Chapter 54: I'm Dropping the Act
Hearing Furina's words, the Tianmeng Ice Silkworm instantly exploded. "Hey! Little Furina! Who're you calling a silkworm grub?! Who're you saying has less combat power than a thousand-year soul beast?! Is this silkworm's million years of cultivation just for show?! And what's all this about a mount?! That's utterly silkworm-shaming!"
Furina completely ignored Tianmeng's protests and continued addressing the Ice Emperor, her words pouring out as rapidly as if she were delivering some grand proclamation. "Also—he's not a free agent anymore! He has already honorably become Huo Yuhao's intelligent soul ring! Have you ever heard of such a thing? The first intelligent soul ring in all of history! So Huo Yuhao is now his host. In a certain sense, Huo Yuhao is his boss! Understand?!"
"Intelligent soul ring?" A flicker of bewilderment crossed the Ice Emperor's eyes. This unfamiliar term had clearly touched upon a blind spot in her vast knowledge. But what seized her attention even more was what Furina had said before. "Pope of the Church of the Water God—and the Water God herself? You?"
She carefully probed Furina's aura with her senses. The level of power was, indeed, nothing particularly astonishing. Yet faintly, indistinctly, she could sense a peculiar air emanating from this person—an aura, a lingering trace, that carried the flavor of something exalted. Something that bore the fluctuations of divinity. It held a certain similarity to the presence of the Sea God and other deities she had remotely perceived ten thousand years ago, however faint.
Seeing the Ice Emperor's skeptical, wavering expression, Furina suddenly let out a sigh. She shook her head with feigned profundity, her tone taking on a dramatic, theatrical quality. "Ah... I had wanted to interact with you all as an ordinary person. Yet all it brought me was distance and doubt. Forget it. I'm dropping the act."
As her words fell, she slowly raised her right hand, palm facing upward, fingers slightly parted. The next instant, a soft, warm blue luminescence emerged from beneath the skin of the back of her hand—as if a slumbering star had been abruptly awakened. The light swiftly condensed and extended, tracing out a complex, profoundly esoteric pattern. It was no mundane tattoo or marking. What flowed across it was the pure, transcendent energy of divinity itself. Merely gazing upon it was enough to feel a primal reverence and awe, stirring from the very source of life.
"I'm laying my cards on the table. I am the Water God, Furina—one of the Seven Elemental Gods—and the sole inheritor of the current Water God's divine seat. This is the mark of the Water God's Divine Trial. I trust that with the breadth of experience you two possess, you can discern its authenticity."
The moment that divine mark fully manifested, the air throughout the entire ice cavern seemed to congeal solid. The Ice Emperor and the Tianmeng Ice Silkworm—these two overlords of the Far North, who had lived through spans of time beyond reckoning—found their spiritual fluctuations plunged into an unprecedented, frozen stillness.
"A divine mark... This is the genuine inheritance mark of a First-Class Deity?!" Tianmeng's voice was so shrill it nearly cracked, saturated with disbelief and shock. "You... you truly are... one chosen by the gods?!"
The Ice Emperor made no sound, but her jadeite-like body trembled, imperceptibly. In her crystalline yellow compound eyes, the earlier pride and coldness were utterly displaced by a colossal, world-shaking shock. She had lived for nearly four hundred thousand years. She had, from a great distance, sensed the similar auras that had drifted from those beings who had ascended or descended ten millennia ago—a level of power that transcended soul beasts, transcended mortals, transcending the very rules of the entire world! The source fluctuations emitted by the mark on the back of Furina's hand were pure and supreme, without the slightest trace of falsehood!
Even Huo Yuhao was utterly stunned. He stared blankly at the mark on the back of Furina's hand—radiating a gentle blue light, yet containing boundless, immeasurable majesty—his mind a complete blank.
He had always thought that "Water God" was merely a rather unique title Sister Furina had adopted, or a grand, distant ideal. Never—not once—had he imagined it was an identity this close to the truth, already striding down a path toward concrete reality! Seeing the nearly unhinged reactions of Brother Tianmeng and the Ice Emperor, the authenticity of this divine mark needed no further words.
Furina gave a slight movement of her fingertip, and the radiance of the divine mark on the back of her hand receded inward, slowly fading from view. Yet the invisible, weighty sense of authority it had radiated did not entirely dissipate. She turned her gaze once more toward the trapped Ice Emperor. Her tone regained some of its earlier liveliness, but now carried an indisputable, bedrock-solid confidence. "So then, Ice Emperor—may we now, with calm hearts, continue this conversation about the future?"
She looked evenly at the captive Ice Emperor. "The method Tianmeng has devised to let you keep living is a 'God-Creation Plan.' He willingly became Huo Yuhao's intelligent soul ring because he wants to help Huo Yuhao ascend to godhood. And you are also a part of his plan. You are the second martial soul he has found for Huo Yuhao."
"You wish to survive the next great reckoning. You yearn for the possibility of eternal life. The young man before you—Huo Yuhao—is the future we have chosen. He possesses talent. He possesses potential that even I cannot fully see through. And even more—he possesses the support of all of us: myself, Tianmeng, and, in the future, yet another guide who will join us. If you join us, if you grant him the martial soul of Ultimate Ice, we will gather the strength of all four quarters and forge, together, a god the likes of which has never been seen. And if he truly becomes a god—when that time comes, perhaps we can even bring your dear sister, the Snow Empress, along as well."
She paused, and her voice took on an unshakable finality, as if she were stating a fact that was already hurtling toward reality. "I, Furina, by the name of the Water God, do swear: if you are willing to become his second martial soul, Huo Yuhao will become a god. Furthermore, I declare that he will become one of the mightiest gods this Douluo Continent has ever seen in all its history!"
A deathly silence fell over the ice cavern. Only the mournful howl of the wind deep within the frozen abyss could be heard. The Ice Emperor's crystalline yellow, gemstone-like eyes—for the very first time—truly, earnestly gazed at this seemingly ordinary human youth before her, Huo Yuhao. It was as if she sought to see straight through him, from his soul to his very flesh and blood.
Tianmeng's God-Creation Plan. Furina's divine oath. And that seemingly absurd blueprint for "forging a god," which yet faintly pointed toward the only path of survival. All of this information collided and swirled inside her mind like a raging blizzard, churning against nearly four hundred thousand years of accumulated wisdom. To survive—or to perish? To cling to the pride of the Far North's sovereign until she scattered into the frozen winds along with the ice and snow—or to wager everything on this human youth's nebulous, ethereal road to godhood?
The long, drawn-out silence congealed in the frigid air, as if even time itself had been frozen solid by the extreme cold in this place.
And at last, the Ice Emperor's cold, crystalline voice slowly rang out—carrying a faint, almost imperceptible tremor that would decide the course of fate.
"Creating a god... Specifically... how is it done?"
This single question was like the very first crack appearing upon the walls of pride she had guarded for hundreds of thousands of years. The Tianmeng Ice Silkworm's spiritual fluctuations erupted with uncontrollable, ecstatic joy. And at the corner of Furina's lips, a mysterious, knowing smile curled upward—the smile of one who held everything firmly within her grasp.
Huo Yuhao held his breath. He knew that a decision capable of altering the very balance of the entire Douluo Continent was about to be made—right here, in this desolate, uninhabited ice cavern of the Far North—by the trapped Heavenly King herself, spoken from her own lips.