Healing Injuries

Huo Yuhao woke in utter cold and silence.

The first thing he felt was pain—pain everywhere. His meridians were like burned glass, riddled with cracks; the slightest probe brought piercing agony. An even colder and hotter source churned in his chest. The curse left behind by the Golden Dragon King throbbed faintly like a living thing with every beat of his heart, each pulse trying to seep that violent madness into his bones. He struggled to lift his eyelids. His ice-blue left eye reflected the jagged ice wall overhead, while his brilliant golden right eye twitched uncontrollably, bringing a wave of dizziness.

Fragments of memory slowly came together—the battle that had shattered the Divine Realm, the radiance of the Genesis Sword Strike, the Golden Dragon King's mad laughter and final counterattack, the passage his father-in-law had opened, and... before he fell, the figure of a blue-haired youth swinging a forging hammer in that distant time and space.

"Wulin..."

The name rolled through his parched throat without making a sound. He painfully turned his neck and surveyed the refuge he had instinctively chosen. It was a natural ice cavern, not very large, its entrance buried by the Xue Beng he had triggered himself. Absolute darkness and cold, along with some mineral in the ice that interfered with energy detection, formed the most rudimentary shelter.

"I need to... figure out the situation first," he told himself, his voice hoarse like a broken bellows.

Closing his eyes, he sank his consciousness into his body. The situation was even worse than he had anticipated. His once-vast emotional Divine Godhood was gone. In the center of his divine soul now spun a chaotic storm radiating destruction—ice-blue fragments of his own Divine Godhood and Dark Gold remnants of the invading Dragon God's essence and will. The two tangled and tore at each other, constantly eroding the foundation of his divine soul. The Sea of Spirit was utterly still. Tian Meng, Ice Empress, Snow Empress... the presences of all his companions had weakened to the extreme and sunk into the deepest level of self-protective slumber. His meridians were severed, his divine power exhausted, and the curse in his chest clung to him like a disease rooted in the bone.

He drew a deep breath. The frigid air stabbed at his lungs, but it also brought a trace of clarity. Despair was useless. He had never been someone who would sit and wait for death.

The starlight sapphire ring on his finger flashed faintly, and several items fell onto the ice. Medicinal herbs, ores, jade bottles, and most importantly—the entirely emerald-green Sword of Life, now reduced to little more than a phantom. These were the emergency supplies he had habitually carried in the Divine Realm. There were not many, but they were crucial.

"Treat the external wounds first. Stabilize the body." He settled on the most practical course of action. He chewed up the Star-Dew Luminousheart Herb, mixed it with Heart-Congealing Jade Liquid, and applied it to the horrific wound on his chest. When the medicine came into contact with the Dark Gold curse, it gave off a faint sizzling sound. The pain was excruciating, but it temporarily suppressed its spread. He swallowed the last powder of the Nine-Turn Heaven-Returning Pill. Its domineering medicinal power charged through his damaged meridians, making cold sweat pour down his body, yet it barely forced open several main pathways.

Next, he took out several small metal devices. These were little things he had made during idle moments in the Divine Realm by combining Soul Tool technology with Divine Realm materials. One was a palm-sized hexagonal metal disk, its surface etched with incredibly intricate energy-gathering Soul Tool circuits—his improved Portable Soul-Guide Spirit-Gathering Array Disk. Though he no longer had enough Soul Power to drive it at full capacity, its exquisite structure alone could more efficiently guide the thin natural essence drawn in by the Voidheart Jade. He placed the array disk together with the Voidheart Jade, then took out several button-sized metal pieces and attached them to the skin near key acupoints. These were Miniature Soul-Guide Temperature Maintenance Units, capable of using the environmental temperature difference to generate faint heat and prevent hypothermia. Lastly came an unremarkable metal ring, which he slipped around his wrist. This was a Basic Mental Barrier Generator. Its primary function was to filter out noise and stabilize his mental fluctuations. Together with the Soul-Calming Divine Crystal, it could better resist the mad whispers of the Dragon God's will in his mind.

After arranging everything, he guided the projection of the Sword of Life to hover above his head, scattering nourishing emerald light. His movements were slow and steady as he did all this, like the most precise Soul Engineer assembling a core formation, though every motion pulled at his agonizing injuries.

