"What's going on? Why does it feel like every Soul Beast over ten thousand years old in the entire Far North is here?" Bo Yunxiu stared at the boundless horde of Soul Beasts pouring out of the blizzard, blotting out the sky, and nearly lost her wits.
What the hell was this? There had to be at least a hundred thousand Soul Beasts charging out at them, and every last one was at least ten thousand years old.
Yes, a hundred thousand Soul Beasts, all at least ten thousand years old.
In this era, Soul Beasts had not yet dwindled as much as they would ten thousand years later. Though they were less numerous than ten thousand years ago, gathering a hundred thousand Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in the Far North was still no problem.
Facing a hundred thousand ice-attribute Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in this world of ice and snow, never mind their Sea God Family-even if every human expert at Soul Saint level or above were brought here, they might not gain much of an advantage.
Their thousand people had gathered here not to clash head-on with the Far North's Soul Beasts, but to set things up.
After all, they were still rational. Had they known over a hundred thousand Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts had gathered here, they would never have charged in so recklessly, not even if someone beat them to death.
Their plan to slaughter the Far North was like dealing with a fierce tiger crouching on the ground, unaware of their impending attack. They would circle behind it and slap it while laying chains to trap it, then tighten those chains bit by bit. That was how they would bring the tiger down.
It was not about brute force, but cleverly applied strength, and all of it depended on the tiger being unaware.
The problem was that the tiger now knew. The moment they attacked, it had already opened its blood-filled maw and launched a counterattack. How were they supposed to fight now?
Their chains had not even bound it yet.
"Humans, did you think we didn't know what you wanted? You wanted to slaughter the Soul Beasts of our Far North and find the Ice God's Divine Seat. Whether that information is true or false, the very thought is enough to make sure you stay here." The Ice Empress felt immensely vindicated at the terror on Bo Yunxiu's face.
When they learned from Di Tian that someone intended to attack the Far North's Soul Beasts, she, already somewhat hot-tempered, had nearly exploded with rage.
Regardless of whether the Ice God's Divine Seat was in the Far North, that was the god of their Far North, their faith. No matter what, these bastards had no business stealing it.
"Who told you this?" Hearing that, Bo Yunxiu instantly felt as though every part of her, from head to toe, had frozen. Terror spread throughout her body.
"That's none of your concern. Pay the price for your ambition." As the Ice Empress spoke, dazzling emerald radiance burst from her body in all directions. In the brief moment Bo Yunxiu stood stunned, the ultimate ice completely froze everything within a ten-thousand-meter radius.
At that moment, even time in this space seemed to have frozen.
Eternal Frozen Domain!
It was the Ice Empress's domain. Once unleashed, it instantly sealed a thousand miles in ice.
Here in the Far North, further strengthened by the blizzard, even a level-98 Super Douluo caught by it in a moment of distraction had the area around her body instantly frozen solid.
By the time she reacted, it was already too late. The next instant came Ice Emperor's Wrath!
The Ice Empress unleashed her strongest attack, chaining damage straight into her control. Bo Yunxiu had no time to defend with a Soul Skill and could only mobilize her Soul Power to protect her vital areas as best she could.
With an earth-shaking boom, emerald shock waves spread in every direction. Cracks appeared in the space where Bo Yunxiu had been standing; even space itself could not withstand the power of this strike.
That single blow sent Bo Yunxiu flying backward, blood spraying through the air. Before it could fall, it turned into crimson ice crystals in the blink of an eye. She flew hundreds of meters like a waterfall, even leaving a deep furrow in the snow behind her.
She was not dead. She was still alive. When experts fought, victory and defeat sometimes came down to an instant. A single moment of distraction was enough to cost someone their life.
Bo Yunxiu had only suffered severe injuries because she was strong. Had she been even a little weaker, that last strike would have killed her.
"You can take quite a beating. Let's see how long you last." Sensing through her Spiritual Power that her opponent was not completely dead, the Ice Empress gave her no chance to catch her breath and hurried forward. A few hundred meters was merely the blink of an eye to her.
"Quick, save the deputy clan leader!" Only then did the people around Bo Yunxiu react. Just as the Ice Empress's front pincer was about to land on Bo Yunxiu, Bo Yunxiu's figure suddenly flickered, vanished from the spot, and appeared beside a Soul Douluo nearby.
