"What happened wasn't your fault - continue. You can choose any soul beast you want to cooperate with your experiment." Di Tian turned to Huo Yuhao and spoke plainly, jolting Huo Yuhao awake from his fearful thoughts.
Huo Yuhao nodded and glanced at Dai Huabin beside him. Dai Huabin's reaction was drastically different from his. At this moment, the half-brother with whom he shared a father only had excitement in his eyes. Dai Huabin stared at Di Tian as if he were gazing upon his idol, a pure worship of strength.
"Thank you for your trust." Huo Yuhao bowed towards Di Tian before he walked towards the soul beasts who were representing the Great Star Dou Forest for the experiments.
Di Tian had heavily injured the Bear Lord and was also telling Huo Yuhao through his actions how important these experiments were, and how much emphasis he placed on them. Huo Yuhao didn't know what the Beast God would do if his experiments failed.
There were many powerful individuals in the human camp, but from the strength that Di Tian had just displayed, he didn't even consider these humans a challenge to him.
Huo Yuhao didn't take long to choose a soul beast. He picked another tiger, but he didn't pick from those who were injured. Instead, he picked from the group whose lives were almost at an end due to old age. This tiger was another ten-thousand-year soul beast, and from its appearance, it had about twenty thousand years of cultivation. With Dai Huabin's talent, this tiger was very appropriate for his sixth soul ring.
Huo Yuhao brought this soul beast, whose movements were already a little sluggish, in front of Dai Huabin. This soul beast was a Black Tiger. Its entire body was pitch-black, and there was a white "King" etched onto its forehead. It was five meters long, and even though it was old and infirm, one could tell see its power when it was in its prime. Its skeleton was large, and its four paws were especially thick and wide.
The Large-Palmed Black Tiger was a ferocious soul beast that was adept in melee. Tigers were typically highly regarded within the forest, but very few tigers could go further after reaching a hundred thousand years. It was because tigers were innately domineering and overbearing, and after breaking through a hundred thousand years, they were likely to threaten the ruler's sovereignty. Di Tian didn't have to make a move; the Bear Lord and the Myriad Demon King wouldn't allow any tiger to break through two hundred thousand years.
Huo Yuhao said to this Large-palmed Black Tiger, "I can sense that your life energy is about to be exhausted. If you complete your fusion with him, you will exist in another form. You will still be a king, and you can still accompany him into battle, and you will still be able to use your powers as a king. Are you willing to try?"
This Large-Palmed Black Tiger's life had several months more to it, at most. The truth was that it had almost died at the hands of other soul beasts before it came forward today, and Bi Ji's kindness had saved it.
Huo Yuhao chose soul beasts who were old and infirm because they hadn't participated in the beast wave, which meant they didn't harbor that much hatred against Shrek City's soul masters.
The tiger nodded slowly. Whether it was because of Di Tian's forceful intimidation or because it wanted to prolong its life, this tiger had no reason to object.
Huo Yuhao continued, "That's good. In a moment, I will begin guiding your spiritual imprint to condense. You have to relax and cooperate with me so that I can fuse your innate abilities with your spiritual imprint. You have to do everything willingly, and only after that can I help you complete the contract."
The Large-palmed Black Tiger growled, and its spiritual undulations became a little excited. However, it was still relatively calm.
Huo Yuhao turned to Dai Huabin and said, "Same goes for you. You have to accept this tiger from the bottom of your heart. The fusion after this will be a little painful, so you'll have to hang on."
"Come!" Dai Huabin had always been one of Shrek Academy's individuals who craved strength the most, and even though his tolerance for pain and suffering wasn't as good as Huo Yuhao, he wasn't that far off due to this desire to strengthen himself.
Huo Yuhao reassured both parties before he stared at the Large-palmed Black Tiger, and the Eye of Destiny slowly opened on his forehead.
He had to use his full strength so that he could ensure success!
Spiritual power that wasn't very intense, but gave others a sticky feeling, surged out from Huo Yuhao and encompassed both Dai Huabin and the tiger.
Huo Yuhao's soul rings, that had transcended ordinary circumstances, rose from beneath his feet and attracted the attention of every single human and soul beast there.
A gentle golden light burst out from Huo Yuhao's rose-gold Eye of Destiny and landed on the tiger's forehead.
The tiger quivered once before it just lay there.
The tiger's current physical situation meant there was no way it could release a burst of energy or use too much strength, but it was best at relaxing.
Huo Yuhao's formidable spiritual power wasn't something it could fight against. His spiritual power went straight in smoothly, and Huo Yuhao quickly found its spiritual imprint and spiritual origin.
Huo Yuhao wasn't hasty, gradually releasing amiable will as he guided the tiger to control its own spiritual power at the same time.
