"This strength of mine..." Huo Yuhao clenched his right hand, feeling the hidden explosive strength circulating throughout his entire body.
He felt that just a mere flick of his fingers, he could easily pop a 10,000 year old Darkgold Terrorclaw Bear's head off.
By his estimation, his physical strength was no worse than the Bear Lord at his peak state.
An evolution of the physique and the formation of a second soul core before even entering Titled Douluo!
A bountiful harvest, one that could make any soul master green in envy.
But Huo Yuhao wasn't happy. Instead, a vigilant look appeared on his face.
"Come out."
"...."
Huo Yuhao narrowed his six eyes, his Rinnegan eyes gleamed.
Six Paths Technique: Deva Path - Heavenly Attraction of All Creation
(AN: I went with the lit. english translation bcz it fits with the whole theme of the story.)
"!?!"
From the depths of the hot-cold spring, the earth split open with a deafening boom.
The icy-hot waters bubbled and exploded upward as the ground beneath fractured violently. Massive chunks of rock were torn free, dragged screaming through the water by an invisible force, before being flung aside like pebbles.
Two colossal shapes were forcibly ripped from the depths.
The moment they emerged, the temperature of the entire well plummeted and spiked. The extreme energies of Ice and Fire went completely crazy.
"Those are... Dragons?" Huo Yuhao was surprised.
In any other location he wouldn't be, but this was the depths of the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well! A Heaven and Earth Treasure that contains the most extreme energies of Yin and Yang.
Unless one possesses a unique physique like the Ultimate Ice-Fire Physique or having consumed both the Octagonal Mysterious Ice Grass and Infernal Delicate Apricot, entering and cultivating within the spring was simply courting death.
Even a Great Beast like Snow Empress at her peak wouldn't last for more than a few days before being incinerated by the extreme Ultimate Yang-Fire.
So seeing two dragon corpses that looked to be well-preserved for who knows how long in the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well, one couldn't help but wonder.
The two enormous dragon skeletons, each easily over a hundred meters long, were dragged halfway out of the depths. Ancient bones the color of dark jade and scorched obsidian groaned under the pressure, covered in remnants of dried sinew, scales fused to bone, and traces of flesh that refused to rot even after untold ages.
One radiated extreme cold.
The other exuded tyrannical heat.
Even in death, the aura they emitted was immense.
The apparent ice or water Dragon's skull was crowned with jagged crystalline horns, empty eye sockets still leaking wisps of frost. Snowflake-like patterns all over its body exuded immeasurable aura of extreme energies of Water.
While the Fire Dragon was its mirror; curved horns like molten blades, ribs charred black and red, heat waves distorting the air around its skeleton. Lava-like veins had fossilized along its bones, pulsing faintly.
"These looked to be pure-blooded dragons of at least 300,000 years old. Yet, just their corpses alone is of quality relative to Di Tian." Huo Yuhao murmured, analyzing and trying to find out the identities of these dragons. A greedy gleam flickered across his eyes.
After all, if his initial expectations are correct, these are corpses of Great Beasts! And when soul beasts reached a 100,000 years of age/cultivation, they are guaranteed to drop a soul bone.
Two Great Beast soul bones of Ultimate attributes! The increase of strength, power, and overall cultivation was unimaginable.
With such add-ons, without even getting a seventh soul ring, would make Huo Yuhao the strongest soul master in the world!
'However, it still wouldn't make a difference. Unless I breakthrough that barrier between mortality and divinity, I can never be free.'
"..."
Without any words, he raised his hands.
Six Paths Technique: Human Path - Soul Extraction!
"!!!"
From within the massive dragon corpses, out came two spectral ghosts. They were vast, draconic souls torn free from their skeletal remains.
The moment they emerged, the entire Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well shook violently.
One dragon soul was vast and frigid, its form composed of condensed frost and pale-blue light. Icy mist poured from its scales, freezing the surrounding spring water into jagged crystals mid-motion. It had gigantic wings of over five hundred meters, with sharp ice spikes at its end.
Contrastingly, the other burned like a miniature sun, its soul blazing crimson and gold, heat warping space itself as flames spiraled around its enormous body. Its crimson scales shimmered with beauty and strength of diamonds, its teeth were like swords, its claws spears, and the end of its tail was similar to a thunderbolt. Its massive wings were nightmarish and fiery.
Even in death, even reduced to remnants, their presence alone carried the dignity and tyranny of apex existences.
ROAR—!
Their souls roared in unison, an earth-shaking cry that reverberated through the entire spring. No, it even reached outwards and heard in the garden!
...
ROAAAAAR—!!
"W-What was that?!"
"A dragon? But where is it coming from?"
