[The little frog's invitation caught the baby silkworm off guard, but he agreed without hesitation. The little frog then hopped onto the baby silkworm's head, slapped both hands down, and shouted, "Kuchiyose no jutsu!"...]
Seeing Tian Meng accept the invitation, Su Mo's heart gave an involuntary leap.
As for the little frog's antics, he automatically filtered them out.
[The instant the little frog vanished with the baby silkworm, he saw the dopey dragon's eyelids suddenly twitch. He wasn't sure whether he had imagined it...]
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's disappearance was noticed immediately.
Several terrifying auras surged from the bottom of the Lake of Life, shooting into the sky.
On the lake's surface, an enormous creature with a bull's head and a serpent's body floated in the water, his somber eyes fixed on the mountainlike, black-furred ape on the shore.
These two enormous creatures were none other than the Sky Azure Bull Python and the Titan Giant Ape.
Having failed to find the little frog, Er Ming knew he had caused trouble. He braced himself and woke the sleeping Da Ming, then told him everything without daring to conceal a thing.
But before they could dive back into the water to search, they sensed several oppressive auras of superior beings emanating from the lakebed. Both beasts were so frightened that they dared not move.
Da Ming was the sharper of the two, and he vaguely suspected that these auras belonged to the ancient beings beneath the lake.
Before long, a towering ancient tree covered in eerie eyes slowly rose from the water, hovering above the Lake of Life.
An extraordinarily foul odor emanated from his entire body.
Da Ming and Er Ming kept their heads lowered, not daring to show the slightest disrespect.
"You two little fellows, I am the Myriad Demon King. By decree of the Beast God, gather all soul beasts over fifty thousand years old at once and search for a giant ice silkworm."
Ordering the soul beasts to search was merely a casual measure.
What the Myriad Demon King truly relied on was the mark he had left on that worm.
"Yes."
Da Ming and Er Ming answered in unison, neither daring to disobey. They then backed away with their heads bowed, only daring to straighten up and leave once they had put some distance between them.
The two beasts exchanged a helpless glance. They still wanted to find Sister Xiao Wu and the frog.
Who had any interest in looking for some ice silkworm?
Little did they know that Sister Xiao Wu and the little frog, whom they were so desperately worried about, were currently in the same space as the ice silkworm they had been forced to find.
The frog's home.
Ten minutes earlier.
A giant baby silkworm suddenly appeared in the courtyard.
The baby silkworm's entire body was translucent and lustrous as white jade, with a halo of light flowing beneath his skin. His round head looked plump and fleshy, with a pair of tiny, gleaming golden eyes.
He was over seven meters long, with golden bands encircling his body at regular intervals.
There were nine in all, from head to tail.
The instant he appeared, wisps of cold seeped invisibly from him, and the surrounding temperature began to drop noticeably.
At the same time, an immense wave of spiritual power enveloped the entire pocket dimension.
Su Mo and Xiao Wu both shivered several times in succession. Their heads also felt heavy and muddled, as though something invisible were squeezing them.
"Wahahaha! I'm out! I'm finally free! Hahahaha..."
Tian Meng looked around and realized he had truly escaped that sea of suffering. He could not help weeping with joy.
Too bad I can't shed tears, or they'd be streaming down my face!
"Croak~ Croak~~"
The little frog patted Tian Meng's head as if comforting him.
Su Mo tilted his head back and studied the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm curiously, his eyes shining as an urge to win him over welled up inside him.
Xiao Wu stared blankly at Tian Meng. Sensing an aura far more powerful than that of a hundred-thousand-year soul beast, she was every bit as shaken as Su Mo, if not more.
Then, as though she had spotted a straw to cling to in a flood, she hurriedly begged him for help.
"Big worm, save me! The guy next to me is a bad person!"
Only upon hearing the little girl's clear, childish voice did Tian Meng notice the two little fellows in front of him.
He immediately reined in his leaking spiritual power and cold.
Tian Meng surveyed his surroundings and discovered that this was an extremely small pocket dimension. Judging by its soul power fluctuations, it had actually been created by a soul skill.
He looked at the two little fellows before him. The bound girl was clearly a soul beast who had undergone soul beast transformation.
That meant the boy beside her must have been the one who cast this soul skill.
"Brother Sky Dream, hear me out!"
Su Mo knew perfectly well that his current appearance was likely to provoke hostility from soul beasts. Moreover, being inside this pocket dimension amounted to imprisoning Tian Meng in a roundabout way.
On top of that, Tian Meng had not yet conceived the idea of creating a god.
He had even less reason to feel any goodwill toward Su Mo.
Although the little frog had helped Tian Meng escape, Su Mo would not gamble on Tian Meng repaying that kindness, much less use it as leverage to demand repayment from someone stronger than himself.
He therefore had to seize the initiative and overturn Tian Meng's first impression of him.
"How do you know my name?" Tian Meng asked, somewhat surprised.
His name was indeed Tian Meng. He had chosen it himself.
He had even planned to start his own branch of the family tree after reaching a million years and name himself the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm.
Yet he had told almost no soul beast or human about any of this, let alone the human child before him, who looked only six or seven years old.
"Hold on. I'll show you something amazing."
As he spoke, Su Mo's pupils turned scarlet, with a single tomoe slowly revolving within each one. Meanwhile, the chains formed by the Infinity Gauntlet did not disappear.
This was a little cheat he had discovered earlier.
He could use all three martial souls simultaneously.
Then Su Mo depicted the stories of the first three Douluo installments through an illusion, projecting them into Tian Meng's eyes.
Although Su Mo had never made a grand display of using the Sharingan, he had secretly experimented with it. It had three traits in total.
They were the Eye of Insight, the Eye of Illusion, and the Eye of Copying.
"Oh? A spiritual-type martial soul!"
At this, Tian Meng developed a little interest in Su Mo.
He did not resist the illusion's intrusion. In his eyes, it was extremely flimsy, but he could sense what seemed to be a compressed archive inside it.
"That's quite an interesting way to use it."
Tian Meng muttered this quietly, then immersed himself in it.
Yet its contents overturned everything he thought he knew.
The more he watched, the more alarmed he became.
Ten minutes later, after watching the contents of the first three Douluo installments, Tian Meng fell silent.
So I spent ten thousand years as a power bank...
Even a million-year soul beast couldn't become a god...
I became little Yuhao's Wisdom Soul Ring...
I met the Holy Necromancer from another world...
I saw Bingbing, whom I'd yearned for day and night...
I succeeded in creating a god, and little Yuhao really did attain godhood...
But he lived like a dog.
"Hey! Big worm!! Wake up!!!"
Xiao Wu thought Tian Meng had fallen under Su Mo's illusion and tried to wake him.
Pop!
Tian Meng created a spiritual barrier, shutting out Xiao Wu's voice. Then he fixed his two tiny eyes on Su Mo.
"What are you trying to do by showing me all this?"
Su Mo spread his hands. "Brother Sky Dream, become my Wisdom Soul Ring. I'll take you all the way to godhood!"
"Hmph. You think you can do better than little Yuhao?"
"Of course. We're ten thousand years earlier now, and Tang San hasn't become a god yet. I have the advantage of knowing what's to come, as well as the one-of-a-kind triple martial souls."
A confident, frenzied light flashed in Su Mo's scarlet eyes.
"I have divine eyes, a divine artifact, and a divine beast that can seek out opportunities."
He displayed the Sharingan, the Infinity Gauntlet, and the Traveling Frog in turn, then added, "Invest in me, and you definitely won't lose out!"