Nurtured by Suffering, Suppressed by Parenting

The safety passage was the only route to the top floor besides the internal elevators.

The Dragon Emperor rested his elbows on the handrail of the stairs, looking at the dejected boy sitting slumped in the hall, as if the sky had fallen.

He shook his head and sighed, "A pity, a child more precious than A-Jin, yet he has such a father."

"Suppressive education, raised in poverty."

It was clear that the Dragon Emperor had long seen through the fact that it was the wisp of the God King Tang San's soul that had been guiding Tang Wulin to change his choices.

As for why he insisted on choosing a mere grass snake, which didn't even count as a soul beast, as the most crucial first soul spirit for his son's soul master career?

It was probably just because he saw his son was too happy today, so he wanted to design some hardships to suppress his emotions.

After all, with the Dragon Emperor's discerning eye as the Ancestor of Sub-Dragons, he saw no extraordinary qualities in this non-soul beast grass snake.

It was neither related to the apex of reptiles, the Sky Green Python, nor the top-tier plant soul beast, the Sky Green Vine.

It was just a pure, non-soul beast young grass snake, yet the God King Tang had chosen it for his son.

And not just once, but repeatedly, insisting on this one.

This kind of upbringing, the Dragon Emperor could not think of any other answer in the tens of thousands of years of the Douluo Plane, except for the suppressive education of ancient times.

"Perhaps Tang San's thinking is still stuck in ancient times."

With tens of thousands of years of experience in the human world, the Dragon Emperor saw through Tang San's parenting strategy at a glance:

First, he placed his son in a family with a difficult fate, feeding him low-level meals with scarce energy.

This way, Tang Wulin, who possessed the Golden Dragon King bloodline, would have to increase his food intake to develop, using quantitative change to trigger qualitative change.

This would allow him to make his son see the hardship of his parents working hard to support the family and eating meagerly, thus cultivating Tang Wulin's guilt.

In reality, if he had been placed in a family with upper-middle-class assets, he could have been fed with a single bowl of "premium meal" to satisfy this "young dragon."

It was just that perhaps Tang San hadn't expected the Silver Dragon King to come and freeload, adding to the burden of this working-class family.

Speaking of which, the Silver Dragon King also played a part in Tang Wulin's more than three years of hardship in his childhood.

After all, it was rather laughable that a half-step God King who had just recovered from a serious injury, and a peak powerhouse who could already absorb the elemental energy of heaven and earth, still needed to consume large amounts of common food to sustain his life.

And now, the God King Tang was most likely adhering to the famous saying, "The sharp edge of a sword comes from grinding, and the plum blossom's fragrance comes from bitter cold."

On the happiest days of his son's life, when he was closest to happiness, he would deliver a blow that could destroy his worldview, shattering this beautiful and sunny atmosphere.

This was so that his son would continue to experience hardships, tempering his resilient character.

At this point, it was not difficult for the Dragon Emperor to deduce.

Today's sudden gloom was just an appetizer.

In the future, the God King Tang and the Silver Dragon King would have many more ways to create many more obstacles to "serve" this Tang Wulin.

"However, in this humble one's opinion, this Golden Dragon host is just a child without his own opinions," the Holy Dragon King also offered his own opinion.

As he spoke, he shook his head, "Humans often say, 'A ten-year-old can be seen as thirty; from the small, one can see the large.'"

"His choice just now was very much like Father God's; neither of them followed their true hearts to the end."

When standing under the ball-drawing machine, the Holy Dragon King was behind the Dragon Emperor's left side, and he had seen it all clearly—

The Dragon Emperor had hidden the two soul spirit balls behind his waist and handed them all to Tang Wulin without swapping them.

But Tang Wulin's performance was like that of the Dragon God, who was influenced by the dual godheads back then, making the most wrong choice.

The Dragon Emperor shook his purple hair and left behind a sentence, "I hope he doesn't end up like A-Jin."

After sighing, he turned and disappeared on the stairs leading up.

Leaving behind a young man, clutching the soul spirit balls, slumped on the cold tiled floor.

Today should have been... the happiest day before the end of his childhood.

Tang Wulin returned home in a daze.

He stood there like a wooden chicken, his red eyes brimming with sadness, but his resilient nature prevented a single tear from falling on the way.

He stood before the empty yellow wooden dining table.

His mother was still working overtime and hadn't come home. Ever since that glutton Na'er arrived, Lang Yue had been forced to go out to work.

It was also since the night Na'er arrived that the house had been quiet, with no smell of cooking food upon entering.

Of course, this was also the first time Tang Wulin had returned home with no appetite.

In his stiff embrace was the half-white sphere, the soul spirit grass snake resting quietly inside, appearing quite well-behaved and still, not even moving.

In fact, it had no intelligence at all and was incapable of reacting to external stimuli.

Sensing his son's abnormality, Tang Ziran, who had been preoccupied all the way, rushed out the door after a few hurried words of comfort.

At this moment, Na'er, with her silver hair, emerged from the shadows, her eyes filled with complex emotions.

Tang Wulin noticed his sister's arrival and quickly used the back of his hand to rub his eyes, trying to force a smile for her.

But no matter how hard he tried to move his lips, he couldn't change his expression at all.

Finally, the moment Na'er took his hand and turned him around.

Tang Wulin's tears, held back for three years, finally fell in silence.

Clear droplets pattered onto the Soul Spirit orb in his arms, gradually soaking the little Grass Snake.

The Grass Snake clumsily twisted its slender body, clearly showing its fondness for the secretions of this Golden Dragon King vessel.

Na'er finally pulled Tang Wulin back into the dim room, sat him on the bed, and used her fair, delicate hands to wipe the tears from the young target, guiding his fragile heart bit by bit.

As her memories slowly resurfaced, she hesitated: should she find a Soul Beast willing to sacrifice itself for him before she left this home for good?

But if she fostered the growth of the Golden Dragon King, she would face trouble when it came time to devour him later...

To help would be detrimental to the future she had planned;

To not help made her heart ache to see him in such a state.

Just as Na'er was torn between these two choices...

Outside the Spirit Pagoda in Proud Arrival City, near noon.

The gray-robed Spirit Master finished his morning work and prepared to wait for the lunch boxes to be sent down from upstairs.

Ever since that group of core members from the Xu Family headquarters had left three years ago and suddenly returned, the food standards at this Proud Arrival City Spirit Pagoda had been rising rapidly.

Suddenly, the gray-robed Spirit Master's heart stirred, and he looked at a shadow being pulled in from outside the door.

--It was the father of the pair from this morning, walking in "furtively."

The Spirit Master frowned and asked from a distance, "Is something the matter, Master Tang?"

He had just learned that morning that the man was a repairman from a struggling family, hence the title.

However, Tang Ziran looked left and right before asking cautiously, "Lord Spirit Master, may I ask if you could introduce me to that young master surnamed Long from this morning?"