All parties did not immediately react.
Everyone tacitly waited for Shrek’s verdict.
These were the rumors Huo Yuhao had heard in the days following his return to the Sun Moon Empire.
After confirming the general situation, Huo Yuhao lost interest in gossiping about further details and shifted his focus to cultivation—soul tool crafting, that is.
“Yuhao, it seems you’re not very attentive to soul master cultivation.”
After returning to Room 411 of the Mingyue Hotel, Huo Yuhao had been holed up in his room forging soul tools before the new semester began, rarely spending time in meditation.
Snow Lady was well aware that this was completely against the norms of soul master cultivation.
In this life, Huo Yuhao’s mind was indeed not on soul master cultivation.
To forge his own path in this life, Huo Yuhao had made many preparations.
Retrieving his mother Huo Yun’er’s soul was only part of this endeavor.
While stirring the situation in Star Luo, Huo Yuhao had also deepened his understanding of the shifts in fortune.
What he was doing now was crafting a special soul tool resembling his Spirit Eye martial soul.
If this soul tool were successfully completed, he would finally set foot on his true path.
The path Huo Yuhao was about to enter was also a path to godhood—but this god would be his own.
“Snow Lady, as I told you before, I’m not skilled at soul master cultivation!”
As he spoke, Huo Yuhao’s resigned expression carried a hint of determination.
Having lived a second life and become a “Spectator,” knowing full well that the soul master path held no future for him, why would he stubbornly cling to it?
Even if he had many emotional attachments to the soul master path, if he wanted to defy fate, he knew he had to acknowledge reality.
Retracing his cultivation path from his previous life would only recreate that good dog of the Tang family—Dai Yuhao.
“Snow Lady, your current talent and constitution are highly suited for soul master cultivation.
I will do everything in my power to help you reach the pinnacle on this path.
You will succeed, and I too will succeed on my own path!”
Snow Lady said nothing more.
After exchanging a glance with Huo Yuhao, a flicker of determination crossed her face, and she entered a meditative state to begin cultivating.
Though she did not understand many of the things Huo Yuhao wanted to do, she believed he would succeed.
Looking back at Snow Lady, who sat on the other bed deep in meditation, Huo Yuhao felt a moment of shyness before rising to take a garment-like soul tool from the wardrobe—one that nurtured spiritual consciousness—and draped it over her.
He recalled: in the final moments of his previous life, before he was reborn, as “Dai Yuhao,” he had felt such hatred.
He hated himself, and he hated the Tang family.
“In this life, I will never allow anyone to use any of you as sacrifices!
Anyone who schemes against us will regret ever being born into this world!”
Regarding the soul tool he was carving, Huo Yuhao had been thinking about it ever since the day he resolved to come to the Sun Moon Empire.
It was only when he had keenly and directly grasped that thread of shifting fortune the moment the Star Luo situation changed that he finally sketched out the rough outline of this soul tool in his mind.
When all the scenes from his rebirth—from the moment he was born, huddled with his mother in the wood shed, leaving the Duke’s mansion to enter the Star Dou Forest, reuniting with Elder I and Tianmeng, to arriving at his present moment—played out in his spiritual sea, Huo Yuhao finally stopped his work.
“It’s done!”
A look of joy spread across Huo Yuhao’s face.
He knew that after more than a decade of effort in this life, he had finally produced something truly his own!
“Little Yuhao, is this the initial state of that divine artifact you’ve been telling me you want to forge?” Ilex’s aged voice echoed in Huo Yuhao’s spiritual sea.
Hearing Ilex speak, Huo Yuhao wore the eye-shaped soul tool pendant on his person.
He named this soul tool the “Eye of Fate.” To any other powerhouse, it would feel like nothing more than a detection soul tool.
“Indeed, Elder I, this is the divine artifact I’ve been telling you about.”
“In appearance, it’s quite ordinary.
In fact, I don’t sense any particular essence from it,” Ilex said directly, voicing his experience.
“But it holds the potential to overturn the future!” Huo Yuhao spoke with a hint of apology as he looked at Ilex, Tianmeng, and the Ice Empress.
“Elder I, Brother Tianmeng, Ice Empress, this is my greatest secret.
For now, I can’t reveal it.”
“So what?
Every powerhouse has their secrets,” the Ice Empress said nonchalantly.
“By the way, the situation you guided in Star Luo—that was a move of yours, wasn’t it?” Ilex suddenly thought of something.
He had noticed that ever since their encounter, every action of this disciple seemed to have been calculated.
“Yes, Elder I, you truly understand me too well,” Huo Yuhao said in a low voice.
“For the upcoming continent-wide advanced soul master academy tournament, I do not wish for it to be held in Star Luo.”
Huo Yuhao remembered that in his previous life, from Chen Zifeng and the others—originally representing Shrek Academy in the tournament—being attacked by evil soul masters and maimed halfway there, to the Qian Kun Question Love Valley, everything he encountered along the way related to tournaments and auctions was shrouded in mystery.
During this second life, he had dared not approach dangerous places like Shrek and the Haotian Sect, but he had thoroughly investigated places like the Sun Moon Empire’s Qian Kun Question Love Valley.
Having circled around the outskirts of the Qian Kun Question Love Valley, Huo Yuhao saw clearly: the so-called Qian Kun Question Love Valley was exactly like the Angel God Test of the Spirit Hall ten thousand years ago—a mere place of inheritance for the divine seat of a deceased god.
To put it bluntly, this kind of place was an excellent channel through which his father-in-law “Tang the Pure” could legally interfere with the mortal world in this era.
At this fallen Love God’s inheritance site, Tang San could strike arbitrarily at the mortal realm under the pretext of “inheritance trials” without having to kill anyone.
Huo Yuhao’s solution was simple: he continuously and indirectly lured powerhouses into the Qian Kun Question Love Valley, depleting the Love God’s divine consciousness within.
Once the Love God’s consciousness was exhausted, this divine test would be permanently severed on the Douluo Continent.
The Qian Kun Question Love Valley, no longer a place of inheritance, would cease to be a channel for Tang San to legally act.
Therefore, the Sun Moon Empire was now a safe haven for Huo Yuhao—unless his previous life’s father-in-law “Tang the Pure” was willing to discard his mask of purity and reveal the Holy Emperor of the Holy Spirit Church.
As for the rest of the Douluo Continent, including the Star Luo Empire, they were places Huo Yuhao was best advised not to linger.
This was the conclusion he had reached after seeing the Records of the Douluo Continent through his “Spectator” authority.
“Then what comes next will likely be that Sea God’s probe into you!” Ilex said solemnly.
“My necromantic demiplane still needs time to be assimilated by this Douluo plane and become a sub-plane attached to it.”
“We have enough time!” Huo Yuhao comforted him.
“Elder I, in my previous life, one of the reasons Tang San could legally attack you in the divine realm was the pretext of cleansing an otherworldly lich.”
“Now that you are my martial soul, if he wants to strike at you again, he can only use that necromantic demiplane as an excuse.”
“But among all the nodes I know of and can deduce that he has set on the Douluo Continent, the nearest opportunity to lock onto me over the long term is the upcoming tournament.
And after what happened in Star Luo, it’s inevitable that the tournament will be delayed.”
“By then, my ‘Eye of Fate’ will have the perfect touchstone to test itself upon!”