Huo Yuhao neither accepted nor rejected Ju Zi's proposal to join forces. Fortunately, Ju Zi had yet to become an extremist at this point, and she did not force him to take a stance.
As for Ju Zi's suggestion that he establish great achievements like Tang San? What a joke! In his previous life, while serving Tang San's family in the Great God Realm, Huo Yuhao had learned that beneath his father-in-law Tang Bingqing's mask of [purity as pristine as ice and jade] lay the rule: "Those who learn from me live; those who resemble me die."
Huo Yuhao knew all too well that serving a sovereign was like living beside a tiger. Now that he had been reborn and encountered Brother Sky Dream and Elder Yi again, he had abandoned the idea of lying flat. His preliminary plan was simply to figure out how to stay alive.
If he acted as though he bore a bitter, deep-seated grudge and harbored lofty ambitions now, wouldn't that be like digging up the earth over a tyrant's head, as far as his esteemed father-in-law watching the mortal world from the Divine Realm Center was concerned?
After seeing Ju Zi off, Huo Yuhao lay in Room 411 of the Mingyue Hotel, leafing through this era's most popular historical publication on the Douluo Continent, the Sea God's Record of Exorcising Evil, for entertainment while opening the [Audience] interface in his Sea of Consciousness to browse "Douluo Continent."
The Sea God's Record of Exorcising Evil needed little introduction. It was "a factual account of the legendary exploits in which the upright and honorable Sea God defeated the evil Angel God," written ten thousand years ago by Yu Xiaogang, the continent's foremost [renowned teacher], who had [raised a god] and whose greatness needed no elaboration. It was also the history people of this era on the Douluo Continent knew.
It recorded stories such as "how the Angel God Qian Renxue exposed her greedy nature and murdered Qian Daoliu while undergoing her divine trials..."
But when Huo Yuhao compared this history with the "Douluo Continent" he saw in the [Audience] interface, he found that the differences were more than just a billion little details.
Huo Yuhao did not remain idle for long, however, before turning his attention back to Soul Tools.
"Elder Yi, let's begin. From now on, you'll be my second martial soul." As Huo Yuhao spoke that day, he activated a Soul Tool array with his hands.
After leaving the Star Dou Great Forest, he had chosen the Sun Moon Empire over the Body Sect. Aside from not being a body cultivator, there was another reason: he needed his use of Electrolux as his second martial soul to look reasonable from the Divine Realm Center's perspective.
After all, to the Sea God seated before the Divine Realm Center, if a youth who had joined the Body Sect suddenly produced a technique for turning a remnant soul from another world into a martial soul, the only explanation would be that something was wrong with both of them.
Huo Yuhao had only one goal in making Electrolux his second martial soul: to bind Electrolux's life to his own. That way, if Tang San tried to attack Electrolux, he would be attacking a native of the mortal Douluo Continent.
The Destruction God King of this era would then have grounds to move against Tang San.
After finishing his first semester at the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy, Huo Yuhao, who had already gained a modest reputation in Sun Moon, did not stay there for the holidays.
That was because, after Electrolux became Huo Yuhao's second martial soul, Brother Sky Dream, who had heard Huo Yuhao explain what would happen to the Douluo Continent in the future, immediately thought of his goddess, the Ice Empress.
Sky Dream wanted the Ice Empress to leave with him.
Seeing how he felt, Huo Yuhao packed his luggage and hurried to the Far North.
Across the snowfields, bitter winds howled and snowflakes drifted down from time to time. Heaven and earth were entirely white.
Walking through this clear, pristine whiteness that seemed free of all impurities, Huo Yuhao, who had attained considerable mastery over ice and snow in his previous life, did not feel the freedom of a bird soaring through the sky. Instead, he felt a trace of heaviness.
The Sky Dream Ice Silkworm, lounging lazily in his Sea of Consciousness, asked curiously, "Little Yuhao, are you still thinking about the Divine Realm?"
Huo Yuhao immediately came back to his senses at Sky Dream's question. "Brother Sky Dream, are you sure you want to bring the Ice Empress along with me? There's no turning back from what I intend to do."
Sky Dream answered without hesitation, "Little Yuhao, going by what you told us about the future you witnessed in your previous life, do Bingbing and I have any better choice than to follow you down this road all the way into the dark?"
Huo Yuhao fell silent, and Sky Dream did not pursue the subject further.
After learning that Tang San would certainly set up a scheme for Tang Wutong to take over everything belonging to the Emperor Auspicious Beast, the Three-Eyed Golden Lion, who embodied the Soul Beast Clan's fortune, as well as the Auspicious Beast's sacrifice to Huo Yuhao under murky circumstances, Sky Dream, simple-minded though he was, still grasped the crucial point: once that period ended, the Soul Beast Clan would be finished.
As for Huo Yuhao's talk of a soul beast resurgence twenty thousand years later?
That was nothing but a joke. Given a choice, who would willingly be murdered?
"Uh, Brother Sky Dream, do you still remember your way around the Far North?" Huo Yuhao suddenly slapped his forehead as something occurred to him. "Everything in this frozen wilderness is white. I can't tell which way is which."
