Tang San Takes a Master? Tang Hao Had Merely Allowed It

His clouded, exhausted eyes, filled with the stench of death, swept across the dim room before finally settling on Tang San and Tang Yuehua.

"Yue... Yuehua..."

Tang Hao's lips were dry and cracked, his voice as faint as a thread. It seemed that every word drained all the strength from his body.

"Second Brother! I'm here! Yuehua is here!"

Tang Yuehua burst into tears and hurriedly pressed her ear close to Tang Hao's lips.

Tang Hao laboriously shifted his gaze toward Tang San at his side.

When he saw the bloodshot, bewildered eyes of his son, a sharp pain suddenly stabbed through his heart.

He knew that his disastrous defeat in Nuoding City and Xiao Wu's capture had inflicted irreparable trauma upon his son.

"Little San..."

Tang Hao took a deep breath, attempting to stir even a trace of soul power within his body.

However, the emptiness in his dantian and the tearing agony that came with it instantly made him realize a cruel reality.

All his meridians had shattered.

His soul power had completely run dry.

He, the Clear Sky Douluo, had truly become a cripple.

Tang Hao closed his eyes, and two murky tears slid from the corners of his eyes.

"Dad, stop talking. Rest properly first."

Seeing his father in such a miserable state, Tang San forcibly suppressed the questions and suspicions in his heart.

Blood was thicker than water. This was, after all, his biological father.

"No... cough, cough..."

Tang Hao coughed violently, coughing up a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of his organs.

He seized Tang San's hand tightly, with shocking strength, as though he had briefly returned to life.

"Little San... listen to me..."

Tang Hao stared fixedly at the ceiling, his eyes filled with profound despair and madness.

"Little San... listen to me..."

Tang Hao stared fixedly at the ceiling. Extreme terror and unease suddenly surged into his once-clouded eyes.

His remaining right hand clamped down on Tang San's wrist, his nails nearly digging into Tang San's flesh. His voice was hoarse, like a broken bellows being pulled.

"Holy Soul Village... twenty li southwest... deep in the mountains... there is a great waterfall..."

Tang San and Tang Yuehua were both stunned. They did not understand why Tang Hao, having only just awakened, had suddenly mentioned a waterfall near some remote village.

"Behind the waterfall... there is a hidden cave."

Tang Hao panted heavily, every breath accompanied by searing pain in his chest.

"There... lies your mother's true body... and a Hundred-Thousand-Year Blue Silver Emperor Right Leg Bone!"

"What?!" Tang Yuehua cried out.

Tang San's pupils contracted sharply as well.

He knew his mother had been a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, but he had never known that her true body still existed, much less that a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Bone remained in this world!

"That youth with the violet-gold eyes... there's something deeply wrong with him..."

A deep fear flashed through Tang Hao's eyes. "It was as if he knew everything... I'm afraid of him... afraid he'll find that place!"

"Little San, promise me... you must go and see it... bring your mother and the Soul Bone back..."

Looking at his father's wretched, desperate expression, Tang San felt a jumble of emotions in his heart.

He gripped Tang Hao's hand in return and nodded heavily.

"Dad, don't worry. I'll definitely go. But..."

Tang San gritted his teeth. His bloodshot eyes met Tang Hao's directly as he finally asked the question that had weighed on his heart and nearly suffocated him.

"Dad, tell me. Was Teacher... Yu Xiaogang... really killed by you?"

Tang Hao froze, even his rapid breathing stopping for a moment.

"Yu Xiaogang? He's dead?!"

"Spirit Hall's Supreme Execution Warrant is plastered everywhere outside!"

Tang San's voice trembled slightly as he recounted every rumor from outside.

"Spirit Hall announced that when you secretly came to see me, you discovered that Teacher had made me absorb the poisonous Mandala Snake soul ring, destroying the foundation of my martial soul."

"So, in your rage, you smashed Teacher into pulp with a single hammer..."

"Bullshit! Utter nonsense!"

Tang Hao trembled with fury and sprayed another mouthful of blood onto the snow-white sheets.

"Second Brother! Don't get worked up!"

Tang Yuehua hurriedly took out a handkerchief to wipe Tang Hao clean, then turned and rebuked him.

"Little San, your father is so badly injured. How could you still use such baseless rumors to provoke him?"

"I didn't kill him!"

Hearing his father's unequivocal denial, Tang San let out a long breath.

As long as his father had not killed him, it was fine.

If his father had truly killed the teacher to whom he owed such profound gratitude, Tang San truly did not know how he could face this family bond tainted with a blood feud.

"But..."

Tang San's brow remained tightly furrowed, his eyes filled with confusion.

"If you didn't kill him, why is Spirit Hall hunting us like mad?"

"Even if Spirit Hall wanted to deal with us, they could have simply found any excuse."

"Why make such a huge issue out of Teacher's death? Teacher... he was only a Grand Soul Master who couldn't even break through level thirty. Why would Spirit Hall's Pope make such a massive fuss over him?"

Hearing this question, Tang Hao fell into a long silence.

The room was deathly quiet, broken only by Tang Hao's heavy, ragged breathing.

After a long while, Tang Hao finally closed his eyes bitterly, and a murky tear slipped from the corner of one eye.

"Because... Bibi Dong, the current Pope of Spirit Hall, once deeply loved Yu Xiaogang."

Boom!

Those words were like a muffled thunderclap, slamming viciously into the minds of Tang San and Tang Yuehua.

"How is that possible?!"

Tang Yuehua covered her mouth, her face full of disbelief.

The high and mighty, iron-blooded female Pope, and that useless master mocked by the entire continent's soul master world?

Those two people, who had nothing whatsoever to do with one another, had once shared a relationship?

Tang San was utterly stunned as well.

He suddenly recalled the lonely, complicated look in his teacher's eyes whenever he occasionally gazed into the distance at Nuoding Academy.

"Back then, their affair was a semi-public secret among the inner circles of the Upper Three Sects."

Tang Hao's voice carried endless weariness.

"Bibi Dong was an extremely proud woman, even somewhat obsessive."

"If she believed Yu Xiaogang was killed by me, then with her personality, she would absolutely mobilize all of Spirit Hall's power and make the entire Clear Sky Sect accompany him to the grave."

At this point, Tang Hao suddenly opened his eyes and stared intently at Tang San.

"Little San, have you always harbored resentment in your heart? Resentment that I ignored you all these years, resentment that I... allowed you to take a useless man as your master?"

Tang San shuddered and lowered his head without speaking. Yet his silence had already given the answer.

After learning that his father was a Titled Douluo, he truly could not understand why his father would rather let him kneel before a level-twenty-nine Grand Soul Master than teach him personally.