Chapter 164: Obtaining the Snow Empress! Seizing the Wisdom Crystal of Mingde Hall
The thick alloy gate of the core secret chamber groaned. Under the sheer, brute force of a Dominator-level entity, the reinforced metal twisted, emitting an ear-piercing screech before finally collapsing inward with a deafening boom. Jagged ice shards and twisted metal debris scattered across the smooth floor.
Heavy, measured footsteps echoed through the settling dust. Liu Yuan stepped into the vault. His gaze, cold and calculating, instantly locked onto the very center of the secret chamber.
Resting upon a heavy pedestal forged from Ten-Thousand-Year deep Ice Iron, a spherical object hovered silently in the air. It pulsed with a deep, captivating blue glow. This was the legendary God-Sealing Platform.
Through the transparent energy barrier of the artifact, the silhouette of an infant could be seen curled up inside. Its tiny body was a pristine, flawless white, appearing as though it were condensed from the purest, most concentrated elemental energy in existence. Her eyes remained tightly shut, yet the sheer, arrogant aura radiating from her—the absolute ruler of the ice and snow in the Far North—could not be contained. Even while heavily suppressed by layers of complex spirit tool formations, her mere presence caused the ambient temperature in the vault to plummet to terrifying extremes.
A hundred meters away, cloaked in the pitch-black shadows of a ventilation duct, Huo Yuhao watched. Through the precise, sweeping vision of his Spiritual Detection Sharing, every detail of the vault was projected flawlessly into his mind.
"Yuhao! Hurry! That's Xue'er! She's right there!"
The Ice Empress's voice tore through Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Sea in a frantic, near-hysterical scream. The desperation in her tone was absolute. As one of the heavenly kings of the Far North, she had stood by the Snow Empress's side for countless years. Now, forced to watch helplessly as her sovereign fell into the hands of another, the empathetic agony clawed at her soul. She looked ready to tear her way out of Huo Yuhao's body just to reach the vault.
"He is putting away the God-Sealing Platform right now! This is his weakest moment! Move quickly!"
Yet, faced with the Ice Empress's frantic urging, Huo Yuhao remained entirely frozen in the dark confines of the metal duct. He looked like a statue drained of its soul. His hands gripped the metal edge of the grate so tightly that his knuckles turned a ghastly, bloodless white. The sharp edges bit into his skin, but he did not seem to feel the pain.
"Ice Empress..." Huo Yuhao whispered back into his Spiritual Sea, his voice hollow, weighed down by an unmatched, suffocating sense of powerlessness. "What do you expect me to use to fight him for it?"
His gaze pierced through the heavy darkness, fixing entirely upon the broad back of the young man below. That figure was currently bathed in the ominous, blood-red light of a fifth spirit ring.
"You saw it just now," Huo Yuhao continued, his voice trembling slightly. "He slaughtered two Spirit Douluos in an instant. Those were eight-ring Spirit Douluos! With my current strength, even if I borrow every drop of power from you and Brother Tianmeng, could I even survive a single Spirit Ability from that red ring of his?"
He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of defeat coating his throat. "If I go down there, I am not seizing anything. I am walking to my execution. I am simply no match for him."
The Ice Empress's frantic shouting choked off abruptly.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over his Spiritual Sea. As a Ferocious Beast who had lived and ruled for over three hundred thousand years, she understood the chasm between Huo Yuhao and Liu Yuan far better than the boy himself did. The memory of that dark purple spatial tear ripping open just moments ago still made her soul shudder.
That level of power had completely shattered the boundaries of the younger generation.
She felt helpless. She felt an agonizing distress. But above all, she felt a stifling, suffocating frustration. The ancient, unyielding pride of the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion was being ground into fine dust beneath the heel of absolute power.
Huo Yuhao shared her agony. His chest tightened, his heart feeling as though it were drowning in a pool of bitter water.
He had been chasing that back for so long. From their very first encounter in the Star Dou Great Forest, to the crushing, humiliating defeat at the Continental Advanced Spirit Master Academy Tournament. He had convinced himself that coming to the Sun Moon Empire to study spirit tools would finally give him the edge he needed to surpass his rival. Instead, reality had just delivered a deafening slap across his face.
"Is he really Liu Yuan?" Huo Yuhao lowered his head, allowing the shadows to completely swallow his eyes. "If it is him... why is he strong to such an outrageous degree?"
Deep within the lowest recesses of his Spiritual Sea, the one suffering the most deep misery was the entity that had remained entirely silent.
The Tianmeng Iceworm.
Its massive, golden, glowing body had curled into a tight, defensive ball. The normally cheerful and boisterous million-year spirit beast now stared out with eyes filled with a hollow, dead silence.
'Back then... why didn't I choose him?'
The question echoed endlessly within the depths of Tianmeng's mind, a torturous loop of regret. Back on the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest, it had sensed two extremely weak but highly potent auras. It had ultimately chosen Huo Yuhao, rationalizing that the boy appeared far more docile and easier to guide.
Tianmeng had already tasted the bitter dregs of regret when Liu Yuan single-handedly swept through Shrek Academy during the tournament. Back then, it had managed to suppress those feelings, comforting itself with the thought that Huo Yuhao still possessed immense room to grow.
But today, watching Liu Yuan casually execute five-ring Spirit Douluos, watching him forcibly bear the crushing weight of a hundred-thousand-year spirit ring, and witnessing a terrifying pupil technique capable of dominating space itself... that suppressed regret shattered the dam of its Divine Sense.
'This is the most regrettable decision I have ever made in my long life... bar none,' Tianmeng thought bleakly.
