Chapter 161: Finding the Snow Empress! Reencountering Huo Yuhao
Deep within the subterranean corridors of Mingde Hall, harsh, cold-toned lights refracted off the seamless alloy walls, casting slivers of icy glare across the metallic floor.
The heavy, rhythmic shudder of explosions echoed from the surface far above, shaking dust from the ceiling joints. Elder Li and Elder Kael were currently tearing the upper levels apart, wreaking absolute havoc on the academy's defenses.
Liu Yuan stood motionless at a four-way intersection. Within his eyes, the purple-gold divine light of his Double Pupils pulsed with an unpredictable rhythm, mapping the unseen world.
He had allowed Electrolux to fully open his Divine Sense, casting a wide net to locate the specific Soul Power signature of the Snow Empress.
Yet, the search yielded nothing but static.
'I will try again,' Electrolux's voice echoed softly within Liu Yuan's Spiritual Sea.
The Necromancer's Divine Sense fluctuations were more stable than they had ever been. Nourished by the Gold of Life, his perception spread outward like an ethereal, fine-threaded mesh. It slipped effortlessly past the crisscrossing alarm lasers of the security Soul Tools, sinking deeper into the core research sectors.
Liu Yuan did not remain idle. He moved. His boots made no sound against the metal plating as he blurred through the corridors at high speed, pushing his Double Pupils to their absolute limit.
The truth-breaking authority of his eyes peeled back the thick layers of alloy, revealing the chaotic flow of energy behind the walls. He searched for anomalies, for the slightest deviation in the facility's power grid.
However, Mingde Hall's architectural layout was a nightmare of engineering. It was heavily reinforced with insulating rare metals and saturated with specialized Soul Tool formations designed specifically to blind spiritual perception. Pinpointing a single target in this sprawling maze was proving difficult.
'I need to move faster. The commotion above is massive, but Mingde Hall's internal reaction speed is elite,' Liu Yuan thought, his expression remaining perfectly placid.
He pivoted around a sharp, right-angle corner and stepped directly into the path of a fully armed internal guard patrol.
A squad of ten men halted in their tracks. Two Level 6 Soul Engineers led the formation, flanked by eight Level 5 subordinates. Heavy, high-caliber ray rifles were already gripped tightly in their hands, their faces tight with hurried panic as they rushed toward the surface explosion zones.
"Who goes there!" the lead Level 6 Soul Engineer barked. His finger clamped down on the trigger guard, the crystalline core of his rifle whining as it instantly charged to maximum capacity.
Liu Yuan's face remained a mask of absolute indifference. Not a single muscle twitched in surprise.
Poison Undying and the Body Sect elders had successfully lured away the vast majority of the high-level combatants, but Mingde Hall's foundation was too deep to be entirely emptied. A core garrison would always remain to protect the subterranean vaults.
Leaving them alive was not an option. If they pinned him down and triggered a localized lockdown, his window to seize the Snow Empress would slam shut.
Fortunately, for the current Liu Yuan, this level of opposition was nothing more than dust in his path.
Against a squad of rank fifty and sixty Soul Engineers, he did not even bother to manifest his fifth Soul Ring.
His stride did not break. He did not even slow down.
The exact moment the squad leader pulled his trigger, the inner pupil of Liu Yuan's left eye violently contracted.
A beam of dark golden light, the Spirit Ray, erupted from his eye.
It tore through the air in a razor-sharp arc, bypassing the blinding flash of the enemy's rifle entirely, and slammed dead center into the lead Soul Engineer's forehead.
There was no dramatic explosion. There was only the sickening, high-pitched sizzle of Soul Power being instantly eradicated.
The Level 6 Soul Engineer's eyes rolled back. He did not even have the breath to scream before his brain and Spiritual Sea were violently shredded into nothingness. His heavy rifle clattered to the deck as his lifeless body crumpled like a cut string.
"Attack! Kill him!" the second leader roared, his voice cracking with sudden terror.
A torrential downpour of high-heat energy rays illuminated the corridor, converging on Liu Yuan's position.
Liu Yuan simply rolled his shoulders. The Qilin Precious Technique flared to life.
A layer of exquisite, dark blue scales rippled across the flesh of his right arm, locking together like divine armor. He did not dodge. He did not raise a shield. He merely pulled his right arm back and threw a single, devastating punch directly into the oncoming barrage.
The overbearing, tyrannical energy of the Qilin erupted from his knuckles, forming a compressed shockwave of sheer kinetic force. The shockwave collided with the concentrated laser fire, fire hot enough to melt refined iron, and shattered the beams into harmless sparks of dissipating light.
Before the sparks could even hit the floor, Liu Yuan vanished.
He became a streak of dark blue lightning, crashing into the center of the squad.
Crack. Snap.
The sickening sound of shattering bone and caving ribcages echoed down the hall in rapid succession. Every casual palm strike, every short-range heavy punch Liu Yuan delivered carried the weight of ultimate power. These Soul Engineers, men who relied entirely on the metal in their hands rather than the strength of their bodies, were as fragile as porcelain dolls against a sledgehammer.
Ten breaths. That was all it took.
The corridor returned to a deathly, heavy silence, broken only by the dripping of blood onto the alloy floor.
Liu Yuan casually flicked a drop of crimson from his knuckles, stepped over the mangled corpses, and accelerated once more.
