Uses of Xiao Hei

The one who came in was not Ling Yunzi, but Yue Lian.

Had he been reborn too, entering the Spirit Realm Platform early to steal the dragon egg from him?

With a sweep of his sleeve, Chu Zeming flew to the lakeshore. His gaze fixed straight on the egg in Yue Lian's hands as he asked, "Where did this egg come from?"

Yue Lian answered, "I found it in a cave brimming with moonlight."

Chu Zeming's expression immediately darkened. Before he could question him further, the egg in Yue Lian's hand twitched.

Crack— A faint, crisp sound rang out, and a fissure suddenly appeared in the lustrous white eggshell.

Both of them held their breath at once.

—The egg was about to hatch.

The cracks in the shell grew deeper and longer, until it finally split apart completely.

Then the eggshell was pushed open, and a green dragon with tiny pink, tender horns poked out its head.

A green dragon!!

Chu Zeming's eyes nearly split apart in fury!

If the one in Yue Lian's hands was a dragon egg, then what had he just contracted?

All of a sudden, Chu Zeming's mentality nearly collapsed.

When he had seen the dragon egg glowing red earlier, Chu Zeming's heart had skipped a beat. But the butterfly effect was so powerful that there was no guarantee the dragon egg had not mutated. After all, in the book Master Above, Me Below, aside from Yue Lian, no one else had obtained another egg on the first level of the Spirit Realm Platform.

Chu Zeming stared at the egg in Yue Lian's hands, his heart stirring restlessly.

Then he extended an evil hand.

Before his fingers could touch the Little Azure Dragon, they were viciously bitten. The Little Azure Dragon then wound itself around Yue Lian's wrist, looking exceedingly intimate with him.

Chu Zeming: "..."

His finger did not hurt—the Little Azure Dragon had not grown teeth yet—but Chu Zeming's expression was still awful. "Why is it so close to you? Did you contract it?"

"I contracted it the moment I found it." Yue Lian did not realize the gravity of the situation. Lowering his head, he stared in surprise at the Little Azure Dragon around his wrist like a jade-green bracelet. His peerlessly delicate face was full of astonishment. "It's a little dragon."

Chu Zeming's expression was terrifyingly grim. "What, you came in looking for it without knowing what it was?"

Yue Lian said in surprise, "I didn't know. Senior Brother, you seem to know a great deal about it?"

"No, I don't."

How could he have mistaken it if he understood it?

Chu Zeming was nearly angered to death. He lowered his head and glared at the small bulge beneath his robes, gritting his teeth. It had been placed so conspicuously in the middle of the lake, yet it was not a dragon egg!

As though it had sensed its master's thoughts, the egg in his arms shrank back slightly.

—It felt a little wronged.

"Senior Brother, you found an egg too?" Yue Lian suddenly noticed the egg in Chu Zeming's arms and said in surprise, "So there are so many dragons?"

Chu Zeming's expression suddenly eased considerably.

That was right. Those dozen or so serpents at the demon-core stage had not dared approach this lake. Perhaps there was a dragon inside this egg as well.

"Let's go back." Chu Zeming shot Yue Lian a cold glance, then crushed the jade talisman in his hand.

He did not care whether Yue Lian followed him out.

Failing to seize the dragon egg left him unwilling to let it go, and his resentment toward Yue Lian deepened further.

In any case, Yue Lian had good fortune. With the protagonist halo granted by his author mother and the lying-flat-and-winning halo, he could casually pick up dragon eggs and would never encounter any danger.

After leaving the Spirit Realm Platform.

Chu Zeming returned to his residence, meditated, and rested briefly. From time to time, he looked up at the glistening red egg on the table, anticipation appearing on his handsome, flamboyant face.

Suddenly, a faint sound rang out within the residence—the egg was about to hatch too.

Chu Zeming, who had been regulating his breath on the cold jade bed, instantly opened his eyes.

