Uncle's Return, Blood Abuse of the White Tiger Madam

White Tiger Duke's Mansion, rear courtyard woodshed.

The midnight wind passed through the broken window lattice, making a sound like mournful sobbing.

A frail boy huddled in the corner. The coarse cloth shirt on his body had long since been washed pale, its cuffs and hem covered in dense patches.

Several fresh finger marks lined his face. A bruise swelled at the corner of his left eye, while his cracked lips seeped blood.

Yet his eyes were bright.

It was not the brightness of a child's innocence, but a light tempered by hardship, growing ever more resilient.

Huo Yuhao was ten years old this year.

Four years had passed since his mother, Huo Yun'er, had died.

For four years, there had not been a day when he did not want to escape this cage. But he could not leave. Before she died, his mother had held his hand and said, "Yuhao, live on. Wait for your uncle to return."

He did not know where his uncle was, what he looked like, or even his name. His mother had only said, "Your uncle is very formidable—far more formidable than you can imagine."

Those words were his entire reason for living.

Bang!

The woodshed door was kicked open.

A middle-aged woman in brocade robes entered, followed by two broad, burly servant women.

The woman looked to be in her early forties. Her well-maintained face was caked in powder, but her features were filled with harshness and malice. She was the Duchess, the White Tiger Duke's lawful wife.

"You little bastard, you're still alive?" The Duchess looked down at Huo Yuhao, a mocking smile on her lips. "Your mother has been dead for four years. Why haven't you gone to join her?"

Huo Yuhao kept his head lowered and said nothing.

He knew that the more he resisted, the worse the beating would be.

"Gone mute?" The Duchess snorted and gave the servant women behind her a look. "Hold him down."

The two servant women immediately rushed forward, seizing Huo Yuhao's arms from either side and pinning him to the ground. He struggled a few times, only to receive a slap across the face that made his ears ring.

"This afternoon, did you sneak into the kitchen and steal a piece of meat?" The Duchess crouched down and pinched Huo Yuhao's chin, her nails digging into his flesh. "I've raised you for ten years. It's already merciful of me not to have starved you to death, and you still dare steal?"

Huo Yuhao gritted his teeth and said, word by word, "I didn't steal it. Auntie Wang from the kitchen gave me that meat. She said I was too thin..."

Slap!

The Duchess struck him across the face.

"Auntie Wang gave it to you? She's a mere servant. What right does she have to decide what happens to my family's things? I think she's tired of living."

The Duchess rose and patted nonexistent dust from her hands. "Someone, drag that old woman surnamed Wang out and give her twenty strokes of the paddle. Then throw her out of the mansion."

Huo Yuhao abruptly raised his head, anger appearing in his eyes for the first time. "It has nothing to do with Auntie Wang! I begged her to give it to me! If you want to beat someone, beat me!"

"Oh? You're quite loyal." The Duchess smiled, clearly delighted. "Since you care so much about her, fine. Kneel for me and knock your head on the ground one hundred times. Then I'll spare her."

Huo Yuhao stared at her intently, his body trembling.

In the end, he slowly bent his knees.

Thud.

His first kowtow struck the blue-brick floor, producing a dull sound.

Thud.

The second.

Thud.

The third.

The Duchess looked down at him, her eyes brimming with satisfaction. She had never liked this child—not from the very first moment she saw him.

He was the product of her husband's drunken indiscretion, a stain upon the White Tiger Duke's Mansion. Every time she saw him, she thought of her husband's affairs outside, of those nights she had spent alone in an empty room.

So she tormented him, abused him, and took pleasure in it.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Huo Yuhao kowtowed mechanically, blood already seeping from his forehead.

But he did not stop, nor did he dare to stop. He feared that if he did, Auntie Wang would be driven away.

Auntie Wang was the only person in the mansion who treated him well. She often secretly brought him food and helped mend his clothes. He could not drag her down with him.

Thirty.

Forty.

Fifty.

His consciousness began to blur, and stars danced before his eyes.

Just then...

A warm force suddenly supported his forehead, preventing him from continuing to bow down.