He encountered three more patrol squads along his descent. The results were identical. Clean, ruthlessly efficient slaughter. He left no survivors, and he left no time for them to trigger the alarms.
Just as he cleared the final checkpoint, the previously silent Divine Sense of Electrolux jolted violently within his mind.
'Over there!'The ancient Necromancer's voice carried a rare, heavy gravity.'One hundred and eighty meters underground. The third sealed storage vault on the left.'Liu Yuan shifted his trajectory instantly.'I have sensed an incredibly pure force of ice and snow,'Electrolux continued, his tone turning sharp.'It carries a distinct trace of Origin energy. Although it is heavily suppressed by some form of high-tier Soul Tool containment vessel, that aura of ultimate cold is unmistakable!''Finally found it.'
Liu Yuan pushed his speed to the absolute maximum. His body blurred into a phantom afterimage, tearing through the complex, winding network of subterranean pipes and maintenance shafts.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of Mingde Hall's underground sector, the catastrophic surface assault led by Poison Undying had drawn the attention of another infiltrator.
Huo Yuhao crouched tightly within the cramped confines of a ventilation duct. His face was pale, slick with a thin layer of nervous sweat.
As a mere exchange student sent by Shrek Academy, he was strictly ordered to remain in his dormitory during any crisis. But the moment the first explosion rocked the academy, the entities residing within his Spiritual Sea had gone completely berserk.
'Our chance has come!'the Ice Empress's voice shrieked in his mind, trembling with a violent, unmatched urgency.'Yuhao! No matter what method you have to use, no matter the cost, you must save her! That aura... that is definitely Xue'er!'
Driven by their frantic demands, Huo Yuhao had slipped into the chaos of Mingde Hall to investigate.
He knew the risk was astronomical, but he also recognized the reality of the situation. Mingde Hall's defensive perimeter had been gutted by the surface attack. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
'Ice Empress, do not panic. I am already moving toward the coordinates,' Huo Yuhao replied internally, gritting his teeth as he crawled forward.
He kept his Spiritual Detection Sharing active at all times, carefully mapping out the faint infrared tripwires and thermal sensors lining the ductwork.
Through the frantic explanations of the Ice Empress and the Skydream Iceworm, he now understood the truth. The so-called Soul Beast Embryo that Sun Moon Imperial Soul Engineering Academy had acquired was not just some rare beast. It was the Snow Empress herself, the absolute ruler and head of the Three Great Heavenly Kings of the Far North.
Huo Yuhao's heart pounded against his ribs. He wanted to fish in these troubled waters. If he could somehow pull off a miracle and rescue the Snow Empress right under Mingde Hall's nose, the benefits to his future cultivation and his Spirit Eyes would be immeasurable.
What Huo Yuhao did not know, however, was that a far more dangerous predator was already closing in on the exact same prey.
Back in the depths, Liu Yuan tore through the final layer of reinforced blast doors and arrived at the entrance of the core storage sector.
The environment here shifted drastically. The sleek metallic walls were coated in a thick, creeping layer of white frost. The biting cold radiating from the vault was so intense that even the highest-grade thermal insulation materials could not completely contain it.
But the path to the vault was not empty.
A line of grim-faced Soul Masters stood in tight formation, blocking the only corridor leading to the door. These were the true die-hard elites of Mingde Hall, the final line of defense.
They maintained a flawless defensive perimeter, their hands gripping heavy, close-combat Soul Tools of Level 7 or higher. The air hummed with the lethal charge of their weapons.
Liu Yuan slowed to a halt, his Double Pupils contracting slightly as he swept his gaze over the formation.
His eyes locked onto the two figures sitting cross-legged on either side of the massive vault door.
Two old men. Both possessed snow-white hair and long, flowing beards, but the sheer density of the Soul Power radiating from their bodies felt like a physical weight pressing down on the corridor.
Eight rings. Two Soul Douluos.
These two elders were clearly the final, desperate insurance policy Mingde Hall had left behind, sworn to guard the Snow Empress embryo with their lives.
'Two Soul Douluos, huh...' Liu Yuan thought, his face completely devoid of fear as he coldly analyzed his opponents.
Given the sheer gap in cultivation realms, forcing his way through two eight-ring experts would require him to expend a significant amount of effort and reveal a portion of his true strength.
'Still, it has to be done.'
He slowly exhaled, his muscles coiling like steel springs as he prepared to manifest his Martial Soul and tear the corridor apart.
But just before he could strike, the peripheral vision of his Double Pupils caught a faint, almost imperceptible distortion in the air.
Coupled with Electrolux's hyper-keen Divine Sense, Liu Yuan's gaze shifted slightly, glancing toward a heavily shadowed corner near the ceiling vents, roughly a hundred meters to his rear.
There, huddled in the darkness, was Huo Yuhao.
The Shrek Academy student was using his Imitation Soul Skill to perfectly blend into the metallic background, erasing his thermal and visual footprint. To anyone else, the corner was completely empty.
But under the absolute truth-breaking gaze of the Double Pupils, Huo Yuhao might as well have been standing under a spotlight.
The corners of Liu Yuan's mouth twitched upward in a dry, knowing smirk.
'Huo Yuhao?'Liu Yuan mused inwardly, a dangerous glint flashing through his purple-gold eyes.'He really did come.'
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