A black figure flashed past. In the blink of an eye, Chu Zeming was standing before the egg.

Chu Zeming approached the table, staring at the small crack that had appeared in the egg. He muttered under his breath, "It has to be a dragon, it has to be a dragon..."

As if it had heard Chu Zeming's call, a tiny black tail tip slowly emerged from the crack in the shell. It had scales.

Dragon scales!

It was a black dragon!

Joy rose in Chu Zeming's heart, and his gaze became ever more expectant.

—Sure enough, being a darling of the heavens was no empty phrase.

With a crack, the eggshell finally shattered completely. Xiao Hei's tail toppled out from half an eggshell and landed on the stone table.

Looking at the pitch-black little dragon on the table, now revealed in full, Chu Zeming's delighted expression froze—three heads, and no dragon horns. A little black dragon?

A deformed dragon?

Before Chu Zeming could manage his expression, the little black dragon suddenly flicked out three tiny pink tongues.

Chu Zeming cracked on the spot.

Did dragons flick their tongues... the forked kind?

The next day.

When Xuan Mo came to Chu Zeming's residence looking for him, Chu Zeming was standing motionlessly at the entrance, lost in thought. Seeing Xuan Mo approach, Chu Zeming's first words were, "Xuan Mo, you've read a lot. Do you know whether dragons flick their tongues?"

When he said this, his face was several shades darker than the black robes he wore. Xuan Mo suddenly became a little afraid. "I-I... Eldest Senior Brother, I've never seen a dragon. I don't know..."

Chu Zeming pulled Xiao Hei from his robes and held him before Xuan Mo, lowering his voice as he asked, "Does this look like a dragon to you?"

Xiao Hei cowered in Chu Zeming's palm, numbly allowing Xuan Mo to inspect him. He did not dare move at all.

After studying him carefully for a while, Xuan Mo lowered his voice too. "Eldest Senior Brother, I think this looks more like a snake. The kind with incomplete development in the womb—a deformity."

"You're talking nonsense. You simply don't recognize this species of black dragon. Come, cultivate." Chu Zeming tucked Xiao Hei back into his robes, his expression somewhat unsightly.

Xuan Mo wanted to cry but had no tears.

The result of telling the truth was that his cultivation that day became exceptionally grueling. Sweat soaked him dry, then soaked him again; he was tormented, then tormented some more, yet Chu Zeming still refused to spare him.

Cultivation was comparable to purgatory.

After finally enduring until it was over, Chu Zeming's words, "We'll continue tomorrow," sent Xuan Mo tumbling from the human world back into hell.

He had always heard that Eldest Senior Brother was a cultivation maniac. It was one thing for him to be mad himself, but why did he have to drag Xuan Mo along with him?!

Watching Chu Zeming's carefree departing figure, Xuan Mo stood on the training ground with a heart as dead as ashes.

"Sixth Senior Brother, when did you become so close with Eldest Senior Brother? He comes to the training ground every day to supervise your cultivation?" A bare-chested body-refining junior brother sidled over and asked.

In the past, Eldest Senior Brother had always been a lone wolf, yet recently he had suddenly become keen on urging Xuan Mo to cultivate. It was truly curious.

"I helped Eldest Senior Brother with a small favor." Xuan Mo sighed, suffering beyond words.

Today's training had gone well and been highly efficient.

The drills ended before nightfall.

After leaving the training ground, Chu Zeming flew directly to Yue Lian's residence.

Two outer sect disciples stood at the entrance to Yue Lian's residence, and Chu Zeming was somewhat surprised—Ling Yunzi had actually assigned Yue Lian servants? The preferential treatment was far too obvious.

Other than prisoners in the forbidden prison, not a single disciple in the entire Nine-Clear Haoran Sect received such treatment.

