Dai Huabin stared at the stalemated battle before him. The cherry-blade arcs of Yae Sakura and the holy gleam of Siegfried's sword interwove midair, their sparks like falling stars that stabbed the eyes shut.
And Huo Yuhao's blood-dyed gaze was locked squarely on him. A surge of dread coiled around his heart like vines, tightening until his breath turned ragged.
"Next, it's time to settle our old score."
Huo Yuhao's eyes went cold in an instant. That chill was more biting than the Ultimate Ice itself, a frigid wind driving straight into the marrow.
He glared at Dai Huabin, and an invisible mental shock slammed into the latter's mind like a sledgehammer—ten-some years of pent-up hatred, the humiliation at the White Tiger Duke's mansion, the despair in his mother's blood-flecked coughs—all of it forged at this moment into the sharpest psychic blades that would tear Dai Huabin's soul.
Dai Huabin felt the world spin as if countless red-hot needles churned inside his skull. He couldn't hold back a grunt, clutching his forehead as he staggered backward, his face draining to paper white.
"Huabin!" Zhu Lu cried out, lunging forward to catch his swaying body, panic written in her dark pupils.
"I'm fine!"
Dai Huabin snarled through clenched teeth, forcefully suppressing the agony in his head.
He knew he could not show weakness now. The moment he faltered, that lunatic Huo Yuhao would rip him apart.
"Zhu Lu, together. We kill him today!"
Before the words finished, yellow, yellow, purple, purple, black—five soul rings lit around him as the White Tiger martial soul roared into possession.
His frame swelled by nearly half under the flood of soul power, his body cloaked in snowy tiger fur that stood like steel needles. The black "King" character on his brow gleamed. Claws and fangs glinted with chilling light as he became a white blur, shrieking through torn air straight at Huo Yuhao.
Zhu Lu didn't hesitate either. The Nether Civet martial soul possessed her; her figure turned slim and lithe, glossy black fur like satin, ghost-green light flickering in her eyes.
She was even faster than Dai Huabin. A few flickers and she skimmed several meters to press Huo Yuhao's flank.
Her third soul skill, Nether Hundred Claws, burst forth. Shadowy talons roared from all directions, weaving a seamless killing net that even swallowed sunlight, sealing all avenues of retreat.
They'd fought together for years, moving as one.
Dai Huabin's frontal assault came iron-hard, tiger claws fierce enough to shatter mountains and rend stone, tearing through any defense.
Zhu Lu harried from the side, ghost-swift and tricky, hunting for a fleeting opening.
This combo had brought them victory time and again in the Arena. Now, under life-or-death pressure, their soul power flowed thirty percent faster and hit even harder.
Huo Yuhao watched them rush in. There was no panic on his face—only a cold, repressed-madness smile.
Soul power surged under his feet; his body ghosted backward several meters, narrowly slipping past Zhu Lu's claw net—the claw wind grazed his coat and carved five bone-deep gouges in the ruined wall behind him.
At the same time, his left hand swept out. A shadow of chill howled forth—an ice lance condensed from Ultimate Ice, its tip glowing ghost-blue with a cold that could freeze blood, lancing for Dai Huabin's face.
Clang!
Dai Huabin reacted fast, parrying with his claws. The ice lance burst into a fog of frost on his paw.
Frost-white ice crawled up his arm in an instant, freezing most of it solid; even the fur crystallized into glittering shards.
Luckily he had prepared: with martial soul possession, he had already triggered his third skill, White Tiger Vajra Transformation. Golden lines lit beneath the fur, forcibly halting the frost's spread—otherwise his whole arm would have been shattered by Ultimate Ice.
"Now!"
Zhu Lu seized the split-second opening, accelerating like a ground-hugging shadow to slip behind Huo Yuhao.
The civet claws gleamed ghostly, five arcs nearly in a line, raking for his back-heart—a human weak point. If struck, even a Titled Douluo would be grievously hurt—assuming you can break a Titled Douluo's defense.
