The Undead Servant, formerly the proud Lightning Douluo, lifted his vacant, grey-glowing eyes. His voice, when it came, was a flat, toneless drone, the sound of a puppet reciting a script it did not comprehend.
"We were dispatched by the reigning Emperor of the Star Luo Empire, His Highness Xu Jiawei."
The name dropped into the chilling silence of the valley, and even Di Tian's colossal golden eye seemed to narrow a fraction, a flicker of ancient memory behind it. The Star Luo Empire. The very empire that housed the festering wound of the White Tiger Duke's mansion, the genesis of all of Huo Yuhao's pain and resolve.
Jin Xi let out a soft hiss, a sound of pure, venomous disgust. "The Star Luo Emperor? That craven liar," she spat, her ruby eyes blazing with contempt. "He claimed to be from the Sun Moon Empire. Do all humans lie as easily as they breathe?"
"He did," Huo Yuhao said simply, his voice a quiet, cold counterpoint to her fire. His entire focus was on the undead servant, his mind a calm, deep well, ready to receive the truth. "Continue. Tell me everything."
The servant's monotone voice droned on, revealing the intricate, cold-blooded calculus of a human emperor, a scheme of breathtaking ambition and callous disregard for life.
"His Highness, Xu Jiawei, initiated a secret operation codenamed 'Celestial Hunt'. The objective was to secure a hundred-thousand-year-old Soul Beast in the process of transformation. He believed this was the key to shifting the balance of power on the continent, a supreme weapon to be wielded in his political games."
The undead servant paused, its vacant eyes staring at nothing, a puppet awaiting its next command. "A spy within the highest echelons of the Sun Moon Empire's Illustrious Virtue Hall provided His Highness with a treasure of immense power: a functional Class 9 Soul Tool, the 'God Sealing Altar'."
'God Sealing Altar…' The name echoed in Huo Yuhao's mind, a chillingly familiar term from the book of fate. He kept his expression impassive, but inside, the disparate pieces of a puzzle he had only read about were clicking into place with horrifying, visceral clarity.
"This tool," the servant continued, its voice a hollow, chilling echo, "is said to be able to forcibly interrupt a beast's transformation and capture its soul and origin, sealing them within the altar to form what His Highness referred to as a 'Soul Beast Embryo'. A perfect fusion of a hundred-thousand-year-old Soul Ring, a hundred-thousand year old Soul Bone of that beast, and a new Martial Soul corresponding to the captured beast, ready for implantation into a human host."
Jin Xi's beautiful face contorted with a look of pure, unadulterated revulsion. The playful princess was gone, replaced by a queen witnessing a profound blasphemy.
"To turn one of our own into… an embryo?" she breathed, her voice trembling with a rage that made the air around her shimmer. "A tool to be implanted in a human? The sheer arrogance! The defilement!"
A pressure so immense that the very glaciers around them groaned with a sound like tearing metal radiated from Di Tian. His golden eye blazed with a cold, contained fury that was more terrifying than any open roar.
The concept of a Soul Spirit, a willing partnership forged in respect, was a revolution he was beginning to embrace. This… this was slavery of the highest, most profane order. It was a violation against the Soul Beasts he presided over.
While the monarchs raged, a different kind of drama was playing out in Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Sea.
The ethereal forms of the Ice Empress and Skydream Iceworm were slowly solidifying, their spiritual energy recovering from the draining battle. The Ice Empress's consciousness was a whirlwind of shock and dawning relief.
'That boy…' she thought, her glacial mind replaying the moment the spatial rift had torn open. 'He summoned him. He actually summoned Di Tian. The reverse scale… he was given a reverse scale from the Beast God himself.'
A shiver, not of cold but of pure, retroactive fear, passed through her spirit.
'If I had truly attacked him back at my lair… if I had not listened… would he have summoned the Dragon King then?'
The answer was a terrifying, unspoken affirmative. She felt a profound sense of gladness that she had made the right choice. This human was far more than he appeared.
'My darling Bingbing! You were a vision! A tempest of glacial fury!' Skydream's voice, now recovered and brimming with his usual romantic zeal, buzzed around her. 'The way you unleashed that Glacial Storm! The power! The grace! It was a masterpiece! A symphony of destruction that sang a love song to my soul!'
'Be silent, you nauseating insect,' the Ice Empress retorted, her focus still on the events unfolding outside. 'I am contemplating the ramifications of what we have learned.'
'A ramification that we overcame gloriously!' Skydream declared, zipping in front of her. 'Thanks to your awe-inspiring power! And my brilliant support, of course! We are the perfect team, my frozen queen!'
'Due to your low power even as a million year old beast, we were about to be killed along with this boy by six Titled Douluo,' she shot back icily. 'The boy's hidden trump cards are what saved us from being overwhelmed.'
'Details, details! The important thing is we won, and you looked magnificent doing it!' He attempted another spiritual nuzzle. The Ice Empress's spectral tail lashed out with practiced ease, swatting him away with a sharp thwack.
