Seven Days Within the Cocoon

The azure-gold cocoon hovered silently above the scorched earth at the heart of the battlefield, like a strange eggstone gestated in the wake of a great calamity.

Seven days slipped quietly away amid the fading killing intent and the chaos of clearing the battlefield.

Within the cocoon, the very concepts of time and space had become blurred.

Lu Chen's consciousness drifted through a chaotic ocean woven from shattered memories, vast dragon roars, ancient runes, and warm vitality.

The azure dragon phantom stripped from the Azure Dragon Halberd had crashed into his brow in grief and resolve.

It fused with the fragmented remnants of the Dragon Soul Mirror imprint, transforming into an even more intricate and majestic golden dragon-shaped sigil, deeply branded into the depths of his sea of consciousness.

He felt the faint golden dragon patterns across his bones come alive, greedily drawing upon the primordial dragon aura radiating from that newly formed sigil. The density and strength of his bones—even their inner "spirituality"—were undergoing a qualitative leap.

At the site of his shattered right leg, the newly grown bone carried a jade-like sheen and was even tougher than before.

His blood and qi surged through his body like mighty rivers, scouring every hidden wound and repairing the meridians corroded by deathly energy. Great swathes of charred skin peeled away, replaced by newborn flesh as lustrous as jade, where faint dragon-scale patterns flashed and vanished.

The puncture wound in his chest and the corrosive injury on his left shoulder had both healed completely, leaving no scars.

The most drastic transformation occurred at the level of his soul.

That newborn golden dragon-shaped sigil—let it be called the "Newborn Dragon Soul Mirror Imprint" for now—was no dead thing.

Like a tiny, beating heart, it continuously fed strands of ancient, majestic, vast "dragon