Shortly after settling Huo Yun'er's remnant soul in Elder Yi's Undead Demiplane, Huo Yuhao hurried to the Star Dou Great Forest. He had much to tell Xu Jiujiu, and he had learned that Princess Xu Jiujiu was currently Soul Hunting there under the protection of the royal guard. The reason someone whose standing was now little better than a mud-legged peasant could learn the whereabouts of this Xu Family princess was simple: real power in the Star Luo Empire had never entirely left the hands of the Dai Family and the Zhu Family.
Huo Yuhao was all too familiar with the Star Dou Great Forest of this era.
After traveling for several days, he sensed Xu Jiujiu's presence-and the Soul Power fluctuations of a fierce battle underway.
"This hundred-thousand-year soul beast is no easy opponent!"
"All royal guards, heed my command: protect Her Highness!"
The officers of the royal Garrison Troops around Xu Jiujiu all wore ashen expressions.
None of them had imagined that, on a day when they were merely accompanying the princess on a Soul Hunting trip to the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest, they would encounter a hundred-thousand-year Pegasus.
Amid flickering light and shadows, the guards around Xu Jiujiu suffered heavy losses before they could escort her very far in retreat.
Watching the guards around the young Princess Xu Jiujiu battle the hundred-thousand-year Pegasus, Huo Yuhao did not immediately rush forward to throw his life away.
From their auras, Huo Yuhao already knew that both these people and the hundred-thousand-year Pegasus possessed strength at the level of nine-ring Titled Douluo. If his current body got caught up in their battle, one careless moment really could cost him his life.
Only after confirming that both sides had fought to the brink of exhaustion did Huo Yuhao secretly draw upon that thread of divine consciousness in his essence, channeling it through his current Spirit Eyes Martial Soul to unleash Soul Extraction on the Pegasus.
Feeling pain in its soul, the Pegasus thought a powerful expert was attacking it from the shadows. Unwilling to let someone reap the spoils after both sides were crippled, it left.
Only after the Pegasus departed did Huo Yuhao reveal himself.
"Who are you?" Having seen Huo Yuhao use some means to frighten off the terrifyingly powerful Pegasus, Xu Jiujiu's guard captain approached him with this question.
"My name is Huo Yuhao. With such a fierce battle here, you must have already alerted quite a few soul beasts. Continuing your Soul Hunting here will be impossible..."
"Senior, I know my limits..." Xu Jiujiu said gravely. Although he appeared as young as she was, someone capable of frightening off that hundred-thousand-year Pegasus might well be a powerful expert who had sealed his vital energy to keep the signs of aging at bay.
"Senior? I hardly qualify as your senior," Huo Yuhao said with a light laugh. "Your Highness, I'm about your age. I can't accept that title from you. Just call me Huo Yuhao."
Hearing Huo Yuhao's words, Xu Jiujiu forcibly suppressed her shock. No one knew better than she did how terrifyingly powerful that hundred-thousand-year Pegasus had been-it had just slaughtered more than half her guards.
Even if the Pegasus had already been exhausted, if the person before her who had frightened it away truly was a boy around her age, the terrifying extent of his talent went without saying.
Xu Jiujiu's poise made Huo Yuhao's conversation with her proceed smoothly.
Soon, he returned to Star Luo City with the princess and her guards.
"Your Highness really does think of everything!" Huo Yuhao praised her. "You even chose somewhere away from the palace to speak with me."
After returning to Star Luo City, the two chatted casually in an ordinary, quiet chain restaurant. No third person was present.
Xu Jiujiu said with feigned nonchalance, "My friend, you know there are plenty of prying eyes and ears in Star Luo City. The more ordinary the place, the better suited it is for discussing important matters."
As a princess of the Star Luo Empire and a pillar of the Xu Family's younger generation, Xu Jiujiu had already developed a knack for handling every side with grace, despite her youth.
"Then I'll get straight to the point: Your Highness, I came to see you because I have some news to share."
At Huo Yuhao's words, Xu Jiujiu gave him a gentle smile. "Yuhao, what sort of news is it? If possible, why not find a way to tell my imperial brother instead of me?"
