Huo Yuhao Had Gone Mad

Huo Yuhao packed away the small glass bottles in front of him one by one, then casually tossed them into his storage soul tool.

The testing was over.

An entire shichen had passed, and he had obtained the data he wanted.

The results were unsurprising—indeed, they matched his previous deductions exactly.

Huo Yuhao looked at the floating cluster of icy-blue airflow above his left palm.

At present, this second martial soul of his was indeed in its most primitive origin state.

Just like those children of three or four who had yet to undergo martial soul awakening.

Many ancient records in the Shrek Outer Court library had mentioned this phenomenon.

The records stated that the embryonic form of a martial soul within a child was an origin source in a state of chaos.

As the child grew, that chaotic origin would be drawn by their own bloodline and gradually take shape.

In the end, it would either become the father's martial soul or the mother's martial soul.

Although those records made it sound mysterious and used all sorts of metaphysical terminology,

to Huo Yuhao, the meaning was actually very simple.

It was not some illusory pull of the bloodline at all.

Put bluntly, it was genetic material.

During a child's development and growth, the origin of their martial soul would continuously be affected by the inherited genes from their parents, eventually solidifying into a specific form.

If the genetic material mutated during that process, then the martial soul would undergo what was known as a mutation.

Huo Yuhao quietly watched the ice mist in his palm.

Following that underlying logic, if he did nothing now and simply allowed this second martial soul to remain in its origin state,

then as time passed, the genetic material in his body would likewise subtly influence this cluster of ice mist.

It would cause it to slowly take shape.

It might take several years.

Or perhaps more than a decade.

But the final result was actually easy to guess.

There was a high chance it would become a tiger-type martial soul with ultimate ice attributes.

After all, the blood flowing through this body belonged to the White Tiger Duke of the Star Luo Empire.

The genetic sequences corresponding to the White Tiger martial soul had long been engraved within him.

In his memories,

Xu Yunhan, the son of the original Huo Yuhao, had not inherited his body martial soul. Instead, through atavistic inheritance, he had mutated into a White Tiger martial soul variant from Dai Hao's lineage—the Three-Eyed White Tiger.

That directly proved just how domineering the White Tiger genes were.

Huo Yuhao rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Just as inspiration continued to surge through his mind and he prepared to dig deeper along this line of genetic contamination,

a cry of surprise suddenly came from beside him.

"Hey, what's that?"

Wang Dong crouched nearby, pointing toward the depths of Sea God Lake with one hand.

Huo Yuhao frowned slightly.

Having his train of thought interrupted annoyed him somewhat.

But he still raised his head in the direction Wang Dong was pointing.

At some unknown point, a blinding crimson light had appeared above the pitch-black lake.

It was still far away, but an overbearing wave of heat had already swept toward them like a tidal surge.

The surrounding temperature rose in a straight line.

A dense layer of vapor even rose from the lake's surface, caused by a massive amount of lake water evaporating instantly.

Before Huo Yuhao could figure out what was happening,

that crimson figure suddenly paused in midair.

Then, a blazing line of fire as thick as a water vat tore through the night sky and shot viciously toward where the two of them stood.

It was unbelievably fast.

"Fuck!"

Wang Dong reacted a step faster than Huo Yuhao.

Her pink-blue eyes abruptly contracted, and she did not even have time for a single unnecessary word.

Light flashed.

The Light Goddess Butterfly martial soul instantly possessed her.

Wang Dong thrust out both hands, grabbed Huo Yuhao by the shoulders, and directly tackled him hard onto the grass.

The two rolled several times across the ground from the momentum.

Boom!

The instant they hit the ground,

that terrifying line of fire swept across the place where they had just been standing.

The pungent stench of scorched earth instantly spread through the air.

Huo Yuhao lay on the ground.

Wang Dong was pressed entirely atop him, both hands tightly shielding his head. The pair of dazzling butterfly wings on her back trembled slightly.

Huo Yuhao turned his head and looked toward the nearby shore.

The path burned by the fireline had left behind a deep, charred trench.

