Ancestor Dragon Is Dumbfounded—There's Such a Move?

As Yang Chen's declaration, "I'll die for you right now," transformed into the purest will of destruction, spreading from the origin of his divine sense.

The entire boiling sea of Karmic Force hit pause.

Time and space lost all meaning in this abyss of curses.

That dark shockwave, condensed from Ancestral Dragon's lifelong resentment and carrying the wails of billions of dragon souls, stopped abruptly less than an inch from Yang Chen's divine sense body.

It wasn't blocked.

It was frozen.

Every wisp of resentment, every remnant soul that formed the shockwave, froze mid-air as if its throat had been gripped by an invisible yet supreme power.

Ancestral Dragon's vast, boundless remnant soul also froze.

Its two empty eye sockets, lit by ghastly green ghost fire, stared fixedly at Yang Chen. The flames no longer flickered or burned, merely frozen there, reflecting an unprecedented bewilderment.

He... was stunned.

A pure, profound shock that originated from his very core and spanned his entire existence.

He's dying? He's going to die? No... that's impossible. All living beings seek survival; this is the foundation of the Great Dao, a fundamental rule set since the dawn of Chaos. This scoundrel... what nonsense is he spouting? Is this a new divine ability? Or... has he gone mad?

Within his cognitive framework, in his long memory spanning the Primordial Era and the Ancient Era, "life" was the sole objective for all beings striving to survive.

To live, one could resort to any means.

To live, one could grovel and beg.

To live, one could betray everything.

This was a fundamental rule etched into the True Spirits of every being in the Primordial World, the very driving force that kept the entire world in motion.

But this junior before him...

This one who inherited Rahula's Karma, who should have been the most lowly debtor in his eyes, was actually using "death" as a weapon.

A... ultimate weapon capable of threatening him, the creditor!

What kind of tactic was this?

It overturned his entire understanding of struggle, of Karma, of life and death.

How long had he lived?

He himself couldn't remember.

He was once the first dragon in existence, the supreme ruler of the four seas and eight directions.

He had experienced the Dragon and Han Great Calamity, a bloody era so brutal it shattered heaven and earth.

He had witnessed the unfathomable depth of the Dao Ancestor and experienced the Demon Ancestor's insidious cunning.

He had vied for the supreme position of protagonist of heaven and earth with the Phoenix Ancestor and the First Qilin, and battled the descendants of countless Chaos Demon Gods and fierce beasts of the Primordial Era.

I, Ancestral Dragon! To fight for a sliver of survival, I led billions of my kin to stain the Primordial World with blood. The Phoenix Ancestor, the First Qilin, weren't they all fighting to the last drop of blood for their clans' continuation? Even a demon like Rahula was seeking survival through enlightenment! Death? Death is failure, the end, nothingness! How... how can it be used as a weapon?!

He had seen more ambitious figures than the mountains of the Primordial World.

He had trampled more powerful beings than the flowing waters of the four seas.

But he had never seen, nor ever imagined, that such a... rule-breaking being could exist in this world!

Using his own life to threaten his enemy?

Using mutual destruction to repay Karma?

Was this a magical duel?

No.

This was a kidnapping!

And what's more, the hostage had kidnapped himself, then threatened to kill himself if the kidnapper didn't guarantee his safety!

How absurd!

How... unsolvable!

This wasn't the conquest of an emperor, nor the duel of a powerhouse. This was... this was the trick of a cockroach crawling out of a gutter! Using his own life to threaten me? How despicable! How base! But... it was damn effective!

Ancestral Dragon's will, that grand, overbearing will capable of making even a Quasi-Saint's heart tremble, experienced a logical fracture for the first time.

What did he want?

He wanted revenge.

He wanted this junior to suffer the endless pain of the Dragon Clan's demise for all eternity, using his lowly True Spirit to appease the resentful flames of billions of dragon sons and grandsons.

This was his only lingering obsession.

What I want is not his death! I want him alive, howling in the endless karmic fire! I want his True Spirit to be gnawed by the souls of my clan day and night, letting him taste one ten-thousandth of the suffering we endured! I want him to regret, to regret inheriting this heaven-shattering Karma!

But the premise of this "revenge" was that he himself, and the souls of the Dragon Clan, still existed in this sea of Karmic Force.

If this junior truly detonated the immeasurable Karmic Force, blowing the entire Primordial World back into Chaos...

Then what meaning would his revenge hold?

This last wisp of his undying obsession, along with the remnant souls of the Phoenix Ancestor and the First Qilin, would likely be completely erased, leaving no trace of their existence in that all-encompassing explosion.

Vanished into thin air.

Never to exist again.

No... even our final obsessions will be taken by him into oblivion. My hatred, my resentment, will have nowhere to rest.

In an instant, the Ancestral Dragon's mind, frozen for countless aeons, fell into a fierce, unprecedented dilemma.

Fight?

The opponent would die immediately, taking the entire Primordial World down with him, and everyone would perish together.

Don't fight?

He could only watch helplessly as the perpetrator of the deep-seated hatred of the Sea of Blood, strutted triumphantly before him, even... looking at him as if he were an idiot.

He felt his divine soul twitching.

That feeling was even more stifling than being schemed against by the Heavenly Dao back then, leading to the destruction of his clan and his own demise.

It was a sense of powerlessness, containing infinite strength, yet unable to move, pinned down by a single straw.

It was a sense of absurdity, of occupying all reason, only to have the opponent flip the chessboard with the most unscrupulous method.

Stifling! How incredibly stifling! Back then, when I died, my heart still held unwillingness and fighting spirit. But today, facing this junior Grand Unity Golden Immortal, I... I've lost even the qualification to make a move?

He, the dignified Ancestral Dragon, the first overlord of heaven and earth.

He, the biggest creditor, was being completely manipulated by a deadbeat who owed a mountain of debt!

The boundless rage that had nowhere to vent, unable to strike Yang Chen, began to backfire on himself.

BOOM!

The dark karmic fire burning on his damaged dragon body suddenly surged a thousand feet high, casting his two empty eye sockets in an even more ghastly green light.

His divine sense roared, but no sound came out.

Because he didn't know what to say.

Curse him for being shameless?

He would only laugh even more happily.

Reason with him?

He would counter by talking about "public morality."

This was no longer a battle of skills, but a dimensional crushing.

He was being completely crushed mentally with a new logic he had never understood.

The next moment, the black dragon-shaped shockwave frozen in mid-air began to show signs of disintegration.

It was dissipating.

Not because the Ancestral Dragon had voluntarily recalled it, but because the "killing intent" driving it had collapsed due to the owner's confused thoughts.

Threads of pure resentment, transformed back into masterless black energy, drifted apart, returning to the silent ocean of karmic force.

A long-planned, thunderous strike, imbued with the final resentment of the entire Dragon Clan, ended in such an anticlimactic, silent manner.

How ironic.

How... stifling!

The Ancestral Dragon's divine soul trembled violently in this silent abyss.

He discovered he had fallen into a vicious cycle.

He hated Yang Chen, so he wanted to kill him.

But he was also afraid of Yang Chen dying, so he couldn't kill him.

Not only could he not kill him, but he also had to find a way to keep him alive and well, at least, not let him have the thought of "it would be better to just die."

This realization brought an indescribable sorrow and violence to the Ancestral Dragon's already dead heart.

I, the dignified Ancestral Dragon, have to beg a scoundrel... to live? Absurd... utterly absurd! This karma, this heaven and earth, it's all gone topsy-turvy!

He realized how humble he, the creditor, was in front of the debtor.