Chapter 237: Tang San's Breakdown! Damned Liu Yuan, You Have Already Found Your Way to Death
Huo Yuhao crouched beside the jagged rock, his gaze locked onto the dark red plant rooted in the harsh soil.
His finger hovered just above the delicate leaves, trembling slightly against the chaotic air currents.
He took a deep, ragged breath, reaching into his storage soul tool to extract a short blade.
The blade was paper-thin, its edge glinting with a cruel, frosty light in the dim cavern. His hand holding the hilt remained steady, though the skin stretched white over his tightly clenched knuckles.
He recalled the exact instructions Tai Tan and Niu Tian had left behind in their letter.
The Lovesick Heartbroken Herb demanded the essence blood of one's heart to awaken its medicinal properties.
Not ordinary blood drawn from a vein, but the absolute core essence of a cultivator's life force.
The precise location to extract this blood was directly over the left side of the chest, a hair's breadth from the beating heart.
The incision had to be flawless. The depth required absolute precision—a millimeter off-target or a fraction too shallow, and the sacrifice would be rendered useless.
Huo Yuhao unbuttoned his collar, pulling the fabric aside to expose his bare chest to the elements.
His skin rapidly flushed a faint, irritated red, battered by the violently alternating waves of scalding heat and freezing mist radiating from the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
He positioned the tip of the short blade against his skin, tracing the exact spot over his ribcage.
As the cold steel pierced inward, tearing through muscle and tissue, a muffled groan escaped his throat.
Thick, vivid crimson blood immediately welled up from the fresh wound, sliding down his chest in a heavy stream.
Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, he yanked the blade free. He pressed his bare palm directly against the bleeding gash, guiding the flow of his heart's essence to drip steadily onto the waiting leaves of the Lovesick Heartbroken Herb.
The moment the first heavy drop of blood splattered against the dark red foliage, the entire plant shuddered violently.
A second drop fell, then a third. The tightly coiled leaves began to slowly unfurl, their dull surface shifting into a vibrant, glowing crimson, as if the plant itself were drawing breath and coming to life.
A faint trace of a smile surfaced on Huo Yuhao's face.
It was weak, exhausted, but entirely genuine.
His complexion had already drained to a sickly pallor, and the rapid loss of essence blood left his lips tinged with a faint bluish hue, yet his bloodied hand never wavered from its position above the herb.
Then, the anomaly struck.
The fresh blood pooling on the leaves suddenly stopped absorbing into the plant.
It was not a natural saturation. It looked exactly as if the liquid had been forcibly halted by an invisible, freezing pressure.
The crimson droplets rapidly condensed into solid ice right on the surface of the leaves—a bizarre, unnatural red frost. One small patch crystallized, followed immediately by a second, and then a third.
The creeping ice layer surged from the delicate leaves down to the main stalk, and from the stalk straight into the root system.
Within mere seconds, the entire Lovesick Heartbroken Herb was encased in a rigid, impenetrable layer of frost.
Huo Yuhao froze in absolute shock.
He stared down at the crystallized plant, the exhausted smile hardening into a mask of disbelief. He reached out with a trembling finger to touch the frozen stalk, and his skin was instantly met with a bone-chilling extreme cold—this was not the ambient chill of the nearby freezing spring, but a sinister, penetrating absolute zero that seemed to drill straight into his bone marrow.
"What is going on?" His voice emerged tight and raspy.
He pressed his palm against his open chest wound once more, violently squeezing the torn flesh to force out more essence blood, letting it rain down onto the frozen herb.
The fresh, boiling-hot blood did absolutely nothing to melt the ice. Instead, it simply slid uselessly off the slick, frozen surface, dripping onto the barren rocks below and seeping away into the dark dirt crevices.
The Lovesick Heartbroken Herb remained entirely motionless, frozen solid and dead to the world.
Huo Yuhao's hands began to shake violently.
It was not the freezing temperature of the cavern affecting him, but a sudden, suffocating wave of absolute panic clawing at his throat.
He had departed from Shrek Academy, crossed half the continent, infiltrated the perilous depths of the Sunset Forest, handled through deadly toxic miasma, and finally descended into the legendary Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well. After enduring endless torment and searching for so long, he had finally located this singular, life-saving herb.
He had willingly sliced open his own chest, extracted his vital heart blood, and poured his life force out drop by drop.
He feared neither the excruciating pain, the severe blood loss, nor the crippling weakness that followed.
The only thing that terrified him was the thought that this herb would fail to save Wang Dong'er.
"This isn't right... it shouldn't be like this..." he muttered to himself, his voice dropping into a desperate, hollow whisper.
Tai Tan and Niu Tian had mentioned absolutely nothing about this bizarre phenomenon in their detailed letter.
They had explicitly stated that the herb only required watering with heart blood; they never once warned that the plant would violently reject the offering and freeze itself shut.
He had no idea what mistake he had made, but he understood one brutal reality. If the herb remained trapped in this frozen state, he could not harvest it, he could not transport it, and he certainly could not use it to cure Dong'er's terminal condition.
Meanwhile, high above the mortal plane.
Tang San sat upon his divine throne, observing the tragic scene unfolding within the shimmering surface of the Water Mirror. The corners of his mouth curled upward in a distinct sneer.
It was a tiny, calculated arc, nearly imperceptible to anyone not studying his face closely.
Yet, his eyes burned with a brilliant, intense light. That gleam contained zero warmth or compassion; it was the satisfied, triumphant glow of a supreme predator reveling in his absolute control over a lesser being's fate.
