Yue Guan and Gui Mei set out for Spirit City with Tang Mo. Rather than carrying him through the air to reach Spirit City as quickly as possible, however, they hired a carriage and made their leisurely, swaying way there.
After so many years at the helm of Spirit Hall, Bibi Dong had long since developed the habit of looking only at results, not the process. Thus, when assigning missions to Yue Guan and Gui Mei, she would not specifically state a deadline.
She had a scale in her heart and had already estimated how long their round trip between Nuoding City and Spirit City should take.
As long as the time they spent on the road was close to her estimate, she would mark down a merit for them in her mind.
As her subordinates, Yue Guan and Gui Mei naturally knew what Bibi Dong was thinking.
It was like delivering takeout: the faster one delivered, the worse the orders one received would become. Either the pay per order was too low, or the delivery window was so tight that arriving on time was difficult.
For workers, performing too perfectly was out of the question, or they would be assigned even more tasks.
Nor could they perform too poorly, or their boss might consider them useless and fire them outright.
Thus, Yue Guan and Gui Mei were in no hurry. They had timed their departure to ensure that they could return to Spirit City within Bibi Dong's estimated timeframe.
Neither too early nor too late-arriving right on the mark was best.
Beyond that, Yue Guan and Gui Mei each had their own thoughts about Tang Mo. They were longtime partners, sharing glory and ruin alike, so when Yue Guan wanted to build a closer relationship with Tang Mo, Gui Mei naturally went along with him.
However, besides cooperating with his old friend, Gui Mei had something else on his mind: he wanted to know exactly what method Tang Mo had used earlier to make his consciousness transcend his flesh.
Along the way, Tang Mo could sense Gui Mei looking at him from time to time. Although Gui Mei kept himself so tightly shrouded that outsiders could not detect his gaze at all, Tang Mo had, after all, practiced the perception-enhancing Observation Method.
To him, Gui Mei's gaze was as conspicuous as lice on a monk's bald head.
"Your Eminence Ghost Douluo, is there something wrong with me?" Tang Mo asked Gui Mei.
Yue Guan, who was considering how to get closer to Tang Mo, could not help feeling somewhat surprised when he heard Tang Mo's question.
For one thing, he could tell that Tang Mo was not particularly afraid of the two of them despite their being Titled Douluos. It was as though Tang Mo was certain he would become a Titled Douluo sooner or later, and thus felt only reverence for their strength rather than fear.
For another, he truly had not noticed that Gui Mei seemed to have other thoughts about Tang Mo.
Preoccupied throughout the journey, he had not noticed anything unusual about Gui Mei. They had been partners for so many years that even if Gui Mei said nothing, he could still tell what he was thinking.
Yet today, their tacit understanding seemed to have stopped working. He had failed to notice anything unusual about Gui Mei.
"Wrong path. Need to find it," Gui Mei said succinctly.
Hearing this, Yue Guan immediately understood that Gui Mei meant their understanding of their martial souls had gone astray, but they still had a chance to change and return to the right path. The opportunity for change that Gui Mei had sensed lay with Tang Mo.
"My young friend Tang Mo." For the first time, Yue Guan changed how he addressed Tang Mo. "This old friend of mine isn't a man of many words. Please forgive him. But since Old Ghost's opportunity lies with you, please don't hold back your guidance. We can pay a corresponding price."
"Since both Your Eminences have put it that way, I'm naturally willing to cooperate. In exchange, I'd like you both to accompany me on some private business in the future." Tang Mo smiled and agreed to Yue Guan's request.
There were two matters included in the private business he mentioned. One was threatening Dugu Bo and plundering the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
The other was taking Ah Yin's original body and the Blue Silver right leg soul bone from right under Tang Hao's nose.
The former would not be particularly difficult. Although Dugu Bo's use of poison inspired awe throughout the world, it was not enough to impress Tang Mo. What truly made Tang Mo wary was Dugu Bo's strength as a Titled Douluo.
But with Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo beside him, both the poison Dugu Bo took such pride in and his Titled Douluo strength would instantly become a joke.
The latter, however, would require some planning on Tang Mo's part. After all, if Tang Hao used Ring Detonation without regard for anything else, then even with his current injuries, the power gained from detonating all nine soul rings together would allow him to contend briefly with the Worship Hall's Second Worship, the rank-98 Titled Douluo, Golden Crocodile Douluo.
"As long as we're not storming the Worship Hall, with Old Ghost's strength and mine, where in this vast world could we not go?" Seeing Tang Mo agree, Yue Guan immediately patted his chest in assurance.
The Guan Zizai Heart Method emphasized practice rather than its formula.
Put plainly, its formula was simple yet contained tremendous depth. To understand it fully, one could only keep trying.
After Tang Mo explained the Guan Zizai Heart Method word by word and sentence by sentence, along with the precautions to take, Gui Mei began practicing on the spot.
However, Tang Mo could tell that the Guan Zizai Heart Method could, at most, provide Gui Mei with some inspiration.
After all, Gui Mei's circumstances were very unusual. He had died once, then, through a fortuitous coincidence, his soul had attached itself to his body, bringing him back to life and awakening his martial soul. He himself was like the living dead, and his martial soul was his own soul.
In Tang Mo's view, there were only two paths if he wanted to develop his martial soul correctly. The first was to learn ghost cultivation, abandon his body, and follow the path of extreme yin giving birth to yang to forge his body anew.
The second was to merge his soul completely with his body, leaving no distinction between them, following the path of the Body Sect, which would only appear in the future.
Whichever path he took, it would be a form of cultivation unprecedented on the Douluo Continent, with no predecessors' cultivation experience to consult. The slightest mistake along the way would leave him beyond redemption for ten thousand calamities.
Tang Mo himself was no expert on souls, so he naturally could not offer Gui Mei much advice and could only let him experiment on his own.
However, the Tang Sect he belonged to had countless threads of connection with Taoism, so he had read some Taoist scriptures and had a certain understanding of the cultivation method for projecting the yang spirit.
The problem was that his own understanding was only partial, and speaking of it might mislead Gui Mei. Moreover, he had not known Gui Mei long, and they were not yet close enough to bare their hearts to each other, so he did not explain the method for projecting the yang spirit.
Bang!
The carriage, drawn by a ten-year horse-type soul beast, suddenly seemed to strike something and came to an abrupt halt. Inside, Tang Mo felt the compartment sway slightly, and he quietly pulled the curtain aside to open a barely perceptible slit.
Through the slit, he saw what was happening outside. An earthen wall had appeared in front of the carriage at some unknown point, and the horse-type soul beast had stopped because it had run into it.
As the carriage stopped, rustling sounds began to rise all around them.
"A soul master's first lesson: learn how to kill." Yue Guan's voice drifted from behind Tang Mo.
This was one of the ways he had thought of to draw closer to Tang Mo. Every soul master, willingly or otherwise, had to take a lesson called slaughter.
A soul master's first kill would leave an impression that was difficult to erase, and the teacher of that lesson would likewise become one of the unforgettable figures in that soul master's heart.
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