Tang San's Fury

Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's voice abruptly cut off, as if he had seen something utterly terrifying and was too frightened to say another word.

Huo Yuhao had no mind to press him further. Every bit of his attention was drawn to that intermingling power.

He could feel his Spirit Eye martial soul cheering, leaping with excitement, madly absorbing that pink-blue power.

With every fraction it absorbed, the Spirit Eye grew brighter, its insight sharpened, and his spiritual power became more solid.

He even had the feeling that if this fusion continued, his Spirit Eye martial soul might... undergo some kind of qualitative transformation.

But just then.

"Buzz!"

Without warning, that intermingling power was cut off.

Like a string pulled too taut, suddenly snapping.

Like a stream rushing too fiercely, suddenly running dry.

The pink-blue radiance and pale golden light receded like the tide, withdrawing back into their respective bodies.

Huo Yuhao felt the power pouring into his body vanish in an instant, replaced by an extreme emptiness, as if part of his soul had been hollowed out...

"Thud."

He rolled off Wang Dong and hit the floor, gasping for breath as his entire body trembled.

Wang Dong likewise lay sprawled on the bed, her chest heaving violently. Her pink-blue eyes were wide open as she stared at the ceiling, filled with confusion and a trace of... barely perceptible fear.

The dormitory fell utterly silent.

Only their heavy breathing echoed through the night.

After a long while, Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's vexed voice rang out in Huo Yuhao's mind.

"What a pity! What a damn pity! We were so close! Just that tiny bit more, and the fusion would have succeeded! Something inside this pink-blue kid was resisting! No, not resisting—it was... some higher-level power interfering! Damn it, what the hell dared ruin my plans?!"

Huo Yuhao ignored him. Struggling to his feet, he looked at Wang Dong on the bed and opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but his throat was so dry that not a single word came out.

Wang Dong turned to look at him as well.

Their eyes met.

Pink-blue eyes and pale golden eyes gazed silently at each other beneath the moonlight.

There was no anger, no embarrassment, no awkwardness.

Only a profound confusion that neither of them could understand...

"Just now..." Huo Yuhao finally found his voice, though it was hoarse beyond recognition. "What happened?"

Wang Dong was silent for a long time before slowly shaking her head.

"I don't know."

Her voice was soft and distant too, as though she were sleepwalking.

"I felt... like something was pulling me, pushing me, forcing me... to fuse with you. But just as it was about to succeed, another force... cut off that push."

She paused, looking at Huo Yuhao as a complicated emotion flashed through her eyes.

"And... I keep feeling that something isn't right. My martial soul's reaction just now... was too intense. So intense that it didn't feel like me. It was as if... as if someone were using my martial soul to influence me, to... control me."

Huo Yuhao's heart sank sharply.

Control her?

Who was controlling Wang Dong?

"And," Wang Dong said, rubbing her brow with a pained expression, "there are... things in my head now. Fragments of memories—broken, chaotic memories that I don't remember at all. A voice keeps telling me to get close to you, to trust you, to... bind myself to you and never part from you."

She raised her head and looked at Huo Yuhao. For the first time, her pink-blue eyes revealed clear, undisguised... fear.

"Huo Yuhao, I... who am I, really? And you... who are you, really?"

Huo Yuhao opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.

He did not know how to answer.

Because he was asking himself the same question.

Who am I?

Huo Yuhao? The illegitimate son of the Duke of White Tiger? A new student of Shrek Academy? Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's host?

Or... something else?

A puppet whose fate had been arranged, casually manipulated as a chess piece by certain lofty beings...?

God Realm, God Realm Committee.

This was a majestic palace floating in the endless void, so grand that words could not describe it.

The entire palace had been built from the purest crystallized divine power. Seven-colored rays flowed across its surface, while ancient and mysterious runes were etched into every brick and pillar, radiating an eternal, indestructible, supreme aura.

This was the center of power in the God Realm, where the gods who ruled over the Myriad Worlds and governed the laws of the universe gathered to deliberate.

At this moment, a routine meeting was being held in the discussion hall at the deepest part of the palace.

More than a dozen figures sat on either side of a long table of divine crystal. Some were male, some female; some old, some young; all had different forms. Yet without exception, each radiated vast, unfathomable divine power like an endless sea.

They merely sat there quietly, yet the divine light circulating around them distorted and solidified the surrounding space, as though they themselves were incarnations of "laws" and manifestations of the "Dao."

Seated at the head of the table was a young man who appeared to be around twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

He wore a simple white robe, with black hair and black eyes, handsome features, and a gentle temperament. A faint smile that made one feel like they were bathed in spring air rested on his lips. He looked like nothing more than an ordinary, kind-hearted neighbor.

But every god in the meeting hall knew that this "neighbor" was the foremost of the God Realm's five great God Kings—the God King who controlled the God Realm Hub and governed all gods... Tang San.

Sea God, Asura God, bearer of two divine positions.

The savior of Douluo Continent ten thousand years ago, leader of the Shrek Seven Devils, and founder of the Tang Sect.

Now, the true and unquestionable ruler of the God Realm.

Yet at this moment, this ruler was clearly in a poor mood.

Leaning against the back of his chair, he unconsciously tapped the smooth tabletop with the fingers of his right hand, producing soft tapping sounds.

Those black eyes that always held a warm smile were slightly narrowed now. A dark red glimmer flashed deep within his pupils—the divine power of the Asura God position, filled with slaughter and destruction, leaking out beyond his control.

He was thinking, calculating, and... growing irritated.

A few days earlier, he had suddenly sensed an extremely faint, nearly imperceptible obstruction in the Divine Soul connection between himself and his daughter Xiao Qi, who had taken the alias Wang Dong. Ever since then, his mood had not improved.

That obstruction had been brief, lasting less than an instant before returning to normal. But for an existence at Tang San's level, an anomaly lasting even an instant was enough to put him on guard.

He had immediately split off a thread of divine consciousness and sent it down to Douluo Continent to inspect Xiao Qi's condition.

Then he saw a scene that left him shocked, confused, and even... somewhat uneasy.

Xiao Qi and Huo Yuhao, the "child of destiny" he had chosen, had actually failed to complete their martial soul fusion.

According to his calculations, Xiao Qi possessed half of Xiao Wu's inherited Soft Bone Rabbit bloodline, while Huo Yuhao had an incomparably pure Spirit Eye martial soul that Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had modified. On top of that, Tang San had secretly planted a "seed" in Xiao Qi's Divine Soul.

Their first intimate contact should have triggered martial soul fusion with absolute certainty, and its quality should have been extraordinarily high. It might even have directly given birth to a Martial Soul Fusion Skill.

That way, Xiao Qi and Huo Yuhao would establish the deepest bond possible, their souls resonating and their destinies intertwined.

Huo Yuhao's future would then be firmly bound to Xiao Qi's, making him Tang San's most obedient, sharpest, and most valuable chess piece.

But the reality was that the martial soul fusion had failed.

No, it had not failed.

It had... been interrupted.

Something seemed to be missing from Huo Yuhao, causing the fusion to fail. Tang San was deeply puzzled by what had happened. It should not have been possible.

Tang San exhausted every method at his disposal and even used the Asura God's divine power to trace the source, but in the end, all he saw was... a hazy fog.

Yes, fog.

It was not an obstruction, nor was it concealment. It was something more fundamental, as if "fate" itself had been thrown into chaos, obscured, and... rewritten—a fog.

From that point onward, Tang San realized that he could no longer clearly calculate Huo Yuhao's future.