Chapter 34: Core Area of the Far North, Hunting the Ice Qilin!
The wind cut across the vast landscape like a serrated blade.
As the emerald green light surrounding Du Busi dissipated into the freezing air, Liu Yuan's boots finally crunched against the thick, packed snow.
Guided by a Level 98 Super Douluo traveling at maximum velocity, a journey that should have spanned half the continent had been violently compressed into a mere seven days.
Now, a silver world stretched out before Liu Yuan—a domain pure to the extreme, yet equally cruel.
The outer perimeter of the Far North.
Looking toward the horizon, the undulating mountain ranges were cloaked entirely in frost. Massive glaciers reflected the faint, anemic sunlight, casting a mirror-like, desolate glare across the tundra.
The temperature here had already plummeted to around minus forty degrees. Every breath Liu Yuan took felt like swallowing jagged shards of glass, leaving a faint, stinging ache deep within his lungs.
He subconsciously tightened his collar. Even with a physical vessel rigorously tempered by the Body Secret Method, a bone-chilling cold still managed to seep through his pores in the face of such absolute natural hostility.
"Do not look to me. Use your own soul power to resist it."
Du Busi stood with his hands clasped behind his back amidst the howling blizzard. There was absolutely no fluctuation of soul power radiating from him. Yet, those lethal winds—currents cold enough to freeze an ordinary Soul Grandmaster into a solid block of ice—quietly dissolved the moment they breached within three inches of his imposing frame.
The old monster cast a sideways glance at Liu Yuan. His tone was flat, but it carried the unquestionable weight of a tyrant.
"This is also a form of cultivation. If you cannot even block the ambient cold of the outer perimeter, the moment you step foot into the core area, your Martial Soul will freeze and shatter."
Hearing this, Liu Yuan immediately locked down his focus.
He drew in a slow, measured breath. His Double Pupils narrowed slightly as the soul power within his meridians surged, circulating like a rushing, heated river. A faint crimson glow surfaced across his skin, forcefully expelling the invasive frost that had begun to numb his extremities.
Master and disciple walked in single file through the knee-deep snowdrifts, moving at a steady, unhurried pace toward the absolute north.
As their altitude climbed and the latitude shifted, the environment grew exponentially more hostile.
Fierce gales shrieked through the icy canyons. The kicked-up snow flurries reduced visibility to less than ten meters, creating a blinding whiteout. The temperature entered a freefall, reaching a terrifying low that would drive even seasoned Soul Masters to despair.
When Liu Yuan felt the weight of thick ice crystals coating his eyelashes and eyebrows, and the circulation of his internal soul power began to stutter and stagnate under the oppressive cold, Du Busi finally halted his steps.
"Enough. If we proceed any further, it will not be something your current frame can endure."
Du Busi casually waved his right hand. A highly condensed, emerald-green barrier of soul power instantly expanded outward, swallowing Liu Yuan within its protective dome.
In a fraction of a second, the shrieking wind, the blinding snow, and the lethal cold were entirely shut out. Inside the barrier, the air felt as warm and gentle as a spring afternoon.
"Thank you, Master." Liu Yuan let out a long, ragged exhale, immediately seizing the reprieve to regulate his breathing and stabilize his internal pathways.
"The next phase is the true battle," Du Busi said, his eyes scanning the white void. "That Ice Qilin is a creature of auspiciousness, a proud king of this polar wasteland. Finding it relies entirely on luck."
...
Half a month bled away quietly within this desolate, frozen forbidden zone.
The process of hunting the Ice Qilin proved far more tedious and grueling than Liu Yuan had anticipated.
They traversed endless ice plains that had not seen a thaw in millennia. They scaled steep, perilous snowy peaks where a single misstep meant a drop into an abyssal crevasse. They even brushed past the territories of several ten-thousand-year Soul Beasts lingering on the very edge of the Far North's core area.
Yet, the majestic, ice-blue figure detailed in the Body Sect's ancient records remained entirely elusive.
"Master, has that creature truly gone extinct?" Liu Yuan sat upon a jagged outcropping of black ice. His Double Pupils pulsed with a faint light as he pushed his visual prowess to its absolute limit, scanning the distant, hazy horizon.
"If a remnant of a Divine Beast were so easily stumbled upon, it would not be worthy of the name Qilin." Du Busi scoffed, though a faint trace of irritation flickered in the depths of his own eyes.
Just as the two prepared to shift their position and resume the hunt, Liu Yuan's body suddenly went rigid.
The twin irises within his Double Pupils overlapped in a split second, locking onto a frozen valley nearly a thousand meters away.
"Master! Look!"
At the mouth of the valley, partially obscured by a raging blizzard, a dreamlike, ice-blue stream of light darted across the snow.
The creature possessed the elegant silhouette of a divine stag, yet its musculature was far more strong and majestic. A single, crystal-clear horn protruded from its forehead, catching the ambient light like a prism. Its entire body was armored in ice-blue dragon scales, each one layered with the careful perfection of a masterwork sculpture.
With every step its hooves took, an ethereal ice lotus bloomed from the freezing mist beneath its feet, radiating a sacred, unyielding pride.
The Ice Qilin.
"To think you actually managed to wait it out, you little monster!" Du Busi's eyes ignited with a predatory gleam. He raised his eyebrows, his vast divine sense crashing outward like a tidal wave to lock onto the prey.
At the same moment, Liu Yuan used the piercing insight of his Double Pupils to analyze the beast. His voice, however, carried a heavy note of undisguised regret.
"Judging from the luster of those scales and the sheer density of the soul power radiating from its core... this Ice Qilin's cultivation is likely hovering around twenty thousand years."
