Drain Your Arrogance Dry

The snowflakes filling the sky were blasted backward by the collision of two forces.

The Ice Empress hovered in midair, the five segments of her scorpion tail raised high behind her. Its emerald glow cast the surrounding snowfield in a ghastly green light.

"Arrogant human, do you really think the Far North is like those worthless little mountains in your inland regions?"

The Ice Empress shrieked, her entire body turning into a green blur as she shot straight for Yu Chen's head.

As she charged forward, thousands upon thousands of crystalline ice spikes condensed directly in the surrounding air. Each spike was over a meter long, its tip gleaming with a venomous blue light. They packed together in a dense mass and came crashing down from every direction.

Wang Dong'er dropped into a crouch in fright, clutching her head with both hands as she cried, "It's over, it's over! There's no way to dodge this!"

Ma Xiaotao planted her feet on the ground as evil fire surged wildly around her. Reaching for Yu Chen's sleeve, she said, "Retreat! Something's wrong with the force behind this!"

Yu Chen did not move so much as a foot.

He did not even spare the falling ice spikes a proper glance. He merely raised his right hand casually and swept it sideways, as though swatting away summer flies.

A broad expanse of white light rippled out from his palm.

A wave of cracking sounds rang out. The countless sturdy profound ice spikes turned to powder the moment they touched the edge of that white light. They did not even make a sound before the wind scattered them away.

"How could this be?"

The Ice Empress paused in midair, smashing her two claws together with a harsh screech of friction.

She had lived for three hundred thousand years and ruled the Far North unchallenged. When had she ever seen someone casually scatter her Myriad Ice Extremity Spikes using nothing but their physical body and released Soul Power?

"I refuse to believe you can truly defy heaven!"

The Ice Empress lost her temper. Her body spun halfway around in the air, and her long emerald scorpion tail suddenly whipped out.

The tail drew an afterimage too fast for the naked eye to follow, accompanied by a piercing whistle through the air. A dazzling dark-green light gathered at the tip of the tail hook as it stabbed toward Yu Chen's brow.

"Ice Emperor's Fury! Die!"

This attack nearly drained half her origin power. The surrounding ice was crushed downward inch by inch, splitting open with sharp cracks and forming dozens of deep ravines.

Wang Dong'er shut her eyes, not daring to look.

Yu Chen stood where he was without even blinking. He pressed together the index and middle fingers of his right hand and reached forward.

That venomous tail hook, so fast its shadow could barely be seen, landed steadily between his two fingers.

His fingers closed, tightly pinching the sharpest tip of the scorpion tail.

The wind and snow filling the sky seemed to freeze for a moment.

The Ice Empress hung suspended in the air, her entire body stiffening. Emerald venom dripped from her tail hook along Yu Chen's fingers and fell onto the ice, burning several small pits into ten-thousand-year profound ice. Yet not even a white mark appeared on Yu Chen's fingers.

"Y-you actually caught it with your fingers?" The Ice Empress's voice rose several octaves, sharp and absurd.

"This ice rod of yours is pretty prickly. Too bad it's got no power behind it."

Yu Chen's tone remained utterly ordinary as he tightened his two fingers.

A crisp crack sounded.

The scorpion-tail shell that the Ice Empress took such pride in, with hardness comparable to a level-ten Soul Tool, was crushed until spiderweb-like cracks spread across it. Emerald blood seeped through the gaps between his fingers.

"Ah!"

The agonizing pain made the Ice Empress scream. Her entire body flailed desperately in midair as her two massive claws struck frantically at Yu Chen's arm.

Yu Chen could not even be bothered to look at those claws. He let them strike the white light protecting his body, yet they failed to create even a ripple.

"A three-hundred-thousand-year ferocious beast, and this is all you can do?" Yu Chen looked at her. "You were shouting quite happily just now. Why have you stopped?"

The Ice Empress trembled from pain, her emerald eyes filled with shock and fury.

She could not understand it. When had such a monster appeared on Douluo Continent?

Even that old man from Shrek Academy who sat in a wheelchair could not possibly receive her full-force attack with two fingers.

"Human, let me go! If you have the guts, put some distance between us and fight me again!" the Ice Empress shouted through gritted teeth.

"Put some distance between us?" Yu Chen sounded as if he had heard a joke, and the strength in his hand increased slightly.

The sound of bones breaking became even clearer.

Tears nearly fell from the Ice Empress's eyes from the pain. The venomous tail hook behind her began trembling violently, its emerald glow flickering between bright and dim.

With ruthless resolve, a circle of blinding white light lit up at the joint of her scorpion tail.

She would sever her tail to survive.

As long as she abandoned the tail hook and used the rebound force to flee into the underground glacier, she would still have a chance to escape in the environment of the Far North.