As if he had eyes in his back, Huo Yuhao suddenly twisted, right hand clenched. Vast spiritual force gathered in his fist—no flourish, just a brutal smash for Zhu Lu's abdomen.
The punch seemed ordinary, with no soul power ripple, yet it contained force enough to tear at the soul—a self-created technique, the perfect fusion of spiritual power and soul power.
Zhu Lu's pupils shrank; she twisted to evade, but the fist's wind still grazed her.
The world reeled; a humming filled her skull. Her movements lagged, half a beat stolen.
"Courting death!"
Dai Huabin roared. Seizing the opening while Huo Yuhao struck at Zhu Lu, he unleashed his first soul skill—White Tiger Light Wave.
A white-hot beam shot like a laser at Huo Yuhao. Air twisted where it passed; stones on the ground sizzled and popped.
Red light flashed in Huo Yuhao's eyes. He advanced instead of retreating, charging directly into the White Tiger Light Wave.
To horror, the beam that could melt steel only singed a few strands of his hair; not even a scorch mark marred his skin.
His left arm swept; blood-red soul power flared, and a towering ice barrier erupted from the earth like a snowy wall.
Dai Huabin and Zhu Lu, rushing in immediately after, slammed into the ice wall as if into iron, bounced back with two thuds, and crashed into a broken wall in a plume of dust.
"How is that possible?!"
Dai Huabin staggered from the dust and spat a mouthful of blood, staining the white fur on his chest crimson.
His eyes at Huo Yuhao brimmed with disbelief. "How did you get this strong?"
He couldn't understand why Huo Yuhao had become so terrifying—not only monstrous regeneration but defense and offense absurdly overwhelming. It was like facing a different person.
Previously, even though he repeatedly lost to Huo Yuhao, he always thought other factors played a role, not that Huo Yuhao was that strong.
But now, Huo Yuhao had truly, single-handedly, simply crushed him and Zhu Lu.
Huo Yuhao strode toward the fallen pair, each footfall glazing the ground with thin ice.
Blood-red eyes churned with the ecstasy of revenge. His voice was low and icy, as if from the Nine Hells: "Dai Huabin, do you remember that child you trampled underfoot at the White Tiger Duke's mansion? Do you remember your mother pointing at my mom and calling her a bitch? Do you remember saying 'bastards belong in the mud'?"
With each sentence, the cold around him deepened until even the air seemed to freeze.
"Today, I'll let you taste what it means to beg for death."
His soul power surged. Countless ice lances burst from the ground like blooming lotus of frost, layer upon layer, sealing every retreat for Dai Huabin and Zhu Lu.
"You—you're that mongrel!"
Dai Huabin's pupils shrank. Sealed shards of memory slammed together: the bean-sprout-thin "little brother," the mixed-blood he'd stomped and bullied, too cowed to even lift his head.
The blurred features from memory meshed with the blood-reeking "monster" before him. The hatred-twisted face overlapped faintly with the timid-eyed child from years ago.
The word "mongrel" had barely left his mouth when a needle of frost flashed in Huo Yuhao's eyes.
His right hand snapped, three ice blades screaming through the air for Dai Huabin's vitals, so cold that even drifting dust froze into crystals in their wake.
"Martial Soul Fusion Skill—Nether White Tiger!"
They wouldn't sit and wait to die.
On the knife-edge of life and death, their soul power spiked. The White Tiger's ferocity meshed with the civet's guile in an instant.
A black-and-white glow speared skyward as a tidal surge of soul power blasted out, shattering the ice blades into glittering shrapnel.
A soul-sage-level aura exploded, making the surrounding ruins shudder and clatter.
Their figures fused and stretched within the light, becoming a gigantic white tiger banded in black—a five-meter shoulder height, nearly ten meters long, snowy pelt mottled with ink-dark stripes, a tail-tip wreathed in smoky shadow, and vertical pupils blazing vicious red. Their hidden trump card: Martial Soul Fusion Skill—Nether White Tiger.
