Douluo Continent: The Twin Holy Dragons of Light and Darkness, the Dragon Emperor Breaks Through the

He hated his father.

He hated those who looked down on him.

Every time he got drunk, he would curse those people one by one, cursing them until he was hoarse and tears streamed down his face, until he didn't even know who he was cursing anymore.

Countless nights, in his drunken stupor, he would grit his teeth and curse his family, curse its decline, curse its demise, and curse those high and mighty people to one day taste the bitterness of being trampled underfoot.

But now, the curse has come true.

The family has truly perished.

My father is really dead.

The Grand Elder and the Supreme Elder are both dead.

The surname Blue Lightning Tyrannosaurus, a name that once resounded throughout the continent, will never exist again.

Yu Xiaogang's lips trembled, and a strange sound came from her throat, as if something was breaking deep inside.

His eyes were so red they looked like they were about to bleed, but not a single tear fell.

His hands trembled more and more violently, and the notice rattled in his hands like a withered leaf struggling in a gale.

"Get out." His voice was so hoarse it didn't sound like his own, as if someone had sanded down his vocal cords.

Teacher Liu was stunned for a moment and didn't react.

"Mr. Yu..."

"go out!"

Yu Xiaogang suddenly raised her head, her eyes bloodshot. The bloodshot wasn't a moist red, but a dry, burning red, as if there were two balls of fire burning in her eyes.

His expression was terrifyingly ferocious; the muscles in his face were contorted, the corners of his mouth were pulled down, and his chin was trembling violently.

Startled, Teacher Liu took three steps back, bumping her back against the door frame, and her glasses were knocked askew.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but seeing Yu Xiaogang's appearance, he swallowed all his words.

He turned and ran, his boots making a series of hurried sounds on the cobblestones, and soon disappeared outside the courtyard.

The door was not closed.

The wind rushed in from outside, passing through the dilapidated wooden door, making the manuscripts on the table rustle and flutter up one by one, like a flock of startled white butterflies, fluttering in the air a few times before falling helplessly to the ground.

The stench of the stinking ditch outside the window rushed in with the wind, a foul stench mixed with the smells of ink, alcohol, and old paper, creating a chaotic mess in the cramped room.

Yu Xiaogang sat there, motionless, like a statue.

The notice was still in his hand, crumpled into a ball, and the writing on it was even more blurred.

His fingers were embedded in the paper, his fingertips turning white, as if he wanted to crush the paper, or as if he was afraid it would slip from his hand.

He didn't know how long he had been sitting there.

Maybe a quarter of an hour, maybe an hour.

Time in this room became a viscous, textureless thing, like the water in the stinking ditch outside the window, flowing slowly and silently, never reaching its end.

A series of commotions came from outside the door.

This dilapidated college, usually as quiet as a tomb, was in an uproar today.

Some people were running in the corridor, their footsteps clattering; others were speaking loudly, their voices carrying a mixture of excitement and tension.

Some people were even leaning out of their windows and shouting towards the outside of the courtyard wall, as if they wanted to send the message to the whole world.

Yu Xiaogang heard a few scattered words: the founding of the Spirit Hall, Empress Qian Renxue, Regent Qian Xunji, and the Spirit Empire.

These words drifted in and out of his ears, leaving no trace in his mind, only endless annoyance.

It's like a pebble thrown into a stinky ditch; it makes a splash, bubbles up a few times, and then everything returns to calm.

None of that mattered to him.

He was just a good-for-nothing who freeloaded, a good-for-nothing who couldn't even protect his own family, a good-for-nothing who couldn't even protect the woman he loved.

He doesn't even deserve to be called trash, because trash at least has some value in being discarded, while he doesn't even have that.

He was just a wisp of air, a non-existent person, a shadow that could not be left in anyone's memory.

Yu Xiaogang stood up, her movements as stiff as a rusty machine.

He walked to the window, leaned against the windowsill, and looked out at the stinking ditch.

Chapter 181 Rats in the Gutter

The water was black and smelled foul, with rotten vegetable leaves and dead rats floating on it, along with clumps of dark green duckweed that reflected a sickly, oily sheen in the sunlight.

A fat rat was struggling on the surface of the water, its four legs kicking wildly and splashing tiny water droplets; it looked like it was about to drown.

Another mouse was squatting on the bank, tilting its head and watching it. It neither helped nor left, just watched, its eyes filled with a cold indifference that humans could never understand.

He stared at it for a long time, then suddenly laughed.

The smile was bitter and self-deprecating; the corners of his mouth were pulled upwards, forming a barely passable smile, but there was no joy in his eyes.

That smile was uglier than crying, and it was heartbreaking.

"They're all dead," he said to the window, his voice very soft, as if he were talking to himself, or as if he were asking the stinking ditch, "They're all dead."

