[The Host Refuses to Repay the Dragon Clan's Karmic Debt, Reward: One Drop of Ancestral Dragon Essence Blood!]

When Yang Chen's declaration, "I'll die right now for you to see," transformed into the purest will of destruction and spread from the source of his divine sense.

The entire boiling Sea of Karmic Force seemed to have had its pause button pressed.

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

The pitch-black shockwave condensed from the Ancestral Dragon's lifelong venomous hatred, carrying the wails of countless dragon souls, came to an abrupt halt less than a foot from Yang Chen's divine-sense body.

It had not been blocked.

It had frozen solid.

Every strand of resentment and every remnant soul forming the shockwave froze halfway through, as if an invisible yet supreme power had seized them by the throat.

The Ancestral Dragon's vast, boundless remnant soul froze as well.

The two hollow eye sockets lit by ghastly green flames stared fixedly at Yang Chen. The flames no longer flickered or burned; they simply remained suspended there, reflecting an unprecedented bewilderment.

He... was dumbfounded.

A pure, fundamental dumbfoundedness that ran through his entire existence.

Dead?

He wanted to die?

No... that was impossible.

For living beings to seek survival was the foundation of the Great Dao, an iron law established when chaos first opened.

What nonsense was this wretch spouting?

Was this some new divine ability? Or had he... gone mad?

Within his understanding, within his long memories spanning the ancient and primordial eras, "life" had been the sole goal for which all things struggled.

To survive, one could resort to any means.

To survive, one could bow and scrape.

To survive, one could betray everything.

This was the iron law engraved in the deepest parts of every living being's True Spirit in the primordial world, the fundamental force driving the entire world onward.

Yet this junior before him...

This debtor who had inherited Rahula's karmic debt and should have been the lowliest of debtors in his eyes had actually turned "death" into a weapon.

A weapon... powerful enough to threaten him, the creditor!

What kind of move was that?

It overturned everything he understood about conflict, karma, life, and death.

How long had he lived? Even he could no longer remember.

He had once been the first dragon in heaven and earth, the supreme sovereign who ruled the Four Seas and Eight Wastes.

He had experienced the Great Calamity of Dragon and Han, an era so brutal that even heaven and earth had been shattered apart.

He had witnessed the unfathomable Dao Ancestor and experienced the Demon Ancestor's sinister cunning.

He had fought Phoenix Ancestor and First Qilin for the supreme destiny of becoming the protagonists of heaven and earth, and slaughtered the descendants of countless Chaos Demon Gods and primordial ferocious beasts.

I, the Ancestral Dragon!

To fight for a sliver of survival, I led hundreds of millions of my people and stained the primordial world in blood.

Phoenix Ancestor and First Qilin—who among them had not fought until their last drop of blood for the continuation of their clans?

Even a devil like Rahula had sought survival through proving the Dao!

Death?

Death was failure, the end, nothingness!

How could... how could it be used as a weapon?!

He had seen more tyrants and heroes than there were mountains in the primordial world.

He had trampled more experts beneath his feet than there was water in the Four Seas.

Yet he had never seen, nor even imagined, that there could be such a... rule-breaking living being in this world!

Using one's own life to threaten an enemy?

Using mutual destruction to repay karmic debt?

Was this a battle of spells?

No.

This was kidnapping!

And the hostage had tied himself up, then threatened to tear up the ransom and demanded that the kidnapper ensure he lived well!

How absurd!

How... unsolvable!

This was not the conquest of an emperor, nor the duel of mighty experts.

This was... this was the trick of a worm crawling out of a gutter!

Using his own life to threaten me?

How vile!

How despicable!

But... damn it... it worked!

For the first time, the Ancestral Dragon's vast, domineering will—enough to make even Quasi-Saints tremble—suffered a break in logic.

What did he want?

He wanted revenge.

He wanted this junior to suffer the endless agony of the dragon clan's destruction for all eternity, to use his lowly True Spirit to soothe the raging resentment of countless dragon descendants.

