Dream (Newcomer Seeking Votes OTZ TvT)

"Greetings, esteemed ruler of the Extreme North, Your Majesty Snow Empress. The reason I know of you is that I once read a description of you in a book. It may have been written by a human Soul Master who saw you from afar and narrowly escaped with his life."

It was half true and half false. After all, the novels he had read in his Previous Life counted as books too, so Ye Wen was not lying and felt perfectly justified.

Snow Empress said nothing, merely giving Ye Wen a deep look. Of course, she knew the human before her had not told the truth, but she had no intention of exposing him.

With a wave of her hand, Ye Wen's vision blurred. When he came back to his senses, he was already inside a cave. A fat Ice Silkworm lay sprawled on the ground, seemingly fast asleep. Judging by the five silver-white stripes on its back, it was likely just over five thousand years old.

Apparently startled by Ye Wen's footsteps, the Ice Silkworm suddenly raised itself and looked at Snow Empress and Ye Wen, who had appeared out of nowhere.

It paid no attention to Ye Wen, since his aura was pitifully faint due to Between Mimicry. But Snow Empress's aura was like an Abyssal demon king suddenly appearing before it, leaving it too rigid with terror to move.

Snow Empress slowly walked up to the Ice Silkworm and said calmly.

"Offer yourself as a Sacrifice to this human, Ice Silkworm."

Hearing Snow Empress's words, the Ice Silkworm, which possessed considerable intelligence due to its Spiritual Attribute, instinctively wanted to refuse. But when it remembered the law of the jungle among Soul Beasts, it knew that refusing would only mean death anyway. After a moment of silence, it slowly nodded.

As the beneficiary, Ye Wen was stunned as well. He did not remember thousand-year Soul Beasts possessing the ability to offer Sacrifice. But since Snow Empress dared to say so, this Ice Silkworm probably truly had that ability.

"Go on. I will ask you the rest after you absorb the Soul Ring."

Ye Wen silently sat cross-legged in front of the Ice Silkworm. He knew that with Snow Empress protecting him, there would absolutely be no danger.

A trace of sorrow appeared in the Ice Silkworm's eyes. Then silver-white light gradually flowed from its body, enveloping the two of them.

A purple halo representing a thousand-year Soul Beast condensed in midair. Once the Soul Ring fully formed, the life in the Ice Silkworm's eyes completely faded. It collapsed onto the ground, while the Soul Ring settled around Ye Wen's Martial Soul.

The familiar surge of heat swept through Ye Wen's entire body once again. His already terrifying physical strength was further enhanced, and his height gradually increased to one meter seventy. He became a handsome young man, shedding his former childishness.

Because the Ice Silkworm had willingly offered itself as a Sacrifice, Ye Wen encountered no resistance whatsoever in absorbing this five-thousand-year Soul Ring. It was completely absorbed in no time.

The cave returned to silence. Ye Wen summoned his Martial Soul again, and one yellow and two purple lights illuminated the dim cave.

"Third Soul Skill: Void Control.

On the basis of remotely summoning my Martial Soul, I can completely control the summoned Martial Soul's hovering and form multiple independent spatial gates.

This is great. With this Soul Skill, not only can I control my Martial Soul better, I can also develop some derivative Soul Skills.

And the Nab Cloth space has expanded to ten cubic meters."

"Looks like you are quite satisfied with the Soul Skill you received. Then answer my questions next."

Snow Empress's cold voice reached him, making Ye Wen realize that he had not yet escaped danger. Who knew what this beast emperor wanted to ask? Would she kill him if he gave an answer she disliked?

Straightening his posture, Ye Wen opened his eyes and was about to reply to Snow Empress.

But a faint white light, so weak it could practically be ignored, suddenly shone from Snow Empress's body and shot toward him. Ye Wen's consciousness immediately blurred, and he fell asleep on the ground.

Snow Empress was bewildered by this sudden development as well. She did not know why that white light had suddenly appeared from her body, nor why Ye Wen had suddenly fallen unconscious. She hurriedly stepped forward to check on him and only relaxed after discovering that he was merely asleep.

Only then did Snow Empress have the mind to consider what that white light had been. It gave her a feeling that was both familiar and unfamiliar, one that seemed extremely distant even within her long memories.

As the only Heavenly Snow Woman in the entire Douluo World, the Heavenly Snow Woman's birth process was extremely special. Calling her a Soul Beast was less accurate than calling her an elemental lifeform. A Heavenly Snow Woman was born from the pure frigid energy and fortune of the Extreme North. She represented both the fortune of the Extreme North and the manifestation of a portion of its rules.

In other xianxia fantasy worlds, a Heavenly Snow Woman could be considered an innately born deity, an existence of supreme nobility and a darling of the world. But in a forcibly twisted world like the Douluo World, the Heavenly Snow Woman's status had been distorted and cast down, turning her into a Soul Beast.

It was precisely because of this that the Heavenly Snow Woman, who should have been the god of ice and snow in this world, had only ten thousand years of cultivation at birth. Yet beloved by the fortune of the Extreme North, she became a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Beast in an extremely short time and cultivated smoothly all the way to the present. Unfortunately, her status had been twisted into that of a Soul Beast.

