He didn't reveal his true form, remaining in human shape, but the terrifying dragon might he radiated was already enough to shatter Yu Yuanzhen's Martial Soul Avatar on the spot!
"Pfft!"
Yu Yuanzhen was forcibly kicked out of his Martial Soul Avatar state. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he slumped in midair like a dead dog, staring in horror at the black-armored man.
"You... who are you?"
"I'm the sect master of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan! I have true dragon blood..."
Yu Yuanzhen stammered, trying to use his bloodline to bargain for a sliver of hope.
"True dragon blood?"
Meanwhile, Heiqing looked as though he'd just heard the biggest joke in the world.
He strode up to Yu Yuanzhen and grabbed him by the throat, holding him like a chick.
"With blood this thin—not even as good as a Sub-Dragon Beast—you dare call yourself a true dragon?"
"You think growing a few scales and a horn makes you a dragon?"
"I'd say you're a mutant big-footed lizard."
As he spoke, Heiqing sniffed Yu Yuanzhen with an expression of disgust. Then his brow furrowed.
"And that lightning energy is so mixed up. It's an insult to the power of thunder."
"I was going to eat you, but I feel like you'd give me diarrhea."
Meanwhile, on the Douluo Continent.
At True Dragon Mountain, home of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.
All the elders and disciples stood as if petrified, staring blankly at the Sky Screen.
Their god. Their invincible clan leader, the man hailed as the one who possessed the world's greatest Beast Martial Soul...
He was being held in someone's hand like a piece of trash.
What broke them most were the black-armored man's words.
"Bastard lizard."
"Not even as good as a Sub-Dragon Beast."
"Mutant big-footed lizard."
Each word was like a red-hot knife, plunging into the heart of every member of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan and twisting viciously!
"No! This can't be real!"
At last, one of the elders couldn't take it anymore. He fell to his knees and broke down sobbing.
"We're dragons! We're noble Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragons!"
"Why are we not even as good as Sub-Dragons in that world?!"
"Our faith, our pride—it's all destroyed!"
Elsewhere, in the Heaven Dou Imperial Palace.
Dugu Bo watched the scene, and the last trace of pride he'd held onto as a Titled Douluo vanished without a trace.
He stared at Heiqing, his voice trembling.
"That black-armored man shattered the old dragon's Martial Soul Avatar with just a trace of pressure, while still in human form."
"He's definitely no ordinary powerhouse..."
"He must be a true dragon from that world, a creature standing at its very peak!"
"Before a true dragon, the so-called dragon Martial Souls of our Douluo Continent really are a joke."
Beyond the Sky Screen, on the Battle Through the Heavens Plane.
Heiqing held Yu Yuanzhen in his hand, growing impatient as he prepared to crush him.
But just then, a young voice, though soft, rang out from within the island, brimming with authority.
"Uncle Heiqing, wait."
Heiqing paused. A simple, honest smile instantly spread across his face as he respectfully looked toward the depths of the void.
"Young Clan Leader? What brings you out of seclusion?"
Soon, a little girl with delicate features, violet hair, and purple eyes came skipping through the air.
She glanced at Yu Yuanzhen, dangling in Heiqing's hand, and a glimmer of curiosity crossed her gemstone-like eyes.
"Huh? This old man smells so strange."
"His bloodline is trash, but the thing inside him that's called a bone is something I've never seen before."
With that, Zi Yan reached out and grabbed toward Yu Yuanzhen's arm from a distance.
Crack!
"Arghhhhh!"
Yu Yuanzhen let out a shrill scream. His right arm exploded, and a blue-violet Dragon Transformation arm bone was forcibly ripped free and flew into Zi Yan's hand.
"Is this an energy crystal that grew inside a bone?"
Zi Yan played with the Spirit Bone and curled her lip.
"Hmm... the energy's too low-grade, but it's pretty hard."
"Perfect. My palace needs a few more tiles for the floor. This bone will do."
"Uncle Heiqing, take out his other bones too. Let's make a full set."
"Coming right up, Young Clan Leader!"
At that, Heiqing grinned, baring a row of gleaming white teeth.
"No... don't!"
"Kill me! Just kill me!"
Yu Yuanzhen wailed in despair.
As the clan leader of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, he'd spent his whole life trying to collect six Spirit Bones and become a true dragon.
But now, in this terrifying world, the Spirit Bones he treasured as dearly as his life were being taken to pave a floor!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Amid the sound of breaking bones and Yu Yuanzhen's screams, one Spirit Bone after another was mercilessly torn away.
Watching the scene, the people of the Douluo Continent felt a chill run through them, as if they'd plunged into an icy abyss.
