The next day.
In the little courtyard of the medicinal garden.
After a simple breakfast, Yu Shuangbai called over Dugu Bo and his granddaughter.
The purpose was simple.
To fulfill his promise to them.
Yu Shuangbai's original plan had been to use the Ultimate Ice power of his Ice Dragon King Martial Soul to help Dugu Bo and his granddaughter eliminate the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison in their bodies.
That way, they wouldn't have to use some method of forcing the poison into their bones.
That would be like quenching their thirst with poison, burying a time bomb inside their bodies.
However, after receiving a reminder from the Ice Dragon King, Yu Shuangbai did indeed come up with a better solution.
"A little snake poison that can't be properly controlled, turning around and biting its owner instead?"
"What an absurd joke."
After hearing about the Dugu Family's curse, the Ice Dragon King spoke with disdain.
When Yu Shuangbai asked him about it,
the powerful Dragon Clan expert taught him a method.
A way for Dugu Bo and his granddaughter to turn the time bomb buried inside their bodies into a source of strength.
It wasn't complicated.
After the Ice Dragon King gave him a simple explanation, Yu Shuangbai more or less understood how to carry out the method.
Dugu Bo and Dugu Yan sat on separate meditation cushions.
Their faces were full of anticipation.
Under their gazes, Yu Shuangbai spoke softly:
"Senior Dugu, Miss Dugu, I'm going to send a stream of energy into your bodies."
"Don't resist."
"This energy will help you control the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison inside you. Use your own power and follow the direction in which my energy flows."
"Understood."
Dugu Bo and his granddaughter nodded in reply.
Having given his instructions,
Yu Shuangbai raised both hands and placed one palm against each of their backs.
Pale blue energy surged from his palms and entered the bodies of the Dugu grandfather and granddaughter.
Both of them shuddered.
Instinctively, they wanted to resist this energy that didn't belong to them.
But remembering Yu Shuangbai's instructions, they quickly suppressed the impulse.
After the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings had offered up their sacrifices,
Yu Shuangbai had gained not only the power of fire; his innate ice attribute power had also reached unprecedented heights.
The power he was using now was his ice attribute power.
The power of fire was wild and highly destructive, so it wasn't suited to this process.
Dugu Yan's cultivation was low, putting her at the same level as Yu Shuangbai.
So when Yu Shuangbai's power entered her body, the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison within her could barely resist. It trembled in fear.
Like a puppet on strings, it let Yu Shuangbai's power manipulate it as it pleased.
But things weren't so simple with Dugu Bo.
His poison-attribute power was naturally inferior to Yu Shuangbai's ice power in terms of quality.
But Dugu Bo was a genuine Titled Douluo.
His cultivation far surpassed Yu Shuangbai's, who was only at the Soul Elder level.
The Jade Phosphor Snake Poison in his body had also built up to a terrifying degree over the years, growing alongside his cultivation.
It might have been inferior in quality, but its sheer quantity more than made up for that.
So Yu Shuangbai couldn't deal with it as easily as he had with Dugu Yan.
If this had happened before, he would certainly have had to expend quite a bit of effort.
But now...
"Senior Ice Dragon King."
"I know."
The Ice Dragon King answered from the Sea of Consciousness.
The next moment,
Yu Shuangbai's expression changed.
The warmth in his eyes faded, replaced by the vicissitudes and depth that came with the passage of time and the changing of the world.
The next moment,
an enormous force of extreme cold flowed from Yu Shuangbai's left palm into Dugu Bo's body.
Faced with this vast force of extreme cold, the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison that had accumulated over the years to the level of a Titled Douluo didn't dare make the slightest fuss.
Like a puppet on strings, it let Yu Shuangbai's power guide it.
Feeling the changes in the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison within him, Dugu Bo was utterly shaken.
As an old man who had been tormented by the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison for nearly a century,
he knew all too well how overbearing it was.
In all his years, this was the first time he'd ever seen the snake poison behave so obediently and meekly.
And it was happening beneath the power of a mere Soul Elder!
What he didn't know was that
the power Yu Shuangbai was using now had long since exceeded the Soul Elder level.
It was the Ice Dragon King's power!
The Ice and Fire Dragon Kings had once been half-step God Kings.
Even after their deaths, with the passage of time, less than one-tenth of their power remained.
Yet even that amount was still terrifying.
It wasn't something Yu Shuangbai could fully absorb in a short time.
So the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings had temporarily sealed that power inside Yu Shuangbai's body.
Like spring rain silently nourishing all things, it quietly nurtured his body.
And the power the Ice Dragon King was drawing on now was precisely the power sealed inside Yu Shuangbai.
This was true divine-level power!
The Jade Phosphor Snake Poison in Dugu Bo's body was, in the end, only at the Titled Douluo level.
Naturally, it couldn't run wild in the face of divine power. It behaved as meekly as a house cat.
Besides that, this power was also Yu Shuangbai's trump card for saving his life.
If he found himself in a desperate situation with no other way out, he could summon the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings in his Sea of Consciousness to break the seal and temporarily unleash power far beyond his cultivation.
With the Ice Dragon King's intervention,
the process went smoothly.
Dugu Yan, whose body contained less accumulated poison, completed the process first.
She opened her beautiful eyes. As she sensed the round, emerald-green object rotating in her dantian, a flicker of excitement crossed her gaze.
Following the guidance of Yu Shuangbai's power, she had successfully established a channel inside her body for circulating the Jade Phosphor Snake Poison.
Through this channel, the Jade Phosphor Snake Martial Soul's poison would condense into a Poison Core.
It wouldn't backfire or harm her.
She could also draw on it freely in battle, increasing her combat strength.
Dugu Yan could now feel that, with the Poison Core, her strength had definitely risen by a whole level!
Not long afterward,
Yu Shuangbai lowered his other hand.
Dugu Bo's core condensation was finally complete as well.
He slowly opened his eyes.
He felt the changes within his body.
The comfort of a body no longer affected by the snake poison felt so unreal.
And yet it reminded him that he had succeeded!
He had finally escaped the threat of that damned snake poison!
He had turned it into a source of strength!
Feeling the Poison Core, brimming with deadly poison in his dantian,
Dugu Bo's long-cherished wish had finally been fulfilled, and his heart was awash with conflicting emotions.
His thin hands trembled uncontrollably.
Wave after wave of complicated feelings battered his heart.
Then,
a sudden surge of aura burst from Dugu Bo, growing several notches stronger.
"What's happening?"
Noticing the change in her grandfather, Dugu Yan couldn't help but worry.
Yu Shuangbai, who had returned the Ice Dragon King to the Sea of Consciousness, folded his arms and watched Dugu Bo's transformation. He reassured her calmly:
"Miss Dugu, there's no need to worry."
"Now that Senior Dugu has resolved the snake poison that troubled him for so many years, the Soul Power bottleneck that had held firm all this time has finally opened."
"He's simply breaking through to the next level of cultivation."
Before you continue