Yu Xiaogang and Tang San's Bitter Defeat

Meanwhile, everyone atop the city wall stood dumbfounded. Then the murmurs began, one voice after another.

"Six... six hundred thousand years... That was a six-hundred-thousand-year Mutated Spirit Beast!"

"He... he rammed it to death all by himself... and absorbed its Spirit Ring."

"Rammed it to death... He rammed the strongest Mutated Spirit Beast in the siege to death!!!"

"Am I dreaming? Or am I already dead—bitten to death by a Mutated Spirit Beast—and seeing things?"

Suddenly, an aged voice rang out.

"It was him... He saved us!"

An elderly Soul Master in his seventies, tears streaming down his face and wounds covering his body, pointed toward Big Luck and Lu Yuan as he continued.

"This old man's lived seventy years, and I've never seen a Soul Master so powerful!"

"The city was about to fall to the Mutated Spirit Beasts. We were finished!"

"But he, with nothing but a Handcart, rammed the six-hundred-thousand-year Mutated Spirit Beast we thought was unbeatable—the Earth-Splitting Demon Scorpion King—to death!"

"How could he have come to harm us? He couldn't possibly be the one who led the Mutated Spirit Beast Tide here. He... he's our savior!!!"

Those words were like a spark, setting everyone atop the wall ablaze in an instant.

"That's right! The boy and Big Luck are our saviors!"

"Our saviors! Of course they are! Without him, how could we have dealt with that six-hundred-thousand-year Earth-Splitting Demon Scorpion King? We might have held it off for a day, but could we have lasted two?"

"That boy with the Handcart... No, he's no boy! He's our lord! The savior of everyone on the walls of Häagen-Dazs City!"

There was no shortage of learned men ready to argue Lu Yuan's case.

One Soul Master after another recognized what Lu Yuan had done for them. They had all misjudged him.

He wasn't a villain! He wasn't the one who had sent the Mutated Spirit Beast Tide charging toward Häagen-Dazs City.

He was a good man!

A good man beyond measure!

Without him, everyone in Häagen-Dazs City would have been eaten by wave after wave of Mutated Spirit Beasts...

Meanwhile, the surviving townspeople climbed onto the wall and dropped to their knees.

Facing the Steel Beast and Lu Yuan outside the city, they knocked their foreheads against the ground again and again!

Thud, thud, thud, thud...

"Our just lord! Our great savior!"

"Holy hell! That boy's a living bodhisattva!"

"Thank you, Handcart! Thank you, my lord!!! Boy? He's practically my own godfather!"

Even on the streets behind the wall, townspeople knelt in swathes...

The sight was even more staggering than the Mutated Spirit Beast Tide had been.

All their resentment and anger toward Lu Yuan crumbled in an instant.

The Soul Masters from the various factions atop the wall, who had berated Lu Yuan moments ago, now stood red-faced. Pretending they had never said a word against him, they began singing his praises too.

Hollanders, the Soul Douluo who had accused him most fiercely, lowered his head. He wished he could bury it in the wall's blue-gray bricks.

One townsman who had thrown a stone at Lu Yuan knelt among the crowd, kowtowing while slapping his own face.

Now, Lu Yuan and Big Luck were no longer a harbinger of misfortune.

Instead, they had become protectors.

In the depths of everyone's despair, they had shone as the only light.

In a corner of the crowd atop the wall stood two people.

One was a thin, scholarly-looking middle-aged man clutching a thick book.

Beside him stood a handsome young man. Panic flickered in his eyes, and he bit his lip without saying a word.

They were Yu Xiaogang and Tang San.

They had planned to travel to Heaven Dou City and, while there, find a powerful expert to train Yu Xiaogang's student, Tang San.

The hope was that Tang San could clear his troubled mind and stop letting Lu Yuan's accomplishments shake him.

But as master and disciple passed through Häagen-Dazs City, the sky had changed, and Mutated Spirit Beasts from another world had appeared one after another...

They had walked straight into the disaster of a city besieged by the Mutated Spirit Beast Tide and found themselves trapped inside.

They were Soul Masters with their pride to uphold, so they had gone up onto the wall and fought alongside Ten Hag and the other Soul Masters from abroad.

Now they stood in a corner of the wall, staring toward the place outside the city where a dark-gold Spirit Ring was slowly rising.

There, too, was a young figure drenched in blood, slowly getting to his feet.

Neither could believe it, yet both had to accept what they had seen. Neither said a word.

From beginning to end, Lu Yuan and Big Luck had dealt master and disciple shock after shock. Even now, they could not shake it from their hearts...

Plop.

A soft sound.

The book Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul slipped from Yu Xiaogang's fingers for the second time and fell to the ground.

The first time had been when Luo Sanpao was sent flying.

This time, his hand had simply gone slack. The truth was more than he could bear...

He did not even bend to pick it up...

Yu Xiaogang's lips trembled. His eyes were hollow, as though all the life had been drained from him, and anguish gnawed at his heart.

"No... This goes against every damn theory..."

"A Six-Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Ring... as a Fifth Soul Ring..."

"A Tool Martial Soul... Impossible... Absolutely impossible!"

His words died halfway out.

Because it suddenly struck him that a Tool Martial Soul could not explain any of this.

Not one thing that vehicle had done, from start to finish, could be explained by "theory."

A ten-thousand-year First Soul Ring.

A hundred-thousand-year Second Soul Ring.

A ninety-thousand-year Third Soul Ring.

A hundred-thousand-year Fourth Soul Ring.

A six-hundred-thousand-year Fifth Soul Ring.

Yu Xiaogang crouched and picked up his book again with trembling hands, then clutched his head.

The movement was so slow it was as if he had aged ten years.

Beside him, Tang San dug his fingernails into his palms as though he would not be satisfied until he had torn them bloody...

He stared at the distant figure.

Since childhood, he had trained relentlessly in the Mysterious Heaven Skill and studied under Yu Xiaogang.

He had studied theory, practiced Hidden Weapons, and even honed the Tang Sect's secret arts to their utmost.

He had always believed that if he worked hard enough, he could stand above all others.

He had once told Xiao Wu, "One day, I'll catch up to him."

But now... he almost lacked the courage to look that man in the face.

Just then, a slender figure appeared beside Tang San and took hold of his sleeve.

"Brother..."

"Brother... can we really catch up to him?"

Xiao Wu was genuinely worried, but to Tang San, her question sounded like mockery...

Where else could he find a woman like Xiao Wu? Yet Tang San still looked down on her.

Stupid man!

Tang San opened his mouth, wanting to say, "One day... I'll surpass him." But the words stuck in his throat, and he could not force out a syllable.

Or rather, he did not have the nerve to say it...

He lowered his head, not daring to look at Lu Yuan's back a second time...

That boy had never once looked him in the eye.