Perhaps it was because of drug resistance, or perhaps Huo Yutong already had almost no impurities in her body, and her foundation had been firmly established.
Whatever the reason, absorbing the eight-petal immortal orchid took the least time.
Only two hours.
"Let's get started."
Seeing Huo Yutong open her eyes, El, who stood beside the icy lake, skipped one last stone and threw away the remaining flat stones he had found somewhere.
He brushed the dirt and dust off his hands, turned around with his back to the lake, and extended a hand toward Huo Yutong.
"Come on, Yu Tong."
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, I'm ready!"
Huo Yutong's eyes were full of determination and anticipation.
She could hardly wait!
"Then..."
With a mischievous grin, El grabbed her outstretched hand and abruptly toppled backward into the Extreme Cold Ice Spring.
Taking Huo Yutong with him.
"Aaah!!"
The sudden sensation of weightlessness made little Huo cry out instinctively.
At the same time, through her evolved Spirit Eyes, everything in the world seemed to slow down. Time seemed to stand still in Huo Yutong's eyes.
She saw the icy-blue lake drawing closer and closer. She saw dark-purple dragon wings unfurl behind the boy and flutter gently. She saw El's crimson eyes brimming with "mischief"...
She realized she could no longer look away.
Splash!
The two plunged into the Extreme Cold Ice Spring together.
"Haha! Did I scare you?!"
The boy's voice rang out beside her ear, carrying the smug satisfaction of a successful prank and a hint of teasing.
"Huh? Why aren't you reacting?"
When he failed to get the reaction he had expected, El lowered his head and looked quizzically at Huo Yutong, wrapped in his dragon wings and cradled in his arms.
Why had little Huo frozen up?
The two were now holding each other tightly.
His broad dragon wings enveloped them both, shimmering with a layer of icy-blue ripples that flowed slowly across them.
To obtain the Ice Dragon King's complete inheritance, they had to descend to the very bottom of the Extreme Cold Ice Spring and find the bones he had left behind.
Huo Yutong currently had no abilities related to ultimate ice. To enter the freezing pool, she could only rely on El's or the Water Dragon King's protection.
When the girl in his arms still failed to respond, El unconsciously tightened his embrace a little.
Then, with wicked intentions, he extended a finger and gently tickled her waist.
"Mmph!"
"That tickles!"
As though waking from a dream, Huo Yutong began squirming slightly in El's arms.
"Don't wriggle around, little Yu Tong!"
The grinning Radiant Dragon King threatened her:
"The water here is very dangerous. Without my power protecting you, you'd turn into an ice sculpture right away~"
Even as he spoke, he did not forget to keep sweeping his wicked hand up and down Huo Yutong's waist.
"El, you're so mean!"
Huo Yutong no longer dared struggle too hard. Unable to escape El's mischievous hand, she could only squirm while condemning his wicked behavior in a voice tinged with tears.
Of course, only she knew how much of that was acting and how much was willing participation.
"Your Highness, this is far too reckless!"
Only then did the Water Dragon King, who had seen them jump straight into the Extreme Cold Ice Spring from above, "finally arrive."
"Although you can temporarily resist the chill of this icy lake, your cultivation is still far too low."
"Without drawing on your other power, you wouldn't reach the place where my body lies in time!"
The Water Dragon King wore a stern expression.
"Uh, but you're here, aren't you...?"
The Radiant Dragon King, who had pulled this impulsive stunt after his earlier attempt to tease little Huo had failed, laughed awkwardly.
He also stopped what he was doing with his hand.
Once the urge to prank her faded, his intelligence reclaimed the high ground.
Just now... had he gotten a little too intimate?
El lowered his head somewhat stiffly and looked at Huo Yutong in his arms.
Wasn't this moving too fast? Holding hands before had been fairly normal, but jumping straight to hugging was a little...
Was my intimacy meter with little Huo going to lose progress?
"Ahem!"
The Radiant Dragon King instantly grew serious, wearing an expression that declared he had "important business" to attend to, and spoke coolly:
"All right, let's put these little matters aside. It's time for the real work."
Ignoring the slight twitch at the corner of the Ice Dragon King's mouth, El looked down into the seemingly bottomless lake and plunged deeper.
"Water Dragon King, lead the way. Let's hurry."
With a somewhat disillusioned look, the Water Dragon King sighed and curled her dragon claw. An enormous icy-blue claw appeared, seizing El and the Huo Yutong he held in his arms.
Then she spread her dragon wings. Her entire body became a blue streak through the water, vanishing from the spot in an instant as she carried the two swiftly toward her bones.
As a soul, she actually needed only a thought to return to her remains. But since she had to bring along two living beings, El and Huo Yutong...
She had no choice but to travel there properly.
The deeper they descended, the more indistinct the division between the Extreme Cold Ice Spring and the blazing yang spring became. Beyond a certain depth, the waters of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well turned outright purple, searing heat and extreme cold constantly alternating, merging, and repelling each other.
Without possessing both ultimate ice and ultimate fire, or receiving help from a Dragon King's remnant soul, even a Limit Douluo could never reach this place.
