"Senior Ice Dragon King, can I really receive the Ice God's inheritance in my current state?"
The Snow Empress found it hard to believe that, now that she had become a Soul Spirit, she was still qualified to inherit the Ice God's divine seat.
"If you still had a Soul Beast's body, certainly not. The iron law that Soul Beasts cannot become gods was laid down by the Dragon God. Even I cannot break it."
"But you can no longer be regarded simply as a Soul Beast. As long as we handle things properly from here, you can absolutely exploit a loophole."
Both the Snow Empress's talent and temperament met the Ice Dragon King's requirements, so the Ice God's divine seat naturally belonged to her and no one else.
Of course, more importantly, the Snow Empress was bound to Yang Xingchen. Investing in her was, in fact, another way of investing in Yang Xingchen.
The Ice Dragon King refused to believe that his investment could still fail when he was investing in two people this time!
"Of course, it is a little too early to discuss this now. To accomplish something like this, you would at least need to become a Million-Year Soul Beast, or Yang Xingchen would need to possess divine power."
After the depletion of so many long years, the Ice Dragon King no longer had any divine power to spare. He would have to draw on someone else's divine power to accomplish this.
The only question was whether the Snow Empress would become a Million-Year Soul Beast first, or Yang Xingchen would acquire divine power first.
The Ice Dragon King did not know that the Snow Empress had made a ten-year pact with her other self.
In his view, if the Snow Empress wanted to devour her other self, she would at least have to wait until Yang Xingchen's strength reached Soul Douluo, or even Titled Douluo.
A Soul Beast with several hundred thousand years of cultivation was bound to have a whole host of followers. If Yang Xingchen lacked sufficient strength, those followers could easily target him.
While the Snow Empress and the Ice Dragon King continued chatting, Yang Xingchen finished absorbing the Ice Dragon King's Right Arm Soul Bone and took out the Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone to absorb it.
Unlike the Ice Dragon King's Right Arm Soul Bone, the Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone had a texture like crimson jade, with the Fire Dragon King's origin power flowing inside it like magma.
But absorbing it was not as easy for Yang Xingchen as absorbing the Ice Dragon King's Right Arm Soul Bone had been.
The Ultimate Fire attribute inherent in the Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone directly clashed with the attribute of Yang Xingchen's Second Martial Soul.
Had the Ice Dragon King and the others not anticipated this and first used their origin power to forge an Ice and Fire Body for Yang Xingchen, the situation would have spiraled completely out of control.
If Yang Xingchen dared to absorb this Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone, the two attributes of Ultimate Fire and Ultimate Ice would dare to detonate inside him.
Less than a minute after Yang Xingchen began absorbing the Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone, his entire body turned scarlet, like a thoroughly cooked shrimp.
Yang Xingchen felt that what flowed through his meridians was not the Fire Dragon King's origin power, but scalding magma.
The Fire Dragon King's origin power relentlessly scorched Yang Xingchen's body, forcing the origin power remaining inside him to heal it.
Through this back-and-forth, the strength of Yang Xingchen's body rose by a level with almost every breath.
Just as Yang Xingchen finished refining half of the Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone, the Ice Dragon King's Right Arm Soul Bone, which he had only just finished absorbing, suddenly erupted with a powerful presence.
"A domain?! What is going on? Why-"
Before the Snow Empress could finish, the Fire Dragon Left Arm Soul Bone, which Yang Xingchen had only half absorbed, also erupted with a presence almost identical to that of the Ice Dragon King's Right Arm Soul Bone.
Using Yang Xingchen's body as their arena, Ultimate Ice and Ultimate Fire sometimes clashed and sometimes blended together.
"How unusual. This boy actually intends to blend the domains of the two Soul Bones into a single, more powerful domain."
The Fire Dragon King watched with interest as the domains around Yang Xingchen began showing signs of merging.
It had to be said that this idea was truly bold. With anyone else, never mind whether they could think of such an idea-even whether they would dare to attempt it was a question.
Even though most of the Ice Dragon King's and Fire Dragon King's power had been worn away by the passage of time, their standing remained. How could their Soul Bones possibly be inferior!
