Xiao Chen held the orange Command Block in one hand, a meek, obedient expression on his face, and slowly stepped forward, walking steadily toward Tang Wulin, who was possessed by the divine consciousness.
His posture was calm and relaxed, making him look as though he truly had been cowed by the Sea God's mighty reputation and was willingly handing over the divine artifact.
Deep down, Xiao Chen felt nothing but cold indifference and mockery toward Tang San.
Above his palm, the hovering Command Block trembled ever more violently, waiting only for Tang San to draw near.
With the Command Block to fall back on, Xiao Chen had no fear of Tang San suddenly turning hostile.
The other party was merely a divine consciousness. Before the Command Block, he could hardly overturn the heavens. If even the Command Block proved useless, Xiao Chen had no other tricks left.
Xiao Chen slowly approached Tang Wulin until less than three meters separated them.
At that very moment, Tang San, who had looked so arrogant and believed he held the entire situation in his grasp, suddenly underwent a drastic change of expression!
Whoosh!
The smugness in his eyes vanished instantly, replaced by terror and shock.
A terrifying suction force, impossible to resist or escape, suddenly erupted from the orange block in Xiao Chen's palm!
This force had neither shape nor substance. It could not be seen or touched, yet it pierced straight through the barrier of flesh and precisely locked onto the strand of God King divine consciousness residing within Tang Wulin.
Tang San's divine consciousness, which had been possessing Tang Wulin, was instantly wrenched and dragged, forcibly peeling away from him without control!
"This is bad!"
Thunder seemed to explode in Tang San's heart. He instantly realized he had fallen into Xiao Chen's trap, his cleverness having outsmarted itself.
He had thought this was merely a divine artifact containing a special power, perhaps one from another plane. Never had he imagined that it possessed the terrifying ability to devour a God King's divine consciousness!
After all, this strand of his divine consciousness was absolutely invincible below the divine level, and it was also a crucial trump card for dealing with the Abyssal Sage King.
Yet now, before this unfamiliar block, he was as powerless as a guttering candle in a raging gale!
Golden-blue specks of divine thought continuously peeled away from between Tang Wulin's brows, surging madly toward the Command Block.
Fear instantly engulfed Tang San's mind, and a panic he had never experienced in ten thousand years swept through him.
"This is bad... this thing... is so terrifying!"
A panicked, hoarse voice emerged from Tang Wulin's mouth, stripped of all its former composure.
He desperately drove what remained of his divine consciousness to stabilize his essence and stop it from being stripped away, trying to root himself inside Tang Wulin again, but every struggle was futile.
The Command Block completely ignored Tang San's struggles, forcibly tearing his divine consciousness free of Tang Wulin's flesh.
In mere moments, most of his divine consciousness had been dragged out of Tang Wulin's body and hung unsteadily in midair.
Utterly panicked, Tang San could no longer concern himself with a God King's dignity or his lofty bearing. He roared a furious challenge at Xiao Chen, his tone laden with towering rage and urgency:
"You! Put that thing away! Stop this immediately!"
"Do you know what you're doing? You're dooming the entire Douluo Continent!"
"This strand of my divine consciousness is the key to protecting the Douluo Continent! Should anything happen to it, billions of lives will perish! Can you bear the guilt?!"
At this moment, Tang San was truly frantic.
He had planned for ten thousand years, laying far-reaching schemes, all to upgrade the Douluo Plane. He had deliberately left his divine consciousness within Tang Wulin solely to preserve his Douluo Plane.
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that, after all his painstaking calculations, he would stumble at a crucial step because of a three-ring Soul Elder!
Once this strand of divine consciousness was devoured, one of the trump cards he had left on the Douluo Continent would be rendered useless. Opposing the Abyssal Sage King in the future would become as difficult as ascending to heaven, and the entire plane would be plunged into a hopeless plight!
Faced with Tang San's exasperated rebukes, Xiao Chen's expression did not waver in the slightest. There was only icy indifference in his eyes as he gave a quiet, derisive laugh and said:
"Heh, then there's no need for you to trouble yourself with watching over it, Lord Sea God."
That casually spoken sentence completely shattered Tang San's last hope.
The next second, the Command Block violently pulled Tang San out of Tang Wulin's body!
"Aaaah!!"
A shrill, wretched howl erupted from Tang Wulin's mouth, carrying a God King's defiance, fury, and despair as it resounded throughout the woodland!
In midair, the mass of stripped-out God King divine consciousness trembled and twisted violently, its dazzling golden divine radiance flickering and shifting incessantly.
