Reverse Scale Sealing Array

Outside the exhibition center, night deepened.

"It looked like it went smoothly." Huo Yuhao parked outside the exhibition center and immediately spotted Demon Spirit waiting there. The evening breeze stirred her hair, and the excited flush on her face had yet to fade. A few scraps of celebratory ribbon, blown in from somewhere, had even caught in her carefully styled hair, glimmering beneath the neon lights.

Huo Yuhao walked over and naturally reached out to gently remove the ribbon fragments from her hair. "Had that much fun? Your hair's been 'decorated' too."

"Brother Yuhao! It was—such a success!" Demon Spirit's eyes shone brilliantly as she eagerly began sharing. "You didn't see the venue! During the finals, every seat was full, and the screams nearly blew the roof off! The peak number of livestream viewers broke the record for every event our studio has ever held! And also..." As she excitedly described the packed venue and the contestants' incredible plays, she followed Huo Yuhao toward the parked car.

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

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

"'Black Dragon Overlord'! And there was a string of glittering gold VIP effects after the name!" Demon Spirit settled into the passenger seat, fastened her seat belt, and could not help laughing. "Isn't that totally Uncle Di Tian's style? Overwhelmingly badass, with a little... well, teenage edginess?"

"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 communication call to properly "check in on" the ruler of the Star Dou Great Forest's online aesthetic. "When we get back, I'll have to properly 'praise' him for that brilliant username!"

As the laughter subsided, Demon Spirit remained in high spirits, though the topic had shifted to more practical plans. "Brother Yuhao, based on the data and player feedback from this event, I want to focus next on optimizing the 'AFK management' and 'fragmented-time utilization' systems. The proportion of Soul Masters among our player base is growing. Their cultivation tasks are demanding, so they can't spend long periods immersed in games. If we can make better use of their spare moments or offer smarter assisted-growth paths, it should better fit their needs."

Huo Yuhao nodded approvingly, his gaze fixed 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 experience, but priorities cannot be reversed. The fact that you considered this and took the initiative to adjust shows that you're truly managing this with care. You aren't just making games—you're understanding your player base. Very good."

Having received his approval, Demon Spirit's smile grew 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-guided car in his storage soul tool when his soul communicator began vibrating urgently. It was Tang Ziran.

The moment he answered, Tang Ziran's terrified, nearly incoherent voice rushed out. "M-Mr. Huo! Something's wrong! Wulin... something happened to him! We're heading to your shop right now! So many golden scales suddenly grew on his body! He's burning up, and he won't respond no matter how we call him! What... what should we do?!"

Huo Yuhao's eyes sharpened, and every trace of ease vanished from his expression in an instant. Yet his voice remained exceptionally calm. "Understood. Don't panic. Be careful on the way. I'm at the shop. I'll wait for you." After hanging up, he quickly said to Demon Spirit, "The Golden Dragon King's power has stirred ahead of schedule. Earlier than expected. Xiaoling, prepare the Reverse Scale Sealing Array!"

"Yes!" Demon Spirit did not hesitate in the slightest. The lingering smile on her face became utter concentration and seriousness. The two quickly went upstairs and entered the quiet room that had long been prepared for this moment.

Three years of painstaking analysis and preparation finally came into use. Using the remnant power of the Golden Dragon King within his own divine core—layered under seals formed by undead spells and the Sword of Life, but already partially analyzed for its characteristics—as bait and a fuse, together with the original aura of the Dragon God's Claw provided by Di Tian, containing a trace of the Dragon God's majesty, Huo Yuhao had long ago inscribed an incomparably complex composite sealing array across the floor of the quiet room. It fused undead magic runes, emotional divine patterns, and the essence of Douluo Continent's array arts—the Reverse Scale Stripping Array. The array's core connected to the deepest reaches of Huo Yuhao's half-plane, the Undead Plane, which possessed an almost instinctive greed for any ownerless high-level energy.

Demon Spirit worked with him in perfect understanding, swiftly checking every energy node of the array, activating the small soul-guided arrays that stabilized it, and placing several rare crystals prepared beforehand into the array eyes. The crystals contained pure spiritual power and spatial stabilizing properties. Her movements were quick but orderly, and her eyes held nothing but focus—for this day, she and Brother Yuhao had run countless simulations and drills.

Less than ten minutes later, a chaotic rush of footsteps came from the stairs. Tang Ziran charged up while 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 cried, her voice choked with tears. Her little hand kept trying to press against Tang Wulin's scorching forehead, while a faint silver glow flickered in and out. She desperately drew upon the tiny sliver of origin power accessible to her as an incarnation of the Silver Dragon King, 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 in Tang Ziran's arms was almost unrecognizable as Tang Wulin. A layer of fine, hard dragon scales, gleaming with dim golden light, covered his exposed skin. Scales had also protruded from his neck and the sides of his cheeks. His eyes were tightly shut, his brows twisted together in agony, and scorching air escaped his nose and mouth with every unconscious breath. His entire body was frighteningly hot, like a little furnace on the verge of exploding.