The stinking ditch did not answer him.

The nearly drowning rat finally stopped moving, floating on the surface of the water, belly up, its four legs stiffly stretched out.

The mouse on the shore waited for a while, and when it was sure the mouse wouldn't move anymore, it turned around and disappeared into a hole at the base of the wall.

Yu Xiaogang turned around, walked back to the table, and pulled out a wine jar from under the table.

The wine jar was made of coarse pottery, with a rough surface covered in dust, and the mouth of the jar was plugged with a rag.

He pulled off the rag, lifted the jar, and poured it into his mouth.

Cheap liquor dripped down his chin and onto his clothes, quickly leaving a large wet patch.

The wine was bitter and spicy, cutting his throat and stomach like a knife, yet he felt no pain.

Or rather, that kind of pain was nothing compared to the pain in his heart.

He took a sip, paused, caught his breath, and then took another sip.

By the fifth or sixth sip, tears finally streamed down my face.

It wasn't a loud wail, nor a heart-wrenching cry, but rather silent, suppressed tears that seeped from the deepest part of the soul.

The tears streamed down his wrinkled face, over his rough stubble, and into his cheap, liquor-soaked clothes, mixing with the wine so well that it was impossible to distinguish between tears and liquor.

He thought of many people.

I remembered my father, Yu Yuanzhen, with his face that never smiled, and how he stood in the center of the square, wearing his signature blue robe with the emblem of the Blue Lightning Tyrannosaurus Rex embroidered on his chest, his eyes like lightning and his voice like thunder.

That was the most imposing person he had ever met, and also the one who terrified him the most.

He remembered the First Elder, Yu Luomian, that always smiling old man who would praise other people's children with a smile, tell them to leave with a smile, and cross him off the family tree with a smile.

He thought of the Supreme Elder Yu Tianxiao, the old man who never spoke to him, who looked at him as if he were a wisp of air, his gaze passing through him and landing in a very, very far place.

He also thought of many people, those clansmen whose names he could and couldn't recall, those relatives who were polite to him in public but gossiped about him behind his back, those elders who deliberately placed him in the corner at family gatherings, and those aunts and maternal aunts who served the best dishes to their own children and pushed the leftovers to his side at the table.

Some of them disliked him, some pitied him, and some didn't care about him at all, but no one treated him sincerely, and no one thought he should be a member of this family.

He was like a patch on the brocade of the Blue Lightning Tyrannosaurus Rex, and no one wanted to give him a second glance.

But now, even that piece of brocade is gone.

The entire family, its centuries-old foundation, the glory of the three upper clans, and the legacy of the Blue Lightning Tyrannosaurus Rex, vanished overnight.

He hates them.

He harbored hatred for half his life.

But when the object of his hatred suddenly disappears, what remains in his heart is not relief or pleasure, but a huge, unfillable void, like a chest cavity with its heart ripped out, so empty that he can hear the wind.

The wine jar is empty.

Yu Xiaogang threw the jar on the ground, and it shattered, shards scattering everywhere.

He looked down at the fragments and suddenly felt that his heart was like this jar, already cracked, now completely shattered, and could never be pieced back together.

He then pulled out a jar of wine from under the table.

This is the last jar he's stored. He originally planned to keep it for another half a month, but now he can't care less.

He broke the mud seal on the mouth of the jar and gulped down a few more mouthfuls.

The sun was gradually setting in the west, and light shone through the window onto the manuscripts scattered on the floor.

The manuscript was filled with densely packed words, his martial spirit theories written over the years, and his self-righteous and proud efforts.

Looking at those words, he suddenly found them ridiculously cheap.

What's the point of writing all this stuff about martial spirit theory and soul master research when you can't even protect your own family or your own surname?

Who cares about a piece of useless research?

Who would take the words of someone who can't even save themselves seriously?

He thought of Bibi Dong again.

This name is like a knife, stuck in his heart for over twenty years, and he has never been able to pull it out.

He thought time would fade her memory, and that alcohol would gradually burn away his recollections of her. But it turns out that the deepest feelings cannot be burned away; they burned into his bones, into his marrow, and became an integral part of his life.

When he first met Bibi Dong, she was still the Holy Maiden of the Spirit Hall, young, beautiful, and talented, like a dazzling star, radiant with light.

And what about him?

A good-for-nothing abandoned by his family, a pathetic wretch who even despises his own martial spirit—his martial spirit is a pig named Luo Sanpao, and he is ridiculed wherever he goes—a vagrant who is ignored by everyone.

The distance between them is farther than that between heaven and hell.

But he still fell in love with her.

He fell in love with her like a moth drawn to a flame.

He knew it was foolish, that it was self-destructive, that she would never even look him in the eye, but he couldn't help it.