Sanzi had no idea that in this world, Martial Souls and Soul Rings were what truly mattered. There wasn't much a teacher could teach a disciple—at least, the amount was negligible.
He still thought it was like his previous life, where the elders monopolized all the methods and resources for cultivation. If they didn't give their approval, you could smash your head bloody and still get nowhere.
A master could do whatever he wanted to his disciple. Even beating one to death was allowed, but if the disciple so much as resisted, he'd immediately be saddled with a heinous crime.
Once a teacher, a father for life. You really had to serve him like your own father, year after year, decade after decade. That wasn't a joke.
Tang San actually felt a little grateful to Huang Tian. If Huang Tian hadn't beaten his teacher into this state, how would he have gotten the chance to comfort him and wait on him hand and foot?
The two of them could certainly be said to be mutually devoted—and not in the ordinary way, either. They both longed for each other to a considerable degree.
His face immediately filled with shock and fury, his complexion turning livid, his gaze surging with rage so fierce it was almost visible to the naked eye.
As a transmigrator with two lifetimes behind him, his acting was every bit as good as Gangzi's. What's more, his hatred for Huang Tian was genuine.
Then he slammed a fist into the tea table beside him. His knuckles throbbed with pain, but his expression didn't change. Gritting his teeth, he said:
"Huang Tian, you scoundrel! How dare you humiliate my teacher like this? You defy Heaven and destroy your ancestors, violate all human decency—you deserve to die.
"From this day on, we're sworn enemies. If I don't avenge this great hatred, I'm no man!"
Yu Xiaogang was so moved that, despite the excruciating pain in his arm, he reached out to hold Tang San's little hand and earnestly promised:
"San, your teacher will teach you everything he knows. I'll pass on every bit of knowledge I possess and make you a legend in the Soul Master World.
"That Huang Tian only managed to defeat you because of his Soul Ring's boost.
"But he has no idea that according to the fourth of the Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul that I researched, 423 years is the limit a First Soul Ring can withstand.
"He absorbed a Ten-Year Soul Ring and is already smug about it. He'll regret it sooner or later.
"Tomorrow morning, once we've healed our injuries, we'll set off to hunt for a Soul Ring. I'll find you the most perfect one."
"Thank you, teacher."
The two of them laughed wildly in their hearts, both immensely excited, to the point that they temporarily forgot their physical pain.
What they didn't know, however, was that as Gangzi did everything he could to slander Huang Tian, a figure in the sky had already darkened her expression to a terrifying degree.
Her chest rose and fell violently, her gaze blazing like a torch.
Gu Yue knew Yu Xiaogang was a hypocritical little man, but her memories of her previous life were incomplete. She had only a few fragments, without enough detail to see the full picture.
Out of curiosity, she had eavesdropped for a while today. In just a few minutes, she'd been so furious that smoke was practically coming out of her ears.
So many people knew the truth. They had witnessed the whole thing with their own eyes, yet he could still lie through his teeth without even changing his expression, twisting right and wrong.
How could anyone be so shameless? So disgusting? So hypocritical, sinister, and utterly brazen?
If she didn't know that Tang San was the Asura God's puppet, and that killing him now would expose both herself and Huang Tian, she would have wanted to rush down and strangle those two to death on the spot.
Gu Yue gritted her teeth.
"Fine, fine, fine. You still think you're going to get a perfect Soul Ring?
"Just wait. I guarantee it'll be [perfect] beyond belief, more than anyone could imagine."
Thinking of what Huang Tian had gone through in his previous life, the Silver Dragon King suddenly conceived an exceedingly sinister plan.
"If I could make Tang San go through some of the things Xiao Tian experienced at the beginning of his last life, the results would be absolutely marvelous, wouldn't they?"
"Xiao Tian said you should treat your friends like a spring breeze, warm and gentle. But when dealing with your enemies, you must be as bitterly cold as winter."
"You reap what you sow. You brought all of this on yourselves."
The night passed without incident.
The next morning, before the sky had fully brightened, Teacher Zhao healed the rest of both their injuries as agreed.
On the way to the Soul Hunting Forest, Gangzi launched into an animated explanation of his "brilliant" academic achievements, force-feeding the blank-slate Tang San the Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul.
Having just made a complete fool of himself, he boasted even more loudly and stubbornly than he had at the same point in the original story.
Of course, he also peppered his speech with contemptuous complaints about the Soul Master World: the Upper Three Sects were hidebound, Spirit Hall was arrogant and prejudiced, and the powerful Soul Masters were ignorant fools.
He even explained his own wretched state by claiming that the powerful and wealthy feared his theories and had joined forces to suppress and blacklist him.
That's right. Gangzi wasn't singling out any particular person. He believed that the entire Soul Master World, taken together, wasn't as knowledgeable about theory as a single hair on his head.
Anyone who didn't agree with him was a fool, and sooner or later they'd regret it.
As they neared their destination, he proudly revealed his genius plan for developing his disciple's Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul: add a poison attribute and make it a control-type Martial Soul.
He kept saying there were no useless Martial Souls, only useless Soul Masters,
while wearing an expression that said, "Even with a completely useless Martial Soul like Blue Silver Grass, I came up with a way to use it. Aren't I amazing?"
Sanzi was swept up in excitement, his face full of admiration and reverence.
The Grandmaster of bluffing was no fraud. In just one day,
in Tang San's eyes, Yu Xiaogang had become some reclusive expert living in the wilderness, whom he'd been lucky enough to encounter.
The carriage traveled for a full day and night, plus half a day, and didn't reach the entrance to the Soul Hunting Forest until the following afternoon.
Gu Yue sensed the spatial mark drawing closer and closer to the target location.
She temporarily handed the task of secretly protecting Huang Tian to Di Tian, then flew to a secluded, uninhabited spot, opened a spatial passage, and teleported directly to the Soul Hunting Forest from a great distance.
After landing, she swept her divine sense across the area. In an instant, the entire Soul Hunting Forest came into her mental vision, every detail clear.
Before long, Gu Yue teleported again, appearing above a nest of strange little silver-white snakes.
Their bodies were entirely free of any other color save for their eyes. Their skin was exceptionally smooth, and both their heads and tails came to sharp points, while their bellies were comparatively plump.
Silver Shuttle Snakes were also commonly called Silver Shuttles, Shuttle Snakes, or Flying Shuttle Snakes. They weren't large—even at a hundred years old, they were only a little over a meter long—but their venom was exceptionally potent.
They moved with incredible speed and especially liked hunting large prey or creatures with tenacious vitality.
Unless the difference in strength was overwhelming, all they had to do was lie in wait in the grass and sink their fangs into an unwary target. Then they could quietly wait for the corpse to hit the ground.
They fed on fresh blood. After a successful hunt, they would often burrow into their prey's heart and suck down every last drop of blood.
The reason she chose this snake was simple: its poison specifically targeted life attributes, making it ideal for inflicting the greatest possible damage on the Blue Silver Emperor's life essence, while offering pitifully little in any other area.
The Mandrake Snake Tang San had absorbed as his First Soul Ring in his previous life did have neurotoxic venom that could harm life attributes, but it wasn't potent enough.
On top of that, its body was as hard as iron, enough to withstand slashes from sharp blades. The Hidden Weapons Bie San was so proud of couldn't even leave a mark on it.
Thus, although its poison had indeed counteracted some of the Blue Silver Emperor's essence, the considerable boost its formidable physique gave the Soul Master also offset the drawbacks to a certain degree.
All things considered, it wasn't outstanding, but it could just about pass.
How could she allow that?
Tang San wasn't allowed to have such an incredible... ordinary Soul Ring.
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