High above the core region of the Star Dou Great Forest.
"Di Tian, let's begin."
The Snow Empress's cool voice rang out.
Di Tian gave a soft snort, unleashing the Black-Eyed Golden Dragon King's cultivation of over eight hundred thousand years without holding anything back.
The Snow Empress seized the moment to summon the phantom of the Heavenly Snow Woman.
For the first time, their two auras clashed head-on in this stretch of sky.
Di Tian frowned.
"Just as I thought."
He discovered that his aura could not suppress the Snow Empress in the slightest. Instead, the two were locked in a stalemate.
He took the initiative to test her, a dragon claw forming over his right hand.
Ultimate darkness intertwined with spatial power on his right dragon claw, collapsing inward.
A rift tore through space, and in the blink of an eye, Di Tian appeared behind the Snow Empress.
He drove a fist toward her shoulder.
Bang! He felt something shatter beneath his fist.
The Snow Empress broke into shards of ice mixed with snowflakes.
They scattered through the air before gathering again in another spot.
She gently raised her delicate hand, and hundreds upon thousands of ice blades rapidly condensed behind her.
At the same instant, she activated her domain.
The space within several hundred meters became the home battlefield of ice and snow.
With no blind spots in any direction, ice blades sliced through the wind from every side.
Di Tian raised his hand, and an energy barrier appeared.
Sharp cracks rang out without pause as the ice blades filling the sky struck the energy barrier one after another, shattering into icy powder. Countless clouds of icy mist spread between them, obscuring most of their view.
Though her first strike had been blocked, the Snow Empress did not pause, immediately launching a second wave of attacks.
A pearl appeared in her hand.
It was none other than the Ice God's divine artifact, the Ice God Pearl!
The Ice God Pearl slowly rose into the air, radiating dazzling blue light. Vast amounts of ultimate ice power rapidly gathered, forming the phantom of an enormous ice dragon in midair. Its entire body was crystalline and translucent, its aura biting and weighty.
Seeing this, Di Tian planted both feet firmly on the Greenstone Cliff Platform. Darkness roared around him as his tremendous Soul Power erupted in full. Clenching his fists and wrapping them in dark power, he punched straight at the ice dragon diving toward him.
Though Di Tian was powerful, he still could not shatter the ice dragon outright under the influence of divine power.
Instead, the ice dragon clamped its jaws around his dragon claw before violently exploding.
Half his arm was sealed in Ultimate Ice.
But soon, Di Tian poured his ultimate darkness Soul Power into the Ultimate Ice. As though stuffed beyond capacity, the ice began to swell before finally shattering.
The two traded blows, swiftly exchanging dozens of rounds.
The Three-Eyed Golden Lion lay on the grass, while Lin Xiao reclined in front of her, using her belly as a pillow.
His gaze drifted toward Da Ming and Er Ming, who were hiding beside the nearby woods, trembling.
"Lin Xiao, who do you think will win?"
Lin Xiao turned his head and patted her little belly.
"A draw."
With a haughty little kick backward, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion abruptly deprived the back of Lin Xiao's head of its support, sending it into intimate contact with the ground.
"Uncle Di Tian is so strong! I know he'll win!"
Lin Xiao chuckled, then scooted backward a couple of steps and lay against her belly again.
Up in the sky, their battle grew fiercer and fiercer.
The Snow Empress had unleashed all of the Snow Empress's Three Absolutes, while Di Tian had used nearly every skill he possessed except the Dragon God Claw.
The Snow Empress was astonished by Di Tian's strength.
She also realized that he had even held back during their battle in the Far North all those years ago.
After all, the current Snow Empress could utterly trounce her former self, whose cultivation had yet to reach seven hundred thousand years.
Dual Soul Cores formed through Yin-Yang Complementarity, together with a divine artifact, were simply far too overpowered.
Yet even with all that, she could only fight Di Tian to a draw.
Di Tian was secretly marveling as well. Seven hundred and fifty thousand years of cultivation, paired with a dedicated ice-type divine artifact, had made her mastery of the ice law increasingly refined. Her power was extraordinarily pure, leaving her virtually unrivaled within the same realm. Even against him, she could maintain a steady stalemate for this long.
He glanced at the unmoved Gu Yuena and at Lin Xiao, who was enjoying the show.
He let go of his final trace of hesitation, and an aura far surpassing his current one suddenly emerged.
This was his ultimate trump card.
Dragon God Claw.
Facing that earth-shaking claw, the Snow Empress pushed the Ice God Pearl as close to its limit as she possibly could.
After all, she had yet to truly inherit the Ice God's divine position.
She could only temporarily wield the divine artifact and a sliver of divine power.
There was simply no way for her to unleash the Ice God Pearl's full strength.
The sky seemed to tear apart, and clouds for several miles around were blown away by the powerful shockwave.
The two figures flew apart from the center, one to either side.
The Snow Empress looked somewhat disheveled, but she had forcibly withstood that claw head-on.
After another few dozen rounds of stalemate, they reached an unspoken understanding and withdrew all their power at the same time.
The Snow Empress raised her hand and recalled the Ice God Pearl hovering in midair. Its blue radiance slowly receded, leaving the pearl lustrous and translucent once more. The bone-piercing chill around her instantly dissipated, and the surrounding temperature gradually returned to normal. The icy mist filling the sky slowly dispersed, while the ice coating the trees below melted bit by bit.
The ultimate darkness surrounding Di Tian gradually dissipated as well.
"Snow Empress, you're truly strong now."
Di Tian had never enjoyed a fight so thoroughly before, nor had he ever truly used the Dragon God Claw.
Today had been his first time.
"I'll admit it now. Your Far North Trio has become a duo!"
He gave her a thumbs-up and smiled.
The corner of the Snow Empress's mouth twitched.
The Far North Trio? Did he mean the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North?
Only Di Tian would put it that way.
Still, she did not argue.
With his two hundred thousand years of cultivation, A-Tai might not even be able to defeat that dog in the Star Dou Great Forest.
Last time, even she and the Ice Empress had needed the home-field advantage of the Far North to fight Di Tian without his Dragon God Claw.
They could still boast afterward that they had not backed down.
But after witnessing the might of the Dragon God Claw, the Snow Empress accepted that she had previously belonged to that lesser trio.
"What about the Ice Empress? Now that you're this strong, she should have four or five hundred thousand years of cultivation too, right?
"She should be only one step away from her limit, shouldn't she?"
Something occurred to Di Tian, and he asked curiously.
"Uh, more or less..."
The image of a little scorpion rolling around on a sofa every day, clutching chips and cola, surfaced in the Snow Empress's mind.
The corner of her mouth twitched again.
"See? I told you it would be a draw. I know my Xue'er pretty well, okay?"
Lin Xiao pointed his thumb downward, making a mocking gesture at the Three-Eyed Golden Lion.
"Hmph! Uncle Di Tian was obviously stronger. He just didn't want to keep fighting, okay?"
The Three-Eyed Golden Lion immediately returned his taunt, pulling a face at him.
"Speaking of which, I've been lying on your belly for so long, but I still don't know your name. I can't keep calling you the Three-Eyed Golden Lion or the Emperor Auspicious Beast forever."
Lin Xiao's sudden question caught the Three-Eyed Golden Lion off guard.
"I don't have a name..."
She drew her head back a little, her thoughts unreadable.
"Then how about I give you one?"
"Really?"
"Hmm..."
Lin Xiao made a show of thinking it over.
He was hopeless at naming things. How could he possibly come up with an original name? Naturally, he would just copy one.
"Either you take my surname and become Lin Qiu'er, or you can be Di Qiu'er. What do you think?"
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