[Cold came and heat departed; grasses and trees withered and flourished.]
[Starlight fell night after night, and the vital essence of vegetation nourished you morning and evening. Your accumulated soul power rose steadily like streams converging into a river, finally coming to a firm stop at rank fifty-two.]
[Ah Yin's true body had grown several yards tall. Gnarled vines coiled like ancient trees, and the golden patterns on her leaves flowed like molten gold, so dazzling that one dared not gaze at them for long.]
[Her cultivation had recovered to ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety years, leaving her just one step away from the hundred-thousand-year threshold.]
[With just one more step, she would fully reclaim her Blue Silver Emperor throne status and once again wield supreme authority over her tribe.]
[One evening, you sat on a thick fallen tree trunk, leafing through the surviving pages of an ancient book you had picked up somewhere.]
[The setting sun filtered through layers of overlapping treetops, casting scattered, swaying golden shadows across the yellowed pages.]
[Ah Yin's spiritual body sat quietly beside you, her legs together and her pale blue skirt spread across the grass. She gazed absently at the drifting clouds dyed through with sunset colors at the edge of the sky, a trace of longing to take human form hidden in her eyes.]
[Recently, she had learned quite a few human skills from you: cutting cloth and sewing clothes, lighting fires and cooking, and even brewing a jar of crisp fruit wine.]
[The Blue Silver Emperor, who had once known only how to take root, grow, and listen quietly to the wind and rain, gradually acquired traces of the smoke and fire of human life on her fingertips.]
[She suddenly turned, her gaze settling on your profile as you read with lowered eyes, lingering longer than ever before.]
["Su Yi." She suddenly spoke, her voice very soft.]
["Hmm?" You did not look up, turning a yellowed page with your fingertips, your gaze still resting on the words of the ancient book.]
[She fell silent for a moment, unconsciously pinching the hem of her skirt as though weighing her words. Only after a long while did she raise her eyes to look at you earnestly and ask softly, "Do you... want to become the Blue Silver Emperor?"]
[Your hands paused. You closed the book and turned toward her, a hint of surprise in your eyes. "The Blue Silver Emperor?"]
[On this continent, the Blue Silver Emperor represented both status and authority, always passed down through a single line from generation to generation. Only when the previous Blue Silver Emperor had completely perished and the throne status stood vacant would the next Blue Silver Emperor naturally emerge within the tribe.]
[You pointed at yourself, raising an eyebrow slightly. "Can I, an ordinary human Soul Master, become the Blue Silver Emperor too?"]
["Under normal circumstances, that would be impossible, but-"]
[Ah Yin paused, meeting your eyes with a clear, earnest gaze. "Blue Silver Grass blood already flows through your veins, and you have been steeped in my origin aura for years. Your Martial Soul has long since developed a deep resonance with the Blue Silver Clan."]
["You only need to absorb a drop of my life-bound essence blood and gain the Blue Silver Clan's recognition, and there will be a very strong chance of you becoming a new Blue Silver Emperor."]
[At this, your brows furrowed slightly. Rather than answering immediately, you asked, "What about you? I remember that only one Blue Silver Emperor can exist on this continent. If I become the new Blue Silver Emperor, what will you be after you break through to a hundred thousand years?"]
[Ah Yin's eyes curved slightly, her tone remaining gentle. "I will naturally still be a Blue Silver Emperor. However, I will possess only the Blue Silver Emperor's origin and power, no longer retaining the Blue Silver Emperor throne status or authority."]
[You nodded thoughtfully.]
[This approach was roughly similar to the course of events in the original story-]
[By taking advantage of the old emperor's fallen cultivation realm and loosened throne status, using the imperial bloodline as a catalyst, and then gaining the Blue Silver Clan's recognition, one could become a new emperor;]
[Then, once the old emperor made another breakthrough, two emperors could coexist.]
[Compared to a mortal dynasty, it would resemble two suns hanging in the sky, or the relationship between a retired emperor and a new emperor-one supreme sovereign and one regent, jointly ruling the Blue Silver Clan.]
[You did not answer immediately, merely lowering your eyes and saying softly, "Let me think it over carefully."]
[Your heart was not entirely untroubled.]
[The Blue Silver Emperor was one of the continent's finest Plant-type Martial Souls, innately possessing the Blue Silver Domain, commanding countless millions of Blue Silver Grass plants, and drawing on the vital essence of vegetation to cultivate.]
[Once you became one, you would at least possess the potential to cultivate to Super Douluo, or even Peerless Douluo.]
[Of course, with your "top-tier comprehension," you did not lack paths to the summit. But the Blue Silver Emperor throne status would undoubtedly spare you many years of arduous cultivation and make your cultivation journey steadier and smoother.]
[Yet you understood very clearly-"emperor" meant not only power, but responsibility. The moment you crowned yourself with the name of "emperor," you would have to shoulder the corresponding responsibility.]
