"I understand." The Snow Empress nodded gently.
The Ice God said no more, while the Snow Empress walked alone toward the divine statue.
The great hall, which had only just gained a trace of human warmth, suddenly fell silent once again.
The Snow Empress and the other woman, named Bing'er, sat on the platform undergoing their trials, while Huo Yuhao stood in the center of the hall, covered in ice.
Time passed, minute by minute and second by second. Within the ice, as spiritual energy continually poured into Huo Yuhao's body, his figure gradually began to change. His skin grew fair, his body became increasingly slender, and even his originally black hair slowly turned ice-blue and began to lengthen.
These were the effects of absorbing the Ice God's power. After all, compared with the Ice God, Huo Yuhao was like a grain of rice beside the sun and moon, a grain of rice trying to rival their radiance.
The Ice God could spare Huo Yuhao all the pain of absorption and allow him to smoothly obtain the Ice God's divine seat, but side effects like these were unavoidable.
For Huo Yuhao, the hardest part of obtaining the Ice God martial soul might have been the earlier process of getting inside. For the rest, as long as he gained the Ice God's recognition, absorbing it was exceptionally easy. It would simply take a very long time.
After an unknown amount of time, the first to move within the ice-blue divine temple was the woman who had entered first: Su Tong, or rather, she should now have been called Bing'er.
She slowly opened her eyes. Those ice-blue eyes seemed completely frozen, devoid of any emotion. Even when she saw the Snow Empress sitting cross-legged in the distance, working through her trial, there seemed to be no emotion in her gaze.
She slowly stood and raised a foot to head toward the second level, but suddenly stopped. A red light flashed through her eyes. Then she raised the arm concealed beneath her black robe. Her forearm was also as translucent as if made of ice. Blue-red light gathered in her palm, swiftly forming a longsword.
Without a word, without even hesitating, Bing'er turned toward Huo Yuhao, strode closer, and thrust her sword viciously.
The Ice-Red Longsword cut a notch straight into the ice surrounding Huo Yuhao.
This was ice crystal formed from the Ice God's power. Ordinary people could not even budge it, much less cut a notch into it.
She did not pause at all. When one strike failed to cut through, she continued hacking fiercely, each blow landing precisely in that same notch as it grew larger and larger.
Its position also happened to line up with Huo Yuhao's heart. Just as the longsword was about to break through the ice and pierce his chest-
A gust of palm force suddenly swept toward her from behind. Detecting the attack, Bing'er's footwork abruptly became bizarre. Her figure swayed, evading the Snow Empress's incoming palm.
"Who are you? Sea God Tang San?" the Snow Empress asked coldly as she looked at Bing'er.
She did not believe an ordinary person could so easily break ice formed from the Ice God's power. That meant the person opposite her was probably not the so-called Bing'er that person had spoken of. Or perhaps this so-called Bing'er had been a puppet left behind by Tang San from the very beginning.
"Take a guess." As Bing'er spoke coldly, she swept her arm, flinging several streaks of cold light toward the Snow Empress. They were ice needles formed from freezing air, aimed at the Snow Empress's vital points.
The Snow Empress darted aside to evade them. By then, a purple glow had appeared in Bing'er's eyes. She surged forward, two purple soul rings and one black one appearing around her as she rushed swiftly toward the Snow Empress. All the while, her hands never stopped moving, flinging out streak after streak of cold light.
Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track! Purple Demon Eye! And hidden weapon techniques!
These were all signature techniques that had made Tang San famous. In his previous life, Tang San had not belonged to this world. He had been an outer disciple of an organization called the Tang Sect in another world, stolen its secret arts, and reincarnated into this world.
These techniques were all Tang Sect secret arts, and they had also been the foundation on which Tang San had first established himself.
The moment these secret arts appeared, they proved that the person opposite her was no Su Tong at all, but Tang San.
The Snow Empress did not care who she was, however. She only needed to know that the person before her was an enemy.
As she evaded the attacks, two purple soul rings appeared beneath her feet. After they passed the first-level trial left by the Ice God, the benefit they received was a thousand-year increase in their soul rings' ages.
The Snow Empress swept her palm, and a wall of ice abruptly appeared before her. The ice needles Tang San had thrown embedded themselves in the wall one after another and pierced through it, but did not touch the Snow Empress behind it.
