While the Heaven Favored Douluo was contemplating life, Huo Yuhao's true body—having resolved the Abyss issue—also arrived at the Undead Plane.
Beneath a blue sky stretched an endless land brimming with both life and the undead.
His divine consciousness projection was already there, escorting the Demon Emperor, the two standing one behind the other on the grassland.
Seeing his true body arrive, the projection nodded slightly, then transformed into a golden light that silently merged back into Huo Yuhao, returning all its observations.
Only the Demon Emperor remained.
The Demon Emperor's spirit body trembled visibly upon seeing Huo Yuhao's true form, clearly uneasy about what was to come.
"What... what do you want?" the Demon Emperor asked, his unease reaching its peak as he saw Huo Yuhao reach for him. He tried to self-destruct and end it all.
But if he couldn't even die before Huo Yuhao's divine consciousness, facing Huo Yuhao himself was even more hopeless.
With a sweep of his divine consciousness, Huo Yuhao halted the Demon Emperor's self-destruction process. Without answering, he grabbed the Possession Demon and forcibly delved into its consciousness, beginning a soul search.
One of the reasons he'd kept the Demon Emperor alive was precisely for this moment.
Instantly, the Demon Emperor's experiences flooded Huo Yuhao's mind like scenes from a film:
Born in the Abyss. Attacking the Douluo Plane.
At the Abyss Saint Lord's command, cooperating with the Holy Spirit Cult and sneaking into the Douluo Plane with his companions.
Encountering the Heaven Favored Douluo exploring in a forbidden zone while assisting the Demon Empress in collecting divine persona fragments. With the Demon Empress's help, seizing his body.
Seeing this, Huo Yuhao's eye twitched.
So the Heaven Favored Douluo being possessed was just bad luck?
His luck was truly something else.
Huo Yuhao felt the Heaven Favored Douluo needed to change his title.
Even without the Possession Demon, his original story experiences didn't match "Heaven Favored." Not to mention the love triangle with Chen Xinjie and Long Yeyue—at his peak, he'd also had the misfortune of running into Harossa, a plane-favored individual, and been elbowed by him twice.
Once lightly wounded, once with mutual injuries.
In the original, he hadn't outlived Long Yeyue—possibly because the second elbow strike left lasting injuries.
After all, though the original never mentioned his cause of death, a semi-divine like him could only have been killed by the Holy Spirit Cult's higher-ups. Chen Xinjie wouldn't have killed him for marrying Long Yeyue—he wasn't that crazy.
But if the Holy Spirit Cult had killed him, it would have been mentioned, since killing a semi-divine and Sea God Pavilion Master would have been a glorious achievement.
Since it wasn't mentioned, the most likely cause was old wounds recurring—natural death. (Note: In the original, the Heaven Favored Douluo seems to have died naturally; if Tang Wulin was eighteen, his death was about forty years prior. That timing makes sense for a Limit Douluo in poor condition dying in his early two hundreds.)
Add to that the fact that after marrying Long Yeyue, he seemingly had no children.
Such experiences and luck didn't quite match "Heaven Favored."
Of course, if you looked at it from a result-oriented perspective, in the original he died early, so he didn't witness Shrek's destruction and those abstract events. If that counted as a blessing from heaven, it made some sense.
Huo Yuhao silently chuckled inwardly, his face betraying nothing. He continued through the Demon Emperor's memories—the later parts he already roughly knew: after being possessed, the Heaven Favored Douluo spent decades in a daze as the Holy Spirit Cult's tool until today.
He skipped those memories and directly searched for intelligence on the Holy Spirit Cult.
Information on the Holy Spirit Cult flooded in like a tide.
Huo Yuhao steadied himself, quickly filtering through it. The Holy Spirit Cult's Douling headquarters location, force distribution, high-level combat strength—each detail clearly presented before him.
This was the Demon Emperor's greatest value. As the bridge between the Holy Spirit Cult and the Abyss, and a Cult higher-up, he knew far too much.
All highly valuable intelligence.
In the original, the only captured Holy Spirit Cult higher-up was the Dark Phoenix—she was only a mid-level figure, later exchanged for Atlas Douluo's remnant soul and returned to the Cult. The Douluo side gained little intelligence.
Now was clearly different from the original.
But just as Huo Yuhao was about to delve deeper into the Demon Emperor's memories to uncover the Cult's secrets, a hidden restriction was triggered. The Demon Emperor's expression froze, then he laughed, "Hahaha! The restriction the Killing God set has been triggered—you won't see the rest!"
Before he finished, the Demon Emperor jolted violently, purple-black light exploding from within like a ignited firework. That hidden restriction wasn't protecting his memories—it was destroying them!
