Every drop of blood in Huo Yuhao's body froze in an instant. Outside the window, the night wind swept dead leaves against the glass, but it could not drown out the pounding of his heart. The shadow on the wall began to stretch slowly. Its blue hair, blue eyes, and even the self-mocking curve of its lips were identical to his own.
"Do you remember how helpless you were when your teacher died for you?" The shadow slowly turned around, a ghostly blue light seeping from its hollow eye sockets. "And when Qiu'er sacrificed herself for you, you couldn't even hold on to the last trace of her divine consciousness..."
"Shut up!" Huo Yuhao struck out with his palm, Soul Power gathering into an ice blade in his hand. But the instant the force of his palm passed through the shadow, it broke into even more maniacal laughter. "Go on! Kill me! Just like you couldn't kill those enemies back then!"
Countless fragments of memory suddenly exploded in his mind-the light of Electrolux fading away, the last words of the Snow Empress and the others... The scenes he had deliberately sealed away turned into sharp steel needles, stabbing deep into his soul.
The shadow advanced slowly, leaving frost-filled cracks in the floor with every step. "Did you think being reborn would let you change everything? You're nothing but a pathetic wretch doomed to repeat the same mistakes." It reached out and stroked Huo Yuhao's cheek, bone-chilling cold seeping through his skin and into his marrow. "Look at yourself. You don't even have the courage to face your past, yet you talk about changing your fate?"
"You're just a puppet of a clown, manipulated by others. Even being reborn can't change that fact."
Agony swept through Huo Yuhao's head like a tide. The veins throbbing at his temples seemed ready to burst through his skin. He staggered and braced himself against the wall, his knuckles scraping against it with a piercing sound.
The dormitory before him suddenly warped into a swirling vortex of liquid ink. Thornlike shadows descended from the ceiling, wrapped around his ankles, and dragged him into a bottomless abyss of consciousness. Even the moonlight outside the window was sucked into the pitch-black fissure.
When the darkness finally receded, he found himself in a void filled with floating shards of broken mirrors. Each shard reflected his own pale, distorted face.
"Welcome home, God of Emotion, Huo Yuhao." A hoarse voice poured in from every direction, its mockery sharp as shards of ice. A blue figure stepped out of a mirror, scarlet flames burning in his blue eyes, dark patterns entwined in his hair writhing like living things. "To be precise, this is the corner deep within your soul that you least want to face. It's a prison for both of us."
"Stop acting so arrogant here." Huo Yuhao's pupils contracted sharply. Clutching the Sword of Emotions tightly, he suddenly sprang into action. "I don't know who Huo Yuhao is. My name is Huo Yuhao."
The instant the cold blade flashed from its sheath, the other man erupted in maniacal laughter, the sound sending ripples through the void. "Still lying to yourself? Look at these!" He swung his arm, and the broken mirrors suddenly reflected the tragic scenes of his previous life-his companions had sacrificed themselves for him, his lover had sacrificed herself for him, and his teacher had perished in the past to save his life. Everyone had died because of him.
"Do you see?" The dark figure closed in, its rotten breath blowing against his face. "Your life is nothing but a discarded piece on the chessboard of Tang San, the God King! Those so-called sacrifices are nothing but scenes in a tragic script written by those above you. In their eyes, you're nothing!"
His voice rose sharply into a piercing roar. "What gives them the right to control whether we live or die? Why should we give up everything for someone else when we could become something far more powerful?"
Huo Yuhao felt an invisible hand squeeze his heart as memories flooded over him. But he clenched his teeth and forcibly swallowed the surging pain. "So what do you want? To replace me and take revenge?"
"What a clever choice." A greedy light flashed in the dark figure's eyes, and the dark patterns circling his body turned into chains. "Give me your body, and I'll crush every enemy with absolute power. And you..."
He leaned close to Huo Yuhao's ear, his voice low as a serpent flicking its tongue. "You won't have to bear those heavy shackles anymore. I'll take revenge, and I'll do the killing. Everything you can't do, I can. Everyone you can't bear to kill, I'll kill in your place. That way, everything I have, you'll have too, because I am you."
"In your dreams!" Huo Yuhao swung his sword, ice-blue Soul Power tracing a brilliant arc through the void. The dark figure merely sneered and met him with the same move. The instant the two Swords of Emotions collided, a deafening boom erupted.
"Your moves, your memories, your power..." The dark Huo Yuhao's mouth stretched to his ears, revealing ghastly white teeth. "I know every last one of them!" The chains around him suddenly shot outward, binding Huo Yuhao in a cocoon. "Give up and obediently become nourishment for my soul! That is your true destiny!"
"Do you think a mere mortal can shake the Divine Realm and defeat a God King?" The dark Huo Yuhao gave a shrill sneer. The dark patterns coiling around him turned into chains, churning the broken mirrors into a vortex.
