Lu Yun didn’t notice the bone dragon following behind him. It’d deployed a certain combat art to hide within a crowd of zombies and followed silently behind her target. Though he was currently the size of a particle, the ripples of the Dragonsearch Invocation were a honing beacon that led the bone dragon’s consciousness straight to him.
To the dragon, there was no difference between dust-sized Lu Yun and regular-sized Lu Yun. Even though a layer of hellfire surrounded him, that still didn’t conceal him from the bone dragon. The difference between their cultivation level was too great. One was second level mortal realm and the other… an eternal overlord.
……
“Found it!” Lu Yun discovered a patch of empty space in the depths of the crowded zombie sea. A mountain of white bones sixty meters across floated within it, surrounded by something that looked like a boundary keeping the zombies out.
“There’s… the presence of the living here? There’s something alive?!” Lu Yun’s jaw dropped. “Not just one, but two!! How is this possible?? How is anything alive in the zombie sea?”
He could clearly sense the presence of the living from the mountain of white bones. Taking a deep breath, Lu Yun cautiously touched the boundary in front of him.
A small ripple traveled across the barrier’s surface as his hand passed right through it. Taken aback, he paused before setting foot inside the empty space devoid of zombies.
An exceedingly refreshing scent wafted into his nose, so revitalizing that he almost hummed with pleasure. Pure chaos currents could be found everywhere inside, seemingly nurturing something. Lu Yun focused his gaze and realized that the dragon pearl could be found inside the mountain of bone.
“No wonder the bone dragon’s cultivation fell to eternal overlord realm. It released all of the power in its pearl to nurture these two beings.” Unbidden, he strode over to the mountain.
Something that looked like a bundle of clouds rested in the center of the mountain. Two pale gold dragonlings slept quietly on the soft clouds.
“This!!” It felt like lightning had struck Lu Yun.
Two golden dragons!
Two. golden. dragonlings!
They weren’t chaos dragons, just ordinary dragonlings, but he’d seen them before!
He’d brought back a dragonling from the dragon tomb in the North Sea of the world of immortals, and it yet remained in Dusk Province. However, its cultivation never progressed and it never grew bigger, still teetering about as a baby. Despite that, the dragon empress, Ghost Dragon, and Ghost Phoenix treated it with utmost respect, even fear and dread.
The two dragonlings in front of him were the exact same as the one in Dusk Province. Even their aura was the same, as if they were the same exact dragon!
“How… is this possible…” Lu Yun stared incredulously at the sleeping dragonlings on the clouds.
“Do you know him?” a soft voice suddenly sounded behind him.
Lu Yun jumped up and scrambled a few steps backward before looking in alarm at what’d walked in behind him. This… should be a woman. He looked upon a figure in a black silk dress, hair black as the night, but her arms and head of bone.
“You’re, you’re the bone dragon from earlier!” he said after a shocked beat.
“Yes.” The woman of white bone inclined her head. “The ripples from your Dragonquake Scripture returned me to reason.”
Flesh and blood slowly grew over her skeleton as she spoke, melding into her body and forming an exceedingly beautiful woman. Elegant and poised, she was plainly of noble birth.
“He is my child.” She pointed at the two dragonlings entwined around each other on the clouds.
“He?” Lu Yun blinked.
“Chaos dragons possess three heads, three tails, and twelve feet. Upon my impending death, I used the last of my strength to split him apart and save his life.” Her tone took a downward turn. “He is a chaos dragon no more.”
“You brought your child here… to fight?” Lu Yun frowned.
“It wasn’t a fight, but a war. A war that came all too suddenly upon us,” she sighed. “He was not yet born when war descended. As the last powerhouse of the chaos dragons, I had to lead my clan to protect our home.
“I gave birth to him before I died and split him into three, dispelling the aura of a chaos dragon from him. That is how he evaded that awful curse. If it wasn’t for the curse, perhaps… perhaps we might’ve won,” she murmured.
“You did win, in reality. The mythical realm was destroyed and the chaos creatures survived,” Lu Yun offered.
“No, we lost. We all lost!” She lifted her head and looked up at the boundless sea. “Whether it was us or this realm, we all lost.”
“Is there… a third party?” Lu Yun probed.
