Chapter 163: A Hundred-Thousand-Year Fifth Ring? Huo Yuhao's Disbelief
The biting chill in front of the core storage area's heavy vault doors felt heavy enough to freeze blood. Liu Yuan stood motionless in the center of the ruined, chaotic corridor. His black combat suit snapped and billowed in the freezing drafts that swept through the underground facility. He did not bother casting a single glance over his shoulder toward the shadows a hundred meters away, where Huo Yuhao remained hidden. Instead, his indifferent gaze locked onto the final two obstacles standing in his path: a pair of eight-ring Soul Douluos.
The two veteran Soul Douluos roared, their soul power erupting like twin volcanoes. Blinding light flared around them as they desperately prepared to summon their Martial Soul Avatars for a final, life-or-death struggle.
But before their ultimate techniques could fully materialize, Liu Yuan moved. He displayed no frantic urgency, no desperate rush to interrupt them. He merely lifted his right foot with agonizing slowness, hovering it over the frost-covered floor for a fraction of a second, before stomping down heavily.
BOOM.
A dull, suffocating shockwave of soul power blasted outward, using Liu Yuan as its epicenter. The sheer density of his aura cracked the alloy floor tiles, sending shards of metal skittering against the walls. Immediately after, rings of condensed energy began to spiral up from beneath his boots, illuminating the dim corridor with their radiant glow.
Yellow. Purple. Purple. Black.
The emergence of those first four soul rings cast a heavy, suffocating weight over the surviving Soul Engineers. Yet, despite the immense pressure bearing down on their chests, this configuration remained within the boundaries of their logic. A Soul King. A powerful one, but still just a Soul King.
Then, the fifth ring ascended.
The moment it breached the surface of the floor, the ambient air in the entire corridor stopped flowing. Gravity itself seemed to warp and crush downward.
It was red. Not just red, but a deep, visceral crimson that resembled freshly spilled blood. Endless killing intent and an ancient, supreme majesty poured from its glowing band, washing over the corridor like a tidal wave of slaughter. The bloody luminescence reflected off the metallic walls, dyeing the encroaching frost a stunning, terrifying scarlet.
Every Soul Master alive knew what that color meant. It was the ultimate symbol of supreme power, the highest miracle achievable in the soul master world: a hundred-thousand-year soul ring.
"Red... red?"
A high-ranking Soul Engineer, currently in the middle of charging a heavy soul cannon, began to tremble. His hands shook so violently that the internal arrays of his weapon misaligned. The half-charged barrel let out a harsh, discordant screech of failing energy, sparking dangerously against his armor. Yet, the man did not even flinch. His widened, bloodshot eyes were glued to the crimson halo spinning lazily around Liu Yuan's waist.
"This is impossible! This is absolutely impossible!" another guard shrieked, his voice cracking under the sheer terror. "He is only a Soul King! How could a fifth-rank body possibly withstand the backlash of a hundred-thousand-year soul ring?!"
"Am I hallucinating? Is that really his fifth ring?!" one of the eight-ring Soul Douluos bellowed. His previously rock-solid soul power fluctuations fractured, spiraling into violent chaos as his mind failed to process the sight before him.
According to the most classified research records within Mingde Hall, even a genius possessing a top-tier mutated martial soul could only endure a ten-thousand-year ring at the fifth slot. That was the absolute biological limit of humanity. The scene unfolding before their eyes did not just bend the rules of cultivation, it took their established common sense, threw it on the ground, and crushed it into dust.
A hundred meters away, hidden deep within the shadows, Huo Yuhao stood paralyzed, looking as though he had been struck by a physical bolt of lightning. Because his Spiritual Detection Sharing had been active this entire time, he was not just seeing the visual spectacle. He could feel it. The terrifying, oceanic reserves of violent energy contained within that blood-red ring washed over his spiritual senses, vast and unfathomable, dwarfing his own power into absolute insignificance.
