Your Soul Power Is Far Too Weak; It Seems You Are Unworthy of Being Called the World's Greatest Defense

Gu Rong was quite puzzled at this moment.

Based on the intelligence gathered along the trade routes of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, he had deduced that the target was an ice carriage departing from Heaven Dou City and heading roughly toward the border of the Far North.

Yet after chasing it all the way to the edge of the Far North, he had found nothing. That carriage seemed to have vanished into thin air.

"The vast Far North won't be easy to search."

Gu Rong stood amid the wind and snow, scanning the surroundings for a moment. He was already considering retreating to the border pass when the corner of his eye suddenly caught sight of something black streaking across the distant sky.

He focused his gaze.

The object was entirely black and round, encircled by a halo spitting emerald-green flames. A large blue-gold sword stood upright above it as it swept through the high sky in the direction behind him.

"What is that?"

Gu Rong watched the metal construct with mild curiosity.

It was made entirely of metal and emitted strange energy fluctuations. It vaguely felt...

Like a Storage Soul Tool?

But not entirely.

Soul Tool technology on the Douluo Continent had long been lost. The ones that remained were mostly auxiliary Storage Soul Tools excavated from ruins.

Occasionally, ruins yielded special Soul Tool fragments. According to speculation, those fragments might have come from long-lost offensive or defensive Soul Tools, but no one had been able to piece them back together or restore them.

Could this self-flying metal construct before him be a complete offensive Soul Tool?

Gu Rong's gaze fell upon the blue-gold greatsword above the Apollo Puppet. The more he looked, the more it resembled an offensive Soul Tool.

"I'll take it down and have a look."

Gu Rong was instantly delighted. Soul Power surged through him as he shot into the air and pursued the black shadow streaking across the sky.

The Apollo Puppet also detected the approaching figure behind it.

Then,

Before Gu Rong's astonished eyes, accompanied by a burst of clanging metal, the sphere suddenly transformed.

It became a humanoid metal construct entirely clad in black, its armor covered in dark-gold patterns and a blue-gold greatsword strapped to its back.

It slowly raised its head, and two scarlet lights lit up where its eyes should have been.

"Just as I thought! Haha, this truly is an offensive Soul Tool unlike any that has ever appeared!"

Bone Douluo's eyes lit up with delight.

"Whether it operates on its own or is being controlled by someone, it belongs to me now."

He immediately raised his right hand, condensing Soul Power into a massive claw that reached down to seize the Apollo Puppet by the head.

"Light Energy Convergence!"

The Apollo Puppet's voice boomed like a great bell.

Amid another burst of clanging metal, its body instantly contracted into a black iron sphere. The coronal halo folded inward, while the blue-gold Corona Sword stood upright above the sphere.

Vast dark-green energy gathered frantically, causing the entire ice field to tremble.

The energy compressed to its limit, like a dark star on the verge of collapse, erupting with an unsettling emerald-green flare.

The next instant,

The light receded, and the Apollo Puppet's humanoid form reassembled.

It drew its sword and pointed it toward the sky, raising two fingers of its left hand like a blade and swiftly sweeping them upward over the sword's body.

An emerald-green pillar of light shot into the heavens along the sword's spine.

The boundless wind and snow were abruptly torn apart, and the skies of the Far North were dyed a bizarre inky green, as though the gates of hell had opened overhead.

The next second, the beam poured back down and struck the Corona Sword.

Light exploded, and an enormous inky-green energy sword dozens of meters long took shape. Emerald-green flames surged and danced across its blade, radiating a suffocatingly terrifying pressure.

"Coronal Light!!"

The Apollo Puppet's voice was cold and hollow, devoid of the slightest emotion, like an echo from the abyss.

Several hundred meters away, every hair on Gu Rong's body stood on end.

He had been locked on.

He could not dodge.

This was a sense of crisis he had never felt throughout his life as a Title Douluo. That pressure bore directly down upon his soul.

He had no time to think. Soul Power surged wildly within him, and the Bone Dragon Martial Soul instantly possessed him as his Seventh Soul Skill erupted with full force!

"Bone Dragon True Body!"

Bone armor covered his entire body, while the phantom of an enormous bone dragon condensed behind him.

But this was only the beginning.

He gritted his teeth fiercely and brought his hands together. Soul Power poured from his body like a breached flood, activating his Ninth Soul Skill!

"Bone Transformation Divine Dragon!"

The bone dragon phantom abruptly solidified. Layers of bone stacked upon one another as flesh and skeletal structure grew wildly, transforming in an instant into a gigantic bone dragon dozens of zhang long!

Its scales were grim and forbidding, its bone spines stood upright, and two clusters of ghostly green soul-fire ignited within its hollow eye sockets, radiating an ancient pressure that made it hard to breathe.

The bone dragon folded its wings, shielding Gu Rong's true body tightly within its deepest depths.

This was his ultimate form, one that united his greatest offense and defense.

The next second, the inky-green greatsword had already descended.

Emerald-green Sun True Fire cascaded down like a waterfall, carrying the power of Judgment and annihilation as it crushed toward the enormous bone dragon.

BOOM!!

The massive Bone Dragon True Body was blasted straight away, smashing through several ice hills and plowing a trench hundreds of meters long through the ice. Shattered ice and snow dust filled the air before it finally came to a stop.

Gu Rong tumbled out of his shattered bone armor and collapsed to his knees on the ice in a sorry state. He had no idea how many bones had broken throughout his body. Blood seeped through the cracks in his broken armor, staining the ice beneath him red.

He raised his head to look at the black sword-bearing figure in the distance, his pupils contracting violently.

The Seventh Soul Skill combined with the Ninth Soul Skill—Bone Dragon True Body layered with Bone Transformation Divine Dragon.

His strongest ultimate defense.

One strike.

Just one strike.

All of his defenses had been completely shattered.

"How is that possible..."

"What kind of power was that... Why couldn't even Bone Transformation Divine Dragon stop it..."

What he did not know was that the emerald-green flames surging along the Corona Sword were still Sun True Fire in essence, merely a different color.

That power of Judgment possessed a natural suppressive effect on all things sinister, alien, and everything that "should not exist."

Like sunlight shining into darkness, leaving shadows nowhere to hide.

His Bone Dragon True Body was powerful, but before that Judgment, it was like a barrier made of paper.

The wind and snow of the Far North still howled, but the sky that had just been torn apart by emerald-green light was slowly closing once more.

At the end of the ravine carved across the ice field, shattered ice and snow dust slowly settled.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The Apollo Puppet stepped across the ice, slowly approaching.

The emerald-green coronal halo behind it radiated scorching light.

Gu Rong struggled to prop himself up, only to discover that his body had already reached its limit. Every bone wailed in agony, and he could not stand at all.

The Apollo Puppet stopped before him and lowered its head slightly, its scarlet eyes looking down at him.

"Your defense is far too weak. I had to deliberately suppress the power of Coronal Light just to avoid killing you with one strike."

"It seems you are unworthy of being called... the world's greatest defense."

"...Bone Douluo!"