The woman shook her head without responding.
“Well… alright, then why is there only two of him? Where’s the third?” Images of the little dragon in Dusk Province came to his mind again. The little dragon was Liu Qingmiao’s playmate and also trained with Aoxue. The blood dragon had named it Aoxin.
“I don’t know where the third him has gone either… After my death, I protected my child with the last of my instincts. I don’t know where he’s gone…
“The presence of the Dragonquake Scripture on you is proof that you have a great kinship with us. I beg of you, take my child and save him from this world devoid of light!” Pleading and great suffering suffused her eyes.
The Dragonquake Scripture was the ultimate method of the chaos dragons and the foremost method of the chaos! Simply possessing the Dragonquake Scripture enabled Lu Yun to awaken her reason and gain her trust.
She didn’t know what’d happened in the outside world or that there was a three-eyed man who’d learned the Dragonquake Scripture and plotted against the chaos dragons.
“The third him is with me.” Lu Yun mused, “I don’t know why he ended up with me, but he is well and truly by my side, with my clansmen.”
It would seem that there was far more than met the eye with the dragon tomb in the North Sea. The dragonling had seemed to be using the tomb’s power to fortify himself. Then… who had built the tomb and what was it meant for? Was it really just to curse the dragons?
Or was the dragonling absorbing the fortunes of dragonkind so he could become a chaos dragon again?
Just who built that tomb?
Lu Yun felt like his brain was about to explode. If only he could find Ghost Dragon or Ghost Phoenix! But they’d disappeared after departing from the dragon tomb.
“He, he’s with you? That’s wonderful. I hereby gift my dragon pearl and everything here to you. I only ask that you protect him.” The woman murmured, “I do not hope that he becomes a master in the chaos, I only pray that he lives on.”
Lu Yun opened his hand to allow a tiny door to swing open. A golden dragonling that looked the same as the two sleeping in the clouds darted out of the doorframe.
“Aooouuaaa!” Freezing with surprise for a split second, the dragonling pounced on the woman with croons that sounded like both laughter and tears. Though he’d been split into three, the three bodies shared one consciousness. The two sleeping dragons were also him.
“My child, my child! It really is you!” The woman hugged the little dragon tightly as tears flowed out of her eyes as two trails of smoke. She was just a skeleton now, her physical body an illusion and her tears formed by her soul—soul tears.
“Aoou aouu aoo!” The little dragon turned around and sobbed at Lu Yun. “Saoove… h-her!” He formed the two words with extreme difficulty.
“Okay.” Lu Yun nodded.
The woman remained unmoving, still crying smoky tears and hugging the tiny Aoxin to herself. Meanwhile, the bundle of clouds gently floated upward and entered the Gates of the Abyss. Aoxin’s body underwent drastic changes as it did so. Since he was a creature of the realms, he wasn’t afraid of its energy, a fact that transferred over to his other two bodies.
“Senior, I can help you return to life.” Lu Yun looked at the woman.
“I cannot leave.” She shook her head. “If I leave, my clansmen here will go extinct and be swallowed by the other zombies.”
“But your child…” Lu Yun frowned.
“He has his life ahead of him. I… I am already dead,” she sighed. She’d originally wanted to use her dragon pearl to help Aoxin be reborn, but her son was alive and well. The death energy that filled her dragon pearl was no longer appropriate for him.
“If I am dead, I should guard those of my clan who have died.” Her physical form began to fade away. “Do not say that you can bring me back to life, that is a taboo in this tomb. If you speak of it, you will be plagued with bad luck. I do not wish for my child to be affected by it.
“I am already dead. I am content as long as my child remains alive.” She returned to her skeletal form and backed out of the area.
“Maooooommy!!” Aoxin burst into heartrending sobs and flailed wildly to catch up to the woman. “Mommy, mommy!! S-save her, please please please save her…”
Aoxin had never spoken in all these years, but forced his draconic mouth to form human language at this time. It was the human language of the world of immortals, not the chaos.
“I know you can, you can save her. Please save her…”
He reached out with two foreclaws, trying to cling to the warm embrace that’d appeared endless times in his dreams. But his claws connected with nothing, no answering warmth. There was only empty nothingness.
