Those Who Dare to Stick Their Necks Out

"Speak."

Meng Jingchun rose first. The droplet condensed from the Dao resonance of [Winnowing Basket Water] swayed gently beneath his earlobe like a gray-white earring, yet within it, an exceedingly slender river flowed in reverse.

His voice was extremely soft, yet atop Dragon Head Platform, in the gaps between the Blind Dragon's heartbeats, that rustling sound seemed especially distinct, like a river flowing through everyone's inner ears.

"Reporting to the Prefecture Lord." His voice was not loud, flat as if he were reciting a dossier from the Water Department, but what that dossier recorded was a bloody river god sacrifice.

"In the southeast of Jinghai Prefecture, along the Lan River branch, this subordinate was ordered to clear the area. An Ink Flood Dragon had entrenched itself there. It was likewise at the Dao Foundation Initial Realm, had occupied those waters for three hundred years, and called itself the Dragon King."

"This creature had long used floods to sweep away farmland, devoured boats and ate people. The seven counties along the riverbanks offered up boys and girls in blood sacrifice every year, only gaining a moment of peace. Over three hundred years, the living souls it swallowed into its belly likely exceeded ten thousand."

"On the night the Great Sun fell, it was the first to answer the tribulation. This flood dragon had built its Dao Foundation inch by inch from blood baleful intent and resentment. When the lingering radiance of the Mad Sun fell upon it, it was like falling upon a mountain of dried firewood. In a single night, inextinguishable dark flames seeped from between its scales."

"The day before yesterday, it traveled upstream against the river, intending to destroy Jinghai Prefecture's eastern embankment. Had it succeeded, the million lives of the three downstream counties would all have become