The short section of tailbone at the end of his coccyx itched faintly beneath his flesh. Less than an inch long, the tiny bone was buried deep within his gluteal muscles, invisible from the outside. But it was growing. Every time his degree of dragon transformation increased, it extended by another sliver.
Once it grew long enough, it would burst through flesh and skin, becoming a real tail.
A dragon's tail. He closed his eyes. Starlight filtered through his eyelids, casting a dim crimson halo across his retinas.
A dull, thunderous boom rose from the depths of Return to Ruins.
The vault overhead had completely collapsed. The ground at the edge of the rift trembled once, then fell still.
The sealing core had shattered. The Undead Monarch's true body had turned to ash. The deathly aura within Return to Ruins had lost its source and was now leaking out through the rift.
The deathly aura that escaped scattered at the touch of the night wind, thinning into an extremely faint gray mist that blended into the clouds and dissolved beneath the starlight.
Lu Chen lay there for a long time. Long enough for the eastern sky to begin paling. Then he sat up.
Less than six hours remained of his weakened state, but some of his true essence had recovered—a thin layer of golden foundation had gathered once more in his dantian, about ten percent of his full reserves. Enough to walk.
He rose and headed east. When he crossed the Black Sandlands, the sand was no longer deep purple.
The purple had faded to gray. It no longer felt rock-hard beneath his feet, returning to the softness of ordinary sand.
Other things began appearing across the sands—new grass shoots. Not the dark-red grass that had once grown in the