Chapter 39: Mad Wild Orangutan? Blue Poison Beast?!
A single shichen slipped by in silence.
Lei Bao was the first to stride into the great hall. His steps were steady and rhythmically precise, as though he trod upon the beat of an invisible war drum, every footfall broadcasting the calm, measured confidence of a man who had fulfilled his mission. After a period of regulated breathing, the soul power he'd expended in his earlier battle had already recovered by more than half. Faint, crackling arcs of electricity danced intermittently across his frame—the natural, unconscious pressure of his Thunderclap Tiger martial soul, silently proclaiming his strength.
Half a pace behind him followed three figures, each utterly distinct in bearing, yet all radiating the formidable aura of Soul Emperor powerhouses. They had once been city lords ruling their own domains as unchallenged overlords. Now, fate had steered them here.
Long Ziyun stood tall and straight as a pine, his features cold and chiseled like ice. His close-fitting, ice-blue martial attire seemed to still carry the bone-deep chill unique to Icewolf City. His piercing gaze swept across every detail of the great hall with the unblinking intensity of a falcon. Deep within the pupils of his Sky-Wing Tyrannosaurus lineage churned a primal hunger for power, intertwined with a cautious, calculating assessment of his new allegiance.
Yan Luo was the very image of a northern warrior-lord—a frame towering and solid as a mountain, knotted muscles straining beneath bronze-hued skin. With every step, he seemed to carry the sheer, crushing weight of the earth. Straightforward by nature, his broad face wore an expression of earnest simplicity and undisguised curiosity. Unlike Long Ziyun, whose thoughts ran deep and hidden, Yan Luo's attitude was simpler: Since I'm here, I might as well settle in. The Mad Wild Orangutan martial soul had gifted him not only unmatched strength and defense but, it seemed, had also shaped this blunt, direct temperament.
Among the three, the expression most tangled with complexity belonged, without question, to Feng Chuixue. A faint pallor still lingered on his face—nearly imperceptible, but there. It was the lingering trace of injuries not yet fully mended since he'd taken Lei Bao's peak blow head-on. The once-shadowed, cunning gleam in his eyes had now receded considerably. In its place surged a tide of emotions too intricate to name: a deep, visceral wariness born from the searing recognition of Lei Bao's absolute power; bitter vexation aimed squarely at his own prior misjudgments. But more than either, there was a watchful, recalibrated caution—the wariness of a man who, shaken by a vaster and more terrifying force than he'd ever imagined, had been forced to reassess his own place in the order of things. And perhaps... buried beneath that caution, a sliver of something else, something he himself was unwilling to examine too closely. A hidden, secret anticipation.
The cold, sinister aura unique to his Blue Poison Beast martial soul had been deliberately suppressed to its faintest whisper.
Lei Bao's eyes, sharp as lightning, instantly locked onto the figure seated upon the throne at the far end of the hall—a delicate, almost petite silhouette framed by ornaments of coral and pearl.
Without the slightest hesitation, he strode three paces forward. He clasped his fist in salute and dropped to one knee in a motion clean, crisp, executed with soldierly precision. His voice, resonant and powerful, filled the hall with heartfelt reverence:
"Your Holiness, Lei Bao has not failed his mission! I have successfully brought Lord Long Ziyun of Icewolf City, Lord Yan Luo of Wildlands City, and Lord Feng Chuixue of Northsea City to seek an audience!"
The words rippled outward like a stone cast into still water, ringing clearly in the ears of the three behind him. And at the same moment, as if by unspoken agreement, all three directed their gazes toward the one seated upon the throne—the supreme leader of the Church of the Water God, the rumored incarnation of the Water God herself: Furina.
The first impression was enough to send ripples of astonishment and near-disbelief coursing through all three hearts at once.
She was far, far too young. She seemed scarcely more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. Her skin was so fair it appeared almost translucent, her features so exquisitely wrought she could have been a doll carved by a master artisan who'd poured his life's passion into every detail. Her long hair, a striking blend of silver-white with blue undertones, was styled into an elaborate and elegant coiffure. Her azure eyes, limpid as the purest alpine lakes, sparkled with lively intelligence—yet, at the same time, carried a hint of something almost otherworldly, a distant, transcendent luminescence.
She was robed in an intricately designed blue-and-white gown of remarkable artistry, its layered skirts cascading like surging ocean waves. Taken as a whole, she looked less like a religious leader capable of stirring the winds and clouds of the continent—one who could make even a powerhouse like Lei Bao bow willingly—and more like a princess meant to be kept and cherished deep within some palace, untainted by the world's harsh edges.
Yet, the moment the three focused their perception and truly sensed what lay beneath that youthful exterior, whatever faint, fleeting contempt had stirred at her extreme youth dissolved in an instant—like snow beneath the sun.
The soul power fluctuations faintly emanating from that delicate frame were unmistakably at the Soul Ancestor level! Such a young Soul Ancestor, combined with the twin martial souls Lei Bao had mentioned... The sheer terror of her talent was indeed enough to rival—perhaps even surpass—those so-called monsters cultivated by Shrek Academy.
The three of them had only reached the Soul Emperor realm after decades of bitter, grueling cultivation, supplemented by elixirs and karmic opportunities. And this young woman? She had only just begun her journey, and already displayed such astonishing promise.
But that was not what shook their spirits to the core.
When they had entered, they'd glimpsed the one called Neuvillette—the Water God's Envoy—handling official matters in a side chamber. The energy fluctuations emanating from his person were as vast and unfathomable as the deepest abyss, as boundless as the sea. They far, far exceeded those of any ordinary Titled Douluo. He was, at the very least, a powerhouse at the Hyper Douluo level! With such a being seated in support, this Lady Pope—even if her own cultivation was still relatively shallow—could walk unhindered across the entire Star Luo Empire.
