Before they knew it, it was already noon.
Tang San carried the rice balls he'd gotten from Zhou Qing's house back home to feed Tang Hao.
Tang Hao didn't mind. He grabbed the food without asking a single question. Once he finished eating, he planned to go back to sleep.
But this time, Tang San stopped him.
"Dad."
"Hmm?"
Tang Hao halted, not even turning his head. "What is it? If you want to play, go play by yourself. Don't bother me!"
"I wanted to ask... what is your spirit?" Tang San asked cautiously.
At once, in the place where Tang San couldn't see, a sharp gleam flickered in Tang Hao's usually murky eyes. But he still replied hoarsely, "What's it got to do with you?"
Tang San's expression dimmed, but he still explained what Zhou Qing had told him. "...So, Dad, what kind of spirits do you and Mom have?"
Tang Hao showed a rare hint of surprise and muttered to himself, That Zhou Qing kid's got a pretty sharp mind... He walked into the room, lay down, and said, "You'll know what your spirit is in a couple of years when you awaken it. What's the point of knowing early? If there's nothing else, go collect firewood. Don't bother me."
With Tang Hao's laid-back yet stubborn attitude, Tang San had no choice but to leave the house and continue looking for Zhou Qing...
But after Tang San left, Tang Hao, who had been lying on the bed with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them. A cold sharpness and confusion appeared in his gaze.
"Xiao San, are you really my son?"
Tang Hao was fully aware of Tang San's cultivation.
The internal energy cultivated through Xuan Tian Gong, in the perception of a titled Douluo like Tang Hao, was indistinguishable from soul power. The only reason this soul power lacked any specific traits was because Tang San hadn't awakened his spirit yet.
Still, how could any child cultivate soul power without first awakening a spirit?
Even a hundred-thousand-year spirit beast in human form couldn't do that!
However, Tang Hao couldn't be sure whether a child born of a human and a transformed spirit beast might possess some innate cultivation method. Then again, he didn't really care about such things.
What puzzled him most was how mature Tang San seemed almost unnaturally so. It was like an adult's mind had been placed inside a child's body.
"Sigh... Ah Yin, I hope I'm just overthinking it."
Tang Hao murmured to himself. As thoughts of the Spirit Hall surfaced, his eyes turned bloodshot.
"Spirit Hall... Spirit Hall... All I have now is hatred. What else can I do? For now, it'll have to wait..."
---
Meanwhile...
Tang San followed a small stream next to the blacksmith shop to a nearby pool. A small waterfall trickled down the rocks—it wasn't very tall, just three or four meters high.
Under the waterfall, Zhou Qing was bathing.
Or rather, not just bathing—he was training his body under the waterfall.
Even though he was only a four-year-old child, the waterfall wasn't tall, so the falling water didn't hurt when it hit him.
Even without Xuan Tian Gong, Zhou Qing frequently used his body to try and sense the real world around him. According to the books on spirit cultivation, spirit masters had to absorb some form of external energy and convert it into soul power.
So in Zhou Qing's view, this world had to contain energy—what he called spiritual energy.
Though he couldn't sense it yet, he believed that by using his body to feel the natural world from an early age, he might gain some insights—like swimming to feel the flow of water, standing under a waterfall to sense how his muscles and skin responded.
He'd even lie on grassy fields with his eyes closed, trying to feel the fresh energy emitted by Blue Silver Grass, Wolf Bristle Grass, and other plants.
Sometimes, he'd run against the wind, testing how to move more efficiently against it—or with it—to increase his speed.
Without any special cheats, all he could do was explore every possibility on his own.
So what if he hadn't awakened his spirit yet?
This kind of training, which followed the laws of nature, didn't require a spirit.
Of course, in the field of spirit cultivation, it was well known that training speed could be improved by cultivating in a mimicked natural environment. This was something already recognized on the Douluo Continent.
Having a spirit could make it easier to sense nature, but it wasn't absolutely necessary.
---
"Brother Qing, you're bathing here again?"
Tang San took off his clothes and jumped into the pool, which was only about a meter deep.
To be honest, he'd already noticed that Zhou Qing was training his body in a rather unusual way. But he didn't find it odd, because Zhou Qing's second-floor bookshelf had a manual that talked about cultivating in simulated environments.
Different spirits responded better to different environments.
For example, someone with a Blue Silver Grass spirit would cultivate faster in lush, natural surroundings, or in places with suitable water and sunlight.
So even without awakening a spirit, one could use this method to feel the body's changes—after all, the spirit was inside the body; it just hadn't awakened yet.
Tang San even found that when he began imitating Zhou Qing's training methods, his Xuan Tian Gong progressed faster. He felt like he might reach a bottleneck within a year.
---
"Come on," Zhou Qing replied, "I'm not like the other kids in the village. This pool isn't deep, and there aren't many people around. Where else would I bathe?"
Then he added with a smirk, "And don't try to scare me with those stories about spirit beasts catching and eating kids. Villages near towns get regular patrols from the Spirit Hall and the city lord's men to prevent such things."
Spirit beasts usually stayed within designated forests, though occasionally, one might wander out.
In rare cases, ordinary animals or plants could evolve into spirit beasts due to certain conditions.
But the transformation wasn't simple. A tree or bird couldn't become a ten-year spirit beast just by living ten years.
Otherwise, given how many trees humans cut down each day, thousands of spirit beasts would die daily.
According to books on spirit beasts, the transformation of common creatures required extremely harsh conditions, including a massive amount of heaven-and-earth energy—what Zhou Qing called spiritual energy.
Even a ten-year beast, if it was a predator like a tiger or wolf, wouldn't be easy for an ordinary farmer to handle.
But if the person was a trained soldier with knowledge of spirit beasts and worked with others, they might find the beast's weak points and kill it in one strike.
There were even frightening tales of ordinary people defeating century-old spirit beasts in Zhou Qing's village and nearby areas.
For instance, fifty years ago, a hundred-year-old turtle-type spirit beast crawled out of a stream and broke into a nearby village to steal corn. It bit off a child's arm. The village's young men took up hoes and beat its shell for three days and nights before finally cracking it.
Sensing its broken shell, the old turtle stretched out its limbs and slowly crawled toward the stream.
But it was too slow. Once it exposed its limbs, the villagers seized the chance and struck hard.
In the end—
The turtle fled back into the stream...
Ever since, the farmers in the nearby villages warned their children never to play near the stream alone lest the old turtle come and eat them.
Some even said that afterward, both the Spirit Hall and the lord of Nuoding City sent people to track down the beast. They eventually killed a hundred-year-old turtle spirit beast known as the Spirit Resonance Turtle though its shell was still completely intact...