There are no useless martial spirits, only useless soul masters!

"If I were to devour thousand-year, ten-thousand-year, or hundred-thousand-year soul beasts... If I were to devour extreme fire, extreme ice, or exotic energies from heaven and earth..."

"What would Little Gold and Little Silver evolve into in the future?"

"No, what kind of heights would I... reach in the future?"

Under the moonlight, stars seemed to shatter within the young man's eyes, brilliant and dazzling.

"From today on, you shall be called Little Gold, and you shall be called Little Silver." He leaned down and spoke solemnly to the two little ones.

"Luo-luo!" Little Gold nudged his palm with its head.

"Luo~" Little Silver rubbed affectionately against his cheek.

With their names settled, it felt as if a contract had been struck. Yu Tianlong could feel his connection with them growing tighter.

Just as he was preparing to delve deeper into his research—perhaps by testing what would happen if Little Gold and Little Silver absorbed the same type of energy simultaneously, or by attempting to actively guide their abilities—

"Knock, knock, knock."

The courtyard gate was rapped upon.

Yu Tianlong frowned. His small courtyard was secluded; aside from the steward who delivered supplies monthly, he rarely had visitors. Especially not at night.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Yu Xiaogang." A muffled voice came from outside, carrying the hoarseness peculiar to a boy going through puberty, along with an inescapable sense of dejection.

Yu Tianlong stood up and signaled for Little Gold and Little Silver to return into his body before walking over to open the door.

Outside, Yu Xiaogang stood all alone. He had changed into clean clothes, but his hair was somewhat disheveled and his eyes were red; clearly, he had shed plenty of tears that afternoon. He clutched a book in his hand, his knuckles white.

"Something up?" Yu Tianlong blocked the doorway, showing no intention of stepping aside.

He held no ill will toward his cousin—in fact, he felt a bit of sympathy—but he was currently in the excitement of discovering his golden finger and really didn't want to be disturbed.

Yu Xiaogang seemed not to have expected such coldness, pausing for a moment before saying in a low voice:

"I... I want to go to the family library to look up some information. About... about martial souls. Do you, do you want to go together?"

"No," he refused cleanly and decisively, "I still need to cultivate."

"Cultivate?" Yu Xiaogang looked up abruptly, his eyes filled with disbelief, which then transformed into a near-vicious mockery.

"Cultivate? Just relying on Luo Sanpao? Yu Tianlong, don't you understand yet? Our martial souls are trash! So what if you have innate full soul power? The essence of a martial soul determines its ceiling! Luo Sanpao, this... this pig-like martial soul, no matter how much you cultivate, at best you'll only ever be a two-ring Great Soul Master! That's the very bottom of the soul master world! It's trash!"

His emotions were agitated, his voice rising as his chest heaved violently.

"Face reality! With martial souls like ours, we should look for another way out early! Study literature, go into politics, do business, or take a clerical job at the Spirit Hall! The path of a soul master is a dead end! Wasting time cultivating is just asking for humiliation!"

Yu Tianlong watched him quietly.

He watched this boy, only six years old, yet already battered and bruised by reality, forced to use anger and bitterness to mask his despair.

In the original story, it took Yu Xiaogang twenty years of traveling the continent and enduring cold stares before he found self-redemption through his theories. But at this moment, he was just a child who had just fallen into the abyss.

Pitiful, tragic, but not worth following.

"Are you done?" Yu Tianlong's tone was calm.

Yu Xiaogang was choked up by this reaction; he opened his mouth but made no sound.

"Yu Xiaogang," Yu Tianlong took a step forward, his gaze locking onto the other's evasive eyes, speaking every word clearly and forcefully:

"In this world, there are no trash martial souls."

"Only trash soul masters!"

Yu Xiaogang shuddered all over, as if struck by lightning.

"So what if it's Luo Sanpao? So what if it's a pig-nosed dog?" Yu Tianlong's voice was not loud, yet it carried a certain iron-clad conviction.

"As long as you find the right method and the right path, even an earthworm can drill through solid rock, and even a sparrow dares to laugh and challenge the heavens."

"My Luo Sanpao will grow claws and fangs in the future, don scales and armor, swallow clouds and spit mist, and soar through the nine heavens."

"It will become an existence that even the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon must look up to."

"And you," he paused, his gaze sweeping over Yu Xiaogang's pale face, "If you accept your fate now and label yourself 'trash,' then for the rest of your life, you will truly be nothing more than a farting, thundering joke."

That line, which should have been spoken by Yu Xiaogang to Tang San twenty years later, was now returned to him in advance.

Yu Xiaogang stood stunned for a while, his face turning from green to red!

"What do you know? A trash martial soul is a trash martial soul... it simply cannot be changed; a predetermined future cannot be altered."

Yu Xiaogang refused to listen, thinking only that Yu Tianlong was a fool.

The two parted on bad terms!

The morning light was faint, and the thin mist had yet to disperse.

Yu Tianlong received a message today to go to the family hall; it said they were to distribute the family's cultivation resources.

Located in the center of the compound, the family hall was a magnificent structure with flying eaves and arched beams. Usually solemn and quiet, it was somewhat noisy today due to the gathering of thirty or forty half-grown children.

These children were all fresh soul masters who had awakened their martial souls just yesterday; their faces were filled with excitement, nervousness, and anticipation, chirping away like a flock of sparrows.

When Yu Tianlong stepped into the hall, the clamor eerily stalled for a brief moment.

Dozens of gazes fell upon him in unison. Curiosity, inquiry, envy, jealousy, disdain, mockery... all sorts of emotions were mixed within those still-immature eyes.

The scene from yesterday's awakening ceremony had already spread throughout the clan; the bizarre combination of twin Luo Sanpaos and innate full soul power was destined to make him the center of conversation.

"Look, that's him, Yu Tianlong..."

"Twin martial souls, what a pity it's Luo Sanpao..."

"So what if he has innate full soul power? If the martial soul is no good, he'll be like that his whole life."

"Shh, keep it down, he's still got innate full soul power after all..."

The whispers were like the buzzing of gnats, faintly audible in the spacious hall.

Yu Tianlong's expression remained unchanged as his gaze swept calmly across the crowd, quickly spotting a figure in the corner who was hunched over, wishing he could bury himself into the ground.

Yu Xiaogang.

He had changed into a dusty, worn-out set of clothes, his hair was a mess, and he kept his head down, staring at the tips of his shoes as if there were some peerless mystery hidden there.

The surrounding children intentionally or unintentionally kept their distance from him, forming an awkward vacuum zone. The occasional gaze that fell upon him was mostly filled with pity or undisguised mockery.

Seeing Yu Tianlong look over, Yu Xiaogang's body stiffened, his head sinking even lower, though the tips of his ears flushed a deep red.

Yu Tianlong sighed inwardly but said nothing, simply finding a spot off to the side to stand.

His calm and composed demeanor, which even carried a hint of leisure, actually caused some of the chatter to die down.

After all, for a six-year-old child to remain this steady in the face of so many strange looks was, in itself, quite unusual.

Putting on an act... Yu Xiaogang muttered in a voice only he could hear, his fingers digging fiercely into his palms.

He felt that Yu Tianlong was doing it on purpose—intentionally being so high-profile, intentionally attracting everyone's attention, just so others would take him, Yu Xiaogang, the "other Luo Sanpao," and use him for repeated comparison and ridicule.

Why? Everyone had trash martial souls, so why could he be so righteous and confident?