Chapter 558.3 - Complementing Yin and Yang, the Second Soul Core
The aura that was radiating from the ice crystal belonged to the Snow Empress.
What is she doing?!
Huo Yuhao was certain that the Snow Empress could control his Ultimate Ice soul power. But he also knew that she should not be able to absorb it. Hence, she must have expended a lot of her spiritual awareness in order to compress his soul power.
However, there was no time for him to ask any questions right now. Since she had already begun the process, it could not be stopped.
As his spiritual power continued to circulate, the air around it trembled gently. Because Huo Yuhao was the owner of the spiritual soul core, his control over the soul core was definitely a lot better than Li Ya’s. After his focus was shifted onto the spiritual soul core, he managed to make it fall into a half-asleep state, which allowed him to extract his soul power without any interference from it. Half of the soul power was fused into the rhombus-shaped crystal near the Snow Empress, while the other half was absorbed by the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion’s torso bone, which was being controlled by the Ice Empress.
The soul power within Huo Yuhao’s body started to become less and less.
Finally, after an extremely long time, the spiritual soul core’s surroundings no longer had any soul power fluctuations. All of Huo Yuhao’s soul power had left the soul core and entered his body.
Even then, the Ice Empress and Snow Empress did not stop what they were doing. They continued to absorb and attract the soul power. Hence, Huo Yuhao’s body was starting to be emptied of soul power.
Huo Yuhao was starting to understand what the two Empresses were planning to do. With their help, he could save an enormous amount of effort for the formation of his second soul core! Yes, I must succeed!
The Ice Empress and Snow Empress seemed as though they had accelerated their attraction and absorption rate at the same time. The soul power in Huo Yuhao’s body seemed to be vanishing at an increasing rate. Very soon, all of his soul power was concentrated at those two places, leaving his entire body devoid of soul power. This made him feel weak as the trembling of his spiritual soul core intensified. It was craving energy! Even though it was a spiritual soul core, its thirst for soul power was still considerable.
The Snow Empress’ voice rang inside Huo Yuhao’s head. “Yuhao, I am about to begin now. The subsequent process will probably be painful. When I start to form your second soul core, your spiritual soul core will put up a strong resistance. This is because it will subconsciously believe that someone is here to invade its territory. Hence, it will retaliate violently. What you need to do is to stabilize it at all costs. Try your best to stop it from interfering with my work. Li Ya, be prepared to help Yuhao when necessary. Skydream, I need you to continue to protect us from the external environment.”
Huo Yuhao acknowledged the Snow Empress’ words with a thought. At the same time, he tried to gather his spiritual power in readiness for the next step.
It was definitely an extremely uncomfortable thing to curb one’s innate ability. However, Huo Yuhao was able to pull it off because of his superior control that came along with his spiritual power.
Suddenly, a small stream of soul power emerged within Huo Yuhao’s empty body.
This stream of soul power—which was coming from Huo Yuhao’s dantian—was released from the rhombus-shaped ice crystal formed by the Snow Empress.
The rhombus-shaped crystal was surrounded by the Ultimate Ice soul power that was revolving around it. This soul power was extremely dense, as it appeared to be almost solid. After releasing this single strand of soul power, it did not seem to affect the cluster of soul power that was revolving around the crystal.
This streak of soul power floated upwards gently until it reached Huo Yuhao’s chest. It first paused there before beginning to circulate in that area.
Huo Yuhao’s spiritual soul core had always been rotating clockwise. However, this strand of soul power seemed to be rotating counterclockwise after pausing at his chest and transforming into a tiny dot.
Its tiny revolutions did not seem to create any significant fluctuations or ripples.
However, there was a strand of soul power which linked this dot all the way back to the dantian, where all the soul power that the Snow Empress had absorbed was stored.
In other words, this meant that the tiny bit of soul power that was circulating there was becoming stronger under the control of the Snow Empress.
The speed of its rotation was not particularly fast. The rate at which its power was increasing was not particularly fast either. However, its rotation was extremely stable. Meanwhile, the Ice Jade Empress Scorpion’s torso bone was glistening under the Ice Empress’ control as it formed a partition between the external world and Huo Yuhao’s chest. It seemed to prevent the external environment from detecting the energy within Huo Yuhao’s chest.
“Yuhao, we cannot completely isolate the Ultimate Ice soul power which is rotating counterclockwise in your chest. If we allow that to happen, your spiritual soul core and new soul core would be destructively incompatible once we remove the partition between them. Your body would not be able to contain the destructive conflict between them, and eventually explode. Hence, we must allow your spiritual soul core to continually adapt to its existence. We must train it to accept its existence instead of rejecting it. This process is also the hardest step in the entire set of procedures. The final push is about to begin. Make sure you get yourself ready.”
“Alright. Let’s do this.” Huo Yuhao answered. He was no longer concentrating on the situation occurring in his dantian and chest area. He focused all his energy on his spiritual soul core.
As the rotation of the Ultimate Ice soul power at his chest started to accelerate, Huo Yuhao’s spiritual soul core seemed to have detected this change, and started to become restless. It first started to tremble lightly before beginning its resistance against Huo Yuhao’s intent.
Because this was his soul core, Huo Yuhao knew exactly what it was trying to do. It wanted to accelerate its rotation and use its powerful spiritual power to destroy the “new fellow” which was trying to challenge its authority.
As Huo Yuhao increased his efforts to control it, the trembling and vibration of the spiritual core became increasingly intense. The Ultimate Ice soul power at his chest area gradually increased to a size which was similar to that of a grain of rice.
