The Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger went utterly berserk when she saw her child injured.
All four of her eyes erupted with dazzling light. Within her cavernous, blood-red maw, intensely concentrated darkness and frost energy gathered frantically, forming a black-and-blue sphere that spun and expanded without cease. The terrifying energy it contained slightly warped the surrounding space. This was her powerful innate offensive soul skill!
Sensing the threat, Xiao Bai's sapphire-blue bear eyes grew solemn.
She rose onto her hind legs and slammed both paws against her thick chest, producing a thunderous, drumlike boom.
An ultimate icy aura, far fiercer and purer than before, erupted from her body. She opened her enormous mouth, gathering endless ice-white light as the temperature around her plunged until it could freeze even the soul!
The next instant-
The Ice Prison Tiger roared, launching the enormous black-and-blue energy sphere at Xiao Bai like a falling meteor. This was the Ice Prison Tiger clan's inherited racial skill, Abyssal Ice Fiend Wave.
Xiao Bai also unleashed an immensely thick, devastating pillar of ice-white light, seemingly composed of countless ice-crystal stars, meeting her opponent's attack head-on.
This was the ultimate move the Snow Empress had taught her: Ice Bear Blizzard!
One black-and-blue, the other ice-white, the two terrifying torrents of energy, each embodying a different ultimate power, collided thunderously in midair!
They did not explode immediately. Instead, the two forces frantically eroded, compressed, and annihilated each other! Their point of collision burst with light bright enough to blind, forming an ever-expanding energy vortex that ravenously sucked in everything around it! Layer after layer of ice shattered and instantly vaporized. Even light was twisted and devoured!
The deadlock lasted only a few breaths!
In the end, Xiao Bai's Ice Bear Blizzard proved superior. The vast soul power she had accumulated over more than two hundred thousand years of cultivation gradually began to overwhelm the Abyssal Ice Fiend Wave, which combined darkness and frost.
Although Xiao Bai was a ferocious beast in the two-hundred-thousand-year class, there was still a difference between two hundred and ten thousand years and two hundred and ninety thousand years. Her actual cultivation was close to three hundred thousand years.
The ice-white pillar advanced steadily, forcing the black-and-blue energy sphere back.
At last, a trace of horror flashed through the Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger's eyes. She frantically drove her soul power, yet still could not stop the devastating ice-white pillar from crushing its way toward her!
RUMBLE-!!!
Finally, the Ice Bear Blizzard completely swallowed the Abyssal Ice Fiend Wave. Its terrifying energy slammed into the Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger's chest and the forelimbs she had hastily raised to defend herself!
BAM! The Ice Prison Tiger was blasted violently backward. Vast sections of the Dark Ice Scales covering her body shattered and fell away, exposing mangled wounds beneath. Cold beast blood sprayed like a waterfall, instantly freezing across the ice into ghastly, blood-red blossoms.
She crashed heavily to the ground and struggled to rise, but damage to her internal organs and the invasion of ultimate cold caused her to keep coughing up blood laced with ice shards. Her aura weakened drastically in an instant. Clearly, she had suffered grievous injuries.
Meanwhile, after unleashing her full strength and enduring part of the energy impact, Xiao Bai had suffered a shallow but rather long cut across her shoulder blade from stray dark energy. Bright red blood seeped out, but compared with her opponent's wounds, hers was only a minor injury.
Seeing its mother gravely injured, the twenty-thousand-year-old tiger cub let out a mournful cry and struggled to rush over.
Knowing she was no match, the Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger let out a roar filled with defiance, anger, and weakness. She cast a long look at Xiao Bai and Dai Youheng behind her, as though engraving their faces into her soul. Then she abruptly turned, dragging her grievously wounded body away as she attempted to escape with her cub.
As long as the green hills remained, there would be no shortage of firewood. She would remember this grudge!
Yet just as Xiao Bai prepared to pursue them and eliminate both threats once and for all, the Snow Empress's voice rang out in her mind again, just in time. "Xiao Bai, stop. Don't chase the hundred-thousand-year-old one. You can defeat her, but killing her would be difficult. She can retreat into the abyss, and on her home ground, you might not be her match. Rather than dealing with her, keep that little one with roughly twenty thousand years of cultivation here for me. Knock it unconscious, but don't kill it."
Although puzzled, Xiao Bai carried out the Snow Empress's orders without the slightest hesitation. She immediately abandoned her pursuit of the fleeing Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger. Her enormous body abruptly changed direction with agility that belied her size, and a single stride brought her up to the young Ice Prison Tiger, whose injuries had slowed it down.
Seeing the terrifying giant bear approaching, the cub's eyes filled with despair. It gave a threatening growl in a final, desperate struggle.
Xiao Bai raised her enormous paw, but this time there was no killing intent behind it. Controlling her strength, she struck the side of the cub's head with precision!
THUD! With a muffled impact, the cub's growl abruptly stopped. The light in its eyes instantly scattered, and its massive body swayed before slumping limply onto the ice, completely unconscious.
Only after finishing did Xiao Bai give a puzzled growl, as though questioning her mother.
Within the sea of consciousness, the Snow Empress explained to Dai Youheng, "Youheng, I originally intended to take you to find a hundred-thousand-year soul beast for the second ring of your Heavenly Demon Pill martial soul, then find the fourth ring for your Evil Shadow Demon Tiger. But this twenty-thousand-year-old Abyssal Ice Prison Tiger belongs to a top-tier race of ancient ferocious beasts, possesses exceptionally powerful evil and darkness attributes along with some ice affinity, and has nearly twenty thousand years of cultivation-just right for you to absorb. It is an outstanding choice for your Evil Shadow Demon Tiger martial soul's fourth soul ring. You could even call it a treasure that can only be encountered by chance, never sought!"
"They attacked us first and tried to kill us. It is only natural that they should pay a price now. It doesn't matter if we reverse the order. We can settle your fourth ring first, then find that hundred-thousand-year soul beast."
Dai Youheng had recovered his breath somewhat. Hearing this, he looked toward the unconscious young Abyssal Ice Prison Tiger, a flash of burning eagerness in his eyes. The Snow Empress was right. This was practically the perfect soul ring delivered straight to his doorstep.
Its attributes, age, and quality were all beyond reproach!
"Thank you, Sister Snow Empress. And thank you, Xiao Bai!" Dai Youheng said sincerely. Enduring his injuries, he struggled to sit up from the fur on Xiao Bai's back, his blazing gaze fixed on their unconscious quarry.
The perfect fourth soul ring lay right before him. He could hardly wait to begin absorbing it.
"Sister Snow Empress, Xiao Bai, there's no time to lose. I'll..." He took a deep breath of freezing air, trying to summon the soul power remaining within him.
His injuries were far from light. He urgently needed the surge of soul power and healing effects that a soul-ring breakthrough would bring to recuperate.
"Wait, Youheng!" The Snow Empress's voice rang out just in time, carrying an unprecedented gravity as she interrupted him. "Don't absorb the soul ring yet. We must leave this place immediately!"
Dai Youheng froze for a moment, then immediately understood. "Leave? I see. You're worried about..."
The Snow Empress nodded. Clever as Dai Youheng was, she knew he had already
arrived at the same conclusion as her.
Xiao Bai, however, gave a low rumble and blinked her enormous bear eyes, seemingly unable to understand her mother's meaning.
She had already driven off the Hundred-Thousand-Year Ice Prison Tiger. Could there really be something even stronger here?
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