The morning mist fell behind him. Before climbing over the mountain ahead, Gu Tian took one last look toward Ancient Dragon Village, then resolutely set out on the unknown road ahead.
He clutched the map Gu Hai had left him. Drawn on parchment, it marked some of the borders and important cities of the Douluo Continent in dark red ink.
"Lin Xi, where are we going, exactly?" Gu Tian asked softly in his mind.
"To the border between the Star Luo Empire and the Heaven Dou Empire. There's a forest there, the largest on this plane." Ao Linxi's voice came from the balcony of the villa in the Sea of Consciousness. She swirled the Nine-Colored Fruit Juice in her hand, utterly unhurried. "If you're going to restore the Dragon God's glory, you should first go meet that little girl guarding the gate."
"The little girl guarding the gate?" Gu Tian froze, then his heart gave a jolt.
As a transmigrator, he knew all too well what that forest meant—the Star Dou Great Forest. And the only one Ao Linxi could call "the little girl guarding the gate" was the Silver Dragon King Gu Yuena, sleeping at the bottom of the Lake of Life.
At this point in the timeline, Gu Yuena was still asleep. It would be about ten thousand years before she truly awakened.
For the next week, Gu Tian spent almost all his time trekking over mountains and crossing rivers.
He crossed the arid wasteland of the Xingyao Principality and climbed the steep Dragon Cry Mountains. Whenever his strength gave out along the way, the Nine-Turn Dragon Breath inside him would circulate on its own. Its warm energy filled his entire body, restoring him in the blink of an eye.
Finally, at dusk on the seventh day, an endless sea of emerald green appeared at the far edge of the horizon.
That was the Star Dou Great Forest.
The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, steeped in an ancient, desolate aura. Huge trees rose from the earth, each one dozens or even hundreds of meters tall. Their thick trunks stood like bronze pillars holding up the sky, their bark cloaked in moss and crisscrossed with vines.
The lush branches blotted out the sky, carving it into fragments of azure. Sunlight slipped through the leaves and turned into countless flecks of gold. Like dancing sprites, they dotted the roots covered in lichen and shimmered across the colorful caps of mushrooms.
The air was filled with the fragrance of earth and the fresh scent of plants and trees. Against this rich vitality, the desolate, lifeless Ancient Dragon Village seemed like a reflection of another world.
Gu Tian stepped into the forest, treading on fallen leaves that had piled up for who knew how many years. Layer upon layer, they felt soft underfoot, like a thick carpet. Clear birdsong echoed around him, mingling with the faint roars of beasts in the distance. Now and then, a few colorful butterflies fluttered past, their wings as light as a vivid dream.
Watching the occasional bird dart past in the distance, Gu Tian couldn't help feeling uneasy.
"Lin Xi, this is a paradise for Soul Beasts. What if I run into one that's several thousand—or even tens of thousands—of years old? My puny body wouldn't survive a single bite."
"Pathetic." Ao Linxi curled her lip, her voice brimming with innate arrogance. "You're the heir to the Dragon God Bloodline, their ancestor. In their territory, you're the one and only king. Just let a little of your Martial Soul's aura out. As long as they haven't gone mad, none of them will dare touch you."
Gu Tian, half convinced and half doubtful, urged his Soul Power into motion.
As the Chaos Dragon God possessed him, a faint nine-colored aura spread from his body. It was subtle, but to the senses of a Soul Beast, it was like thunder striking the ground.
Sure enough, the surroundings fell silent in an instant.
The insects that had been chirping in the grass fell quiet, and the monkeys playing in the treetops froze. Gu Tian walked on for a while and was surprised to find that he hadn't encountered a single Soul Beast—or even an ordinary beast of any size.
In the minds of Soul Beasts, the Dragon Clan was born to rule. And the aura Gu Tian gave off far surpassed that of ordinary dragons.
At that moment, the entire forest seemed to fall into a collective silence. Every living creature cowered in the shadows, heads bowed in terror as the young king walked slowly through their territory.
The deeper he went into the forest, the stranger the plants became. Some enormous flowers were two or three meters across, their translucent petals gleaming like jade. Pale purple spores drifted through the woods, glowing faintly and making the dark forest seem dreamlike. These Plant-type Soul Beasts had at least several thousand years of cultivation.
It would take about another day to reach the Lake of Life in the core area. As dusk fell, the forest grew extremely dim. The trees in the distance seemed like clawing ghosts, their massive shadows interweaving among the trunks. Now and then came the sound of branches cracking under the steps of some large creature.