Huo Yuhao's face was also full of smiles. "Princess Jiujiu, your distant relative—the one a generation older than you, of course—Lady Xu Xiaoyu, or rather, the mother of Young Master Dai Luoli of the White Tiger Duke's Mansion... well, she may be in danger. You should warn her to be careful! And of course, His Majesty must not learn of this. After all, in His Majesty's eyes, the glory of the White Tiger War God, devoted wholly to his country and guarding his virtue like jade, must never be sullied."
Although Huo Yuhao did not spell it out, Xu Jiujiu immediately understood what he meant.
"How did you know..."
"Me? I have some grievances with certain people in the Duke's Mansion." Huo Yuhao spread his hands. "Your Highness, the White Tiger Duke is a Divine Descendant, after all. If you enlist another Divine Descendant Family to deal with a Divine Descendant, the likeliest outcome isn't successfully turning their strength against him—it's having them join forces to beat you down. That's all I have to say..."
Their conversation went no further, as the waitress came in to serve their food.
After bidding Xu Jiujiu farewell that day, Huo Yuhao stayed the night at the restaurant.
"Yuhao, are you saving Dai Luoli and his mother because you see your own past in them?" As Huo Yuhao lay in bed that night, Tian Meng's voice reached him from his Sea of Consciousness.
"Brother Sky Dream, you've figured it all out again..." Huo Yuhao found that, whether in his previous life or this one, Tian Meng was always his resident know-it-all.
During his childhood in the White Tiger Duke's Mansion, only a handful of people besides his mother, Huo Yun'er, had ever shown Huo Yuhao warmth. Among them was one woman-Dai Hao's secondary wife. She, too, was a woman the duchess regarded with hostility: Xu Xiaoyu, Dai Hao's secondary wife.
This titled lady from a collateral branch of the imperial family had taken great care of him and his mother.
When Huo Yuhao was two, the duchess had driven him and Huo Yun'er into the woodshed and cut off their income. For a long time afterward, it was Xu Xiaoyu who brought them food and clothing.
Without Xu Xiaoyu's help, Huo Yuhao would not even have lived long enough to leave the Duke's Mansion. He remembered very clearly how, the last time they met Aunt Xu, his mother had introduced her to him: "This auntie even held you when you were little!"
Of course, the duchess's interference later made it difficult for them to meet.
Huo Yuhao certainly was not saving Xu Xiaoyu and Dai Luoli because he saw himself in them.
Even if Xu Xiaoyu was a secondary wife, her noble status as a titled lady was far beyond anything his mother, Huo Yun'er, could lay claim to in the rigidly hierarchical society of the Douluo Continent.
"You don't want the Dai Family to reclaim the throne!" Not long after Huo Yuhao fell silent, Electrolux's aged voice rang out in his Sea of Consciousness.
"Elder Yi, you really can read minds," Huo Yuhao murmured to himself. "I certainly won't let the Dai Family reclaim the throne of the Star Luo Empire."
Huo Yuhao looked at Tian Meng, then at Electrolux, and said, "Things gather with their own kind, and people flock with their own crowd. These families running with the Tang Family piss into the same chamber pot as them, right down to their bones. They're dreaming far too sweetly about a great many things."
"Back when the Douluo Three Kingdoms first encountered the Sun Moon Empire and the two sides fought, the Dai Family collapsed in a rout that swept a thousand miles. With their dignity trampled into the dust and their prestige utterly lost, the Dai Family handed over the throne-which was a hot potato at the time-to the Xu Family, remnants of Spirit Hall whose position was awkward but who had distinguished themselves in the war against Sun Moon. Then they ducked out of the storm for a while, while still controlling Star Luo's military and political power in practice. They made it seem as though the Xu Family were rats climbing onto the dinner table to snatch some advantage."
"Out of fear, the Xu Family even went to great lengths to oppose the angels, repeatedly launching so-called campaigns to purge Spirit Hall's lingering poison to prove their loyalty to the Dai Family, the Zhu Family, and those they represented."
"All I want to ask is: by what right? Is the Xu Family unworthy of Star Luo's throne?" Huo Yuhao said coldly. "And once the Dai and Zhu Families' plan to make Dai Luoli disappear fails, the Xu Family's early showdown with them will also mark the beginning of those two larger divine idols' collapse-idols bigger than the little one that is Dai Hao alone..."
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