Houtu's Shock: This Guy Dared to Threaten Even Reincarnation?

Yang Chen's words were not thunderclaps.

Thunderclaps at least had sound, form, and traces to follow.

His words were void, chaos—an absolute subversion that struck directly at the source of the Divine Soul.

Boom!

The aura within Pingxin Hall, linked to the pulse of the entire primordial land and steady, weighty enough to bear all things, snapped in that instant!

It was as though one of the massive pillars supporting heaven and earth had been pulled away.

Houtu's Dao body, forged from Pangu's essence blood and harder than divine iron, stiffened almost imperceptibly for an instant.

Deep within those compassionate eyes, always gentle as though they could contain the suffering of all living beings, a storm from the earth's core erupted completely! Her pupils contracted to their limit in an instant, then suddenly dilated.

Shock?

That word was far too shallow. It could not begin to describe the towering waves surging through the depths of her Divine Soul.

How could he know? No, he did not merely know—he saw through it! He saw through the essence of my becoming reincarnation, through the boundless danger hidden beneath this immeasurable merit, danger that even I dare not face directly! He... he actually treated my Dao as karma that could be traded!

She had imagined countless possibilities.

She had imagined Yang Chen greedily demanding Innate Spiritual Treasures, asking the Witch Clan to wage war for him, or even proposing conditions still more absurd and unreasonable.

She had prepared herself for all of them.

But she had never imagined that he would... that he could use such an unimaginable perspective, one utterly beyond the rules of the primordial world's games of power, to tear open her grandest, most sacred, most secret future aspiration on the spot!

Then he laid the bloody danger and karma within it, things even she herself had been unwilling to contemplate, bare upon the gambling table.

Finally, he put a price tag on that aspiration.

A price tag belonging to Yang Chen!

Becoming reincarnation was the sole sliver of hope Houtu had found for herself and her entire clan after seeing through the dead end ahead of the Witch Clan.

It held immeasurable merit.

But it was also a path of near-certain death!

It was equivalent to using her own life and everything she possessed to forcibly chisel an opening into the iron curtain of Heaven's Dao's already rigid order and establish an earthly reincarnation of her own!

The backlash and obstruction from Heaven's Dao she would encounter in this process would be unimaginably terrifying. The danger might even surpass the Dragon-Han Initial Tribulation and the Dao-Demon Conflict!

She had thought she had hidden it well.

She had thought this would be her final trump card for moving Yang Chen and persuading him to protect the Witch Clan in the future.

Yet she had never expected him to disregard all convention.

He had seen through everything at a glance!

Not only had he seen through it, he had even seized the initiative and directly defined her future "investment" as Yang Chen's "risk and return"!

This man...

As Houtu looked into Yang Chen's eyes, calm without the slightest ripple, the pride and confidence born of Pangu's bloodline were invaded for the first time by an icy chill, shattering inch by inch.

For the first time, she realized that she seemed to have underestimated this young man, burdened by immeasurable karmic debt, from beginning to end.

His indolence, his shamelessness, his madness...

Those had merely been surface appearances.

Was this his true face? Was that rogue who joked and cursed, seemingly driven to despair by karma, merely a disguise? He was not a prisoner tormented by karmic debt. He was a king holding the authority of destruction!

Beneath that seemingly fragile shell lay a heart that saw through the essence of all things, regarded heaven and earth as a chessboard, sages as chess pieces, and every rule as a bargaining chip... a delicate mind paired with an Asura's courage!

Cooperating with him was not like seeking a tiger's skin.

It was like placing her own neck beneath a divine dragon's fangs and gambling on whether it would bite down.

But...

She had no other choice.

Yang Chen was right.

From the moment her path of reincarnation had been conceived, it was destined to contend with Heaven's Dao for life.

And Yang Chen, this ultimate variable whom even Heaven's Dao had to coax, yield to, and dare not settle accounts with, was undoubtedly the best—perhaps even the only—talisman she had against Heaven's Dao's resistance!

He was the greatest chip in this gamble of hers.

She had originally intended to use hospitality and the promise of future investment to slowly win him over.

Yet he had dumped a basin of ice water over her head, waking her instantly.

It turned out that from the very beginning, she had been the frog in the pot.

I saw the dead end my brothers could not see. Yet the only hope I found for the clan has fallen into the hands of such a man. If I oppose him, the Witch Clan will surely suffer eternal ruin. If I cooperate with him... I will be placing the fate of the entire Witch Clan in his hands. Do I have any choice left? No.

