Douluo Continent: Copying Ya Li, the Carefree King of the Sun and Moon

To seal the wolf's lair and reside in the Xu state is an achievement that many people dream of their entire lives.

He couldn't resist taking another step.

A chill ran through his bones once more, and the Snow Emperor's voice exploded directly in his mind's sea: "Are you stupid? This is the Divine Trial Illusion, it's all fake!"

Xu Yanli suddenly came to her senses.

The scene before my eyes shattered like a mirror.

The third, the fourth, the fifth... the images kept appearing one after another.

A beggar, holding a tattered bowl, smiled and invited him to join him in rebuilding the world.

A scholar, fanning himself with a paper fan, invited him to join hands in creating an everlasting era of peace.

Every scene captivated him, and every sound made him want to follow.

But at crucial moments, a chill would surge up from his torso, trapping him firmly.

Xue Di's voice echoed in his mind again and again: "It's fake! It's all fake, don't be fooled!"

Until the very last scene appeared.

A man in straw sandals stood before a desolate landscape, with broken walls and ruins behind him and enemy troops swarming across the mountains and plains before him. He turned to look at Xu Yanli, smiled, and asked him if he was willing to join him in driving out the foreign invaders and protecting their homeland.

This time, Xu Yanli's foot moved.

He wasn't deceived by the illusion; he did it willingly.

He took that step directly.

Just then, a sudden burst of coldness erupted from his torso, freezing his feet instantly.

The phantom of the Snow Empress emerged from behind him, her long, ice-blue hair fluttering in the wind. She glanced at the man in straw sandals, then turned to look at Xu Yanli, saying nothing, only letting out a soft sigh.

The next second, the screen completely collapsed and shattered.

Xu Yanli stood in the center of the altar, panting heavily. Cold sweat streamed down his forehead, dripping onto the dark ground and instantly disappearing without a trace.

He looked down at the soul bone in front of him.

That soul bone was no longer in the shape of a bone.

It transformed into a dragon, a true Eastern dragon.

It's not the winged, lizard-like Western dragons of the Sun and Moon Empire, but a genuine five-clawed dragon with horns like a deer, a head like a camel, eyes like a rabbit, a neck like a snake, a belly like a clam, scales like a fish, claws like an eagle, paws like a tiger, and ears like a cow.

The dragon's body was entirely black, its scales shimmering with a dark purple light, as it slowly swam through the void.

The black dragon circled his right arm once, and finally transformed into a stream of light, merging back into his right arm.

This is no longer an ordinary soul bone.

It is a divine bone.

Right arm bone.

Xu Yanli clenched his fist, feeling the terrifying power surging in his right arm, and breathed a sigh of relief once again.

The second altar, pass.

Before he could catch his breath, the third wave of excruciating pain arrived as expected.

This time it's the torso bone, the one that the Snow Emperor sacrificed to him.

A burst of icy blue light erupted from his back, causing the temperature of the entire void to plummet instantly, and a thin layer of frost to form on the ground.

The pain was more intense than the previous two times. It wasn't a tearing pain, but an icy pain, as if his spine was being frozen section by section and then forcibly thawed little by little, causing him to tremble all over.

The Snow Emperor's soul floated out of his body and hovered in front of him. Her icy blue eyes looked at him quietly, and her tone was cold, but it contained a trace of tension that was hard to detect: "Hold on."

Xu Yanli gritted his teeth and nodded forcefully.

The moment his torso bones were ripped away, a huge scene unfolded before his eyes. This was not an illusion, but his real memories from this life.

It started in the cold palace.

He saw himself as a child, huddled in a corner of the cold palace, wrapped only in a thin, tattered garment, shivering from the cold. The palace maids and eunuchs who passed by didn't even glance at him, as if he were invisible.

The scene changes.

He saw Kong Deming pass by the entrance of the Cold Palace, and suddenly stopped. He turned around and glanced at him, a trace of reluctance flashing in his cloudy old eyes.

The next day, Xu Tianran sent someone to pick him up.

He sat in Xu Tianran's wheelchair and was pushed into the Crown Prince's residence. It was the first time in his life that he felt warmth, not physical warmth, but warmth in his heart.

The scene then changes.

The day my martial spirit awakened.

The angelic radiance illuminated the entire awakening room, and the emperor of the Sun and Moon Empire stood up directly from his dragon throne, his eyes filled with shock.

He also saw his mother, Xu Wangshu.

It wasn't a portrait, but a living person, a spirited princess standing in the sunlight.

She laughed, then started crying. She reached out to touch his face, but her hand passed right through his body, as if passing through a wisp of mist.

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Chapter 188 The Place Where the Moon Rises

She couldn't reach him.

Because she's long gone.

The scene ends abruptly here.

The bones of his torso transformed into a beam of ice-blue light, merging into his back—not merging, but a complete return to their original positions.

The torso and bones were complete.

The phantom of the Snow Empress looked at him, a slight smile playing on her lips: "Congratulations, you've taken another step closer to godhood."

Xu Yanli didn't speak, but simply nodded slightly at her.

The third altar was successfully passed.

Sunset City, on the border of the Heavenly Soul Empire.

Huo Yuhao stood on a high slope outside the city, his dark blue military uniform fluttering in the evening wind. Behind him, three hundred soul-guided cannons that Ju Zi had brought were lined up in three arcs, their muzzles all aimed at the city wall, but he hesitated to give the order to fire.

