The Clear Sky Douluo's Fury: Yu Xiaogang Takes a Brutal Beating

In a Detached Villa at Nuoding Academy, the air reeked of cheap herbal medicine for bruises.

Yu Xiaogang sat bare-chested, his gaunt torso crossed by several dark purple welts. They were the severe internal injuries left by the backlash when Luo Sanpao was smashed apart by the Horned Dragon's tail.

"Hiss..."

Gritting his teeth, Yu Xiaogang smeared ointment over the wounds with a trembling hand. The pain made his whole body shudder.

Yet the pain in his flesh was nothing beside the panic and humiliation in his heart.

Earlier that day, at the academy's front gate, Tang San had revealed that deathly pale Ten-Year Soul Ring and the remains of his mutated, withered grass, which had crumbled to powder before everyone's eyes. The roar of laughter from the assembled teachers and students, and Instructor Chen's barbed mockery, were like red-hot knives, stabbing the dignity he had spent twenty years building as the "foremost authority on Martial Soul Theory" until it was riddled with holes.

The joke had spread throughout Nuoding Academy. His reputation was utterly ruined!!

"No... I can't just sit here and wait for the end." Ignoring the sharp pain in his body, he stumbled to his desk, seized a quill, and pulled over a sheet of coarse parchment.

He had to write at once to his friend Flender in distant Suotuo City, setting out a detailed account of "an unknown adverse mutation in a Plant-type Martial Soul caused by extreme external stimuli."

"As long as I insist it was a malignant Martial Soul mutation... as long as Flender agrees to take Little San..." Yu Xiaogang muttered feverishly, his quill scratching across the page in frantic, grating strokes.

But before he could finish the third line, the air in the room went still.

The feeble oil lamp looked as though an invisible hand had clenched around it. Its orange glow twisted in an instant into a chilling, sickly green!!

BOOM!!

The entire sturdy brick wall, along with its carved wooden window, exploded inward!

A dense crimson Blood Fiendish Aura surged through the billowing dust like a collapsing mountain of blood, crashing into the cramped study!

Thud!

The instant that terrifying pressure descended, Yu Xiaogang was flattened against the floor before he could even think of releasing his Martial Soul.

As the dust slowly cleared, it revealed a towering figure wrapped in a tattered black robe. Tangled gray-white hair spilled over his shoulders, and a nearly tangible murderous frenzy churned in his sunken eyes.

It was the Clear Sky Douluo, Tang Hao, who had retreated after his defeat at Su Chen's hands!!

The savagery and fury in Tang Hao's heart had reached a fever pitch.

Outside Dorm Seven, the supreme presence of the god-level Chaos Ancestral Dragon had grievously injured him on the spot. Not only had his Divine Slaughter's Domain been broken, even the Clear Sky Hammer within him had wailed in submission, while the old wounds he had suppressed for years spiraled out of control.

He, the mighty Clear Sky Douluo, had been frightened into fleeing by a six-year-old child. The shame of it nearly drove him mad!!

And the root of it all lay not only with Su Chen, but with this fraud lying before him!!

Tang Hao looked down at Yu Xiaogang, who lay limp as mud beneath him. "You wretched insect. You have no idea what you've done."

"A... a Titled Douluo?"

When Yu Xiaogang felt that killing aura, so concentrated it seemed capable of cleaving a mountain, terror nearly drove his soul from his body.

His own strength might be meager, but in his younger years, he had seen the might of the world's greatest fighters.

No ordinary Soul Douluo could possess such godlike, demonic pressure!

"Y-Your Excellency, please calm your anger!" Yu Xiaogang forced a shrill plea through his throat, tears and snot streaming down his face. "I am Yu Xiaogang, son of the head of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan! My father is a level ninety-five Power Attack System Titled Douluo! What's more... I have an old acquaintance in Bibi Dong, the current pope of Spirit Hall! I don't know how I've offended Your Excellency, but for the sake of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan and Spirit Hall, please spare my life!"