Before long, the three arrived at their destination.
"Oh my heavens...!"
Little Huo covered her mouth in astonishment.
"They're so big."
What entered their sight were the remains of two enormous dragons, vast enough to inspire a terror of gigantic things.
The icy-blue dragon skeleton was well preserved, its bones neatly arranged. They could still vaguely make out what the dragon had looked like in life. It was precisely the target of their journey.
The other, red dragon skeleton was much less complete. Most of its bones were cracked, and only half the wing bones remained.
They could not even see any bones from the dragon's lower body!
Feeling the pressure and aura emanating from these remains, Huo Yutong could not help experiencing a flicker of sorrow.
Even she did not know where that sorrow came from.
"Come, child."
The Water Dragon King extended a hand, covering Huo Yutong in a layer of icy-blue energy.
"According to His Highness the Radiant Dragon King's plan, I will seal most of my energy within my dragon bones for you to absorb as a torso bone."
"Then the rest of my power, together with my dragon soul, will become your second martial soul."
"All right!"
Little Huo stood at attention.
Finally!
The Water Dragon King nodded gently, then beckoned with a dragon claw. The icy-blue dragon bones blazed with light, and their energy began pouring endlessly into the spine at their center.
The spine, large enough to form an entire mountain range, shrank continuously as energy flowed into it. Its light grew ever brighter until all the power remaining in the bones had been poured into it.
The divine Ice Dragon King torso bone was complete!
The Water Dragon King brought the torso bone before Huo Yutong. It no longer glowed, but was as translucent as the purest ice crystal, while also resembling flowing rivers and seas.
"When you begin absorbing this torso bone, I will simultaneously begin becoming your martial soul."
"This uses the shared origin of the divine bones and divine soul to make them draw one another in, allowing them to stabilize more easily."
El offered a timely explanation, his face completely serious:
"But likewise, if anything goes wrong with either one, you will suffer double the pain, and it will be extremely dangerous!"
"If it reaches that point, I will stop the fusion, then take you to the Far North and activate our backup option."
"Of course, the more likely outcome is that once something goes wrong, I won't even have a chance to stop it before your body bursts and you die."
"Yu Tong, you must hold on."
The corners of Huo Yutong's mouth lifted into a sweet smile.
Her gaze passed over El and the Ice Dragon King in turn before she spoke with complete confidence.
"It'll succeed!"
"I'll become the new Ice Dragon King! Become Mama's daughter! Become El's w... helping hand!"
"Let's do it!"
Huo Yutong stepped forward of her own accord and grasped the Ice Dragon King torso bone floating before her.
At her touch, the Ice Dragon King torso bone transformed into a radiant stream, gentle as water yet bitterly cold, and entered Huo Yutong's body.
Her entire chest was enveloped in a blue halo.
She swiftly settled into a cross-legged position and began fusing with and absorbing the Soul Bone.
Meanwhile, seeing that Huo Yutong had begun, the Ice Dragon King's entire dragon body began blazing with ice-white flames of light.
He raised his head and let out a long roar, likewise transforming into a streak of light that plunged into Huo Yutong's mind.
The Ice Dragon King's inheritance had begun.
Huo Yutong gritted her teeth as she felt that powerful Soul Bone, arguably unprecedented on the Douluo Continent, begin crushing her original spine bit by bit before replacing it piece by piece.
Fascia, flesh, bones-everything in her body, even every molecule, screamed in agony.
The pain of bearing divine might in a mortal body was beyond anything words could describe.
At the same time, an earth-shattering transformation was also taking place within Huo Yutong's Sea of Consciousness.
Within the sea of interwoven purple and gold, an icy-blue dragon apparition large enough to cover everything spread its wings and roared. As its wings beat, streams of ice-white light rapidly spread, freezing Huo Yutong's Sea of Consciousness inch by inch.
"What is this?!"
Tian Meng's pupils contracted, and he swiftly mobilized his sealed spiritual origin.
Ripples appeared across the purple-gold ocean, surging forward until they became a towering wave that slammed violently into the spreading ice, hindering its advance.
"That's right. Slow the spread of the ice."
A figure projected down from the icy-blue dragon apparition, appearing beside the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm and Huo Yutong.
It was a gentle, exquisitely beautiful woman with long, ice-white hair shaded in a gradient, dragon horns on her forehead, and an illusory icy-blue crown on her head.
"My power is foreign to Yu Tong. Even with my cooperation, it will still erode her body."
"This ice is the manifestation of that erosion."
"Once Yu Tong completes the fusion and my power becomes part of her, it will naturally cease to harm her."
The Ice Dragon King, now in human form, walked gently to little Huo, who sat cross-legged with pain etched across her face, and gathered her head into his embrace.
"Keep going, Yu Tong."
"Mama is here."
Sensing that warm, familiar presence, little Huo's eyelashes trembled softly, and she murmured:
"Mama..."
Tian Meng did not turn to look at this tender scene of maternal love and filial devotion. Instead, his eyes shone, and a somewhat wild smile spread across his face.
