Toji's figure, like the Grim Reaper, slowly walked up to Huo Yuhao, looking down at this once evenly matched opponent.
Blood dripped from the Soul Liberation Blade onto Huo Yuhao's cheek, warm and sticky.
"In the end, it was tamed."
Toji's voice was low and calm, revealing no emotion, only a knowing indifference.
"You don't have my awareness of facing death to live. Although our cultivation levels are similar at the moment, and your opportunities may even be greater than mine."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Huo Yuhao's pained and desperate face, then glancing at Tang Wutong, who was barely breathing in the distance. His voice carried an indescribable sigh:
"But your mindset, and your attitude towards a mortal enemy, sealed your fate."
Toji slowly crouched down, meeting Huo Yuhao's bloodshot eyes, filled with pain and resentment, his voice like a heavy hammer striking Huo Yuhao's crumbling Dao heart:
"I sensed it from the very first moment you saw me."
Toji's eyes were sharp as knives.
"What lies deep in your eyes is not pure fighting spirit, but fear of me."
"It's this woman's existence..." Toji's gaze shifted to Tang Wutong's mangled body, "That influenced you. It made you hesitate, made you afraid to abandon everything, to risk your life for that only chance of survival."
"It makes your soul, which should be extreme, which should be willing to do anything for victory, hesitant, and... weak."
"What a pity."
Toji in his tone, there was a hint of genuine regret.
He slowly stood up, and the dark silver fang-shaped short blade, Inverted Spear of Heaven, reappeared in his hand.
The tip of the blade gleamed with a deadly cold light.
"It's over."
Toji's voice was as cold as the wind on a frozen ice field.
He stopped looking at Huo Yuhao and instead strode towards Tang Wutong, who lay in a pool of blood, her upper body the only remaining part of her body, her consciousness fading.
The tip of Inverted Spear of Heaven was aimed at her beautiful forehead, which was stained with blood.
Cut the weeds, remove the roots.
Toji raised his arm, and the Inverted Spear of Heaven, carrying the law of annihilation, stabbed fiercely towards Tang Wutong's head!
However, just as the Inverted Spear of Heaven was about to touch Tang Wutong's forehead—
A golden beam of light, indescribably sacred and majestic, pierced through the ice crystal dome of the Eternal Freeze Domain without warning, descending instantly like divine salvation, and precisely enveloping Tang Wutong's battered upper body.
The gentle yet immensely powerful divine light instantly blocked the sharp edge of the Inverted Spear of Heaven.
Toji thrust forward, his movement was abruptly halted by an overwhelming divine force.
In the golden light, Tang Wutong's broken body seemed to be lifted up by an invisible hand. The horrific wound on her waist healed rapidly under the divine light, and her severed lower limbs regenerated at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Her pale face quickly regained its color, and her faint breath rose rapidly.
The sacred golden light enveloped her, like the warmest swaddling clothes, and carried her slowly upwards toward the outside of the broken ice crystal dome.
Faced with this sudden miracle, faced with this golden pillar of light containing the will of the God King, Toji slowly withdrew the Inverted Spear of Heaven.
He did not attempt to attack the beam of light.
Because it's meaningless.
This is a force from a higher dimension, a rescue within the bounds of the rules.
He sensed the familiar aura of Sea God Tang San, within the pillar of light, and a cold, mocking smile curled at the corner of his lips.
Toji turned around and looked again at Huo Yuhao, who lay in the pool of blood, completely forgotten and whose life force was rapidly fading away like a candle in the wind.
Huo Yuhao's pupils reflected the warm and sacred golden pillar of light that had taken Tang Wutong away, and also reflected the eyes outside the pillar, Toji with pity and mockery.
"It seems..." Toji's voice was low and somber, like a final judgment, clearly reaching Huo Yuhao's ears, piercing his already shattered soul like an ice pick, "You have been abandoned."
"How... pitiful."
The golden light completely subsided, carrying the fully recovered Tang Wutong, and disappeared into the crack in the sky.
The Eternal Freeze Domain vanished, leaving only endless frost and a blinding crimson expanse on the Subduing Dragon Plain.
Huo Yuhao lay alone in a cold pool of blood, gazing at the sky where his lover had disappeared, and at Toji's indifferent departing figure.
The endless cold, despair, and pain of abandonment, like a perpetually frozen cold wave, completely overwhelmed his remaining consciousness.
Blood spread silently beneath him, staining the crystalline ice a most poignant dark red.
The Subduing Dragon Plain was deathly silent. Only the cold wind howled as it swept across this blood-stained ice field, as if playing a final lament for the fallen chosen one.
A chilling despair, like the biting wind of a frozen glacier, eroded Huo Yuhao's remaining consciousness.
The thick pool of blood soaked through his tattered robes, and also through his shattered soul.
The warm halo of light that guided Tang Wutong away, and Toji chilling words of abandonment, were like the sharpest icicles, repeatedly piercing his last shred of dignity and faith.
Being tamed... weakness... fear... abandonment...
These words, like the most vicious curses, echoed wildly in Huo Yuhao's dying consciousness.
They tore away the halo he had always held as a chosen one, revealing his bloody, unacknowledged true nature.
"No--"
A roar, inhuman and filled with endless humiliation, resentment, and mad rage, suddenly burst from Huo Yuhao's broken throat.
The voice was hoarse and distorted, yet it was like the final roar of a dying Ferocious Beast, instantly tearing apart the deathly silence of the Subduing Dragon Plain.
The almost extinguished flame in his eyes was completely ignited by this extreme humiliation and anger.
An unprecedented, insane will, willing to Destruction everything, erupted within his shattered body.
I'll fight you to the death!
With a deafening roar, Huo Yuhao's remaining body suddenly rose from the pool of blood.
It is not based on strength, but on the ultimate will that burns the soul and the very essence of Life.
A blinding light burst forth from his body.
That wasn't the light of Soul Power, but the purest and most tragic glow emitted when a soul burns.
The nine Soul Ring behind him, which had long since dimmed, instantly ignited and disintegrated like kindling thrown into a furnace.
It transformed into a torrent of primal energy, surging wildly into his ravaged body.
The vast Spiritual Power, as boundless as the starry sea, was no longer used for detection, control, or defense, but was instead ignited, compressed, and detonated by this frenzied will.
Like the final burst of a supernova before it collapses.
Soul Core, Soul Ring, Life, soul—everything ignited at this moment.
Everything that could burn, everything that could be used as fuel, was Huo Yuhao without reservation into this final, ultimate furnace, designed solely for Destruction and mutual annihilation.
The price is utter annihilation, the complete destruction of one's soul, and eternal damnation!
But the reward was a terrifying power that transcended mortal understanding and even briefly surpassed the previous state of fusion with the Light's Raiment, truly touching the realm of God Level, surging like a world-destroying torrent within his shattered body.