With his life on the line, Yu Xiaogang abandoned every last shred of composure.

Like beans tumbling from a bamboo tube, he spilled every powerful connection he had ever taken pride in.

It might have been better if he had never mentioned the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.

At the words "pope of Spirit Hall," Tang Hao's blood-red eyes flew wide. The savagery and hatred in them erupted into a towering blaze of rage!!

Spirit Hall! The culprit that had driven Ah Yin to her death and destroyed his life!

"Spirit Hall? Bibi Dong? The Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan?"

Tang Hao let out a wild laugh.

"You think you can use Spirit Hall to threaten me? Yu Xiaogang, you sniveling old dog, when Qian Xunji and his Spirit Hall lackeys surrounded my Ah Yin, where was their regard for anyone's standing?!"

Before the words had left his mouth, Tang Hao raised his heavy right foot and brought it down without a shred of flourish, thousands of pounds of Soul Power behind the blow!!

Crack...

"AAAAAAHHHH!!"

Yu Xiaogang's shriek tore through the night. Tang Hao's foot had crushed both his knees to pieces!!

Yu Xiaogang curled up like a boiled shrimp, convulsing wildly with pain.

Tang Hao stared down at him with boundless disgust, then bent and seized him by the throat, hoisting his gaunt body off the floor like a dead dog.

"What are you? You think you're fit to teach my son?"

Tang Hao's killing intent blazed as he forced each word through clenched teeth. "Little San has Innate Full Soul Power and carries the noblest bloodline of my Clear Sky Sect! I entrusted him to you, and you worthless fool dared take him into the Soul Hunting Forest. When danger struck, you lost your nerve and ran for your life like a dog fleeing a ruined home, leaving a six-year-old child to die beneath a rampaging Soul Beast?"

"Tang... Tang Hao??! You're... the Clear Sky..." Yu Xiaogang's eyes widened.

Tang Hao's iron grip locked around his throat. Starved of air and wracked with pain, he nearly passed out on the spot.

He could never have dreamed that Tang San's perpetually drunk blacksmith father was Tang Hao, the youngest Titled Douluo famed across the continent!

"Little San trusted you and respected you as his teacher! But you selfish bastard, you were too afraid to venture deeper into the forest. To preserve your worthless, sanctimonious reputation, you forced him to absorb a withered ten-year-old vine as his First Soul Ring!!"

Tang Hao's grip tightened. Violent Soul Power shook Yu Xiaogang until black blood sprayed from his mouth. "You ruined his foundation! You made him the laughingstock of the world!! You ruined the child Ah Yin gave her life to save!"

Tang Hao's chest heaved. His old injuries surged through him again under the force of his rage, and a trickle of hot blood escaped the corner of his mouth.

He wanted to smash the shameless man into pulp with a single palm strike, but reason held his killing intent fast.

Tang San's Martial Soul was damaged, his severed arm had yet to heal, and he had no one to rely on in Nuoding City.

If Yu Xiaogang died suddenly, the eyes of Spirit Hall and the Heaven Dou Empire would turn here. Tang San would have nowhere to hide his Twin Martial Souls!

Bang!

Tang Hao hurled the half-dead Yu Xiaogang away like a piece of trash!

Yu Xiaogang hit the ground hard and curled up in a pool of blood, vomiting mouthful after mouthful. He trembled all over, without even the courage to look up at Tang Hao.

"Listen carefully, Yu Xiaogang."

Tang Hao stood with his hands behind his back, like an Asura returned from Blood Prison.

"I'm leaving your miserable life intact so you can shield Little San from prying eyes. Your theories are nothing but a joke cobbled together from texts stolen from Spirit Hall! From this day on, if you dare use Little San to prove your worthless core theory again, if you dare treat him as a test subject... I won't just break your bones. I'll go to the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan myself and wipe out your entire bloodline!"

Before the last words had faded, his violent aura vanished. Tang Hao slipped into the boundless night, leaving Yu Xiaogang drowning in fear and despair.