Each person here hoped that Baili Suxue would succeed but they did not have eyes that could pass through space. So they did not know what had happened in Changling right now.
“So his plan was to use himself to lure most of Zheng Xiu’s forces to Min Mountain Sword Sect, and then use the Nether dragon to enter the Changling imperial palace?” Ding Ning took a deep breath and said to Qing Yaoyin.
Qing Yaoyin nodded and looked at Tantai Guanjian whose emotions still had not calmed. “If everything went smoothly, that is the case, so no one has to stay in Min Mountain Sword Sect.”
Tantai Guanjian said gravely, “But the plan is just a plan. While we can use the nether dragon to enter the palace to assassinate Zheng Xiu, and it is a chance when Yuanwu is not in the imperial palace, even if no one has to stay behind in Min Mountain Sword Sect, he should have taken more people along.
Qing Yaoyin looked at Tantai Guanjian and grimaced. He did not speak. But everyone knew that Tantai Guanjian’s question was very simple and everyone knew the answer.
What was hardest to deal with Zheng Xiu was not her cultivation, but her cunning, her eyes which were everywhere and the news which came from different channels. If she was not certain about the whereabouts of Tantai Guanjian, Qing Yaoyin and the others, she would not activate her trap, and Baili Suxue could not get a chance to enter the palace to assassinate her.
From the start, Baili Suxue had set up this situation, and not Zheng Xiu. He first gave her a chance to kill him, and then got a chance to kill her. This was a simple cause and result, but out of concern, Tantai Guanjian had a turbulent feeling.
“Of course, there is another important reason.”
Qing Yaoyin glanced at Ding Ning and Zhangsun Qianxue, saying, “Because this place, to him, is likely as important as Changling.”
Ding Ning had experiences that no other cultivator had, an exciting and magnificent life no one else had, so at many times, his mind was calm. But hearing Qing Yaoyin’s words, his heart suddenly shook, and he even had a feeling of shame.
Zhangsun Qianxue could understand his feelings at this time. From a certain point of view, she and Baili Suxue were the same kind of people. “There is no relation between mistakes and misunderstandings. The key is you do not want to fail your friend, and your friends do not want to fail you,” she looked at Ding Ning and said.
The people present, including the Donghu monk who was almost powerless, could be counted as old people of Changling. They had some grievances with the Ba Mountain Sword Field of the past and the great upheaval before Yuanwu’s ascension, other than Qian Mu.
He was a true junior, and even his master, strictly speaking, while a grandmaster in the era of the Ba Mountain Sword Field, had not participated in that battle. So Qian Mu did not have much of an interest in these past events. His attention was more on the strange cocoon in Qing Yaoyin’s hands and the present situation.
“Then what will this cocoon become in the end?” he looked at the strange and powerful ice energy coming off the cocoon, and could not help but ask.
“No one knows what it will become.” Qing Yaoyin thought intently and said, “I was in the core of Min Mountain for more than a decade, and was close to the Nether dragon. This kind of black ice worm could be used as a replacement for the Nether dragon, to test for the Nether dragon’s response to medicines. Among this kind of worm, only this one had such a change, and it co-incidentally encountered the Nine Hell King Sword. But if I had to try… to speculate about it, then it is likely to become something similar to the Nether dragon.”
“Similar to the Nether dragon? Another Nether dragon?” Now even Qian Mu was shocked.
While he was a junior, he had heard of the Nether dragon the You Emperor rode when conquering the world in the past from many stories. In many legends, not just that terrifying enormous Nether dragon, even the eight descendants of the Nether dragon with other serpents were given to eight great warriors as their steeds. Those eight great warriors smelted down the strongest blades in the world to create divine armor for themselves and their steeds. At the time, they had been the symbol of invincibility.
All of the stories recorded a truth, the terror of the Nether dragon stemmed from the fact that while the primal energies of the universe it could summon was akin to the realm seven and not realm eight, it had much more energy accumulated in its body than ordinary realm seven grandmasters. This was like a realm seven grandmaster who possessed an energy sea and meridians tens of times greater than ordinary people. He naturally could use some powerful sword moves and not worry about the energy used up, and could fight one against many.
Even more importantly, the power of the Nether dragon and the strength of its scales was unimaginable. It was born as a powerful armor. In the records, many experts among the rebels of the thirty-three provinces had been lost to finally kill the Nether dragon and the eight great warriors, before finally killing the Nether emperor.
“The Nether dragon of the You Emperor had centuries of cultivation, not something that these infants can compare to.” Looking at Qian Mu’s shock, Qing Yaoyin shook his head and said, “But with the help of the Nine Hell King Sword, it is unexpected that this nether worm changed so quickly. In the short term, this nether insect will look very different from the Nether dragon, and it will be much weaker. But in the long term, it may have more potential.”
After a pause, Qing Yaoyin explained with great seriousness, “Because the Nether dragon is the same as many other powerful beasts recorded in our books, their cultivation relies on accumulation through time. Time cannot change their vital energy, but it can make their bodies grow stronger, their armor thicker, and their flesh more tough. This is not like us cultivators who keep on going up. Roughly speaking, they expand horizontally.”
Qian Mu completely understood. His mouth opened even more, and he was even more shocked. Qing Yaoyin clearly meant that the thing in the cocoon, while not as strong at the start as the Nether dragon he had raised in Min Mountain Sword Sect, could cultivate faster than that dragon.
As time went on, what would be stronger, the thing in the cocoon or the pure blood Nether dragon?
The You Emperor had only one Nether dragon, and it was treated as asymbol of imperial power, appearing in many insignias. But now, Min Mountain Sword Sect had two. He was a youth, so he could not help but forget where he was right now, and could not help but think, think if both Nether dragons grew up, then was there any need for the remaining grandmasters of Ba Mountain Sword Field to act? Just these two Nether dragons and the people of Min Mountain Sword Sect were enough?
Qing Yaoyin looked at the light in the youth’s eyes and easily saw what he was thinking. Then he shook his head. He knew, since Baili Suxue needed to use that dragon as a shield to enter the imperial palace, then it would be very hard for this Nether dragon to survive. Min Mountain Sword Sect’s Nether dragon came from the imperial treasury of the former You Dynasty, a complete dragon egg and the blood, bones, and core of the Nether dragon’s corpse from back then.
If that Nether dragon died, then the Nether dragon would be extinct in the world. For a cultivator who spent half of his life studying such things, he naturally felt some regret.
Now, with this cocoon in hand, it was a great surprise.
As they spoke, the soaring snakes of Jiaodong Commandery were still lost in the dust mountains, not daring to fly down or fly up. Their enormous bodies kept on colliding with the almost tangible energies and created terrifying sounds.
At this time, the Jiaodong Commandery controller found he could not control these soaring snakes and suddenly, a very sharp whistle sounded. The soaring snakes, in chaos from their terror, seemed to lose their minds, growing mad. They stopped going through the air, and fell down towards Ding Ning and the others on the ground.
Qing Yaoyin’s expression did not change. He did not even look at the enormous figures falling from the sky. He quickly took out a pill bottle, and dripped all of the medicine fluid on the cocoon in his hand.