Immediately afterward, a sight that shocked even Xiao Chen suddenly unfolded!
Under the Command Block's erosion, that mass of God King divine consciousness actually began rapidly disintegrating and transforming!
The once-condensed light of divine thought swiftly scattered and twisted, turning into countless densely packed fragments of code.
These fragments of code flickered chaotically, recombining wildly and scrambling at random, constantly breaking apart, forming anew, being dismantled, and being reconstructed.
This strand of Tang San's divine consciousness struggled, roared, and resisted madly, but it accomplished nothing.
All the power of this strand of his divine consciousness was dismantled into the most basic, disordered gibberish.
Finally, all the code dismantled from Tang San's divine consciousness gathered inside the Command Block.
The instant it absorbed the last piece of God King code, all the pressure and fluctuations of divine power belonging to Tang San vanished from the surroundings.
The divine consciousness Sea God Tang San had left on the Douluo Continent disappeared just like that, "devoured down to the last scrap" by the Command Block!
Xiao Chen's pupils contracted slightly, and ripples stirred in his heart.
He had anticipated that the Command Block could suppress, imprison, or severely injure Tang San's divine consciousness, but he had never imagined that this trump card's upper limit would be so terrifying-directly erasing a God King's divine consciousness, converting it into data, and swallowing it!
Only after devouring Tang San's divine consciousness did the orange Command Block's light slowly dim, as though there was no need for it to remain once the crisis had been resolved.
But it was far from over.
Buzzz!
The Command Block locked onto the now-unconscious Tang Wulin again!
To be precise, it had not locked onto Tang Wulin's body, but onto the Golden Dragon King Divine Core within him!
As Xiao Chen watched, code was being typed out furiously around the Command Block. It left him utterly bewildered; he could just about make out things like /tp...
Was the Golden Dragon King Divine Core a living organism?
Bang!
A brilliant golden light instantly emerged from Tang Wulin's chest, and an immense draconic aura swept in all directions.
The Golden Dragon King Divine Core sealed within Tang Wulin was actually forcibly pulled out of his body!
The Divine Core was golden throughout, its ancient, imposing patterns flowing with domineering power as it hovered in midair, gleaming brilliantly.
Unlike the miserable fate of Tang San's divine consciousness, which had been dismantled, scrambled, converted into data, and devoured, the Command Block treated this Divine Core entirely differently.
There was no dismantling, no pulverizing, and no reconstruction.
The Command Block trembled slightly. After undergoing some changes, the Golden Dragon King Divine Core followed the path of an invisible force and flew steadily toward Xiao Chen.
Finally, it merged into Xiao Chen's body without the slightest obstruction!
Having done all this, the Command Block seemed to have completed its task. It stopped trembling and fell still.
With a faint flash, the pixelated block hovering over Xiao Chen's palm abruptly dispersed, turning into a streak of orange light that slipped between his brows and quietly returned to the depths of his Sea of Consciousness.
Peace returned to the woods.
All that remained were Tang Wulin, lying unconscious on the ground, and Xiao Chen, dumbfounded after having the Golden Dragon King Divine Core suddenly forced into his body.
Xiao Chen sank into his Sea of Consciousness. Fortunately, the final seventeen seals on the Golden Dragon King Divine Core remained intact, but would he have to desperately hunt for heavenly treasures to undo the seals, just like Tang Wulin?
To figure it out, Xiao Chen could only sift through the recent commands and code around the Command Block with an aching head, finally gaining a rough understanding of the situation.
Essentially, the Command Block had optimized the seals, and had even optimized the Golden Dragon King Divine Core itself.
The Command Block had cleared away the Golden Dragon King Divine Core's baleful energy and the Golden Dragon King's lingering consciousness in passing, leaving an all-natural, harmless Golden Dragon King Divine Core.
As long as his body reached the point where it could withstand the power, he could undo the seventeen seals step by step and perfectly obtain the Golden Dragon King's full power.
After figuring it out, Xiao Chen left his Sea of Consciousness and let out a long breath. Looking at that long string of code was still too much of a headache.
But from the looks of it now, he would not have to suffer like Tang Wulin in the original story, hunting for heavenly treasures to undo the seals and still being unable to unseal even the final few.
All he could say was that the Command Block was truly badass. It always felt as though it was growing more intelligent, actually knowing what he wanted. Why was that?
Deep within the plane.
Tang Hao: "Aaaah! Who's stealing my Douluo Plane..."
Before you continue