Douluo 2: This Dragon God has too much martial virtue

Chapter 543 Opened My Eyes (Part 2)

"No..." A weak trembling voice escaped from Huo Yun'er's pale lips; she denied it almost subconsciously.

Of course she knew! How could she not know?!

That legendary evil dragon, that mysterious, powerful, and ominous being in her eyes, those rare and precious treasures whose names she could not understand at all, those resources that required Soul Masters to venture into perilous places with a nine-out-of-ten chance of death to obtain... Although she was an ordinary person, a woman who had never even truly stepped into the threshold of becoming a Soul Master, she was not completely ignorant.

How could a child with only level one innate soul power be raised to the level of Limit Douluo in less than ten years?!
The mere thought was enough to make her dizzy, filling her with an incomprehensible fear and absurdity. How many resources would this require? How enormous an investment, far beyond her imagination, would it demand? She couldn't even begin to picture the exact number—it was an astronomical sum that she, no, the entire White Tiger Duke's Mansion represented by Dai Hao, could never reach, no matter how much wealth and resources they poured into it! In the world of Soul Masters, the White Tiger Duke, whom she saw as a mountain of power, was merely a Title Douluo whose strength was "not particularly outstanding." In her hazy understanding, the gap between a Title Douluo and a Limit Douluo was no less than the difference between a mortal and a god.

She had always known the dragon's investment was enormous, so enormous that it terrified her, so enormous that it filled her with an unspeakable inferiority complex and a humiliating sense of being given charity. She hated it even more! She hated that dragon to the core! In her eyes, it was that dragon who used these cold, vast resources as bait and shackles to completely twist and transform her Yuhao, turning him into the vengeful and ruthless person he was today. She was the one who corrupted her child! She was the one who ignited the all-consuming flames of revenge!

Therefore, she deliberately ignored these enormous "educational expenses." She was unwilling to think about it, unwilling to admit that her son was built on such a crumbling edifice of hatred and exorbitant resources. She only wanted to grasp the last bit of maternal instinct to condemn her son's cruelty, to fantasize that there might still be a glimmer of hope, that she could find the boy with the clear eyes she remembered.

But now, Huo Yuhao has shattered all her self-deceiving fantasies with this stark reality.

She had to face it.

Those resources she dared not and did not want to think about were real, the only pillar supporting Huo Yuhao's current "living" and "safe" standing here. And what sustained this pillar was Huo Yuhao's unwavering determination to take revenge on the White Tiger Duke's Mansion.

Overwhelming fear instantly overwhelmed her hatred for the dragon and her anger at her son's methods.

"No...don't..." she cried out again, her voice trembling with sobs, no longer an angry accusation, but a desperate plea.

She reached out, trying to grab Huo Yuhao's sleeve. "Yuhao... I... I didn't mean that... I..."

A long-forgotten image suddenly crashed into Huo Yun'er's chaotic mind: a scene of her confined to her sickbed, knowing her days were numbered. Young Huo Yuhao stood by her bedside, his face filled with a stubbornness and fear beyond his years. With her last strength, she held his hand and spoke the words she had once said to him…

That sentence was the only humble yet "safe" way out that this weak and incompetent mother could think of and planned for her son at the end of her life.

Huo Yun'er seemed to grasp at the last straw, "Do you remember, Yuhao? Do you remember what Mom said to you when she was about to die?"

Huo Yuhao's body stiffened. Of course he remembered that it was the belief that supported him in obtaining his second martial soul.

A glimmer of morbid hope flickered in Huo Yun'er's eyes. She struggled, tilting her head back, repeating the words with all her might, as if it were a spell to awaken her son and save everything:

"Mom said... if... if you can't become a Soul Master in the future... then... learn a trade! Live a peaceful... life! Live like an ordinary person!"

After she shouted those words, her chest heaved violently as she gasped for breath, staring intently at Huo Yuhao, her eyes filled with a humble plea. The mundane scene she depicted was less a way out for her son, and more a desperate attempt to buy herself a breather for the man she deeply loved—a faint hope that might end the hatred and the torment.