Huge as it was, its speed was outrageous. Almost the moment it formed, it crossed dozens of meters, arriving before Huo Yuhao.
Its massive paw fell with a space-rending boom. Even before it landed, the ground caved into a vast pit, gravel flying like shot.
Above, the blood moon grew more uncanny, its red glow viscous like blood, dyeing the world a ghastly hue.
Scarlet currents erupted around Huo Yuhao. A berserk aura burst from within him, making the Nether White Tiger's motion hitch by reflex.
A sudden change!
Silvery-white fur sprouted from Huo Yuhao, each hair glinting like icy filaments. His ten fingers elongated into razor claws whose tips held ghost-blue ice crystals. His height swelled past three meters, muscles knotting like ice-carven rock, explosively strong.
Among the silver fur, fine ice crystals formed, reflecting a chilling gleam.
Sharp ice spines jutted several inches from shoulders, elbows, and key joints, bristling with menace.
His head warped into a wolf's; fangs like icicles, ears upright and rimed thick with frost.
His tail thickened like a steel whip, tipped by a football-sized ice cluster that whipped up slicing gales, freezing the very air into rime.
He was a frost werewolf stalking from the far northern icefields, still roughly human-shaped yet brimming with bestial frenzy and cold.
Faced with the Nether White Tiger's crushing blow, Huo Yuhao raised his crystal-tipped wolf claws and, with flesh and bone, caught a strike that could pulverize boulders.
A dull boom rippled outward. The ground beneath them shattered, spiderweb cracks racing for dozens of meters.
Murder blazed in Huo Yuhao's scarlet beast-eyes. On his claws, tremendous spiritual power wove madly with Ultimate Ice, shaping into a lifelike ice-wolf energy body.
The ice wolf threw back its head in a silent howl that carried soul-rending pressure. Even the Nether White Tiger trembled.
"Die."
Huo Yuhao growled. He condensed the ice wolf into his fist and drove it down at the Nether White Tiger's skull with annihilating will.
The blow fused his vast spiritual might with Ultimate Ice—both a soul-ripping mental shock and a freeze-all absolute cold.
Under that invisible pressure, the Nether White Tiger's mind shrieked. Its body locked, bound by unseen chains. Evading was impossible.
Thoom!
The massive ice-wolf smashed into its brow with a deafening crack.
The Nether White Tiger loosed a wail of agony and flew like a cut kite, smashing through ruin after ruin, plowing a trench dozens of meters long, and finally crashing into a shattered high-rise, making the whole structure totter.
Ultimate Ice erupted, racing over its body. Black-and-white fur froze in an instant; even the blood from its jaws crystallized midair into ruby frost.
In a few breaths, the Nether White Tiger became a titanic ice sculpture wedged into the wreckage, only its resentful vertical pupils holding a last flicker of life.
Huo Yuhao slowly drew back his fist, wolf head bowed slightly, scarlet eyes fixed on the ice statue. The silver fur matted with blood shone stark under the moon.
His chest heaved, each breath puffing white frost—clearly that strike had cost him plenty. But the fire of hatred in his gaze only burned fiercer.
"Master!"
Dai Huabin's scream carried across the battlefield. Siegfried's face changed.
Catching sight, from the corner of his eye, of the Nether White Tiger freezing into an ice statue, urgency spiked. He could no longer afford to be tangled with Yae Sakura.
Clang, clang, clang!
Siegfried took several of Yae Sakura's slashes head-on without hesitation.
The spirit blade Sakura Fubuki sparked brilliantly across his Armor of Fafnir, shrieking with harsh metallic cries.
Dark red lines surfaced upon the blood armor—defensive might inherited from a wicked dragon—blunting her blows and leaving only faint white scratches.
A B+ anti-personnel Noble Phantasm: Armor of Fafnir. It can defend against certain physical and energy attacks.