The four divine beasts of heaven and earth had been born at the dawn of the universe. They were among the earliest living beings, even predating the Five Great Sages.
After countless years of propagation, all four divine beasts had produced vast numbers of descendants and established their own powers. Old Azure Dragon had founded the Dragon Domain. Though it had not initially been as powerful as the forces of the Five Great Sages, it had not suffered great losses in the battle a million years ago and had preserved its strength. Today, it was one of the absolute top powers in the Bright World.
When heaven and earth gave rise to all things, the more powerful a lifeform was, the fewer of its kind existed. This was especially true of divine beasts like the four of them, each of which was utterly one of a kind beneath heaven.
Yet it was precisely this uniqueness that put the four divine beasts in an awkward position. To breed descendants, they had to... mate with other races. From the second generation onward, their bloodlines began to thin and mutate.
And the farther down the line they went, the thinner those bloodlines became, directly affecting the strength of their descendants.
What made divine beasts most formidable was their physical bodies. This was especially true for beings like Old Azure Dragon, one of the first creatures born into existence. It had been in the Chaos Realm from the moment of its birth, and its body was as tough as a Chaos Realm treasure. It was simply invincible!
But as the bloodline thinned, that invincible body grew "weaker." Eventually, even maintaining dragon form became difficult. They could transform into dragons only after activating their bloodlines, like the Five Dragon Emperors, Ye Guyu, and Li Yuncong.