Within this enormous sect, everyone was a little cabbage fending for themselves. Only Yue Lian lay flat like a salted fish to a complete and utter extent, taking it as perfectly natural—thinking of how he had gone to find the dragon egg in the middle of the night only for Yue Lian to cut in and snatch it away, Chu Zeming felt awful again.

Chu Zeming waited outside the door.

Before long, Yue Lian came out.

"Eldest Senior Brother, did you come to see me?"

Chu Zeming nodded and once again pulled out Xiao Hei, who was squirming about against his chest. "This hatched from my egg."

Looking at Xiao Hei's three heads knotted and twisted together, Yue Lian said in delight, "It hatched. A black dragon."

Hearing the words "black dragon," Chu Zeming's mood improved considerably. He tucked Xiao Hei back into his robes and said, "Let me see your dragon."

Yue Lian obediently rolled up his sleeve, removed the "green silk ribbon" gently coiled around his wrist, and handed it to Chu Zeming.

Chu Zeming pried open the Little Azure Dragon's mouth and carefully examined its tongue.

Pink and tender, a tiny little strip, slender and long, but... not forked.

Chu Zeming: "..."

Raising his eyes to Yue Lian, Chu Zeming asked, "Does your dragon flick its tongue?"

Yue Lian shook his head. "My dragon doesn't flick its tongue. But it can breathe dragon breath." As he spoke, Yue Lian grabbed the Little Azure Dragon, pried open its little mouth, and sprayed Chu Zeming's face. "Feel that? Dragon breath is dense spiritual energy."

Listening to the Little Azure Dragon make a great effort to spray out air, Chu Zeming felt terrible all over.

Because his dragon did not breathe dragon breath... it flicked its tongue.

Chu Zeming could not accept that the precious egg he had painstakingly found in the middle of the night was not a dragon but a snake. Thus, over the next several days, aside from drilling Xuan Mo, his number-one military adviser of a junior brother, Chu Zeming spent all his remaining time in the Scripture Pavilion.

He searched through every illustrated guide to spiritual creatures and divine beasts in the cultivation world within the Scripture Pavilion, yet failed to find a single image of a spirit beast resembling Xiao Hei. There were quite a few black snakes, but three-headed black snakes that hatched from red-glowing eggs... not one.

The handsome man in elaborate, luxurious black robes sat at a desk, propping his chin on his hand as he stared at the little black snake playing in an empty inkstone. His mind fell into a half-paralyzed state—

Chu Zeming took a deep breath, scooped up Xiao Hei, stuffed him into his robes, then left the Scripture Pavilion with a dark face.

Upon returning to his residence, before he could rest, someone came to visit. It was a disciple from the Hall of Ritual Instruction, there to remind Chu Zeming not to forget his duty at the lecture hall tomorrow. For the next half month, it was his turn to lead his junior brothers and sisters in morning lessons.

Chu Zeming froze.

He had truly forgotten—

While reading the book, the perspective had followed the salted-fish protagonist bottom. Every day was either romance or picking up treasures. He had completely forgotten that, as the Eldest Senior Brother of the Nine-Clear Haoran Sect, he needed to teach morning lessons.

Sitting on the cold jade bed, Chu Zeming was expressionless, his gaze vacant.

He was considering what he should do tomorrow.

As half an illiterate, how was he supposed to explain the Daoist arts in the books to everyone? Back in the Scripture Pavilion, without Xuan Mo's explanations, there had been many characters he could not even recognize. If he made things up off the top of his head, would anyone notice...

Or should he teach Autumn Water Sword Intent?

It was one of the few books Chu Zeming had completely comprehended, but there were not many sword cultivators in the sect... Everyone had their own other magic artifacts. Would Autumn Water Sword Intent be too useless?

Pulling his wandering thoughts back from the void, Chu Zeming decided to use the most primitive method to determine what he would teach tomorrow. He pulled the bewildered Xiao Hei from his robes and tossed him into the air—

"Tail tip facing south, I'll teach practical combat. Facing north, I'll teach sword intent."