Rus Wang emerged from the spatial rift with the item the Light Dragon King had given him. He had left Zi JI in the Dragon Valley World, where she was learning Dragon Clan Secret Techniques under the Light Dragon King's personal guidance.
"Your Excellency?"
Riven saw that Rus Wang had come out alone and Zi JI was nowhere to be seen. She asked quietly.
"The old ancestor is personally teaching the Dragon Clan envoy from Douluo Continent Dragon Clan Secret Techniques. It's very displeased with how the Dragon Race and Soul Beasts on Douluo Continent have done nothing. It gave me some things the Dragon Race needs to build right away and sent me to take care of them. Because of what's happening over there, the pressure on us is about to increase."
"So, Your Majesty the Dragon King... what earth-shattering thing did they do over there?"
"I'll start with the least serious thing: the Dragon Race and Soul Beasts of Douluo Continent are negotiating peace with the humans. They're maintaining peace by handing over a few Soul Beasts each year."
Riven, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon, felt as if she could barely keep her lightning under control. Negotiate with humans? They were really something! At least the Elves didn't need anything from the Dragon Race or Soul Beasts. And with the Divine Realm already reaching for the Dragon Race's legacy, deepening ties with the Elves was essential.
What were humans, anyway? Their civilization was built on Soul Masters. They were clearly bent on wiping out the Dragon Race and Soul Beasts. But that meant, just as Rus Wang had said, the pressure on their side would suddenly increase, too.
"Let's focus on what's in front of us, Riven. Here in the Dragon Valley Forest, we'll keep sending military personnel to infiltrate the Star Luo Empire every year, but our main focus will be building up Zheer Continent. For a long time to come, we'll have to rely on the distance across the sea to maintain our strategic defense."
"Yes."
After finishing his conversation with Riven, Rus Wang immediately used spatial teleportation to return to Zheer Continent. When the formation's effect wore off, he took a deep breath and calmed himself.
Although he knew what the Silver Dragon King had done in Dragon 3, he still felt the pressure of being asked by the poor Light Dragon King to take on the role of Dragon King for the Dragon Race, on the assumption that the Silver Dragon King would act sensibly. He wondered whether, once the Light Dragon King saw through the Silver Dragon King, he would fall into despair—or accept reality and face the Dragon Race's desperate situation with composure.
"I should go see that brat. It's been two years since I watched my granddaughter being born."
With that, Rus Wang spread his wings and flew toward Ravenna. Before visiting the family, he would stop to buy them some gifts.
In the expanded estate on the outskirts of Ravenna, a "young" couple who had been together for decades stood helplessly before their child.
"Don't eat that, Toriya. That's the wooden bed rail!"
"Don't chew on charcoal. It's not food!"
The creature Barus and Elena were fretting over—a dragon and an Elf—was finally strapped into a dining chair. She was eating a meat patty chopped into mush, her apron smeared with grease. She was a mixed-blood child with traits of both Elves and the Dragon Race.
She still had the Elves' overall build, with a basically humanoid body. But she also had a pair of symmetrical dragon horns on either side of her head, a dragon tail on her bottom, scales on her arms, and narrow, blade-like pupils.
"Finally, she's willing to eat proper food."
When she used to crawl around on all fours, her range of movement had been limited, so Elena and Barus could still keep an eye on her. That wasn't possible anymore. Once she turned two, she started running all over the place just like the other Elf children.
When Toriya was born from Elena, she had been an egg. Even without transforming, Barus was a male dragon and knew nothing about eggs. The young couple had no idea what to do, so they asked Yanjin, who had come to visit them, to help with the egg.
At first, they had Yanjin Auntie around to lend a hand and keep an eye on things. But a few days ago, Yanjin had returned to the Nanshan Rainforest to inspect her private territory, and the house had fallen into chaos.
"Should we ask a friend from the Grey Feather Division to be her nanny?"
Seeing her transformed husband with his clothes in disarray, Elena felt sorry for him. She didn't mind that their daughter Toriya was lively. Even if she wrecked the house, Elena wouldn't be too strict with her. After all, her father, Osuen, had once served as the kingdom's prime minister, and the inheritance he'd left her was still mostly intact. She was also an honorary member of the Education Division, so the cost of renovating the estate was no problem.
The real issue was that their daughter's fingernails were beginning to look like dragon claws. They couldn't break an Elf's skin, just like the claws of a two-year-old True Dragon, but having her tear up their clothes was still a nuisance.
"I don't think that'll work. The Grey Feather Division may nominally be a private organization run by my dad and two aunties, but aside from their annual audits for internal corruption, the three of them mostly leave it alone. And with Ulides serving as a Grand Mentor and one of the thirteen members of the King's Permanent Secretariat, it's practically become a national auditing agency."
Barus sighed.
Actually, according to Yanjin Auntie, mixed-blood children like theirs were normally supposed to be raised like dragon hatchlings from ages zero to six—that is, semi-wild in the core region of the Nanshan Rainforest.
