Prologue (1)

Heaven and earth had only just parted, and the Divine Realm hung high above.

That year, the storm did not descend upon the Douluo Continent. It descended first into a father's heart.

Deep within the Divine Realm, golden light seethed, and layer upon layer of divine barriers trembled with a low hum. This was no ordinary surge of energy. An ancient ferocious beast, sealed away for countless ages, was using the tiny body of an unborn child to unleash his first true roar.

The child had yet to open his eyes.

But the blood surging within him already burned and raged like a towering sea of molten lava.

Asura divine power, the Sea God's divine consciousness, and layer upon layer of seals were battered, torn apart, and ground away before that golden will. It was not merely power, but an almost instinctive hunger for destruction—the Golden Dragon King's fury, which would rather see jade and stone burn together than ever bow his head.

He struggled.

He roared.

He searched for a vessel that could truly bear him.

And now, he had found one.

Xiao Wu knelt in the center of the divine hall, her face pale, her hands never leaving her belly. She was the child's mother, yet all she could do was watch helplessly as that power churned seas and overturned rivers inside him. Every movement in her womb struck her heart like a heavy hammer.

"If this goes on..."

She raised her head, her voice trembling, but dared not speak the words that followed.

If this went on, the child would die.

Tang San stood outside the barrier, his expression grim, fine beads of sweat gathering at his temples. As both the Sea God and the Asura God, there was little in existence that could leave him powerless. Yet what he faced now was not an enemy, but his own child; not a demonic scourge he could slay, but a bloodline he had to preserve.

This was his son.

And the vessel the Golden Dragon King had chosen.

His divine consciousness reached inside again and again, only to be driven back each time by that savage golden light. Tang San knew better than anyone that seals alone could no longer hold it down.

The Golden Dragon King's power was too domineering, innately rejecting every restraint. It would expand madly when the infant was at his most vulnerable, until it burst his body apart, until it burned his young soul to ashes.

Unless he gave him something else.

Something powerful enough, yet gentle enough; noble enough, yet resilient enough.

A "cage" he could swallow, but could not immediately grind into oblivion.

Tang San closed his eyes and remained silent for a long, long time.

So long that Xiao Wu suddenly understood something, and her expression changed sharply.

"Brother, no!"

She sprang to her feet, tears already glistening in her eyes. "That's... that's his martial soul!"

Tang San did not answer.

Or rather, he no longer had any other answer.

He slowly raised his right hand. In his palm, a gleam of exquisitely clear blue-gold light quietly appeared. At first, it was only a wisp, then it became the luminous image of supple, noble vines, unfurling silently in his hand. The rhythm of life flowed through every leaf vein, and every inch of blue held the gentle yet unyielding aura of an emperor.

The Blue Silver Emperor.

This was his legacy, and what should have been the gentlest protection he could leave his child.

Had everything gone as it should, one day this child would possess both his father's bloodline and his mother's resilience. Like Tang San himself once had, he would grow from humble beginnings, stand unbroken through wind and rain, and bloom from the ordinary into a flower that shook heaven and earth.

But now, this "gentleness" had become the only price he could offer in exchange for his child's chance to live.

"He can't bear twin martial souls."

Tang San finally spoke, his voice so hoarse it sounded as though something had scraped it raw. "At least, not now."

"The Golden Dragon King will instinctively devour every source of energy to strengthen himself. Ordinary seals won't last until his birth. Only the Blue Silver Emperor... he's strong enough, and gentle enough, to be swallowed and become a living restraint."

As he spoke, his gaze never left the child's body.

Because he knew all too well that the Blue Silver Emperor alone would not be enough.

The Blue Silver Emperor could bind the Golden Dragon King's innermost will, but could not suppress the savage blood energy that would sooner or later tear its way out. Once the child was born, once his martial soul awakened, once his soul power truly circulated for the first time, that savagery would spread through his blood into every limb and bone, finally assaulting the very core of his soul.

So this seal still needed a second lock.

One to bind the "spirit."

One to bind the "power."

Tang San slowly raised his other hand.

This time, what appeared in his palm was not gentle blue-gold light, but a dark gleam, dense and heavy, as though it could press even space into a slight collapse. Within that dark light, a tiny hammer's silhouette quietly formed, hazy at first, then gradually solidifying. It released no earth-shattering pressure, yet the moment it appeared, the air throughout the divine hall seemed to grow heavier.

Xiao Wu froze.

Of course she recognized it.

The Clear Sky Hammer.

It was the strongest legacy of Tang San's other half, the supreme tool soul that should have manifested openly and proudly among this child's martial souls.

Yet now, Tang San held it too, as though he was about to send it into another gamble from which there could be no return.

"The Blue Silver Emperor will suppress the will. The Clear Sky Hammer will subdue the power."

Tang San's voice was soft, yet it fell as heavily as a weight upon fate itself. "If we keep only the Blue Silver Emperor, sooner or later the Golden Dragon King will force his way out through the blood energy and shatter our son's martial soul and meridians. The Clear Sky Hammer must remain, but it cannot remain whole."

The tears in Xiao Wu's eyes deepened. "You mean..."

