: The Sanctuary's Heart and the Prisoner in Ice
The Dragon's Sanctuary existed in a bubble of forgotten time. Moss grew thick on ancient stone, and the colossal trees stood as silent sentinels, their leaves barely stirring in the windless air. Here, Huo Yuhao found the rarest of treasures: peace. Not the peace of safety—he knew the Karma Observer was searching—but the peace to focus, to train, and to finally take inventory of the power he had accumulated.
The circular temple became his home. The pool at its center, fed by a hidden spring, was water of shocking purity that seemed to hold a faint, nurturing consciousness—a last remnant of the Nature Spirits who had built this place.
His first act was to establish a routine. In the mornings, he would sit by the pool, listening to the whispers of the seven Dragon Scion Souls now woven into his being. Each had a distinct personality and a specialty:
· Gold Dragon (Fortitude): Provided a steady, unshakable boost to his physical and spiritual defense.
· White Dragon (Light/Purification): Granted a gentle, healing aura and an instinctive understanding of binding seals.
· Black Dragon (Darkness/Destruction): Lent a corrosive, penetrating edge to his spiritual attacks.
· Red Dragon (Fire/Rage): Though muted by his icy core, it allowed him to understand and subtly disrupt fire-based energies.
· Blue Dragon (Water/Adaptability): Enhanced his affinity with all liquids and granted incredible fluidity to his movements.
· Green Dragon (Wood/Growth): Connected him to plant life, allowing him to sense through roots and vines.
· Ice Dragon (Absolute Zero): Resonated perfectly with his Glacial Sovereign, deepening his authority over cold.
He couldn't summon them, but he could learn their lessons, allowing their essences to subtly refine his spirit and grant passive boons.
In the afternoons, he practiced the Sun Moon Star Nine Elements Technique. He had mastered the First Level (Reduction) on matter and spiritual constructs. He had used the Second Level (Guidance) to integrate the Ice Lotus's law. The Third Level (Transposition) had allowed him to open the Space Crack. Now, he sought to deepen his understanding of all three, practicing micro-transpositions of pebbles from one hand to the other, or guiding the growth patterns of the temple moss with a thought.
But the greatest mystery remained the Divine Golden Clock. It had saved him during the dragon baptism, regulating the catastrophic energy. It chimed in his dreams. It was listed in the Black Book's index as the "Chronos-Regulator," dormant until Soul Founder rank.
He was not yet a Soul Founder. But his soul, his Sea of Spirit, had been God-King level once, in a past life he couldn't remember. Perhaps he could not wield it, but he could attempt to observe it.
Communion with Chronos
One evening, as the sanctuary's perpetual twilight deepened, Huo Yuhao sat before the still temple pool. He focused inward, past the dragon souls, past the glowing treasury index, to where the Clock resided—a majestic, complex architecture of golden gears and crystalline pendulums suspended in the darkest part of his Soul Sea.
He did not try to touch it. He poured his spiritual awareness into simply watching it.
Tick. Tock.
The sound was the heartbeat of his inner world. As he watched, he saw that the gears did not merely turn; they turned through multiple, ghostly layers of possibility. A single gear might have three faint, overlapping afterimages, each showing it in a slightly different position—a micro-second in the past, a micro-second in the future.
The Clock wasn't just measuring time; it was displaying the branching probabilities of immediate causality around him. It showed him not what was, but what could be in the next fleeting moment.
Excited, he opened his eyes and looked at a leaf falling from a vine outside the temple door. He focused on the Clock's perception. He saw the leaf's path, but also saw two ghostly afterimages: one where a slight breeze nudged it left, another where it tore on a twig. A second later, the breeze ghost-image became real. The leaf drifted left.
He couldn't control time. But he was beginning to perceive its short-term branches. It was a predictive tool of unimaginable subtlety and power. In combat, it would be like seeing an opponent's moves before their muscles twitched. In life, it was seeing the immediate consequences of his choices.
"Fascinating," Electrolux breathed, observing through Huo Yuhao's senses. "Not control over time's river, but the ability to see its immediate forks. This is a power of Fate in its purest, most minute form. No wonder it required a stable soul. A weaker mind would fracture seeing these possibilities."