"That's—"
Skydream and Jianxin looked around in alarm, their expressions changing drastically.
The concealed garden trembled.
Leaves and lesser immortal herbs rustled violently. The ground quaked as if something primordial had awakened beneath it.
Even with Jianxin's Yin-Yang Five Elements Concealment Formation in place, that roar still leaked through; muffled, distorted, but unmistakable.
It was a sound that did not belong to this era.
A sound that was filled with resentment,
"A dragon's roar...." Jianxin whispered, her pupils contracting. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. "No, two of them? And judging by the aura of those roars, they're true dragons!"
Skydream's playful demeanor vanished entirely. His face turned pale as he instinctively looked toward the Ice and Fire Yin–Yang Well. "That's not an ordinary true dragon either. That roar...I recognize that sort of power. It's something at the level of Di Tian, a Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King!"
"That's impossible. A descendant of a Dragon King is here? That's ridiculous!"
"Trust me. As someone who was imprisoned by Di Tian for thousands of years, I can quite tell the difference between a True Dragon and a Dragon King."
You You nervously looked at the icy-hot springs and glanced at the older soul beasts. He quietly signaled the other immortal herbs to stay silent.
"They woke up? But that can't be possible, it isn't time yet! Oh no, oh no, oh no. If something happens to that human, we're all dead!"
.....
ROAAAR—!
A lesser being would have been obliterated on the spot.
Huo Yuhao wasn't a lesser being.
"Shut up."
The proud and ancient dragon souls, who held their heads high and looked down at Huo Yuhao, felt an overwhelming spiritual pressure crash down on them like the collapse of the heavens themselves.
They fell silent.
Six eyes opened fully.
Huo Yuhao's spiritual power was at the peak of Spirit Domain, on the cusp of the realm of Divinity(Divine Consciousness), and amplified by the power of the Rinnegan, Jōgan, and Kokugan.
These dragon souls, once the apex beings of the Divine Realm, were no longer at their peak. Time, cruel and unstoppable, had slowly deteriorated their divine consciousnesses over eons.
They only moved with instincts. Their memories and intelligence had long since eroded, leaving behind only the lingering pride and the instinctual dominance of True Dragons.
So it was quite easy for Huo Yuhao to dominate their soul and minds.
Their eyes glazed over, taking the shape of the Rinnegan.
He didn't want to waste time and started reading their memories.
Seven hours passed.
"...."
"So, you're the Water Dragon King and the Fire Dragon King. The source of the creation of the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well!" Huo Yuhao's eyes gleamed with interest and exhaustion.
Clearly, shifting through eons of memories to find important information wasn't easy.
"So the reason why you both helped in the creation of my second soul core, was because you both sensed the aura of the Dragon God on me? What? How do I have the aura of the Dragon God?" He was utterly confused. Since when did he interact with the remnants of the Dragon God?
Sure he encountered his descendants; Di Tian, Zi Ji, Huo Qiu'er, etc. But was that really enough to have the Dragon God's Aura?
Unbeknownst to him, due to his soul bond with Huo Qiu'er, he'll emit slight traces of the Golden Dragon which is the descendant of the Golden Dragon King. And the Silver Dragon King had secretly placed a dragon mark on him that would keep other soul beasts from attacking him.
In his encounter with Masashi, the Ōtsutsuki ancestor had elevated his bloodline to the purest Ōtsutsuki bloodline. In the process, it had strengthen the aura of the dragons on his body.
At that moment, he had the auras of the Golden Dragon King, Silver Dragon King, and the Dark Dragon King.
Let's put aside the Dark Dragon King.
The Golden Dragon King and the Silver Dragon King are the most important, as they were the true legacy of the Dragon God after his death.
When their auras mixed together, it produced a sliver of the Dragon God's aura.
It wouldn't have been enough to fool someone like Di Tian, but dragon souls who doesn't have a lick of intelligence?
Huo Yuhao was fortunate that their loyalty towards the Dragon God, as the Water Dragon King and Fire Dragon King; who were known to be his first disciples, was so engraved in their souls that they helped him unhesitatingly.
Other Dragon Souls would've tried to devour him.
'So the Dragon Clan met their downfall at the hands of their own God. And to think they were that strong, to have their own divine realm. The strength of those God Kings from the human side... Unbelievable. They were that strong over who knows how long ago, they'd be stronger now!
Strength...I need more power!'
Huo Yuhao looked at the Dragon Souls before him and made a decision.
❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️
AN: Honestly, writing this chapter made me wonder why nobody wrote a soul land fanfic with the martial soul of either the Boosted Gear Divine Dividing. It'd be a pretty interesting story when done right.