"The Silver Dragon King is a premature brat who doesn't know a thing about Soul Beasts. She can't even tell which matters more: the fate of the Soul Beast Clan or her love for a human. And being queen is even further beyond her. Especially when she got lovestruck during the final battle and chose to die in combat. It was just like a teammate making a brain-dead play in a ranked match right when we were about to turn the game around. It pissed me off!"
After reading about Gu Yuena's actions in the novel, the young man couldn't hold back his urge to rant. He started criticizing a certain passage.
"Whatever. I'm annoyed, but I should go pick up the Rus Wang figurine I custom-ordered for 640 yuan. I can grab a bowl of knife-cut noodles on the way and sort out lunch."
With that, the young man grabbed his keys and left, locking the door behind him. After signing for the package at the courier station with his phone in one hand, he walked across the crosswalk under a green light. A large truck sped through the red light...
Hydrogen (not) Douluo Planet, Zheer Continent, Nanshan Rainforest.
In the rainforest after the rain, the air was damp and stifling. Every breath felt hard to draw. Torrential rain had flooded the trees in many low-lying areas. As the river overflowed into them, it provided schools of fish with plenty of new places to live. It also gave the predators that fed on them relatively safe hunting grounds where they could grow.
The lake that filled this flooded hollow rippled once more. Predators and fish alike hurried to flee the waters. A gigantic creature had entered the lake. Though enormous, it had a sleek, streamlined build, and its body was covered in icy blue and pale green scales. Sharp horns jutted from its head like blades, giving it a distinctive dragon's head profile.
Pale yellow, mane-like structures hung from its neck. Its body scales were arranged like steel armor, and spikes jutted from some of its joints. Its limbs were thick and powerful, while the fan-shaped fin at the end of its long tail faded to orange-red, as if to show that it still bore the traits of an aquatic creature. The broad wings attached to its forelimbs combined features of both bat wings and dragon wings, silently demonstrating its ability to survive in many kinds of environments.
Rus Wang! An Elf that had never existed on Douluo Planet.
A thick nictitating membrane covered its eyes as it entered the lake. But it was so huge that even lying on the lakebed, much of its back and wings remained above the surface.
It lifted its head from the water. Apparently satisfied that no other creatures were around, it opened its mouth and made a modest sound. It wasn't asserting its territory; it was calling to someone.
Soon, another figure emerged from the rainforest: a ten-thousand-year female dragon with a body that truly fit the Western dragon form. Between the gaps in her still-parted jaws were five tiny lives—the bloodline crystals of the two dragons.
To people from Douluo Continent beyond Zheer Continent, it was hard to believe that a Male Water Dragon and a Female Water Dragon would raise their young together. But that was assuming the male dragon paired with the Female Water Dragon was a Male Water Dragon.
He watched his wife place five hatchlings, whose appearance blended dragon and Rus Wang traits, into the water from her mouth. Then he wrapped all six of them in energy. Next, he released a pressure equivalent to that of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, warning every creature in the surrounding forest.
Once he was done, he moved his massive body through the rippling lake to his wife and their young, nestling beside her. He watched the hatchlings play in the water or climb onto his back to rest, savoring the contented life he shared with his wife and children.
Rus Wang, who raised the young alongside the Female Water Dragon, was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast and the undisputed ruler of this rainforest. Yet the Folded Ear Continent where it lay had never existed on Douluo Planet, either.
But just like Rus Wang, it had appeared on Douluo Planet out of nowhere. As if by some mystery, it drew in many weak Soul Beasts fleeing persecution by humans and the Spirit Pagoda. Yet human expedition ships from beyond the Indigenous People had never managed to reach this mysterious Fourth Continent.
Rus Wang summoned a system panel that only he could see. It held the truth about the Folded Ear Continent.
[Current time: 85th year of the ten-thousand-year interlude between Peerless Tang Sect and Legend of the Dragon King] [Time until the Folded Ear Continent's protective barrier disappears: July 29, 1994, 13 hours, 7 minutes...] [Indigenous People: (Custom) Chinese-style Western Fantasy Elf] [Population: 3,113,000+] [Technology level: Late Neolithic] [Cultivation system: None]
The Folded Ear Continent had essentially been created by the system after Rus Wang was struck by a truck and sent to this world.
Its Indigenous People, the Chinese-style Western Fantasy Elves, were a race Rus Wang had designed himself. They looked like the Japanese-style Elves in Record of Lodoss War, but lacked the arrogance of Western fantasy Elves. They had Chinese ethical and moral values, loved farming and craftsmanship, and approached everything in the world rationally. In a sense, the Chinese-style Western Fantasy Elves were the product of Rus Wang's human soul pursuing the perfect model of humanity.
"It's been five years since I came here."
Now that he had a wife and children, Rus couldn't help but reflect. In the 80th year after the Peerless Tang Sect timeline, he had been struck by a truck and sent to Douluo Planet. He had thought it was all over, but the Paradox System had given him a chance to take action.
If he could unify the 44.76 million square kilometers beneath his feet and unite the Chinese-style Western Fantasy Elves, he was confident he could use the two-thousand-year protection period to build a nation where Soul Beasts and Elves lived as equals—and with the technology level of Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
"In a few days, I should shrink down and take the year-old little ones to an Elf city to see the world."
As more and more Soul Beasts fled to the Folded Ear Continent, it was inevitable that the intelligent Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts would grow afraid of the continent's Indigenous People, the Elves. They feared these long-eared primates might repeat humanity's slaughter of their kind. As a result, severe conflict broke out between Elves and Soul Beasts in just three years.
Many Elf city-states that had been on the verge of entering the Bronze Age were destroyed by Soul Beasts. The darkest joke was that the Soul Beasts were the refugees who had come to this land.
In the five years since Rus Wang arrived, aside from finding the Female Water Dragon by his side—one who was friendly toward Elves—and fathering children with her, he had spent most of his time searching for and protecting the Indigenous Elves. He also killed any Soul Beasts that mistook Elves for humans and, blinded by bloodlust, couldn't tell the difference.
Through those five years of fighting and protecting, Rus had also gained a sense of his own strength. He was currently around the level of a two-hundred-thousand-year Soul Beast. He just wasn't sure how many times stronger he would become if he evolved into Blade Ruse King.
Rus felt one of his young ones sprawled over his head, asleep. He let it sleep rather than shake it into the water. The little tyke weighed only a few dozen pounds, so having it on his head put virtually no strain on his neck.
"Still, come to think of it..."
Perhaps because of his own energy and bloodline, his five little ones had the intelligence of Border Collies from his previous life by the time they were six months old. They also understood the Elvish Language (Chinese) he taught them, and were far brighter than their mother. She had studied with him for two years and could only recognize fifty Chinese characters and recite the nine-times table.
Rus Wang looked at the Female Water Dragon.
[Female Water Dragon, age: 95,200 years]
Her age had increased by another hundred years since the previous month. Was it because the Folded Ear Continent was good for raising Soul Beasts, or something else?
But thinking about how the Female Water Dragon had grown more and more clingy over the past few months, Rus Wang understood her worry.
"Ten thousand years is a tribulation for Soul Beasts. But don't worry. I'm here. The Dragon God's schemes won't hurt you."
Before you continue