“Yes! Learn a skill!” Her voice became urgent, filled with unrealistic fantasies. “Leave here! Go far away! You can start over! Live like…like a normal person…okay? Yuhao? We don’t want this power anymore! We don’t want this hatred anymore! Okay?”

"Learn a skill?" Huo Yuhao tilted his head slightly, his voice soft, with a strange upward inflection, clearly repeating those four words as if savoring something utterly ridiculous. "Live peacefully... like an ordinary person?"

"Do you know what kind of life I've been living since I left the Duke's mansion?" A cruel sense of superiority curled at the corner of his mouth. "Luxury clothes and sumptuous food? Ha, that's too superficial. Rather, my peaceful life only began after I left the Duke's mansion."

He took a step forward, and the invisible pressure made Huo Yun'er almost suffocate.

As for cultivation resources, Huo Yuhao scoffed, his eyes revealing extreme contempt for the past.

Soul bones? Soul rings? Those are just the most basic things. How could his mother know what beast sacrifice was? Those terrifying beings, hundreds of thousands of years old, that could drive the top experts of the entire continent to madness and stir up bloodshed, willingly offered their lives, souls, and most primal power to him to become his soul rings, all because of a single, casual remark from his teacher?

Mu Xingle, who had initially thought he would just observe from the sidelines, was amused. “I really find people who talk to themselves, have their own set of values, and don’t care what the world is like or what they think the world should be like, and who don’t care about the lives of others, to be particularly interesting.”

Would a domesticated cat, pampered and cared for after being adopted, ever want to return to the streets to compete with stray dogs for food? He'd rather die than return to that precarious, undignified life! Therefore, Mu Xing never worried that Huo Yuhao would give up everything he possessed. His extravagant power was ingrained in his very being, the foundation of his existence and an inviolable source of dignity. And Huo Yun'er's imagined "stability," based on poverty and weakness, was more unbearable than hell in his eyes. She didn't yet understand how terribly wrong she was; she not only underestimated the power of hatred but also completely underestimated the allure of power, status, and a life of luxury. Her son was no longer the child who suffered hunger and bullying in the Duke's mansion; he was a beast raised by a dragon using power.

But Huo Yun'er is indeed quite good at annoying others. First it was the Duchess, then it was the dragon who raised Huo Yuhao so well, and finally it was Huo Yuhao himself's turn.

Fu Rui couldn't help but feel sorry for her closest ally. Both of them were beings burdened with destiny, but compared to her, Huo Yuhao's first half of life was incredibly miserable, and now one of the culprits who caused all of this was still chasing after him.

"..." Electrox didn't make any comment on the surface, but in his heart he was already thinking that if the world were full of people like this, his guilt about destroying the world might be lessened.

“I really don’t understand this. To be honest, if any of my children got hurt because of me, my eight wives would take turns scolding me…” Rong Nianbing looked a little embarrassed. He had indeed done a background check on Huo Yuhao, but the child’s biological mother was really outrageous.

“Actually, you don’t need to emphasize that you have eight…” Mu Xing couldn’t help but interrupt him.

Di Tian said that he, as a beast god, had lived for hundreds of thousands of years and had seen all kinds of scenes, but sorry, he really had never seen this scene before!

Huo Yuhao sighed. His face showed no anger, but rather a weary helplessness.

"Are you really telling me all this for my sake?"

Huo Yun'er's heart clenched under his calm gaze, a panic of being completely seen through gripping her instantly. She opened her mouth, wanting to explain, wanting to deny, but her throat felt like it was being choked, and she couldn't utter a sound.

Huo Yuhao didn't wait for her answer, nor did he need it. His voice remained calm, carrying a weary glimpse of someone who understood everything: "You simply can't accept that he's become like this, can't accept that the man you love most has fallen into this state. You used the last words you left me to paint a false picture of a stable future, your real purpose being to make me stop, to make me let him go, isn't that right?"

Huo Yun'er's body trembled violently, her face ashen. Huo Yuhao's calm words, like the sharpest scalpel, precisely dissected all her self-deceptive pretense, nakedly exposing her most wretched, twisted, and morbid love for Dai Hao. She couldn't refute him, because he spoke with absolute certainty.

