"Hahaha! I've broken through to level thirty!"
Yu Xiaogang, who had been threatening to kill himself just moments ago, was now positively cheerful.
Just now, while struggling to recall what had happened, Yu Xiaogang had suddenly felt his entire body open up.
Unable to work out why right away, Ganzi even wondered whether his nighttime campaign had caused it.
At first, Yu Xiaogang had thought it was some psychological hang-up from losing his Soul Tool, until he examined his body and discovered that his Soul Power was flowing more strongly.
He immediately circulated his Soul Power and summoned Luo Sanpao.
And just like that, Yu Xiaogang excitedly discovered that the bottleneck he had struggled to overcome had actually been broken.
It was hardly fair to blame Yu Xiaogang's sluggishness for taking so long to notice. Anyone else would have been the same. After all, whose bottleneck of fifteen or twenty years suddenly broke for no apparent reason?
Yu Xiaogang gradually began to feel better. His lifelong obsession had finally been laid to rest.
The most frightening thing, after all, was the way people filled in the blanks themselves.
A sudden inspiration struck Yu Xiaogang, and he linked his ordeal to his breakthrough!
"I remember clearly that I was writing a letter last night. Then I suddenly did those things. Could my martial soul have guided me to do them unconsciously?"
Yu Xiaogang muttered to himself, then turned his gaze toward the Luo Sanpao he had summoned.
Looking at Luo Sanpao's bloated, purplish body, which resembled both a pig and a dog, Yu Xiaogang became increasingly certain of his theory.
Although the process had been terribly painful, the result was good, all things considered.
In Yu Xiaogang's heart, the ranking had always been bottleneck > reputation > clan.
As long as he could break through his bottleneck, he could accept anything!
Had Li Mingzhu been there to hear his thoughts, he would certainly have praised Ganzi's forbearance.
None of this actually made sense, but Yu Xiaogang's flights of fancy and self-reassurance made it seem reasonable.
Li Mingzhu's original idea had merely been to help him break through his bottleneck, awaken his selfishness and urge to research, and divert his attention away from himself.
Everything else had merely been a lesson!
"I was completely naked at the time. Could I have unconsciously left my Soul Tool somewhere nearby on the way there?"
As he filled in the blanks, Yu Xiaogang began supplying his own explanations for everything that did not make sense.
The possibility that someone else had helped him break through, or deliberately played a trick on him, had never occurred to him.
With his exalted status, who would dare take revenge on him? Besides, he had searched so long for a way to break through his bottleneck without finding one. He did not believe anyone else could have found one either.
What was more, anything that could help him break through had to be unimaginably precious. If someone bore him a grudge, why would they help him break through? That theory made no sense at all. It could only have been his own martial soul!
Li Mingzhu: "Right, right, right. Everything you say is right!"
As for Li Mingzhu, with whom he had recently developed a grudge, he had never even considered him. It was not that Yu Xiaogang was arrogant; he genuinely could not imagine what someone only in the teens could do to him.
And with that, congratulations to Yu Xiaogang for veering completely away from the correct answer!
"Luo, luo-!"
Luo Sanpao affectionately sidled up to Ganzi like a little kitten, hoping its master would feed it!
Looking at Luo Sanpao pressed against his trouser leg, Yu Xiaogang did not want to admit it, but he increasingly felt that Sanpao looked like a pig.
"Could Sanpao be like a person, needing to let off some pent-up fire every so often?"
Yu Xiaogang stared at Luo Sanpao and spoke without thinking.
Luo Sanpao possessed some intelligence. To test his theory, Yu Xiaogang crouched down and stroked it. "Sanpao, tell me, do you need to release your pent-up urges?"
Although Luo Sanpao understood simple commands, how could it understand any of that? When Yu Xiaogang questioned it, Luo Sanpao thought he was asking whether it wanted radishes.
It immediately cried "Luo, luo!" excitedly at Yu Xiaogang!
Seeing Luo Sanpao's intense reaction, Yu Xiaogang became one hundred percent convinced of his theory.
"Haha!"
Yu Xiaogang grew happier and happier, as though he were about to witness the birth of his new theory.
At that moment, Yu Xiaogang had a new idea. Until he had definitively established the cause of his breakthrough, he did not want to tell the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.
"Father, don't blame me!"
Yu Xiaogang sighed. He knew his father: the clan came before everything else. If his father discovered the cause of his breakthrough, he would certainly put it to use for the clan.
Yu Xiaogang had no intention of using a method he had finally stumbled upon on a bunch of people who mocked him.
What he needed to do now was prepare for soul hunting and search for traces of his Soul Tool.
Having decided what to do next, Yu Xiaogang planned to take a stroll outside and see whether his actions the previous night had been exposed.
Just as he was about to leave, he saw that it was already growing dark outside the window, so he had to abandon his plans for a stroll.
What he had done might have caused too much of a stir. If he went out at night and was taken for a suspect, he would be in trouble. He might as well rest properly and replenish his energy and vitality!
Li Mingzhu, on the other hand, had not thought that much about it. He ate and drank as usual, felt fantastic, and even felt that his cultivation had sped up.
At that moment, he was in his room, leafing through the books he had obtained from Yu Xiaogang. He occasionally offered a comment on their contents, enjoying himself immensely.
As for Yu Xiaogang, he planned to check on him in a few days and see how things stood-whether he still intended to send word to the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan!
Before long, he finished reading the encyclopedia of high-grade bloodline soul beasts in his hands.
Li Mingzhu promptly tossed it into the Domain Space and took out another book at random.
Seeing another handwritten volume, Li Mingzhu assumed it contained some treasured knowledge from Spirit Hall and eagerly opened it.
On the yellowed pages, a sentence had been inscribed on the very first page.
At the sight of that sentence, Li Mingzhu's delighted expression began to change, and his face grew solemn.
It was none other than the famous line: "There are no useless martial souls, only useless Soul Masters!"
Seeing those words, Li Mingzhu sucked in a breath of cold air and said, "Terrifying indeed."
Li Mingzhu then skimmed through the whole book and discovered that it really contained nothing but Yu Xiaogang's ten theories of martial souls. He stopped playing along with the joke and spat, "Pah!" It simply felt like bad luck.
Li Mingzhu could not be bothered to let the book take up space. He spat out a mouthful of Dragon Flame, burning it to nothing.
Had Yu Xiaogang learned that his book was gone, he would certainly have been heartbroken. This copy of the "Ten Core Theories of Martial Souls" was the very first one he had written and held immeasurable sentimental significance.
After burning it, Li Mingzhu wiped his hands, as though afraid that some unspeakably filthy thing had clung to them.
His mood for reading vanished at once, leaving Li Mingzhu to stabilize his Soul Power instead.
Other people obtained their Soul Power through diligent cultivation; he obtained his through diligently popping pills. There was really no difference between the two.
The Douluo Continent was not some proper fantasy world that stressed the accumulation of deep foundations.
Besides, when Li Mingzhu's cultivation slowed between levels thirty and seventy, that would conveniently serve to stabilize his foundations.
As for his reserves, those were even easier to build. He could simply hunt a few super soul beasts and pop a few immortal herbs. Li Mingzhu refused to believe that his reserves would not become profound.
Just look at Huo Yuhao-how much of all his Soul Power had he actually cultivated himself?
Before you continue