30: Chapter 30 Tang Hao's Regret and Forbearance
The bustle and cheers in the Awakening Hall of the Spirit Hall lingered for a long time. Surrounded by a group of Titled Douluo, the four children were the most dazzling prodigies on the entire Douluo Continent.
But let us turn our attention elsewhere—Bajie... Pfft, things were quite miserable on Tang Hao and Tang San's side.
In Saint Spirit Village, south of Nuoding City in the Fasinuo Province of the Heaven Dou Empire, the only thing present in the dilapidated smithy at the west end of the village was the year-round stench of alcohol and rust, wrapped in an inseparable coldness and desolation.
The smithy was divided into two rooms. The outer room contained a rusty forging furnace, with scattered iron blocks and farm tools waiting for repair piled in the corner. The floor was covered in dense dents from years of hammering. The inner room contained only a hard wooden bed, a wooden table with a missing leg propped up by a stone, and two chipped coarse porcelain bowls. The air was filled with the choking smell of inferior alcohol, and dozens of empty wine jars lay scattered against the wall.
A burly, bald man with a perpetually hunched back sat slumped in a chair next to the forging furnace, clutching a wine jar and gulping it down. His face looked as if it had been repeatedly corroded by strong acid and raging fire, pitted and covered in hideous scars. The resolute and handsome appearance he once possessed was completely destroyed, leaving only a pair of turbid eyes that, in the moments when the alcohol's influence faded, occasionally flashed with a ferocity and sharpness completely inconsistent with his dilapidated appearance.
No one knew that this dilapidated blacksmith, whom the villagers of Saint Spirit Village called "Tang Dachui," was the Human Race's number one traitor—Clear Sky Douluo Tang Hao—who had shaken the continent six years ago and was now wanted across the entire continent with sketches of his likeness, carrying a bounty of one million gold coins and two ten-thousand-year Spirit Bones.
In order to survive and evade the omnipresent pursuit, he not only destroyed his own appearance with his own hands and changed his name to something that no one would associate with the Clear Sky Sect, but he also carved a prosthetic arm out of hard iron birch wood, attaching it seamlessly to his severed right shoulder.
He usually wore loose, greasy blacksmith clothes to keep the prosthetic arm covered tightly. When forging, he used cloth straps to fix the prosthetic arm to the iron block, using only his left hand to swing the hammer. He looked no different from any one-armed blacksmith seen everywhere on the continent, perfectly hiding the most iconic feature from that great battle—the right arm severed by the Angelic Sacred Sword.
And the Saint Spirit Village he chose to hide in contained the calculations he was betting his life on.
The battle at the desolate stone ridge six years ago that ruined his reputation was only three mountains away from Saint Spirit Village, reachable in half a day by riding a fast horse.
Everyone on the continent thought he would take the child and flee to the extreme northern ice plains or the Star Dou Great Forest—those desolate, uninhabited places. No one would have expected that he was actually hiding right under the nose of the incident's location.
The so-called most dangerous place is the safest place.
From the time Tang San was just one year old and still in swaddling clothes, he had brought the child into this remote little village, hiding for five years.
The dignified Young Lord of the Clear Sky Sect, the youngest Titled Douluo on the entire continent, was now forced to mingle with a bunch of mud-legged peasants in his eyes, enduring the expressions of those commoners, and relying on forging hoes and sickles to exchange for inferior alcohol.
A tiger falling to the flatlands is bullied by dogs—nothing could be more fitting than this.
But he had no other choice; he had to forbear.
In that great battle six years ago, not only did he lose an arm, but the damage to his Origin caused by the Ring Explosion had yet to recover to this day. Only by relying on alcohol could he barely numb the pain that seeped deep into his bones.
More importantly, the entire continent was hunting him. Even if he revealed the slightest trace of being Clear Sky Douluo, he would be met with an endless, mortal encirclement and extermination.
To survive, to seek revenge, he could only endure.
Forbearance!
Having gulped down more than half a jar of inferior wine, Tang Hao slammed the jar onto the ground, ceramic shards mixing with the residual alcohol and splashing everywhere.
He breathed heavily, his crimson eyes staring fixedly out the window, a low growl like an injured beast emitting from his throat. Countless resentment and unwillingness surged in his chest, almost tearing him apart.
He couldn't understand, he really couldn't understand.
In that great battle six years ago, he only wanted to protect his beloved Ah Yin, only wanted to protect his wife and child from Spirit Hall, from those jackals who coveted the hundred-thousand-year spirit ring.
He considered himself upright and unyielding, willing to stand against the entire World for his lover. He should have been a devoted hero praised by the World, so how did he become the eternal sinner who betrayed the Human Race, colluded with Spirit Beasts, and fell into the Demonic Path overnight?
Damn it! Everything is damn it!
That group of hypocrites in Spirit Hall, it was clearly they who coveted Ah Yin's hundred-thousand-year spirit ring and Spirit Bone, setting up a killing trap to encircle and kill her first, yet in the end, they turned the tables and splashed all the dirty water onto his head!
And those Sects and the two great Empires that followed the trend, each one sanctimonious, merely jealous of Ah Yin's Spirit Bone and spirit ring, taking advantage of the chaos to loot!
And the Clear Sky Sect! His Sect! The place that gave birth to him and raised him!
They actually expelled him from the Sect in front of the entire continent, drawing a line between them! Those old fogies, who usually prattled on about the Sect's honor and brotherhood, when disaster struck, didn't even dare to say a word of defense, only knowing how to save their own skins!
Tang Hao punched the forging furnace, and the heavy furnace instantly dented, sparks flying everywhere.
His gaze fell on the small figure by the bed in the inner room, who was tiptoeing to tidy up the bedding. A surge of extremely twisted emotions instantly welled up in his eyes: ferocity, resentment, and a trace of fear that even he was unwilling to admit.
If it weren't for this child, if it weren't for him and Ah Yin giving birth to this child, how would Ah Yin have been forced to sacrifice herself? How would he have ended up in this current state?
But as soon as this thought emerged, it was suppressed by a deeper bewilderment.
He actually never held any hope for this child's Spirit Awakening.
Ah Yin was a hundred-thousand-year Blue Silver Emperor; even if she transformed into a human, possessing a human body and Divine Soul, the Spirit Beast Origin in her bones had never disappeared.
On the Douluo Continent, the union between humans and Spirit Beasts has always been a great taboo, and it is not without precedent.
Those Wolftaken who run rampant in the countryside, aren't they just wolf-headed, human-bodied monsters bred from humans and Storm Devil Wolves?
They look like humans, but in their bones, they are bloodthirsty Spirit Beasts, without a shred of humanity, knowing only slaughter and destruction, and are despised by everyone on the continent.
He had stared at the sleeping Tang San in the dead of night more than once. The child looked no different from a human child, but the stone in his heart had never been put down.
Six years had passed, and the child had grown safely to six years old, but who knew what would happen at the moment of the Spirit Awakening?
What if he really awakened a half-human, half-beast Spirit? What if he really was, as those people cursed, a born abomination, a monster?
By then, not only would his crime of "human-beast copulation" be completely confirmed, but even this child would end up being executed on the spot.
Not to mention that he had been secretly Cultivating since he was three or four years old, using a Cultivation Technique he had never seen before.
He had even thought about what he should do if it really came to that point.
Should he end the child himself, or take him and fight his way out, continuing to flee for his life?