road beneath their feet.

That was the largest building in Proud Arrival City—the Spirit Pagoda.

The holy land in Tang Wulin's heart.

Everyone knew its location, but those who had actually entered it were few and far between.

His teacher had said that the Spirit Pagoda organization was not limited to the Douluo Continent where the Federation was located.

This ancient and powerful force, which had existed for ten thousand years, was naturally of utmost importance to Soul Masters in this era where soul beasts were precious.

Especially after they developed artificial Soul Spirits, their status had risen even higher; their sphere of influence spanned three continents, and their power was comparable to the Sun Moon Federation.

For some reason, this Spirit Pagoda looked different from the last time Tang Wulin had visited.

It seemed as though an extra half-story had been added to the very top, shaped like a fixed, small tent.

This filled Tang Wulin with immense admiration for this microcosm of a top-tier power, while also adding a touch of mystery and anticipation:

Could it be that the Proud Arrival City Spirit Pagoda was expanding?

This was an important omen for the city's development!

When the father and son arrived, the main gate of the Spirit Pagoda was already open, though there was no flow of people entering or exiting. After all, this was a place only qualified for Soul Masters, and the number of Soul Masters in a backwater like Proud Arrival City was... countable on one's fingers.

Tang Wulin stopped to wait for his father while looking up at the wide, octagonal tower.

But as he tilted his head to look at the top of the tower, for some reason, a cluster of flowing purple crystals also peeked out from the top floor, casting two purple-gold gazes downward.

A strange sense of familiarity... welled up from within.

"Why aren't you going in?" Tang Ziran had already caught up to his son, and while Tang Wulin was dazed, he had even walked a good distance past him toward the main entrance on the first floor.

"Hm? Oh, okay." Tang Wulin snapped back to reality, stopped meeting the gaze of the person at the top of the tower, and quickly trotted to catch up with his father's footsteps.

As the father and son walked into the Spirit Pagoda together, Tang Wulin looked around the interior of the building with curiosity.

The interior of the Spirit Pagoda was spacious, with floors paved tightly with marble.

Around the walls of the first-floor lobby was a circle of doors leading to unknown places.

In the very center of the lobby, there was a circular counter.

A Spirit Master in a gray robe sat at his workstation, beginning his day.

Seeing someone walk in through the morning light, the Spirit Master quickly stood up, faced the father and son, and asked, "Hello, how can I help you?"

Tang Ziran hurriedly replied respectfully, "Hello, Master Spirit Master, I have brought my son to purchase a Soul Spirit. His Soul Power cultivation has reached level ten."

Upon hearing this, the warmth on the Spirit Master's face immediately dissolved by half, simply because the person who had arrived was not a Soul Master.

"Do you have enough funds?" the Spirit Master asked with a cold face.

Tang Wulin quickly interjected, "We have enough! We have enough!"

The Spirit Master prepared the paperwork while asking, "Which grade of Soul Spirit are you looking to purchase?"

Tang Ziran acted as if he didn't know, asking, "Master Spirit Master, we aren't very familiar with these things. Could we trouble you for a detailed explanation?"

The Spirit Master let out a long sigh, his tone sounding rather impatient.

"You came here without even asking around? In a backwater coastal town like Proud Arrival City that isn't even a port, we only provide: ten-year white Soul Spirits, hundred-year yellow Soul Spirits, and random draws."

"A white Soul Spirit costs seventy thousand, and a yellow one costs a million. Which one are you buying?"

Tang Wulin was stunned into silence, his childish voice suddenly failing him: "Master Spirit Master, isn't a Soul Spirit only thirty thousand?"

"How could it... be so expensive?"

The bright sunlight behind him and the lingering freshness of the road were suddenly swallowed up by this cold building.

The Spirit Master glanced at him heartlessly and said, "Thirty thousand is for a random Soul Spirit. You'll usually draw a ten-year white one, though it's possible to get a hundred-year yellow one. But there's a high chance you'll get one that isn't suitable for your martial soul."

"Some people gamble to save money, but I don't suggest you choose that. Betting on one success amidst a hundred failures is nothing but a pipe dream."