A faint golden layer of light began to emerge from the tiger's body. Under Huo Yuhao's guidance, its spiritual origin, its spiritual imprint, and part of its purest soul power began to gather with the mysterious power contained within its innate bloodline.
This was a very long process. In the end, he was working on a soul beast that had more than twenty thousand years of cultivation. Furthermore, this was the first time that Huo Yuhao was carrying out a material experiment. He didn't dare to be careless at all, and he did everything meticulously.
Nobody knew more about Spirits than Huo Yuhao. Following the improvement of his spiritual power, Huo Yuhao gained an increasingly deeper understanding of the magic that Electrolux had left behind for him. Juxtaposed with the changes in his martial soul, his ability to control his spiritual power became stronger every time he underwent closed-door cultivation.
Both parties watched Huo Yuhao's actions nervously, and not a single human or soul beast dared to make a sound.
They knew that if Huo Yuhao succeeded, he would make history on the Douluo Continent. He would have invented a formidable ability that could be popularized besides soul rings and soul bones!
---
Fifteen minutes later, the golden light on the tiger's body became stronger, and everyone could see that golden light had begun to surge from its tail. Its body began to decay and darken wherever this golden light passed; its tail's fur lost its shine first, and its hind legs went next. The golden light that was slowly shifting forward became increasingly brilliant.
Finally, all that golden light concentrated on the tiger's head and had become so intense that nobody could see its body anymore.
Huo Yuhao raised his left hand as the golden light condensed into a staff that appeared in his grip, and deep and drawn-out incantations could be heard.
Those incantations were very bright and clear, but nobody could understand what he was saying. The unfamiliar voice seemed to cause heaven and earth to tremble along with it.
A golden hexagon began to take shape on the ground. This hexagon encompassed Huo Yuhao, Dai Huabin, and the Large-palmed Black Tiger.
Huo Yuhao's body slowly drifted into the air, the Eye of the Asura appeared behind his back as a vertical eye.
His chanting became sharper and higher in pitch as his seventh soul ring glowed, and the vertical eye behind him burst with light as that light swallowed him entirely, and he transformed into the Eye of the Asura.
Rose-gold sun patterns lit up several hundred meters around him, and intense spiritual undulations caused even the expressions of the Beast God, the Taotie Douluo Elder Xuan, and the Body Douluo Du Busi to change.
Rose-gold streaks of light flickered one after another as Dai Huabin and the Large-palmed Black Tiger were pulled closer to one another.
A beam descended on Dai Huabin's head, and another pulled on the tiger. Under the effects of Huo Yuhao's chants, they were finally pulled to within one foot of one another.
Huo Yuhao's will guided Dai Huabin, and Dai Huabin slowly raised his right hand and pressed it against the Large-palmed Black Tiger's forehead. Dai Huabin began to chant something, as the tiger also began to make sounds that sounded like whimpering.
The hexagon beneath them became brighter and brighter as strange glyphs rose up one after another. These glyphs circled around their bodies as gentle spiritual and soul power undulations orbited them at the same time.
Di Tian, Elder Xuan, and the others who had seen many things and were very knowledgeable could clearly feel the peculiar transformations that were happening between Dai Huabin and that Large-Palmed Black Tiger.
The process was similar to absorbing soul rings. Dai Huabin was actually absorbing something from the tiger, while the tiger's life energy was continuously slipping away. However, its body was integrating into Dai Huabin's body, creating something that wasn't a soul ring.
Both the humans the soul beasts could tell at this point that Huo Yuhao's research into Spirits had its reason and rationality. Even though the process wasn't yet complete, they knew that Huo Yuhao's claims weren't empty.
The Eye of the Asura slowly rose into the sky and retreated as Huo Yuhao returned to human form and ended his martial soul true body.
Huo Yuhao had already helped Dai Huabin and the tiger complete the necessary incantations. Now, he would have to wait and see if they could complete their fusion.
Huo Yuhao took a deep breath and watched everything that was happening in the hexagon nervously. This was an equal contract, so approval from both parties for each other was more important than anything else. If either had any objections during this approval process, the ceremony would fail.
At this moment, the benefit of Huo Yuhao choosing this old and infirm Large-Palmed Black Tiger began to show. The tiger was aging, and if it didn't approve Dai Huabin and couldn't become his Spirit, then the tiger would die for sure! These circumstances discreetly raised the tiger's sincerity exponentially. Huo Yuhao couldn't guess Dai Huabin's mentality at this moment, so he could only resign things to fate.
Seconds and minutes passed as the light inside the hexagon became increasingly strong, while the glyphs became increasingly numerous.
Suddenly, all the glyphs paused in midair as the Large-palmed Black Tiger's enormous frame slanted and collapsed inside the hexagon. It had lost every last bit of its life energy.
The soul beasts that were prostrate on the ground, especially those who were about to be experimented on, all stood up in unison and stared at Dai Huabin. Fear and anger began to surface in their eyes.