Had Ah Yin not been nearby, in his towering fury, he could even have flattened this nameless hill one hammer blow at a time.
Tang Mo, who had defeated Tang San and toyed with Tang Hao, had already returned to his thatched hut in Holy Soul Village.
He had originally been an ordinary homebody. First, he had transmigrated into the Tang Sect of The Outcast, where he wiped out more than half the Hekeng Ninja in the battle at Mianshan before dying of exhaustion. After his death, he had transmigrated again, this time into the Douluo World.
In this life, he had neither father nor mother. Old Jack of Holy Soul Village had found him and brought him back, sparing him from dying before his campaign had even begun.
But once he could survive on his own, he had moved out and built a small thatched hut on the outskirts of Holy Soul Village.
It was not that he did not want to rely on Old Jack and lie low until his martial soul awakening, but that he had too many secrets he needed to keep from others.
Just as he was doing now: after roughly processing the medicinal herbs in his hands, he set them outside the door to dry, then ground the already dried herbs into powder and rolled it into individual pills.
The Tang Sect he had belonged to was also an assassin organization, skilled in poisons and hidden weapons, but what he practiced was not the Mysterious Heaven Skill. It was the Five Treasures Body Protection Method.
This was a method of cultivating the qi of the five elements corresponding to the five viscera-the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. It could turn the qi of spleen earth into a thin membrane to protect his internal organs and meridians, then combine the qi of lung metal, qi of heart fire, and qi of liver wood with medicinal herbs to blend qi poison inside his body.
Qi poison could be shaped at will for use as an attack, or transformed into Poison Miasma. Poison Miasma possessed unparalleled defensive power and could even poison others' protective abilities through contact.
In other words, whether his opponent used soul power as a shield or possessed a defensive soul skill, as long as it came into contact with Poison Miasma, the miasma could send poison into their body along their soul power.
Because qi poison possessed extraordinary capabilities, cultivating it was no easy task. After all, it involved mixing toxins inside his body. He first needed to take medicines to alter his constitution and gain a degree of poison resistance, then cultivate the Five Treasures Body Protection Method to a level sufficient to protect his internal organs and meridians.
Smelling the pungent odor rising from the pill in his hand, he gritted his teeth and swallowed it in one gulp.
The pill smelled pungent and tasted bitter. Without a certain amount of perseverance, it really was hard to bring himself to swallow it.
"Gulp!"
After swallowing the pill, he sat down cross-legged where he stood and began cultivating the Five Treasures Body Protection Method. The pill was mildly poisonous, making it just right for assisting his cultivation of the Five Treasures Body Protection Method.
While he cultivated, Tang San gradually woke. The intense pain from his body made him suck in a sharp breath.
"Hiss!"
He struggled to sit up. As he looked at the bandages on his body, which had suddenly begun to seep blood, his eyes filled with fury. He clenched his fists and silently swore that he would make Tang Mo repay this humiliation with his life.
"Hiss, hiss, hiss..."
Who could have expected that merely clenching his fists with all his strength would split several of his wounds open again? More blood seeped out, and the ensuing pain made him involuntarily suck in several sharp breaths.
Hearing Tang San's sharp intakes of breath, Tang Hao entered and tossed him a porcelain bottle and a roll of bandages.
"Stop moving around. Apply the medicine," Tang Hao said curtly.
Clearly, now that Tang San was awake, he no longer intended to change his dressings for him. Tang San could do it himself anyway.
Noticing that Tang Hao's attitude toward him remained as lukewarm as ever, Tang San suddenly knelt before him and said, enunciating every word, "I want to learn smithing!"
At this, a flicker of sadness crossed Tang Hao's eyes, as though he had recalled the days when he followed Tai Tan around, learning Forging.
"Once your wounds heal." Leaving him with those words, he turned and left the house. Like any ordinary drunkard, he went into the village to buy low-quality ale and drank it mouthful by mouthful.
Realizing that Tang Hao had agreed to his request, a flash of fervor passed through Tang San's eyes. Although he could not achieve a qualitative breakthrough in the Mysterious Heaven Skill anytime soon, he could improve his combat strength by forging hidden weapons.
Once he successfully forged his hidden weapons, he would seek out Tang Mo and avenge that kick, no matter what. Until then, however, he had to endure.
The days passed one by one, and soon only three months remained until the martial soul awakening.
"Whoosh!"
Tang Mo was gathering herbs on the mountain when his ears twitched slightly, easily catching the faint sound of something cutting through the air.
Although there was only one sound, as an expert in hidden weapons, he could naturally tell that more than one hidden weapon was coming at him. There were ten Willow-Leaf Darts of nearly identical shape and weight.
To achieve this, someone had to throw ten virtually identical Willow-Leaf Darts at precisely the same time. Otherwise, there would not have been just one sound cutting through the air, but ten.
Sensing someone launching a sneak attack from behind, Tang Mo scooped a handful of pebbles off the ground, held them in his hand, then flicked his fingers repeatedly behind him.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh... clang!"
After ten sounds of rushing air came the ring of metal. The ten pebbles Tang Mo had flicked out in succession actually struck all ten Willow-Leaf Darts at the same instant.
The trajectories of the ten Willow-Leaf Darts shifted. Tang Mo reached out, caught them securely in his hand, then threw them back with a backhand motion.
Hiding in the shadows, Tang San had never imagined that his opponent's hidden weapon techniques had also reached such an exquisite level.
To restore his proficiency with hidden weapons, he had practiced his throwing techniques day and night whenever he was not smithing.
He did not believe that Tang Mo, who had to gather herbs every day, could spare so much time to practice hidden weapon techniques.
But facts spoke louder than words. Tang Mo's hidden weapon techniques firmly surpassed his own, and his opponent could even determine his position from the sounds the hidden weapons made in flight.
Seeing the Willow-Leaf Darts draw ever closer, he immediately used Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track to change his hiding place while throwing several Steel Needles.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..."
The sound of the Steel Needles cutting through the air was faint and delicate, easily concealed beneath the sound of the flying Willow-Leaf Darts.
Yet even such minute sounds could not escape Tang Mo's ears, for he had cultivated the Observation Method.
Taken literally, the Observation Method meant a method of observing the world, and that was precisely what it was. It helped him better observe changes in his surroundings.
Whether a leaf tilted in the breeze or a speck of dust changed direction, he could sense it.
Even if his brain could not process so much information in such a short time, it could still alert him, to a certain extent, to changes in his surroundings.
Thus, even though the faint sounds of the Steel Needles cutting through the air were masked by the flying Willow-Leaf Darts, they still did not escape his perception.
Using Flocculent Steps, he silently evaded the incoming Steel Needles. Then a length of fine thread appeared in his hand.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..."
The fine thread danced nimbly in his hand, silently winding around the Steel Needles. With a flick of his wrist, the needles immediately flew back the way they had come.
This was another signature skill of the Tang Sect he had belonged to, called Hidden Thread.
Hidden Thread itself was a tough silk thread finer than piano wire, yet a single strand could suspend an entire piano.
Besides its toughness, Hidden Thread was also exceedingly sharp. Those skilled in its use could even silently turn people into string puppets or cut them into scraps of flesh.
As the Steel Needles flew back along their original paths, Tang Mo also wound a length of silk thread around them.
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