"So all we have to do is keep Yu Tong's Sea of Consciousness from freezing completely before the fusion finishes, right?!"
Once we pulled this off, little Yu Tong would have a direct route to becoming a God King!!
All in, all in, all in!
Nobody could stop me from living forever!!
A portion of Tian Meng's spiritual origin began breaking apart of its own accord.
Leave everything on the mental side to me, little Yu Tong!
As for the pain her body endured while fusing with the Soul Bone...
Tian Meng had absolute trust in Huo Yutong.
The dragon bone was fusing steadily.
The martial soul had begun to take shape.
Time trickled past. As the sun and moon took their turns, everything progressed steadily toward a favorable outcome...
Outside, El, who had been watching Huo Yutong's condition closely, breathed a sigh of relief.
It looked like everything would be fine.
Little Huo inheriting the Ice Dragon King's position was only a matter of time...
No!
El's crimson eyes were instantly replaced by orange-gold dragon eyes.
His needle-fine pupils locked onto Huo Yutong. Though she remained motionless, faint cracks had begun appearing across her body, icy-blue light shining from within them.
More precisely, he stared at the somewhat illusory icy-blue crown that had appeared above her head.
Why?
Why?! Why did this illusory Dragon King crown still contain part of the divinity's authority?!
The current Huo Yutong couldn't possibly bear this thing!
This had nothing to do with willpower. It was the true divide between mortals and gods!
According to the original story, the Dragon God should have taken everything belonging to the Dragon Kings' divinities!
Only once someone inherited the Dragon God Divinity would the dragons' divinities reappear.
What remained here should only have been part of the Water Dragon King's symbolism!
Damn it!
El gritted his teeth.
Things that should not have followed the original story had happened, while the things that should have followed it had gone wrong!
El let out a long breath, stepped forward, and pulled Huo Yutong into a tight embrace.
He held her slender waist tightly, trying his best to maximize the contact between their bodies.
The next instant,
Alatreon, Xeno'jiiva-
Martial Soul Possession, simultaneously!
He unleashed his true trump card!
Incomplete self-Martial Soul Fusion Skill!
Dragon Radiance: Song of Primordial Origin!
An illusory figure appeared where El had stood.
His entire being brimmed with profound contradictions:
Near-sacred evil, creation that annihilated all things, chaotic order...
All manner of imagery flashed across him.
If any being had probed with divine sense or a similar means, they would have discovered that El's existence had now completely merged into the world itself, becoming utterly imperceptible.
One could even say that, at this moment, he was the world!
The mere appearance of this figure seemed to bring some imperceptible, peculiar change to this small patch of space.
Some existence grander than the stars, loftier than the Divine Realm, and deeper than the abyss cast a glance in this direction.
Delight, yearning, disgust...
All manner of emotions flashed through its eyes.
Meanwhile, on Douluo Star, El, who felt he had popped the champagne too soon, knew nothing of this.
At present, he was working hard to manipulate it.
"Racial authority over 'ice dragons'..."
In his Martial Soul Fusion Skill state, El easily saw through the nature of this lingering authority.
"Useless."
Whether any pure-blooded ice dragons were even still alive was an open question.
He seized this incomplete authority and forcibly tore it out of the illusory crown.
The entire process took less than a second.
Yet that single second was enough to leave El utterly drained.
He dropped out of his Martial Soul Fusion form and immediately felt that nothing in his body was right.
"Hiss..."
My body is spasming. The Four Extreme Elements just fused, and now they're rejecting one another again. The Alatreon Martial Soul was provoked by the Xeno'jiiva Martial Soul...
El grimaced.
"My body actually cracked?"
Looking at the spiderweb-like cracks across his arms, the Radiant Dragon King shed involuntary tears, his eyes filled with displeasure.
"This body is still far too weak. When will I finally reach seven rings?"
"This is the episode where I miss my dragon body the most."
Meanwhile, deprived of its anchor, the extracted fragment of authority began fading into the void on its own, drawn away by the Water Dragon King's divine seat.
Its direction matched the direction in which El sensed Dragon Valley exactly.
"I'm out of strength."
El draped himself over Huo Yutong, who was sitting cross-legged, like an enormous stuffed bear nestled in her lap.
My body hurts. I don't want to move.
Seeing that little Huo had stabilized again and would finish merging in a little while, El opened his mouth and began gulping down the lake water around him, formed from the merging of the Extreme Cold Ice Spring and the Blazing Yang Spring.
First, replenish a little. Suck up some energy.
El swallowed the lake water, which contained both Ultimate Fire and Ultimate Ice attributes, breaking it down into the purest energy before channeling it into his body.
Nourished by the vitality converted from that energy, the cracks in El's body began healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
He simply closed his eyes and began feeding mechanically.
Until two voices reached his ears.
"El, are you all right?!"
"Your Highness! Something is wrong with that authority!"
El opened his eyes.
"I'm absolutely certain there was no lingering authority within my crown.
It was only ever a phantom, a key, a symbol."
A measure of terror crept into the Water Dragon King's voice.
"That authority-that racial authority over ice dragons appeared out of nowhere!!"
Before you continue