Gu Tian found a secluded cave by the roadside and slipped inside.
He quickly cleared a patch of ground and built a fire. The flames danced, casting long shadows across the stone walls. Gu Tian took out the dry rations Lin Ping had baked by hand. They had gone a little hard, but roasting them over the fire brought out a hint of wheat that stirred a trace of homesickness in him.
Just as he took a bite of the flatbread, a foul wind suddenly swept in from outside the cave.
"Roar—!"
A low growl came from the cave entrance.
By the firelight, Gu Tian saw a huge Soul Beast slowly padding toward him.
It was a Saber-Toothed Tiger, its body covered in sword-shaped stripes, standing a full two meters tall. Its pair of foot-long fangs gleamed with a chilling light in the fire, looking razor-sharp. From its size and fluctuations of Soul Power, it was at least a thousand-year Soul Beast.
Gu Tian was badly startled, and the ration in his hand nearly fell into the fire. This was his first time facing a thousand-year Soul Beast without anything standing in his way. The pressure of a predator made every hair on his body stand on end.
"Beast!"
In the Sea of Consciousness, Ao Linxi shot upright from the sofa. Her stunning face was wreathed in frost.
She felt that her authority had been gravely challenged. Her chosen heir had been frightened by a feline that wasn't even fully intelligent? Worse, this little wildcat had dared bare its fangs at a candidate for the Dragon God's mantle?
"Kneel before me!"
Ao Linxi's cool voice rang out like a divine decree.
Gu Tian felt a terrifying bloodline pressure erupt from the region of his heart.
This sacred force, bearing absolute supremacy, surged through the cave and spread outward, sending ripples through the air around it.
The Saber-Toothed Tiger, which had been about to pounce, froze the instant it sensed that aura. Its pupils contracted violently, and its ferocious expression was instantly replaced by sheer terror.
Then, before Gu Tian's stunned eyes,
the four legs of the thousand-year Saber-Toothed Tiger began to shake violently.
"Splash—"
A foul smell spread through the cave. The mighty ruler of the jungle had wet itself in fright!
The Saber-Toothed Tiger let out a whimper that broke into a squeak. It tried to run, but its legs were so weak that it tumbled head over heels. It scrambled out of the cave, not daring to look back, and fled into the depths of the bushes with a wail.
Gu Tian stared blankly at the wet patch by the cave entrance, then looked down at his hands as they gradually stopped trembling.
"Lin Xi, you... you're unbelievably strong!" Gu Tian swallowed and praised her from the bottom of his heart.
"Hmph. It's only a thousand-year Soul Beast. Before me, it doesn't even deserve the chance to beg for mercy." Ao Linxi settled back onto the sofa, her tone full of disdain. "That Soul Beast must be a descendant of the White Tiger, right? I wonder how she raised it."
"The White Tiger? Who's that?" Gu Tian asked curiously. He could tell there was more to Ao Linxi's words.
When she mentioned the White Tiger, the first thing that came to mind was probably the White Tiger Martial Soul, the inherited Martial Soul of the Star Luo Imperial Family.
"Xiao Tian, let me think about where to start." Ao Linxi mulled it over. "You know that Soul Beasts cultivate far more slowly than human Soul Masters. They need to spend several times as long to reach the same level as a Soul Master. Before I fell, I divided some of my fortune among a number of Soul Beasts to keep them from being bullied on the Douluo Continent. I made them Auspicious Beasts, so they could help other Soul Beasts cultivate."
"The earliest Auspicious Beasts were the Qilin, Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise. That Saber-Toothed Tiger just now was a descendant of the Auspicious Beast White Tiger."
Hearing the names of the five Auspicious Beasts, Gu Tian felt a ripple stir in his heart. "Going by what you said, the Azure Dragon's descendants gave rise to the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, the White Tiger to the Dai Family, the Vermilion Bird probably corresponds to the Phoenix Sect, and the Black Tortoise to the Xuanming Sect. No wonder those families became some of the most prominent clans."
"But as I just said, the fortune those Auspicious Beasts received came from me. And you, as my heir, will naturally inherit all of it." Ao Linxi gave him a mischievous smile.
Gu Tian shook his head with a wry smile. "Fortune? What good is that?"
"For example, you'll never lose at rock-paper-scissors!"
Gu Tian's lips slowly curled upward. "Heh heh heh. In that case, I've thought of something fun."
"Oh? What?"
"Not telling you. Hehe."
The night passed without incident.