'So persistent…' she muttered, a flicker of something almost like grudging respect in her icy gaze before turning her attention back to the interrogation.
Outside, the undead servant's voice droned on, oblivious to the monarch's rage or the spiritual comedy routine.
"To find a target," it continued, "His Highness dispatched over two dozen Soul Douluo, each equipped with a Class 8 Soul-Seeking Compass, a device capable of detecting the unique energy fluctuations of a hundred-thousand-year-old beast's transformation across vast distances. They were spread throughout the continent. When a compass reacted, the nearest team of Titled Douluo would be dispatched to investigate and, if the target was confirmed, to capture it using the God Sealing Altar."
The Lightning Douluo's vacant head twitched slightly. "Our team… was the closest to this region when the compass flared with an intensity never before recorded. The energy signature was off the charts, far greater than any previously recorded transformation. We were told to capture the beast at all costs."
Huo Yuhao's heart went cold, then settled into a grim calm. 'So that's how they found us. A Class 8 Soul Tool… The book never mentioned this part of the plan. It seems my future self didn't manage to discover this. He only knew of it after this God Sealing Altar appeared in the Starlight Auction House. I…have changed the timeline.'
"But the mission given to us was to set up for a trap," the undead servant added, a new, serpentine layer of information unfolding. "His Highness, Xu Jiawei, did not intend to use the Soul Beast Embryo for one of his own descendants. His true target was not a Soul Beast, but a human sect and the Sun Moon Empire."
"A human sect?" Jin Xi asked, her curiosity momentarily piqued despite her simmering anger. She found the self-destructive squabbles of humanity to be a constant source of morbid fascination. "Humans fighting humans? How delightfully predictable."
"The Body Sect," the servant stated, the name echoing with a strange power. "A mysterious and powerful sect allied with no empire. Their current inheritor, a youth named Long Aotian, is said to possess a top-grade Body Type Martial Soul of immense power. His Highness believed that the Body Sect would be irresistibly tempted by a Soul Beast Embryo, which could grant their precious inheritor a second, equally powerful Martial Soul, thus enhancing his potential to a monstrous degree."
The servant paused, a hollow space in its recitation. "The plan was multi-layered, as our captain understood it. First, capture the beast. Second, orchestrate a grand auction, putting the Soul Beast Embryo up for the highest bidder. The Sun Moon Empire, with its vast wealth and obsession with radical power enhancement, would almost certainly win the bid. Third, His Highness would then secretly approach the Body Sect, feigning a benevolent alliance. He would offer them precise intelligence and covert support to launch an all-out assault on the Sun Moon Empire's Illustrious Virtue Hall, to help them 'acquire the embryo."
The sheer, serpentine cunning of the plan left even Jin Xi momentarily speechless. It was a scheme of such layered deceit it was almost artistic in its depravity.
"The desired outcome," the servant concluded in its flat, dead monotone, "was a devastating, resource-draining battle between two of the Star Luo Empire's greatest rivals. The Body Sect's overwhelming physical power would be broken against the formidable Soul Tool defenses and personnel of the Illustrious Virtue Hall. The Hall itself would suffer immense damage and a catastrophic loss of prestige in the conflict. Two powerful enemies crippled with a single, cleverly disguised stone, all while the Star Luo Empire appeared to be a neutral, uninvolved party."
Di Tian let out a low, rumbling growl, a sound that was filled with an ancient, bottomless contempt. "Human schemes," his voice echoed in their minds. "Like maggots squirming in filth, fighting over a corpse. They would use the sacred life of one of our kind, a being of a hundred-thousand-years, as a mere piece of bait in their pathetic little games of territory."
Huo Yuhao's mind was a whirlwind. Now he understood. He finally understood the full, chilling context of the events he had only read about in the book of fate.
'The Starlight Auction House… the attack on the Illustrious Virtue Hall… it was all a setup. A grand play orchestrated by Xu Jiawei,' he thought, a chilling clarity descending upon him. 'The hunters, the Emperor, even the powerful Body Sect… none of them knew the beast they were hunting was the Snow Empress herself. They were chasing a compass reading, an energy signature. If they had known her true identity, they would have abandoned all subtlety. They would have risked everything to claim her power directly for themselves.'
A profound sense of satisfaction, a deep, personal victory that warmed his soul against the northern cold, bloomed in his chest. 'In that other life, the book said my future-self had to take great risks to save her. He had to fight against the Body Sect which had attached the Illustrious Virtue Hall when he was an exchange student there sent by Shrek to learn Soul Tool technology, and barely managed to save the Snow Empress from being captured by the Body Sect or used by the Illustrious Virtue Hall.'
'But here… now… because of me, because of our journey to the North, none of it happened. She was never captured. The God Sealing Altar never found its prey. The auction for her life will never occur. The devastating battle between the Body Sect and the Illustrious Virtue Hall will probably not be triggered. I didn't just save her… I changed the entire course of the continent's history, and no one but me will ever know.'