It was one of that person's Soul Skills!
"Everyone, retreat!" Bo Tianlong, who was fighting the Titan Snow Demon King elsewhere, also reacted and swiftly gave the order.
They had no choice but to retreat. They only had a thousand people, and their preparations were not even complete. If they did not run now, every last one of them would remain here.
"How could you have been prepared?" Bo Yunjie was also dumbfounded, staring incredulously at the Snow Empress before him.
"That's none of your concern. None of you are leaving today." The Snow Empress smiled, a beautiful smile like a plum blossom in bloom.
But Bo Yunjie had no desire to admire it. Instead, the Snow Empress's smile made him feel as though he had fallen into an ice cavern.
Where exactly had things gone wrong?
Yet even if the Sea God Family discovered the problem now, retreating was already becoming impossible. A hundred thousand Soul Beasts had surrounded them. How could escaping be easy?
In the Divine Realm, Tang San sat in a magnificent, deserted hall, watching the Sea God Family being driven back in defeat on the water screen before him. His fingers tapped intermittently against his chair's armrest.
Finally, he sighed. His finger hovered for a second before pressing heavily against the armrest, sending out blue-gold ripples.
"Ah, just as expected. In the end, I still have to intervene."
The Far North!
As Bo Yunjie fought the Snow Empress, the Sea God Helmet on his head suddenly erupted with an even more dazzling radiance than before.
The light was so brilliant that it pierced the blizzard stretching a thousand miles and illuminated this dim world.
Caught off guard by the radiance as she exchanged a blow with Bo Yunjie, the Snow Empress was blasted away without the slightest chance to struggle. She hurtled a hundred miles backward and slammed into a snowdrift.
"Snow Empress!" Hearing the commotion and seeing the Snow Empress flying away, the Ice Empress had no time to pursue her own enemy and immediately flew toward her.
The others, whether the Ice Bear King or the Titan Snow Demon King, all abandoned their opponents at the same instant and fixed their gazes on Bo Yunjie in the air.
Below them, the hundred thousand Soul Beasts were pinned down by that azure light. Every one of them felt as though a mountain weighed upon their body. Apart from those over a hundred thousand years old, not a single beast could move.
"That's divine power. Has Tang San intervened?" Di Tian raised an eyebrow slightly at the sight.
"That's only natural. It would be strange if he didn't. These are his believers. If they were all killed, he'd feel the pain too. The question is what he plans to do next. Get ready to act." Huo Yun, on the contrary, thought it was only to be expected. It would be strange for Tang San not to intervene under these circumstances.
But the key was what Tang San wanted to do. If he wanted to avoid being discovered by others, he had to act more discreetly. Right now, he could probably only borrow the Sea God Helmet's power and use it a little.
Afterward, he could explain that his believers below had used the trump card he had left behind. It was his believers' doing and had little to do with him.
But this trump card certainly could not unleash too much power. As things stood, it could at most repel the Snow Empress and suppress the Soul Beasts somewhat. That was nowhere near enough to completely turn the situation around; at best, it would let his believers retreat.
But after this incident, the Sea God Family would have to consider whether they would die miserable deaths if they continued confronting the Far North head-on.
Therefore, if Tang San wanted them to keep moving against the Far North, he had to make another move.
Hearing this, Di Tian readied himself. His right hand had already quietly transformed into the Dragon God Claw, while Huo Yun also began secretly channeling energy, blessing Di Tian with the mighty power of heaven and earth.
This would ensure that he could briefly unleash god-level strength.
Just then, the light suppressing nearly a hundred thousand Soul Beasts in the Far North gradually contracted. A ribbon of light abruptly shot into the depths of the Far North, but this time, it seemed to carry no attack at all, not even any imposing pressure.
"Now." Huo Yun did not care what Tang San wanted to do. The same principle applied: even if he wanted to celebrate his own father's birthday here, she had to ruin it.
Di Tian flashed in front of the ribbon of light and brought his Dragon God Claw down hard upon it, wrapped in multicolored radiance. The instant his claw struck, heaven and earth dimmed, as though the Dragon God Claw had become the absolute center of the world.
