After saying goodbye to Bei Bei and the visibly disappointed Tang Ya, Huo Yuhao brushed the dust off his shoulders and headed out of the Star Dou Great Forest.
At this point, even though he had only one ring and his body was still frail, his supreme god-level divine sense made it effortless for him to wield the strength of a three-ring Soul Elder under normal conditions.
Along the way, he slaughtered a few Wind Baboons as easily as chopping melons and slicing vegetables to vent his frustration.
Godslayers, huh?
Once he left the Star Dou Great Forest, Huo Yuhao had no intention of wandering over to Shrek, but neither did he head straight to the Far North to find the Ice Empress for Brother Sky Dream.
He knew that if he went there and persuaded the Ice Empress in person to become his Soul Spirit, there was no telling what his dear father-in-law in this era would do upon witnessing it from the Divine Realm's control center.
His martial soul, Spirit Eyes, was a body martial soul. Aside from his divine sense, the strongest card he currently held was the Necromancy Elder Yi had given him.
Huo Yuhao understood his own situation: the places suited to him were either the Body Sect or the Sun Moon Empire, the Holy Spirit Cult's home turf.
He was not a body cultivator, so he could eliminate the Body Sect outright. That naturally left the Sun Moon Empire.
On his journey from the Star Luo Empire to the Sun Moon Empire, Huo Yuhao often saw evil soul masters wipe out entire civilian families and massacre villages. Yet among the common people of the Sun Moon Empire, the very nest of evil soul masters, they behaved with far greater restraint.
After entering the Sun Moon Empire, Huo Yuhao took in its prosperity as though viewing flowers from horseback.
Unlike the Star Luo Empire and even the original three empires of Douluo, the Sun Moon Empire of this era had extremely effective social organization. It was certainly not a place where just anyone could casually change their nationality while the empire remained completely unaware throughout.
"Esteemed Mr. Huo Yuhao, your room is number 411!" a tall, slender attendant told Huo Yuhao one day at the Mingyue Hotel in the Sun Moon Empire.
After taking his room key and settling in, Huo Yuhao lounged lazily on the bed and began talking with Tian Meng and Electrolux.
"Elder Yi, have you ever wondered who the Holy Spirit Cult's Holy Emperor is?"
Huo Yuhao did not want to join the Tang Sect and become expendable material in the Tang family's effort to turn the continent into their own domain. But neither did he believe that the other two options before him, the Body Sect and the Sun Moon Empire, were likely to be much better than the Tang Sect.
"Yuhao, why do you ask?" A trace of confusion colored Electrolux's aged voice.
"Back in my previous life, I worshipped Shrek fanatically. Because I supported the Shrek Inspection Corps' mission of exterminating evil soul masters, after ascending to the Divine Realm, I once tried to investigate the origins of the Holy Spirit Cult's so-called Holy Emperor through Temporal Reversal," Huo Yuhao said gravely.
"But all I saw in that Temporal Reversal was a blank. It was as though he was merely someone the Holy Spirit Cult had invented. I couldn't find which evil soul master had first fabricated this figure."
"Now, in this life, looking back on it all, I realize it must have something to do with Tang San, the father-in-law who remade me into Huo Yuhao in my previous life."
"When I think about how Shrek first defined what an evil soul master was and called for their deaths, only to finally accept them after the Qiangu Family, the successors to my Spirit Pagoda, turned them into the Douluo Federation's covert operatives, I grieve for everyone who died because of evil soul masters over those long years-from their rise two thousand years before I first made my name to the resolution of the problem twenty thousand years later."
Tian Meng suddenly interjected, "Little Yuhao, why grieve? None of this was your doing. But only after hearing you explain it did I realize human hypocrisy could reach such depths!"
Electrolux, however, said thoughtfully, "Many people live wearing masks. And the masks they wear often end up becoming their faces. Once such people gain power, there are many things they need black gloves to handle."