"Enough. Quiet, all of you!" Huo Yuhao gave a low shout. 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 get out! Xiaoling, guard the door. No one is to disturb us!"

"Yes!" Demon Spirit immediately stepped to the door and gestured for Tang Ziran and the other two to leave, her gaze resolute. Tang Ziran looked at his son's terrifying state, then at Huo Yuhao's calm, waterlike face. Gritting his teeth, he gently placed Tang Wulin at the center of the faintly glowing array on the floor, then pulled his sobbing wife and the unwilling Na'er out of the room. Demon Spirit swiftly shut the door and activated the soundproofing and protective soul-guided array built into it.

Only Huo Yuhao and Tang Wulin, whose entire body was covered in golden scales and whose aura was growing increasingly violent, remained in the quiet room.

Huo Yuhao closed his eyes. When he opened them again, gray vortices and flashes of golden lightning seemed to flicker through the depths of his icy blue eyes. His hands formed several complex seals like fluttering butterflies, and he shouted, "Undead Forbidden Art: Spirit Synchronization! Activate!"

His body did not move, but a solid spiritual phantom had already separated from him. Following the pathway constructed by the array, it crashed fiercely into Tang Wulin's spiritual sea, which was being swept by a golden storm!

Tang Wulin's spiritual sea.

This was no longer a tranquil sea of consciousness. It resembled a hellscape consumed by apocalyptic flames. Golden fire surged like waves, while scorching, violent intent brimming with destruction filled every inch of space. At the center of the sea of fire crouched a Golden Dragon King phantom, shrunk countless times over but no less majestic or ferocious. Sensing the intruder, it suddenly 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 gave you last time wasn't deep enough!"

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

Before his words had faded, Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom abruptly thrust both hands into his own chest—not to attack himself, but to trigger a switch left within his physical body outside! In reality, Huo Yuhao, seated cross-legged beyond the array, suddenly trembled. 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 and sealing his shattered divine core along with the Golden Dragon King's remnant power, was forcibly torn open by a sliver!

Boom—!

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

"Hahahaha! Fool! You're courting death!" The Golden Dragon King phantom was initially stunned, then overcome with wild delight. It opened its jaws and greedily devoured this power of the same origin. Its phantom became more solid and expanded at a visible rate, its aura rising higher and higher. "With your broken divine soul in its current state, you think you can control my power? Obediently become nourishment for my resurrection!"

Yet there was not the slightest panic on Huo Yuhao's face. Only a near-maddened resolve remained. "Devour it, then. Devour all you want!" He violently pulled his hands apart, and countless profound chain-like dragon patterns formed from emotional power and undead runes suddenly lit up across his spiritual phantom. "Golden Dragon King, you guessed correctly. I truly cannot control it. But you forgot that this power has been separated from your divine core for too long, and I've repeatedly scoured it with undead magic. It has long become ownerless! It will only instinctively flow toward... a stronger power of the same origin!"

"Activate the array! Reverse Scale Stripping!"

Outside, in the quiet room. The Reverse Scale Stripping Array inscribed upon the floor suddenly erupted with soaring light! The array patterns seemed to come alive, frantically drawing in the ownerless Golden Dragon King power pouring from Huo Yuhao's body. At the same time, higher-level dragon pressure originating from Di Tian's Dragon God's Claw spread through the room.

"What?!" Within the spiritual sea, the Golden Dragon King phantom's wild laughter came to an abrupt stop. To its horror, the power it had just devoured, along with the power still pouring from Tang Wulin's divine core, suddenly became extremely unstable! Those energies seemed to be drawn by two temptations: on one side was the ownerless power of the same origin on Huo Yuhao, yet more "fresh" in nature, serving as bait; on the other was the Dragon God's Claw aura transmitted by the array, which held a fatal attraction to dragon power, serving as a trap! More fatally still, the chain-like dragon patterns on Huo Yuhao radiated a deceptive fluctuation resembling a "false kin," preventing the power within Huo Yuhao from corroding his divine core.

"Bastard! What trick did you pull?!" The Golden Dragon King was both shocked and enraged. It attempted to tighten its control over the power in its divine core, but the ownerless energy pouring into Huo Yuhao and then transformed by the array was like a spark dropped into grease, instantly disrupting its absolute command over its origin power. The energy began flowing 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, yet his voice carried an icy command of everything. "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 half-plane! It's been 'hungry' for a very long time!"

