"This place is heaven!"
Lou Gao entered the Castle. With Li Chen's permission, he could browse the blueprints for low-end Soul Tools.
He stared in shock at the automated production lines inside the Castle, along with two enormous rockets standing dozens of meters tall.
An entire Soul Engineer Corps was also training and adjusting the combat-ready Soul Tools they wore.
"Fire!"
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The deputy commander of the Sun Moon Empire Imperial Soul Engineer Corps was training his troops to fire handheld Soul Tool Machine Guns.
The targets several hundred meters away
were instantly knocked down.
"Throw!"
A squad immediately hurled Soul Tool Cluster Bombs. After being thrown, the bombs bounced repeatedly across the ground for some distance before attaching themselves to the target dummies.
Then...
Boom!
An earth-shaking explosion left a row of huge craters in the distance!
The blast nearly deafened Lou Gao.
There were even operators controlling Soul Tool Drones, dropping bombs precisely onto their targets.
"My heavens! No wonder-no wonder they wouldn't let me in! The Sun Moon Sect clearly possesses Soul Tools with tremendous destructive power. They... what are they planning, training like this?!"
Lou Gao was stunned.
At that moment, the deputy commander of the Sun Moon Empire Imperial Soul Engineer Corps swept a cold glance over him, then ignored him and continued the training.
Lou Gao narrowed his eyes. Any ordinary person who stumbled upon these sect secrets would flee in fear. After all, knowing these things meant the Sun Moon Sect would never let him leave.
Yet Lou Gao had no such worries. Instead, excitement welled up from the bottom of his heart.
Lou Gao casually found himself a spot and happily hid in a corner with a large pile of blueprints and a Soul Guide Communicator to begin his research.
Soon, he was immersed in this epoch-making technological knowledge.
Outside the Castle,
Li Chen and Huo Yuhao walked side by side, taking a casual stroll.
"Yuhao, I think you could leave the sect for a while and travel around the continent."
Li Chen carried a pebble as he spoke with seeming nonchalance.
"Travel? Where would I go?" Huo Yuhao asked in confusion.
"Anywhere. This is the Douluo Continent from ten thousand years ago. Who knows? There might be opportunities like the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well."
Li Chen dropped the hint.
He knew the Divine Realm must have taken an interest in Huo Yuhao, but First-Level Gods could only communicate with him through divine ruins. If Huo Yuhao stayed in Heaven Dou City without ever leaving, he would have no way to discover those ruins.
"Heh, what if I run into the Great Love Valley again? Wouldn't I be done for?"
Huo Yuhao shook his head.
"How could that happen? Little Scumbag hasn't even become a god yet. With your current strength, you can go anywhere as long as you avoid Slaughter City in the desert west of the continent, Sea God Island, and the core region of the Star Dou Great Forest."
Li Chen smiled. "Take a positioning Soul Tool with you and help me map the terrain while you're at it. Wouldn't that be nice?"
Huo Yuhao fell into thought.
He seemed to hear something beneath Li Chen's words.
"All right. Actually, I've wanted to visit the Far North for a while. I have a question, though. Do you think the Ice Empress is still there in the Far North right now?"
As Huo Yuhao brought this up, excitement stirred in his heart.
"If she exists, then is Tian Meng in the Star Dou Great Forest too?"
Huo Yuhao knew Li Chen had long since learned the secrets he carried, so when they were alone together, he had little reason to hide anything.
Besides, the two of them had met in the Star Dou Great Forest when they were ten.
When Huo Yuhao first absorbed Tian Meng as his Soul Spirit, a troop of Wind Baboons had nearly killed him. Li Chen had been the one to save him.
"I don't know." Li Chen shook his head.
"I'm more inclined to think they still exist."
Huo Yuhao pondered. "I really want to go take a look. But speaking of that, if Tang San doesn't become a god in this timeline, does that mean Dong'er will never appear?"
Li Chen fell silent.
Logically, yes.
The cause had to come before the effect.
Without Tang San, Dong'er and Qiu'er naturally would not exist.
Huo Yuhao sighed.
"Back in the Star Dou Great Forest, I didn't kill Tang San immediately because I thought of this problem. I never expected him to escape in the end. Chen, tell me, can becoming a god really let me turn back time and resurrect my mother and the woman I love?"
Li Chen was silent for a moment.
After thinking it over, he said,
"If I say yes, it wouldn't carry much weight. After all, I haven't become a god myself.
But if I say no, that would be far too heartless of me as your friend. I can show you something. Take a careful look and sense it."
With that,
Li Chen suddenly unfastened his shirt, revealing his finely defined, leanly muscled upper body.