Hearing this, Huo Yuhao raised an eyebrow. "Elder Yi, do you have a story of your own?"
Electrolux's divine consciousness froze for a moment. Only then did he remember that he had been listening to Huo Yuhao's account all along without telling his disciple about his own experiences.
And so he recounted his past in great detail.
"So that's how it was. Fulo's attitude toward you, Teacher, really was similar to the way my 'wife' Tang Wutong viewed me in my previous life. But now that I've been given another life, at the very least, Tongtong and her God King father can forget about keeping their black glove on the Douluo Continent-the Holy Spirit Cult."
Knock, knock...
Just as Huo Yuhao made this grand vow within his Sea of Consciousness, a knock came from outside the door.
Huo Yuhao gently opened the door, and a thirteen-year-old girl came in. "I'm here to tidy the room," she said.
Huo Yuhao glanced at her. The girl had sweet, delicate features, fair skin, and a head of wavy golden hair. A little angel pendant hung around her neck. She was a beauty in the making.
"A sacred aura?" Electrolux's voice suddenly rang out within Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness.
Hearing Elder Yi's words, Huo Yuhao's interest stirred. His divine sense swept over the girl, and he immediately detected the exceptionally pure aura of sacred light within her.
Although the girl had done her utmost to conceal her soul power aura, such concealment was naturally futile before Huo Yuhao, who had lived two lives and once been a "first-generation God King."
"Miss, could you let me see your martial soul?"
Huo Yuhao asked with playful interest.
The girl stared at Huo Yuhao warily. With her family in decline, she had treaded carefully every step of the way. She knew all too well what a stranger might want when asking her to reveal her martial soul.
"Don't worry. I'm not an evil soul master, and I mean you no harm. My name is Huo Yuhao. What's yours?" As he spoke, Huo Yuhao revealed his Spirit Eyes martial soul.
Only then did the girl speak. "Just call me Ye Guyi. Ye as in leaf, Gu as in bone, and Yi as in clothing." At the same time, she released her own martial soul amid a brilliant golden glow. It was a beautiful angel.
"The Holy Angel martial soul! Miss, with such a top-tier martial soul, why are you here instead of cultivating at a Soul Master Academy or sect in the Douluo Three Kingdoms? Judging by your accent, you must be from the Star Luo Empire."
Ye Guyi frowned. "The Douluo Three Kingdoms are very dangerous for me right now."
Then Ye Guyi explained her circumstances.
It turned out that after Spirit Hall's destruction, Qian Renxue had gone into seclusion in the Star Luo Empire to avoid retaliation from the Heaven Dou Empire, where her enemies were concentrated. After her death, her descendants had done the same.
After the Sun Moon Continent collided with the Douluo Continent, the Dai Family, the Star Luo Empire's imperial family with the Evil-Eyed White Tiger martial soul, had been replaced by the Star Crown Martial Soul Xu Family because of their incompetence during the war against the Sun Moon Empire.
The family with the Star Crown martial soul had been on good terms with the family of angel soul masters since Spirit Hall's era. Naturally, the Angel Clan's lives improved considerably once the Xu Family took the throne. Many angel soul masters worked in the Star Luo Empire, even becoming its honored retainers.
But things changed with the appearance of the first evil soul master to be designated as such by Shrek.
From then on, these soul masters, who made burning, killing, looting, and every conceivable evil their daily routine and could be considered absolute evil, appeared frequently across the Douluo Continent.
And angel soul masters were their preferred targets. Life grew bitter for the Angel Clan once more.
After discovering the symbiotic relationship in which many powerful forces on the Douluo Continent, such as nobles and soul master sects, secretly kept evil soul masters as hired muscle, Ye Guyi had chosen to seek her future in the Sun Moon Empire, where there were few soul masters.
"Miss Ye, you really are naive!" Although his body was currently younger than hers, Huo Yuhao spoke with easy assurance after hearing her account.
Before you continue