Inverse Scale Sealing Array

Outside the exhibition center, the night deepened.

"Looks like it went smoothly." Huo Yuhao parked outside the exhibition center and immediately spotted Demon Spirit waiting there. The evening breeze tousled her hair, and the excited flush on her face had yet to fade completely. A few stray celebratory streamers had even caught in her carefully styled hair, glimmering faintly beneath the neon lights.

Huo Yuhao walked over and naturally reached out, gently removing the scraps of streamer from her hair. "Had that much fun? You've even got battle scars in your hair."

"Brother Yuhao! It was—such a success!" Demon Spirit's eyes shone brightly as she eagerly began sharing the news. "You should've seen it! During the finals, every seat was filled, and the screaming nearly blew the roof off! The peak viewership for the livestream broke the record for every event our studio has ever held! And also..." As she excitedly described the packed venue and the competitors' incredible plays, she followed Huo Yuhao toward the car.

She suddenly leaned closer with a mysterious look, lowering her voice as though sharing a secret. "And you know what? Uncle Di Tian actually secretly came into my livestream! He even sent two super-cool 'Cosmic Galaxy' mega rockets! I recognized that account name at a glance!"

"Oh? What was it called?" Huo Yuhao asked curiously as he opened the car door.

"It was called 'Black Dragon Overlord'! And there was a string of glittering VIP effects after the name!" Demon Spirit settled into the passenger seat, fastened her seatbelt, and could not help laughing. "Isn't that totally Uncle Di Tian's style? So domineering, with a little... well, chuunibyo flair?"

"Hahahahahaha!" Huo Yuhao finally burst out laughing, making even the steering wheel tremble. "'Black Dragon Overlord'... with a gold frame too! That guy... hahahaha!" If he had not been driving, he would have immediately made a Soul Tool call to properly "greet" the ruler of the Star Dou Great Forest about his online aesthetic. "When we get back, I need to properly 'compliment' him on what a brilliant username that is!"

As the laughter gradually subsided, Demon Spirit remained excited, but the topic shifted to more practical plans. "Brother Yuhao, based on the data from this event and player feedback, I want to focus next on improving the 'idle management' and 'fragmented-time utilization' systems. A growing proportion of our player base consists of Soul Masters. Their cultivation and missions keep them busy, so they can't stay in the game for long periods. If we can make better use of their spare moments, or provide smarter assisted growth paths, it should fit their needs better."

Huo Yuhao nodded approvingly, keeping his eyes ahead as he drove steadily. "You've got the right idea. A Soul Master's foundation is ultimately their own cultivation. Games are a diversion, another form of relaxation or even training, but priorities cannot be reversed. The fact that you considered this and took the initiative to adjust shows that you're truly running this with care. You aren't merely making games—you're understanding your players. Very good."

Having received his approval, Demon Spirit's smile became even brighter.

Rain Spirit Grilled Fish Shop, second floor.

The cheerful mood came to an abrupt halt when they returned to the shop entrance. Huo Yuhao had just stored the Soul Tool car in his storage Soul Tool when his Soul Tool communicator began vibrating urgently. It was Tang Ziran.

The moment he answered, Tang Ziran's utterly panicked, nearly incoherent voice burst forth. "M-Mr. Huo! Something's wrong! Wulin... something happened to him! We're on our way to your shop! Golden scales suddenly grew all over him! His whole body is burning hot, and he won't respond no matter how we call him! What... what do we do?!"

Huo Yuhao's gaze sharpened, and every trace of ease vanished in an instant. Yet his voice remained exceptionally steady. "I understand. Don't panic. Be careful on the road. I'm at the shop. I'll wait for you." After ending the call, he quickly said to Demon Spirit, "The Golden Dragon King's power has stirred ahead of time. Sooner than expected. Xiaoling, prepare the 'Inverse Scale Sealing Array'!"

"Yes!" Demon Spirit did not hesitate in the slightest. The lingering smile on her face turned into intense seriousness. The two hurried upstairs and entered the quiet room that had long been prepared for this day.