As the ruler of the Far North, the Snow Empress's mastery over ice was beyond question.
An ice wall like this was not one of her soul skills, but it was something she could form with a casual gesture.
She was like an ice mage. With a sweep of her hand, ice followed her will, forming all manner of shapes.
Every hidden weapon Tang San hurled was blocked by an ice wall the Snow Empress casually created. Clearly, Tang San knew this too. His figure circled her constantly like a phantom, searching for an opening.
After all, Tang San's true body was still beside several God Kings. The body he could control had three-ring soul power cultivation, certainly stronger than the Snow Empress, who currently had only two rings.
Even if they continued exhausting their soul power like this, he could outlast the Snow Empress, so he was not anxious at all.
Besides, how much soul power could creating ice needles consume?
The Snow Empress, by contrast, had lower cultivation. Although her second soul skill could reduce expenditure, every ice wall she created still consumed more than the much thinner, smaller ice needles.
The Snow Empress knew this well. After ten seconds of back-and-forth, she stopped defending passively and charged forward to seek an opening. Her first soul ring lit up, and with a casual sweep, freezing wind swept up snowflakes and rushed straight at Tang San's face.
Wind and Snow!
Strictly speaking, the Snow Empress was a soul beast of the ultimate ice and snow attributes, and her first soul skill was this very move, Wind and Snow.
With a mere lift of her hand, she could unleash fierce wind and snow. Every snowflake had edges as sharp as blades. An ordinary soul master taking this attack would certainly feel as though they were being sliced by a thousand knives.
But the martial soul of Tang San's current body was also the Heavenly Snow Woman. Even if its quality could not match the Snow Empress's, his cultivation was higher. This wind and snow merely blurred his vision briefly and made his skin feel as though it had been nicked. He suffered no real injury.
But that brief moment when his vision blurred was exactly what the Snow Empress wanted. Soul power swiftly circulated into her thighs, sending her darting to Tang San's side like a cheetah. A layer of white light covered her fair, jade-like palm as she brought it down fiercely.
Emperor Palm: Great Cold Without Snow!
Although the Snow Empress had taken human form and begun cultivating anew, that did not mean she had forgotten how to use her three greatest signature techniques. She simply lacked the soul power to use some of them now. Emperor's Palm was the only signature technique she could currently unleash.
The moment she struck, she delivered a decisive killing move.
Just as her palm was about to land on Tang San, his left hand suddenly yanked to the left. The Snow Empress's palm involuntarily shifted half an inch sideways, causing Emperor's Palm, which had been aimed at Tang San, to miss.
Tang San also spun on the spot. A Tang Sect secret art, Controlling Crane Capturing Dragon!
This was one of the Tang Sect's secret grappling arts, using four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds and dissolving attacks into nothing. It could seize or control a target from a distance. Its principle involved activation through the Tang Sect's secret art, Mysterious Heaven Skill, with energy naturally circulating through the meridians before finally gathering into a vortex in the palm, generating a pulling force.
Having used it in haste, Tang San could only shift the direction of the Snow Empress's attack, but that was enough to make her signature technique miss.
After evading the attack, Tang San's third soul skill lit up. An ice sword swiftly formed in his hand, and he turned back, slashing at the Snow Empress.
Having missed her strike, the Snow Empress had no time to dodge. She could only hastily mobilize the power of ice and snow, forming an ice shield beside herself to block it.
But an ice shield formed in haste could not match Tang San's charged turning strike. The ice sword sliced through it as easily as tofu.
At the critical instant when the blade was about to cleave into the Snow Empress-
An uncanny force knocked the blade in Tang San's hand aside.
Crack!
At the same time, accompanied by a crisp sound of shattering, a slender fist broke out of the small iceberg in the center of the divine temple. Then a delicate figure stepped out of the iceberg, not quite stark naked, but with clothing that could only cover a few vital areas.
This person had waist-length ice-blue hair that fell loose over the shoulders, and wore cloth garments that fit terribly and had already burst apart. They outlined an impressive figure while revealing a fair, flat belly, slender jade-like hands, and a pair of eye-catching legs. That figure alone was enough to make countless women envious.