Tang Ziran was overcome with a mix of emotions.

He could only crouch down, pat his son's stiff shoulders, and comfort him gently, "Wulin, let's just go with the random draw. Your Blue Silver Grass martial soul has quite strong adaptability; most Soul Spirits should be compatible with it."

"Okay."

Just as Tang Wulin's spirits began to lift, a bucket of cold water was poured over them.

"I think it's necessary for me to remind you of two things."

The Spirit Master's voice rang out again: "While there is a small chance of drawing a hundred-year yellow Soul Spirit with a random draw, there is also a certain chance of drawing a defective Soul Spirit."

"Because with our current technology, we aren't always successful when creating artificial Soul Spirits. In many cases, defective Soul Spirits appear. Although a Soul Master can still fuse with them, the benefits are minimal, and at the very least, you will have wasted a soul ring slot."

Tang Ziran wanted to play it safe.

He told his son he planned to borrow another forty thousand to make up the total in Federal Coins so they could come back and buy a white Soul Spirit suitable for him.

But Tang Wulin recalled his adoptive parents, who toiled day and night to raise two "dragons," not even willing to touch meat themselves...

That image caused the precocious Tang Wulin a sharp pang of pain in his heart.

Therefore, he refused outright and firmly comforted his adoptive father in return.

While Tang Ziran was still moved.

Tang Wulin took the initiative to suggest going to draw the Soul Spirit and handed over the thirty thousand Federal Coins, his small face filled with determination.

The Spirit Master was touched, immediately waiving the mental power test fee and leaving Tang Ziran, who was not a Soul Master, where he stood.

He then took Tang Wulin alone and walked toward one of the doors.

On the way, the Spirit Master summarized the levels of mental power.

From high to low, they are: Spirit Origin Realm, Spirit Connection Realm, Spirit Sea Realm, Spirit Abyss Realm, and Spirit Domain Realm.

These five mortal realms are also divided into low, medium, and high sub-levels.

Every person is born with a basic level of mental power—the Spirit Origin Realm.

The characters for "Spirit Origin" also signify "the essence of all things, the initial origin."

Of course, the Spirit Master also mentioned the God Origin Realm in passing, a legendary mental power realm that only deities possess.

After putting on the detection helmet, the final result was as expected: the precocious Tang Wulin had much higher mental power than an average child, reaching a value of thirty-eight points.

According to the "three-six-nine" grading system, this was equivalent to the intermediate level of the Spirit Origin Realm.

Finally having some good news, Tang Wulin's mood improved significantly, and he realized there was another path of development in the world of Soul Masters.

Next, the truly tense moment arrived.

Tang Wulin was brought to an adjacent small hall.

The interior was much more spacious than the testing room next door.

A massive, semi-transparent machine, three meters high and six meters wide, stood at the end of the hall.

A large number of spherical objects glowed and floated inside the semi-transparent glass cover.

The Spirit Master explained that those were the Soul Spirit spheres and introduced the green and red buttons on the front of the machine.

Finally, he left the choice to Tang Wulin, letting him decide his fate with luck.

Tang Wulin's heart raced; the moment that would decide his fate had finally arrived.

He gritted his teeth and slammed his hand onto the green button.

A series of flickering lights ignited inside the machine, and over a hundred Soul Spirit spheres accelerated along their tracks, creating a dazzling, dizzying display.

Everything was left to fate.

At a certain moment, as if by some divine intuition, Tang Wulin raised his hand to touch the red button. His hand, which usually held the Thousand Refined Tungsten Steel Hammer with ease, couldn't help but tremble slightly.

Taking a deep breath, Tang Wulin closed his beautiful eyes, pressed his right hand down, and quickly pulled it back as if he had just touched a scorching iron.

The rotation inside the machine stopped, and a Soul Spirit sphere dropped from the exit with a "thud."

Tang Wulin opened his eyes instinctively, his heart drumming against his chest like a war drum.

The Spirit Master walked over, took out the Soul Spirit orb, and handed it to him.

Tang Wulin's breathing grew rapid, as if he were receiving a world-class treasure... or a curse.

