Jiang Tingting nodded and replied, "Yes, there is an Ice Flood Dragon Egg beneath the cold pool. However, Senior Fang, it should be a dead embryo."
"According to legend, that Ice Flood Dragon Egg was dug out of the belly of an Ice Flood Dragon that had ravaged a starfield, after a Jiang family senior killed it an unknown number of years ago.
"This egg had been congenitally deficient because its mother had not carried it long enough. It was then damaged in the battle, its shell cracked, and its life force gradually drained away."
"That senior was amazed by its extraordinary bloodline and placed it in the cold pool at the foot of this mountain, sealing it within Taiyin Moon Essence Ice. The hope was that the Spiritual Energy of the cold pool would slowly nourish its life force and make up for its innate deficiencies."
"If it could successfully hatch, this Ice Flood Dragon with its extraordinary bloodline could become a new foundation of our Jiang family with a little cultivation."
"But ten thousand years have passed, and this Ice Flood Dragon has still not hatched. By now, even its last trace of life force has likely long since dissipated."
Fang Zheng did not care much about that and said directly, "Take me to see it. I want to try the Monster Spawning Box."
Jiang Tingting was somewhat puzzled, not knowing what a Monster Spawning Box was, but she still nodded and continued leading the way, flying toward a cold pool at the foot of the mountain.
Far below at the foot of the mountain lay a cold pool.
However, calling it a cold pool was not quite accurate. It was more like a great lake.
It resembled a piece of solidified black jade embedded within an enormous mountain of jagged black rocks.
Frosty mist that could freeze everything drifted over the ink-black water all year round. Even when the midday sun shone directly down, it could not draw the slightest reflection from the surface.
All light seemed to be swallowed directly by those abyss-like waters.
Though his Block Person body could not sense the temperature of the water, Fang Zheng could see the thick ice covering the surrounding rocks.
Yet curiously, although thick ice blanketed the surroundings, the water's surface showed no signs of freezing. It was as still as an ancient well, like black crystal.
From time to time, faint blue points of light like ghost flames emerged across the pitch-black surface, only to vanish in an instant. Seen from low in the air, they looked like a starry sky endlessly blinking into existence and extinction.
"Quite pretty."
Seeing this, Fang Zheng descended straight into the cold pool without hesitation. After a brief hesitation, Jiang Tingting followed him down.
The deeper they went, the darker it became. After descending only a few meters into the black waters, not a trace of light remained.
Fang Zheng pondered, "This is clearly just a pool of ink. It's black as hell."
Even after drinking a Night Vision Potion, Fang Zheng found that he still could not see anything.
After all, a Night Vision Potion only allowed one to see objects in darkness. It was naturally useless against things completely obscured from view.
This showed that the cold pool did not look black because it was too deep. The water itself was black.
So he simply activated Spectator Mode, allowing both his body and his viewpoint to pass through the endless darkness as he looked below.
Jiang Tingting, following behind Fang Zheng, suddenly frowned. Why did Senior suddenly disappear?
At the same time, her forehead emitted a faint moonlight-like glow, and a moon-colored tiny figure on the Immortal Platform between her brows opened its eyes.
The Divine Sense of the Immortal Platform Second Realm spread out, instantly covering a radius of a hundred li.
While informing the nearby Jiang family elders of the situation, she also attempted to communicate with the Jiang family's Emperor Weapon, the Hengyu Furnace, which had remained in a state of full revival at all times.
The divine spirit within the Hengyu Furnace frowned slightly. Yet out of respect for the Taiyin Human Emperor, it did not release Extreme Dao Pressure or use its own divine power to search for Fang Zheng. Instead, relying on the resonance between Emperor Weapons, it communicated with the Taiyin Moon Blade at Jiang Tingting's waist.
Having received its answer, it transmitted a thought to Jiang Tingting: Do not worry. This is merely a divine ability of the being named Fang Zheng. Wait where you are.
By then, Fang Zheng had used Spectator Mode to treat the black currents as though they did not exist.
Through his transparent viewpoint, he saw tangible black fluids beneath the cold pool, forming vortex after vortex.
These vortices ground apart the black ice covering the lakebed, turning it into snowflakes like black crystal. They rose and fell, then condensed anew, creating the wondrous sight of a black blizzard at the bottom of the pool.
"Looks rather romantic," Fang Zheng murmured.
He passed through the various vortices and finally found an oval object more than three meters in diameter deep within the largest whirlpool.
Not a trace of black ice covered its surface. Its dark cyan shell was filled with spiral patterns resembling clouds, mist, and snowflakes.
Looking closely, he saw a faint crack that nearly split it in two. Yet some unknown dark golden substance had glued it back together. It seemed that this very crack had drained away the egg's essence, causing it to lose its original vitality.
As he looked at the enormous egg, large enough to stuff an elephant into, Fang Zheng was filled with curiosity. Just how large was the Flood Dragon that laid this egg? It must have been at least as big as Godzilla, right?
He recalled videos he had watched before.
They had said that the larger an animal was, the more outrageous its physical strength would be, provided it could still move normally.
Just like Ultraman and the monsters in tokusatsu dramas: if they could maintain that kind of size and still move freely on land, then their bones, muscles, and everything else would be far stronger than every material humanity had produced in the twenty-first century.
That would be a level of toughness at least a hundred times greater than steel. Even a point-blank nuclear explosion would likely do little damage.
And such terrifying creatures, with merely a movement or gesture, could produce secondary effects such as infrasonic and ultrasonic waves that would be enough to completely wipe out humans across vast regions.
If creatures of that size appeared in reality and could move normally like they did in tokusatsu dramas, then all of humanity's weapons would be unable to pose the slightest threat to them.
Come to think of it, could Demonic Beasts, divine beasts, spirit beasts, and the like in this Cultivation World naturally grow to such sizes, or did they need methods like magical power to support them? Fang Zheng was deeply puzzled.
He then recalled the White Tiger he had encountered on the Immortal Ascension Road. Its body alone had been larger than Betelgeuse, the red Supergiant Star discovered by humanity, and its speed had exceeded the speed of light by more than 11 billion times.
Logically speaking, with such an exaggerated size, its average density should not have been lower than air like an ordinary star's. It should have been closer to that of a solid entity.
Taiyin had also said that the White Tiger should have been alive in the past, and what Fang Zheng had seen was merely a Law Phantom.
So when that White Tiger had still been alive, had its true body naturally been that enormous, or had it become so huge by relying on some enlargement technique like First Brother from Calabash Brothers?
Before you continue