So he devoted himself to research, refining the Soul Spirit Contract.
With the wholehearted help of Di Tian, Bi Ji, and the other Ferocious Beasts, and combining the necromantic knowledge Electrolux had taught him with his own insights into the laws and the Sun Moon Empire's most cutting-edge Soul Guidance Technology, he began his ultimate exploration into the nature of Soul Rings and Soul Bones.
His research made a breakthrough.
He discovered that Soul Rings and Soul Bones were not innate parts of Soul Beasts.
A Soul Ring was a combination of the heaven-and-earth energy a Soul Beast accumulated through a lifetime of cultivation and its spiritual imprint. At death, some law of the world guided this energy to manifest.
A Soul Bone, meanwhile, was closely connected to whether a Soul Beast could condense a Soul Core within its body—that was the nascent crystalline core of a Soul Beast's power.
A Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast was certain to produce a Soul Bone precisely because a Soul Beast with a hundred thousand years of cultivation could already stably condense a complete Soul Core. When it died, that Soul Core had a very high chance of transforming into a Soul Bone.
The discovery was like lightning cleaving through the darkness, illuminating the path ahead for Huo Yuhao.
Combining it with Electrolux's supreme theories on contracts and energy conversion, inspiration struck him. He began trying to bypass Soul Beasts themselves and communicate directly with the laws of the world.
After countless failures and brushes with danger, and with Electrolux's guidance, Huo Yuhao successfully created a completely unprecedented method of making contracts. He named it the "Heavenly Dao Contract"!
This method no longer used Soul Beasts as intermediaries. Instead, Soul Masters used their own spiritual power and Soul Power as a guide to resonate directly with the unseen energy and laws of the world, borrowing the power of heaven and earth to condense "Artificial Soul Rings" perfectly suited to their own attributes and needs!
The age, attributes, and even the skills a Soul Ring might carry were all closely tied to a Soul Master's cultivation, state of mind, and compatibility with the world.
The advent of this method meant a fundamental transformation in how Soul Masters acquired power. At last, the Soul Beast Clan saw a glimmer of hope that they might escape their fate of being hunted!
Di Tian, Bi Ji, and the other Ferocious Beast leaders were overjoyed. Their gratitude and admiration for Huo Yuhao reached its peak.
To prove that the Heavenly Dao Contract worked, Huo Yuhao tested it on himself.
At Level 70, drawing on his deep reserves and understanding of the multiple laws of ice, spirit, and fate, he successfully condensed his first Artificial Soul Ring—a Ferocious Beast Soul Ring whose quality reached the two-hundred-thousand-year level!
This feat firmly established the authority of the Heavenly Dao Contract.
At nineteen, Huo Yuhao also advanced to Level 8 as a Soul Engineer.
Through Jing Hongchen's arrangements, he gained entry into the Sun Moon military, starting as a high-ranking officer in a frontline unit fighting the White Tiger Legion.
With his military achievements, strength, and peerless talent for Soul Tools, he rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the commander of an elite Soul Engineer army under the Imperial Dragon Soul Engineer Legion, one of the Sun Moon Empire's beast-king-level corps.
At twenty, Huo Yuhao's Soul Power broke through Level 80. Commanding his Soul Engineer army in the Mingdou Mountain Range, he launched a decisive offensive against the Star Luo Empire's Northwestern Army Group.
Leading from the front, he relied on Ultimate Ice, powerful spiritual strength, and his masterful use of Soul Tools to cut down several Titled Douluo of the Star Luo Empire. He personally destroyed the White Tiger Royal Guard that Dai Hao had been so proud of, annihilated the main force of the vainglorious White Tiger Legion, and finally captured his enemy, Dai Hao, amid a sea of troops.
He chose neither a complicated trial nor humiliation. Before the military's high command and countless soldiers, he personally severed Duke White Tiger Dai Hao's head at the front lines.
His great revenge was complete. In that moment, he felt no satisfaction, only a cold, hollow emptiness—and a yearning for even greater power.
At twenty-three, Huo Yuhao broke through Level 90. Then, in one fell swoop, he used the Heavenly Dao Contract to condense powerful Soul Rings of the appropriate ages for all the remaining Soul Ring slots in his two Martial Souls.
The surging energy poured into him, sending his Soul Power soaring all the way to the peak of Level 98.
Afterward, he returned to the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well. Drawing on the power of the Dragon Cores left behind by the fallen Ice and Fire Dragon Kings, he used tremendous resolve and wisdom to successfully refine an unprecedented third Soul Core. In one leap, he entered the realm of a Level 99 Limit Douluo, becoming the strongest person alive.
With his help and inspiration, Kong Deming broke through his bottleneck and reached Level 97. He also pushed Soul Tool research to the unprecedented Level 10 realm. The Level 10 Soul Tools he created were powerful enough to threaten or even contend with Limit Douluo!
Du Busi also successfully condensed Yin-Yang Complementary Dual Soul Cores and advanced to Limit Douluo.
