Jiang Ce: If I don't beat you into calling me "Dad" today, I'll take your surname.

She dove through the flames, her dragon wings grazing the male dragon's spine. With the combined force of her wing-blades and the dragon fire coating them, she tore a charred, jagged wound into its scales.

The patterns on her dragon wings flared brightly—Dragon Wing Enhancement, doubling all her attributes once more.

Liu Erlong swooped down.

She drove a fist into the back of the male dragon's neck, the force of the blow piercing through to its throat as flames erupted through the entire length of its neck.

The male dragon crashed to the ground.

The female dragon let out a shrill, furious roar, opening its maw to unleash its dragon breath.

Liu Erlong's wings gave a single flap, and she instantly vanished from her spot.

Seizing the opportunity, she lashed out with a whip formed from the black liquid on her arm, striking the female dragon squarely on the nose. The dragon breath cut off abruptly.

She retracted the whip, closed the distance, and cut into the side of the female dragon's neck. Bolstered by her dragon arm, the black liquid on her hand condensed into a sharp, pitch-black blade, which she drove straight into the female dragon's eye.

The female dragon let out a harrowing shriek, its body convulsing violently before it finally went still.

Double kill.

Liu Erlong stood between the two dragon carcasses and slowly retracted her blade.

"Keep this one intact to turn in for the bounty," she said, patting the female dragon's horn. "You can eat the other one."

Pitch-black liquid surged from her chest, engulfing the male dragon's corpse.

It took a good while to finish digesting it completely.

"It converted five hundred years of cultivation; I'm at seven thousand years now."

Jiang Ce reported the number while simultaneously organizing the skill he had obtained from this Red Fire Earth Dragon—

Mountain Crushing Strike: Leap into the air and strike the ground with force, channeling fire-attribute soul power into the earth to detonate a five-meter-thick pillar of fire beneath the target.

Upon impact, it deals dual damage—high-temperature burning and a knock-up effect—while the ground continues to burn.

Liu Erlong clenched her fist, feeling the soul power flowing back into her body; it was equivalent to over half a month of grueling cultivation.

Almost there. Just a little bit more to break through.

She stored the female dragon's corpse into her soul tool—

This was the one she had scavenged from the Red Flame Earth Dragon's nest, the one with the largest capacity. At ten cubic meters, it was more than enough to fit the female dragon.

Once finished, she looked up, her gaze falling on the cave entrance where the two dragons had been sunning themselves.

Time to loot.

Liu Erlong bent down and crawled into the cave.

The interior was filled with the dry, scorching scent characteristic of molten rock.

A few stalks of Dragon Breath Grass grew in patches on the cave walls, which she plucked and tossed into her storage ring.

Deep inside the cave, in the center of a dragon nest built from gravel and dried grass, a massive pile of gold soul coins lay spread out.

Although not as extravagant as the Red Flame Earth Dragon's hoard, there were at least a hundred thousand coins.

Several gemstones of varying quality were scattered among the gold, glinting with different colors. As expected of dragon-type soul beasts, they were born with a love for shiny things.

Beside the pile of gold sat three soul bones. Two were common pieces worth about two or three thousand years of cultivation, while the third was darker in color, likely over four thousand years.

There were also two soul tools, one for storage and one for defense. They weren't top-tier, but they could still fetch a decent price.

"These two dragons were actually quite stingy. A male and a female combined, and all they have is a hundred thousand gold coins and a few soul bones."

"You call this stingy?" Liu Erlong crouched down, nimbly sweeping the soul bones, gold, and gems into her soul tool.

"These gold coins alone are more than I earned from hundreds of commissions in the past—and you call this stingy?"

As for the two soul tools, she packed them into a separate bag with efficient movements.

After clearing out the gold coins, she found two dark red, finger-sized gemstones pressed into the bottom of the nest. They felt slightly warm to the touch.

"Byproducts of the fire attribute. They'll be useful for alchemy and forging soul tools," Jiang Ce remarked.

Liu Erlong looked at the two gems in her palm, suddenly feeling a bit sentimental.

"Just these two little things would have covered my expenses for several years back then."

She had never forgotten the words that man had thrown at her:

You won't be able to survive out there on your own. You'll see just how cruel the world is.

But she had survived on her own. She took missions, earned commissions, and lived better than she ever had before.

Now, she could stand with her hands on her hips and retort with righteous confidence:

No, it is only now that I have truly seen what I am capable of.

Furthermore, with Jiang Ce by her side, she would only grow stronger and travel further.

"Don't worry, your old man will take good care of you."

"Cut the crap, you bastard, you're trying to take advantage of me again—"

Snap.

A black whip struck her backside with pinpoint precision, shattering the end of her sentence into a trembling vibrato.

Liu Erlong's pupils constricted, and her body gave a violent jolt.

"You—you ambushed me again!"

"Heh heh, it won't do if you don't call me Daddy." Jiang Ce slowly retracted the whip, his laughter echoing against the cave walls.

"You just wait, one day I'll make you call me Mommy."

"Hmm?" Jiang Ce's voice took a sudden turn. "Come to think of it, if it's just for fun, calling me Mommy isn't out of the question—come now, good daughter!"

Before the words had even faded, the two candied hawthorn skewers spun violently.

Liu Erlong let out a muffled groan, her legs giving way as she collapsed to her knees, her hands gripping the ground tightly to keep from falling flat.

"Stop... stop it!"

"Good daughter, resistance is futile."

The pitch-black liquid on Liu Erlong's body surged violently.

Immediately after, Jiang Ce separated from her, coalescing into his sturdy, two-meter-tall humanoid form.

He casually pulled a mattress from his soul tool and tossed it onto the ground, scooped Liu Erlong up by the waist, and threw her onto it.

With a flick of his wrist, he sealed the cave entrance with black liquid and cracked the whip twice in the air, the sound whistling sharply.

"If I don't make you call me Daddy tonight, I'll take your last name."

For a moment, someone was knocking frantically at the door, bang, bang, bang.

It was as if something urgent had happened.

However.

The big event here with Jiang Ce was far more pressing.

The next morning.

The black liquid sealing the cave entrance slowly retracted, and sunlight squeezed through the rock crevices, casting a long, narrow beam of light onto the floor.

Liu Erlong lay on the mattress, her fingers twitching, then twitching again, before she pushed herself up slowly.

She raised the back of her hand to wipe the lingering saliva from the corner of her mouth, her hair as messy as if someone had scrubbed it three times over.

"...Bastard," she rasped. "You tossed me around all night. Are you even human?"

"Strictly speaking, I am indeed not human right now."

Jiang Ce's voice drifted out from within her, his energy levels clearly several notches higher than hers.

"Shut your mouth." Liu Erlong climbed off the mattress, her movements significantly more agile than the last time.

Although her body still felt a bit weak, at least she wasn't stumbling and unable to stand steady like the first time.

She casually tugged at the shoulder of her black bodysuit, gathered her disheveled hair behind her head, and continued to curse:

"Forcing me to call you Daddy—is there something wrong with you?"

"How can you call it something wrong? This is intimacy."

"Then why don't you call me Mommy?"

"That's not impossible, either." Jiang Ce's tone suddenly turned a bit more serious. "Let's try a different scenario next time—you feed me, and I'll call you Mommy. Dear mother, you wouldn't want your son to go hungry, would you?"

Liu Erlong nearly smashed the storage soul tool she had just picked up against the ground.

"Get lost—!"