On top of that, the two possessed a quality that had put every successive Pope at ease.
Absolute loyalty.
Their loyalty to the Pope was practically etched into their bones.
Whoever held the Pope's Position commanded their obedience.
People like that were invaluable to any faction.
All the more so when they were two level 95 Titled Douluos.
That was why Qian Juechen would not put on airs as Pope around Yue Guan and Gui Mei.
He would give them the respect they deserved and would not begrudge them their due rewards.
As for whether the two could eventually become his trusted confidants, only time would tell.
Below him, although Yue Guan and Gui Mei appeared respectful, they still maintained a trace of instinctive wariness.
After all their years navigating Spirit Hall, they had long since learned one thing with absolute clarity.
The higher someone's position, the less one could judge them by appearances alone.
Was this new Pope genuinely kindhearted, or was he a deeply calculating man hiding behind a smile?
It was far too early to draw conclusions after a single meeting.
That, too, would have to be left to time.
At this point, Pufferfish and Snake Lance were the only two Titled Douluos in the entire Elder Hall whom Qian Juechen had yet to meet.
But that would happen soon. His coronation was less than a week away, and delegations from the various nations and representatives of the different factions were due to arrive.
Several hundred li south of Nuoding City.
Amid the surrounding mountains, an unremarkable little village stood at the foot of a mountain.
Its name was Holy Soul Village.
The name sounded rather impressive, but in truth, it was as ordinary a village as any other.
It dared to call itself Holy Soul because, long, long ago, a powerful Soul Saint had come from there.
On a continent where Soul Masters reigned supreme, what a Soul Saint represented went without saying.
For ordinary villagers who had spent generation after generation toiling in the fields, even producing a single Soul Master was an honor worth boasting about for years.
How much more so a Soul Saint? That alone deserved a place in their village's annals.
Thus, the villagers of Holy Soul Village had always regarded that Soul Saint as the pride of their entire village. Whenever outsiders passed through, they could hardly wait to approach and tell them about him, lest anyone fail to learn that their village had once produced a Soul Saint.
It was not merely an honor to boast about, but also an invisible deterrent.
Precisely because Soul Masters held a status on the continent far beyond that of ordinary people, even a single Soul Master in an ordinary settlement like Holy Soul Village was enough to give those with ill intentions pause.
Villages like this were not uncommon on the Douluo Continent.
But this Holy Soul Village near Nuoding City had gradually gained some renown in recent years because of something else.
Just last year, this tiny village had actually produced an exceptional prodigy with innate full soul power.
That was innate full soul power! Few people in the entire history of the continent had possessed it, and among those gifted with it who survived to maturity, not one had been weak.
Unfortunately, this child's martial soul was Blue Silver Grass.
A martial soul considered utterly useless by most Soul Masters, and even by ordinary people.
Even so, someone with innate full soul power could become a Soul Master simply by obtaining a Soul Ring. For Holy Soul Village, that was still a major event worth celebrating and boasting about.
At least in some villagers' eyes, this child named Tang San might truly become a powerful Soul Master one day and carry on Holy Soul Village's glory.
At that moment, flames blazed in the furnace of a crude smithy in Holy Soul Village.
Yet today, the usual clang of hammering was absent.
Inside, a tall but slovenly dressed man sat in a corner. His hair was disheveled, his face covered in stubble, and the heavy reek of alcohol clung to him.
Anyone who saw him would probably take him for a good-for-nothing drunk. It would be difficult to imagine him as a Soul Master, let alone a Titled Douluo.
The man held a newspaper he had just bought in Nuoding City, something Spirit Hall had only recently begun publishing.
Besides assorted entertaining essays and anecdotes, it also carried important news from across the continent.
For ordinary people, it might merely be something to pass the time after a meal.
But for Soul Masters, the newspaper allowed them to learn about recent major events across the continent without leaving home. It had therefore become very popular, and even the empires' official institutions had begun publishing similar papers.
Without question, the most sensational recent news on the continent was that Spirit Hall's new Pope was about to take office.
Tang Hao's gaze slowly swept over the newspaper's contents and the illustration of the new Papal Palace.
When he saw the new Pope's identity, his movements slowly stopped.
He had never expected the new Pope to be the son of that bastard Qian Xunji.
The name Qian Xunji was like a needle plunging deep into Tang Hao's heart.
Tang Hao would never forget that name for as long as he lived. If anyone asked whom he hated most in this world...
Qian Xunji would unquestionably take that place.
Everything that had happened back then had become a wound in his heart that would never heal, a torment he could never escape.
Ah Yin, the woman he had loved most in his life, had been driven to her death by that man.
Spirit Hall had pressured the Clear Sky Sect, and because of that affair, his father had ultimately died from sheer rage.
Even Tang Hao himself had been forced to sever ties with his sect. He could only bring Ah Yin's body and his young son into hiding, conceal his identity, and drink his days away in this remote mountain village.
He was the Clear Sky Douluo, a powerful figure who had once stood at the very pinnacle of the continent, hailed as its youngest prodigy and one of the Clear Sky Twin Stars.
Yet now he could only live like a rat afraid of the light, hiding from Spirit Hall's pursuit and the eyes of the world.
Qian Xunji had a hand in all of it.
Now, although the force of Tang Hao's hammer strike had killed Qian Xunji, his son was still alive. He was even about to inherit his position, become Spirit Hall's new Pope, and rise to a supreme status admired and respected by the world.
Yet he and little San...
Tang Hao stared at the name in the newspaper, an icy menace gradually surfacing in his eyes.
After a long silence, he slowly tossed the newspaper into the fiercely blazing furnace.
Ever since Ah Yin's death, he had felt as though he had lost all hope of living on.
Fortunately, his son Tang San had pulled him back at the most critical moment.
Little San had not only inherited their Clear Sky Sect's Clear Sky Hammer martial soul, but also Ah Yin's Blue Silver Grass. He possessed the exceedingly rare twin martial souls as well as innate full soul power—a peerless prodigy worthy of being recorded in history.
Now little San had safely enrolled in Nuoding Academy and had even taken Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang as his teacher.
Though Yu Xiaogang was not strong, he had considerable connections and had conducted extensive research into martial soul theory.
With Yu Xiaogang teaching little San, combined with little San's own talent, Tang Hao no longer needed to watch over him every moment.
At last, he had time to do some things he wanted to do.
Spirit Hall's new Pope was about to take office. A ceremony of that scale would inevitably draw all the continent's major factions to Spirit City to witness it.
Before you continue