2: C2 Encountering the First Old Acquaintance:
Huo Yuhao dusted off his shoulders and made his way out of the Star Dou Forest.
At this moment, even though he only had one soul ring and his body was still in a frail state, with his divine sense at the level of a supreme god, he could easily exert the strength of a three-ring Soul Elder in normal combat.
Along the way, he casually carved through several Wind Baboons like chopping vegetables, taking out his frustrations on them.
God-Slayer, was it?
After leaving the Star Dou Forest, Huo Yuhao, having no intention of wandering over to Shrek, naturally did not head straight for the Extreme North to find the Ice Empress for Brother Tianmeng.
Because he knew that if he went to persuade the Ice Empress to become his soul beast in person, it was anyone’s guess what his good father-in-law, watching from the divine realm’s central hub, would do.
His martial soul, the Spirit Eye, was a body martial soul.
Apart from his divine sense, his greatest asset right now was the necromancy magic gifted to him by Elder I.
Huo Yuhao knew his own situation well: the suitable places for him were either the Body Sect or the Sun Moon Empire, the lair of the Holy Spirit Church.
He was not a body cultivator, so the Body Sect could be ruled out entirely.
The only path left to him, then, was naturally the Sun Moon Empire.
On the journey from the Star Luo Empire to the Sun Moon Empire, Huo Yuhao frequently witnessed evil soul masters wiping out entire families and villages of commoners.
Yet, within the Sun Moon Empire—the very nest of evil soul masters—these same邪 soul masters were surprisingly more restrained among the common folk.
Upon entering the Sun Moon Empire, its prosperity gave Huo Yuhao the feeling of viewing flowers from a galloping horse—a dizzying blur of sights.
Unlike the Star Luo Empire and even the three original Douluo empires, the Sun Moon Empire of this era possessed an exceptionally strong social organizational capacity.
It would never allow just anyone to freely switch nationalities while the empire remained completely oblivious throughout the entire process.
“Dear Mr.
Huo Yuhao, your room is number 411!” That day, at the Mingyue Hotel in the Sun Moon Empire, a tall and slender waitress said to Huo Yuhao.
After taking his room card and settling in, Huo Yuhao lay lazily on the bed, conversing with Tianmeng and Ilex.
“Elder I, have you ever given thought to the identity of the Holy Emperor of the Holy Spirit Church?”
Huo Yuhao had no desire to join the Tang Sect—a sect that the Tang family was using as payment to forge their Tang family continent—and become nothing more than expendable material.
However, he also did not believe that the other two options before him, the Body Sect and the Sun Moon Empire, offered much better prospects than the Tang Sect.
“Yuhao, why do you ask?” Ilex’s aged voice carried a hint of confusion.
“Back in my previous life, when I was still fanatically devoted to Shrek, out of my identification with the Shrek Supervisory Team’s cause of eradicating evil soul masters, I tried to investigate the origins of the so-called Holy Emperor of the Holy Spirit Church through temporal回溯 after ascending to the divine realm,” Huo Yuhao said in a low voice.
“But all I saw in the temporal回溯 was a blank void.
It was as if this entity had been fabricated by the members of the Holy Spirit Church.
I could not find any trace of which evil soul master had first invented this figure.”
“Now, having come to this life, as I recall all of this, I understand that it cannot be separated from my good father-in-law Tang San, who transformed me into Dai Yuhao in my previous life.”
“Think about it: Shrek, the very institution that first defined what an evil soul master was and called for their extermination, eventually embraced evil soul masters after my descendants from the Spirit Transferring Pagoda’s Qian Gu clan reorganized them into the secret service of the Douluo Federation.
When I consider the long ages from the rise of evil soul masters two thousand years before my own rise to prominence, all the way to the resolution of the evil soul master problem twenty thousand years later, I feel deep sorrow for all those who suffered and perished because of this issue.”
Tianmeng suddenly interjected: “Little Yuhao, why should you be sorrowful?
None of this was your doing.
But hearing you speak of it, I now realize the depths of human hypocrisy—it truly knows no bounds!”
Ilex, however, seemed lost in thought.
“Many people live their lives wearing masks.