"What are you waiting for?" Orange rode up from behind, her long orange-red hair flying wildly in the wind, clutching the command flag tightly in her hand, ready to be swung at any moment.

Huo Yuhao remained silent, closed his eyes, and activated his mental detection to its maximum, thoroughly examining every corner of Sunset City.

The garrison on the city walls numbered less than three thousand, and most of them were old, weak, or disabled. The real elite troops had been wiped out in the previous battles. The city's granaries had been empty for more than half a month, and the people were all emaciated, some even resorting to gnawing on tree bark.

There were no ambushes, no reinforcements, and the defenders didn't even have the will to fight to the death.

Huo Yuhao opened his eyes and looked at Ju Zi: "We can fight, but it's unnecessary."

Orange frowned: "What do you mean by that?"

"Surround them without attacking, and wait for them to open the city gates themselves." Huo Yuhao said calmly, "The food in the city won't last more than three days. Rather than blowing up the city walls and then going in to clean up the mess, it's better to wait until they're starving and can't take it anymore, and then they'll open the gates and surrender. This way, fewer people will die, less food will be wasted, and it'll save us a lot of trouble."

After a moment of silence, Ju Zi put away the command flag in her hand.

"Okay, then we'll wait."

Three days later, the gates of Sunset City were indeed opened from the inside.

It wasn't breached by artillery fire; the defending troops themselves tied up the city's commander and opened the gates voluntarily.

When the army of the Sun Moon Empire entered the city, they did not burn, kill, or loot; they didn't even touch the homes of ordinary people. Huo Yuhao immediately ordered that all soldiers were forbidden from harassing the civilians, and those who disobeyed would be dealt with according to military law. Ju Zi also had soup kitchens set up outside the city to distribute porridge and food to the people who had been starving for so many days.

After resting, the army bypassed Sunset City and continued its westward advance.

The people of Sunset City stood at the city gate, watching the dark blue procession disappear into the distance. Some couldn't help but cry, while others knelt down and kowtowed repeatedly in the direction the procession had gone.

They all say that the army of the Sun Moon Empire doesn't kill or set fires, and they even give them food.

In contrast, the officials of the Heavenly Soul Empire only knew how to levy exorbitant taxes and conscript men, while the people starved to death in the streets without a care in the world. They had no humanity whatsoever.

Over the next two weeks, cities of the Heavenly Soul Empire fell one after another.

It wasn't that the Sun Moon Empire's offensive was particularly fierce; it was simply that the Heavenly Soul Empire itself was already on the verge of collapse. Its elite troops had been almost entirely wiped out in the previous border conflict with the Sun Moon Empire, and most of its Title Douluo-level experts were being held captive in Mingdu by Xu Yanli. The leaders of those sects were still "attending a wedding" in the Sun Moon Empire, with no one left to report back. The sects were leaderless and had no will to resist.

The army suffered repeated defeats, its food supplies were completely cut off, and the people had long since lost faith in the royal family.

One city, two cities, three cities...

The main force of the Sun Moon Empire didn't even need to be mobilized much. Huo Yuhao's Soul Master Corps, along with Ju Zi's artillery, took down the remaining five or six cities of the Heavenly Soul Empire one by one.

On the fourteenth day, the army directly besieged the capital of the Heavenly Soul Empire, Heavenly Dou City.

The walls of Tiandou City are higher and thicker than any other city before, and the garrison numbers more than 20,000. The city walls are covered with banners, and one can vaguely sense that powerful figures at the Title Douluo level are stationed here.

Ju Zi frowned deeply as she looked at the intelligence report in her hand, while Huo Yuhao put the report down and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

"Someone will open the door for us tonight."

Orange was taken aback and quickly asked, "Who?"

Huo Yuhao didn't answer directly, but instead looked in the direction of Tiandou City, his gaze fixed on the tallest tower in the palace.

As night deepened, the moon rose. Silvery moonlight spilled onto the heavy city walls and gently fell upon a person's shoulder.

Zhang Lexuan stood atop the tallest tower in the palace, her long, silvery-white hair fluttering freely in the night wind. Nine soul rings slowly rotated beneath her feet, and the phantom of the Silver Moon Martial Soul stood silently behind her. Moonlight, like water, quietly bathed the entire imperial city.

She had been standing there for a long time, so long that her legs had gone numb.

She wasn't hesitating; she was just waiting for news, waiting for that person to fulfill the promise they made back then.

Seven years ago, on a tree-lined path at Shrek Academy, that blond boy smiled and said to her, "Senior, there's a real culprit behind the massacre of your entire family. Why don't you investigate it yourself?"

She actually did investigate, and that investigation lasted for a full seven years.

From the archives of Shrek Academy to the top-secret files of the Heavenly Soul Empire's royal family, from the members of the oversight team who handled the case back then to the recollections of the surviving veterans, she peeled back the layers of the truth bit by bit, and all those bloody facts were laid bare before her.

The one who wiped out her entire family was neither an evil spirit master nor a bandit.

It was the royal family of the Heavenly Soul Empire.

They suspected that his martial spirit completely disregarded whether they wanted to return to the Sun Moon Empire, and even whether this martial spirit was truly the royal martial spirit of the Sun Moon Empire...