Thus, it was hard to say whether risking the destruction of the Soul Bones' domain Soul Skills through an attribute clash was worth attempting a fused domain of uncertain strength.
Still, the Fire Dragon King liked Yang Xingchen's willingness to gamble and fight for it. He had often done such things himself when he was alive.
"But ideas alone won't work without the strength to back them up!"
Sure enough, the instant the Fire Dragon King finished speaking, the two domains around Yang Xingchen inexplicably showed signs of collapse.
The two domains, so powerful a moment ago, were like deflating balloons. In the blink of an eye, they weakened until little remained but a few visual effects.
The Fire Dragon King knew it was time for him to act. If he waited any longer, the two domains Yang Xingchen had just acquired would disappear completely.
The sound of snapping fingers abruptly echoed through the ice and fire space, and the origin power of the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings lying dormant within the Soul Bones immediately stirred.
The Fire Dragon King's Left Arm Soul Bone, which Yang Xingchen had originally only half absorbed, merged into his body of its own accord.
With both Soul Bones in place, the restless origin power of the Ice and Fire Dragon Kings filled every meridian in Yang Xingchen's body in the blink of an eye.
With a source of power, the two domains grew strong again, but this time, instead of clashing, they slowly merged.
"Interesting. No wonder I sensed traces of your divine power on my Super Divine Artifact when you returned it to me back then!"
The Ice Dragon King could tell at a glance that the Fire Dragon King was helping Yang Xingchen actively merge the two domains.
It reminded him of the time the Fire Dragon King had borrowed his Super Divine Artifact.
After attaining his own divine seat, the Fire Dragon King had not devoted most of his efforts to his clan as several of the other Dragon Kings had. Instead, he had continued improving his own strength.
Of course, this might also have had something to do with the Fire Dragon King wanting to catch up with the Dragon God.
"Hehe, back then, I was wondering whether combining the powers of ice and fire would produce a different effect."
"Unfortunately, your power and mine were too strong. To continue researching it, I would have had to risk destroying our Super Divine Artifacts."
"I never expected to have another chance to experiment now. The power of ice and fire within Yang Xingchen is nowhere near yours and mine."
In truth, the Fire Dragon King had always felt that if he had managed to fuse the powers of ice and fire back then, perhaps he could have saved a few more dragons.
Unfortunately, reality was reality. There were not so many what-ifs for the Fire Dragon King to imagine.
Meanwhile, Dugu Bo, who came to check the waters of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well every day, suddenly discovered that all the water in the well was boiling.
Dugu Bo had never encountered anything like this in all the decades he had lived at the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
"Could that boy have caused this?"
Faced with the strange phenomenon in the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, Dugu Bo immediately thought of Yang Xingchen.
After all, this phenomenon had only appeared after the boy jumped in.
"But with that boy's strength at only three rings, can he really stay in this spring water for so long?"
The waters of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well were something even Dugu Bo, a Titled Douluo, dared not touch much.
The extreme powers of ice and fire contained in the spring water would not only corrode Dugu Bo's flesh, but could also damage his poison cultivation.
Only when his poison flared up did Dugu Bo dare sit beside the waters of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well, using the escaping powers of ice and fire to suppress the poison.
While Dugu Bo was pondering this, the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well abruptly fell still.
At the sight, Dugu Bo hesitated for a moment. Only after confirming that the presence of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well had returned to calm did he approach.
"Ice and Fire Annihilation Domain!"
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Yang Xingchen abruptly opened his eyes. Two-colored dragon scales grew over his hands, and an unprecedentedly powerful presence swept outward.
"Wait, why has a fourth Soul Ring appeared beneath Yang Xingchen's feet?"
The Snow Empress's attention was drawn not to the dragon scales on Yang Xingchen's body, but to the additional red-and-blue Soul Ring that had appeared out of nowhere beneath his feet.
From the moment he jumped into the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well to now, after absorbing two Soul Bones, Yang Xingchen had had no spare time at all to absorb the fourth Soul Ring Cangyuan had given him.
Then where had this fourth Soul Ring, which had suddenly appeared and was clearly the wrong color, come from?!