That was his sole remaining obsession.

What I want is not for him to die!

I want him alive, wailing within endless karmic flames!

I want his True Spirit to endure the gnawing of my clan's dead souls day and night, so that he may taste even one ten-thousandth of the pain we suffered!

I want him to regret it, to regret inheriting this monstrous karmic debt!

But the premise of this "revenge" was that he himself, as well as the dragon clan's departed souls, still existed within this Sea of Karmic Force.

If this junior truly detonated immeasurable karmic force and blasted the entire primordial world back into chaos...

What meaning would his revenge still have?

His final indestructible obsession, along with the remnant souls of Phoenix Ancestor and First Qilin, would likely be utterly erased in that explosion that swept away everything, leaving behind not even the faintest trace of their existence.

They would vanish like smoke.

Never to exist again.

No... even our final obsessions will be dragged with him into annihilation.

My hatred, my resentment, will have nowhere left to reside.

In an instant, the Ancestral Dragon's thoughts, frozen for countless eras, fell into a fierce and unprecedented dilemma.

Fight?

The other side would immediately die, taking the entire primordial world to the grave with him. Everyone would be finished together.

Do not fight?

Then he could only watch helplessly as the culprit who had inherited their blood-deep vendetta strutted about before him, even... looking at him as though he were an idiot.

He felt as though his Divine Soul were convulsing.

That feeling was even more stifling than when he had been plotted against by the Heavenly Dao and suffered the destruction of his clan and his own death.

It was the helplessness of possessing infinite power yet being unable to move beneath a single straw.

It was the absurdity of having every justification on his side, only for the other party to flip the entire board with the most shameless method possible.

Stifling!

How utterly stifling!

When I died and my Dao was extinguished, I still harbored unwillingness and fighting spirit.

But today, facing a mere Grand Unity Golden Immortal junior, I... I have even lost the right to strike?

He, the mighty Ancestral Dragon, the first hegemon of heaven and earth.

He, the greatest creditor, had been completely controlled by a deadbeat who owed a mountain of debt!

The towering fury with nowhere to vent could not strike Yang Chen, so it began to backlash against himself.

Boom!

The black karmic flames burning across his shattered dragon body suddenly surged a thousand feet high, making his two hollow eye sockets glow an even ghastlier green.

His divine sense roared, yet not a sound emerged.

Because he did not know what to say.

Call him shameless?

He would only laugh even more happily.

Reason with him?

He would turn around and lecture you about "public morality."

This was no longer a battle of spells. It was a dimensional strike.

Using an entirely new logic he had never understood, Yang Chen had utterly crushed him on a spiritual level.

The next moment, the pitch-black dragon-shaped shockwave frozen in midair began to show signs of collapse.

It was dissipating.

Not because the Ancestral Dragon had voluntarily withdrawn it, but because the will to kill at all costs driving it had crumbled amid its master's mental chaos.

Strands of pure resentment turned back into ownerless black mist and drifted away, returning to the silent sea of karmic force.

A thunderous strike long in the making, gathering the dragon clan's final resentment, came to a silent and anticlimactic end in this manner.

How ironic.

How... stifling!

The Ancestral Dragon's Divine Soul trembled violently within the deathly silent abyss.

He realized that he had fallen into a vicious cycle.

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

But he feared Yang Chen's death, so he could not kill him.

Not only could he not kill him, he had to find a way to make him live properly. At the very least, he could not let Yang Chen develop the thought that I might as well die.

This realization caused an indescribable sorrow and savagery to surge into the Ancestral Dragon's long-dead heart.

I, the mighty Ancestral Dragon, must beg a wretch... to keep living?

Absurd... utterly absurd!

This karma, this heaven and earth, had all gone mad!

He realized that, as the creditor, he was actually so humble before his debtor.

Just as the Ancestral Dragon Remnant Soul sank into stunned frustration, unable to advance or retreat.

The system notification sounded in Yang Chen's mind right on cue.