As the representative of the Abyss's cooperation with the Holy Spirit Cult, he hadn't initially had a restriction in his body. After all, he was essentially the Abyss's highest representative on the Douluo Plane—who would have the authority to place one on him?
No outsider had that right—only himself.
But as a Possession Demon, before the version update, no one could harm him, let alone capture him. There was no need to place a restriction on himself.
So he'd had none.
But after reincarnated deities appeared and the world gradually entered the age of deities, the Cult's higher-ups were no longer as safe as before—there was a risk of being captured by deities and having intelligence leaked.
So he'd approached the Killing God to place a restriction on him.
His own power was insufficient; any restriction he imposed could be discovered and broken by the gods. It was better to let the God of Death handle it.
He'd thought this restriction would only be triggered near the final battle—he never expected to encounter Waterloo now.
But still—
"At least I made a deity waste his efforts—this Emperor's death was worth it!"
Just as the Demon Emperor wanted to mock this deity in his final moment, he saw the other's gaze was utterly calm.
Watching the Demon Emperor about to explode, Huo Yuhao calmly raised his hand.
The Reincarnation Domain expanded instantly.
Gray-white light spread outward from him.
At the moment the Demon Emperor exploded, time within the domain flowed backward like a receding river. The purple-black light particles reassembled from their scattered state, the Demon Emperor's disintegrating form restoring inch by inch.
One breath later, the Demon Emperor floated in midair, dazed, his spirit body completely intact, as if the explosion had never happened.
He looked down at his hands, then up at Huo Yuhao, his lips trembling, unable to speak.
What the hell was this? Time reversal?
Weren't you the Fire God? Since when did you command time power?
"I don't want you dead, so you can't die." Huo Yuhao finally spoke, his voice soft yet striking the Demon Emperor's heart like a hammer.
"You... you..." The Demon Emperor trembled with rage.
He'd never seen anything so absurd—being brought back from the dead to have his memories searched again.
Unable to die, unable to escape, forced to surrender all his intelligence—it was utter despair.
Ignoring the despairing Demon Emperor, Huo Yuhao continued his search.
And so began the Demon Emperor's endless cycle: "self-destruct—revive—self-destruct—revive."
The Reincarnation Domain was effective, but it reversed temporal states, so the restriction within the Demon Emperor's body was restored with each revival.
However, the restriction the Killing God had set was triggered by accessing the Cult's core secrets. Even if he only looked at a little each time, repeating the process would eventually uncover everything.
Huo Yuhao didn't mind the trouble—it just meant making the Demon Emperor explode a few more times.
Demon Emperor: I object! Where are my rights as a prisoner?!
Huo Yuhao: Objection overruled. Continue.
Minutes later, having obtained all the intelligence, Huo Yuhao released the Demon Emperor, looking thoughtful.
Combined with the Demon Emperor's intel, he now had a clear picture of the Holy Spirit Cult.
The Holy Spirit Cult was currently roughly divided into two factions.
One faction, led by the Demon Empress and the Ghost Emperor, sought to use the Abyss's power to achieve godhood. Their main force was on the Xingluo Continent, commanding most of the Cult's experts.
The other faction, led by the Killing God and the Demon Emperor, wanted to use the Cult's influence to facilitate the Abyss Plane's descent and destroy everything.
Their main force was on the Douling Continent, but their actual strength wasn't great. Only a small number of evil soul masters wanted to fully join the Abyss, so many operations requiring manpower still relied on the Cult.
This division existed because the Killing God hadn't openly supported the Demon Emperor and the Abyss. In many eyes, his stance was uncertain, his intentions unfathomable. Otherwise, the Cult would have imploded.
The two factions cooperated while watching each other.
Thus, even as a Cult higher-up, the Demon Emperor didn't have complete intelligence on the Xingluo side.
Fortunately, the Douling Continent was largely under his control, and the intelligence there was considerable.
Currently, the most notable figures on the Douling Continent were the Killing God and the Demon Empress.
The Cult's two top combatants were both there now.
But they largely stayed out of affairs—the Demon Empress was even there partly to watch the Demon Emperor—which was why he could serve as the Douling side's leader.
Otherwise, even if he wanted to manage things, his strength wouldn't allow it.
Besides watching the Demon Emperor to keep him in line, the Demon Empress's other purpose was to oversee the construction of the Blood River God-Slaying Grand Arrays.
"They're planning to build two Blood River God-Slaying Grand Arrays—one in Tiandou City and one in Douling City?"
Thinking of the Demon Emperor's memories of core secrets, Huo Yuhao frowned.
Tiandou City was the Douling Empire's capital, the political and economic heart. Douling City was a historic city named to commemorate the Douling Empire's founding ancestor.
Both were densely populated cities with millions of residents each—natural choices for the arrays.
And the Douling Continent's population could sustain both arrays.
