With Yu Tianheng passing this trial, Ye Lingling and Ning Rongrong also successfully completed their fifth trial.
Yu Tianheng and Ning Rongrong were at the Black Level Sixth Trial, meaning they only needed one more test to complete their assessment. Meanwhile, Ye Lingling and Xiao Wu were at the Red Level Seventh Trial, requiring two more trials to finish.
As for the others, they had already completed all their required trials.
"Little San, now it's your turn," Lin Mu said.
Looking at Sea Dragon Douluo, who was currently meditating to recover, Tang San's eyes flashed with reluctance. "Master, this is, after all, the Sea God's trial. Isn't it a bit inappropriate to do this?"
Although challenging a heavily exhausted opponent would make passing the test easier, it felt too much like taking a dishonorable shortcut.
Hearing this, Lin Mu rolled his eyes and said irritably, "Why didn't you think of being 'appropriate' when you tied up Sea Woman Douluo?"
Upon hearing this, Tang San was speechless and could only awkwardly scratch the back of his head.
At the time, he thought Sea Woman Douluo posed no lethal threat to him, and he had been eager to efficiently show off his power in front of his master, so he hadn't thought much about the optics.
Now, looking back, he realized there was indeed a hint of differential treatment in how he handled the guardians.
"Master, I just feel that doing this is a bit too easy. It goes against the original intention of participating in a divine assessment designed to push our limits," Tang San said earnestly.
Hearing this, Lin Mu fell into deep thought.
Under his strict tutelage, Tang San's cultivation journey had progressed relatively smoothly.
Aside from being beaten by his own father, Tang Hao, he had encountered virtually no insurmountable setbacks.
While his raw combat strength had increased significantly, he perhaps lacked a certain grinding, desperate combat experience.
After a moment, Lin Mu sighed, patted Tang San's shoulder, and said evenly, "This is your trial, so of course the method you choose to pass it is entirely up to you."
"Thank you, Master."
Tang San's eyes gradually hardened with resolve. He leaped across the sea-within-a-sea, landing softly in front of the massive Sea Dragon Holy Pillar.
Sensing the commotion, Sea Dragon Douluo slowly opened his eyes, breaking his meditation. He looked at Tang San standing before him and said calmly, "You must be Tang San, right? Are you planning to challenge me now?"
Sea Dragon Douluo wasn't surprised at all by the tactic of attrition warfare. It had appeared in previous rounds of assessments, and he had received word of it.
Although he was personally somewhat dissatisfied with fighting while drained, it didn't violate any rules.
At this moment, Tang San suddenly took out several glowing Blue Silver Pills and handed them to Sea Dragon Douluo.
"What are these?" Sea Dragon Douluo asked, bewildered.
"These Blue Silver Pills are created by my fourth soul skill. They possess incredibly potent healing properties and can rapidly restore your soul power. Consume them. Once you've fully recovered, we can have a fair fight," Tang San said firmly.
Hearing this, Sea Dragon Douluo was completely dumbfounded.
This was entirely beyond his expectations. A challenger was actually offering precious recovery items to help their examiner heal before a fight?
After a moment of stunned silence, he asked, genuinely puzzled, "Tang San, why are you helping me? By doing this, you're deliberately putting yourself in a vastly disadvantageous position!"
"Don't misunderstand, I'm not doing this out of pity to 'help' you. If I had to put it into words, it's just to ensure the assessment can proceed under normal, honorable conditions," Tang San said calmly.
Seeing the unwavering determination in the young man's eyes, Sea Dragon Douluo didn't waste any more words. As a proud warrior, he naturally preferred a direct, peak-condition confrontation anyway.
Looking at the glowing blue-gold pills in his hand, he didn't hesitate.
Trusting the pride of the challenger, he stuffed them all into his mouth without any doubt about their safety.
After all, he was currently seriously injured and drained; Tang San had no tactical need to poison him when he could just attack right now.
In just a few minutes, the miraculous effects took hold. Sea Dragon Douluo's internal injuries were basically healed, and his depleted soul power had surged back to over ninety percent capacity.
Since Tang San had broken through to Level 90, the restorative effect of his fourth soul skill had grown exponentially.
Even a Level 95 Super Douluo could recover a massive amount of vitality from a single pill. Sea Dragon Douluo, having consumed seven or eight Blue Silver Pills at once, had essentially been forcefully restored to his peak condition.
"Are you absolutely sure you're not secretly a food-type soul master?"
