Shi Qingcang brought his cleaver down upon the dragon corpse's front claw, producing the clash of metal against stone.
It was truly—
The sound of metal striking stone.
Shi Qingcang's cleaver was metal, while the dragon corpse was stone.
With that single stroke, the dragon claw was severed at once, revealing grayish-brown stone within.
"This...?"
Shi Qingcang looked at the severed end of the dragon claw, then at the shattered chunks of stone on the ground, his face filled with astonishment.
"...How could it be stone?"
Shi Qingcang was not the only one taken aback. The others, too, watched this scene in disbelief.
Even Song Wen, who had been the first to notice something amiss with the dragon corpse, stood dumbfounded.
"We fought to the death, schemed against one another with every ounce of cunning we had, only to end up fighting over a stone?" Yi Ji's voice was cool as a spring, drifting faintly through the air. It sounded both mocking and wistful, tinged with a trace of bewilderment.
"Something is not right." Xuan Li sat cross-legged on the ground, her brows tightly furrowed. "This dragon corpse fell from such a height along with us. If it were merely stone, why was it not shattered by the fall? And why did our divine senses fail to notice anything unusual about it beforehand?"
Before the Dragon-Breath Profound Ice had fully melted, although their divine senses had been suppressed, they had not been so completely unable to leave their bodies as they were now.
Logically speaking, they should have discovered the problem with the dragon corpse then.
Song Wen bent down and picked up a chunk of stone that had broken off the dragon corpse. Turning it over in his hand, he said,
"This stone is not natural. It was refined,