"Ice Empress, are you suggesting I take Snow Girl in too?" After Ice Empress became the Wisdom Soul Ring of his Undead Calamity martial soul, Huo Yuhao had been about to take his luggage and head back to the Mingyue Hotel.
In this life, Huo Yuhao had no intention of retracing the cultivation path of his previous life.
He had already decided what sort of divine seat he would condense once his Divine Sense had fully recovered, and he already had some ideas about the cultivation methods and divine artifact that would revolve around it.
He had come here to pick up Ice Empress entirely at Brother Sky Dream's request. He understood his own situation: unlike the so-called "road to heaven" Tang San had laid out for him in his previous life, the path he had chosen for himself had no safety net.
There was no guarantee that the companions who followed him in this life would ascend to heaven. Instead, they might fall into an abyss beyond all redemption. Huo Yuhao did not want to drag others down with him.
"Since our Far North Ice Plains will face a catastrophe sooner or later, why shouldn't we take a gamble with you now?" Within Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness, Ice Empress's green eyes burned with fighting spirit.
Ice Empress added, "No one wants slaughter visited upon them."
"Snow Girl is like an ice elemental spirit. The very nature of her existence, born and nurtured by heaven and earth, is much like your current Soul Spirit form. Even ten thousand years from now, in that era I told you about, when Soul Masters use Soul Spirits to cultivate instead of hunting beasts for Soul Rings, she shouldn't face any insurmountable pressure to survive."
"Hmph... how many of you humans are as honest as you?" Ice Empress shook her head. "I know Snow Empress's temperament. She would never accept such a lowly, twisted existence. By then, I'm afraid you humans wouldn't let her live."
Seeing Tian Meng give him a lazy nod as well, Huo Yuhao replied, "All right. Once I get back to Sun Moon, I'll go to Mingde Hall and get Snow Girl out."
"Wait... that's not right. Snow Girl shouldn't have fallen into Sun Moon's hands yet..." Huo Yuhao suddenly remembered something.
With Ice Empress guiding him, Huo Yuhao hurried toward the Core Circle of the Far North.
The journey was far from peaceful: Huo Yuhao encountered many Evil Soul Masters. Looking at the Soul Beast corpses strewn across the ground, and the few human dead mixed among them, whose faces still bore the greed of their final moments, Huo Yuhao knew that a group of Soul Masters far too eager to advance had just fought a chaotic battle with the Soul Beasts here.
Those who had died must have been reckless and ill-prepared, losing their lives here as a result.
During his years at Shrek in his previous life, Huo Yuhao had learned of something called a Secret Art Soul Bone.
Creating a Secret Art Soul Bone required slaughtering Soul Beasts in a particular way: for example, killing one hundred Soul Beasts of any one species within an hour, then using a secret method to trigger their Soul Rings, offered a ten-percent chance of obtaining a Secret Soul Soul Bone. It was considered a relatively simple way to obtain a Soul Bone.
Doing this required staggering amounts of manpower and intelligence resources for the necessary preparations and operational arrangements.
Most Evil Soul Masters were Soul Masters from unorthodox backgrounds. Even the Holy Spirit Cult itself had only a half-baked organizational structure, making operations like this difficult to execute.
"See? Those savage expressions on their faces-that's the usual face of your human race," Ice Empress said within Huo Yuhao's Sea of Consciousness, forcing down her revulsion.
Several days later, near Ice God Lake.
Sensing Soul Power fluctuations at the level of a Nine Rings Titled Douluo, Huo Yuhao immediately realized what was happening. "So this is a large-scale Soul Hunting Operation! Anyone deploying power at the level of a Nine Rings Titled Douluo must be targeting a Soul Beast at least a hundred thousand years old! No wonder so many unorthodox Evil Soul Masters have followed along to fish in troubled waters."
As he approached, Huo Yuhao discovered that the Soul Power fluctuations at the level of a Nine Rings Titled Douluo came from three Level 9 Soul Engineers.
One of them spoke in a solemn voice. "The environment here is too harsh. Make this quick!"
The other two Level 9 Soul Engineers laughed heartily. "We've really struck it rich this time! This Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast Embryo is priceless."
Grinning savagely, the three ventured deeper into Ice God Lake and arrived before the pure white lotus platform at its very center.
A slender figure of breathtaking beauty lay upon the lotus platform.
From her smooth, flowing hair to her cool, aloof face, her exposed shoulders, and the gauzy dress she wore, the girl was entirely white, radiating a delicate glow.
The barefoot girl held an equally white lotus in her hands.
This girl was Snow Girl. Faced with a seven-hundred-thousand-year heavenly tribulation that offered certain death and no hope of survival, she had planned to use this hundred-thousand-year snow lotus, which possessed little intelligence, as a vessel for rebirth and start over.
"Despicable humans!"
Snow Girl had never expected that, as a daughter of the Far North, she would have these powerful humans come attacking her doorstep just as she began cultivating anew.
Had she not been in the transformative stage of restarting her cultivation, Snow Girl could have crushed the three Level 9 Soul Engineers who had come here as easily as ants. But the fickle ways of the world rarely allowed for such ifs.
The lotus in Snow Girl's hands had already been damaged by several beams of Soul Power.
The helplessness she felt at that moment made Snow Girl wish she could drag these humans to their deaths with her.
Boom... An explosion thundered out, and countless blades of ice scattered like knives. The force of this sudden upheaval rivaled mountains collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
It was not Snow Girl unleashing a means of mutual destruction.
It was the Ice Explosion Technique! An inherited skill of Ice Empress's Ice Jade Emperor Scorpion Tribe.
Aided by the vast bloodline power remaining within the torso bone, and striking the unsuspecting with a prepared attack, Ice Empress used Huo Yuhao's body to unleash a blow that inflicted fatal injuries on the three Level 9 Soul Engineers.
A deep crater a hundred meters in diameter appeared where the three had been standing.
Snow Girl did not hesitate either: the three had barely climbed out of the crater when they saw a great hand of white mist descend, grasp them, and tighten.
As the bloody mist dispersed, the three had been crushed to pieces in Snow Girl's grip.
In the distance, Huo Yuhao spat out blood and collapsed to the ground.
Blood seeped from all seven orifices.
Though he was not dead, his body could no longer move.
Had he not been a [One-Bag God King] who had [lived two lives], using his Divine Sense to precisely control every minute change within his body, the backlash from Ice Empress controlling his body to unleash this Nine Rings Titled Douluo-level Ice Explosion Technique would have been enough to turn him into mush.
Sensing Ice Empress's Soul Power fluctuations, Snow Girl froze.
"What's going on?"
"Bing'er, how did you end up here?"
Snow Girl knew Ice Empress's talent fell short of her own. She could endure until the seven-hundred-thousand-year mark, while Ice Empress would struggle even to pass her four-hundred-thousand-year heavenly tribulation.
Snow Girl's plan had been to start her cultivation anew and rely on her gifts as a Child of Ice and Snow to catch the attention of an ice-aligned deity in the Divine Realm, then receive divine trials and become a god.
At that point, she could make Ice Empress her Wisdom Soul Ring and take her along in an ascension to the Divine Realm.
"Snow Empress, it's me," Ice Empress's voice rang beside Snow Girl's ear. Then Ice Empress explained in detail how Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had persuaded her to become Huo Yuhao's Wisdom Soul Ring.
"So, Snow Empress, are you willing to join us?" asked Ice Empress, who had the temperament of a raging she-dragon.
Though he could not move his body at that moment, Huo Yuhao felt rather strange when he heard those words.
Why did this make it sound like I was running a pyramid scheme?
"I am!"
Before you continue