Barn looked at the Spine-backed Iron-armored Dragon before him with confusion. The creature was curled up, its tail in its mouth, as if gnawing or sucking on it.
"Declan? What are you doing?" Barn asked, bewildered.
"Ah!" Declan quickly hid the dragon tail behind him. "Barn, why are you out here?"
Barn looked at the blood on Declan's mouth and the dragon tail behind him. "You're... eating your own tail?"
A panicked expression appeared on Declan's massive dragon head. He mumbled, "It's fine. I'm big, losing a bit of flesh isn't a big deal."
"Why aren't you eating anything—" Barn stopped mid-sentence, stunned. Among the jumbled fragments of memory in his mind, there was an insignificant one—the piece of meat he had just eaten was their last remaining food.
Gobada was a cruel place. Even Divine level beings could draw divine power from their divinity to sustain themselves. But for those in the Saint domain, they either pledged loyalty to a Divine level being and received a sliver of divine power to survive, or they were forced by starvation to kill and devour each other.
Barn and Declan had eaten all the provisions in their spatial rings during the first few decades. They tried to endure hunger for a while, but eventually, hunger defeated them, and they had to start "hunting."
However, Saint domain beings were at the very bottom of the Gobada plane. Even the arrogant Tiger-pattern Warriors and Spine-backed Iron-armored Dragons could barely survive. Especially in the last few years, the two had been unlucky, encountering strong enemies repeatedly. Not only did they fail to gain anything, but they were also injured multiple times, their condition worsening.
Before their last battle, they had only one meal's worth of flesh left. They were forced to attack a powerful enemy. In the end, Barn was severely injured, while Declan managed to escape with his life by burrowing underground.
Now, Barn finally understood why Declan had called roasting meat with dragon flame "extravagant"—the dragon flame consumed energy, and the roasting process caused the fat to be lost. The food that was supposed to be for two people was only enough for him to eat his fill.
Barn drew his spear. "Let's go hunting!"
"No, you need to rest and recover your strength to its peak! Only then will we have a chance in battle."
"You are a Spine-backed Iron-armored Dragon, the proudest of dragonkind. I can't watch you devour yourself to fill your stomach!" Barn was influenced by the memory fragments of those thousand years and now considered Declan his brother.
However, Declan merely smiled sadly, faint tears welling in his dark golden eyes. "No matter how proud a dragon is, here, one can only bow their head. This place is—Gobada."
The Gobada plane prison was a land of despair forged by the Supreme God with the most brutal laws. The sky had no sun or moon, and gray mist perpetually permeated, shrouding the entire plane in eternal twilight. The land was barren and desolate, mountains shattered, plains cracked. Elements were scarce, and the aura of life was so thin it was almost nonexistent.
If one looked up intently, they could vaguely see flashes of multicolored light behind the gray mist that obscured the sky, illuminating the land below—these were terrifying spatial turbulence.
The plane stability of Gobada was extremely poor. Generally, at a thousand meters above the ground, spatial rifts existed, becoming denser the higher one went. In special areas, spatial rifts could even appear tens of meters above the ground.
This made it so that even Divine level beings dared not fly high, only able to fly close to the ground. Saint domain beings, on the other hand, mostly chose to dig holes in the ground and huddle underground.
But what made them despair was that a thousand meters below the ground was the spatial barrier set by the Supreme God. A powerful repulsive force acted like a wall, preventing any living being from advancing even half a step further.
This forced all Divine and Saint domain beings to survive, fight, and die only within the narrow zone from a thousand meters above the ground to a thousand meters below it.
At this moment, in a cave five hundred meters from the ground, an Ice Snow Lion was curled up.
The Ice Snow Lion was merely a peak eighth-level magical beast. Living in the northern part of the Dark Forest, it had good talent. Through hard work, it broke through to the ninth level and was fortunate enough to encounter two Saint domain magical beasts fighting. Taking advantage of the chaos, it obtained a water-element Saint domain magic core, thus reversing its fate and becoming a Saint domain beast.
The talent of an eighth-level magical beast was very low among Saint domain magical beasts, but low talent had its advantages, which was that comprehending laws was easier. Thus, within a few hundred years of breaking through to the Saint domain, it compensated for its lack of talent with laws and killed two human Saint domain beings who had come to try and subdue it.
During this process, the Ice Snow Lion discovered that humans were delicious!
So it began to indulge itself, constantly attacking human adventurers, and eventually, its greed grew, and it attacked several human villages.
In its opinion, these humans attacked each other, and more people died each year than it ate. Especially in the land called the Eighteen Duchies of the Northern Territory, there weren't many Saint domain beings, so it didn't expect any humans to trouble it because of this.
But unfortunately, one day, while it was happily eating, it was grabbed by a black hand and thrown into this desolate world.
It regretted it now, it truly regretted it.
However, regret was useless. The elements here were completely different from the Yulan Continent. On the Yulan Continent, the seven elements were very active. The Ice Snow Lion only needed to gently activate its magic core, and water elements would surge towards it like sprites.
But in Gobada, the elements here were like frozen corpses. Even with full mental exertion, it could only awaken a very small portion, barely enough to compensate for bodily consumption.
"I can't concentrate on comprehending profound mysteries when I'm starving!" the Ice Snow Lion muttered to itself. "Fortunately, I still have some provisions."
It glanced at its spatial pendant. Only three thousand human corpses remained inside. At this rate of consumption, it would only last for a hundred years—
"Roar!" The Ice Snow Lion suddenly lunged, swiping its claws at a black shadow in the corner of the cave.
"Clang—" The sound of metal clashing echoed, followed by a playful voice.
"Finally, our luck has turned! One Ice Snow Lion is enough for us to eat for three years!"
Declan's ferocious body emerged from the shadow, his dragon claws like scimitars, slashing towards the Ice Snow Lion.
But the Ice Snow Lion, capable of causing trouble with its eighth-level magical beast talent, naturally had its own means—it had comprehended the most physically powerful attack in the water element laws, the Profound Truth of Ice.
Countless ice cones appeared around the Ice Snow Lion, like a hedgehog's armor, and then it swung its sharp claws to meet the attack head-on.
The two magical beasts fought fiercely in the cave, neither gaining the upper hand for a time.
However, the Ice Snow Lion failed to notice that Declan had said "we" in his earlier words!
The side wall of the cave suddenly collapsed, and a figure half-human, half-tiger, holding a long spear, appeared.
A hint of cold light arrived first, then the spear thrust out like a dragon.
The Ice Snow Lion's ice hedgehog armor instantly bristled, then shot out like countless arrows.
However, the figure, which looked like a human and a tiger, seemed to have foreseen this. It circled and dodged all the ice swords in the air, its speed undiminished. In the blink of an eye, the spear was before the Ice Snow Lion.
The Ice Snow Lion let out a tiger roar, forcing back the Spine-backed Iron-armored Dragon, and stood on its hind legs, meeting the attack with its tiger claws.
However, the spear's edge strangely curved, enlarging in the Ice Snow Lion's pupils, and then left a trail of cold blood in mid-air.
Previously, Barn had agreed to Declan's request and rested in the cave for ten days. He completely mastered all the combat skills of the original owner and integrated all the memory fragments related to profound mysteries before deciding to go "hunting."
The soul from another world had completely taken over this body, and the memory fragments of the former Barn were absorbed by the current Barn without any obstruction.
As a result, Barn also mastered all the original owner's insights into the Law of Destiny.
The four great rules were profound and difficult to articulate. Barn named the part of the Law of Destiny he comprehended "Destined Hit."