She dove through the flames, her Dragon Wings slicing across the male dragon's back. The wing blades, wreathed in dragon flame, tore a charred gash through its scales.
The markings on her Dragon Wings suddenly lit up—Dragon Wing Enhancement, doubling all her attributes once more.
Liu Erlong swooped down.
She drove a punch from her Dragon Arm into the male dragon's nape. The force of the blow pierced through its neck and into its throat, fire blazing through the entire length of it.
The male dragon crashed to the ground.
The female dragon let out a furious, piercing roar and opened its mouth to unleash its breath.
Liu Erlong's Dragon Wings beat once behind her, and she shot away from the spot.
Then, seizing her chance,
a whip surged out of the Black Latex Suit in her hand and cracked across the female dragon's nose. Its breath attack cut off abruptly.
She reeled in the whip, closed in, and slipped to the side of the female dragon's neck. Empowered by her Dragon Arm,
the Black Latex Suit on her hand formed a razor-sharp black blade, which she drove straight into the female dragon's eye.
The female dragon let out a harrowing shriek. Its body convulsed violently once, then it died.
A double kill.
Liu Erlong stood between the two dragon corpses, slowly drawing back the blade in her hand.
"I'll keep this one intact and turn it in for the bounty." She patted the female dragon's horns. "You can eat the other one."
Black liquid welled from her chest and covered the male dragon's corpse.
It took a good while to digest it completely.
"I converted five hundred years of lifespan. I'm at seven thousand years now."
Jiang Ce reported the number, while also sorting through the skill he had obtained from the Red Fire Earth Dragon—
Mountain Crushing Strike: Leap up and slam into the ground, pouring fire-attribute soul power into the earth to erupt a five-meter-wide pillar of flame beneath the target's feet.
On a hit, it dealt both high-temperature burn and knockback damage, while the ground continued to burn.
Liu Erlong clenched her fist, feeling the soul power surging through her in return. It was about as much as she'd gain from more than half a month of hard cultivation.
Almost there. Just a little more, and she'd break through. Mm.
She put the female dragon's corpse into her Soul Tool—
She'd found this one in the Red Flame Earth Dragon's lair. It was the largest Storage Soul Tool, with a full ten cubic meters of space—more than enough for the female dragon.
After putting it away, she lifted her head and looked toward the cave where the two dragons had been sunning themselves.
Time to loot the place.
Liu Erlong bent over and crawled into the cave.
The cave was filled with the dry, scorching air unique to lava.
A few Dragon Breath Grass plants dotted the cave walls. She picked them without a second thought and tossed them into her storage ring.
Deep in the cave, between the dragon nest built of gravel and dry grass, Gold Soul Coins covered the ground in a thick layer.
It wasn't as absurdly extravagant as the Red Flame Earth Dragon's hoard, but there were at least a hundred thousand.
A few gems of varying quality lay scattered among the coins, glinting in different colors. As expected of dragon-type Soul Beasts—they naturally loved shiny things.
Three Soul Bones lay beside the pile of coins. Two were ordinary ones, around two or three thousand years old, while the third was darker in color and probably over four thousand years old.
There were also two Soul Tools, one for storage and the other for defense. Neither was top-tier, but they could still fetch a decent sum.
"These two dragons really were pretty broke. A male and a female, and between them they only had a little over a hundred thousand gold coins and a few Soul Bones."
"And you call that broke?" Liu Erlong crouched down and briskly swept the Soul Bones, coins, and gems into her Soul Tool.
"These gold coins alone are worth more than I used to make from over a hundred jobs—and you call that broke?"
As for the two Soul Tools, she put them in a separate bag, moving swiftly.
After collecting the Gold Soul Coins, she found two dark-red gems, each about the size of a fingertip, pressed into the bottom of the nest. They felt slightly warm to the touch.
"Fire-attribute byproducts. They're useful for alchemy and forging Soul Tools," Jiang Ce remarked.
Liu Erlong looked at the two gems in her palm and suddenly felt a little sentimental.
"These two little things alone are worth several years of my old expenses."
She had never forgotten what that man had said when he left her—
"It'll be hard to survive out there on your own. You'll see just how cruel the outside world can be."
But she had survived alone all the same, taking jobs and earning commissions. Her life was better than it had ever been.
Now she could plant her hands on her hips and answer him with every bit of confidence:
No. Only now have I truly discovered what I'm capable of.
Besides, Jiang Ce was with her now. She would only grow stronger and go farther.
"Don't worry. Your old man will take good care of you."
"Cut it out, you bastard. You're trying to take advantage of me again—"
Smack.
A black whip cracked precisely across her backside, shattering the end of her sentence into a trembling squeak.
Liu Erlong's pupils contracted. Her body jerked violently.
"You—sneaking up on me again!"
"Heh heh. You have to call me Daddy." Jiang Ce slowly withdrew the whip, his laughter echoing off the cave walls.
"Just you wait. One day, I'll make you call me Mommy."
"Hmm?" Jiang Ce's voice suddenly took a turn. "Come to think of it, if it's just for fun, calling me Mommy wouldn't be out of the question. Come on, good girl!"
Before he had finished speaking, those two strings of candied hawthorns suddenly spun around.
Liu Erlong groaned and her legs gave way. She dropped to her knees, only managing not to collapse by bracing herself against the ground with both hands.
"Stop... Stop!"
"Good girl, struggling won't help."
The black liquid on Liu Erlong's body churned violently.
Then,
Jiang Ce separated from her body and coalesced into a sturdy, two-meter-tall humanoid form.
He casually pulled a mattress from his Soul Tool and tossed it onto the ground, then scooped Liu Erlong up around the waist and threw her onto it.
With a casual motion, he sealed the cave entrance with black liquid. He cracked the whip twice in the air, its sharp whistle cutting through the cave.
"Tonight, I won't stop until you call me Daddy—or I'll take your surname."
For a while, someone pounded frantically on the door, bang, bang, bang.
It sounded as if something urgent had happened.
But.
The urgent business here with Jiang Ce was even more pressing.
The next morning.
The black liquid sealing the cave entrance slowly withdrew. Sunlight squeezed through a crack in the rock, stretching a long, narrow beam across the ground.
Liu Erlong lay face-down on the mattress. Her fingers twitched once, then again, before she slowly pushed herself upright.
She raised the back of her hand and wiped the drool left at the corner of her mouth. Her hair was so disheveled, it looked like someone had rubbed her from head to toe three times.
"...Bastard." Her voice was hoarse. "You kept me at it all night. Are you even human?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm not human anymore."
Jiang Ce's voice drifted languidly from inside her, his energy far surpassing hers.
"Shut up." Liu Erlong climbed off the mattress, moving much more smoothly than last time.
Her body was still a little weak, but at least she wasn't staggering and barely able to stand like she had the first time.
She tugged at the shoulder of her Black Latex Suit, gathered her unruly hair behind her head, and kept grumbling:
"Forcing me to call you Daddy—what the hell is wrong with you?"
"How can you call it something wrong with me? It's just a kink."
"Then why don't you call me Mommy?"
"Not that I wouldn't." Jiang Ce's tone suddenly turned more serious. "Next time, we'll switch things up—you breastfeed me, and I'll call you Mommy.
"Mother, you wouldn't want your son to go hungry, would you?"
Liu Erlong nearly dropped the Storage Soul Tool she had just picked up.
"Get lost—!"
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