And oftentimes, the mask they wear on their face eventually becomes their actual face.
Once such people gain power, there are many matters that require black-gloved hands to handle.”
Hearing Ilex say this, Huo Yuhao raised an eyebrow.
“Elder I, you seem to have quite a story of your own as well?”
Ilex’s spiritual consciousness gave a start, and he then realized that he had been listening to Huo Yuhao’s narration all this time without ever telling his disciple about his own experiences.
So he recounted his past in great detail.
“So that’s how it was.
The way Flo regarded you, Master, is quite similar to how that ‘wife’ of mine from my previous life, Tang Wutong, regarded me.
However, since I’ve lived again in this life, at least Tongtong and her Divine King father can forget about keeping their black glove, the Holy Spirit Church, on the Douluo Continent.”
“Knock, knock…”
Just as Huo Yuhao was making this grand resolution within his spiritual sea, a knock came from outside the door.
Huo Yuhao gently opened the door, and a thirteen-year-old girl entered, saying, “I’m here to tidy up the room.”
Huo Yuhao cast a glance at her: this young girl had sweet facial features, fair skin, a head of wavy golden hair, and wore a small angel pendant around her neck—she was clearly a beauty in the making.
“An aura of holiness?” Ilex’s voice suddenly sounded in Huo Yuhao’s spiritual sea.
Hearing the Elder say this, Huo Yuhao’s heart stirred, and his divine sense swept over the girl.
Immediately, he discovered an exceptionally pure aura of sacred light emanating from her.
Even though the girl had done her utmost to conceal her soul power aura, such concealment was naturally futile before someone who had once been a “bag of divine kings” and had lived two lifetimes.
“Miss, could you let me see your martial soul?”
Huo Yuhao asked with an amused tone.
The girl eyed Huo Yuhao warily.
Having come from a fallen family and having been cautious her entire journey, she knew all too well what a stranger asking to see her martial soul intended.
“Rest assured, I’m not an evil soul master, and I harbor no ill intentions toward you.
My name is Huo Yuhao.
And you?” As he spoke, Huo Yuhao revealed his Spirit Eye martial soul.
Only then did the girl speak.
“Just call me Ye Guyi: Ye as in leaf, Gu as in bone, Yi as in clothing.” At the same time, accompanied by a golden radiance, she released her own martial soul—a beautiful angel.
“A Holy Angel martial soul!
Miss, with such a top-tier martial soul, why are you here instead of cultivating in the soul master academies or sects of the three Douluo nations?
From your accent, you should be from the Star Luo Empire.”
Ye Guyi frowned.
“The three Douluo nations are very dangerous for me right now.”
Then she recounted her situation in full.
It turned out that after the Spirit Hall’s fall, to escape the concentrated vengeance of the Heaven Dou Empire faction, where her enemies were numerous, Qian Renxue had gone into hiding in the Star Luo Empire.
After her death, her descendants continued to live there.
After the Sun Moon Continent collided with the Douluo Continent, during the wars with the Sun Moon Empire, the Star Luo Empire’s royal family—the Evil Eye White Tiger martial soul Dai clan—was replaced by the Star Crown martial soul Xu clan due to their incompetence.
The Star Crown martial soul clan had been on good terms with the Angel soul master families since the Spirit Hall era.
Life for the Angel families naturally improved considerably after the Xu clan became emperor.
Many Angel soul masters took up positions in Star Luo, even becoming enshrined of the empire.
But the turning point came with the appearance of the first individual defined by Shrek as an evil soul master.
From that time onward, this class of soul masters—those who took arson, plunder, and every atrocity imaginable as their daily routine, representing absolute evil—began appearing frequently across the Douluo Continent.
And the Angel soul masters became their primary targets of attack.
The Angel families’ circumstances grew bitter once more.
After discovering the symbiotic relationship beneath the surface—that many great powers on the Douluo Continent, such as nobles and soul master sects, secretly kept evil soul masters as their hired thugs—Ye Guyi chose to develop her path in the Sun Moon Empire, where there were very few soul masters.
“Miss Ye, you are truly naive!” Because his current body was younger than hers, Huo Yuhao spoke with an air of seasoned wisdom after hearing her account.