"I'll preserve its essence, making it the only martial soul our child can manifest in the future." Tang San briefly closed his eyes. "But until he's strong enough, it cannot appear as the true Clear Sky Hammer. First, it must draw itself in, shrink, dull itself, and sink."

"It must bear that first burden in the child's place."

This time, Xiao Wu understood completely.

They were not simply taking away a martial soul.

Before their child had even been born, they were deciding his future fate for him—

The Blue Silver Emperor would no longer manifest as a martial soul, but become the roots of a seal; the Clear Sky Hammer would no longer descend in its true form, but become a heavy shell. And what these two seals would suppress together was the Golden Dragon King, whose savagery could swallow heaven and devour earth.

This was no simple severance, nor the dissolution of a martial soul.

They were deliberately sending half the talent that should have belonged to their child into another monster's jaws.

Letting him swallow it.

Letting him chew it.

Forcing him, bound in endless strands of life, to slow down, sink, and sleep.

From then on, only one martial soul would reveal itself within that child.

The other martial soul would not die, but neither would he ever awaken in his complete form. He would become a seal, a layer of roots deep within the bloodline, a net, a vine wrapped around an evil dragon's throat.

And the sole tool soul that could manifest outwardly would no longer be the Clear Sky Hammer remembered by the world, the hammer whose might had shaken the continent.

It would lose its edge, its divine might, and the majestic aura that should have proclaimed its bloodline.

Through long years of suppression, it would contract into an unremarkable little black hammer, like an ordinary object darkened by smoke, dulled by time, and deliberately hidden away by fate.

It would still be a hammer.

But it would no longer be easily recognized as the "Clear Sky Hammer."

In the next instant, towering blue-gold light surged through the divine hall!

Tang San formed seals with both hands. The Sea God's divine sense became tides, and Asura divine power became a cutting edge. Countless divine markings spread across the void, finally converging into the course of a seal that spanned heaven and earth. Wrapped in divine power, that cluster of the Blue Silver Emperor's essence slowly sank into Xiao Wu's belly, into the body of the child yet to be born.

Almost at the same moment, that heavy dark light descended with it.

There was no thunderous crash.

No vision of the heavens collapsing.

The instant the Clear Sky Hammer's essential silhouette touched the core of the child's soul, it began to collapse inward of its own accord. As though it understood the duty it was about to shoulder, it withdrew, bit by bit, all the divine might it should have radiated, and pressed, inch by inch, all the brilliance that should have illuminated heaven and earth into its deepest recesses.

The immense hammer's silhouette kept shrinking.

From heaven-shaking and earth-quaking to dense and heavy.

From dense and heavy to blunt and roughly hewn.

In the end, only the outline of a pitch-black, dim, utterly unremarkable little hammer remained, suspended silently in the depths of the child's soul.

And at that very moment, the sleeping will of the Golden Dragon King suddenly lunged forward, filled with boundless greed and fury, and swallowed that cluster of blue-gold life essence in a single gulp!

The instant he devoured it, golden light swelled violently.

But in the next moment, countless blue-gold vine markings suddenly emerged within that swelling golden light.

They did not fight it. Instead, they seeped in like water, entwined like roots, and permeated that supremely violent will little by little, like spring breezes turning to nourishing rain.

At the same time, the little black hammer, now fully contracted into shape, abruptly sank like a meteor plunging into the deep sea, pressing hard upon the golden blood energy surging to escape.

Thus, the Blue Silver Emperor bound his rage.

The Clear Sky Hammer subdued his power.

Life could not destroy destruction.

But it could teach destruction to sleep.

Time passed, little by little, and at last the barrier stopped trembling.

Xiao Wu sank limply to the floor, her face streaked with tears, yet her hands still guarded her belly, as though she were protecting an entire world lost and found again.

Tang San stood where he was, motionless for a long time.

His palms were empty.

But he knew that the Blue Silver Emperor, who should have become a second martial soul, had not truly vanished. He had merely survived in another form—as a seal, as roots, as the deepest and most silent part of the protection within his son's body.

And the price was that, from this day on, the child would no longer possess the complete twin talents that should have been his.

He would believe he had only one martial soul.

He would believe he had inherited only the Clear Sky lineage.

Through countless painful nights to come, he would not understand why a savage power within him always sought to tear him apart.

Nor would he know that, in the deepest recesses of that power, a Blue Silver Emperor had been growing in silence all along.

He would no longer bloom, no longer manifest, no longer possess soul rings or soul skills.

He would do only one thing.

Live.

And then cling to that dragon with a death grip.

Silence returned to the divine hall.

And in that moment, the distant river of fate quietly changed its course.

Many years later, on the Douluo Continent, a boy would raise his hand during his martial soul awakening and see a little hammer, pitch-black from end to end, blunt, short, and utterly unremarkable.

Most people would not marvel.

They would merely think it seemed to be an ordinary hammer-type martial soul, albeit a somewhat strange one.

Only a very few beings would vaguely sense that something older, more dangerous, and sadder lay buried within that little hammer—

The weight of a sovereign, deliberately compressed.

A supreme tool soul that had yet to reveal its true form.

That was no mere inheritance of a martial soul.

It was a life a God King had forcibly snatched back from the jaws of destruction for his child, at the price of a lineage of gentleness.