Yu Xiaogang never made it into the library. Although the Imperial Capital's library was a public facility, entering it required a Citizen ID from the Divine Realm Empire.
It was a palm-sized metal plate.
Yu Xiaogang had never seen anything like it.
The Heaven Dou Empire's household registration policies could only control ordinary people, making them serve in the army, perform compulsory labor, and pay taxes. They had no authority over Soul Masters whatsoever.
Yu Xiaogang had lived in the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan since birth. Only Spirit Hall had his information.
That information was in Spirit Hall's Soul Master Handbook.
Like a Citizen ID, a Soul Master Handbook was a metal plate. It recorded the Soul Master's personal information and bore a special identification number assigned by Spirit Hall.
For instance, Tang San's Soul Master Handbook read:
[Name: Tang San, sex: male, registered at the Nuoding City Spirit Hall Branch in year 2637 of the Douluo Calendar, martial soul: Blue Silver Grass.]
Tang San and Yu Xiaogang generally used their Soul Master Handbooks to collect their monthly subsidies.
Once they arrived in the Divine Realm Empire on the Spirit Ice Continent, their Soul Master Handbooks were useless.
"Forget it."
Yu Xiaogang slunk off to a secondhand bookstore recommended by a library security guard.
The bookstore, called "Zhuanzhuan," specialized in buying used books.
Many years ago, Zhuanzhuan had been nothing more than a little shop staffed by a husband and wife. Now it employed two hundred shop assistants alone, and its collection had reached a million titles.
The cost of producing books in the Divine Realm Empire was not high, but its control over knowledge was extremely tight.
The cheap publications were magazines and newspapers devoted to matters below the belt. Genuine academic books were generally monopolized