Time flowed in silence. The wounds on his body began to heal under the medicinal power and life energy, while the Dark Gold mass in his chest was contained. But the storm within his divine soul was the true threat to his life.

He stared at the chaos. Conventional methods were no longer effective. A nearly insane plan gradually took shape—since he could neither disperse it nor fuse with it, he would lock it up. He would use the still-controllable concept of a Divine Godhood framework as its skeleton, the life barrier of the Sword of Life as its prison, and then add...

He thought of his teacher, Electrolux. Those ancient undead restraints concerning the nature of souls, confinement, and balance.

"An Inverted Seal... it can only be this."

There was no room for hesitation. He raised both hands, and his ten fingers began forming seals. The movements were sluggish, every bend and extension draining his strength. What flowed from his fingertips was no longer pure divine power, but a mixture of faint spiritual power, lingering emotional fragments, and a thread of gray-white energy from Electrolux's inheritance that represented absolute order. The light within the cave seemed to dim, more intricate frost patterns formed across the ice walls, and a silent, ancient rhythm filled the air.

He softly chanted the altered incantation while directing, with unimaginable concentration, the relatively stable ice-blue fragments within the divine soul storm that belonged to himself—fragments carrying the authorities of emotions such as longing, Guard, and reason. It was like dancing at the edge of a cliff. He had to precisely avoid the violent Dark Gold torrent.

Drawn by his call, the fragments peeled away. Following the paths traced by the power of the incantation, they revolved around the Sword of Life's projection, interwove, and began weaving an incomparably complex three-dimensional sealing framework. This framework combined the strange restraints of undead magic with the balanced cycles of divine arts, while also employing the multilayered interlocking principles of Soul Tool design to forcibly unite two contradictory styles.

The process was slow and agonizing. Huo Yuhao's face was as pale as paper, his body trembled faintly, and sweat soaked through his clothes. Yet his gaze remained sharp as he held on with all his strength.

When the last suitable fragment merged into it, the framework gave off a faint resonance.

"Seal!"

A fierce light flashed in his eyes as his hands snapped together decisively!

The ice-blue and gray-white sealing framework abruptly contracted, like living shackles biting viciously into the divine soul storm!

"Roar—!"

Dark Gold light exploded with violent fury, madly battering the seal! Cracks instantly spread across the surface of the newly formed framework, which shook violently. Huo Yuhao suffered a crushing blow and spat out a mouthful of pale golden blood. Blood seeped from his seven apertures, and his soul felt as if it were being torn apart.

"Suppress!!!"

He roared inwardly, staking all his remaining will, his concern for Wulin, and his desire to live! The ice-blue fragments flared with a final brilliance, the gray-white power of order solidified, and the emerald light of the Sword of Life transformed into countless resilient vines that wrapped around and reinforced the seal.

The tug-of-war deep within his soul reached a fever pitch. In the end, the violent storm was compressed bit by bit, dragged away, and fully drawn into that complex sealing sphere centered on the Sword of Life and woven from ice-blue and gray-white.

The sealing sphere floated in the center of his divine soul. Within it, light and shadow clashed and flickered, incredibly unstable, but it had finally been isolated.

Huo Yuhao collapsed completely, barely even breathing. Unparalleled weakness drowned him. He could almost no longer sense the power of his Divine Godhood. All that remained was spiritual power roughly at the level of a Soul King, though exceptionally pure, along with the most basic visual ability of his Spirit Eyes. He had become a mortal with a volcano sealed inside him, burdened by a curse and possessing nothing but memories and knowledge.

The price was devastating, but he had survived.

After an unknown amount of time, he gathered a trace of strength and leaned against the ice as he looked at his pale hands.

"Starting over... no, it will be even harder." He muttered hoarsely, but there was no despair in him. After all, the seal still contained his fragments and possibilities.

Just as exhaustion was about to drag his consciousness into darkness, an incomparably faint sensation of warmth lightly touched his heart from an impossibly distant place.

It was the safety signal of the Eternal Snowflake.

The corner of Huo Yuhao's mouth moved almost imperceptibly, as though he wanted to smile but no longer had the strength. In this absolutely cold darkness, that thread of connection became his only warmth. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the long darkness of recovery.