Yu Xiaogang delivered himself to his doorstep

Gold Soul Coins had considerable purchasing power on the Douluo Continent. A single Gold Soul Coin was enough for a commoner family of three to live on for several months.

Offering one Gold Soul Coin a month in rent, Xiao Yao soon rented a decent courtyard residence in Nuoding City.

The room directly opposite the main gate was used for cooking, eating, or entertaining any guests they might have.

The rooms on the left were for living in, while those on the right were for training.

Settling into a courtyard where humans lived for the first time in ages, Xiao Yao and Xiao Wu both enjoyed a good sleep.

Early the next morning, Xiao Yao went out alone, planning to buy some good ingredients to cook.

He had spent all his time before this in the Star Dou Great Forest, eating wild fruit when hungry and drinking river water when thirsty. His mouth had grown so bland that birds could practically fly out of it.

But when he returned with a basket of good ingredients, ready to show off his cooking, he discovered two uninvited guests at home.

The black-clad man sitting in a chair had ordinary features, a crew cut, and a short beard. His only distinctive feature was his pair of deep eyes.

A little boy in blue stood beside him, looking about Xiao Wu's age.

Compared with the black-clad man, however, the child actually seemed stronger in spirit, vitality, and bearing alike.

Xiao Wu was pouring water for the black-clad man, while the boy in blue was trying to strike up a friendship with her. Xiao Wu had ignored him the entire time.

Seeing Xiao Yao return, the black-clad man stood and extended his left hand. "Hello, my name is Yu Xiaogang. Everyone calls me Grandmaster. This is my disciple, Tang San."

Oh, so they were Tang San and Yu Xiaogang. No wonder their outfits looked a little familiar.

Wait, why had they come to his house?

He hadn't even gone to Nuoding Academy, yet he still had to deal with them?

Just then, Xiao Wu came over and pointed at Tang San. "He was there when we went to Spirit Hall yesterday."

Then she pointed at Yu Xiaogang. "He wants to take us as disciples. He does have some talent, but that's about it."

Xiao Yao understood. It seemed this was the butterfly effect of his transmigration.

Because of him, Xiao Wu had arrived in Nuoding City later and happened to run into Tang San returning from Soul Hunting.

Tang San had then happened to see Ma Xiunuo and the others trying to recruit him and told Yu Xiaogang, piquing his interest and leading to the scene before him.

The truth was much as he had guessed.

Tang San had returned to Nuoding Academy full of resentment. After racking his brains, he ultimately blamed the unfair treatment he had received on his Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul.

He had innate full Soul Power and was already rank thirteen at six years old, yet the treatment he received had actually lost out to that of two children about his age.

Even if their first Soul Rings were also hundred-year ones, so what? Could those compare to the Mysterious Heaven Skill internal power he had accumulated for so long?

So he had sought out his teacher and asked permission to cultivate his hammer Martial Soul.

This had given Yu Xiaogang a fright. He did not understand why his disciple had developed such a rebellious idea after returning from Spirit Hall.

After asking what had happened, Yu Xiaogang had reached the same conclusion as Tang San.

Those two children certainly had less Soul Power than Tang San, but perhaps their Martial Souls were of extremely high quality, which was why Ma Xiunuo and his group had tried so hard to recruit them.

It was then that Yu Xiaogang had come up with a crooked idea.

I already have Tang San as a disciple, so I can verify some of my theories.

But Blue Silver Grass is ultimately too poor in quality. There are still many theories I can't put into practice.

Even if he has the Clear Sky Hammer as his second Martial Soul, adding Soul Rings to it will be decades away at the very least. I might not be able to wait that long.

In that case, why don't I take those two children with extremely high-quality Martial Souls as disciples too?

Once they all grow up, I'll be the teacher of three Titled Douluo.

Then who will be able to question my theories? Who will dare question them?

And so he had used his connection with Nuoding Academy's dean to find Xiao Yao's residence and paid a visit early in the morning.

Unfortunately, Xiao Yao had gone out, and Xiao Wu, who had stayed behind, only listened to Xiao Yao.

"Oh, Grandmaster." Xiao Yao shook Yu Xiaogang's hand too, filling the latter with delight.

But Xiao Yao's next words sent him plummeting from heaven to the bottom of a valley in an instant.

"Never heard of you."

The smile that had just appeared on Yu Xiaogang's face froze.

Honestly, if Xiao Yao had said from the start that he had never heard of him, he would not have been particularly surprised. The boy was still young, after all.

But first putting on a look of sudden recognition and then saying "never heard of you" really messed with a man's head.

Still, who was he? He was Yu Xiaogang, a man who had "commanded the winds and clouds" of the Soul Master World. He soon regained his composure.

He gave Tang San a meaningful look.

Understanding, Tang San took several stacks of gazettes out of Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges.

The gazette was actually a booklet several dozen pages long, published monthly by Spirit Hall, recording major events in the Soul Master World.

It also served to spread basic knowledge about Soul Masters. It could be called the Soul Master World's Google and Baidu.

One had to understand that the Douluo Continent was vast, while its technology was very backward.

Producing a monthly gazette already required Spirit Hall to go all out.

One could imagine just how significant and authoritative anything that appeared in the gazette must be.

Tang San even deliberately turned to several pages, their headlines standing out clearly:

"Yu Xiaogang discovers a new theory, fully deserving the title of 'Grandmaster'"

"Ten Core Competencies of Martial Soul Theory overturns your understanding of Martial Souls"

"Top powers including the Heaven Dou Empire, Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, and Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect extend olive branches to Grandmaster one after another"

Xiao Yao glanced through them. They were all filled with praise for Yu Xiaogang.

While out buying ingredients earlier, he had also seen several people reading gazettes and learned how authoritative they were.

This surprised him somewhat. Had Yu Xiaogang actually had such a glorious period in the past? He had thought the man had always been a joke.

What Xiao Yao did not know, however, was that this glorious history was precisely the main reason Yu Xiaogang's name stank to high heaven.

Take his previous life, for instance. Among crackpot researchers, hundreds of perpetual motion machines emerged every day, but beyond giving people a laugh, most failed to make anyone remember even their creators.

But if someone appeared on national television, only for his theories to be proven a patchwork of plagiarized material...

Then everyone would laugh at him for ten stretches of two and a half years.

That was exactly Yu Xiaogang's situation.

Using the authority of Bibi Dong, who had still been the Holy Maiden at the time, he had published gazette articles about himself and made his name known throughout the Douluo Continent.

As a result, everyone learned that his theories were a joke. This was also the main reason the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan had expelled him.

Yu Xiaogang was now taking advantage of Xiao Yao and Xiao Wu being too young to know what had happened more than a decade ago, trying to bluff them.

Xiao Yao did not know that so much shady business lay behind it all, but he knew one thing:

Yu Xiaogang himself was trash. No matter how glorious his past had been, it could not change the fact that he was now universally acknowledged as trash.

So becoming his disciple was out of the question.

I hadn't planned to come looking for trouble with you this soon, but since you've delivered yourself to my doorstep, don't expect to leave unscathed.