The Undead Plane, as a half-plane sustained by death and energy, possessed the deepest instinctive greed for divine power such as the Golden Dragon King's, which contained a trace of creation and immortality authority. The array was like a conduit, continuously transferring the stripped ownerless Golden Dragon King power there. Having lost the Golden Dragon King's conscious control, this energy could only be slowly eroded, assimilated, and absorbed within the environment of the Undead Plane's core, saturated with emotional divine power and the aura of death, becoming nourishment for the growth of that half-plane.

"Golden Dragon King, can you feel the taste of losing 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 some meager faith from the Spirit Pagoda to slowly nourish my remnant soul. What about you? Once this ownerless power is 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 shaking. The tiny cracks that had appeared after its injuries in the Divine Realm seemed to be widening as its power drained away. "What is that idiot Silver Dragon King doing?! Is she just going to watch you scheme against me?!" It roared madly, trying to pull in its power and defend its core. But the harder it struggled, the more intensely the lingering wounds within its divine core, inflicted by the Creator God's projection and the Sword of Three Realms' Judgment, were stirred. Its power began draining even faster! It was an unsolvable deadlock—if it did nothing, it would be drained dry; if it resisted, its wounds would erupt and the loss would accelerate!

"Looks like you figured it out." In Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom's hand, a long spear of brilliant golden light condensed, yet it radiated bone-chilling coldness—the projection of the Golden Dragon Spear! "The Silver Dragon King gave me an idea. The Dragon God could split into the two of you, and it could split again, so why... can't you continue splitting as well?" His gaze was sharp as a blade, as though it would dissect the Golden Dragon King's soul. "Especially when I give your already shattered divine core another little 'help' with 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 delight, around the Golden Dragon Spear's projection. It amplified the damage to spirit and soul to the utmost limit before he fiercely thrust it toward the core guarded by the Golden Dragon King phantom—the cracked dark-gold divine core!

"No—!! Huo Yuhao, you dare?!" The Golden Dragon King let out a desperate roar. It finally understood Huo Yuhao's entire intention! 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 it split, its consciousness would be completely dispersed and weakened. It might even produce two independent consciousnesses, at which point it would no longer have the power 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 do as you wish! But do you think the power after splitting will still be ownerless?!"

It no longer resisted the power agitating its wounds. Instead, it proactively compressed its consciousness with all its strength while using a secret art to activate its divine core!

Crack—! Crash!

A shattering sound that set one's teeth on edge exploded within the spiritual sea! The dark-gold divine core, already covered in cracks, was suddenly split completely in two along its largest fracture under the Golden Dragon King's deliberate action and the lingering wounds in the Golden Dragon King's core! The larger piece accounted for roughly seventy percent. It still shimmered dark gold and was firmly occupied by the Golden Dragon King's consciousness. The smaller piece, roughly thirty percent, was forcibly condensed in an instant from countless divine core fragments. Its light was slightly mottled, but it radiated the Golden Dragon King's power as well!

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

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

The endless torrent of ownerless power that had been drawn out by the array suddenly halted! Then, as though it had found a new master, the overwhelming majority of it surged back in a violent reverse flow, madly pouring into the smaller newly born divine core. Its radiance swiftly stabilized and strengthened! And the one commanding this new divine core... was the portion of consciousness belonging to the Dark-Gold Dragon King, filled with resentment and triumph!

"Hahahahahaha!! Huo Yuhao! Didn't expect that, did you?" The Golden Dragon King phantom laughed wildly above the reassembled divine core. Its voice was somewhat shriller due to the split, but its delight overflowed. "Actively splitting myself does weaken me, but it also lets me instantly reorganize 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 consciousness after the split! How much more can your array extract?!"

It grinned viciously at Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom, whose expression had suddenly turned grave due to the abrupt change. "Stripping ownerless power? Now every ounce of my strength has a 'master'! Your trap is finished! Next, I'll slowly devour this boy, then use the complete—though split—power of my divine core to crush you and your Undead Plane together!"

Vast Golden Dragon King divine power, though already split, once again filled the spiritual sea. Centered on Tang Wulin's body, it even showed faint signs of erupting outward!

Huo Yuhao's spiritual phantom stood amid the raging tide, his expression cold to the extreme. One of the outcomes he had feared most had still come to pass. The Golden Dragon King had been so decisive, choosing this method of damaging its own foundation yet instantly turning the tables. A crucial part of the plan had been interrupted. Not only had the power in Tang Wulin's body failed to be effectively stripped away, but after the split and reorganization, it had become even more controllable and was on the verge of erupting!

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