Word Count: 3,248 Words
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"I am Tang Wutong."
Those simple, tranquil words sent Huo Yuhao plunging into an ice-cold abyss. An unprecedented panic flooded his mind, and his voice shook so violently he could barely string together a coherent sentence:
"I know! Your true name is Tang Wutong, but you're also my lover, Wang Dong Er!"
Tang Wutong paid him no mind. Her pink-blue eyes stared straight at Ling Bai, and an almost imperceptible flicker of fear passed through their depths.
For half a year, Ling Bai had never once set foot in this underground chamber. In his absence, that madwoman had exhausted every imaginable torture upon her. Among those methods were no shortage of obedience-conditioning spiritual directives, and Tang Wutong had lived in constant dread that her mind would shatter, her personality crumble away, and she would truly become nothing more than a faithful hound.
"Dong Er!"
Her attitude pierced deep into Huo Yuhao's heart. He thought back to the Spirit Master Tournament, when Wang Dong Er had suddenly grown strange and distant, constantly rebuffing his attempts at closeness and slipping in the occasional word of admiration for Ling Bai. Now she was the same. In her eyes, he was nothing at all. Less than nothing. Beneath even an enemy.
"Enough, Huo Yuhao."
Tang Wutong spoke with frigid indifference. "I've already told you. I am Tang Wutong. Daughter of the Sea God, Tang Wutong!
There has never been any Wang Dong Er in this world. The girl you knew was merely a stray wisp of my Divine Realm divided soul, one that drew close to the Son of Destiny after I lost my memories.
So long as someone bears the title of Son of Destiny, whether Huo Yuhao, Zhang Yuhao, or Zhao Yuhao, Wang Dong Er would seek him out of her own accord, form a 100% compatible Spirit Fusion Skill with him, and then, through one shared experience after another, fall helplessly in love with him.
This is Wang Dong Er's destined fate. To fall in love with the Son of Destiny, to ensnare him so completely that he could never tear himself free, to interfere with his encounter with the Destiny Beast, and to plant my soul seed within the Destiny Beast's body.
Father decreed that I would replace the Destiny Beast and seize control over the fate of spirit beasts, then marry the Son of Destiny and bind myself to the fate of humanity. In this way, the destinies of both great races would fall into his grasp. Sheltered beneath the destinies of those two races, Grandfather and Grandmother could replace the planar consciousness and the source of nature far more swiftly, transforming themselves into the masters of the Douluo plane."
"What a fine God King's grand design."
Ling Bai offered a slow round of applause, yet the smile at the corners of his lips held no warmth whatsoever. Its icy arc seemed capable of freezing time and space.
Huo Yuhao's face went pale as a washed-out oil painting. His tall frame trembled ceaselessly, and something he had always clung to shattered to pieces within his mind. The Haodong Three Moves he had only recently comprehended began to crumble apart.
So Dong Er had favored him only because he was the Son of Destiny. That was why she had pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees toward Ling Bai during the tournament.
Had they escaped the Yin Yang Love Querying Valley with Tang Wutong still living as Wang Dong Er, perhaps she would have fallen helplessly in love with the new Son of Destiny, Ling Bai, instead.
"Was everything between us nothing more than a script your father wrote? Why must he seize control of the Douluo Continent..." Huo Yuhao forced the words out through grinding effort.
Tang Wutong let out a derisive laugh. "How could the likes of you ever hope to fathom Father's world-shaking wisdom?
The Douluo Continent, or rather, the Douluo Planet, is one of the few high-tier planes beneath the Divine Realm, one possessing the qualifications to give birth to Gods.
By the terminology of this era, the first-generation Angel God conquered only the human faith of the Star Luo Empire, the Heavenly Soul Empire, and the Dou Spirit Empire, and from that alone she ascended from mortal to 1st Class God.
Now factor in the Sun Moon Empire, the other continents, the land spirit beasts, the sea spirit beasts, the sea Spirit Masters... the Douluo Planet might even be capable of producing a God King!
Use that pig brain of yours and think. Shouldn't a plane like this be held tightly in one's hands?"
Huo Yuhao gazed at the unrepentant Tang Wutong and smiled wretchedly. Tears poured down his face in heavy drops. He regretted ever coming to see this woman. She was the God King's tool. She was not, and had never been, his lover.
