Even the Ultimate Dark Fire Ma Xiaotao had forged during her time earning her stripes in the Holy Spirit Cult had failed to harm Huo Yuhao in the slightest. Instead, it had been frozen solid!
"Your Shrek Academy really is something. Anyone who didn't know better might think that this power, dark to the extreme, belonged to some heir to the Holy Spirit Cult's leadership."
Huo Yuhao pinched Ma Xiaotao's cheek and smiled faintly.
"I already broke free of the Holy Spirit Cult's control... I've turned away from darkness and embraced the light..."
Ma Xiaotao glared bitterly at Huo Yuhao, but even now, her Soul Power was completely frozen by him. She no longer had the slightest power to fight back.
"Is that so?"
Huo Yuhao neither confirmed nor denied it. As for what came next, he planned to take her to the dragon bed and question her at leisure! He had long heard that this Phoenix Douluo had kept her Evil Fire suppressed for years. Reaching her current level of cultivation had been no easy feat.
Wasn't this the perfect chance to help her out?
Taotie Douluo Xuan Zi and Dragon God Douluo Bei Bei both perished in this battle. Phoenix Douluo Ma Xiaotao, who had only recently returned, Xiao Ding Douluo Xiao Xiao, and Silver Moon Douluo Zhang Lexuan were captured by Huo Yuhao. After that, they vanished without a trace.
Shrek Academy was utterly terrified and never again dared to openly oppose the Star Luo Empire!
After that, Huo Yuhao even paid a visit to the Sea God Pavilion and returned with a great haul of treasures.
A Level 9 Soul Engineer trained by Shrek Academy tried to ambush Huo Yuhao. To his surprise, Huo Yuhao was quite knowledgeable about Soul Tools as well. The attack failed, and Huo Yuhao killed him instead!
In the blink of an eye, Huo Yuhao had passed his hundredth year and become the undisputed strongest cultivator on the entire Douluo Continent.
Kong Deming, a Level 10 Soul Engineer, once challenged Huo Yuhao, but was defeated in just five moves. Even his Level 10 Soul Tool was badly damaged, and he fled back to Ming Capital in disgrace.
When Huo Yuhao was ninety, he went to the Evil Demon Forest and the Land of Great Calamity in the Star Dou Great Forest, where he challenged the Evil Emperor and Di Tian.
They said that battle in the Star Dou Great Forest had plunged the heavens into darkness, with sun and moon appearing together. The entire sky above the forest had warped. That terrifying battle lasted seven days and seven nights.
But in the end, the one who returned victorious was Spirit Ice Douluo Huo Yuhao!
"Hmph!"
Huo Yuhao entered the dungeon, his gaze cold as he looked at the many boys and girls frozen in ice. They had pale pinkish-blue hair and exquisite, almost identical features, like copies made on an assembly line.
These people had all appeared inexplicably beside his children. It was obvious that some kind of force was pushing them to approach his children on purpose.
Huo Yuhao had secretly dealt with all these bizarre beings and brought them here for study.
"The Divine Realm... Sea God..."
White-haired Huo Yuhao suddenly raised his eyes to the sky, his gaze cold and still. Once again, he recalled the lines of the "Sea God's Precepts" that the Duchess had forced him to memorize when he was young.
"Back then, that woman forced me to memorize five pages of precepts. Later, she gave birth to five sons for me..."
Huo Yuhao murmured to himself.
Dressed in a magnificent, gold-trimmed robe, white-haired Huo Yuhao grew ever more defiant, his aging Spirit Eyes gleaming with pride. At last, only a sheet of ice remained in his gaze.
"Tang San, when I walk the path to godhood, I'll come for your head!"
"To slay the Sea God on the path to godhood. What a bold declaration!"
At Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineer Academy, a youth polishing his sword gazed intently at the Sky Screen, as if a fire unlike any he had ever known had just been kindled within him.
At that moment, the vast majority of people on the Douluo Continent felt conflicted. They looked at the white-haired, rebellious old ruler in the scene with awe and fear, but also... with a trace of yearning.
Sea God Tang San was a being whose name inspired awe in everyone who heard it, a true god and legend shaped and exalted over countless years. On the Douluo Continent, he was practically a blue sun in the sky.
And now, someone had openly declared that he would cross blades with Tang San on the path to godhood!
The Sky Screen also revealed the final outcome of this timeline.
"Kill!"
As more and more inexplicable disasters struck the Star Luo Empire, countless civilians were killed or injured. One massive tsunami in particular completely submerged five cities along the southern coast, leaving over a million dead or wounded.
Unable to endure it any longer, Huo Yuhao smashed open the Heavenly Gate with a single punch ahead of time and charged into the Divine Realm!
No one had inherited a divine position, and no passage between the two realms had been opened by the Divine Realm's will.
Huo Yuhao had simply used his own strength to smash open the passage between the two realms. He bore the flying shards of space and the Divine Realm's thunderous laws as he charged toward that world!
The crowd could no longer make out the details of the battle in the Sky Screen. All they could see was the bizarre, shifting light filling the passage through space and time.
No one knew how many impossibly powerful beings appeared to intercept Huo Yuhao. At times, even the blood of gods could be seen spraying through the passage!
"A true man should be like this!"
Outside the Sky Screen, everyone who watched the scene felt their hearts swell with yearning and fiery passion, whether or not they approved of Huo Yuhao's past actions and methods. In that moment, every eye was fixed on the ruler battling through the passage between the two realms.
"Why... why did it turn out this way... Yuhao, Dai Yuhao, Huo Yuhao..."
In the White Tiger Duke Mansion beyond the Sky Screen, Duchess Xu Feiyan suddenly clutched her head with both hands. Her beautiful face twisted in indescribable agony.
Countless scenes, countless little moments, and countless details from her own life surfaced and awakened in her mind.
Even Huo Yuhao's thrusts and every touch were so vivid that, in an instant, they nearly buried all her memories with Dai Hao!
What Huo Yuhao didn't know was that, not long before this, Ning Tian had briefly lost consciousness and then awakened in the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. She had taken Wu Feng and slipped out of the sect without anyone noticing. No one knew where they had gone!
"Huo Yuhao... In this life, no matter what, I'll find you again... You won't escape from beneath my skirt, Ning Tian... Heehee..."
Sitting in a modified high-speed Soul Tool motorcycle, the young woman gazed up at Huo Yuhao's face on the Sky Screen and smiled dreamily.
"Huo Yuhao... Sword Dog... You promised you'd let me experience the young lady's flavor again, didn't you? Those were your words..."
Beside the girl in white, the girl in leather was trembling with excitement. Her fiery eyes held nothing but sickness and madness!
Huo Yuhao, unaware of what was about to come, watched the final moments of the Sky Screen with a grave expression, waiting for the outcome.
At last, after a flash of sea-blue light, only a regretful sigh came from the passage.
"What a pity. If I had been born ten thousand years earlier..."
Then, in the scene on the Sky Screen, the Star Luo Imperial Palace—and the entire Star Luo Empire—erupted in wave after wave of grief-stricken wailing, like mountains crumbling and seas roaring.