Long eyelashes, large ice-blue eyes that were lively and bright, an exquisite face, a high nose bridge, and a small mouth like a juicy peach made for breathtaking beauty that did not lose to the Snow Empress's.
An ice-blue and gold soul ring slowly condensed around that figure, dazzling and resplendent. Translucent, magnificent, and noble-these were the impressions people would have upon first seeing this soul ring.
Within this ice-blue divine temple, that soul ring seemed to be the center of this world. Set off by its brilliance, the stunning figure emerged from the ice, powerful, elegant, and gallant, looking even more like the heart of this world.
"Are you Su Tong or Bing'er? Or neither?" Huo Yuhao asked as he looked at the current Tang San.
Yes, he was Huo Yuhao, who had awakened the Ice God martial soul after absorbing the Ice God's power.
That brilliant, crystalline ice-blue and gold ring was precisely Huo Yuhao's first soul ring, the Ice God Soul Ring, a soul ring formed spontaneously from the Ice God's power!
Strictly speaking, this soul ring could not even be classified within the Douluo Continent's current conventional soul ring system, because it was formed from the divine power of a First-Level God. Although it did not contain a First-Level God's full power, its quality absolutely surpassed the Million-Year Soul Ring the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm had given Huo Yuhao. In fact, there was probably no soul ring anywhere in the world at present that could surpass it.
It was a true god-level soul ring!
"Tch!" Seeing that Huo Yuhao had finished absorbing the power, Tang San could not help sneering coldly. In the end, this body's original owner had passed the first trial too late. She had not even matched the Snow Empress beside her. The latter had entered some time later, yet had broken through her trial not long after the former awakened.
"Neither, then." Seeing Tang San's expression, Huo Yuhao also knew that the person opposite him was neither the Su Tong nor the Bing'er he had mentioned.
The person before him was actually a puppet Tang San had found for himself, just like him.
He probably wanted him to obtain the Ice God's divine seat and become a god, becoming his right-hand man. There should originally have been an independent consciousness, or the Ice God could not possibly have failed to notice. Tang San had only taken possession now.
Speaking of which, the person originally treated as a puppet like him-or rather, as a dog-had been him.
"I don't care who you are, but you've come onto my territory and tried to take my divine seat. Aren't you looking down on me a little too much?" At that moment, the Ice God's voice sounded from Huo Yuhao's mouth.
Huo Yuhao obtaining her power actually meant her remnant soul had entered him. Thus, she herself was now inside Huo Yuhao's body.
"Isn't it because the owner of your current body has courted death? Couldn't you just obediently follow my plan? I paved your path ahead, arranged a divine seat for you, and arranged for you to become a god in the end. Even your mother could be resurrected. I even intended to let you marry my daughter and become my son-in-law, yet you insisted on rejecting me and becoming the Douluo Consciousness's dog." Tang San glanced at their surroundings and sneered.
Hearing this, Huo Yuhao was truly, utterly enraged. He had never seen anyone so shameless. He roared back, "I know better than anyone exactly who wanted me to be a dog, you bastard! You attacked Mom, wanting to drain her origin and take control of this world. And you claim you paved my path ahead? As far as I can see, the end of that path is nothing but being bound by your so-called daughter and becoming your dog. Stop talking as though you're giving me charity. When I, this Child of Destiny, was brought into being, it was to stop you, Tang San! You heartless beast! This world nurtured you and let you become a god, and this is how you repay it!"
"Listening to what you said makes even me feel sick," the Ice God could not help mocking him.
She had figured it out. He was simply an ambitious schemer who wanted to control Douluo while also presenting himself as open and upright.
His double standards were nauseating.
"I'm saving this world. This world has been constantly declining. The seeds of resentment between humans and soul beasts have long since been sown. There's no avoiding it.
"But in my plan, all these grudges can be resolved in the future. As long as things proceed according to my plan, this world can even become stronger than ever before," Tang San retorted.
"Enough. Stop talking about your plan. I can't be bothered to listen. Just disappear and die. What happens to this world has nothing to do with you." Huo Yuhao could listen no longer. He stepped forward, shooting toward Tang San like an arrow loosed from its bow.
Seeing this, Tang San had just raised his hand to fling out hidden weapon ice needles when he suddenly felt his legs go weak. The soul power within his body poured toward Huo Yuhao, completely beyond his control.
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