,
the Changshu Nine Dragon Grass, certainly reduced Tang San's sanity, but without the Changshu Nine Dragon Grass's initial strengthening, Tang San wouldn't have survived until his sanity was reduced.
Most of his current spirit power comes from external forces. Some, like spirit rings and spirit bones, are relatively gentle and can be absorbed with a bit of practice, while others, acquired through swallowing, are difficult to dispose of.
If this period had been three years, Tang San wouldn't have faced any major problems. However, in less than a year and a half, Tang San had unpredictably increased his level by nearly thirty levels in a single bound. The fact that he hadn't exploded was already a limit, influenced by numerous factors.
His body swelled like a balloon inflated to its limit; the slightest external pressure would have made him feel like he was about to burst. Another step would have meant death from the rupture of his meridians. He was walking a tightrope, constantly at risk of sudden death from the use of his spirit power.
Even Tang San could sense that something was wrong. But when Tang San thought about how he had already reached the rank of Soul King at the age of fourteen, possessing five ten-thousand-year spirit rings, a feat far superior to that of an average Titled Douluo, he began to overlook his physical problems.
After all, Tang San saw Tang Chen as his great-grandfather. If others could harm him, then his own great-grandfather certainly wouldn't.
His father had been captured, his godfather Yu Xiaogang was a complete loser, the Clear Sky Sect ostracized him, and his adoptive father Tang Xiao didn't understand him. Now, if even his only supporter harbored ill will, Tang San felt he had no one to trust besides Xiao Wu.
Uneasy, Tang San and Tang Chen arrived at Spirit City, awaiting the start of the finals.
Meanwhile, Chen Ming had been busy too. While seemingly insignificant, he had accomplished a great deal.
Recently, upon learning that the Min Clan was reuniting with the Clear Sky Sect, he disguised himself as a merchant and paid for the Crystal Dragon Blood Ginseng from Bai He. During this time, his divine trials and strength advancement had not ceased.
Despite the doubled pace and twice the difficulty of the Divine Exam, Chen Ming continued methodically. His strength had reached level eighty, and he was preparing to obtain his eighth spirit ring.
For various reasons, Chen Ming quietly left Douluo Continent in the latter stages of the Heavenly Dou preliminaries and fled to the Sun-Moon Continent. Leveraging Alan's abilities, he located a large gathering place of spirit beasts known as the Demonic Forest.
Chen Ming's target for his eighth spirit ring was the Evil Emperor. After all,
the Evil Emperor possessed the greatest spiritual power on the continent, and even among spirit masters, he was undoubtedly a demigod. While his power was quantitatively inferior to that of the lucky Tianmeng Ice Silkworm, his power was far superior. He was a spirit beast with one foot on the threshold of the divine realm.
If the world's rules didn't forbid it, the Evil Emperor, like Di Tian and the Deep Sea Demon Whale King, would have achieved divine status. Just as the Deep Sea Demon Whale King claimed he could attain divine status by devouring Tang San, who possessed the power of a Sea God, the Evil Emperor had also claimed he could forcibly cross over to the divine realm by devouring the Tianmeng Ice Silkworm.
His 780,000 years of cultivation was a considerable tonic for Chen Ming, and his powerful mental strength could also strengthen Chen Ming's own spirit.
The Demonic Forest was now a gathering place for soul beasts even larger than the Tiandou Great Forest. This was not only because the Demonic Emperor, the king of the Demonic Forest, never hid his presence, but also because the humans on the Sun and Moon Continent had not yet formed a unified force, failing to reduce the range of soul beasts.
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Nowadays, every empire on the Sun-Moon Continent keeps a respectful distance from the Demon Forest. The Evil Eye Empire, one of the continent's five major empires, whose totem and name are the Evil Eye, holds an inexplicable reverence for the Demon Forest.
While mainlanders call it the Demon Forest, the Evil Eye Empire officially calls it the Holy Demon Forest. While the Demon Forest is technically part of the Evil Eye Empire's territory, the Evil Eye Empire has always prohibited its spirit masters from hunting souls there.
As for the connection between the Evil Eye Empire and the Demon Forest, that has nothing to do with Chen Ming. He simply arrived in the Demon Forest, identified the source of the undisguised, powerful aura within, and then immediately sneaked in.
The Demon Forest's overall atmosphere is dark and mysterious, and the spirit beasts that inhabit it mostly possess spiritual and dark attributes. Because spirit beasts like the Evil Eye feed on the souls of other spirit beasts, Chen Ming occasionally witnessed scenes straight out of a horror film.
Things like half-rotten corpses were minor. Occasionally, a giant eyeball could be seen resting on another soul beast, draining its soul and chewing it.
According to the current Spirit Hall's perspective on Douluo Continent, the Evil Eye Clan, from top to bottom, were undoubtedly genuine evil soul beasts.
However, the Sun-Moon Continent lacked a human power like the Spirit Hall, and the strongest soul beast clan was the Evil Emperor, their ancestor. Therefore, the Evil Eye, a soul beast that should have been exterminated, thrived in the Demon Forest, becoming a massive group.
Atop a relatively flat mountain, a massive Evil Eye Tyrant, over three hundred meters in diameter, lay comfortably atop, eyes closed, basking in the warm sunlight. Beside him, ninety-nine tentacles, over five hundred meters long, dangled carelessly from the cliff, their massive body practically covering the entire peak.
Beneath him, a large group of ape-like soul beasts, each with a single eye, carefully massaged each of the Evil Emperor's tentacles. The technique was evidently quite sophisticated. Though merely a group of soul beasts, the rhythm was almost as skilled as that of a human masseur.
While the smallest of these ape-like soul beasts stood nearly four meters tall and possessed nearly ten thousand years of cultivation, the largest possessed two heads, stood twenty meters tall, and possessed the cultivation of a hundred-thousand-year soul beast. Yet, compared to the Evil Emperor, these bizarre ape-like soul beasts looked like puny ants.
A native of the Sun and Moon Continent would undoubtedly have recognized these apes.
While these one-eyed apes appeared timid and vulnerable before the Evil Emperor, they were in reality a unique hybrid born from the union of the Cyclops and the Evil Eye, known as the Evil-Eyed Demonic Ape.
Drawing on the bloodlines of these two spiritual soul beasts, each possessed the qualities of a top-tier soul beast and possessed intelligence comparable to that of a human. Its character is extremely brutal, and it enjoys consuming human brains and the souls of various creatures. It often raids human villages and towns in groups, making it a notorious soul beast on the Sun and Moon Continent.
Although this scene seems abstract, Chen Ming can still sense a sense of comfort and weakness from the Evil Emperor's massive body.
Chen Ming feels that the Evil Emperor has suffered serious injuries. Although he has recovered, he is still not in peak condition.
(End of this chapter)