The Forgotten Silver Dragon King (Continued)

No one told her the time. There was no light, no sound, nothing changed.

Only eternal darkness and eternal silence, like a gigantic, formless Soul Beast, crouched before her day after day, gnawing at her sanity with silence.

Ten thousand years.

Twenty thousand years? Or longer?

She couldn't tell anymore.

All she knew was that she hadn't always been the only one in that prison.

Those mortal prisoners eventually died. Gu Yuena watched them through the iron bars, initially feeling some emotion, but later only numbness remained.

She remembered the day the last person died very clearly.

It was an old man, covered in festering sores and emitting a foul stench.

He didn't last long, and on a "night" (Gu Yuena could no longer distinguish between day and night, but habitually used this term to refer to when she was conscious), she breathed her last.

She listened as his breathing grew weaker and weaker until it disappeared completely, followed by a long, suffocating silence.

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The food delivery window did not open again the next day.

There was none on the third day either.

One year, two years? Or ten years?

Gu Yuena doesn't remember.

All she knew was that from a certain day onward, the prison door was never opened from the outside again.

The guards' footsteps disappeared, the small window for delivering meals was completely sealed off, and even the sliver of light that occasionally shone through the crack in the door was extinguished forever one day.

She has been forgotten.

This realization initially angered her.

She desperately pounded on the iron bars of the prison, tearing at the special cage with the power of the Dragon Clan, roaring and howling, trying to attract even the slightest attention.

But there was no response.

She was unaware of how well the soundproofing was done here, unaware that no one dared to approach this prison after it was designated a forbidden area, and even less aware that successive Pope had tacitly chosen to "forget" it—leaving the question of how to deal with the Silver Dragon King to the next generation, and the next generation after that, until no one remembered that a dragon was locked up deep underground.

Her power remains.

The lifespan of dragons is outrageously long. When they were recuperating at the Lake of Life, a seclusion of tens of thousands of years was nothing more than a nap. But that was at the Lake of Life, where they were nourished by abundant life energy, protected by subordinates, and surrounded by light.

There is no light here.

There is only darkness here.

Eternal, absolute, and unchanging darkness.

Gu Yuena began to feel afraid.

She was never the kind of strong person with an iron will.

If that were the case, then after having his memories sealed and living as a human for decades, he wouldn't have forcibly split into two personalities—one that of the Silver Dragon King and the other that of a human woman.

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At first, she would talk to herself, have conversations with herself, Simulation two people's voices, and pretend that there was another person present.

But over time, she found that her voice began to sound unfamiliar, as if she were listening to another person speak.

She began to wonder if it was herself speaking, or if the split personality had returned.

Later, she even stopped talking to herself.

Later, she began to hallucinate.

She "saw" the light.

Sometimes it was blinding white, sometimes a warm orange, sometimes shimmering like the surface of Lake of Life. She reached out to touch it, but all she touched were cold walls and rough ground.

She "heard" the sound.

The sounds of guards' footsteps, prisoners' groans, dripping water, and even singing coming from the depths of a corridor where no one had ever been before. She desperately crawled in the direction of the sounds, bleeding from her head, only to find there was nothing there.

She "felt" someone touching her. Sometimes it was a subordinate helping her up, sometimes it was a pair of hands she didn't recognize but felt strangely familiar with.

I've gone mad!

When this thought first appeared in Gu Yuena's mind, she struggled to deny it.

But now, she doesn't care anymore.

Go ahead and be crazy.

Anyway, nobody saw it.

Anyway, nobody cares.

Anyway, she's long been forgotten.

Gu Yuena huddled in a corner of the cell, like a wounded, abandoned cub.

Her silver hair had long lost its luster, tangled into a dirty mess, dragging on the ground mixed with dust.

Her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, revealing bluish-purple veins underneath.

Her eyes were open, but she couldn't see anything—not because she was blind, but because her consciousness was no longer processing the information coming from her retina; the faint, almost imperceptible darkness had long been automatically filtered out by her brain.

Her lips moved, uttering whispers that no one could hear.

"... Ten thousand years... twenty thousand years... or even longer..."

"I forgot... I forgot everything..."

"Who am I again...?"

"The Silver Dragon King... or... Gu Yuena..."

"Wait... Who is Gu Yuena... And who is the Silver Dragon King...?"

She suddenly laughed, a laugh as jarring as shattered glass, yet as faint as a leaky bellows.

"Hahaha... I've even forgotten who I am..."

"But I'm not dead yet..."

"Why isn't he dead yet...?"

"Let me die... let me die..."

Laughter turned into sobs, and sobs turned into silence.

She curled herself up even tighter, as if trying to squeeze herself into a corner, into a crack where no one could find her.

But she's still here.

Forever here.

Day after day, year after year, for millennia, it has remained the same.

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Until one day--

The prison door was suddenly pushed open from the outside.

A ray of light, like a sharp sword, pierced through the darkness that had lasted for countless years.

Gu Yuena did not move.

She didn't look up, didn't open her eyes, and her breathing didn't even change.

Light.

It was just another hallucination.

She had seen it before.

I've seen it many times.

It will disappear on its own in a while, and then the darkness will return, as if it had never been there at all.

Gu Yuena just curled herself up tighter, muttering to herself, "Fake... it's all fake..."

"No one is coming... no one will come..."

"I've been forgotten... I've been left here... forever... forever..."

The sound of the door being pushed open didn't disappear.

Footsteps sounded.

Step by step, I approached her.

Gu Yuena remained motionless.

She was waiting for the illusion to dissipate on its own, just like countless times before.

But the footsteps didn't stop.

However, a pair of feet landed in front of her.

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The dungeon door hadn't been opened in a long time.

A very, very long time.

Over time, the dust accumulated on the door hinges formed a thick, grayish-white hard shell, as if time itself had solidified into a physical form.

The iron chain was rusted into gnarled, brown nodules, each link almost fused with the door knocker, making it impossible to distinguish where the iron ended and the rust began.

The spiderwebs stretched from the lintel to the ground, layer upon layer, with the remains of dead insects embedded in them, long since weathered into empty shells.

Not a single ray of light could see through the crack in the door.

Not a sound could be heard coming from behind the door.

The Pope of Spirit City throughout history have all tacitly avoided this place.

The file read "Forbidden Zone," and the word-of-mouth cryptically mentioned "that thing is locked up." No one wanted to come, no one dared to come, and no one knew what to do.