Several massive decorative boulders along the shore had completely changed shape, their surfaces melted into magma-like liquid glowing a dark red.

What the hell kind of absurd temperature was that?

Huo Yuhao's eye twitched slightly.

If that thing had grazed them even a little, they would probably have been cremated on the spot.

He raised his head and looked at the culprit in the air.

A fiery-red figure hovered beneath the night sky, backed by the phantom of a gigantic, violent fire phoenix.

The extreme heat had even distorted the surrounding air.

It was Ma Xiaotao.

Her signature scarlet hair and those crazed eyes that had completely lost all reason left no room for a second guess.

Huo Yuhao sighed inwardly.

He had only just grasped the underlying logic behind martial soul mutations and was preparing to fully refine the theory.

Then this madwoman had shown up.

She had forcibly cut off his train of thought.

It was really infuriating.

"Are you okay?"

Wang Dong climbed off him, then pulled him to his feet.

Before Huo Yuhao could answer,

a frenzied phoenix cry rang out from the sky.

Bang!

Ma Xiaotao descended directly from the sky and smashed heavily into the ground less than ten meters away from them.

The powerful impact made the ground tremble.

The grass beneath her feet turned to ash in an instant, while the nearby lake water bubbled violently from the heat.

Faced with that suffocating pressure,

Wang Dong's expression completely changed.

She took a deep breath, spread her pink-blue arms, and without hesitation shielded Huo Yuhao behind her.

A six-ringed Soul Emperor.

This was absolutely not an opponent that two two-ringed Grand Soul Masters could handle.

Although she and Huo Yuhao often traded barbs,

when lives were on the line, she still instinctively moved to protect him.

"Get farther away."

Wang Dong stared fixedly at Ma Xiaotao ahead of them, her voice somewhat hoarse with tension.

Standing behind her, Huo Yuhao watched this little girl's legs tremble even as she stubbornly tried to act tough.

For some reason,

an inexplicable feeling rose within him.

He found it a little funny, yet she also seemed just a tiny bit dependable.

But now was not the time to be moved.

Huo Yuhao knew Ma Xiaotao's current condition very well.

The backlash of her evil fire had caused her to completely lose control. This madwoman's mind was now filled with nothing but violent flames, and she could not hear a word anyone said.

Nothing but extreme cold could suppress her.

At that thought,

Huo Yuhao ignored Wang Dong's warning and directly mobilized the soul power within his body, pouring it without reservation into his left palm.

The originally calm cluster of icy-blue airflow instantly swelled.

An aura of ultimate cold burst outward in all directions like a tsunami.

The moisture in the air froze in an instant, turning into countless tiny ice crystals.

The clearing, which had just felt like a furnace, saw its temperature plummet.

Wang Dong, standing at the very front, bore the brunt of it.

"Gasp—"

She sharply sucked in a breath, and her entire body shuddered uncontrollably.

It was too cold.

This was not the cold wind of an ordinary winter, but a terrifying low temperature that seemed capable of freezing one's marrow to pieces.

Her butterfly wings instantly stiffened, and a faint layer of white frost even formed over them.

Then, an unbelievable scene occurred.

Ma Xiaotao, who had been preparing to launch an indiscriminate attack, suddenly stopped moving.

Her hollow, unfocused eyes locked onto Huo Yuhao as though a radar had detected prey.

To her, with her body being scorched by raging flames from within, that ultimate chill was simply the most fatal temptation in the world.

"Screech!"

Another piercing phoenix cry rang out.

The dark-red flames around Ma Xiaotao rose another three feet, and she locked onto Huo Yuhao like an arrow released from a bow.

At the sight of this, Wang Dong felt her heart leap into her throat.

She had just fought desperately to pull them farther away, but Huo Yuhao behind her had gone and caused such a huge disturbance instead.

"Are you insane?!"

Wang Dong turned her head, her eyes reddening from extreme panic.

She shouted at Huo Yuhao in near collapse, "Why are you provoking her at a time like this? Are you tired of living?!"