As for why Tang Mo could be certain Tang San would enter the Soul Hunting Forest today, it was because entry required advance registration.
The Soul Hunting Forest lay more than four hundred li northeast of Nuoding City and was a suitable place for low-ranking soul masters to obtain soul rings.
To prevent soul beasts of excessively high ages from appearing there, people would even enter specifically to conduct a cull.
Although this greatly reduced the danger of the Soul Hunting Forest, it also made suitable soul beasts difficult to find. Even hundred-year soul beasts were not particularly common; otherwise, the ten-year solitary bamboo meme would never have existed.
Tang Mo did not choose to travel on foot, but hitched a ride instead. While checking the entry registration records for the Soul Hunting Forest, he discovered that a wealthy merchant from Nuoding City was taking his son there today.
The man had deep pockets and quite the air of a nouveau riche, so even the horses pulling his carriage out of the city were descendants of horse-type soul beasts renowned for their speed.
Although these carriage horses did not even qualify as ten-year soul beasts, their endurance and speed were nothing to scoff at.
Racing along the whole way, Tang Mo even caught Tang San and Yu Xiaogang entering the Soul Hunting Forest.
He quietly activated the Illusion Barrier, which could blend him into his surroundings, and followed behind the two.
After he caught up with them, a faint sensation of being watched swept over Tang Mo from time to time.
He surmised that Tang Hao was probably watching Tang San from a distance, so the chances of getting Tang San to select ten-year solitary bamboo for his first soul ring were slim.
There was even a certain chance that the Mandala Snake Tang San encountered had been secretly delivered by Tang Hao as a fallback soul beast.
Yu Xiaogang's Ten Core Competitive Theories of Martial Soul seemed to be his original theories, but in reality, many were theories Spirit Hall and other sects had discovered long ago.
Moreover, Tang Hao could eavesdrop, so there was no way he did not know that Yu Xiaogang wanted Tang San to add a beast-type soul beast's soul ring to his Blue Silver Grass.
Tang Mo followed behind the master and disciple, Yu Xiaogang and Tang San, privately pondering how to pull something big on them while also considering what soul ring he should add to his own martial soul.
His first martial soul was himself from his previous life, primarily cultivating the Five Treasures Body Protection Method and a whole collection of Tang Sect Secret Arts.
His second martial soul was the Fish Intestine Sword. Its blade was short enough to conceal inside a fish's belly, and its overall shape somewhat resembled a whole fish with its fins removed.
The twisting patterns on the blade also resembled fish intestines, hence its name, Fish Intestine.
Although he was proficient in assassination with short weapons, the Tang Sect Secret Arts were the foundation on which he stood, so focusing on his first martial soul better suited his path of growth.
And the most important ability of his first martial soul was the foundational cultivation method, the Five Treasures Body Protection Method; the other secret arts came after that.
The Five Treasures Body Protection Method was connected to the five organs and five elements, so ideally, his first five soul rings would correspond to the five elements one by one.
The conventional order of the five elements now was metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, but this arrangement actually followed no pattern.
Following the elements' generative cycle, the order should be wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, so his first soul ring would ideally come from a wood-type soul beast.
If Ah Yin were still alive, her soul ring would fit Tang Mo's requirements very well. Unfortunately, even if she were still alive, her age was far too high. Unless she sacrificed herself, Tang Mo could not withstand it for the time being.
Thus, the wood-type soul ring would have to be pushed back to become his fifth soul ring. Even if he could not turn Ah Yin into a soul ring by then, he could still use Spirit Hall's power to threaten the Blue Silver King with Ah Yin and make him voluntarily sacrifice himself.
Thinking along those lines, his first soul ring would ideally come from a fire-type soul beast.
Just as he was considering this, his surroundings suddenly fell silent, followed immediately by the abrupt descent of an indescribable oppressive presence.
"Rustle, rustle..."
All kinds of bird soul beasts flapped their wings and flew into the distance as though they had encountered an utterly terrifying existence. Insect soul beasts that could not easily move fell silent where they were or hid themselves, and even the immobile plant-type soul beasts disguised themselves as ordinary plants as best they could.
"Luo, luo!"
At that moment, Luo Sanpao, whom Yu Xiaogang had summoned, seemed to sense something. After barking in one direction, he hid behind Yu Xiaogang.
Yu Xiaogang had originally intended to introduce the characteristics of his martial soul, Luo Sanpao, to Tang San, while using the ten-year soul beasts by the roadside as teaching material for hunting soul beasts.
But after seeing Luo Sanpao's behavior, Yu Xiaogang completely lost his urge to play the teacher.
"This is bad!" he cried, then grabbed Tang San and ran toward the entrance of the Soul Hunting Forest.
But before he could run very far, a three-meter-tall figure appeared before them, without them knowing when it had arrived.
It was a terrifying giant bear roughly three meters tall, covered in dark gold fur, with extremely thick forearms and claws alone that exceeded a meter in length.
"A dark gold terrorclaw bear?" The instant Yu Xiaogang made out the enormous beast before him, his body began trembling uncontrollably, and his voice shook so badly that he barely managed to finish saying its name.
Priding himself on his extensive knowledge, he naturally recognized the giant bear before him as one of the most terrifying kinds of soul beasts, reputed to rival ten-thousand-year beasts at a thousand years and fight hundred-thousand-year beasts at ten thousand years.
A dark gold terrorclaw bear several hundred years old stood around two meters tall, while the one before him stood a full three meters tall, meaning it was a ten-thousand-year soul beast.
A terrifying existence comparable to a hundred-thousand-year soul beast was right before his eyes, and it even raised its meter-long claws at him. A puddle of unidentified yellow liquid immediately appeared beneath Yu Xiaogang's feet.
Trembling, he raised Luo Sanpao, and his first soul ring lit up. Then, treating a dead horse as though it were still alive in a desperate attempt, he shouted, "Fart like thunder, shatter heaven and earth, Luo San."
At his wits' end, Yu Xiaogang thought that if he could make the dark gold terrorclaw bear suffer the stench, perhaps it would give up hunting the two reeking prey.
But he had forgotten that pungent odors could also enrage soul beasts, and the dark gold terrorclaw bear before them bore wounds that were not particularly obvious.
Tang Mo had likewise caught the scent of blood on it, allowing him to dodge out of its path a moment early. That dodge let him notice a distinctly smaller dark gold terrorclaw bear hiding behind a large rock not far ahead.
It stood over two meters tall, yet was nowhere near three meters, so it should have been at the thousand-year level.
More importantly, it was severely injured. At that moment, it was already in a hazy, half-awake state and seemed liable to fall unconscious at any time.
According to Yu Xiaogang's theory, the upper limit for a first soul ring was 423 years, but Tang Mo knew that as long as the body could withstand it, a soul ring's age could certainly be pushed higher.
Thinking of how he had trained his body day and night to cultivate the Tang Sect Secret Arts, he surmised that he could most likely attempt to absorb a thousand-year soul ring.
More crucially, he also had Earth-Wood Flow Injection, which could temporarily stimulate his body's potential.
Earth-Wood Flow Injection was an ability recorded in the Five Treasures Body Protection Method. By injecting the qi of liver-wood and spleen-earth into the body's meridians, he could stimulate his potential and temporarily increase his speed, strength, self-healing, and other abilities.
As long as the Ten-Thousand-Year Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear was held up by Tang Hao in hiding, he could absolutely absorb the soul ring of the Thousand-Year Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear before him.
As for whether Tang Hao would fall for it? Tang Mo's position was that Tang Hao's son, Tang San, was already in peril. If Tang Hao could still endure that, he could only collect Tang San's corpse and happily claim the title of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
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