Three years of painstaking analysis and preparation were finally being put to use. Huo Yuhao used the residual Golden Dragon King power within his Divine Godhood—which had been locked away layer upon layer by undead magic and the Sword of Life, but whose traits had already been partially analyzed—as bait and a fuse. Combined with the primal aura from Di Tian's Dragon God's Claw, which contained a trace of the Dragon God's majesty, he had long ago carved an extraordinarily complex composite sealing array across the floor of the quiet room. It fused undead magic runes, emotion divine runes, and the essence of Douluo array theory—the Inverse Scale Stripping Array. The array's core connected to the deepest region of Huo Yuhao's Undead Plane, a place that possessed an almost instinctive greed for any ownerless high-level energy.

Working in perfect coordination, Demon Spirit swiftly checked every energy node in the array, activated the small Soul Tool arrays used for stabilization, and placed several rare crystals prepared in advance into the array's focal points. The crystals contained pure spiritual power and spatial stabilizing properties. Her movements were fast but orderly, and her eyes held only focus—for this day, she and Brother Yuhao had run through countless simulations.

Less than ten minutes later, chaotic, hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. Tang Ziran rushed up carrying a "humanoid object," with Lang Yue and Na'er close behind him. All three wore expressions of horror and despair.

"Uncle Huo! Save my brother!" Na'er's voice carried a sob. Her small hand kept trying to press against Tang Wulin's burning forehead, while a faint silver glow flickered in and out. She was desperately drawing upon the meager origin power accessible to her as the Silver Dragon King's avatar, calling forth the projection of the Silver Dragon Spear in an attempt to suppress that violent golden power, but the effect was negligible.

The person Tang Ziran carried was almost unrecognizable as Tang Wulin. A dense layer of hard dragon scales covered his exposed skin, glinting with a dim golden light. Scales also protruded from his neck and the sides of his cheeks. His eyes were tightly shut, his brows twisted in agony, and scorching air poured from his nose and mouth with every unconscious breath. His entire body was terrifyingly hot, like a little furnace on the verge of exploding.

"Enough. Quiet!" Huo Yuhao shouted softly. His voice was not loud, yet it carried an unquestionable authority that instantly suppressed all panic and crying. "Put him in the center of the array, then everyone leave! Xiaoling, guard the door. No one is allowed to disturb us!"

"Yes!" Demon Spirit immediately took up position by the door and gestured for Tang Ziran and the others to leave, her gaze resolute. Tang Ziran looked at his son's horrifying state, then at Huo Yuhao's face, calm as still water. Gritting his teeth, he gently placed Tang Wulin at the center of the faintly glowing array, then pulled his sobbing wife and the unwilling-to-leave Na'er outside. Demon Spirit swiftly shut the door and activated the soundproofing and protective Soul Tool array built into it.

Only Huo Yuhao and Tang Wulin remained in the quiet room, the latter covered in golden scales as his aura grew ever more violent.

Huo Yuhao closed his eyes. When he opened them again, gray whirlpools and golden flashes seemed to pass through the depths of his ice-blue eyes. His hands formed several intricate seals like fluttering butterflies, and he shouted, "Undead Forbidden Art: Spirit Synchronization! Open!"

His body did not move, but a solid spiritual phantom separated from him, following the passage formed by the array as it fiercely crashed into Tang Wulin's Sea of Spirit, which was being swept by a golden storm!

Tang Wulin's Sea of Spirit.

This was no longer a tranquil inner world. It resembled a purgatory scorched by apocalyptic flames. Golden fire surged like waves, while a scorching, violent will filled with destruction permeated every inch of space. At the center of the sea of fire, a Golden Dragon King phantom countless times smaller than its original form yet no less majestic or savage lay coiled. Sensing the intruder, it abruptly raised its head and let out a deafening roar.

"Huo Yuhao! You actually dared to come in and deliver yourself to death?! It seems the lesson the Divine Realm taught you last time wasn't severe enough!"

Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom floated above the golden sea of fire. Faced with the Golden Dragon King's overwhelming ferocity, he instead revealed a cold smile. "Hehehe, Golden Dragon King, thanks to you, my Divine Godhood shattered and I ended up here. Today, it's time to settle that debt properly! Did you think I spent these three years merely recovering from my injuries?"

Before his words had faded, Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom thrust both hands into his own chest—not to attack himself, but to trigger a certain switch left within his physical body outside! In reality, Huo Yuhao's main body, seated outside the array, suddenly shuddered. His face instantly turned pale, but he clenched his teeth as the Inverted Seal within him—constructed from Electrolux's undead forbidden art and the Sword of Life, sealing his shattered Divine Godhood and the Golden Dragon King's residual power—was forcibly torn open by his own hand!

