Aftermath, the God Realm's Gaze

The Heavenly Dragon Gate had lain dormant for too long. So long that many had forgotten that once a true dragon bared its fangs, it meant to devour people.

Undercurrents surged wildly through the major cities.

The name Thunder Dragon, along with Shrek's humiliation, had become a bloodied blade hanging over the heads of every young Soul Master.

Meanwhile, in distant Shrek Academy.

Sea God's Island.

Deep within Sea God's Pavilion, beneath the enormous Golden Tree that radiated a gentle golden glow.

The light was dim.

An old man with a hunched frame lay in a battered wicker chair.

His face was hidden in shadow, his breathing so weak it seemed as though it could cease at any moment.

Suddenly.

"Cough, cough, cough..."

A wrenching fit of coughing shattered the deathly stillness of Sea God's Pavilion. The old man abruptly sat upright, clutching his chest as a trace of dark red blood seeped through his fingers.

Unprecedented shock erupted in his clouded eyes.

The air seemed to still retain a destructive aura transmitted through the unseen currents of fate. It was an overbearing law that did not belong to this world at all, as though it could crush the entire Sea God's Pavilion into dust at any moment.

The old man's trembling hand wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Ultimate darkness fire..."

"Overbearing dragon might..."

He muttered to himself, his voice as hoarse as dried bark, carrying a trace of fear he could not conceal.

"Mu En, just what kind of existence have you provoked...?"

On the official road outside Soto City.

Carriage wheels rolled over the uneven dirt road, kicking up yellow dust that filled the sky. Wang Dong'er dusted off her clothes and hurried after the white-clad figure ahead.

She bit her lip and kicked a stone away with the tip of her shoe.

"Where... are we going?"

Wang Dong'er kept her voice low. Her mind was still a mess. Shrek's proud banner had been ground beneath someone's feet, and somehow, she had followed this lawless bastard out with him.

Yu Chen stopped.

Without turning around, he looked past the wilderness ahead and straight toward the distant north.

"To a very cold place."

Yu Chen raised his right hand. Several black markings surfaced in his palm. They were the marks of Red-Eyes.

"When I casually killed that fat Iceworm before, I left something there. There's movement over there now."

Yu Chen clenched his fingers and crushed a fallen leaf.

"Power from the same source. And it's not small. Something big is about to awaken."

Wang Dong'er shrank back. Just hearing Yu Chen mention it so casually gave her goosebumps all over. What kind of monster would qualify as "something big" to Yu Chen?

She pulled her coat tighter around herself.

"The Far North."

Yu Chen started forward again, crunching dead branches beneath his feet.

"Let's go. Let's see what treasures are hidden in that frozen wasteland."

Wang Dong'er looked at Yu Chen's back and jogged after him.

Shrek Academy, Sea God's Pavilion.

The Golden Tree's leaves rustled. In the shadows beneath it, Mu En hunched over, his entire body sunk into a battered wicker chair.

Several intelligence reports covered in coded writing were clenched in his hand.

The papers had been crumpled into wrinkles by his grip. Every word on them challenged everything he had known for more than a century.

Black flames.

Tyrannical dragon might that suppressed all else.

And crippling Huo Yuhao in public before taking Wang Dong'er away.

Mu En stared fixedly at the writing on the papers.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough!"

Violent coughing shattered the silence around him. Mu En bent over, his fingers like dead bark covering his mouth. Dark red blood seeped through the gaps and dripped onto the intelligence reports.

The little life force he had left drained away with that mouthful of blood. He could not even catch his breath properly.

He stared northward, his hand shaking so badly that he could no longer hold the papers.

At the same time, in the core region of the distant Far North.

Deep within glaciers that never melted year-round.

Gales swept up blizzards that spiraled into the sky. Without any warning, a storm powerful enough to overturn the entire snowy plain was rapidly gathering.

The clouds hung low.

Dull sounds came from beneath the thick ice.

The God Realm.

Golden light, unchanged for ten thousand years, poured down from the dome above, yet it could not bring even a trace of warmth into the committee hall.

A man in magnificent blue robes sat in the seat of honor, his slender fingers tapping intermittently against the cold armrest.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The sound was quiet, yet it was like a drumbeat striking the tips of everyone's hearts, filling the vast hall with suffocating oppression.

Tang San's eyelid twitched.

He spread open his palm. A golden thread symbolizing the fate of Douluo Continent floated above it.

Compared to a few days ago, the thread had grown dimmer and thinner. Worst of all, it looked as though something invisible had gnawed at it, causing golden motes of light to continuously leak away at a slow yet irreversible rate.

It felt as though an uncatchable glutton had slipped into his wheat fields and was madly devouring the harvest he had expected for the next few decades.

"That variable again..."

He closed his eyes, and his vast divine sense surged toward the mortal realm like a tide.

The entire map of Douluo Continent instantly unfolded in his mind. Mountains, rivers, and cities were as clear as lines on his palm. He could easily find anyone he wished to find and observe every word and action they made.

But when his divine sense tried to lock onto the white-clad youth named Yu Chen.

The image in his mind suddenly blurred.

Chaos.

Within it, only black-and-white lightning intertwined, collided, and annihilated each other in a frenzy, like a primordial storm from before the creation of heaven and earth. The instant his divine sense approached, it was pulverized by that power of destruction and creation, pure to the extreme.

"..."

Tang San withdrew his divine sense, and the rhythm of his fingers against the armrest quickened slightly.

No.

The power surrounding the other party stood at too high a level, far beyond his understanding. Forcing a deduction would not only yield nothing, but would also deplete the origin of his divine soul.

So what now?

Was he supposed to watch helplessly as the sheepfold he had painstakingly enclosed was trampled to pieces by some wild wolf that had appeared from nowhere?

Tang San's gaze slowly moved over the map of Douluo Continent before finally stopping on a faint yet unusually pleasing light point curled up in a corner of Shrek Academy.

Huo Yuhao.

This pawn had originally been an idle piece he had laid down to pave the way for his daughter and conveniently harvest some fate. But now... perhaps it could still be put to use.

He looked at the intense resentment, jealousy, and unwillingness swirling within that point of light, nearly tangible in their density, and pulled his lips into a cold smile.

Since he could not pull out that most irritating weed.

Then he would water another weed and let them fight each other first.

Tang San extended a finger and carefully stripped a minute thread of power from the origin of his divine soul, carrying the cold killing intent unique to the Asura God's divine position.