The Heavenly Tribulations faced by Soul Beasts were ultimately unavoidable, which was why the plot of Douluo 2 came about. Otherwise, if the Heavenly Snow Woman had cultivated smoothly to a Million Year, she would definitely have broken through the world's limitations and become the Douluo World's god of ice and snow.

Only then did Snow Empress finally remember why that white light had felt so familiar. It was the feeling from before she had been born, when she existed as a crystal of primordial energy and was protected and nurtured by the world.

"Is this child the Child of the World chosen by the world? Then is my future on him as well? I will protect him, world, just as you protected me when you nurtured me into being," Snow Empress murmured.

At that moment, Ye Wen was experiencing a bizarre dream.

He dreamed of the final moment of his Previous Life, when he had stayed up late rushing a thesis and then suddenly died from overwork. Afterward, his soul was swept into a tiny Space-Time Turbulence that appeared from nowhere, eventually drifting for an unknown amount of time before arriving outside Douluo Star.

As a soul, he had lost the ability to think independently at the time and drifted in a muddled haze. After the Douluo Plane captured his soul, it examined his memories, understood the future he came from, and began preparing to save itself.

Then, after some mysterious process, he was reincarnated into this world. Under the Plane Master's manipulation, he gained Twin Martial Souls: the god-level Martial Souls Time Orb and Void Cloth, representing the origins of time and space.

Moreover, because these two Martial Souls were so purely refined, they were also Ultimate Martial Souls. They were even more terrifying than the Angel Martial Soul, the famous god-level Martial Soul of the continent. And because they had been granted by the world itself, they did not possess the flaw of other Ultimate Martial Soul users, whose early cultivation was slow.

But precisely because they represented the origins, these two Martial Souls appeared plain and unremarkable, their divine nature concealed. Only after reaching the Soul Saint realm could they truly display their power.

But that was not the important part. The important part was the innate abilities of these two Martial Souls.

Void Cloth, or Nab Cloth, came with its own space, while all further development depended on the user. Time Orb, however, was even more heaven-defying. Every time he filled it with Soul Power and scanned his body, it was saving a record of his physical condition. Once he entered a near-death or death state, it could passively or actively use the Soul Power within to rewrite his body's state, essentially functioning as an innate resurrection skill.

But because this ability was too heaven-defying, the Plane Master could not add any further settings. Under the world's twisted rules, Time Orb could only possess this single ability. However, with every additional Soul Ring Ye Wen acquired in the future, he could bind one more person for resurrection.

However, the Soul Ring requirements would also vary according to the bound person's cultivation.

To resurrect a Titled Douluo-level powerhouse, the resurrection slot bound to that person had to be a Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring, and the record and binding had to be made in advance.

For each lower Soul Master rank afterward, the required Soul Ring age decreased by ten thousand years.

Even so, this Martial Soul was still enough to be called heaven-defying. Compared to Void Cloth, which had originally only been usable as a spatial storage ring, if Ye Wen revealed this ability, every faction would likely go mad trying to recruit him.

After all, Douluo's strongest and most precious support ability was—resurrection.

Only then did Ye Wen truly understand why he had come to this world and why he possessed such powerful Martial Souls.

"Every drink and every peck is karma," Ye Wen murmured.

The dream seemed about to end, and Ye Wen's consciousness grew stronger and stronger. Then he seemed to hear a tiny voice, impossible to identify as male or female, softly saying,

"From here on, I leave it to you~

To erase the traces of your foreign origin and grant you powerful Martial Souls, I expended too much strength. The world rules twisted by the gods are constantly suppressing me, and I am about to fall into slumber.

Please, you must save this world, lost one from a higher dimension."

The increasingly weak voice gradually faded away, and Ye Wen opened his eyes.

Looking at the ice ceiling glowing with light, Ye Wen knew that dawn had already arrived. He rubbed his groggy head and looked around.

"Where is Snow Empress?" Ye Wen asked in confusion.

He had originally thought Snow Empress would question him about his relationship with this world, but she had vanished without a trace, leaving Ye Wen at a loss.

But once he considered what Snow Empress represented, it seemed reasonable that she would not stay by his side in order to avoid exposing him. After all, there was nothing normal about an ordinary human being followed by a six-hundred-thousand-year beast emperor. It would not be good if that drew the gods' attention.

After stretching lazily, Ye Wen walked out of the ice cave and began his journey home.

What he did not know was that Snow Empress was following him from afar, protecting him.

Unlike what Ye Wen believed, Snow Empress considered it perfectly ordinary for a beast emperor capable of freely taking human form to enter the human world and wander around.

Furthermore, the gods had vanished for nearly ten thousand years, and her vigilance toward them had long since fallen to its lowest point.

The reason she did not appear before Ye Wen was entirely because she believed that even if Ye Wen was the Child of the World, he still needed to experience countless battles in order to grow. All she could do was give him a hand when he was on the brink of death.

Only such a Child of the World, in her view, was what the world needed.

Because that was how she herself had grown up.