"Tang San holds Dual Godhood. All the gods of the Divine Realm obey his commands and have made him their enforcer, while you-you don't even amount to an ant!" Maniacal flames danced in his scarlet eyes. Every word was like a poisoned arrow, piercing the most vulnerable corner of Huo Yuhao's soul.
Huo Yuhao's blue hair whipped wildly in the storm. A blue light flashed in his eyes, colder than ten-thousand-year-old profound ice. "Why not?" He suddenly threw a punch, brilliant golden light bursting from his fist, and growled:
"From the very beginning, I said I wanted the heavens to be unable to veil my eyes, the earth unable to bury my heart. I wanted all living beings to bow before me. Now, naturally, I also want to wipe that God King out of existence and become one who holds the sun and moon and plucks the stars."
The dark figure let out a piercing shriek and split into countless phantom images that surrounded Huo Yuhao. "An ant trying to shake a tree! What can someone as weak as you accomplish? You can't do anything at all..."
"Can't do it? I don't understand those words!" Dazzling divine soul light burst from Huo Yuhao's body. The Power of Emotion merged with the Golden Dragon King's presence, tearing a scarlet fissure in the void. "My path is mine alone to walk. Even if I fail, I won't have the slightest regret. As long as I've set foot on that path, even if I die here and my body is smashed to pieces, I'm prepared for it."
His voice shook the sea of consciousness violently. The fragments of memory that had once weighed on him until he could barely breathe now turned into flames, igniting every inch of his divine soul.
"You're nothing but a heart demon on my path!" Huo Yuhao suddenly sprang forward and clamped a hand around the dark figure's throat. Two forces, identical yet utterly opposed, crashed together, and the entire space of consciousness began to collapse.
"The divine soul power of the God of Emotion isn't the only power I possess!" Golden light blazed in his eyes, and a pair of dragon wings made of golden light unfurled behind him. "My power belongs neither to light nor to darkness. It belongs entirely to me alone. Or rather, there's something I can do now that you can't, and that's the key to defeating you."
The dark figure twisted and struggled in his grip, roaring in despair. "You've gone mad!"
"Without madness, there can be no life!" Huo Yuhao threw back his head and let out a long cry, charging toward the heavens of his sea of consciousness with the dark figure in his grip. His hair gradually shifted between blue and black. "In this life, in this life, I'll be myself alone. Whatever the price, I can bear it, even if my body and spirit are shattered and my soul is scattered."
With an earthshaking boom, Huo Yuhao burst through the confines of the space of consciousness like a meteor. In the blinding light, he saw the blue sky he had not seen in so long-a color purer than any world.
When the last trace of shadow faded, he gently brushed his hair, now black again, and a resolute smile curved his lips. "You want to replace me? You're twenty thousand years too early!"
The heavens of the sea of consciousness split open with a roar. True sunlight poured through the fissure, shining in harmony with the divine radiance bursting from Huo Yuhao's body. The golden dragon wings behind him spread in the halo of light, divine patterns flowing across every scale.
The edges of the scales gleamed like colored glass, as though they were divine artifacts forged by the Creator God. With a roar like a dragon's cry, the wings shuddered violently, shaking spiderweb cracks into the surrounding void.
The mighty Power of Emotion surged from the depths of Huo Yuhao's soul like an ancient tide. Grief, rage, ecstasy, despair... Countless emotions took tangible form, whipping up a storm in the sea of consciousness that blotted out the heavens and the sun.
The painful memories the dark figure had awakened-the grief of losing his beloved, the resentment of being toyed with by fate, the solitary courage of his rebirth-now became towering waves within the storm. At its center, Huo Yuhao's black hair streamed through the air, starlike light flowing in his golden eyes. He seemed to have become the embodiment of the Power of Emotion itself.
"Emotion Storm Tide!" Huo Yuhao's voice shook the space with divine power, and the divine soul power of the God of Emotion erupted in full. He raised a hand and waved it lightly. His golden dragon wings swept up a streak of light, drawing the struggling, howling dark Huo Yuhao into the heart of the storm.
The dark figure twisted and warped amid the raging tide of emotions, shrieking in defiance, but could not break free of this power that came from the very source of the soul.
"Emotion Storm Beam." Huo Yuhao slowly raised his right hand. A spinning wheel of seven-colored light appeared in his palm, each color representing an emotion at its extreme. The wheel spun faster and faster, pulling the space around it out of shape. "Don't hold a grudge after I'm done hitting you."
A teasing smile curved his lips, but a steadfast light burned in his eyes. With a low shout, a colossal beam of seven-colored light burst forth. Space was annihilated inch by inch wherever it passed, countless streams of the Power of Emotion intertwining and colliding within it.
The dark Huo Yuhao roared in despair under the beam's bombardment. His body began to crumble inch by inch, turning into black motes of light that scattered across the sea of consciousness.
As the dark figure was annihilated, the entire sea of consciousness began to reform. The broken mirrors pieced themselves back together, the warped space grew calm, and it too slowly vanished completely.