Chapter 51 Sacrifice

"Now you should be able to listen to my explanation properly, right?"

Rolling up his silkworm cocoon, Tianmeng Iceworm looked aggrieved. "If even Huo Yuhao has no way to become a god, then no feasible path to godhood should exist in this world."

Indeed...

The Ice Empress's gaze swept roughly over the Angelic Godhead and then lingered on the illusory figure of Elder Yi.

The capital possessed by the human before her already far exceeded anyone in the world, and his foundation was even deeper than that of the three who initiated the divine war on the continent ten thousand years ago.

Whether it was becoming a god through faith or directly comprehending the Great Dao to condense a godhead, neither was likely an out-of-reach goal for him.

After all, lying right within his spiritual sea was a damaged godhead belonging to a Tier 1 God. Even if he were merely drawing a tiger based on a cat to weave an inferior imitation, it would still ultimately secure him a ticket to step into the divine tier.

"Snow Empress... we..."

The Ice Empress's voice beside her carried a trace of hesitation, clearly already beginning to waver.

To become a god, to attain eternal life.

Even humans would go mad over an illusory opportunity for ascension, let alone soul beasts who suffered the ravages of heavenly tribulations throughout their lives.

As a predator, the Ice Empress had never cared about the soul beast population as much as the Snow Empress did. In the past, on a mere whim, she did not even know how many so-called kindred she had crammed into her belly. Now she was being lectured about the antagonism between two races and aiding and abetting the evildoer?

She only knew that right before her lay a chance to change her destiny!

"..."

The Snow Empress lowered her gaze and struggled for a long while before looking once more at Elder Yi, at this mysterious old man who remained completely calm and composed before her despite possessing only a fragmented divine consciousness. "Senior—"

"Do you think I possess the qualifications to become a god?"

To abandon her dignity, initiate a sacrifice, submit herself to a human from then on, and entrust her life to a human...

She was still somewhat unwilling.

"Snow Empress!"

The Ice Empress panicked instantly.

Judging by the current situation between humans and soul beasts, the moment the Snow Empress dared to transform and retake human form, she would inevitably become nourishment for humans! Simply surviving for ten years in human society was already an almost impossible task to accomplish.

"Become a god?"

Faced with the Snow Empress's inquiry, even with Elder Yi's discerning vision, he found it difficult to give a definitive judgment and could only offer an ambiguous reply. "If the path of cultivation after reincarnation proceeds without any mishaps, you should have a thirty percent probability of stepping into the realm I once touched during my lifetime."

Faced with these words, Tianmeng and the Ice Empress were left entirely blank-faced.

Only the Snow Empress nodded with a trace of dejection.

She understood.

Her cultivation would reach the ultimate limit permitted by the plane, divine consciousness would be born within her mind, she would comprehend at least one law of nature and put it into practice, and she would peer into the might of the divine tier...

This was her upper limit.

Yet the human sitting before her, aided by a godhead and this strand of divine consciousness, had a lower limit for his future achievements that was already at this very level.

"Tianmeng, tell me your thoughts..."

The Snow Empress sighed softly.

...

Corrode—

A emerald scorpion tail whipped through the air, piercing into Huo Yuhao's spine. Simultaneously, a powerful energy originating from this heaven and earth emerged from the void, forming a layer of light filled with minuscule veins that enveloped both human and beast.

Tianmeng's plan was simple.

It was to directly shatter Huo Yuhao's backbone! And then use the energy from the sacrifice to fuse it back together!

The Ice Empress had been lingering at the threshold of three hundred and ninety thousand years for a long time, and the energy she unreservedly released during the sacrifice had solidly reached four hundred thousand years. This kind of power, which even a Super Douluo would find difficult to endure, was simply not something a first-ring soul master could swallow.

As for the Snow Empress, it was even more exaggerated. If this terrifying energy, comparable to a Limit Douluo, were forcibly crammed into Huo Yuhao's body, it would only turn him into an unprecedented super bomb.

Moreover, the total amount of soul power within a soul beast's body was inherently higher than that of a human by a significant margin. One could imagine that if the Snow Empress's vast origin energy were to explode just like that, it would probably be enough to trigger a heaven-shaking blast comparable to a strike from the divine tier.

Therefore—

Huo Yuhao had to be reconstructed into a vessel capable of containing and sealing the fierce beast's origin!

"The pain of being smashed to pieces, the sensation of freezing down to the soul... Who would have thought this kid could endure so much without uttering a single sound."

The Snow Empress sat cross-legged in front of Huo Yuhao and glanced at his expression, her opinion of this human—who was practically winning while lying down—somewhat shifting.

She had originally thought he was merely a lucky person who had been chosen.

Now it seemed it was not without reason that he had been chosen by so many opportunities.

The Snow Empress raised her hand slightly, and Huo Yuhao's hands naturally aligned palm-to-palm under her guidance. Pure snow-white energy rapidly stained his arms, surging toward his torso, which was constantly being shattered and repeatedly reconstructed.

"Ugh...!"

The pressure on his body suddenly doubled. Huo Yuhao gritted his teeth, opened eyes that were nearly split apart, and his tightly strained spirit came within a hair's breadth of completely shattering.

Right now, he could faintly hear the sound of tiny ice crystals surging, squeezing, and colliding within his blood vessels and meridians.

His entire physique was about to turn into a glassware vessel filled to the brim with ice shards.

"Steady your heart."

The Snow Empress, who was wholly focused on controlling the origin energy, whispered and diverted a fraction of her awareness to open her eyes and meet his gaze. "This will be an opportunity for a complete rebirth. Push through it, and the future will be as vast as the sea and sky."

Snap~

It was as if a tiny ice thorn pierced through Huo Yuhao's pupils, reflecting and overlapping bizarre light and shadow in his eyes.

"We have already placed our hopes in you..."

The golden-radiating figure, refracting under the sunlight, merged with the Snow Empress, whose entire body was glowing white. "Then do not let us down."

I...

Will.

Accompanied by a sound close to the grinding of ice shards, Huo Yuhao laboriously closed his eyes, enduring the torture of ice and snow extending outward from every single pore.

Time ticked away second by second.

Yet at the very moment the process was about to be completed, a terrifying fluctuation suddenly burst forth from within the sacrificial ring of light.

The Snow Empress, sitting opposite Huo Yuhao palm-to-palm, instantly turned pale.

"Bing'er? Snow Empress?"

Tianmeng, who had been anxiously and quietly waiting, felt his heart skip a beat and frantically lunged forward. "What happened? What on earth is going on?!"

There was no reply. Only the fluctuations emanating from the sacrifice grew increasingly violent, spreading outward like water ripples and pushing the clouds overhead toward the horizon wave by wave.

"The vessel is almost full."

Elder Yi, who had been quietly studying the soul beast sacrifice from the side, suddenly spoke up, casting his gaze toward a bloody ice thorn that abruptly protruded from Huo Yuhao's elbow.

"What?!"

Tianmeng was stunned for a moment, his heart completely flooded with unprecedented panic and helplessness as he threw himself desperately against the layer of sacrificial light. "Wait... Stop! Stop right now!"

Unfortunately.

Once a soul beast's sacrifice began, there was no possibility of it being interrupted. Even if a divine-tier entity wished to intervene, they would have to face the obstruction of the plane's rules.

He would die...

He would truly die.

Tianmeng's pupils trembled wildly. "Yuhao will definitely be burst open and killed! No, how can this be? Can't the Ice Empress's torso bone completely accommodate the Snow Empress's origin? Why is this happening?!"