Boom—!

A torrent of dark-gold energy, pure, violent, and filled with the true intent of immortality and destruction, surged backward through the spiritual link between Huo Yuhao and Tang Wulin, flooding into this spiritual sea of fire! It was the Golden Dragon King's origin power that Huo Yuhao had sealed and refined for three years, yet which had remained untamed!

"Hahaha! Fool! You're courting death!" The Golden Dragon King phantom froze at first, then erupted in wild delight. It opened its enormous jaws and greedily devoured the power from the same origin. Its phantom rapidly solidified and expanded, its aura climbing higher and higher. "With your shattered divine soul as it is now, you think you can control my power? Be good and become nourishment for my resurrection!"

Yet there was not the slightest panic on Huo Yuhao's face, only a nearly mad resolve. "Devour it. Devour all you want!" He abruptly pulled both hands apart, and countless profound chain-like Dragon Runes formed from emotional power and undead runes blazed across his spiritual phantom. "Golden Dragon King, you're right. I truly cannot control it. But you forgot that this power has been separated from your Divine Core for far too long, and I have repeatedly washed it with undead magic. It has long become ownerless! It will only instinctively flow toward... stronger power of the same origin!"

"Activate the array! Inverse Scale Stripping!"

Outside, within the quiet room, the Inverse Scale Stripping Array carved into the floor suddenly erupted with soaring radiance! Its lines came alive, frantically drawing in the ownerless Golden Dragon King power pouring from Huo Yuhao's body. At the same time, an even higher-level dragon pressure originating from Di Tian's Dragon God's Claw spread through the room.

"What?!" Within the Sea of Spirit, the Golden Dragon King phantom's laughter came to an abrupt stop. To its horror, it discovered that the power it had just devoured, along with the power still surging out of Tang Wulin's Divine Core, had suddenly become incredibly unstable! That power seemed to be drawn by two temptations: on one side, Huo Yuhao's ownerless power of the same origin, fresher still, serving as bait; on the other, the aura of the Dragon God's Claw transmitted by the array, possessing a fatal attraction toward dragon power, serving as the trap! Even more deadly, the chain-like Dragon Runes on Huo Yuhao's body emitted a deceptive fluctuation of "false kinship," preventing the power inside Huo Yuhao from corroding his Divine Core.

"Bastard! What did you do?!" The Golden Dragon King was both shocked and enraged. It tried to strengthen its control over the power of its own Divine Core, but the ownerless power that flowed into Huo Yuhao's body and was then transformed by the array was like a spark falling into grease, instantly disrupting its absolute control over its origin power. The energy began pouring uncontrollably toward the array, as if a black hole lay there!

"What did I do?" Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom swayed amid the golden sea of fire, but his voice carried an all-controlling chill. "I'm helping you 'lose weight,' Golden Dragon King. I'm sending all this excess, violent power of yours to where it belongs—the core of my Undead Demiplane! It has been 'hungry' for a very long time!"

As a demiplane sustained by death and energy, the Undead Plane possessed an instinctive, extreme greed toward divine power such as the Golden Dragon King's, which contained a trace of the authority of creation and immortality. Like a conduit, the array continuously delivered the stripped ownerless Golden Dragon King power there. Having lost the Golden Dragon King's conscious control, that power could only be gradually eroded, assimilated, and absorbed within the environment of the Undead Plane's core, which teemed with Emotion Divine Power and the aura of death, becoming nourishment to strengthen that demiplane.

"Golden Dragon King, can you feel what it's like to lose your power?" Huo Yuhao's voice echoed through the spiritual sea of fire like a devil's whisper. "Douluo Continent no longer has the environment of the Divine Realm. Every bit of divine power you use is one bit less, and you cannot replenish it. As for me, I still have at least a trace of meager faith from the Spirit Pagoda to slowly nourish my lingering soul. But what about you? Once this ownerless power has been drained away, how much will remain of your shattered Divine Core?"

"You! You madman!" The Golden Dragon King finally panicked. It could feel the foundation of its Divine Core wavering. The tiny cracks that had formed when it was injured in the Divine Realm seemed to be widening as its power drained away. "What is that fool, the Silver Dragon King, doing?! Is she just going to watch you scheme against me?!" It roared frantically, attempting to withdraw its power and defend its core. But the more it struggled, the more severely the lingering injuries in the depths of its Divine Core—wounds inflicted by the Creator God's projection and the Sword of Three Realms' Judgment—were provoked, causing its power to drain even faster! It was an unsolvable vicious cycle—remain still and be slowly drained dry; resist, and the wounds erupted, draining it even faster!

