Having read the Original Work, Mo Yuan naturally understood how powerful the Black King was. From that moment on, he had only three goals: get stronger! Get stronger! And get damn stronger!
He would replace all the blood in his body with genuine Black King's Blood! He would become the new Black King!
Of course, along the way, he would also do some things he had wanted to do for a long time. For example: elbow a certain God King who wielded a trident...
Back in the present, the most troublesome part of absorbing a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring—the Soul Shock—had already been dealt with. All that remained was to absorb the massive energy, which was the easiest step for Mo Yuan, whose body was strengthened by Dragon Blood.
Outside, the seconds ticked by. About half an hour later, the black Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring floating above Mo Yuan's head suddenly contracted several times, then descended and settled around him.
At last, it came to rest at the outermost edge of his three existing Soul Rings—one yellow and two purple—and began to pulse slowly along with them.
The Dragon Horn Hunting Lizard's Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring had been successfully absorbed!
At the same time, inside the Sea of Consciousness, the instant the Soul Ring's absorption was complete, Black King Nidhogg abruptly raised his head and roared at the sky. The wings on his back, hung with countless skulls, burst open, unleashing a terrifying gale.
Mo Yuan braced himself against a gravestone, struggling to withstand the wind as he gazed expectantly at the flawless black dragon.
"Now that my Dragon Blood has reached 40%, I should be able to use every Word Spirit below Sequence Number 90 freely, right? I wonder how much more alchemy I'll learn..."
As the Black King roared, a Blood Bead emerged from his chest. It seemed filled with searing flames, yet also with tiny crackles of lightning. Its crimson hue was like a precious gem.
The instant the Blood Bead appeared, Mo Yuan caught a strangely fresh, sweet scent. It immediately made the blood in his body outside surge, while deep within, he felt an overwhelming longing.
It was the instinct of a living creature to evolve: a lower bloodline's instinctive hunger to become purer. The greed for convergent evolution in his blood told Mo Yuan that this was the key to evolution.
The Blood Bead flew swiftly to stand before Mo Yuan. Gazing at the countless times-concentrated crimson blood, Mo Yuan didn't hesitate for even a moment. He swallowed it whole.
Dragon Blood was both a blessing and a poison, and that was all the more true of the Black King's Blood of the Dragon Emperor, Black King Nidhogg. Even at just 40% purity, it was more than Mo Yuan could easily withstand.
Amid searing pain, the purity of the Dragon Blood in Mo Yuan's body rose rapidly. As the Blood Bead merged with him, more of his human blood was eroded and utterly extinguished.
At the same time, a fierce, destructive intent rose in Mo Yuan's mind. Then, like burning gasoline, it blazed and spread wildly.
Outside, Mo Yuan's tightly shut eyes snapped open. His deep, ink-black pupils were instantly swallowed by brilliant Golden Eyes. Unlike their former coldness, his Golden Eyes now brimmed with savagery and murderous intent.
This was the spiritual erosion caused by Dragon Blood, far more deadly than the physical erosion. Once their minds were filled with the savagery and destruction in Dragon Blood, mixed-bloods had only one fate: becoming Dead Servants.
Of course, Mo Yuan was no exception. But after undergoing blood replacement three times, he had already trained himself to endure it.
Having tasted death again and again, Mo Yuan clenched his teeth against the agony and abruptly raised his head, letting out a furious roar toward the sky. His roar was interwoven with an unknown language.
It sounded less like a human cry and more like the bellow of a giant dragon. The language was the same.
"On the day I return to the world, all traitors shall perish!"
This was Dragon Language.
The roar slowly faded across the Star Dou Great Forest. Scalding steam rose from Mo Yuan's body. Within him, his body like a furnace, the poisonous Dragon Blood grew ever more beautiful and pure, and at last the bloodline's transformation came to an end.
The crimson hue in his brilliant Golden Eyes slowly faded. As Mo Yuan closed and reopened his eyes, his deep black pupils returned.
"My Soul Power Level has reached level 41. I've basically mastered the Dragon Language Word Spirits below Sequence Number 90, and I've learned more about Conceptual Weapon and spatial control in alchemy. But I still haven't learned things like Time Reversal or Cause and Effect Separation."
After absorbing and organizing the new information in his mind, Mo Yuan spoke in an even tone.
He was somewhat disappointed that he still had no information about Time Causality among the Seven Great Kingdoms of alchemy, but he didn't take it too much to heart.
After all, compared with elemental control, an alchemy discipline with a relatively low ceiling, Mo Yuan—whose bloodline was equivalent to that of an S-rank mixed-blood—could learn and use it. But Time Causality... even if he could learn it, his current bloodline probably wouldn't let him do much with it.
"My bloodline's transformation is complete. Time for the traditional celebration..." Mo Yuan walked over to the two massive halves of the Dragon Horn Hunting Lizard's corpse and reached out with both hands. A wet, ripping sound rang out as flesh was pierced.
Mo Yuan plunged his hands into the corpse. Wisps of pale energy rose from his body, carrying an unquestionable aura of death that enveloped it.
The two enormous sections of the corpse quickly shriveled, as though drained of water. Mo Yuan seized all the vitality and residual Soul Power within them.
The warmth of the vitality and Soul Power flowed into him, and the weariness from enduring the agony vanished. His mind and body were completely restored to peak condition, and his Soul Power Level rose slightly as well.
Mo Yuan had discovered one use for the Black King's Blood: as a symbol of death, destruction, and calamity, it allowed him to draw on the vitality and Soul Power of living creatures to recover and grow stronger. In actual combat, it made him something like a perpetual-motion machine.
This was also the main reason he had reached the level of a Four-Ring Soul Ancestor at just eleven years old.
Unfortunately, no one else had seen him like this. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been long before Shrek's Supervisory Group came knocking to "show him some warmth."
The dense aura of death, the ability to draw on living creatures' vitality and Soul Power to recover and grow stronger, the extreme savagery and sense of calamity...
From every angle, Mo Yuan looked like an Evil Soul Master.
And according to Douluo II's classification of Evil Soul Masters, that was indeed what he was.
After all, anyone who had read the Original Work knew that mixed-bloods were still cool—terrifyingly cool—if they didn't Bloodburst and used only Word Spirits.
But once they Bloodburst, their bodies underwent Dragonification and their minds were eroded. They became little different from monsters, even more sinister than some Titled Douluo who were Evil Soul Masters.
Having read the Original Work, Mo Yuan naturally knew this too. That was why no one but him knew that he drew on living creatures' vitality.
Of course, there had been someone else once. But that person was gone again before long.
To conceal his true Martial Soul, Mo Yuan always claimed that his Martial Soul was his eyes. He called it the Golden Eyes.
If he hadn't usually lived in no fixed place, the Body Sect would have found him long ago.
After draining the remaining vitality from the Dragon Horn Hunting Lizard, Mo Yuan was about to withdraw his hands when he seemed to notice something. He raised his brows in surprise.
"It actually dropped a Soul Bone?"
Pulling his hands from the shriveled flesh, he took hold of the long blade stuck in the ground and slashed at the Dragon Horn Hunting Lizard's right arm.
The shriveled flesh parted, revealing a Right Arm Bone that glimmered with faint red light.
Hmm... not bad quality. At twelve thousand years, it should fetch a decent price...
Mo Yuan took the Soul Bone from the corpse and examined it before storing it in the ring-shaped Soul Tool on his left hand.
Mo Yuan had "borrowed" the ring-shaped Soul Tool from a "lucky fellow." Its storage space was average—not too big, not too small—and was just enough for his needs.