It was too savage!
Too humiliating!
A dignified Titled Douluo, the master of one of the Upper Three Sects, had been called a lizard and stripped of his bones to pave a floor?
How was this merely a crushing display of power from a higher dimension?
It was the people of Douluo Continent's dignity being ground underfoot again and again, until it was pulverized!
Before long, the once-arrogant clan leader of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan, the Level 95 Titled Douluo Yu Yuanzhen, was left sprawled in midair like a dead dog with its tendons severed.
His body was covered in blood. Without his Spirit Bones to support him, his once-powerful frame had twisted into a grotesque shape, his limbs bent backward in a way that made one's blood run cold.
"Argh! My Spirit Bones!"
"Those were dragon bones I spent my whole life saving up!"
Yu Yuanzhen had gone mad. He could only watch as the purple-haired girl handled the Spirit Bones he'd been so proud of, weighing them in her hand with the same disdain one might show for rotten cabbage at a market.
"Tsk, only this one has any hardness to it."
Zi Yan wrinkled her delicate nose. She casually tossed the blue-violet lightning-wreathed right arm bone to Heiqing, then pointed to a gap at the entrance of the magnificent palace in the distance.
"Uncle Heiqing, use this one to patch that step over there. The color's a bit tacky, but we shouldn't waste it."
"Sure thing!"
Heiqing gave a simple, honest smile, then swept out his hand.
"Bang!"
And just like that, the sixty-thousand-year Spirit Bone—something that would have sent Titled Douluo scrambling to fight over it on the Douluo Continent—was slammed into the dirt like a broken brick. It became a floor tile on East Dragon Island, meant for people to walk all over!
"P-pave the floor?"
After seeing this, Yu Yuanzhen's mind, already blurred by pain, finally collapsed completely.
His proud true dragon bloodline had been called lizard blood.
The legacy Spirit Bones he'd treasured as dearly as his life had been used to pave the ground.
"Pfft!"
Overcome with rage, Yu Yuanzhen threw his head back and spewed a half-meter-high column of blood. His eyes rolled back, and he passed out cold in the icy void.
He was still alive, but for a Titled Douluo who valued glory above all else, this was a million times crueler than being slowly executed.
Meanwhile, on the Douluo Continent.
As Yu Yuanzhen fainted, the Sky Screen's image slowly froze on the floor tile, still flickering with a faint trace of lightning.
The entire Douluo Continent was plunged into unprecedented turmoil.
Star Dou Forest, Core Circle, Lake of Life.
The water had once rippled with jade-green waves, brimming with rich life energy.
But now the entire lake churned as if it were boiling.
"Roar!"
The next second, a dragon's roar erupted from the bottom of the lake.
A black dragon more than a hundred meters long soared into the sky. It was none other than Beast God Di Tian, the mightiest of Douluo Continent's Ten Great Ferocious Beasts, whose cultivation exceeded eight hundred thousand years!
Yet this Beast God, who usually radiated overwhelming power, showed none of a mighty being's poise.
He only circled once in the air before seeming to sense an absolute suppression from deep within his soul. His massive dragon body trembled violently, then fell uncontrollably from the sky and crashed onto the grass by the lake.
But he paid no heed to the pain. He dropped to all fours, pressed his enormous head firmly to the ground, and performed a perfect bow in the direction of the Sky Screen!
"Is that... the aura of a true Ancestral Dragon?"
Di Tian's voice trembled. All the pride in his golden eyes had vanished, replaced by a shuddering fear born of instinctive submission to his bloodline.
"Terrifying. Even across a plane, even just from seeing it through the Sky Screen..."
"The black dragon claw that reached out from the void—just the pressure from a single scale was enough to make my soul feel suffocated!"
"Before that lord, the dragon blood in this so-called Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King of mine is as thin as a single drop of blood in a bowl of water!"
Beside Di Tian, the once-calm lake suddenly parted.
A woman in a silver gown, with violet eyes and silver hair, slowly emerged. Her beauty was enough to make heaven and earth lose their color.
She was the Silver Dragon King, Gu Yuena!
The supreme being who had inherited half of the Dragon God's power and commanded the laws of the elements!
But now, even this Co-Lord of Soul Beasts had lost the cool detachment she usually wore on her breathtaking face. In its place was a deep, heavy doubt in herself.
"That purple-haired girl..."
Gu Yuena stared fixedly at the frozen image. Her slender hands clutched her skirt so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"She's taken human form, but I can clearly sense the power surging inside her. It's a higher-dimensional dragon might, purer than the Dragon God's and more ancient than his!"