Huo Yuhao froze.

He raised his head and saw a pair of feet before him. They wore white boots embroidered with intricate golden patterns, with faint streams of light flowing across their surface.

Following those feet upward, he saw a young man dressed in white.

The man looked no more than twenty-four or twenty-five. His features were so handsome they seemed unreal, and his deep eyes appeared to hold a sea of stars.

He stood there without doing anything, yet the atmosphere in the entire woodshed changed. At some point, the two servant women holding Huo Yuhao down had released him and collapsed onto the floor, trembling like leaves.

The duchess, who had been so arrogant just moments ago, was now deathly pale, her lips quivering too much to form a single word.

Because she had seen the soul rings circling the young man in white.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Nine soul rings, every one of them a deep blood-red, radiating suffocating pressure within the dim woodshed.

Nine rings.

All hundred-thousand-year soul rings.

A Titled Douluo.

No, that wasn't right... Though the duchess was only a Soul King, she had seen Titled Douluo before.

The White Tiger Duke, Dai Hao, was an eight-ringed Soul Douluo, and she had also glimpsed from afar the Empire's nine-ringed Titled Douluo consecrated master.

Those people possessed powerful auras, yet none of them inspired even a fraction of the terror this young man brought her.

It felt like an ant gazing up at a god.

"Y-you... who are you?" the duchess asked in a shrill, trembling voice.

The young man in white ignored her.

He bent down and reached out with both hands, carefully helping Huo Yuhao up from the ground. His movements were gentle, as though he were holding a priceless treasure.

"Child, you've suffered."

His voice was gentle, as gentle as a spring breeze brushing over a lake.

Huo Yuhao stared at him blankly. For some reason, his nose suddenly stung.

"You are..."

"My name is Huo Chen." The young man in white smiled faintly and reached out to wipe the blood from Huo Yuhao's forehead. "I'm your mother's elder brother—your uncle."

Huo Yuhao's pupils abruptly constricted.

Uncle.

The powerful uncle his mother had spoken of.

He had finally come.

"Uncle..." Huo Yuhao's voice choked, tears filling his eyes. "Y-you... why did you only come now...?"

He had waited for this day for four years.

After his mother died, he waited every day. He waited for that legendary uncle to appear and take him away from this hell.

But day after day, year after year, that person never appeared. He began to wonder whether this uncle had never existed at all, whether his mother had merely made up a lie to give him a reason to keep living.

Until today.

"I'm sorry." Huo Chen's voice was filled with guilt. "Your uncle came too late."

He truly had come too late.

Ten years ago, he encountered a spatial-temporal turbulence and accidentally entered the independent training ground of the Reincarnation God King.

It was a mysterious space adrift beyond Douluo Continent, concealing the six foundational divine trials left behind by the Reincarnation God King. He spent long years there—ten years had passed in the outside world, but a thousand years had passed within the training ground.

He passed the six divine trials and cultivated to rank ninety-nine, becoming an Ultimate Douluo with one foot already in the realm of gods.

But his seventh divine trial, [Proving the Dao in the Mortal World], remained unfinished. He needed to return to Douluo Continent, protect his closest kin, and reverse destiny.

So he returned.

But he was still one step too late.

His younger sister, Huo Yun'er, had been dead for four years.

"Uncle is taking you home." Huo Chen held Huo Yuhao's hand, his voice gentle yet firm. "From now on, no one will ever bully you again."

With that, he turned to look at the Duchess.

In that instant, the warmth in his eyes vanished, replaced by icy killing intent.

"You're the White Tiger Duchess?"

Frightened by his gaze, the Duchess staggered back two steps and shouted fiercely despite her inner weakness, "Y-you... what are you trying to do? This is the White Tiger Duke's Mansion! My husband is an imperial duke, an eight-ringed Soul Douluo! If you dare lay a hand on me, he won't let you get away with it!"

"Oh?" Huo Chen raised a brow. "Dai Hao isn't at the mansion, is he? If I remember correctly, he should be overseeing the army at the border. He won't be back for at least three months."

The Duchess's expression turned even uglier.