At dawn, the hatchlings would be let loose in the nursery area to play as they pleased. In the evening, the obedient ones would return to their caves, while the disobedient ones would be carried back by the scruff of the neck. Then they would be taught the Dragon language and script, and the whole family would go to sleep.
But Elena was an Elf. How could she stand to let her child live like that in the wild?
So the young couple had talked it over and bought an estate with a three-thousand-square-meter garden. They moved in so Toriya could play to her heart's content.
Knock, knock—the estate's front door sounded. Barus and Elena hurried to look.
"That aura... Mom and Dad? Why have they come all of a sudden?"
Back when they'd found out that he and Elena had managed to produce a granddaughter who was still an egg, his father had chased him all over Ravenna. In the end, his father, his mother, and seven other aunties had caught him and given him a thorough thrashing. Even so, every month they still sent over food commonly eaten by Elf and dragon hatchlings.
Barus immediately went to open the door for his parents.
"Why does this room smell so greasy?"
Rus Wang, transformed into a middle-aged man, and Thalassa, in her usual form, smelled the grease throughout the house as soon as they stepped inside.
"Well, Father, she was making a fuss earlier and wouldn't eat the chopped-up meat patty, so she ran all over the house..."
"You're feeding a two-year-old chopped-up meat patties? She hasn't even finished teething. Take me to her at once, Elena."
As soon as Thalassa heard what the young couple had been feeding her granddaughter, she panicked. She grabbed Elena and hurried off, while reminding Rus Wang, "We're here to see our granddaughter. You two, don't start fighting in your daughter-in-law's house."
Rus Wang nodded, then put an arm around Barus and stood silently in the hallway.
How could Barus dare move? He could only stay stiffly in that position. After a long while, he finally asked, "Father, what did you want to talk to me about?"
Rus Wang watched his wife, Thalassa, and his old friend's daughter, Thalassa, fuss over his granddaughter Toriya. Without dwelling on it for long, he decided to set aside the item the Light Dragon King had given him and spend time with his family first.
"There's still plenty of time. It's not that urgent. We'll talk tonight. For now, I want to spend some time with the three of you."
Barus nodded happily.
The three generations, five family members, spent the day like an ordinary family on the weekend, taking turns looking after the child and cooking. As the sun set, Rus Wang and Barus sat down on a white wooden bench in the garden and began their serious conversation.
"So, Teacher, what did the Light Dragon King ask you to do?"
Barus asked his father.
"It's a fairly important matter. You know about the Dragon Ascension Pillar, don't you?"
Rus Wang set down his bottle of wine.
"Yes. I know it's the only Super Divine Artifact created by the Dragon God that wasn't made from a body. It can also be made using rare metals, but the effect is much weaker. Teacher had me study how to make it for a full ten years, and I've gotten pretty good at it. Why did he suddenly give you the Dragon Ascension Pillar's core materials and ask me to make one?"
"To explain why, I'll have to tell you about something much bigger."
Rus Wang's face fell.
"Son, you've been to the Dragon Valley Forest, so you must know those people from Star Luo came from another continent, right?"
"Yes. We're standing on a planet, after all. There must be other continents, and there must be Dragon Race kin and Soul Beasts living on them."
"Remember what I'm about to tell you. It's not something a dragon who hasn't even lived fifty thousand years should know, but the situation has left us no choice."
Rus Wang then told Barus about the events leading up to and following the Dragon God's fall, the first and second installments of the story, Huo Yuhao, and some of what happened in the third. Barus had started out serious, but as Rus Wang went into more detail, his expression grew graver and graver.
"We can't put all our hopes in the Silver Dragon King, Father. The gods have already taken the faith of all the humans on Douluo Continent and half the fortune of the Star Dou Forest. Now they're turning their attention to the Dragon God's legacy. Naturally, they'll want even more—the entire Dragon Race, and perhaps something even greater. We absolutely must not pin all our hopes on a single rope hanging over a cliff. We need to prepare more climbing ropes."
"That's also why your teacher, the Light Dragon King, handed me the Dragon Ascension Pillar's core materials."
Rus Wang showed Barus the vial containing the Light Dragon King's blood. Just as Barus reached to take it, he pulled it back.
"But remember, son: the Dragon Race's glory is long past. We should learn and protect the knowledge and treasures that remain. Humanity is at the height of its power now, so we should study and learn from their Soul Guidance Technology. The Elves have boundless potential but are still weak; they aren't yet capable of becoming the future rulers of this planet. If the Dragon Race wants to rise again, it should stay close to the Elves and face humanity's all-out assault alongside them."
Rus Wang looked toward Toriya. While Thalassa and Elena kept her company, she had suddenly changed from her Elf form into a True Dragon and was spraying water.
"Of course, the true future may belong to the offspring of the Dragon Race and the Elves, just like our granddaughter."
Rus Wang let out a long sigh.
"From now on, we can only rely on ourselves. The Dragon Valley Forest will keep sending out military personnel, while we devote ourselves to building up Zheer Continent, increasing the populations of the Elves, the Dragon Race, and the Soul Beasts, and establishing a defensive system. Once the mist surrounding Zheer Continent dissipates, we'll face the darkest hour before dawn."
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