Chapter Forty-Seven: Dragon Transformation

A week passed in the blink of an eye.

Lin Yun had barely left the house all week. During the day, he worked in the training room to get used to his greatly increased strength. At night, he shifted his consciousness to the Coiling Dragon World and practiced the secret techniques he had bought in the woods behind Ernst Academy. He made the most of the time in both worlds, steadily consolidating his strength through training in each.

His Spiritual Force had reached the peak of the late High-Level War God stage, while his Warrior cultivation had reached the peak of the Primary War God stage. Both had fully stabilized, and that "hollow" feeling was gone. His body had also adjusted completely to its new power. Every punch and every strike could now unleash its full force.

His control over the flying daggers had improved by leaps and bounds. The twelve Grade 9 Flying Daggers moved like living things in his hands, darting wherever he pleased within a thousand meters and piercing steel plates several meters thick with ease. He was confident that if he encountered another Advanced Lord-level monster like the Heaven-Swallowing Python, he could kill it easily with the daggers alone, without needing to use a Soul Attack.

But these weren't what he was really looking forward to.

Lin Yun sat cross-legged on his bed and took the sealed box out of his Space Ring. He opened it. The Green Spirit lay quietly inside. He had already eaten its six leaves, leaving only the lone red fruit atop its stem. In the moonlight, it shone invitingly, its deep red surface seeming almost ready to drip.

"It's time to eat it," Lin Yun murmured.

But he didn't hurry to put the fruit in his mouth. He was weighing a question: which body should eat it?

He had eaten the Green Spirit's leaves in the Swallowed Star World, and they had worked wonders. His Spiritual Force had surged, and his physical abilities had improved as well. But the fruit was different. It was more than ten times as potent as the leaves, containing far greater quantities of purer energy. He needed to think carefully about which body should absorb it.

Lin Yun closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into both bodies at once, carefully sensing their condition.

His body in the Swallowed Star World had just undergone the Green Spirit leaves' cleansing. His Spiritual Force had reached the peak of the late High-Level War God stage, and his physical abilities had advanced to the peak of the Primary War God stage. It was in excellent condition, brimming with energy, its cells active and at their peak.

In the Coiling Dragon World, his Spiritual Energy had reached the late stage of a Level 9 Mage, but his magical power remained at the peak of Level 8 and still needed time to refine. His Warrior cultivation was at the peak of Level 7. It wasn't weak, but compared with his magic, it was clearly lagging behind.

Deep down, Lin Yun felt that his body in the Coiling Dragon World needed the fruit more. More importantly, that world had Light Element magic.

Light Element magic excelled at healing and purification. If anything went wrong while he was eating the fruit, he could use light magic to deal with it. He had no such means in the Swallowed Star World.

"I'll have the body in the Coiling Dragon World eat it." Lin Yun made his decision.

He put the sealed box back in his Space Ring, then sent the ring back to the Coiling Dragon World.

The moonlight poured over Lin Yun's shoulders in the small grove behind Ernst Academy. Sitting cross-legged on the familiar blue-gray stone, he took the red fruit out of his Space Ring.

The fruit was only about the size of a baby's fist, perfectly round and smooth, and it gave off a faint red glow in the moonlight. A sweet fragrance wafted from it. Just one breath was enough to refresh the mind.

Lin Yun took a deep breath and put the fruit in his mouth.

The instant it touched his tongue, a warm surge of energy burst forth. Unlike the leaves' coolness, this was a deeper, richer warmth, like aged wine—smooth at first, but with a powerful kick.

The fruit melted at once, turning into a warm liquid that flowed down his throat and into his body. Every cell it touched seemed to cheer and rejoice, as if a long-dried land had finally received rain.

Lin Yun closed his eyes and focused all his attention inward.

The warmth flowed through his meridians like a gentle river, nourishing every inch of flesh, every bone, every cell along the way. He could feel his body undergoing a wondrous change—not a simple increase in strength, but something more fundamental, something deeper.

His Warrior cultivation was the first to break through.

The bottleneck at the peak of Level 7 crumbled under the surge of energy, as flimsy as paper. His cultivation climbed through early Level 8, mid-Level 8, and late Level 8, then finally stopped at the peak of Level 8.

But the energy hadn't run out. It continued to flow through his body, nourishing every cell.

Then Lin Yun felt it.

At the moment his cultivation reached the peak of Level 8, something inside him broke. It was an invisible shackle, buried deep in his bloodline and at the core of every cell. It had been there since birth, accompanying him for fifteen years, and now at last, it shattered.

A sudden realization surged through his mind.

It wasn't knowledge learned from the outside, nor a theory he had read in a book. It was something inborn, an instinct carved into the depths of his bloodline. Just as a baby was born knowing how to breathe and a fish was born knowing how to swim, this realization was the dormant memory in the Dragonblood Warrior bloodline—the power passed down through generations by the ancestors of the Baruch Clan.