"Y-you... how do you know...?"

"I know more than that." Huo Chen said flatly, "I also know what you've done to my nephew over the past four years."

He raised his hand, and a bewitching crimson flower bloomed in his palm.

Its petals overlapped in countless layers, every one flowing with a bloody radiance and exuding an aura of life, death, and reincarnation. The instant the flower appeared, the temperature throughout the woodshed plummeted, and a thin layer of frost formed over the ground.

"The Reincarnation Other Shore Flower." Huo Chen looked at the flower in his palm as though admiring a work of art. "My martial soul. It can control the cycle of life and death—and it can also let people experience... what it truly means to wish for death."

The Duchess let out a shriek and turned to flee.

But the moment she took a step, an invisible force imprisoned her in place. To her horror, she found that her body was completely beyond her control. She could not even move a finger.

"Don't worry. I won't kill you." Huo Chen walked up to her and looked down at her. "Killing you would be letting you off too easily. I only want you to have a taste of the suffering my nephew endured all these years."

He stretched out a finger and lightly tapped the center of the Duchess's brow.

A streak of bloody light entered her mind.

The Duchess's body suddenly stiffened. Her eyes rolled back, and drool trickled from the corner of her mouth.

Her consciousness sank into chaos as horrifying scenes flashed through her mind without end. She was hung up and whipped, pinned against scorching iron plates, thrown into a pit of snakes...

These were all punishments she had once inflicted on Huo Yuhao, now returned to her a hundredfold.

"Ah!"

The Duchess let out a miserable scream and collapsed to the floor, her entire body convulsing violently.

The two servant women had long since fainted from fright.

Huo Chen paid them no further attention. Turning around, he took Huo Yuhao's hand. "Let's go, Yuhao."

Huo Yuhao looked at the convulsing Duchess on the ground, then at his uncle beside him, an indescribably complicated swirl of emotions rising in his heart.

Satisfaction? Relief? Both were there, but more than anything, there was a sense of security he had never known before.

So this was what it felt like to have someone standing behind you.

"Uncle, where are we going?"

"First, we'll go to your mother's grave. I'll take you to see her." Huo Chen's voice grew low. "Then, we'll go home."

"Where is home?"

"In the Heavenly Soul Empire, beside Sunset Forest, there is an estate. Your uncle has been preparing it for many years, waiting to bring you there."

Huo Yuhao fell silent for a while before asking, "Then... will I be able to come back someday?"

Huo Chen stopped and looked down at him. "Do you want to come back?"

Huo Yuhao shook his head.

"Then you'll never come back." Huo Chen rubbed his head. "From this day onward, the White Tiger Duke's Mansion has nothing to do with you. You are not anyone's illegitimate son, nor are you some shameful stain. You are Huo Chen's nephew, my only family."

"Remember this: your surname is Huo, not Dai."

Huo Yuhao nodded hard, and at last, he could no longer hold back his tears.

This time, they were tears of happiness.

The two walked out of the woodshed, crossed the silent rear courtyard, and arrived at the side gate of the Duke's Mansion. When the guards saw Huo Chen, they instinctively tried to stop him, only to have their legs go weak from a single glare. They dropped straight to their knees.

"Open the gate," Huo Chen said calmly.

Trembling, the guards opened the side gate.

Huo Chen led Huo Yuhao out in long strides.

Moonlight spilled over them, casting two long shadows. One large and one small, pressed close together.

Behind them, the White Tiger Duke's Mansion was brightly lit and in complete chaos. The Duchess's screams rang through the entire estate, yet no one dared step forward to stop them.

Before them stretched the vast night, scattered with starlight.

A new world was waiting for this boy who had suffered so much.

"Uncle."

"Hmm?"

"Are you really stronger than my father?"

Huo Chen laughed, openly and heartily.

"Silly child, what does your father amount to? Your uncle here is going to become a god."

"Then can I become a god too?"

"You can." Huo Chen tightened his grip on the boy's hand. "With your uncle here, you'll definitely become the strongest god in this world."

In the night wind, the boy's eyes shone like two stars.

It was the light of hope.