However, just as the Soul Power within her began gathering at the joint, a black slit suddenly tore open in Yu Chen's right palm without warning.

A deep, violent aura of darkness surged from the crack.

Faintly, the phantom of a gigantic black dragon with crimson eyes appeared in the air. It opened its bloody maw and let out a greedy roar.

The temperature around them was already frigid, but when that black dragon phantom appeared, even the frozen air began to distort and darken.

The Ice Empress felt as if some savage being had fixed its gaze upon the depths of her soul. The blood throughout her body froze, and the Soul Power she had prepared to sever her tail was immediately scattered.

Yu Chen looked at the emerald scorpion struggling desperately, a teasing smile at the corner of his lips.

"Trying to run? My black dragon says it's hungry."

A soul-chilling pulling force came from the black crack.

Before the Ice Empress could react at all, she felt an irresistible force wildly tugging at the meridians around the wound on her tail hook.

The extreme-cold origin she had cultivated for three hundred thousand years surged out in great torrents through the damaged tail shell and flowed toward Yu Chen's palm.

That dark-green Soul Power turned into visible streams, gathering into a ribbon of light in midair and pouring endlessly into the black dragon phantom's open mouth.

The black dragon phantom let out an excited low growl, and the black scales on its body became increasingly solid.

"L-let me go! Stop it!"

The Ice Empress screamed in terror, all her previous arrogance gone.

She frantically swung her two front claws and even tried to ram Yu Chen with her body. But the power within her was draining too quickly. Her movements grew softer and weaker, like a boneless worm.

She could clearly feel her cultivation falling at a horrifying rate.

Two hundred ninety thousand years...

Two hundred eighty thousand years...

Two hundred seventy thousand years...

Every passing second meant that ten thousand years of her painstaking cultivation vanished into nothing.

The sensation of having her origin forcibly stripped away was a hundred times more painful than having her flesh torn apart.

"No... don't absorb any more! I beg you!"

The Ice Empress's body began to shrink. Her originally crystal-clear, jade-like emerald shell gradually lost its luster, becoming dull and cracked.

Standing behind them, Wang Dong'er rubbed her eyes, swallowed, and muttered softly, "Isn't this too ridiculous? He can drink even the ferocious beasts of the Far North like juice?"

Ma Xiaotao stared in stunned silence as well, both hands pressed against her chest. The evil fire inside her sensed that black dragon's might and obediently shrank into her dantian, not daring to stir even slightly.

"So this is the master's power..." Ma Xiaotao murmured, her eyes full of fervor.

Yu Chen held the Ice Empress, who had nearly shrunk into a ball, in one hand. His gaze was so cold that no emotion could be seen within it.

"Weren't you arrogant just now? Didn't you say the soul beasts of the Far North would drown me with a mouthful of spit each?"

Yu Chen flicked his wrist, and the pulling force surged again by thirty percent.

"You may rule the Far North, but to me, you're just a power bank."

The Ice Empress's consciousness began to blur, and the light in her large eyes gradually dimmed.

She regretted it.

Why had she run out of the core region to provoke this fiend?

This was not a method any human Soul Master should possess. Even if a god descended from the heavens, it should not have been able to directly devour a soul beast's origin cultivation.

This man was a complete monster.

Just as the Ice Empress's cultivation was about to fall below the two-hundred-thousand-year threshold, leaving her barely able to maintain her true form—

At that moment.

The originally white sky suddenly darkened.

All sounds of wind and snow vanished in that instant.

An indescribable chill gathered from all directions. It was so cold that even space itself seemed about to freeze.

Wang Dong'er shuddered. The light-attributed Soul Power that had just risen around her instantly went out, and she was frozen so badly that she could not straighten her back, her lips turning blue.

The phoenix flames around Ma Xiaotao could not emit even the faintest light and directly retreated into her body.

What fell from the sky was no longer ordinary snow, but crystal-clear ice flakes as large as goose feathers.

Every ice crystal fell extremely slowly, yet each carried an incomparably heavy pressure of the plane.

At the heart of the blizzard, a slender and graceful white figure slowly emerged.

Long white hair danced in the wind. Her peerlessly beautiful yet expressionless face held a pair of snow-white eyes that watched Yu Chen coldly.

An ethereal, indifferent female voice crashed down from the depths of the storm:

"Release her, human. Otherwise, the Far North will be your grave."

Yu Chen lightly tapped his folding fan against his palm twice, looking as casual as could be.

"What do I want? Do you even need to ask? Of course, I want you two to work for me off the books."

