Jin Que listened to Zhan Lingyun's cries from inside the furnace, his heart heavy. But he knew the world was sliding into chaos. Without formidable skills, a person would be swallowed whole and chewed to pieces by it.
Daoist Fire Crane formed seals with both hands, and a faint fragrance of herbs and wood rose around the alchemy furnace.
The fragrance seeped through the furnace walls and drifted inside in fine threads, steadily nourishing Zhan Lingyun's battered body.
Inside the furnace, Zhan Lingyun's exposed tendons and veins crisscrossed and bulged slightly. His entire body was red-hot.
Under the Earth Vein True Fire's relentless tempering, day after day, a faint, translucent glow gradually settled over his once-ordinary flesh and sinews.
As his tendons and bones were remade, deep, powerful Flood Dragon roars seemed to sound whenever the channels throughout his body twisted. Desolate and domineering, they sent the flames inside the furnace surging wildly.
As the tempering continued, the glow grew denser. Scattered points spread into patches until they covered every limb and bone, every channel in Zhan Lingyun's body.
The instant the glow covered his flesh, a vast, mighty dragon's roar exploded beside his ears!
His Divine Soul shuddered, and the blood in his veins surged and boiled.
Zhan Lingyun gritted his teeth against the agony. He assumed days of burning in the furnace had exhausted his mind and brought on a hallucination at the edge of death.
But in the next instant, a second dragon's roar rang out, then a third!
The roars overlapped, powerful and commanding. No longer faint or illusory, they sounded unmistakably real, as though a true dragon dormant within him for untold ages was about to break free and soar!
The dragon roars shook his flesh and washed through his tendons and bones.
Zhan Lingyun's