[In the original story, before the Blue Silver Tribe was utterly extinguished, two humans had also become Blue Silver Emperors.]
[The first was Tang San.]
[After Ah Yin sacrificed herself, Tang San relied on his latent Blue Silver Emperor bloodline and, after promising the Blue Silver King in the Blue Silver Ancestral Land that he would "protect the Blue Silver Clan forever," received the homage of all the grasses and became the first human Blue Silver Emperor.]
[The second was Tang Ya-the Tang Sect's sect master during the era of "Peerless Tang Sect."]
[At the time, the Blue Silver Emperor, whose cultivation stood at a hundred and ninety thousand years, was about to face the two-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation. After Huo Yuhao, the child of destiny, promised to "find a qualified protector for the Blue Silver Clan," the Blue Silver Emperor willingly became a Soul Spirit and formed a pact with Tang Ya, helping her purify her Martial Soul origin and become the second human Blue Silver Emperor.]
[Faced with the temptation of the power bestowed by an emperor's throne status, both had solemnly sworn to protect the clan, yet-]
[Neither kept their promise.]
[One became a god and ascended, leaving behind only an empty throne; the other became entangled in worldly affairs and ultimately betrayed the trust placed in her.]
[They seized all of an emperor's power, yet never truly shouldered an emperor's responsibilities, betraying an entire tribe's trust and entrustment.]
[You knew that you would never lightly break a promise.]
[But as a human, unless you became a god, you would have only a short lifespan of a hundred-odd years and could protect the tribe for a little over a century at most.]
[More importantly, you harbored another, deeper concern.]
[You understood one principle well-might the one who first made burial figurines be left without descendants?]
[In the original story, it was precisely because the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had seen Xiao Wu, Da Ming, and Er Ming sacrifice themselves to Tang San and ultimately follow him in ascending to the Divine Realm that, ten thousand years later, he devised the god-making plan that nearly cut off the entire tribe's future.]
[You were uncertain whether, if you ascended the Blue Silver Emperor throne today as a human and set this precedent, more members of the Blue Silver Clan might later cling to wishful thinking, blindly trust humans, and place the fate of the entire tribe in outsiders' hands.]
Outside the simulator, Su Yi stared at this passage and sank into a long silence.
In "Peerless Tang Sect," the Blue Silver Emperor, who cared deeply for his tribe and had a strong sense of responsibility, had shown profound wariness and hostility from the outset toward Huo Yuhao, who bore the Auspicious Beast's fortune, and Tang Wutong, who likewise possessed the Blue Silver Emperor bloodline.
He repeatedly avoided their visits and flatly refused the humans' requests to form a pact.
Only after Huo Yuhao made a solemn promise did he finally relent and agree.
Among the reasons for this, apart from trust in the Emperor Auspicious Beast and the threat posed by humans.
Perhaps it was also precisely because Tang San had set a precedent as a "human emperor" that he willingly relinquished a thousand years of life and gambled his entire clan's future to support a human girl whose lifespan was merely a hundred-odd years.
[After night fell.]
[You lay on the vine couch in the treehouse, gazing at the starlight pouring down outside the window, unable to sleep for a long time.]
PS: Here, "the threat posed by humans" mainly refers to Huo Yuhao and Tang Wutong, as well as those in Shrek and the Tang Sect who did not want anything to happen to Tang Ya.
The situation here was that Huo Yuhao and Tang Wutong sought out the Blue Silver Emperor and stated that they would not take his life. They only hoped he would become a Soul Spirit to save their friend Tang Ya, and they absolutely would not force him.
But in my view, Huo Yuhao's promise was just as absurd and laughable as his claim that he would "never take the initiative to hunt Soul Beasts."
From the Blue Silver Emperor's perspective-
The two people before him utterly outclassed him in strength, and behind them stood the two colossal powers of Shrek and the Tang Sect.
If she flatly refused, would they turn hostile on the spot?
Even if they did not turn hostile on the spot, would people from Shrek and the Tang Sect come knocking afterward to threaten and pressure him?
If Tang Ya ultimately could not be saved, would they vent their anger on him, or even settle accounts with the entire Blue Silver Clan?
Thus, the Blue Silver Emperor's so-called "willingness" here was essentially half coercion and half compromise.
Otherwise, after making the novel's plot logically coherent, I truly could not explain-
Although a Soul Beast's cultivation age was not entirely equivalent to the years it had lived, the Blue Silver Emperor had only a hundred and ninety thousand years of cultivation and was at least a thousand years away from the two-hundred-thousand-year Heavenly Tribulation.
How could a living being who could survive for at least another thousand years willingly throw away his life to fulfill the wishes of a natural human enemy who had no hope of becoming a god and a lifespan of only a few hundred years at most?
Before you continue