As the two met, something bizarre happened. The Dragon God Claw struck nothing. The blue-gold ribbon passed straight through it, and even through Di Tian, before disappearing into the depths of the Far North.
"What?" Di Tian could not help being startled.
Before they could think further, roughly five or six seconds later, a terrifying cold current erupted from deep within the Far North. In the blink of an eye, it had reached the region's edge.
Upon contact with the cold current, ice crystals appeared on Di Tian's body before he could evade it. It was not just Di Tian: aside from those of the Far North, everyone else, including Bo Yunjie and Bo Yunxiu, was coated in frost.
Those with lower cultivation froze into blocks of ice in the blink of an eye wherever the cold current passed.
The cold current did not stop. It surged outward and even beyond the Far North. Wherever it passed, the land, mountains, and rivers closer to the Far North were covered in ice, while those farther away were blanketed in snow.
The cold current directly affected half the Douluo World.
"The Ice God's Divine Seat! Damn you, so that's it! Tang San deliberately triggered the Ice God's Divine Seat to retaliate. He wants to draw the attention of every faction on the entire Douluo Continent to the Far North." Huo Yun was the first to realize what had happened.
She also quickly worked out Tang San's plan: lure his believers into the Far North and have them use the divine artifact he had left behind. That would give him legitimate grounds to use the power within the artifact to stir the Ice God's Divine Seat hidden in the Far North.
He had an excuse for every part of this sequence. Even if the Deities of the Divine Realm noticed, he could explain himself.
Most importantly, what had awakened was the Ice God's Divine Seat, which had slumbered for years. The aura erupting from the Divine Seat was enough to envelop half the world and attract the attention of those pinnacle experts stuck at level 99, unable to become gods.
Once word spread that a Divine Seat existed here in the Far North, the major human factions would definitely turn their attention here. Countless people would press into this place for the Divine Seat, and clashes with the Far North's Soul Beasts would be inevitable.
And those people would not be ordinary people, but the foremost experts of human society.
No matter how strong the Snow Empress was or how formidable she was in the Far North, humans were no pushovers either. There were currently three known Limit Douluos on the Douluo Continent, not counting Bo Yunjie. Huo Yun reckoned that two of those three would definitely come to compete for the Divine Seat, bringing the factions they represented along with them.
That was not even counting the powerful sects a little below them.
Furthermore, once word of the Divine Seat spread, it was hard to say whether the machinery of entire nations would also join in.
Human ambition could not be underestimated, especially the obsession with eternal life.
Previously, there had been no opportunity to become a god. If even one arose, there would definitely be ambitious people willing to try.
Whether the Far North's Soul Beasts could hold their ground truly remained unknown.
"We're retreating!" Though he did not understand what had happened, Bo Yunjie did not dare linger in the Far North under these circumstances. Before the other Soul Beasts could react, he immediately led the members of his Sea God Family in retreat.
"Don't let those bastards escape!" The Ice Bear King reacted first, throwing back his head and roaring as he ordered the Soul Beasts to pursue.
Because of what had happened, however, the Ice Bear King and the others did not dare pursue too far. They drove the humans out of the Far North, then withdrew.
Of the thousand-plus Sea God Family members who had charged in, fewer than half ultimately made it out. As for those frozen into blocks of ice, there was little more to say: they simply became food for the Soul Beasts.
After driving the humans out, the Ice Bear King returned to the Snow Empress and asked with concern, "Mom, are you all right?"
"I'm fine. That power only knocked me back. I wasn't really hurt." The Snow Empress shook her head, though recalling that power still left her somewhat shaken.
Before that power, she had seemingly been unable even to react before being blasted away. It was hard to imagine whether she could have withstood that blow had the power been offensive.
"What did those bastards do? And that cold current just now-for an instant, I even felt like the power inside me was about to go out of control." As she spoke, the Ice Empress looked toward the direction the cold current had come from.
"That was the Ice God's Divine Seat. Those people triggered the Ice God's Divine Seat hidden in the Far North." Di Tian flew over at that moment. Huo Yun had just explained everything to him, allowing him to understand the current situation.
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