"Wait... he actually used a sixty-thousand-year Spirit Bone as a floor tile?!"
Gu Yuena took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling sharply. Her voice held a trace of bitterness she couldn't hide.
"On our Douluo Continent, Spirit Bones are the essence of a Soul Beast's life. They're trophies humans boast about after hunting us."
"But in that world, in the eyes of those true dragons, these things are just waste for paving the ground?"
"What does that mean? It means the energy level of that world is so high that we can't even begin to imagine it!"
"Perhaps in that purple-haired girl's eyes, even the Spirit Bones left behind by Ferocious Beasts like us, after hundreds of thousands of years, are nothing more than slightly brighter pebbles."
She had lain in wait for hundreds of thousands of years, always hoping she'd one day lead the Soul Beast Clan in an assault on the Divine Realm and restore the glory of the dragon race.
But after seeing the Ancient Void Dragon Clan in that world, she suddenly felt like a local tyrant who ruled over a village—and had just come face to face with true imperial nobility.
"Di Tian."
Gu Yuena's voice was distant.
"Tell me, if we went to that world... would those powerhouses grab us and strip our bones to pave the ground, just like Yu Yuanzhen?"
Di Tian, still kneeling, shuddered all over and lowered his massive head even further. His voice carried a hint of a sob.
"My lord, your subordinate doesn't know."
"But I have a feeling that if I used the Dragon God Claw in front of that black-armored man, he'd crush me to death."
Far North, Ice and Snow Temple.
The wind howled, and snow swept through the air.
This was a forbidden land to humans, a realm ruled by ice and snow.
Inside a palace carved from ten-thousand-year-old ice, two breathtaking figures stood frozen before the throne.
One was tall and graceful, her long white hair falling to her ankles. Her bearing was cold and noble, like an ice goddess made flesh.
She was the leader of the Three Heavenly Kings of the Far North, Snow Empress, whose cultivation had reached seven hundred thousand years!
Beside her stood a petite girl in a jade-green dress, her lively twin ponytails framing her face.
She was Ice Empress, the second of the Three Heavenly Kings of the Far North, with a cultivation of four hundred thousand years!
"Big sister..."
Ice Empress's voice trembled. Her emerald eyes, usually full of haughty defiance and fiery temper, were now filled with fear.
"Did you see that place called the Void Lightning Pool..."
"The space there was shattered, full of black rifts capable of tearing apart Soul Beasts that had lived for hundreds of thousands of years!"
"And yet the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon clan leader and those Ancient Void Dragons were living in an environment like that?!"
Ice Empress couldn't understand.
In the Far North, although the environment was harsh, at least space was stable.
But in that world, even the conditions for survival were terrifying!
Snow Empress's stunning face was pale, too.
She slowly raised a hand and caught a falling snowflake. Her gaze distant, she said:
"Bing'er, that wasn't the most frightening part."
"The most frightening part was that black-armored man."
Snow Empress's voice was cool and clear, yet carried a chill that seeped into the bone:
"When he crushed Yu Yuanzhen's Martial Soul Avatar, he didn't use any skills or draw on the power of heaven and earth."
"He simply squeezed."
"A level-95 Titled Douluo's Martial Soul Avatar! Its defense was said to belong to the strongest Beast Martial Soul on the continent!"
"And he crushed it casually, like it was a bubble!"
"If we went there..."
Snow Empress glanced at the body of the Heavenly Snow Woman she was so proud of and gave a bitter smile:
"I'm afraid that even without the black-armored man lifting a finger, a single shock wave from that Void Lightning Pool would turn us to dust."
"Our cultivation of hundreds of thousands of years probably wouldn't even qualify us to be pets in that higher-dimensional world."
"That world is too dangerous."
At that, Ice Empress was so frightened she clung to Snow Empress's leg and cried out, her voice breaking:
"Big sister, I don't want to go to that world! I don't want them to catch me and use me as floor tiles! Waaaah..."
Amid the wind and snow, the two super Ferocious Beasts who had ruled the Far North for hundreds of thousands of years huddled together like a pair of frightened little quail, trembling.
The Clear Sky Sect, Clear Sky Peak.
This perilous peak stood atop a range of mountains, shrouded in clouds and mist all year round, connected to the outside world by a few thick iron chains. Now, it was sunk in deathly silence.
Inside the Clear Sky Sect's main hall, the atmosphere was so oppressive it was suffocating.
The sect master, Tang Xiao, a level-96 Howling Sky Douluo, stood in the center of the hall, staring fixedly at the light screen. His fists were clenched so tightly that his nails dug deep into his palms, and blood dripped onto the cold stone floor with a soft patter.
Before you continue