"Looks like you figured it out." In Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom's hand, a long spear of dazzling golden light condensed, yet it radiated an icy, chilling aura—the projection of the Golden Dragon Spear! "The Silver Dragon King gave me the idea. The Dragon God could split into the two of you, and then split again, so why... can't you keep splitting?" His gaze was sharp as a blade, as though he intended to dissect the Golden Dragon King's soul. "Especially when your already shattered Divine Core receives a little more 'help' from this."

"Emotional Divine Technique: Seven Emotions Soul Refinement! Golden Dragon Spear: Corebreaker!"

Huo Yuhao wrapped the divine technique's radiance, condensed from pure emotional power such as joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, around the Golden Dragon Spear's projection, amplifying its damage to the spirit and soul to the utmost limit. Then he ruthlessly thrust it toward the core guarded by the Golden Dragon King phantom—the dark-gold Divine Core covered in cracks!

"No—!! Huo Yuhao, you dare!!!" The Golden Dragon King let out a desperate roar. It finally understood Huo Yuhao's complete plan! First strip away the ownerless power to weaken it, then use emotional power and the Golden Dragon Spear to attack its most vulnerable Divine Core, forcing it... to split itself! Once split, its consciousness would be completely scattered and weakened, perhaps even producing two independent consciousnesses. At that point, it would have no ability to resist!

"You think you've won?! Fool!" At the instant the Golden Dragon Spear was about to strike, an extreme madness and venom flashed through the Golden Dragon King's eyes. "Split? Fine! I'll grant your wish! But do you think the power after splitting will still be ownerless?!"

It no longer resisted the power aggravating its wounds. Instead, it proactively compressed its consciousness with all its might while activating its Divine Core with a secret art!

Crack—! Crash!

A grating sound of shattering exploded through the Sea of Spirit! The dark-gold Divine Core, already covered in cracks, was forcibly split completely in two along its largest fracture under the Golden Dragon King's deliberate action and the residual damage to its Divine Core! The larger piece accounted for roughly seventy percent, still gleaming dark gold and firmly occupied by the Golden Dragon King's consciousness. The smaller piece, accounting for around thirty percent, was forcibly condensed in an instant from countless Divine Core fragments. Its light was slightly muddled, but it radiated the same Golden Dragon King power!

The split was complete! The Dark-Gold Dragon King was born!

The situation underwent a heaven-shaking reversal in an instant!

The torrent of ownerless power that had been continuously flowing out under the array's attraction abruptly stopped! Then, as though it had found a new master, most of that power rushed back in reverse, madly pouring into the smaller, newly born Divine Core. Its glow swiftly stabilized and grew stronger! And the one controlling this new Divine Core... was a portion of the Dark-Gold Dragon King's consciousness, filled with resentment and triumph!

"Hahahahahaha!! Huo Yuhao! Didn't expect that, did you?" The Golden Dragon King's phantom laughed wildly above the reassembled Divine Core. Its voice had become slightly shriller due to the split, but its triumph overflowed. "Actively splitting myself does weaken me, but it also instantly reorganizes my control over the fragments! I've now lost thirty percent of my Divine Core and its corresponding power, but that power is no longer ownerless! It has returned to my control—though under a portion of my split consciousness! How much can your array still extract?!"

It grinned viciously at Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom, whose expression had turned grave at the sudden reversal. "Strip away ownerless power? Now every bit of my power has a 'master'! Your trap is finished! Next, I'll slowly digest this brat, then use the complete—though split—power of this Divine Core to crush you and your Undead Plane together!"

The immense Golden Dragon King's Divine Power, though now split, filled the Sea of Spirit once more. Centered on Tang Wulin's body, it faintly showed signs of erupting outward!

Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom stood amid the raging tide, his face icy to the extreme. One of the outcomes he had feared most had still occurred. The Golden Dragon King had been so decisive, using this method that damaged its own foundation yet instantly turned the situation around. A crucial part of the plan had been interrupted. Not only had the power inside Tang Wulin not been effectively stripped away, but through splitting and reassembly, its control had become even stronger, and an eruption was imminent!

At this critical moment, the true crisis had only just arrived!