If it had chosen Liu Yuan back then, combining those space-dominating Double Pupils with its own million-year spiritual origin, they could have forged a true God. Instead, it was reduced to cowering in the shadows, forced to watch the host who should have been its true partner effortlessly claim the very treasure that could alter the destiny of the Far North.
Down in the vault, Liu Yuan had never once lowered his guard.
Though his physical attention seemed entirely devoted to the God-Sealing Platform in front of him, the peripheral vision of his Double Pupils remained sharply locked onto the exact ventilation duct where Huo Yuhao was hiding.
Through Electrolux's powerful Divine Sense, which spread out like an invisible, inescapable net covering a hundred-meter radius, Liu Yuan monitored the entire area. The moment he detected even the slightest fluctuation of spirit power from Huo Yuhao's direction, he was fully prepared to instantly activate his Forbidden Domain and lock the boy in a spatial prison.
However, seconds ticked by, and the shadows above remained entirely still.
A cold, mocking arc lifted the corner of Liu Yuan's mouth. 'It seems he has finally learned what it means to know his own limitations.'
Dismissing the hidden observer, Liu Yuan focused on his prize. A layer of dark blue Qilin scales rippled across his right hand, forming a dense, armored gauntlet. He reached directly into the mass of biting, deep blue light and firmly gripped the heavy base of the God-Sealing Platform.
The extreme, biting cold immediately fought against his scales, carrying with it a weak yet incredibly tenacious rhythm of life.
Liu Yuan stared at the curled-up infant within the barrier and whispered, "Snow Empress. In this life, your fate will be rewritten by my hand. Come back to the Body Sect with me. There, I will show you a completely different Douluo Continent."
With a flash of spatial light, the massive God-Sealing Platform vanished, securely stored within his spatial spirit tool.
He did not linger in the vault. The primary objective was secured, but he still had a promise to keep. He needed to coordinate with Poison Undying and unleash absolute havoc upon the facility.
Liu Yuan's figure blurred into a streak of dark light, shuttling rapidly through the complex, sprawling underground tunnels of Mingde Hall.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Fusing the explosive, physical devastation of his Qilin force with the piercing annihilation of the Body Sect's Spirit Rays, Liu Yuan became a walking natural disaster. Wherever he passed, high-end precision experimental benches shattered into shrapnel. Unfinished level-nine spirit tool components were crushed into useless scrap. The massive energy cores designed to fuel the war machine of the Sun Moon Empire were violently detonated, collapsing entire corridors in his wake.
Just as he finished his destructive sweep and prepared to head toward the northern suburbs to rendezvous with Poison Undying, his Double Pupils caught a faint, anomalous glimmer. Behind a heavily reinforced, translucent alloy partition, a hidden chamber revealed itself.
It was an incredibly spacious, circular library.
Liu Yuan kicked the heavy alloy door off its hinges and stepped inside. Towering metal bookshelves lined the curved walls, stacked to the ceiling with countless metallic scrolls, heavy leather-bound tomes, and specialized power-conducting blueprints.
Curious, he casually pulled a thick metal file from the nearest shelf and scanned the engraved contents. Instantly, the casual destruction faded from his eyes, replaced by a sharp, intense focus.
"This is... the core formation theory for high-tier spirit tools?" Liu Yuan muttered, quickly flipping to the next page. "And the exact material ratio schematics for fixed-load spirit tool artillery shells?"
His hands moved faster, pulling down more scrolls. The texts in this hidden archive contained a staggering wealth of research. Concepts for level-eight and even theoretical level-nine spirit tools. Exhaustive physical and chemical reaction data for ultra-rare metals. The absolute core design blueprints of the empire's military might.
These were the highest-tier secrets of Mingde Hall. Liu Yuan knew the lore perfectly; the loss of these specific archives in the original timeline had caused Hall Master Jing Hongchen such immense psychological trauma that the old man had nearly coughed up blood.
Liu Yuan understood the terrifying value of these power-conducting materials better than anyone alive.
"The only reason the Sun Moon Empire manages to suppress the original three nations of the Douluo Continent is precisely because of these theoretical concepts and technical reserves," Liu Yuan murmured, his eyes reflecting the cold light of the metal scrolls.
He knew the inescapable trajectory of this world. Spirit tools were the absolute future. Thousands of years from now, during the era of the Dragon King, battle armor and towering mechas would become the sole standard for measuring true power. Even now, in this current era, advanced spirit tools were already dictating the flow of warfare.
In the late stages of the original timeline, even someone as fiercely traditional and overwhelmingly powerful as Poison Undying had been forced to admit how foolish his early contempt for spirit tools had been. That stubborn pride was one of the primary catalysts that eventually led to the tragic decline of the Body Sect.
"The Body Sect might look down on these metal toys right now," Liu Yuan said, his voice hardening with absolute resolve, "but they are going to learn. They must have this."
He didn't hesitate for another second. Pushing his spatial storage ring to its absolute maximum capacity, Liu Yuan swept his arm across the room. Like a massive whale swallowing the ocean, a powerful suction force erupted, stripping the towering bookshelves bare. Every single blueprint, every metal scroll, every scrap of research data vanished into his inventory.
"Since I've already seized the Snow Empress, I might as well take the foundation of their empire too."
Liu Yuan let out a low, mocking sneer. He cast one final glance around the completely barren library, ensuring not a single page remained. Then, his body dissolved into a streak of dark purple light, violently smashing upward through the reinforced ventilation shafts, bursting out of the earth, and escaping into the chaotic night sky above the Ming Capital.
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