Huo Yuhao continued to rein his spiritual soul core in and tried to prevent it from interfering with the Ultimate Ice soul power.
In the meantime, the Snow Empress was trying to continue the formation of the Ultimate Ice soul power in a stable manner. Just as she had explained to Huo Yuhao earlier, she was doing it slowly, so as to allow the spiritual soul core to get used to the existence of a new soul core. However, this adaptation phase naturally had to begin with violent resistance.
Huo Yuhao was starting to feel an intensifying sense of dizziness. When he was trying to fight against his own spiritual soul core, he was effectively fighting against his own source of spiritual power!
Huo Yuhao was starting to see illusions, even though he had been trying to fight back against them. However, the control he was exerting over his spiritual soul core was already causing his spiritual sea to tremble.
At this instant, a melodic song entered his ear. It was Li Ya, who was trying to release her spiritual power. He spiritual power seemed to be filled with the power of temptation as her singing tempted the spiritual sea to stabilize. It also seemed to possess the power to alleviate Huo Yuhao’s pain and soothe the soul core.
In the meantime, the Ultimate Ice soul power’s revolutions were not only becoming stronger, but also faster.
Even with Li Ya’s help, Huo Yuhao was only to catch a breather before the powerful sensation returned again.
“Yuhao, you can relax your control on the soul core. You must not suppress it entirely. That would be bad for both soul cores in the future.”
“Noted.”
Relax my control? The moment Huo Yuhao toned down his suppressive efforts, he realized that the soul core became a lot harder to control than when it was fully suppressed.
After seeing an opportunity to release spiritual power, the spiritual soul core took advantage of it, and radiated spiritual power fervently. The spiritual power raced towards Huo Yuhao’s chest as it tried to destroy the tiny bit of Ultimate Ice soul power that was rotating there.
A jade light flashed, and his entire chest area was sealed. The Ice Empress had made her move! Her Ultimate Ice soul power blocked the spiritual power and protected the new origin within it.
When his spiritual power collided with the Ice Empress’ Ultimate Ice, Huo Yuhao’s entire body spasmed intensely. It was as if the blood flow in all of his passageways had been reversed. It was an incredibly awful feeling.
The spiritual soul core, which had tasted a tiny bit of freedom after Huo Yuhao had loosened his control over it, started to run wild as it tried to release more spiritual power to overcome the Ice Empress’ Ultimate Ice. This meant that Huo Yuhao had to somehow strike a balance between ensuring the release of spiritual power and controlling the amount that was actually released by the spiritual soul core. This was a lot more difficult than just suppressing the soul core entirely.
While the Ice Empress was focusing on defending against the aggressive spiritual power, the Snow Empress continued to control the formation of the new soul core. The rate at which Ultimate Ice soul power was being transported was now finally starting to increase.
The soul power core, which was only the size of a grain of rice, very soon became the size of a bean. The waves of spiritual attacks also became increasingly intense as they became more driven to overcome the Ice Empress’ defense.
Huo Yuhao started to feel waves of excruciating pain as the spiritual power attacks became more intense. While he was trying to cope with the pain, he still had to control his spiritual soul core and withstand the weak feeling that was coming from his spiritual sea.
He was only able to barely push through the pain with the help of his invincibly strong determination. His determination did not waver at all throughout the entire process.
Huo Yuhao’s resilience also gave the six Spirits plenty of confidence that they would all succeed.
Faint white glows started to appear in the bones and passageways in Huo Yuhao’s body. A cooling sensation seemed to soothe the piercing pain which came with the collision between the spiritual power and the Ultimate Ice formed by the Ice Empress.
This cooling sensation was created by Little Bai. Little Bai had started to protect Huo Yuhao’s body.
Even though Huo Yuhao felt a little better, he did not become complacent. This was because his spiritual soul core was becoming increasingly violent as the Ultimate Ice soul power in his chest area started to coagulate and take shape.
As Huo Yuhao focused on his intent to control the spiritual soul core, he became increasingly confident in his odds of forming his second soul core in his chest. He felt that if he were to still fail even with the help of his six Spirits, he would have failed the gifts he had been blessed with!
After stabilizing his mental state, he also realized that his body was no longer in as much pain as before. He silently mustered his spiritual power as he tried to maintain control over his spiritual soul core. He tried to slow its rotation while maintaining a steady and continuous stream of spiritual power which exited the soul core and collided with the Ultimate Ice soul power.
Because the Ultimate Ice soul power at Huo Yuhao’s chest was continually expanding, its rotation speed and the rate at which it was absorbing the Ultimate Ice soul power were increasing and becoming stronger as well. At the same time, Huo Yuhao started to feel a painful sensation in his chest.
After all, it was rotating in the reverse direction! This reverse rotation was directly acting on his body! Hence, Huo Yuhao had to suffer twice the amount of pain from both rotations.
Huo Yuhao continued to feel a sharp piercing sensation coming from his chest area. The pain was extremely suffocating. Nevertheless, Huo Yuhao did not seem to be struggling with the pain.
However, he soon discovered something that startled him. The ice crystal that the Snow Empress had transformed into was actually ascending and leaving his dantian area.
This rhombus-shaped ice crystal and the Ultimate Ice soul power which had taken shape at his chest had been linked by soul power. However, there seemed to be a change in their mutual attraction now. The soul power at his chest seemed to be attracting the ice crystal beneath it. The small cluster of soul power was actually pulling the ice crystal formed by the Snow Empress upwards.
This…
What is the Snow Empress trying to do?
Huo Yuhao did not really understand what she was trying to do. However, he understood how trust was of the utmost importance now. Hence, he would neither doubt nor ask her what she was planning to do.