"Holy Evil Douluo... I want to leave... I don't want to see her again... let me go..."
Huo Yuhao was like a flower ravaged past saving, collapsing from full bloom to ruin in the span of a single instant. The tips of his hair faded to a deathly, lifeless white.
His heart broke beyond mending. A single thought turned his hair white.
A spatial gate yawned open and swept him beyond Nine Treasure City. The gulf between them in strength, identity, and station was simply too vast, and Ling Bai had no interest in continuing to target this former Son of Destiny. He left him to fend for himself.
"Yuhao, don't scare your big brother now! So what if you got your heart broken? Look at me! I chased after Bingbing for hundreds of thousands of years and I'm still a bachelor silkworm!"
Beneath the weight of so devastating a blow, signs of fracturing surfaced within Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Sea. Skydream grew so alarmed that he hurried to offer comfort.
"It's not the same, Brother Skydream." Huo Yuhao spoke as though in a daze. "Ice Empress is at least a complete being. Dong Er was like a Spirit Guidance Device running on a preset program. Tang Wutong has made me realize that my love was a complete and utter joke from beginning to end..."
Skydream let out a long sigh. "Then think of it as a dream. The dream is over now.
Yuhao, what do you intend to do next?"
"I..."
Huo Yuhao remained dispirited and listless. Only after a long silence did he slowly speak. "I'll return to Star Luo City. My mother's grave lies on the mountain outside the city walls. I want to tell her that the White Tiger Duke is dead.
Brother Skydream, I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill your wish. I... I just want to live as an ordinary person in Star Luo City."
"It's all right, Xiao Yuhao. Your big brother has lived for a million years. This life of mine has already been worth every moment. We'll walk these last hundred years together."
From this day onward, Skydream no longer harbored dreams of ascending to the Divine Realm at Huo Yuhao's side. He chose instead to keep him company. One man and one silkworm, living out the rest of their days in quiet peace...
…
Within the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Clan's secret chamber, Ling Bai calmly dismissed the spatial gate. Huo Yuhao had refused to accept the truth and insisted on seeing her one last time. The shattering of his Dao heart was no one's fault but his own.
"La la la~"
A melodious, lilting tune drifted in from the corridor outside. Its cheerful cadence betrayed the singer's excellent mood. Ling Bai watched with a faint smile as the chamber door swung open, and the dim light spilling through revealed an emerald-green figure.
The figure noticed the unexpected presence inside and froze for a heartbeat. Then she threw herself at Ling Bai as though she longed to melt into his body.
"Darling~"
Her voice was sweet and seductive, dripping with honey. Ling Bai had long since grown used to the pet name. Tang Wutong, however, felt every hair on her body rise. Ling Bai did not torture without cause. This woman was his polar opposite. Pain was the finest stimulant to her, driving her cruelty into ever wilder excesses of madness.
In Wang Dong Er's memories, this woman was Dugu Lin, an Inner Courtyard student of Shrek Academy and a bloodline descendant of Poison Douluo Dugu Bo from ten thousand years past. Her connection with Ling Bai ran deep indeed.
Dugu Lin had inherited every drop of the Jade Phosphor Serpent clan's cruelty and sinister cunning. Her methods for tormenting others were endlessly inventive, so much so that even Empress Ye Guyi had once thought of recruiting her as Minister of Punishments.
"What brings you to such a filthy place?" Dugu Lin blinked her curious, emerald-green serpent eyes.
Ling Bai slipped an arm around her supple waist and answered with casual ease. "I came to see what state you've reduced her to. She looks close to her breaking point."
"Does your heart ache for her?" Dugu Lin's smile turned bewitchingly soft. "I suppose it's only natural. She is Tang San's daughter, after all, and that peerless little face of hers stirs pity even in me. Her figure's first-rate, too. So seductive, so graceful that I'll admit I feel a touch of envy myself.
If you want her, I can train her into a sweet, obedient little dog."
Tang Wutong shrank back and shook her head over and over. Dugu Lin possessed every ounce of cruelty needed to make good on that threat, and already, against her will, Tang Wutong's body had begun to obey the woman's commands on instinct.
"I prefer snakes."
Ling Bai's hand drifted lower and gently kneaded her pert rear. Dugu Lin obligingly let her expression melt into one of dazed intoxication. Since that night when eerie green light had filled the sky, the distance between the two of them had closed considerably.
