I Can See Your Combat Power

Longzhou Calendar, 1779, January 3rd

Even though the New Year’s Eve and the Spring Festival were celebrated at the clan’s ancestral hall, Xu Shuhui still organised a private family gathering from a traditional perspective.

In this gathering, there were no servants. There were only five members of the family, cooking a genuine reunion dinner.

Tang Sen was responsible for handling the animals, including skinning them, draining the blood, and breaking them down into chunks.

Tang Luo and Tang Xing were responsible for delivering these ingredients to their mother, who was at the stove-front.

Even Nuan Nuan, the youngest, was asked to wash the vegetables and pick out the undesirable ones with a small basin.

But honestly, Tang Luo felt that the most difficult time of the year is when it came to this reunion dinner, because their mother, Xu Shuhui’s cooking skills were, truthfully, quite ordinary.

Due to the increased quantity of each plate of food from Tang Sen’s presence, Xu Shuhui’s grasp of the seasoning intensity always seemed less than satisfactory—it was either too salty or too bland.

However, since the ingredients themselves were extremely nourishing and tasty, even when a subpar chef worked with them, the food could still be palatable, despite its ugly appearance.

Because Tang Sen would always finish all the food at once, Xu Shuhui felt that her cooking was exceptional, and she proudly declared that she made different dishes every year.

After an afternoon’s work, the family’s first meal was finally ready and laid out in the dining hall.

Looking at the table full of mouth-watering dishes, Xu Shuhui seemed completely intoxicated. She clapped her hands to attract everyone’s attention and said, “It’s a new year again. Luo Er has started his business, Tang Xing has also started practicing martial arts, and even Little Nuan Nuan will start her Foundation Building next year. Make your New Year’s wishes.”

This was a tradition of the Tang Family, part of the Yuanzhou custom. Every New Year, everyone would make a vision or goal for the new year, and then strive to achieve it.

Sometimes, the atmosphere and personality of a family are intimately linked to the lady of the house. If the lady is vain and power-hungry, it’s hard for the family to foster generous and tolerant children. Similarly, a generous and kind lady might not raise mean and stingy children.

Xu Shuhui especially liked this tradition of Yuanzhou because it gives people new goals to strive for each year. Therefore, it became a tradition in the Tang Sen Mansion.

When there was only one son, Tang Luo, in the house, Xu Shuhui would make Tang Sen make a wish for the coming year every New Year.

Tang Luo vaguely remembered that his wish last year seemed to transcend the mortal world. Although he hasn’t achieved it, transcending the mortal world now seemed like a easy task to him. Therefore, he was very calm about making a new New Year’s wish.

“Brother, what did you wish for?” The young boy asked Tang Luo, his eyes filled with curiosity.

Just as he was about to make a wish, Tang Luo glanced at the curious young boy and asked indifferently, “Is your wish to defeat Tang Zhen in the new year?”

The face of the curious young boy suddenly filled with disbelief, and he stammered, “You…how did you know?”

He even forgot to call him “brother” in his nervousness.

Tang Luo shook his head, not even bothering to respond, only thinking that youngsters had no ambition, with his wish being to defeat a little girl.

The scene in the Tang’s dining hall was not very large, and the conversation between the brothers was heard by Xu Shuhui. She curiously gossiped, “Tang Zhen? That sounds like a little girl’s name. Is she Little Xing’s sweetheart?”

I knew where the young boy’s gossiping came from. Tang Luo glanced at Xu Shuhui and thought confidently.

However, exposing a family member’s embarrassment always seemed exciting, so he cleared his throat and, ignoring the blushing young boy who wanted to jump up, described in vivid detail how he had hit a girl in the chest during a practice match, and then was chased and beaten by the girl until his face was a bloody mess.

“Bro-Brother! Brother!!” Despite the young boy’s shrill cry, the embarrassing incident of losing to a girl of the same age was instantly made public to the people closest to him.

Even the usually calm Tang Sen couldn’t help but twitch at the corner of his mouth when he heard that his brother was beaten into a pig by a girl for several days in a row, not to mention the mother and daughter who were laughing and hugging each other.

“Shame-brother, shame-” Little Nuan Nuan pointed to her round face and teased the young boy with her small hand.

Meanwhile, the soft laughter from Xu Shuhui, who was covering her mouth, was undoubtedly the last straw that broke the young boy’s heart.

The young boy was in complete despair. He buried his head in the bowl and his tears dripped drop by drop.

“Alright, alright, don’t cry, Xing. After turning thirteen, the girl will be no match for you-” Seeing her younger son crying with his face buried in the bowl, Xu Shuhui immediately felt distressed and comforted him.

The young boy lifted his tear-stained face and whined, “Why?”

Xu Shuhui froze for a moment, finding it hard to explain. She simply said, “Because after turning thirteen, Tang Zhen will start to get sick. For seven days each month, she won’t feel like practicing martial arts. Then you can catch up.”

Xu Shuhui thought she explained it quite well, but this didn’t satisfy the young boy.

The young boy widened his eyes and blurted out, “What kind of illness?”

“It’s a kind of illness that every girl will get. It’s no biggie.” Xu Shuhui smiled at the anxious young boy.

But the one who had the strangest expression had to be Tang Luo. He looked at the young boy’s face, and he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Upon hearing his mother’s words, the young boy’s first thought was not that he would catch up with her in a few years, but was concerned about what kind of illness she had. Could it be that his younger brother was a masochist, and had fallen for the girl while being continuously beaten into a pig-headedness by her?

After thinking about it, Tang Luo felt that it was very likely. He felt like a heavy burden was on him, the Tang family was declining, and it was up to him to shoulder the family responsibility.

“In the future, I must not become a henpecked husband!”

The fourteen-year-old him looked at Tang Sen and Tang Xing’s expressions, and changed his wish.

New Hall of the Tang Clan

Dark Thunder Hall did not choose a new piece of land to construct a new building, but directly set up the new hall in a forest behind the ancestral hall, making it seem very mysterious.

And stimulated by the heavy reward, the branch family heads of the Tang Clan brought their Transcendence-level warriors to the ancestral hall, handing them over to Tang Zuo.

In just a few days, five hundred Transcendence-level warriors were recruited.

However, it was simply daydreaming to think that these five hundred warriors, who had not practiced the Combined Attack Technique, could compete with Martial Hall. In the eyes of many people from Martial Hall, the newly formed Dark Thunder Hall was seen as a joke and a miscalculation of the Elder Council.

It would have made more sense to establish a new faction within Martial Hall and let Tang Zuo serve as its leader.

Otherwise, this new Hall would need to take all out their members just to complete a suppression mission. Some warriors from the Battle Hall thought maliciously.

January 4th

With the abrupt activation of the Ninth Room of the Star Pavilion, it indicated that all Star Seeds that Tang Luo could condense at this stage had emerged.

At the start of the New Year, Tang Luo still had 102 points of spiritual power left, and the increase in spiritual power reached 33 points per day, which is over 10,000 points for a year.

“Just ask you guys, have you ever seen a fifteen-year-old at Peak Transcendence?” He gleefully thought, unable to contain his happiness..