The Pool's Gift
Days turned into weeks. Huo Yuhao grew stronger, more precise. His cultivation, fueled by the sanctuary's rich energy and his own profound foundations, steadily climbed. He practiced blending his powers: using Spiritual Detection enhanced by the Clock's probability-sight, or layering the Ice Dragon's authority with his Glacial Sovereign to make patches of cold so absolute they temporarily refused to interact with external energy, creating voids.
One day, during his meditation by the pool, he performed an experiment. He allowed a drop of his blood—blood refined by the Dragon God and carrying the essence of all seven Scions—to fall into the water. Simultaneously, he let a wisp of his Glacial Sovereign aura, the pristine cold, touch the surface.
The pool, a relic of Nature Spirits who loved dragons, reacted.
The water did not ripple. It crystallized. Not into ice, but into a flat, mirror-smooth plane of solidified spirit energy. Images began to form, not reflections, but visions drawn from the resonance of his blood and his cold.
He saw a vast, frozen landscape, more barren and lonely than the Far North. He saw a colossal, intricate formation of glowing chains and runes carved into a continent-spanning ice field. At its heart was a mountain of pure ice, and sealed within it…
His breath caught.
A girl. She appeared to be sleeping, her silver hair flowing around her like a frozen waterfall, her features so ethereally beautiful they seemed carved from moonlight and sorrow. Her long eyelashes were dusted with frost. She wore simple robes, and even in stasis, an aura of immense, weary, and deeply lonely power radiated from her. Her hands were clasped over her chest, and on her forehead was a faint, intricate scale pattern that shimmered with suppressed rainbow light.
Gu Yuena.
The name surfaced in his soul, not from memory, but from a deep, instinctual recognition. The Silver Dragon King. The other half of the Dragon God's legacy. The being whose blood and soul were the key to so many celestial schemes.
The vision showed her prison. It was not just ice; it was a divine seal of astronomical complexity, humming with a familiar, hated energy—the meticulous, manipulative power of Tang San. This was his doing. This was a cornerstone of his "Ten-Thousand-Year Plan."
The vision lasted only moments before the pool returned to liquid with a soft sigh. But the image was burned into Huo Yuhao's mind. The profound sadness, the majestic power locked away, the brutal efficiency of the seal—it ignited a fire in him that was different from his anger at Tang San. This was sharper, more personal. It was empathy, and a fierce, protective outrage.
"So, that is the prize," Electrolux said quietly, his usual academic tone replaced by grim understanding. "The ultimate dragon. Imprisoned not just in ice, but in a cage of destiny."
"She's… she's like us," Brother Heavenly Dream whispered, uncharacteristically subdued. "Trapped. Used as part of a plan."
Huo Yuhao stood up, his fists clenched. The peaceful training was over. A new objective, born not from the Black Book's instructions but from his own heart, had crystalized.
He had to find her. He had to free her.
Not because it was part of any plan, but because it was the right thing to do. It was the ultimate act of defiance against the chessmaster who had imprisoned her and sought to control him.
The sanctuary had given him refuge. Now, it had given him a purpose. To find the Silver Dragon King, he would need to understand the seal, which meant he would need to delve deeper into the dragon souls' memories and perhaps seek knowledge from places even the heavens had forgotten. His path was no longer just about survival or power. It was about liberation.
And as this resolve solidified in his soul, high in the Divine Realm, the Karma Observer assigned to his case frowned at his scrying mirror, which showed only an empty, quiet valley. The "anomaly" had vanished from the threads of karma entirely, as if he had stepped off the loom of fate itself. It was an impossibility. The Observer marked his report: "Target Huo Yuhao: Status changed from 'Containment Pending' to 'Lost. Presumed in Unmapped Temporal or Spatial Anomaly.' Recommend escalation to Department of Divine Law (Asura)."
The hunt was escalating. And Huo Yuhao, now driven by a new and powerful purpose, was preparing to step back onto the board on his own terms.
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