"Then... if you don't want her, she'll be my pet..." Her breath spilled against his skin like orchid fragrance.
"Do as you please."
With that single sentence, Ling Bai dissolved into motes of golden light and vanished from the chamber.
The moment his aura faded, every trace of Dugu Lin's infatuated softness vanished with it. She turned toward Tang Wutong like a venomous serpent emperor closing on prey. Tang Wutong slumped to the floor and dragged her battered, wound-covered body backward, shouting with brittle bravado:
"Dugu Lin, do you really think you've already won? My father will never let you off!"
Dugu Lin paid the cries no heed. Her palm flashed out in a crisp, ringing slap that sent stars exploding across Tang Wutong's vision. She seized Tang Wutong's chin in an iron grip, her voice dropping to a venomous hiss:
"Before I knew his attitude, I left this pretty little face untouched. Lucky for me, Darling has no interest in you. Otherwise, I'd have had to put real effort into training you properly.
The treasure I've poured my heart into serving is not something the likes of you are fit to enjoy.
There'll be plenty of time to play with you later. For today, I think I'll start by ruining this stunning little face of yours..."
"No... don't!"
Tang Wutong could only watch in terrified despair as a Nine Segment Jade slid from Dugu Lin's sleeve and reared its upper body. The cold fork of its tongue pressed against the skin of her cheek.
Deadly venom began to corrode flesh…
…
"Xiao Bai, gather everyone in the alchemy room."
Ling Bai had only just returned to his chamber to meditate upon the power of space when Jianmu Douluo came knocking. Exhaustion weighed heavily on the old man, yet a dense, fervent excitement burned through that weariness. Ling Bai's heart leapt with equal joy.
The pill had been refined!
After the Battle of Jialing Pass, when his Seraphim had slain Ye Xishui and absorbed the spirit power feedback, Ling Bai's cultivation had stalled at Rank 98. Only by condensing a third spirit core could he break through to Rank 99.
Master and disciple made their way to the alchemy room. Ling Bai drew a deep breath, and spatial gates split open one after another. Jianmu Douluo found himself nodding in repeated approval.
The Evileye Tyrant Emperor's spatial power was no less than that of Beast God Di Tian. Since the spiritual attribute was naturally affinitive with the spatial attribute, and given that the Evil Emperor had comprehended the Space-Time Light, his spatial mastery might even surpass Di Tian's.
Ling Bai had absorbed the entirety of the Evileye Tyrant Emperor's spatial comprehension. Were it not for the shortness of his cultivation period and the energy for his third spirit core still falling short of what was needed, he would have already stepped into the Limit Douluo realm. This was precisely why Jianmu Douluo had refined the pill.
Figures stepped forth from the spatial gates one by one. Angel Empress Ye Guyi, Phoenix Douluo Ma Xiaotao, Golden Fairy Douluo Han Ruoruo... including Ning Tian, Wu Feng, and the others residing within the Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Clan. Ling Bai had opened a spatial gate for every one of them.
The alchemy room grew crowded in an instant. The many peerlessly beautiful women exchanged measured glances, then tacitly turned their faces away from one another. On the road of love, every one of them was a rival. Their acceptance of Ning Tian as Ling Bai's official wife did not mean they were content to lower their heads and play the meek concubine.
Beneath Ling Bai's tireless nurturing, every one of his beloveds had grown into a top-tier genius of the current era. Forcing them to gather under one roof like caged canaries would not only chain their personalities but squander their gifts as well.
So Ling Bai had settled them apart, each in her own rightful place.
Ning Tian had inherited the position of Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Clan Master. The Nine Treasure Glazed Tile Clan of today was no longer what it had been in years past. As the Angel Empire's Guardian Sect, it stood without dispute as the foremost sect in the world. Wu Feng remained at Ning Tian's side naturally, taking up the burden Jianmu Douluo had once shouldered and becoming the clan's chief Worship.
Ling Qiuxi had no interest in any post within the human world. Her sympathies lay far closer to the spirit beasts.
Human desire was a bottomless pit. Even with Heaven-Bestowed Spirit Rings replacing ordinary spirit rings, humanity would never relinquish its hunger for spirit bones, flesh, and pelts.