The realization was empowering. It was intoxicating. He was not just a recipient of future knowledge, a ghost walking a pre-written path. He was an active agent of change, a creator of a new, better destiny.
"I have my answers," Huo Yuhao said, his voice calm and steady, pulling himself from his internal reverie. He looked at Di Tian, then at Jin Xi. "The planner is in the Star Luo Empire, and his tools are broken. For now, we are safe. As for this one…" He looked at the empty shell of the Lightning Douluo. "I will send him… to another place."
Di Tian's golden eye watched him with a new, intense curiosity. Jin Xi tilted her head, her ruby eyes questioning. "Another place? Where? Are you going to kill him?"
Huo Yuhao did not answer with words. He closed his eyes, surrendering control once more to the ancient, powerful consciousness residing within his soul.
The boy's youthful, determined aura vanished, replaced instantly by the deep, cold, and profoundly sorrowful presence of the Holy Necromancer. Elder Yi, now in full command of Huo Yuhao's body, raised a hand. The air before him shimmered with a grey, ethereal light, and an object materialized from nothingness.
It was a staff. It was long, fashioned from a material that looked like polished, metal, smooth and cold to the touch. It was topped with a beautiful, ethereal blue crystal skull that pulsed with a faint, internal light, seeming to absorb the very joy from the air around it.
It was the Demiplane Key, the artifact that anchored Elder Yi's personal realm to him.
Elder Yi gripped the staff and tapped its base once on the frozen ground.
The space before them didn't just tear; it unraveled like a piece of old cloth. A perfect, circular gateway opened, a swirling vortex of deep, profound grey. It was not the chaotic violence of Di Tian's spatial rift. It was a controlled, deliberate, and silent opening into another reality.
From within the gateway, an aura washed over them, an influence utterly alien to the world of the living.
It was an aura of pure, unadulterated Death Essence.
It was not the angry, violent death of the battlefield, filled with resentment and pain. It was the ancient, quiet, and eternal death of the tomb. It was the feeling of dust settling over millennia, of forgotten memories and silent, peaceful endings. It was a cold that did not bite the skin but seeped directly into the soul, a feeling of utter finality, of dust and echoes, a peace so profound it was terrifying.
Jin Xi instinctively took a step back, her vibrant life force recoiling from this fundamental, opposing principle. The divine Golden Dragon Spear in her hand hummed, a low, guttural warning thrum, recognizing a power that was anathema to its own draconic vitality.
Even Di Tian, the mighty Beast God, master of Darkness and Space, felt a flicker of something he had not felt in a hundred thousand years. It was not fear. It was a deep, primal unease, the feeling of looking upon a law of reality he did not understand and could not command.
He understood the laws of space and of darkness. But this… this was the law of the Death.
A concept, a power that stood outside the cycle of life and rebirth that he knew.
'What is this power?' the Dragon King thought, his golden eye narrowed to a slit as he stared into the grey vortex, his analytical mind trying and failing to categorize the energy. 'The divine consciousness this boy carries… it is not just a remnant of some forgotten god. It commands a law that is powerful in our world. It has created its own dimensional plane… a realm of pure, unadulterated death.'
Elder Yi, controlling Huo Yuhao's body, gestured with the strange staff about three meters long. The Undead Servant, its movements still stiff and unnatural, stood without a sound. It turned, walked emotionlessly into the grey vortex, and vanished without a ripple, accepted into its new, final home.
As soon as the servant was through, Elder Yi tapped the staff again. The gateway swirled inward and closed, sealing itself without a trace, the profound Death Essence vanishing as if it had never been, leaving the air of the valley feeling strangely warm and alive in comparison.
'We will explore the Spectral Demiplane later, disciple,' Elder Yi's voice echoed in Huo Yuhao's mind as his consciousness receded. 'It is a powerful realm, and one that requires great will. For now, rest. You have much to process, and your body is at its limit.'
The grey, ancient light faded from Huo Yuhao's eyes, the warm, vibrant blue of his own soul returning. The ethereal staff vanished. He swayed on his feet, the combined exhaustion of the prolonged battle, the use of the divine gifts, and the intense necromantic ritual hitting him all at once like a physical blow. He felt drained, empty, but victorious.
He looked at the blood-stained snow where the Titled Douluo had fallen, their lives extinguished, their ambitions turned to nothing. Then he turned his head, his gaze falling upon the serene, glowing nimbus of light where the Snow Empress continued her sacred, undisturbed transformation.
"It's over," he said, his voice quiet but firm, a statement of fact in the now-silent valley. "The immediate danger has passed. She is safe now."
Di Tian looked at him, a new, complex, and deeply profound respect in his ancient gaze. The boy was more than just a tool of destiny, more than just a lucky child chosen by a god. He was a confluence of powers, a mystery deeper and more profound than the Dragon King had ever imagined.
He gave a slow, deep nod, a gesture of absolute agreement from one king to another. 'Indeed. For now, she is safe.'