Sea Dragon Douluo was utterly shocked by the astonishing, near-instantaneous effects of the Blue Silver Pills.
To recover from a battered, exhausted state to peak combat readiness in mere minutes, the effect was simply too exaggerated for a control-type soul master.
"It's just a specialized soul skill, nothing worth mentioning." Tang San waved his hand casually, then asked, "Do you need a few more minutes to recuperate?"
"No need. Thanks to your Blue Silver Pills, my injuries are completely healed. However, even though I owe you a favor for this, I absolutely will not hold back during the trial," Sea Dragon Douluo said seriously, rising to his feet.
Tang San remained perfectly calm. He had only helped Sea Dragon Douluo heal to ensure a fair fight and save time; he didn't expect, nor want, any mercy.
"Enough talk. Let's begin."
"Then be careful."
After a phenomenally fierce, earth-shattering battle, Tang San finally managed to defeat Sea Dragon Douluo at his absolute peak.
Not long after the brutal battle concluded, Bo Saixi appeared silently behind the group on the shore.
She announced that because of their performance, the difficulty of the sixth trial had been drastically increased. Their new objective: they would have to endure a full incense stick's worth of time in combat against her.
Only five people were eligible to participate in this sixth trial: Tang San, Ye Lingling, Xiao Wu, Ning Rongrong, and Yu Tianheng.
"All of my soul bone skills are still completely restricted," Tang San said gravely, reading the prompt in his mind.
If his soul bones hadn't been disabled, he would have been fairly confident he could hold out against Senior Bo Saixi for a single incense stick's time.
But without his primary defensive and utility tools, it seemed he had almost zero chance of survival.
He realized that perhaps using the team-attrition trick during the fifth trial had angered the Sea God, directly resulting in this massive spike in difficulty.
"Fortunately, the rules state Senior Bo Saixi can only use her first six soul skills, and she is forbidden from using her domain or drawing upon the ambient power of the sea. Otherwise, we would be completely hopeless," Ning Rongrong said with a slight hint of relief.
Hearing this, Tang San suddenly remembered the cryptic words Sea Dragon Douluo had spoken after their fight.
In the fifth trial, Tang San technically needed to earn the genuine "approval" of all seven examiners.
However, by brutally binding Sea Woman Douluo and exploiting Sea Spear Douluo's injuries, he hadn't truly gained their martial approval.
If he hadn't chosen to heal Sea Dragon Douluo and fight him fairly at the end, the Sea God's punishment for the sixth trial would likely have been even more impossibly difficult.
Seeing his disciples' low spirits, Lin Mu spoke up. "The assessment isn't for another three days. There's still plenty of time. You can take your time to rest and formulate a proper strategy."
In reality, Tang San could simply absorb the Myriad Demon King as his soul spirit right now, which would instantly make passing the sixth trial a breeze.
However, Lin Mu knew that doing so would undoubtedly cause the Sea God to exponentially inflate the difficulty of the final assessments in response.
In Lin Mu's view, the Sea God had absolutely no principles whatsoever.
He constantly altered the rules on a whim, artificially inflating difficulty purely for the sake of making things harder, even going so far as to blatantly prohibit the use of a soul master's own hard-earned soul bones.
Having a complete, god-tier set of soul bones, yet being arbitrarily forbidden from using them, wasn't that just blatant, unprincipled bullying by a supposed god?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the island, Dai Mubai and Ma Hongjun had just trekked back from the outer sea and rushed toward the Sea Ghost Holy Pillar.
When they arrived, they found Sea Ghost Douluo sitting cross-legged on the ground, deep in meditation.
Judging from the extensively damaged terrain surrounding the pillar, a massive battle had clearly taken place here very recently.
"If I'm not mistaken, Tang San and his group have already completed their assessments here, and they've probably already passed," Ma Hongjun guessed, looking at the scorched earth.
"Tsk tsk. Looks like they've actually improved quite a bit during this time," Dai Mubai said calmly, his tone surprisingly devoid of its usual venom.
For the current Dai Mubai, the only thing that truly mattered was passing the grueling tests of the God of Wrath.
As for past grudges with Tang San, he found he no longer cared much. As long as he could successfully ascend and become a god, none of those petty mortal squabbles mattered.
In fact, he thought, if Tang San was willing to bury the hatchet once they both ascended, he wouldn't mind reconciling.
They could even team up and dominate the God Realm together in the future.