Ling Bai had met once with the Star Dou Great Beasts and proposed a spirit beast migration plan. The condition was that the spirit beasts would cooperate with the Angel Empire by providing genetic samples for research, allowing the empire to fashion artificial spirit bones and similar products to satisfy human demand. The Star Dou Great Beasts had agreed without hesitation. They had long since grown sick to death of mankind.
Once Ling Bai became a God and located a planet suited to spirit beast habitation, Ling Qiuxi would depart alongside Di Tian, Bi Ji, Zi Ji, and the other Great Beasts to establish a kingdom of spirit beasts. At most, she would serve as a peace ambassador between the two planes.
Snow Empress had successfully condensed her Yin-Yang Complement twin spirit cores. Since she had taken the protection of the Extreme North as her own sacred duty, she too participated in the spirit beast migration plan. Wherever the four Great Beasts of the Extreme North made their domain, the land would slowly turn to glacier, leaving no cause for concern over the environment.
In Angel Holy City, Ye Guyi was extraordinarily busy as the Angel Empire's empress during these early days of the nation's founding. When she managed to steal a rare quiet hour, she would seek out Ning Fengya to discuss matters of state, and incidentally work with Ling Bai on producing an heir to the throne.
The Angel Empire as a whole was rising with vigor and purpose. Its laws and institutions grew more refined with each passing day. It dared to reform itself, to identify flaws, and to mend them.
To foster the gathering of faith, Angel Empress Ye Guyi decreed that every elementary, intermediate, and advanced academy add a weekly class on ideology and moral education. They would begin with the children, instilling in them from the earliest age that the Angel Empire was a sacred nation, that Holy Evil Douluo was the nation's great hero, and that faith in Holy Evil Douluo was the sacred duty of every Angel Empire citizen!
Dugu Lin had taken office as the Angelic Sanctuary Hall Master of Angel Holy City and now controlled the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well. She was, however, conspicuously derelict in her duties, perpetually offloading her responsibilities onto Vice Hall Master Nanmen Yun Er before slipping away to Nine Treasure City to indulge her pleasures and torment Tang Wutong.
Ma Xiaotao continued to serve as Sea God Pavilion Master at Shrek Academy, while Han Ruoruo held the dual role of Shrek City's Angelic Sanctuary Hall Master and Sea God Pavilion elder.
With the angel lineage holding the Douluo Continent in its grip, Evil Spirit Masters were doomed to scuttle through life like vermin in the gutter. Shrek Academy abolished the Shrek Guardians, Inner Courtyard students no longer died tragic deaths, and the academy returned to its original calling of teaching and shaping young minds, washing its hands of Angel Empire political affairs.
The elders of the older generation withdrew from the Sea God Pavilion of their own accord. Ma Xiaotao, Han Ruoruo, Zhang Lexuan, Wu Ming, Hua Yao, Chu Qingtian, and Gu Fan formed the new-generation Sea God Pavilion. Shrek Academy, whose every pillar and beam had once rotted to the core, breathed in fresh life and turned to a brand-new chapter.
Worth noting was that Phoenix Douluo Ma Xiaotao had made good on the vow she had once sworn. Every few days, she would abandon Shrek Academy entirely and seek out Ling Bai to warm his bed, dumping every academy affair onto Vice Pavilion Master Zhang Lexuan's desk without a second thought.
Zhang Lexuan could only smile bitterly again and again. She did not dare imagine what the future held. With one hand she managed Shrek Academy's affairs, and with the other she helped Han Ruoruo care for her child. By all rights she was a single, peerless beauty, yet somehow she found herself living the exhausting life of an old nanny.
Beyond Ling Bai's lovers, the rest of the continent's geniuses each filled their own roles, working to maintain the Angel Empire's lasting peace and stability. Talents such as Ji Juechen, Ling Luochen, Yu Mengdi, and Na Na all served as main-city-level Angelic Sanctuary Hall Masters, each guarding their assigned region.
Once everyone had assembled, Jianmu Douluo raised both hands in a slow, deliberate upward gesture. The alchemy furnace hissed open, and a rich medicinal fragrance erupted forth like a gushing fountain.
A layer of precious radiance welled up from within the furnace, forming a crystalline film of light that shimmered with miraculous visions shifting in turn. A nine-story pagoda. A golden dragon roaring at the sky. A fire dragon exhaling its breath. And...
Space collapsing amid pitch-black rifts!
The pill was complete!