"This is..." Before Lin Yun could think further, a sudden change came over him.

The warm, soothing energy abruptly turned violent. It no longer flowed gently like a river. Instead, it erupted from every corner of his body at once, like a volcano.

A fierce pain struck him through every pore.

It wasn't the pain of a cut or a broken bone. It was deeper, welling up from between his bones. It felt as if something were writhing beneath his skin, trying to burst out.

Lin Yun threw back his head and let out a pained roar. His voice echoed through the night, startling the birds roosting in the trees.

Beneath the moonlight, his skin began to change.

It started with his arms. Patches of blue-green scales pushed through his skin, their sharp edges tearing his clothes with ease. They were a deep jade color, like fine emerald, and gleamed with a cold light beneath the moon. Layer upon layer, they tightly covered his arms, each scale as sharp as a blade.

Then they spread across his torso, legs, and back. The scales advanced faster and faster, like a wildfire. In moments, they covered Lin Yun's entire body.

He looked down at his hands. They were no longer human. His fingers had grown longer, sharp claws sprouting from their tips, while fine scales covered his knuckles. Each hand looked like a miniature dragon's claw.

The pain didn't stop.

An even more intense pain came from his forehead, as if something were forcing its way out through the bone. Lin Yun gritted his teeth. Veins stood out on his forehead, and sweat mixed with blood seeped through the gaps between his scales.

Two dragon horns slowly emerged from either side of his forehead.

They were short, only as long as an adult's finger, and jade-green all the way through. Their surfaces were smooth as mirrors, and their tips sharp as needles. They curved slightly backward, giving off a faint glow in the moonlight.

Next, a sharp pain stabbed through the base of his spine. A blue-green dragon tail emerged from his tailbone. At first it was barely a foot long, but it quickly grew until it was more than a meter in length. Fine scales covered it as well, and its spear-sharp tip swayed gently beneath the moonlight.

But it wasn't over yet.

A piercing pain shot through all ten fingers and all ten toes. Lin Yun looked down to see each of his fingers changing. His nails fell away, replaced by sharp claws growing from their tips. Like the claws on his hands, they gleamed jade-green, curved like hooks and sharp enough to tear through steel.

His feet changed at the same time. His toes became claws, his arches grew more curved, and his feet took on a shape better suited for gripping the ground and leaping.

The pain of having claws grow out of him like that made Lin Yun's vision go black. He lost consciousness.

His body slid off the stone and fell onto the soft grass. Moonlight spilled over his scaly form, the jade-green scales glowing faintly in the darkness. With horns, a tail, and claws, he looked like a dragon in human form.

After an unknown amount of time, Lin Yun's consciousness slowly returned.

He opened his eyes to the moonlight and the silhouettes of leaves overhead. His mind was still hazy, and his body felt stiff, but he could tell that everything had changed.

He sat up and looked down at his hands.

Jade-green scales covered his arms and the backs of his hands, and sharp claws tipped all ten fingers. He tried clenching his fist. His scales scraped together with a faint sound, and a power unlike anything he had felt before surged through him.

He stood and walked to a large tree at the edge of the grove. Without using any technique, he simply threw a punch.

"Boom!"

His fist punched straight through the trunk, sending wood chips flying. The tree, thick enough to take a person's arms to encircle, snapped where he had hit it and crashed to the ground.

Lin Yun froze.

He looked down at his fist. The scales were completely intact, without so much as a scratch. His strength had increased by more than ten times.

He closed his eyes and sensed his cultivation.

Peak Level 9.

His Warrior cultivation had shot straight from the peak of Level 8 to the peak of Level 9. His physical abilities and strength after Dragon Transformation were several times greater than before. In terms of physical ability alone, a Dragonblood Warrior at the peak of Level 9 was already on par with an ordinary Saint Warrior.

When he ended Dragon Transformation, however, his cultivation dropped back to the peak of Level 8. The scales, horns, tail, and claws all vanished, and he became an ordinary boy again.

But the sensation of power and the realization buried deep in his bloodline remained.

"Dragon Transformation," Lin Yun murmured, a flicker of understanding in his eyes.

When the Dragonblood Warrior bloodline of the Baruch Clan reached a high enough concentration, it could awaken this form. While transformed, one's physical abilities increased several times over, and one's defense rose by a geometric measure. The reason their ancestors had been able to fight dragons head-on was this very power.

But the problem was that his bloodline concentration hadn't been high enough for Dragon Transformation.

Back in Wushan Town, Hogg had tested the bloodline concentration of Lin Yun and Linley. Neither of them had enough to awaken Dragon Transformation. It had always been a regret of Lin Yun's, and one reason he had favored magic over the Warrior path in the Coiling Dragon World.

But now, the fruit had changed everything.

