Chapter 71

After burying the mother phoenix, Yuhao and Snow Empress travelled just over one kilometre to a nearby formation of rocks. They unanimously decided that this would be a suitable location for Yuhao to absorb her as his fourth conscious spirit ring and overall, sixth conscious spirit beast companion.

Once they were settled, Snow Empress' stomach glowed briefly before a plant appeared in her dainty hands. She extended the Life Goddess' Orchid out to him, "If I am joining you, I won't need this anymore. You should absorb this after you fuse with me. I have no idea what kinds of benefits you will get out of it, however, knowing the quality of this plant, any and all benefits will be incredible."

Yuhao nodded as he placed the orchid into his storage bracer, "Thank you Snow Empress." He paused briefly before chuckling, "It is almost like a housewarming gift…only you are moving into the house as well."

Snow Empress mirrored Yuhao's smile briefly at the unusual but quite relevant comment.

"Ok with that done, how should we go about this?" Yuhao questioned her. Seeing her hesitating briefly, Yuhao said, "For reference, Ice Empress fused her spirit bone with me first, before sending her conscious and energy into my body afterwards. Are you ok with doing the same?"

"Yeah, I am ok with that, however, my spirit bone is a torso bone. I'm assuming that Bing Bing gave you that already?" Snow Empress replied.

Yuhao grimaced in hearing this, unsure of what to do with her spirit bone.

Just as he went to ask his other companions, Amra cheerily spoke up, "Hi Yuhao, you are in luck. Do you remember that Secret Law Spirit Bone you allowed me to scan and analyse?"

Yuhao nodded, "Yeah what about it?"

"Well as you know, it is able to fuse with other spirit bones. This is a trait that I have only seen in a very few spirit bones in my lifetime," Amra stated. He paused dramatically before continuing, "Through my analysis, I have been able to pinpoint where that trait comes from, and I believe I could replicate it in other spirit bones. Thus, we can simply fuse Snow Empress' torso bone with Ice Empress'."

Yuhao's eyes bulged at the thought of that happing, "That's amazing! There are so many possibilities with that."

"Yeah there are, however, the spirit bone still has to be of the same type and for it to properly fuse with each other, the two bones cannot be contrasting each other in element," Amra sensibly said.

His voice and emotions suddenly turned very serious, "That doesn't mean you can simply go around killing and torturing spirit beasts for their spirit bones. Even though I am somewhat apart of you now and am willing to support you throughout your future, I will not perform this process if you needlessly massacre beasts. I know that you wouldn't, but it is something that I still have to say. If a beast attacks you, deserves to be eliminated like that Scarlet King or willingly joins you, then I will be more than happy to fuse their bone with one of yours if you already have that bone type."

"That is reasonable," Yuhao seriously replied, repulsed by the thought of someone massacring hundreds and thousands of innocent and peaceful spirit beasts to acquire power.

Yuhao turned his focus away from Amra and towards Snow Empress as he explained what Amra just told him. Snow Empress was happy in hearing that her own torso bone won't simply be discarded, and she can further contribute to Yuhao's strength.

Deciding to immediately begin the fusion process, she laid peacefully on the ground. Promptly afterwards, a chilly, blue light began radiating off of her body, undulating from her head and all the way to her fingers and toes. This light became more powerful before separating into seven, distinct blue balls of light. Similar to the Ice Empress, these balls of light represented her spiritual origin which held her consciousness and power.

As the balls of light positioned themselves a few metres to the right, the relaxed body of the Snow Empress suddenly began dissolving into snowflakes of varying sizes. Once her entire body formed into a massive ball of hovering snowflakes, they all rushed straight into his chest at incredible speeds. As each snowflake hit and was absorbed by his torso, Yuhao felt like he was being hit by hail. The energy began flowing down and through all of Yuhao's bones in his torso, intertwining with the already existing Ice Jade Empress Scorpion torso bone there.

Yuhao felt like his entire body had simply become ice or at least the new definition of freezing cold. Luckily, as his entire torso was so cold, he felt no pain whatsoever from the fusion process. This was extremely fortunate for him as a four hundred-thousand-year-old torso bone was extremely painful already, and another bone, almost double the age, would undoubtedly be more so.

The fusion process continued over the entire night, before finally, at roughly ten o'clock in the morning on the third day of the mid-year break, the spirit bone fusion ended. Now, Yuhao's torso bones were stronger than a seven hundred-thousand-year-old spirit beast, with the properties of a Heavenly Snow Woman and Ice Jade Empress Scorpion merging and enhancing themselves, not to mention the influence of Yuhao's bloodline.

With the fusion of the torso spirit bones complete, the Snow Empress only had to convert her extensive power into a spirit ring for Yuhao, while maintaining her consciousness. This process was supported by all of Yuhao's beasts, allowing it to progress smoothly and efficiently. In the end, it only took another one hour before the process was completed and Yuhao had his third spirit ring on his FrostFire spirit.

With the energies from both the, now evolved, Three-Headed Scarlet Devil Mastiff and Heavenly Snow Woman, Yuhao had pushed his cultivation rank up to the rank forty threshold. Until he absorbed a total of four spirit rings on a single one of his martial spirits, he would be stuck at this rank.

As Yuhao opened his eyes, he received the information on his newly mutated torso bone and his third tool spirit's spirit ring. His mutated torso bone had changed into a Heavenly Snow Jade Scorpion Torso Bone. There were no new abilities however both of the pre-existing abilities had evolved. The previous twenty-metre radius of the permafrost domain had expanded to fifty metres, while its freezing abilities were enhanced. Likewise, the pressure-type skill, now named Snow Jade Empress' wrath, had become even stronger, while also being able to suppress all cold type spirits and spirit beasts in the vicinity.

In regards to the new spirit ring, unlike its predecessor spirit rings which only gave two skills, this ring gave Yuhao three. The three skills were three of the Snow Empress' most renowned skills, being Unparalleled Chill, Snowless Glacier and Snowy Dance of Ultimate Ice, or more simply, Snowstorm.