Three-Eyed Golden Lion

Lake of Life lay in the Core Circle of the Star Dou Great Forest. It contained an immense power of life, and Soul Beasts who cultivated on its shores could advance at twice their usual speed. For this reason, Soul Beasts with cultivation periods of a hundred thousand years or more were often born around the lake, and every one of them was powerful.

At that moment, a Soul Beast was fast asleep on the lakeshore, snoring loudly.

The Soul Beast was about three meters long and eight feet tall at the shoulder, its entire body covered in shimmering golden fur.

Its body seemed to be made of translucent crystal, giving it a strange texture.

Its overall shape resembled a lion, but it had four dragonlike claws, each treading on a ball of golden flame.

Its muzzle was a little longer than that of a lion-type Soul Beast, and beneath its fur, its body seemed to be covered in fine golden scales.

In addition to its ordinary pair of eyes, it had a third one: a vertical pupil.

Its two normal eyes gleamed gold, while the vertical pupil radiated a few hints of eerie red.

It lay there sprawled out, unguardedly exposing its fluffy belly, without the slightest concern that another Soul Beast might sneak up on it.

In truth, no Soul Beast would dare do something so reckless as to provoke it.

First of all, it had powerful backing.

Secondly, it was an Auspicious Beast—the Three-Eyed Golden Lion.

Auspicious Beasts were born with intelligence no less than that of humans. In any Soul Beast habitat where one lived, all the Soul Beasts grew twice as fast as usual, and the odds of a hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast breaking through a bottleneck doubled. The effect applied even to more powerful Soul Beasts.

That was an Auspicious Beast for you—completely unreasonable.

And because an Auspicious Beast brought good fortune, all Soul Beasts indulged it, spoiled it, and granted its every wish.

It could be said that the Auspicious Beast was the apple of everyone's eye in the Star Dou Great Forest.

No one would dare disturb such a Little Ancestor while she slept.

Yet, despite there being no movement at all, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion suddenly woke. It raised its great head and gazed into the distance. Its golden eyes showed humanlike surprise and confusion, while the vertical eye on its forehead glimmered with eerie red light.

"This aura... It's that guy. How is this possible? He's still alive?" The Three-Eyed Golden Lion spoke in a crisp, melodious voice.

It rolled to its feet and stretched like a big cat, then lightly trotted off toward the direction from which it had sensed the aura.

Just like that, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion swaggered out of the Core Area and into the Mixed Area. The Soul Beasts it encountered along the way either bowed down in submission or turned tail and ran.

By coincidence, it ran into a Cyclops in the Mixed Area.

The moment the Auspicious Beast appeared, the Cyclops turned pale with fright and immediately bolted.

It wasn't surprising that it was so scared. Cyclopes were one of the Auspicious Beast's favorite foods.

Seeing how timidly it ran, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion grinned. The Cyclops hadn't been its target, but it just so happened to be heading in the same direction.

The Three-Eyed Golden Lion decided that, since things had worked out this way, she wouldn't hold back.

"Awwooo!"

The Three-Eyed Golden Lion let out a strange cry. Watching the Cyclops flee in a panic, its three eyes darted about as a humanlike grin spread across its face.

The Cyclops, meanwhile, was in utter misery. Fueled by its desperate will to survive, it ran at a furious pace, its two hairy legs moving so fast they blurred.

Lin Ye was searching for Soul Beasts when he felt the ground start to shake, as though an earthquake had struck.

The tremors grew stronger and stronger, until the earth seemed to quake and the mountains to sway.

At the same time, he noticed something approaching at high speed. A large flock of birds was startled into flight from the woods ahead.

The rumbling grew louder, and Lin Ye soon saw what was coming: a Cyclops, ten meters tall, its body covered in thick black fur, with a triangular loincloth woven from vines covering its private parts.

Lin Ye was fairly knowledgeable about Soul Beasts, so he recognized the one in front of him.

Cyclopes were rather unusual. Apart from the single eye on their foreheads, they looked much like humans, except they were taller, bigger, and hairier.

They were less intelligent than humans.

They wove clothes from vines to cover their lower bodies.

Cyclopes had the rare attribute of Chaos, an attribute that was difficult to define and could change at any moment.

They might be suited to every Soul Master, or they might be suited to none. Using one as a Soul Ring was pure luck.

The Cyclops showed no intention of going around them. Seeing the enormous beast charging toward them like a tank, the Ice Empress made her move.

A flash of emerald light passed by, and the energetic Cyclops was instantly frozen into an ice statue. Through the thick layer of ice, they could see the terror on its face.

At that moment, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion caught up.

Lin Ye's vision blurred. When he looked again, a beautiful Soul Beast stood before him.

Three eyes, golden fur, and a face that was the envy of the entire Soul Beast Realm—there was no mistaking it. This had to be the Three-Eyed Golden Lion.

The Three-Eyed Golden Lion had met a rather tragic fate.

As the Emperor Auspicious Beast, it bore the fate of the Star Dou Great Forest and possessed the rare Golden Dragon Bloodline. Its status was incomparably noble.

Yet that very nobility was what ruined her.

It was precisely because of this that the Little Scumbag set his sights on her.

After a series of schemes, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion sacrificed herself to Huo Yuhao, and all her fate and bloodline were taken from her.

In a roundabout way, she ended up benefiting the Tang Family.

As Lin Ye sized up the Three-Eyed Golden Lion, she was studying him as well. The first thing she said was, "You're still alive?"

Lin Ye: "..."

What kind of thing was that to say? What did she mean, I was still alive? Was I supposed to be dead? Whose kid was this, anyway? Why was she so rude?

But his mind worked quickly, and he soon figured out what had happened.

His future self had traveled back to the past, met the Three-Eyed Golden Lion, and kept the time-travel secret from her.

That meant she thought he was the same person from back then—in other words, someone from a thousand years ago.

And humans only lived for a few hundred years at most.

By that logic, in the Three-Eyed Golden Lion's mind, he should have died of old age long ago.

And things had indeed happened just as he had deduced.

The Three-Eyed Golden Lion was full of questions. What was going on with this man? Not only had he not died of old age, he had gotten younger. She even suspected that the person in front of her wasn't the one she knew.

"You're Lin Ye, right?"

Lin Ye blinked. Should he admit it? His future self had bullied this girl before. If he confessed now, would she try to get even? As things stood, he was no match for the Three-Eyed Golden Lion.

Lin Ye's hesitation immediately confirmed his identity in the Three-Eyed Golden Lion's mind.

If he truly didn't know her, the first thing he should have shown was confusion—confusion about who she was, or even curiosity about why a Soul Beast like her could talk.