Twenty thousand years.
According to the ironclad laws of the Soul Master world, the absolute limit for a third soul ring sat squarely around the one-thousand-and-seven-hundred-year mark. Even rounding up, two thousand years was considered a death sentence.
Even factoring in the monstrous physical advantage of his Body Martial Soul, which allowed him to absorb rings far beyond the conventional threshold, attempting to assimilate a twenty-thousand-year ring... that was not bravery. That was suicide.
"What a pity. The age is simply too high," Liu Yuan sighed, his pragmatism overriding his desire.
"Pity my foot!"
Du Busi whipped around and delivered a sharp, stinging rap to the back of Liu Yuan's head. The old monster's tone dripped with a wild, unbridled arrogance.
"Do you think the high-tier Soul Beast meat, the agonizing secret medicinal baths, and the body-strengthening pills I have been forcing down your throat for the past few months were meant to feed the dogs?"
Du Busi stepped closer, towering over his disciple. "Is the Body Secret Method you torture yourself with every single day meant for you to walk the same pathetic, conventional path as those ordinary trash Soul Masters?"
Liu Yuan froze, rubbing the back of his head.
Du Busi stood tall, his hands clasped behind him. A terrifying mixture of madness and absolute confidence burned in his eyes. "Liu Yuan, listen to me very carefully."
"Your Double Pupils are inherently a top-tier mental attribute mutation. Your mental force has long since shattered the boundaries of a Soul King!"
", after enduring the baptism of my Body Sect for nearly half a year, the sheer tensile strength of your physical vessel has reached an unmatched level!"
Du Busi sneered at the distant valley. "If I only intended to fetch you some mediocre, few-thousand-year soul ring, why would I, the master of the Body Sect, personally make this trip?"
"In my grand design, your third soul ring must begin at the ten-thousand-year threshold or higher! This twenty-thousand-year Ice Qilin... its age is absolutely perfect!"
Twenty thousand years. Perfect?
Liu Yuan stared at the old man. The initial shock rapidly dissolved, replaced by a surging tide of extreme joy and ruthless ambition.
If his Master, a Level 98 Body Douluo, declared it possible, then it was a guaranteed reality. He would shatter the limits of this world.
"Go. Find a sheltered crevice in the rear and watch. Watch how your Master breaks this beast for you!"
The very instant the words left Du Busi's mouth, the space where he stood shattered. He vanished.
A split second later, an devastating roar of pure, unadulterated terror erupted from the distant ice valley.
The Ice Qilin sensed an apocalyptic threat descending upon it. It threw its majestic head back and shrieked, the ice-blue scales across its body flaring with blinding intensity. A burst of absolute zero cold exploded outward, transforming into a localized hurricane of ice blades, desperately attempting to shred the incoming emerald meteor.
Though this Ice Qilin only possessed twenty thousand years of cultivation, its bloodline was legendary. As detailed in the ancient texts, its physical body, reinforced by its Divine Beast lineage, was terrifyingly durable. Its actual combat prowess was more than enough to slaughter ordinary thirty- or forty-thousand-year Soul Beasts.
But against Du Busi, this desperate resistance was nothing more than a joke.
"Body—Suppress!"
Du Busi's voice detonated like a thunderclap across the polar wastes.
Watching from his vantage point, Liu Yuan's eyes widened. His Master did not even bother to summon his Martial Soul. Relying entirely on the tyrannical, overbearing soul power inherent to his physical flesh, Du Busi simply brought his right palm crashing down.
The sheer kinetic force of the strike shattered the surrounding glaciers for hundreds of meters, sending massive slabs of ice launching into the sky.
No matter how frantically the Ice Qilin charged, bit, or unleashed its freezing breath, it was utterly outmatched. Before the towering might of a Super Douluo, its pride was ground into the snow, its stamina drained away second by agonizing second.
'When will I possess that kind of power?'
Watching Du Busi's savage, almost primitive fighting style, an intense, burning yearning clawed at Liu Yuan's chest.
This was a true Body Soul Master. This was the pinnacle of strength!
One force shatters ten thousand laws. It did not matter what kind of exalted Divine Beast bloodline flowed through your veins—before absolute physical dominance, you had no choice but to bow your head!
Barely a few minutes later, the emerald light returned.
Du Busi landed heavily beside Liu Yuan. In his massive hand, he held the Ice Qilin by the scruff of its neck. The once-proud king of the tundra was now breathing its last, the majority of its reinforced bones completely pulverized. Du Busi carried it with the same casual ease one might hold a stray kitten.
"Deliver the killing blow. I leave the rest to you." Du Busi dropped the massive beast into the snow and clapped his hands together, looking as relaxed as if he had just returned from a leisurely morning stroll.
Liu Yuan did not waste a single second with hesitation. He drew a sharp hunting dagger from his belt, stepped forward, and drove the blade ruthlessly into the exposed, unarmored weak point at the Ice Qilin's throat.
Blood sprayed across the pristine snow. The beast gave one final shudder before its eyes dulled completely.
Hum—!
A deep, silent, and infinitely oppressive black ring of light slowly condensed from the sacred, dissipating light of the Ice Qilin's corpse. It hovered in the freezing air, pulsing with a heavy, rhythmic dread before slowly drifting toward Liu Yuan.
A ten-thousand-year soul ring!
Liu Yuan took a deep, steadying breath and sat cross-legged in the snow. Within his Double Pupils, a terrifying crimson light and an abyssal depth exploded simultaneously.
'Whether I ascend or crumble, it all depends on this very moment!'
The impending absorption would be the ultimate crucible—the final trial that would determine whether he could truly be reborn as a monster capable of crushing everything in his path.
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