'Brother Skydream... Snow Empress...'Huo Yuhao's voice trembled violently within his Spiritual Sea. His mind went entirely blank for a long, agonizing moment.'I am not seeing things, am I?''His fifth soul ring... is red?'Inside his Spiritual Sea, the usually boisterous Skydream Iceworm and the aloof Snow Empress were plunged into a dead, heavy silence. The shock radiating from the two great soul beasts far exceeded the disbelief they felt when Liu Yuan had casually slaughtered a Soul Sage just moments prior.'Impossible... This completely defies the fundamental laws of soul ring absorption!'Skydream Iceworm's massive golden body thrashed anxiously through the golden waters of the Spiritual Sea, creating massive waves of mental energy.'Yuhao, listen to me,'Skydream continued, his tone frantic.'Although the soul rings you possess are technically of a higher tier, that was only possible because I actively sacrificed myself! I voluntarily sealed my own origin energy and fed it to your body in tiny, manageable batches. That is an exception among exceptions!''But this ring of his...' The Snow Empress's usually cold, ethereal voice was laced with unmatched gravity.'The energy radiating from it is extremely violent. It is wild, heavy, and completely untamed. This was clearly absorbed by brute force...'She paused, her spiritual projection flickering with disbelief.'But he is merely a Soul King. How could a human of that rank forcibly absorb a hundred-thousand-year soul beast's ring without his physical body exploding into a mist of blood? This is completely wrong!'
Huo Yuhao ground his teeth together so hard his jaw ached. The lingering frustration he had felt toward Liu Yuan, a feeling he thought he had finally managed to suppress, now rapidly mutated into a suffocating, leaden oppression. It pressed down on his chest, squeezing his lungs until he could barely draw a breath.
He stared at the broad back bathed in that demonic, blood-red luminescence. His fingernails dug deeply into his palms, drawing thin lines of blood. Only one thought echoed through his chaotic mind: Is this person really Liu Yuan? How is it possible for him to have become this monstrously strong?
Liu Yuan, however, had no intention of giving his enemies the luxury of time to process their shock.
"Fifth Soul Ability—Forbidden Domain."
His voice was flat, devoid of any inflection, yet it carried the weight of a judge passing a death sentence. The blood-red fifth ring at his feet flared with a blinding, apocalyptic brilliance.
The physical space of the underground corridor violently shuddered, as if reality itself was being forcibly severed by an invisible blade. A massive, hemispherical domain erupted outward, using Liu Yuan as its absolute center. It pulsed with a dark, ghostly purple light, instantly expanding to swallow the entire front line of Soul Engineers, dragging the two eight-ring Soul Douluos into its depths.
The atmosphere shifted instantly, plunging into an eerie, suffocating dread. The Soul Engineers trapped within the Forbidden Domain widened their eyes in pure horror. They frantically tried to draw upon the ambient energy in the air, only to realize that their connection to the outside world's soul power had been cleanly and absolutely severed. They were isolated. Cut off.
But the nightmare had only just begun. The very fabric of the void rippled, and countless thick, dark purple chains slithered out from the empty air. These chains were etched with eerie, glowing runes that pulsed like beating hearts. Like vipers striking their prey, the chains lashed out, densely binding the limbs and torsos of every single person trapped within the domain.
"What the hell is this?! Break for me!" one of the eight-ring Soul Douluos roared. His entire body ignited with blinding soul power. The muscles in his arms swelled to grotesque proportions, veins bulging against his skin as he attempted to shatter the chains using the brute force of a high-tier expert.
Yet, his desperate struggle proved entirely futile. Every time he managed to snap a single link, three more chains violently erupted from the void to take its place. Worse still, the moment the dark purple metal made contact with his soul power defenses, it did not shatter. Instead, the eerie runes flared to life, crazily absorbing and dissolving his origin soul power, draining his strength by the second.
"It is useless."
Liu Yuan's cold, detached voice echoed through every corner of the Forbidden Domain. It did not come from his mouth; it reverberated from the very walls of the purple space, omnipresent and absolute. "In this space, my will is the only law."
Without missing a beat, he initiated the slaughter.
"Dominator."
Within Liu Yuan's eyes, the terrifying Double Pupils, three distinct irises arranged in a perfect, triangular formation, began to shift. Slowly, firmly, they overlapped toward the center of his eyes, merging into a single, abyssal void the moment the Forbidden Domain stabilized.
As the pupils fused, a supreme, tyrannical aura descended upon the corridor. It was the aura of a true Dominator, a presence that looked down upon all living beings as nothing more than dust. Within the dark purple space of the domain, Liu Yuan's physical body blurred, turning into an untraceable phantom.