Such behavior was utterly inhuman. But discussing morality with evil soul masters was like playing the lute to a cow. If conditions allowed, they'd probably sacrifice the entire Douluo Plane.
"Fortunately, with this intelligence, disrupting those two arrays will be much easier."
Huo Yuhao exhaled and began organizing other important information.
The Demon Emperor's memories also revealed the Cult's strategic plan: they intended to wait until the war between Xingluo and the Douluo Federation reached its most intense stage—when the war could no longer be stopped and Xingluo was crippled—and then perform the blood sacrifice on Douling to open the Abyss Passage and begin the final battle, turning the Douling Continent into the ultimate battlefield.
The core purpose was to fully bind Xingluo to the war effort, ensuring they served their intended role as a drain, preventing them from surrendering or withdrawing if the situation turned sour.
After all, sacrificing the entire Douling Continent was too shocking. If Xingluo learned the Cult planned to do that, they might well back out.
Of course, the Cult had other schemes, like using the war to harvest souls and enhance their experts' strength.
For evil soul masters who relied on evil methods to grow, the longer the war, the more they gained.
Beyond that, he'd obtained other significant intelligence from the Demon Emperor.
Such as the divine artifacts the Cult had acquired, the Killing God's willingness to serve as the Abyss Saint Lord's vessel, most of the Sea God's divine persona fragments gathered, and—Chen Xinjie's captured divine consciousness.
Several of these intelligence points were quite substantial, surprising even Huo Yuhao.
Especially the Killing God's willingness to be a vessel and Chen Xinjie's divine consciousness being captured.
"Since the Killing God is willing to be a vessel, I don't need to worry about that. But the Killing God is far stronger than the Demon Empress and holds a second-class deity divine seat. If the Abyss Saint Lord possesses him, his power will be far greater than in the original—requiring more careful handling."
Vessel quality was a key factor in the Abyss Saint Lord's power. In the original, the Demon Empress couldn't let him exert his full strength. But the Killing God was clearly a different case—he might even let the Saint Lord reach super-divine level.
A flicker of gravity passed through Huo Yuhao's eyes, then vanished. Smiling, he looked at the Demon Emperor with some emotion. "You're the biggest catch in this operation, second only to the Abyss Saint Lord. Compared to the intelligence you've provided, the Blazing Emperor's power and Plane Seed are secondary."
The despairing Demon Emperor's eyes widened. "What do you mean? You killed Lord Blazing Emperor and seized his Plane Seed?"
He'd been pursued and hadn't known what happened at the Abyss Passage.
Huo Yuhao smiled without answering.
The Demon Emperor read the silence, his face turning ashen.
Huo Yuhao standing here unharmed said everything—the Abyss's attack had been repelled.
And Lord Blazing Emperor had likely died at this deity's hands—even the Saint Lord had apparently paid some price.
They'd lost both the lady and the soldiers!
Ignoring the utterly despondent Demon Emperor, Huo Yuhao sorted through the intelligence and sent filtered portions to the Federation and Rong Lingji, enabling them to formulate countermeasures against the Cult's plans.
Having done this, he didn't immediately kill the Demon Emperor. Instead, he sealed him away.
Keeping the Demon Emperor might serve other purposes, and he had a ninth spirit ability that required a Possession Demon to assist with his experiments—the Demon Emperor had arrived just in time.
But now wasn't the time.
Huo Yuhao took out the five Plane Seeds aside from the Blazing Emperor's and sat cross-legged.
He'd been at the Golden Body stage for a while. During this time, through nurturing by the Four-Element Divine Thunder, thunder tribulations, and Gold of Life, his physical condition and the Body Sect's innate secret method had been steadily improving.
With his earlier mastery of the seven-colored divine thunder through his Plane Lord authority, his innate secret method's progress had leaped forward.
After all, as the symbol of the Heaven-Earth Tribulation, the power of the seven-colored divine thunder was undeniable. Many divine-level experts who had broken through weren't even qualified to have such a tribulation descend upon them.
Even Lan Xuanyu, after mastering the four-element divine thunder, had first grasped the Light and Dark Divine Thunder—composed of light, dark, space, and time—before tackling the Heaven-Earth Tribulation's seven-element composition.
Huo Yuhao had jumped straight to it, so the advancement was naturally great.
Even without deliberately tempering his body, the seven-colored divine thunder within him would gradually elevate it to the Flawless Golden Body level.
But Huo Yuhao didn't want to wait.
Now, having killed a large number of Abyss creatures, the massive amount of Abyss energy he'd absorbed was still unrefined, plus the five Plane Seeds—he had abundant resources.
By converting all this energy into life energy to nourish his body and enhance his spirit power, combined with the Undead Plane's seven-colored thunder tribulation for tempering, he had enough to support his breakthrough to Flawless Golden Body.
Now was the time to break through!
***
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