"For his sake, you can ignore all the humiliation I endured, you can ignore the days when my son and I walked on thin ice in the Duke's mansion, and you can even ignore the fact that behind your plea for me to 'give up my power and live a peaceful life,' I may be facing a desperate situation that is ten thousand times more miserable than it was back then."

Whether it's fine clothes and sumptuous food, or the sacrifice of ferocious beasts, or the teacher's kindness in giving him a second chance... these are all established facts, the foundation of his existence. Giving up everything, what's the difference between that and suicide? Anyone with a sound mind knows which choice to make, right? He's not some blindly filial fool!

Besides, he's living a pretty stable life now, so why would he want to make things difficult for himself?
The worst thing that could happen was that his own mother had arranged it for him. Unlike the blatant hatred between Wang Dong and her anthropomorphic father, Huo Yun'er's harm to him felt like a slow, agonizing torture. He could ignore her pain, despise her choices, and even hate her for ignoring her own son for Dai Hao's sake… but he couldn't abandon her, simply because… she was his mother, the one who gave him life. She was the woman who, in the darkest days of the Duke's mansion, had tried to shield him from the storms with her frail body. This responsibility and obligation stemming from blood ties, even now, with a heart as cold as ashes, even after seeing through all his mother's depravity and selfishness, could not be completely severed.

It wasn't him who made Dai Hao wish he were dead. Huo Yuhao thought about it; all he did from beginning to end was slap Dai Hao, gouge out his eyes, and oh right, cripple Dai Huabin. If we're really talking about who was more ruthless, could he compare to Ju Zi?
What truly dragged Dai Hao into hell, subjecting him to unimaginable torture and leaving him wishing for death, was Ju Zi! Huo Yuhao looked at Huo Yun'er in bewilderment. Since his mother loved that man so much, why didn't she hate Ju Zi?

Because she dared not. Ju Zi was now the Marshal of the Sun Moon Empire, wielding immense power and commanding a large army. She had been cowardly her whole life, even the servants of the Duke's mansion could bully her; how could she dare to hate such a being?
Yet she dared to hate the legendary dragon? Hate that it corrupted her son, using vast resources to mold Huo Yuhao into a weapon of revenge. In her eyes, Mu Xing was the evil dragon that twisted her son, the source of her resentment, because she felt that the dragon was the instigator of Dai Hao's humiliation. She could only understand and vent her anger on that seemingly hateful being who had not directly exerted pressure on her.

How could a dragon be someone to be trifled with? Any normal person knows that dragons are by no means benevolent, right?

"Ahem! This child is indeed deeply emotional and loyal. His inner purity and resilience are the most crucial qualities for inheriting the position of the God of Emotions. You see, his perception of emotional power is becoming increasingly acute; whether it's anger, pain, or compassion, it can all resonate in his spiritual sea. This innate talent, coupled with the character he has honed through trials, allows him to truly understand the essence of emotions. At this rate of growth, perhaps it won't be long before he fully comprehends the true meaning of the God of Emotions!" Seeing his successor stuck in a stalemate, Rong Nianbing cleared his throat, justifying everything he had done before.

It's definitely not because two dragons were preparing to gang up on him.

"Do you think I'm easy to fool?" Mu Xing didn't believe Rong Nianbing's nonsense at all, after all, he had a history of lying to her.

"Haha, look at the mess this has made!" Seeing the dragon's increasingly hostile gaze, Rong Nianbing instantly became serious and said, "The foundation of my divine position has never been brute force or simply the thickness of my cultivation. Its core is the tempering of the deepest part of the soul! You think the word 'emotion' is just child's play? It is the fundamental pulse of the existence of living beings, the invisible fire that drives all things. To master it, one needs the will to guard the lighthouse of one's true self amidst the turbulent waves of the seven emotions and six desires of all living beings!"

"Are you going to say next, 'Only after you have gone through seven levels of solitude can you become a true strongman, and our world will be born from that'?" Mu Xing's expression was indescribable.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly what I meant!" Rong Nianbing instinctively leaned back tactically, dodging the oncoming dragon god's claw.

　Too lazy to come up with two titles, let's just look at them together.

　　(End of this chapter)