In the end.

Within the hall's deathly still air, so still it seemed nearly solidified, came an exceedingly soft sigh, like jade cracking.

That sigh came from Houtu.

It carried no divine power, yet it bore a weight heavier than any divine ability.

It pierced through the ancient loneliness of the stone hall, shattered the tense confrontation between the two, and announced the end of a silent contest.

Houtu's taut body slowly relaxed.

It was a release of strength that spread from the deepest part of her Divine Soul to every limb and bone. The final string supporting her pride and wisdom as an ancestral witch had snapped.

The Earth Element Great Dao aura around her, compressed to its limit in instinctive defense, also receded like the tide, restoring its former warmth that embraced all things.

Yet within that warmth now lingered an indescribable bitterness and resignation.

The Luminous Pearls in the hall's vaulted ceiling cast a cold glow, their shadows twisting across the rough stone walls. On the murals, Great God Pangu's majestic figure as he created heaven and earth now seemed to Houtu to carry an indescribable desolation as well.

Father God, your descendants have reached a dead end.

To find them a sliver of hope, I... have no other choice.

Before Yang Chen, she slowly lowered that noble head which had never truly bowed to any living being other than Pangu.

The movement was slow. Every minute shift in angle tugged at the fortune of this Witch Clan land, as if crushing the inborn pride within her bloodline.

Her figure dipped slightly.

It was a complete and solemn gesture, an ancient rite of the Witch Clan.

This was not merely etiquette.

It was acknowledgment.

It was surrender.

It was the complete abandonment of her pride as an ancestral witch, placing their positions such that he stood above and she below.

Yang Chen watched quietly.

He did not move. Even the curve of his lips did not change in the slightest.

He merely watched, admiring the scene before him with a pure, emotionless gaze.

A future Lord of the Earthly Dao, one of the most supreme beings in the primordial world, was lowering her head to him at this moment.

That sense of conquest gave his Dao Heart, tormented by immeasurable karmic debt, far more pleasure than defeating ten thousand Xing Tians.

Houtu paid no heed to Yang Chen's scrutiny—or rather, she no longer had the strength of mind to care.

The moment she made this decision, personal honor and disgrace had already been completely stripped from her Dao Heart.

"What you say is entirely correct, Daoist."

Her voice had regained its calm, but none of its previous gentleness remained. There was only an absolute composure stripped of all emotion.

Such composure represented a more complete submission than any intense emotion could.

"It was Houtu... who had thought too simply."

She raised her head, and her clear eyes met Yang Chen's gaze once more. Every emotional storm within them had subsided, leaving only an unfathomable abyss.

She no longer considered how Yang Chen had seen through all of this.

Nor did she dwell on how completely she had lost this contest.

Those things no longer mattered.

What mattered was that she had seen reality clearly.

A cold, cruel, yet incomparably clear reality.

Yang Chen, this walking Immeasurable Tribulation, this variable whom even Heaven's Dao feared, was the only key to her path of becoming reincarnation, as well as her only talisman.

Without him, her great aspiration had a ninety-nine percent chance of becoming nothing more than a bubble.

The backlash of Heaven's Dao, the covetous eyes of the sages, the secret interference of the primordial world's Great Powers... any single obstacle would be enough to condemn her to eternal ruin.

But if Yang Chen, the sharpest spear, stood before the grand formation of reincarnation, who would dare act rashly?

Who would dare risk letting this madman completely ignite karma and drag the entire primordial world down with him just to obstruct her Dao?

Once she understood this, all unwillingness and humiliation became costs that were only natural.

So be it.

Since the road had reached this point, no amount of pride or calculation was of any use.

For the Witch Clan, for those countless lonely souls...

This price, I, Houtu, will pay!

She looked directly at Yang Chen, his overly calm figure reflected in her deep eyes.

She knew that from this moment onward, the initiative had completely and utterly shifted into his hands.

What came next would be the moment when she was at his mercy.

She had already cut open her deepest secret and the future of the entire Witch Clan, laying them upon this gambling table.

And the other side had not even placed a single genuine chip on it.

"Then, Daoist, may I ask."

She spoke each word slowly, each one incomparably heavy, as though she were using all her strength to push an invisible boulder.

"What 'compensation' do you desire?"