The Green Spirit fruit hadn't merely improved his physical abilities; it had purified his bloodline as well. The faint traces of the Dragonblood Warrior bloodline lying dormant deep in his cells had been awakened, refined, and strengthened by the fruit's energy. The concentration that had once been insufficient had been forcibly raised to the level needed for Dragon Transformation.

"No wonder the Heaven-Swallowing Python was willing to fight to protect the Green Spirit," Lin Yun murmured. A Spirit of Vegetation capable of purifying bloodlines and increasing their concentration was worth far more than a treasure that merely improved one's strength. On Earth, anything that could alter a Warrior's very foundation was priceless and nearly impossible to find. The Heaven-Swallowing Python had guarded this Spirit of Vegetation for decades, finally waiting until it matured. It had only needed to raise its cultivation to the peak of Advanced Lord, then eat the Spirit of Vegetation to reach King Level in one leap—but Lin Yun had snatched it away.

He sat cross-legged again, closed his eyes, and carefully felt the power of Dragon Transformation.

A Dragonblood Warrior at the peak of Level 9, a Level 9 Seven-Element Mage, and the second layer of the Nine-Layered Thunder Blade. In Lin Yun's estimation, the second layer of the Nine-Layered Thunder Blade had already surpassed the description of the second layer in the Baruch Clan's inherited manual—Heavy as Light. Taken together, his overall strength was no weaker than that of an ordinary Saint Realm expert. He hadn't broken through to the Saint Realm, but he could now put up a fight against someone who had just entered it.

And Dragon Transformation brought more than just increased strength. His defense soared in that state, and each jade-green scale was as hard as fine steel. An ordinary Level 9 Warrior's attacks would probably fail even to break through them.

Lin Yun shifted his consciousness to the Swallowed Star World.

In the villa in Bright Moon Residential District, his other body sat cross-legged on the bed and slowly opened its eyes.

Almost the instant Dragon Transformation ended in the Coiling Dragon World, this body felt the energy flowing back into it.

His Warrior cultivation leaped from the peak of the Primary War God stage to the peak of the Intermediate War God stage. He was only one step away from the High-Level War God stage.

His Genetic Origin Energy surged through his body. His cells cheered and rejoiced. He could feel his physical abilities undergoing a qualitative leap—his strength, speed, and reflexes had all improved by an entire tier.

Lin Yun clenched his fist, feeling the power gathered in his palm.

Peak Intermediate War God.

Before eating the Green Spirit fruit, his Warrior cultivation had been at the peak of the Primary War God stage. Now he had already touched the threshold of the High-Level War God stage.

If I run into the Heaven-Swallowing Python again... Lin Yun thought, I won't need a Soul Attack. My flying daggers alone will be enough to kill it.

Lin Yun stood and walked to the window. Moonlight slipped through a gap in the curtains and fell across his face as he silently reviewed what he had gained over the past week.

Swallowed Star World: Spiritual Force at the peak of the late High-Level War God stage; Warrior cultivation at the peak of the Intermediate War God stage. Twelve Grade 9 Flying Daggers and more than a dozen secret techniques. More than 1.1 billion left in his account.

Coiling Dragon World: Spiritual Energy at the late stage of a Level 9 Mage, with his magical power rapidly refining and expected to reach Level 9 within a month. Warrior cultivation at the peak of Level 8, rising to the peak of Level 9 during Dragon Transformation. All seven elements of magic advancing in tandem. The second layer of the Nine-Layered Thunder Blade mastered, and he was pushing toward the third.

Most importantly—Dragon Transformation.

It was one of Lin Yun's trump cards in the Coiling Dragon World, a winning card that could let him fight across levels. With a Level 9 Dragonblood Warrior, a Level 9 Seven-Element Mage, and the force application technique of the Nine-Layered Thunder Blade, his overall strength was already no weaker than that of an ordinary Saint Realm expert.

And it all came from that Green Spirit fruit.

The moonlight poured through the small grove behind Ernst Academy.

Lin Yun opened his eyes and rose from the grass. His clothes had been shredded by his scales during Dragon Transformation, so all he could do now was wrap himself in a spare robe from his Space Ring.

He looked at the scraps of fabric scattered across the ground and gave a wry smile. Dragon Transformation cost more than just strength. It cost clothes, too.

"Looks like I'll have to keep a few extra sets on hand," he said to himself.

Then he sat cross-legged again, closed his eyes, and began to refine his magical power.

The Green Spirit fruit's energy hadn't been fully absorbed. Some of it still lingered in his body, slowly nourishing his bloodline and physique. He needed time to absorb it completely, stabilize Dragon Transformation, and consolidate his cultivation.

Moonlight fell across his shoulders. The seven elements of magic slowly swirled around him like streams of different colors, joining into a dazzling, multicolored river.

The Thunder Element was especially active. It seemed the fruit had improved not only his bloodline concentration, but also his affinity for the laws of the elements. Lin Yun could feel his understanding of the Lightning Law growing at an unprecedented rate.