After becoming [Huo Yuhao] in his previous life, he had spent so long as a lofty God-King, and even when observing the Douluo Continent, he had stared at Shrek every day. When would he have had time to pay attention to Brother Sky Dream's homeland?
Although the sliver of divine consciousness he now possessed was powerful, his father-in-law was watching from the Divine Realm. He did not dare release it outright to search for the Ice Empress's presence.
"Well..." Sky Dream froze for a moment before saying awkwardly, "I spent the past ten thousand years trapped in the Star Dou Great Forest. I don't know how the terrain of the snowfields changed over all that time!"
"What did you say?" Huo Yuhao's face darkened.
After wandering around the snowfields like that for many days, Huo Yuhao finally encountered the Ice Empress at the foot of a snowy mountain.
The moment Sky Dream saw his goddess, he rushed forward excitedly. Then the Ice Empress picked him up as though she were pinching an ant. "After all these years, I thought you were dead. To think you'd deliver yourself right to my door..."
"Bingbing, don't be so fierce..."
Huo Yuhao did not interrupt the two beasts' exchange.
Perhaps the god of love had flexed his power again, but the Ice Empress was ultimately persuaded by Sky Dream. As she approached him, Huo Yuhao revealed his second martial soul, Undead Calamity.
"Brother Sky Dream should have told you a great deal already. So, Miss Ice Empress, are you willing to come with me?"
"You... are no ordinary person. I hope you won't deceive us..."
The Ice Empress said no more, but Huo Yuhao could tell that she merely wanted a reason with which to convince herself...
"Of course I'm no ordinary person." Huo Yuhao smiled. Whether as the child of the Douluo Continent's fortune in his previous life or as a reincarnated God-King in this one, he had never been ordinary. "But I'll say it again: the road ahead really is dangerous... If you aren't willing, Miss Ice Empress, I won't force you."
Once this sovereign has made up her mind, there's no reason to hesitate again. With that thought, the Ice Empress opened and closed her two pincers, then said in a low voice, "I'm willing to walk the same path as you!"
"Welcome!"
Unlike in his previous life, Huo Yuhao refused the Ice Empress's torso bone. "Your soul beast lineage stores all its cultivation in flesh and blood. Keep this torso bone. If I lose my life someday, it will be your way out. Perhaps you'll be able to find another Soul Master and become his Wisdom Soul Ring."
Sky Dream, standing nearby, stared blankly. "Little Yuhao, what are you doing? Even if your origin is on an incredibly high level, this Soul Bone containing Bingbing's four hundred thousand years of cultivation could still do your fragile body a great deal of good."
But Huo Yuhao said solemnly, "Brother Sky Dream, I'm telling you honestly once more: if what I'm trying to do fails, we'll be beyond redemption for ten thousand calamities! This isn't child's play."
"Well..." Sky Dream hesitated. He knew Huo Yuhao was leaving them a way out.
At that moment, the Ice Empress manifested as a proud, prickly little girl. With her hands on her hips, she looked at Huo Yuhao and said coolly, "You really are an interesting human. But I must remind you that your puny body will endure tremendous pain when you fuse with me. I don't know whether you're mentally prepared for that."
Huo Yuhao merely smiled and immediately sat cross-legged. "Pain? It doesn't matter. Come on!"
Pain? Compared with the nine knife thrusts and eighteen wounds I endured in my previous life for Tang Wutong, the woman who turned me into [Huo Yuhao], what does this little pressure from fusing with the Ice Empress amount to?
"Your origin actually makes me feel... as though I'm on the verge of death?"
After entering Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness, the Ice Empress felt an immense oppressive force. She knew that the speck of silver light at its very center had already surpassed the level of spiritual consciousness.
Huo Yuhao rubbed his hands together. "Then let's talk now!"
Only inside his own Sea of Consciousness did Huo Yuhao dare reveal many things, such as the future of the Far North, which concerned Brother Sky Dream most.
"You mean that across the entire Douluo Continent, including the Far North, very few of our soul beast lineage will escape death in the days to come?" After hearing Huo Yuhao out, the Ice Empress's face was filled with shock.
"And then, during the resurgence twenty thousand years later, we'll follow that grandson of the Sea God who inherits the Dragon God Divinity and regain the possibility of becoming gods?"
"Cruel though it is, that really is what will happen in the future." Huo Yuhao spread his hands. "You'll only realize it after the fact. If the sovereign of your soul beast lineage, the Silver Dragon King, had her head on straight, what she should be doing now is plotting to sabotage what the Asura God Tang San is doing at Shrek."
"Unfortunately, she's done nothing. That means the script the Tang family has prepared for you is already set: over the next ten thousand years, Soul Engineers will give all humanity the ability to take up arms, and Soul Masters will grow even stronger. Those will be ten thousand years of you being killed off one by one. The second ten thousand years will be the era when that grandson of the Sea God rises and inherits the Dragon God Divinity. He'll resurrect those of you who were killed, then take you in as his lackeys."
"In short, the process is: get killed-become lackeys."
After hearing Huo Yuhao say that, the Ice Empress suddenly understood why Sky Dream had grown so anxious when he saw her hesitate while trying to persuade her.
But if that was the situation, then didn't that mean the Snow Empress, who was just beginning to cultivate anew, would...
Before you continue