For some inexplicable reason, Huo Yuhao recoiled in alarm, clutching both arms over his chest. "Hey, hey, what are you doing?"
Li Chen snapped irritably, "What are you thinking?! I'm telling you to look at my lower dantian!"
Then,
Li Chen drove his soul power to its fullest. A faint black halo appeared on his lower abdomen, beneath his navel.
Huo Yuhao's eyes widened at once.
"This is..."
Li Chen said solemnly, "A soul core. My first soul core has condensed inside my body."
"What?!"
Stunned, Huo Yuhao hurried forward and instinctively reached out to feel it.
"Hey, hey, a soul core isn't a physical organ. What are you touching?"
Huo Yuhao gave an embarrassed smile. "Force of habit... It really is a soul core. But you're only a Soul King! How do you already have one?!"
Huo Yuhao remembered that a Soul Master could only condense their first soul core when breaking through to Titled Douluo.
He had truly never fucking seen anyone condense a soul core at the Soul King stage.
Li Chen pulled his shirt closed and buttoned it up.
He explained,
"This is my reward for completing the first three trials of the Evil God Examination."
"The Evil God King's first three trials are Seeing Evil, Discerning Evil, and Fallen Calamity."
"Ning Fengzhi's vicious scheme let me witness the evil in people's hearts and personally plunge him into calamity."
"After I completed those three trials, evil divine power washed through my body. Over this past month, a soul core gradually condensed."
Huo Yuhao focused, listening intently.
"So I can't tell you whether Dong'er can be resurrected. But gods are called gods because they can accomplish things beyond human power!"
"And if you don't try, there truly won't be any hope at all. Besides, even if the existing gods can't do it, you can create a new godhood yourself that can!"
Li Chen patted Huo Yuhao's shoulder.
"Yuhao, you have to believe in yourself. Remember, just like Tang San, you're a child of the plane-someone the Douluo Continent produces only once every ten thousand years!"
Huo Yuhao listened in a daze, then suddenly sniffled.
"You're right!"
Huo Yuhao clenched his fist. "As long as I want to walk, the road is beneath my feet! All right, I'll set out tomorrow. I'll definitely find a way to reverse time. And if there isn't one, I'll create it!"
Li Chen nodded in satisfaction.
Atop the Castle wall, Xiao Hongchen and his sister lay peering down at them.
Meng Hongchen covered her mouth.
"Ooh~ So mushy! If Dong'er comes back to life, she'll definitely be jealous of Li Chen!"
Xiao Hongchen looked puzzled. "Mushy? It only feels sacred to me. This is the bond between brothers!"
Spirit City, the Pope Palace.
Yue Guan lowered his head and reported,
"Your Holiness, the Sun Moon Sect doesn't inscribe the core Magic Arrays of its Soul Tools in the city at all. And all their Soul Tools have anti-disassembly mechanisms! My subordinates said there's simply no way to replicate them."
Veins bulged on Bibi Dong's forehead.
"Useless! You can't even handle such a trivial matter! What use are you?!"
Yue Guan and Gui Mei lowered their heads, not daring to argue.
Bibi Dong tapped her scepter against the floor as she paced back and forth.
"This Sun Moon Sect actually dares to cooperate with both the Heaven Dou Empire and the Star Luo Empire. And in just one short month, they brought about the destruction of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect... What a formidable hidden sect!"
Yue Guan and Gui Mei were puzzled. "Your Holiness, wasn't the destruction of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect the young mistress Qian Renxue's achievement?"
Qian Renxue had sent Spirit Hall a letter, which Yue Guan and Gui Mei had also read. They knew exactly what had happened on the night the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect fell.
"Her achievement?"
Bibi Dong sneered. "If the Sun Moon Sect hadn't possessed those powerful Titled Douluo, could she have schemed Ning Fengzhi to death, no matter how cleverly she plotted?"
The two lowered their heads. "You are right, Your Holiness."
Bibi Dong walked to the doorway.
"Come. You two will accompany me. We might as well pay the Sun Moon Sect's master a visit.
I'd like to see whether the Sun Moon Sect truly has a Peerless Douluo presiding over it. If not, they can hardly blame me for being ruthless!"
Bibi Dong flew straight into the sky.
If an artifact-forging sect like the Sun Moon Sect could not serve her alone, then it had no reason to exist!
In any case, Bibi Dong would never allow the Heaven Dou Empire and the Star Luo Empire to receive the Sun Moon Sect's help!
Yue Guan and Gui Mei exchanged a glance. Deep down, they both felt that Bibi Dong's rash decision to confront the Sun Moon Sect might lead to trouble, but they gritted their teeth and followed her anyway.
Before you continue