"Success," he whispered into the empty, opulent hall.
Tang San's slender fingers tapped rhythmically against the armrest of his throne, the brisk tempo echoing his elevated mood.
"Just like that." His voice rose slightly, carrying a heavy, irrepressible smugness that filled the silent divine chamber. "This is exactly the kind of tempering he needs. The more difficult and agonizing the process, the less likely he is to ever forget his place. Every single time he looks back on this moment in the future, he will be forced to remember the sheer magnitude of what he sacrificed for Wang Dong'er."
Tang San's calculating gaze remained glued to the rippling surface of the Water Mirror.
He watched Huo Yuhao's face twist in agonizing despair, his own sense of satisfaction swelling with every passing second of the boy's suffering.
Everything was finally proceeding exactly according to his grand design.
The previous irritating setbacks, those minor deviations caused by the unexpected interference of Du Busi and that anomaly Liu Yuan, no longer mattered in the grand scheme of things.
This specific trial was the absolute linchpin of his plan.
This step had not been interrupted. No one had dared to interfere with his divine will.
Back down in the mortal realm, within the depths of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Liu Yuan stood casually near the edge of the bubbling pools, his hands resting lightly at his sides as he watched the dramatic scene unfold. A single brow arched upward in mild amusement.
'Has Tang San finally made his move?'
As a transmigrator intimately familiar with the original trajectory of this world, he knew exactly what sort of divine trickery had just transpired.
Why else would the legendary Lovesick Heartbroken Herb suddenly freeze over for absolutely no logical reason?
This was, without a shadow of a doubt, the petty handiwork of the Sea God sitting up in the Divine Realm.
Following that logic, if no external factors intervened, the panicked and desperate Huo Yuhao would inevitably attempt to throw himself into the boiling extreme spring next, right?
Liu Yuan weighed his options with cold, pragmatic calculation.
Should he bother saving Huo Yuhao from his own stupidity?
Intervening now meant directly slapping Tang San's face and ruining the god's carefully laid emotional trap.
Was the resulting divine temper tantrum really worth his effort?
However, the frantic boy ahead of him did not leave Liu Yuan much time to ponder the political ramifications.
At that exact moment, Huo Yuhao completely lost his grip on rationality, descending into a state of sheer, unadulterated frenzy.
To save Wang Dong'er, he had to thaw the Lovesick Heartbroken Herb immediately.
But how could he possibly generate enough heat to counter an unnatural, bone-deep freeze?
Huo Yuhao's bloodshot eyes darted toward the violently bubbling Fire Spring situated on the opposite side of the cavern.
The temperature of the Fire Spring was catastrophically high. Even if he did not submerge the fragile herb directly into the liquid, simply bringing the freezing plant close enough to the boiling surface would surely radiate enough ambient heat to melt the stubborn ice. Driven by sheer desperation, he prepared to launch himself directly into the lethal, scalding waters to fetch the extreme heat.
Up in the Divine Realm, Tang San leaned forward on his throne, his expression twisting into one of extreme, sadistic excitement upon seeing the boy's suicidal resolve.
"Exactly! Jump!"
Just as Huo Yuhao's muscles tensed to launch himself into the boiling abyss, a blinding, dark purple light violently erupted beside the edge of the pool.
Liu Yuan moved.
He displayed zero hesitation, zero wavering, and did not even spare the frantic Huo Yuhao a second glance of pity.
Beneath his feet, a terrifying, blood-red fifth soul ring ignited with blinding intensity.
A suffocating dark purple aura surged outward from his imposing figure, instantly expanding to swallow a massive portion of the cavern surrounding the extreme springs.
"Forbidden Domain."
His voice was not loud, yet in the enclosed underground space, those two words carried an unquestionable, absolute chill that demanded total obedience.
The dark purple spatial distortion violently expanded outward, using Liu Yuan as its absolute epicenter.
From the empty void, countless thick, dark purple chains materialized out of thin air, accompanied by the harsh, metallic grinding of heavy iron.
The chains appeared slender, but every single link radiated a crushing, heavy soul power fluctuation that distorted the very air around them. The spectral chains crisscrossed through the cavern, rapidly weaving into an inescapable net, before simultaneously shooting forward like striking vipers toward the edge of the hot spring.
The first heavy chain viciously snapped around Huo Yuhao's right wrist, halting his forward momentum instantly.
The second chain whipped around his waist, locking tight with a metallic clank.
A third, a fourth, a fifth followed in rapid succession.
Chains erupted from every conceivable angle, violently binding Huo Yuhao's arms, shoulders, legs, and bleeding chest. They coiled around his struggling form multiple times, constricting with brutal force, and then simultaneously pulled taut, locking his entire body directly in mid-air.
Huo Yuhao's battered body hung suspended in the void, exactly two meters above the churning, lethal surface of the extreme hot spring.
The scalding, bubbling water roared aggressively just beneath his dangling feet, sending thick plumes of white steam billowing up to engulf his trapped form.
Suspended helplessly by the dark purple chains, he was completely paralyzed, unable to move a single muscle.
And high above, in the untouchable God Realm.
Tang San, who had just been overflowing with absolute smugness and divine superiority, felt his entire face freeze. His expression violently twisted into something unrecognizable as he witnessed the sudden, brutal destruction of his flawless plan.
The sheer audacity of the interference drove him half to death with rage on the spot. He slammed his hands down onto the armrests of his divine throne, shattering the pristine material as an outright, furious roar tore from his throat.
"Damned Liu Yuan, you are actively courting death!"
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