That cold, mechanical voice sounded like heavenly music within this deathly silent abyss of karmic force.

[ Ding! Detected that the host has successfully suppressed the dragon clan's deceased souls' intent to collect their debt, and has thoroughly shattered the opponent's fighting spirit through the shameless tactic of "mutual destruction"! ]

[ Choice mission completed! Reward is now being issued! ]

Yang Chen was delighted inside, but he maintained the cold expression of someone ready to die at any moment, continuing to pressure the Ancestral Dragon from within.

The black karmic flames on his divine-sense body did not diminish. Instead, they burned even more fiercely, as though they might completely lose control at any time.

[ Ding! Congratulations to the host for obtaining a dragon clan-exclusive reward: one drop of Ancestral Dragon Essence Blood! ]

The instant the system notification ended.

Within a void-like system space, a drop of blood appeared from nothing.

It was not an ordinary crimson color, but a radiant, weighty, supremely noble shade of molten gold.

It was only the size of a fingernail and floated there, yet it twisted the entire system space around it, as though what it carried was not its own weight, but an entire primordial ocean and the rise and fall of a whole era.

The blood was not liquid within.

A visible phantom of a Golden Divine Dragon, shrunk by hundreds of millions of times, slowly swam and coiled within it. Every time its dragon body stretched, it radiated an overwhelming sense of power capable of opening heaven and earth.

Soundless Dragon's Roars crossed the barrier of space and exploded directly within the depths of Yang Chen's primordial spirit.

Bzzzz—

Far away in the outside world, within that crude cave abode.

Yang Chen's physical body, seated cross-legged, suddenly shuddered violently without warning!

His limbs and bones, every inch of his sinews, every particle in his body, all erupted with thunderous roars at that moment.

That was desire!

It was the most extreme yearning at the very root of life itself for a higher-order existence!

This was no ordinary dragon clan essence blood.

This belonged to the Ancestral Dragon! The first dragon between heaven and earth, who had condensed this life essence at the height of his life and the peak of his physical strength, at the cost of consuming his own origin!

It contained the purest, most primordial power of the dragon clan's origin. It even bore traces of a vague yet incomparably domineering comprehension of the... Law of Strength!

The foremost of the three thousand Great Daos controlled by Great God Pangu!

Obtaining it and refining it would not merely transform the strength of his physical body.

It would be a complete and thorough remolding!

He might even gain some of the Ancestral Dragon's innate divine abilities, abilities long lost to the primordial world!

Yang Chen forcibly suppressed the urge to immediately return to his physical body and begin merging with it.

His divine sense merely cast a casual glance.

A glance at the Ancestral Dragon Remnant Soul, still trapped in self-doubt and logical collapse, as enormous as a mountain range yet appearing somewhat pitiful at this moment.

At the level of divine sense, a silent sneer curled across Yang Chen's lips.

"Old fellow, thank you for your generosity."

"Not only will I not repay a single cent of your debt."

"I'll carve flesh from you, slice by slice, and draw your blood, drop by drop, you creditor!"

"This is only the beginning!"

His divine sense swept across this deathly silent abyss of karmic force like the most sensitive radar.

He could sense it clearly.

Not far away, two other equally vast and ancient wills, each utterly distinct in character, had been watching everything unfold.

One was blazing like an undying divine fire—proud, fierce, and carrying the resolve to burn away the eight desolations.

Phoenix Ancestor.

The other was as heavy as the boundless earth—calm, steadfast, and bearing the benevolence and majesty to support all things.

First Qilin.

They had seen everything that had just happened.

They had seen how Ancestral Dragon's furious, thunderous strike had vanished into nothing before his casual threat.

They had seen how the supreme overlord who had once contended with them for supremacy over heaven and earth had been driven by him into a predicament where he did not even dare to make a move.

Good.

That saved him the trouble of wasting his breath explaining the rules of the game again.

Today, right here.

He would squeeze the last scraps of "inheritance" from these three ancient great clans in one go!

Not a single drop left!