The Snow Empress stood there, completely stunned by those words. She had lived for a full seven hundred thousand years. She had heard human Soul Masters beg for opportunities and heard those who wished to hunt her for her soul ring and soul bone, but she had never heard anyone speak of subduing the overlord of the Far North as casually as hiring temporary labor.

"Work off the books?" The Snow Empress furrowed her brows tightly, her voice full of confusion. "Human, you call offering up one's origin and becoming a soul ring working off the books?"

"What else would I call it? Should I worship you like ancestors?" Yu Chen raised an eyebrow. "You soul beasts have been holed up in the Far North for hundreds of thousands of years. Every day, all you do is sleep and get struck by lightning. When your limit arrives, you still turn to ash. Work with me, and not only will you preserve your consciousness, but when the gates of the God Realm open in the future, you can even get yourselves a proper godhood. Where else on all Douluo Continent are you going to find terms like that?"

The Ice Empress, sprawled in a snow pit, had caught her breath by then. She barely pushed up her upper body, her emerald eyes filled with hatred.

"Snow Maiden, don't listen to this bastard's nonsense!" the Ice Empress shrieked into the wind. "No human is any good! He only wants to deceive us out of our origin. Once he drains us dry, he'll turn around and refine us into soul bones!"

Wang Dong'er could not help taking two steps forward as she listened from behind. She quietly muttered to Ma Xiaotao, "Sister Xiaotao, look at that green scorpion. She's been beaten so badly, but her mouth is still that tough."

Ma Xiaotao folded her arms over her chest and glanced sideways at the Ice Empress. "She's just ignorant. If the master truly wanted their lives, he would have had the black dragon suck her into a dried corpse earlier. Why would he waste time talking nonsense with them?"

Yu Chen could not be bothered to pay attention to the Ice Empress's shouting. He merely raised the fingertips of his right hand slightly.

A faint circle of golden light spread from his fingertips. Immediately afterward, spiritual fluctuations rippled across the ice field.

The Snow Empress's expression changed. This spiritual fluctuation was far too pure, and it carried the unique chill of the Far North. It even contained an indescribably familiar presence.

Before the Snow Empress could figure out whom that aura belonged to, a grating, drawn-out voice, shameless and broken like a cracked gong, exploded directly in the minds of both the Snow Empress and the Ice Empress.

"Oh my god! Bingbing! Snow Maiden! Long time no see! I missed you two so much!"

The moment that voice appeared, the Ice Empress jolted as though struck by lightning. Her two front claws tore several deep trenches into the ground.

"Tian Meng?! You worthless trash, you're actually alive?!" the Ice Empress shouted, her eyes widening round.

"Watch your mouth! Watch your mouth!" Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's punchable voice continued echoing through their spiritual consciousness. "I've got an official position now! I'm following the boss, with food and lodging included, and I can become a god too! Bingbing, listen to your brother—those hundred-thousand-year heavenly tribulations aren't something beasts can survive. Hurry up and throw yourselves at him!"

The Snow Empress could no longer maintain her usual cold composure.

She knew better than anyone what Sky Dream Ice Silkworm was like in the Far North. He was a walking million-year tonic. Aside from his immense spiritual power and plump, delicious flesh, his combat strength was so weak that he could not even defeat a ten-thousand-year soul beast. A few years ago, that giant fleshy worm had vanished without explanation. The soul beasts of the Far North had all assumed he had long since been divided up and eaten by the ferocious beasts of the Star Dou Great Forest.

Who could have imagined that this fellow had entered this young man's body?

And judging by Tian Meng's lively tone, not only was his consciousness completely intact, but his spiritual origin was even more solid and powerful than when he had been in the Far North!

"Tian Meng, did you truly become his soul ring?" the Snow Empress could not help asking in her sea of consciousness.

"A soul ring? Your perspective is too limited!" Tian Meng hummed smugly. "The boss is an existence from a higher dimension! We're called soul spirits! We keep all our wisdom and memories. Even if the physical body is gone, the divine soul remains. When the boss kicks open the gates of the God Realm someday, I'll be a divine beast! Bingbing, that black dragon behind the boss nearly chewed you to pieces just now, didn't it? Let me tell you, the boss doesn't have the best temper. If you keep being stubborn, not even the gods can save you!"

The Ice Empress was dumbfounded. Lying in the snow, the tip of her tail trembled uncontrollably.

"The sights beyond the God Realm..."

The Snow Empress murmured those words softly, her gaze falling once more upon the Blue-Eyes White Dragon phantom behind Yu Chen.

That pure white lightning of yang from earlier still lingered in her mind. Power capable of casually vaporizing ultimate ice absolutely did not belong to the laws of the Douluo plane. Tian Meng, that fat worm, might normally spout nonsense, but when it came to matters of survival and becoming a god, he would never dare joke around.