Feng Chuixue felt this most acutely of all. The moment he'd sensed that faint yet seemingly soul-crushing pressure radiating from Neuvillette, his qi and blood had roiled violently in his chest. He'd nearly aggravated his internal injuries on the spot, a coppery sweetness surging up his throat before he forcibly swallowed it back down. Inside, his heart was already a tempestuous sea, churning with emotions too tangled to name.
"That bastard Lei Bao...!" Feng Chuixue very nearly cursed aloud in his heart. A fierce, suffocating wave of indignation and belated dread seized him. "If he had only told me earlier that a Hyper Douluo stood guard over this Church of the Water God, would I, Feng Chuixue, have been so... so stupid as to take his fully-amplified sixth soul skill head-on?!"
He recalled the earlier duel—how he'd schemed and calculated at every turn, convinced that his intellect and the unique traits of his martial soul would be enough to maneuver through. And then, in the face of absolute power, it had all crumbled in an instant. Now, looking back, that whole display made him seem little more than a capering clown. Before a Hyper Douluo, every last one of his schemes and stratagems was laughably, pathetically futile.
Yet after the fury and the resentment had run their course, a bone-deep chill slithered up his spine. Then, that chill was replaced—strangely—by a peculiar, almost fatalistic release. He glanced sidelong at Lei Bao, who knelt in earnest reverence, and a tangled, unreadable emotion filled his chest.
"Perhaps... Lei Bao's approach was the correct one after all," Feng Chuixue reflected darkly.
"Even if he'd plainly told me then that a Hyper Douluo stood behind this church, given my deeply suspicious nature, I likely wouldn't have fully believed it without experiencing it myself. I might even have thought he was bluffing. After all, who could easily believe that a newly risen sect with only a city's worth of reputation could have such a heaven-supporting titan at its back? Only by personally feeling this soul-crushing pressure—this force that teetered between despair and hope—could someone like me, who never sheds tears until he sees the coffin, truly and completely face reality."
In this single moment, every last shred of wishful thinking, every drop of lingering defiance, and all his excessive, convoluted calculations—crumbled utterly to dust. Before the unbridgeable chasm of absolute power, all schemes and shortcuts were nothing but futile flailing. To attach himself to a power that commanded a Hyper Douluo... for a man like him, whose unique martial soul had drawn suspicion and hindered his path at every turn—was this not, perhaps, a shortcut to a far wider world?
Just as the thoughts of the three men surged and churned in their hearts, Furina on her throne spoke. Her voice was crisp and pleasing, carrying the lively vitality unique to a young woman, yet underscored with an undeniable note of authority:
"Well done, Lei Bao. You may rise." Her gaze shifted toward Long Ziyun and the others, alight with a measured, deliberate curiosity. "And you three city lords—no need for excessive formality." Her eyes swept over them with evident interest before returning to Lei Bao. "So these three are the talents you spoke of—the ones willing to join our Church of the Water God?"
Lei Bao rose at her command and stepped to the side, ceding the stage to the three city lords.
Long Ziyun drew a steadying breath, pressed down the waves still surging in his heart, and stepped forward. He clasped his fist and spoke in a deep, solemn voice: "This one is Long Ziyun, Lord of Icewolf City. Rank 67 assault-type Soul Emperor. My martial soul is the Sky-Wing Tyrannosaurus."
Yan Luo followed, his voice booming like a great bronze bell, resonant with the unpolished boldness of the north: "I'm Yan Luo, Lord of Wildlands City! Rank 65 assault-type Soul Emperor. My martial soul's the Mad Wild Orangutan!" As he spoke, he unconsciously thumped his own chest—solid and broad as a slab of rock—with a dull, heavy thud.
"Mad Wild Orangutan?!"
Furina, who had been reclining with a touch of languid ease, felt her eyes fly wide open the instant those three words registered. Her body instinctively leaned forward. Her face was a mask of pure, unfiltered astonishment—and something else. Something that bordered on the surreal, the utterly absurd.
What the—?! A Mad Wild Orangutan?! This art style... Inside Furina's mind, it was as if ten thousand wild horses were stampeding at once. Isn't that a character from the neighboring set?! How did he cross dimensions into the Douluo Continent?! Could he also be...? She forcibly swallowed the powerful urge to demand, "Where is your Black Iron Beast Legion?!" Instead, she simply stared at Yan Luo with an exceedingly peculiar, intensely probing gaze, sweeping him up and down, as if trying to unearth the faintest trace of a "kindred spirit" buried somewhere beneath his guileless expression and towering frame.
Yan Luo, for his part, was made profoundly uncomfortable by her openly unabashed scrutiny. He scratched his head in bewilderment, his bell-like eyes brimming with pure, honest confusion.
Then Feng Chuixue also took a step forward. He quietly steadied his breathing, doing his utmost to make his voice sound calm and respectful: "This one is Feng Chuixue, Lord of Northsea City. Rank 65 control-type Soul Emperor. My martial soul... is the Blue Poison Beast."
"Pfft—cough, cough, hack!"
Furina had just lifted her cup of delicately fragrant floral tea—meant to settle her nerves after the first shock—when the two words "Blue Poison Beast" slammed into her ears. The tea went down the wrong pipe entirely. She nearly sprayed it through her nose. A violent, wracking cough seized her, so fierce it squeezed involuntary tears from the corners of her eyes.
"Your Holiness!" Lei Bao immediately shot her a deeply concerned look.