He was no longer bound by the physical rules of momentum or friction. His silhouette flickered and warped, shuttling instantaneously through the dark purple expanse. Every time his shadow materialized, a life was violently extinguished.
Squelch.
Liu Yuan materialized directly behind a six-ring Soul Engineer. His right hand flattened into a rigid blade. A terrifying surge of Qilin power flashed across his fingertips for a fraction of a second before he thrust his hand forward, effortlessly piercing through the heavy armor, the flesh, and directly into the man's back. The Soul Engineer did not even have the breath to scream. His heart was instantly pulverized, his lifeless body slumping forward as Liu Yuan withdrew his bloodless hand.
"He is over there! Attack! Kill him!" the second Soul Douluo shrieked, his spiritual senses finally catching a glimpse of the phantom. He frantically hoisted his Class 8 melee soul weapon, a massive, humming heavy sword, and swung it with enough force to cleave a mountain, hacking savagely at the spot where Liu Yuan had just stood.
But the blade only bit into empty air, slicing cleanly through a fading afterimage. In his Dominator state, Liu Yuan's speed transcended mere movement; it was akin to true spatial teleportation. Before the heavy sword even completed its downward arc, Liu Yuan had already manifested directly on the Soul Douluo's exposed flank.
"You can join them," Liu Yuan stated, his tone as dry as bone.
His right hand shot out, his fingers clamping down like a vice grip directly onto the crown of the Soul Douluo's skull.
An overbearing, tyrannical force poured directly from his palm into the man's head. The Soul Douluo's eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets. Beneath his skin, every single meridian, every soul power pathway, violently ruptured simultaneously, completely shattered by a destructive force that simply did not belong to the Soul King level.
Even with the formidable cultivation of an eight-ring expert, under the absolute suppression of the Forbidden Domain and the lethal enhancement of the Dominator state, the veteran was as fragile as a flickering candle in a hurricane. He collapsed, dead before his knees even hit the floor.
In the span of a few dozen breaths, the massacre concluded. The entrance to the core storage area, which had previously been heavily fortified by Mingde Hall's elites, was now entirely devoid of standing defenders.
The Soul Emperors and Soul Sages who usually walked through the world with high and mighty arrogance, and even the two revered eight-ring Soul Douluos, were now nothing more than a pile of mangled, lifeless corpses strewn across the floor of the Forbidden Domain.
Liu Yuan exhaled slowly, retracting his aura. The dark purple spatial barrier dissolved into wisps of fading light, revealing the ruined corridor once more. The only difference was the thick, metallic scent of blood and the grotesque carpet of broken Soul Engineers paving the way forward.
Hidden near the ventilation duct far behind the carnage, Huo Yuhao was plunged into an unmatched state of absolute numbness.
"This... how is this possible?" Huo Yuhao muttered to himself. His voice was hollow, dripping with a primal fear of the unknown. "A Soul King... mass slaughtering Soul Emperors and Soul Sages... and even effortlessly crushing two eight-ring Soul Douluos?"
Within his Spiritual Sea, the Snow Empress and Skydream Iceworm remained deathly silent. This horrifying battle record had completely and utterly overturned their tens of thousands of years of understanding regarding the human soul master ranking system.
In front of a monster like Liu Yuan, cultivation ranks truly seemed to be nothing more than meaningless numbers.
Liu Yuan completely ignored the terrified gaze burning into his back. His boots stepped heavily onto the blood-stained floor, his steady footsteps echoing through the silence as he walked slowly toward the heavy core door, which was still thickly coated in frost.
He reached out, his palm hovering inches from the frozen metal. He could feel it clearly now, the increasingly intense, deeply familiar, and fiercely arrogant aura of Ultimate Ice radiating from behind the barrier.
"Snow Empress... you are mine now," Liu Yuan murmured, his voice low and resolute.
His right hand suddenly clamped down on the metal, his muscles surging with explosive force. The incredibly sturdy alloy door began to groan, emitting a teeth-grinding screech of metallic distortion as it buckled under his Dominator-level physical strength. With a deafening boom, the massive vault door was violently ripped from its hinges and collapsed inward.
Dust and frost billowed outward. Liu Yuan strode confidently into the secret room, his piercing gaze instantly locking onto the object resting in the very center of the chamber: the God Sealing Platform, pulsing with an eerie, ghostly blue light.
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