Nervousness, anticipation, and a trace of unwillingness to face reality intertwined complexly within his heart.

Clutching this restless complexity, Tang Wulin returned to his father and took the oval-shaped tool handed over by the Spirit Master.

Little did they know, at the stairwell between the first and second floors.

A pair of purple-gold pupils gradually reverted to pure gold, and the expanded will of destruction slowly retracted.

The Purple Crystal Crimson Flower that had gazed across the high building at Tang Wulin swayed, whispering with regret: "What a pity, to be saddled with a father like that."

The moment the words left its lips, the three breaths in the distance suddenly hitched and stopped.

"A ten-year Soul Spirit."

Inside the pure white Soul Spirit orb, a thread-like creature lay coiled.

It was no more than ten centimeters long and half a finger wide, its entire body an earthy yellow. Only by looking extremely closely could one discern a layer of fine, diamond-shaped scales.

"This... this can be a Soul Spirit?" Tang Ziran asked, his voice filled with disbelief.

Because this thing was merely a Grass Snake that could only prey on weak insects, and a juvenile one at that. On the Douluo Continent, it wasn't even considered a Soul Beast; could it really count as a Soul Spirit?

Its entire image could be summed up by the words "harmless to man and beast." If a Soul Master absorbed it, what kind of competitive edge could it possibly provide?

The Spirit Master admitted that this was a defective Soul Spirit—not a defective product made from Soul Beast blood, but a failed experiment created using the blood of ordinary animals.

Through this failed experiment, one thing had been proven: the genome of ordinary animals was too poor and entirely unsuitable as experimental material.

Thus, the little Grass Snake in Tang Wulin's hand was among the worst of the failed, defective products in the world.

Defective product + failed experiment.

These two heavy, thousand-jun hammers struck through his adoptive father's sigh, smashing Tang Wulin's mental world into gray ruins.

He felt that although he was still standing, he had been dragged into the shadows of this cold building, his heart trembling uncontrollably in helpless struggle.

In this moment, three years of hard work turned to ash.

Even the Spirit Master was advising Tang Wulin to give up on this Soul Spirit, as such a failed, defective product had ten disadvantages and not a single benefit.

Tang Ziran was also patting his head, trying to comfort him, saying he would find a way to scrape together the money to buy him a suitable ten-year Soul Spirit.

But he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to clear the vision blurred by tears.

Knowing how hard it was for his parents to run the household, he knew this small family could no longer bear any more heavy burdens.

Therefore, Tang Wulin feigned strength and ease, saying: "Dad, let's go home first."

He desperately wanted to escape this shadow, to return to the air outside the door, filled with sunlight and the sweet fragrance of Blue Silver Grass.

But just then, from the deepest part of the pitch-black shadows, a Purple Crystal Crimson Flower walked out unhurriedly.

In an instant, the three of them froze in place.

Surprise appeared on Tang Ziran's face, for he discovered a youth even better-looking than his own son, especially those golden eyes.

Yet the gray-robed Spirit Master appeared completely at a loss; he clearly knew the identity of the person who had arrived... how mysterious and noble it was.

Only Tang Wulin, suppressing his grief, felt utterly bewildered by this inexplicable sense of familiarity: he felt as if he had seen him somewhere before.

He immediately remembered—it seemed to be the person who had gazed at him from the top of the tower before he entered.

But even earlier memories surged into his mind, and a title stumbled out of his mouth: "Bad, bad person..."

"Huang."

He hadn't expected the other party to actually be a member of the Spirit Pagoda, or even live right inside the Proud Arrival City Spirit Pagoda.

And in the three years that had passed, this "bad person" surnamed Huang had not turned into a lecherous demon, but had instead grown even better-looking.

Back then, he had even issued a threat, saying that if they met again, he would definitely find the police officer uncle to arrest him.

But...

Did the law actually work on him?

The cluster of purple hair on the Dragon Emperor's shoulders trembled gently with each step he took.

He walked up to the three of them, ignored the gray-robed Spirit Master's salute, and cast his highly aggressive gaze between Tang Wulin's chest and abdomen.