With its greatest forces united, the Sun Moon Empire—led by its three peak experts, Huo Yuhao, Kong Deming, and Du Busi, and aided in secret by the invited Beast God Di Tian—swept through the land with thunderous force. It completely destroyed the Holy Spirit Cult, which had been operating in secret within the empire under Dragon Emperor Douluo Long Xiaoyao and Death God Douluo Ye Xishui, rooting out this blight on the continent once and for all.
That same year, after internal threats were quelled, the Sun Moon Empire's emperor, Xu Tianran, grew wary of Huo Yuhao and tried to secretly plot against him.
Huo Yuhao struck first and killed him decisively. Then, through his peerless prestige and strength, he became regent of the Sun Moon Empire and took control of all state affairs.
Under his command, the Sun Moon Empire's armies overwhelmed their enemies, successively conquering the Heavenly Soul, Spirit, and Star Luo Empires, then breaching Shrek Academy—a symbol of the Soul Master holy land, though long since rotten to the core.
The Douluo Continent entered an era of unification, known to history as the first year of the Sun Moon Era.
At twenty-four, with the empire unified, Huo Yuhao had more time to explore the origin of power.
He had already been bound to the Emperor Auspicious Beast by fate, and had created the Heavenly Dao Contract to communicate with the world. His spiritual power had long since reached the Divine Origin Realm.
During one Deep Meditation, he successfully glimpsed a fragment of the truth behind the law of fate. Using it as his foundation, he condensed his own Demi-God Position, becoming, in truth, the strongest beneath godhood—his combat strength approaching that of a god.
That same year, following the hazy guidance of the law of fate, he discovered an ancient secret realm within the Sun Moon Empire.
Within it, he found an unexpected treasure: the Ice God Pearl, an artifact component left behind by the Ice God, along with part of the Ice God's insights from the time of his ascension. This gave Huo Yuhao crucial direction and foundation for creating his own godhood and completing his divine nature.
Yet just as he had reaped his rewards and was preparing to leave the secret realm and return to the Sun Moon Empire, ready to make a concerted push for godhood, an ambush suddenly sprang!
The Clear Sky Sect's first sect master, Niu Tian; its second sect master, Tai Tan; and the Great Enshrined of Sea God Island—all three had long since reached the realm of Limit Douluo, and had clearly been empowered by the Sea God Divine Power. Together, they launched a sudden, deadly assault on him!
This was clearly a long-planned operation to eliminate him, the "variable."
Though Huo Yuhao's spiritual power had long since reached the Divine Origin Realm, and repeated tempering and the nourishment of his Demi-God Position had forged his body into a demigod's, he still fell into a bitter struggle against three Limit Douluo empowered by divine power, working in perfect coordination and willing to pay any price to kill him. In the end, he was gravely wounded and on the verge of death.
In that desperate situation, the ruthlessness and resolve buried deep in Huo Yuhao's bones emerged once more.
Without hesitation, he burned the hard-won Demi-God Position he had condensed. As it disintegrated, he unleashed a strike on par with a god's, killing Niu Tian, Tai Tan, and the Great Enshrined of Sea God Island on the spot!
What happened afterward connected directly to his final memories from before his rebirth. Just as he lay on the brink of death, his Demi-God Position burned away, and his body utterly spent, Tang San's divine consciousness descended in person. From his lofty perch, he sought to erase Huo Yuhao as an "error" that had "disrupted causality."
Unwilling to be slaughtered, Huo Yuhao ultimately chose to burn up his Martial Souls, Soul Power, spiritual power, soul origin... everything he had, turning it all into one final strike that took Tang San's divine consciousness down with him.
This was Huo Yuhao's true previous life!
A thorny road soaked in blood and fire, filled with struggle and vengeance, independence and creation!
It was worlds apart from the so-called "Huo Yuhao" in the "original story"—the Tang Sect's loyal dog, Shrek's favored son, who ultimately enjoyed a happy family life and ascended to the Divine Realm!
After digesting the supposed "original plot" from Wang Teng's memories and comparing it with the blood-soaked life he had personally lived, Huo Yuhao felt an utterly absurd sense of irony rise in his heart. Then came an even more bone-deep chill and hatred, so cold it seemed capable of freezing his soul.
The Huo Yuhao in that "story" had actually repaid his enemy Dai Hao's cruelty with kindness? He had actually thanked Tang San, who controlled everything?
He had even treated the fates of his Soul Beast friends and beloved women as natural sacrifices or mere appendages?
"Thank goodness that guy wasn't really me..." Huo Yuhao slowly opened his eyes. Gold and blood-red swirled deep in his pupils, and his killing intent had nearly taken solid form.
"If that spineless fool in the 'story' really were me, I'd rather end my own life than allow such a humiliating, laughable existence!"
He drew in a deep breath. The cold air filled his lungs, but could not quell the fury and steely resolve roiling within him.
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