After beating Peng Shan, Kong Bo had no plans to attend practical combat class anymore. Among students his age, he had no rivals left. As for challenging older students, he wasn't ready to do that yet. Those matches still counted as Soul Fighting, and, as Kong Bo put it, they were "battles like children playing house"—utterly boring. As for how to train for real combat, he had written up a plan and handed it to Electrolux, who lived in his mind.
"Elder Yi, here's my training plan. Please take a look." Since Kong Bo wanted to train for real combat, he had devised a program himself and given it to Electrolux in his mind.
"Hmm... Hmm? Kong Bo, you're only six years old. Are you sure you want to see these things?" Electrolux furrowed his brow. "Back in my day, I became a necromancer only because I had nowhere else to turn. But you're already asking to see this stuff? Isn't it too soon?"
Kong Bo explained, "It's not too soon, Elder Yi. I want to grow stronger as quickly as I can. I'd rate my combat experience very poorly right now—not even as good as Little Lion's. I need to see real fighting soon. I mean bloodshed. On top of that, that powerful man called Dottore knows a great deal. I'll need to conduct experiments on living creatures, so I'll need strong nerves. Shouldn't I start training while I'm young?"
"All right. You haven't been driven into a corner like I was back then, so it's fine to get used to it gradually this way," Electrolux said. "Besides, you have so many powerful Soul Beasts protecting you. Go ahead."
Kong Bo found the Evil Emperor and explained how he wanted to train. She frowned as she listened. "You want to train this way? All right. You saved my life, and I have to keep you safe, so I'll play this role. I understand. Starting tomorrow afternoon, I'll take you to the outskirts of Ming Capital, and we'll handle it together."
So how would Kong Bo train? By collecting "Gundams" to steel his resolve. Back on Blue Star, Wang Yangming had studied bamboo; now that Kong Bo had crossed over, he would start by studying "Gundams" to temper his mind. Only then would he be able to learn Dottore's legacy.
Were there "Gundams" in Ming Capital? Of course. Production there was generally at around an eighteenth-century level, and "Gundams" were common in big cities of that era.
What's more, Ming Capital was an important base for the Holy Spirit Cult. One of the city's major gangs, the Xishui Alliance, was just the Holy Spirit Cult operating under a different name. Evil Soul Masters in the cult needed to train, and some of them naturally used "Gundams" for that.
Kong Bo thought, Only after I've grown used to seeing Gundams will I be able to study the research Dottore put the most effort into. In the future, I'll use living members of the Holy Spirit Cult to test some of Dottore's results, as well as a few of my own theories. So I have to start by getting used to Gundams. I'll aim to reach the point where people look like Gundams to me, and Gundams look like people, within a year. Then I can move on to the next stage of training. I definitely can't tell Great-Grandpa the truth. I'll just say I'm doing one-on-one training with the Evil Emperor.
After making these plans, Kong Bo went out with the Evil Emperor that afternoon. She adopted the name Lao Zhen, while Kong Bo chose the alias Alex. His Martial Soul was a white cat.
Kong Bo was very pleased with his alias. Now Douluo Continent had its own "Prisoner A." And Kong Bo didn't need to "recover sanity." He knew exactly what he wanted: to train himself into a "Pain Boy" and "Bone Craftsman." I'm here to lose my mind.
Their cover was that they worked for the Ming Capital authorities, collecting "Gundams." With the Evil Emperor's official connections, obtaining that identity was no trouble. Kong Bo and the Evil Emperor went out every afternoon to collect "Gundams," mainly in the outer districts of Ming Capital. The inner district was where the rich lived, along with the imperial relatives and high-ranking officials, so the Holy Spirit Cult—or the Xishui Alliance—had to be more careful there. The inner district was orderly and peaceful.
But the slums in the outer and western districts were another matter. The Holy Spirit Cult's bigwigs lived in the inner district, while the outer district was packed with its members. Kong Bo's father, Kong Yi, and his great-grandfather, Kong Deming, had repeatedly warned him not to go to the outer district, especially the western district. People who went there didn't come back.
The outer and western districts were densely populated, and the Sun Moon court's authorities only wanted things to look respectable on the surface. As long as there wasn't too much unrest, they turned a blind eye. That made the districts a den of gangs. And since gangs were active there, the Xishui Alliance, which operated as a gang but was really the Holy Spirit Cult, was naturally active in the outer district, too.
Ming Capital now had three major gangs: the Xishui Alliance, backed by the Holy Spirit Cult; the Aodu Chamber of Commerce, backed by the Sun Moon Empire's military; and the local Pingfan Alliance. What happened when gangs ran rampant in densely populated areas? Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Miami in the White Eagle Federation were good examples. Someone had to go collect the "Gundams."
"You and your disciple work hard. The Xishui Alliance's bigwigs are paying good money for those Gundams!" Some Evil Soul Masters needed them for their training, too. "If they're Soul Master Gundams, you can sell them for ten times as much."
With the Evil Emperor guiding him, Kong Bo went out with her each afternoon to collect "Gundams." Before long, he spotted one, and hesitated. He asked Electrolux, "Do I really have to touch it myself?"
"Kid! You're already hesitating just because you saw one Gundam. How can you expect to learn necromancy from me? Hmph. I saw thousands upon thousands of Gundams back in the day—and that was only in one morning. You see one and freeze up like this. How am I supposed to teach you? How are you supposed to perform the Slicing Technique? You've got a lot of training ahead of you, kid!"
Then Kong Bo gritted his teeth and tossed the Gundam he'd spotted onto the cart. After that, he continued collecting more with the Evil Emperor. That evening, when he returned to her home, his face was as pale as paper, and his whole body was shaking.
"Kid, you're too young. You can wait until you're older to practice," Electrolux said.
"Elder Yi, I've already made up my mind, so I have to see it through. Otherwise, won't I just be all talk? I came up with this training plan myself. I have no reason to give up on it." Kong Bo gritted his teeth. "Tomorrow afternoon, I want her to take me again. The road to cultivation is bound to be hard. If I can't pass this test of willpower, what's the point of anything else?"
"All right. You've got that kind of resolve. What more can I say?" Electrolux spread his hands.
Every afternoon, without fail, Kong Bo had the Evil Emperor take him out to collect "Gundams." It took nearly a year, but eventually he could see ordinary Gundams without his face changing or his heart skipping a beat. He had overcome "the human instinct to sympathize with one's own kind." He now treated Gundams as ordinary objects and could pick them up and put them on the cart without hesitation.
But when he saw Gundams with "Discomi," or ones that were only half a Gundam, his expression still changed a little. That was already a great improvement. The first time Kong Bo saw one of those, he had thrown up with a "waaah." His face had stayed pale for almost the entire afternoon, and his legs wouldn't stop trembling.
Then Kong Bo began specialized training, specifically helping the Ming Capital Magistrate collect these "Discomi Gundams" or half-Gundams. After another year and a half or so, he could look at all kinds of Gundams without his expression changing.
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