Only through working hard in his cultivation would he be able to become stronger and better protect her. As long as he could reach a certain level of power, he wouldn't have to worry about her leaving him even if she were to recover her memories.

With that in mind, Tang Wulin was filled with motivation, and he immediately called up Jiang Wuyue to continue beating him...

"Why is it that after beating you up, I'm sore all over the place, but you're completely fine? What is your body made of?" Jiang Wuyue complained.

In the beginning, beating up Tang Wulin had been quite a satisfying experience, but after a while, he discovered that Tang Wulin wasn't affected by his beatings at all, yet he was always exhausted by the end. There's no way that Tang Wulin was human! Even iron and steel would've been reduced to powder by his attacks, yet they only managed to inflict a few slight injuries on him, and those injuries would be completely gone by the time they met again the next day.

As such, the initial sense of satisfaction and achievement was constantly on the wane.

Tang Wulin cracked his knuckles, and suggested, "How about we switch roles next time?

Jiang Wuyue immediately shook his head vigorously. "No way! By the way, why are you asking me to beat you up? With your personality, you definitely wouldn't do something for no good reason."

Tang Wulin made no attempt to hide the truth. "I'm doing this so I can better control my own strength. Now that you mention it, I don't really feel your beatings all that much anymore; it's time for me to change to someone else. I'll call up Big Brother Ma next time."

He currently shared an extremely good relationship with Ma Shan. He had forged all of the metals required for Ma Shan's suit of three-word battle armor, and they were not just soul refined metals, but soul refined alloys instead.

After breaking his 10th seal and attaining his soul core, Tang Wulin's control in his forging had also improved significantly. As a result, the success rate for his spirit alloy fusion and soul refinement had both improved drastically.

Ma Shan naturally couldn't be more pleased with this. Not only would a good suit of three-word battle armor enhance his powers tremendously, it would also forge a great foundation that would increase his chances of being able to attain a suit of four-word battle armor in the future.

In the world of battle armor masters, there were quite a considerable number of three-word battle armor masters, but four-word battle armor masters were exceedingly rare. This was partially due to the extreme shortage of Divine Blacksmiths on the continent, but a major factor behind this also lay in the flaws of many suits of three-word battle armor, which prevented them from being upgraded to a suit of four-word battle armor.

With Tang Wulin's forging skills, not only had many of the flaws in Ma Shan's suit of two-word battle armor been ironed out during this upgrade process, the quality of his suit of three-word battle armor was definitely one of the best among its kind in the entire Blood God Legion.

Of course, with his straightforward personality, he made no effort to hide Tang Wulin's talents, and all of the two-word battle armor masters in the legion were now staring at Tang Wulin like starving wolves. He hadn't received that many soul refinement jobs in the past, but there were now almost constantly people piling in through the doors of his workshop. However, with his limited time, he was only able to accept a small proportion of these jobs.

In the past, there may have been people who would've tried to pressure him into taking on their jobs, but he was now Blood Nine! Who would dare to exert any pressure on him?

In reality, the main beneficiary from all of this actually wasn't him. Instead, it was Long Yuxue as half of all of the profits from Tang Wulin's workshop went to her. Tang Wulin was a very stingy person, but he also definitely kept his promises. As such, Long Yuxue profited to an even greater degree than Tang Wulin did from this workshop as she didn't need to do any work.

As a result of this vast influx of accolades, Long Yuxue had recently purchased a lot of expensive equipment and become significantly more powerful. She still wasn't as powerful as Jiang Wuyue, but it was looking very much like she would be able to surpass him in the near future.

This made Long Yuxue's attitude toward Tang Wulin change even further. However, the only times that she could see Tang Wulin now was when he was forging in his workshop.

In her eyes, Tang Wulin was like a tireless automaton; all he did every single day was cultivate and forge without taking any time to relax and enjoy himself.

He was cultivating in the Blood God Battalion, which Long Yuxue was prohibited from entering, but she had known Tang Wulin for the longest period of time among everyone in the legion, so she could clearly sense that Tang Wulin seemed to be changing noticeably every single day.

From the time when he'd first arrived until now, he had completely evolved into a new man.

Tang Wulin had managed to progress through the finals of the Star Battle Net Inter-federation Competition very smoothly thus far. His opponents were all quite powerful, but following his recent transformations, none of them posed much of a challenge to him. The elimination stage quickly concluded, and the round-robin stage commenced.

After that would be the set of elimination rounds.

There were a total of eight groups in the round-robin stage with four people in each group, and only two people would progress from each group to the final 16. There was no risk of immediate elimination in the round-robin stage, but every match had to be treated as a must-win battle. Only then would one get a chance to progress to the next stage.

"What are you doing, Gu Yue?... Oh, if you like it, then eat some more of it... I'm great; don't worry about me. I'm entering the round-robin stage now, so I'll have to compete every single day, and I won't be able to visit you until after the round-robin stage. I'll see if I can pay you a visit in between the two stages."

"There's no need for that, Father; just come to visit me after the competition. Otherwise, it'll be too much of a hassle for you."

"Alright. What a good girl you are!"

……

After ending the call, the smile on Gu Yuena's face was instantly replaced by a cold expression. She dialed another number, and after the call was connected, she said, "Begin the infiltration. Is everything already prepared?"

"Yes, my Lord, everything has already been prepared," a deep voice replied from the other end of the line.

"Good. Make sure to constantly keep me updated, and don't let the Spirit Pagoda discover what we're doing."

"Don't worry, my Lord, we've begun our infiltration from the elementary Spirit Ascension Plane, so they won't be able to catch on to what we're doing."

After ending the call, Gu Yue combed her hair before striding out of her room. If Tang Wulin could see her right now, he would definitely be given a huge shock as she was no longer at the Scorching Basin. Instead, she was in a world that was filled with metal.

"Are you ready?" A pleasant voice sounded beside Gu Yuena's ears, and Heavenly Phoenix Douluo Leng Yaozhu was already waiting for her outside.

"Yes, Teacher," Gue Yuena replied with a nod.

A faint smile appeared on Leng Yaozhu's face. This disciple of hers had never disappointed her. She raised a hand and high-fived Gu Yuena. "Show them just how powerful my disciple is."

"I will." An extremely determined look appeared on Gu Yuena's face. After passing this trial, she would officially become a backup Spirit Envoy, which would make her a truly high-ranking member of the Spirit Pagoda.

The metal doors were opened, and Gu Yuena strode into the other room. What was awaiting her was the most rigorous trial that the Spirit Pagoda had to offer.

……

"Let the first round-robin match begin!"

Following the announcement from the electronic voice, Tang Wulin cast his gaze toward his opponent.

His opponent had the number "47" hovering above their head.

The one thing that set the Star Battle Net Inter-federation Competition apart from other competitions in the world of Soul Masters was that no one knew anything about their opponents, and there was no way to investigate anything about anyone. The mainframe kept all of the competitors' information extremely confidential, and one could only learn about their opponents by assessing their past competition footage. However, the main issue there was that no one even knew who was in their group, so they had no idea who their next opponent would be. As such, they'd have to learn about a vast number of opponents.

Of course, this wasn't a problem to Tang Wulin as he had never even bothered to research any of his opponents. Instead, he preferred for his opponent to be as mysterious as possible as the extra element of facing the unknown would provide him with greater stimulus.

At this point, he had already mastered his own body to an elementary level, so he wouldn't lose control as he often did after first breaking his 10th seal. The more control he gained over his own strength, the more self-confident he became.

There was still around half a month left until he had to face Blood Nine's challenge, yet he had never been as confident as he was now. Only he could completely comprehend just how powerful he had become.