The Nine Dragon Grass certainly reduced Tang San's rationality, but without the physical enhancement from the Nine Dragon Grass in the first place, Tang San wouldn't have even survived to the point where his rationality declined.
Most of Tang San's current soul power comes from external sources. Some of these, like soul rings and soul bones, are relatively mild and can be absorbed after some adjustment, while others, gained through devouring, are much harder to integrate.
If this process had taken three years, Tang San wouldn't have had major problems. However, in less than a year and a half, Tang San had raised his strength by nearly thirty levels through extreme and unorthodox means. The fact that he hadn't exploded yet was already the result of multiple factors working in his favor.
His body was like an overinflated balloon, where even the slightest external pressure could make him feel as if he were about to burst. If he pushed forward any further, it would lead to the rupture of all his meridians and death. At this point, he was walking a tightrope on the edge of a cliff, constantly at risk of sudden death due to the strain of using his soul power.
Although Tang San himself could sense that something was wrong with his body, he brushed it off when he considered that, at the age of just fourteen, he had already reached the level of a Soul King, with five ten-thousand-year soul rings on his body. He was not far behind even compared to some titled Douluos.
In Tang San's mind, Tang Chen was his great-grandfather. Others might harm him, but his great-grandfather surely wouldn't, right?
With his father captured, his godfather Yu Xiaogang being utterly useless, the Clear Sky Clan rejecting him, his foster father Tang Xiao misunderstanding him—if even his only remaining support, his great-grandfather, harbored ill intentions toward him, then Tang San felt that, apart from Xiao Wu, he truly had no one else to trust.
With this uneasy mindset, Tang San followed Tang Chen to Spirit City, waiting for the grand finals to begin.
...
During this time, Chen Ming wasn't idle either. Although he didn't make any major moves on the surface, he had been quietly accomplishing a great deal.
Not long ago, upon learning that the Speed Clan was trying to reconnect with the Clear Sky Clan, Chen Ming disguised himself as a merchant and directly bought the Crystal Dragon Blood Ginseng from Bai He. Meanwhile, he continued advancing both his divine trials and his strength.
Even with double the pace and double the difficulty of the divine trials, Chen Ming proceeded methodically. His strength had already reached level eighty, and he was preparing to obtain his eighth soul ring.
For various reasons, Chen Ming quietly left the Douluo Continent during the later stages of the Heaven Dou qualifiers. He traveled to the Sun Moon Continent, where, with the help of Ah Yin's abilities, he located the Evil Demon Forest, a large gathering place for soul beasts.
Chen Ming had decided that the target for his eighth soul ring would be none other than the Evil Emperor.
The Evil Emperor was currently the strongest spiritual being on the continent and undoubtedly a demigod in terms of soul master strength. While it lacked the sheer quantity of spiritual energy possessed by Skydream Iceworm, who had lucked out immensely, the quality of its power far surpassed it. The Evil Emperor stood with one foot at the threshold of the divine realm.
If not for the world's rules preventing it, the Evil Emperor would be just like Di Tian or the Deep Sea Demon Whale King—capable of ascending to godhood on its own. Just as the Deep Sea Demon Whale King claimed it could ascend by devouring Tang San, who possessed the power of the Sea God, the Evil Emperor once claimed that it could forcibly cross into the divine realm if it consumed the Skydream Iceworm.
With 780,000 years of cultivation, the Evil Emperor was a massive supplement for Chen Ming, and its powerful spiritual energy could further enhance Chen Ming's mind.
The Evil Demon Forest was now larger than the Star Dou Forest by a significant margin. This was not only because the Evil Emperor, the ruler of the forest, never concealed its existence but also because the human forces on the Sun Moon Continent had not yet unified and thus had not encroached upon the living space of soul beasts.
Currently, every empire on the Sun Moon Continent maintains a respectful distance from the Evil Demon Forest. Among the five great empires on the continent, the Evil Eye Empire, which took the Evil Eye as its totem and name, held a peculiar reverence for the forest. Its royal family harbored an inexplicable sense of awe toward the Evil Demon Forest.
While most people referred to it as the Evil Demon Forest, the Evil Eye Empire officially called it the Holy Demon Forest. In name, the forest was considered part of the Evil Eye Empire's territory, but the empire strictly forbade its soul masters from entering the forest to hunt soul rings.
As for the connection between the Evil Eye Empire and the Evil Demon Forest, it had nothing to do with Chen Ming. After locating the unmistakable aura of overwhelming power within the forest, he immediately began his stealthy approach.
The Evil Demon Forest exuded a dark and eerie atmosphere. Most of the soul beasts living within it were inclined toward spiritual and shadow attributes. Due to the Evil Eyes' habit of feeding on the souls of other creatures, Chen Ming occasionally encountered scenes straight out of a horror movie.
Half-rotten corpses were small matters; sometimes, he would see a massive eyeball perched on another soul beast, simultaneously extracting its soul and chewing on its flesh.
From the perspective of the Douluo Continent's Spirit Hall, the Evil Eyes were undoubtedly genuine evil soul beasts from top to bottom.
But since the Sun Moon Continent lacked a human organization like the Spirit Hall, and since the strongest soul beast in the region was the Evil Emperor—the progenitor of the Evil Eye species—the Evil Eyes, which should have been exterminated, had flourished in the Evil Demon Forest, growing into a massive clan.
On a relatively gentle mountain peak, a massive Evil Eye Tyrant with a diameter of over three hundred meters lay leisurely on the mountaintop, basking in the warmth of the sun with its eyes closed. Surrounding it, eighty-one tentacles, each over five hundred meters long, dangled casually over the cliffside, its enormous body almost completely covering the mountain.
Below it, a group of ape-like soul beasts with a single eye carefully massaged the Evil Emperor's tentacles. Their technique was surprisingly skilled, rivaling that of human masseurs.
Among these ape-like creatures, the shortest stood nearly four meters tall with close to ten thousand years of cultivation, while the largest had two heads, stood twenty meters tall, and possessed the strength of a hundred-thousand-year soul beast. Yet in comparison to the Evil Emperor, this group of bizarre ape-like creatures seemed as insignificant as ants.
If the locals from the Sun Moon Continent were here, they would immediately recognize the identity of these apes.
Though they appeared weak and submissive before the Evil Emperor, these creatures were a hybrid species born from the union of One-Eyed Giants and Evil Eyes, known as Evil Eye Demon Apes.
Due to their lineage from two highly spiritual soul beast species, every Evil Eye Demon Ape possessed top-tier potential and intelligence comparable to humans. They were ferocious, with a penchant for consuming human brains and the souls of other creatures. Frequently attacking villages and towns in groups, they were infamous throughout the Sun Moon Continent.
Despite the absurdity of the scene before him, Chen Ming could still sense the combination of relaxation and weakness emanating from the Evil Emperor's enormous body.
From Chen Ming's perception, the Evil Emperor seemed to have suffered significant injuries in the past. Although it had mostly recovered, it was still not in peak condition.