Uses for Little Black

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

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

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

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

Chu Zeming's face immediately darkened. Before he could ask anything further, the egg in Yue Lian's hand suddenly moved.

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

Both men held their breath at the same time.

—The egg was hatching.

The cracks in the shell deepened and lengthened until, at last, the entire shell split open.

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

A green dragon!!

Chu Zeming's eyes nearly split open in fury!

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

All at once, Chu Zeming's state of mind nearly collapsed.

When he had first seen the dragon egg glow red, Chu Zeming's heart had skipped a beat. But the butterfly effect was so powerful that perhaps the dragon egg had mutated. After all, in Master Above, Me Below, no one other than Yue Lian had obtained another egg on the first level of Spirit Realm Platform.

Chu Zeming stared at the egg in Yue Lian's hand, eager to make a move.

Then he extended his evil hand.

Before he could touch the Little Azure Dragon, his finger was viciously bitten. Then the Little Azure Dragon coiled around Yue Lian's wrist, looking incomparably affectionate.

Chu Zeming: "..."

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

"I contracted it when I found it." Yue Lian had not realized the gravity of the situation. He lowered his head in astonishment, looking at the Little Azure Dragon wrapped around his wrist like a jade bracelet. His exquisitely beautiful face was full of surprise. "It's a little dragon."

Chu Zeming's expression turned utterly terrifying. "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 lot about it?"

"No, I don't."

If he understood it, how could he possibly have mistaken it?

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

As if sensing its master's thoughts, the egg in his robes shrank back slightly.

—It was a little aggrieved.

"Senior Brother, did you pick up an egg too?" Yue Lian suddenly noticed the egg in Chu Zeming's robes and said in surprise, "So there are this many dragons?"

Chu Zeming's expression abruptly eased considerably.

That was right. Those dozen or so serpent demons at the demon-core stage had not dared approach this lake. Perhaps there was a dragon in this egg too.

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

He could not be bothered to care whether Yue Lian followed him out.

Failing to get the dragon egg left him deeply unwilling, and his grievance against Yue Lian only grew worse.

In any case, Yue Lian was lucky. With the protagonist halo granted by the author who was practically his birth mother, plus the halo of a salted fish winning while lying down, he could casually pick up a dragon egg and would never encounter any danger.

After leaving Spirit Realm Platform.

Chu Zeming returned to his residence, meditated, and took a short rest. Every so often, he looked up at the glossy red egg on the table, anticipation showing on his handsome, flamboyant face.

All of a sudden, a faint sound rang out in the residence—the egg was hatching too.

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

A dark-clad 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 on the egg. He muttered under his breath, "It has to be a dragon. It has to be a dragon..."

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

Dragon scales!

It was a black dragon!

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

—As expected, being Heaven's favored child was not just empty talk.

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

Looking at the fully revealed Xiao Hei dragon, dark as charcoal, on the table, Chu Zeming's delighted expression froze—three heads, and no dragon horns? A Xiao Hei dragon?

A malformed dragon?

Before Chu Zeming could manage his expression, the Xiao Hei dragon suddenly stuck out three tiny pink tongues.

Chu Zeming cracked apart on the spot.

Did dragons stick out tongues... forked ones at that?

The next day.

When Xuan Mo came to Chu Zeming's residence to find him, Chu Zeming was standing motionlessly at the entrance, lost in thought. The first thing he said upon seeing Xuan Mo was, "Xuan Mo, you've read a lot. Do you know whether dragons stick out their tongues?"

When he said this, his face was even 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 Little Black from his robes, held it before Xuan Mo, and asked in a low voice, "Does this look like a dragon to you?"

Little Black cowered woodenly in Chu Zeming's palm, allowing Xuan Mo to inspect it. It did not dare move in the slightest.

After studying it carefully for a while, Xuan Mo also lowered his voice and said to Chu Zeming, "Eldest Senior Brother, I think this looks more like a snake. The kind that didn't fully develop in the womb—a malformed one."

"What nonsense. You simply do not recognize this breed of black dragon. Come, train." Chu Zeming tucked Little Black back into his robes, his expression rather unpleasant.

Xuan Mo wanted to cry but had no tears.

The consequence of telling the truth was that his cultivation that day became especially grueling. Sweat soaked his body, dried, then soaked it again. He was battered and battered again, yet Chu Zeming still refused to let him go.

The training was comparable to purgatory.

After enduring it with great difficulty until it ended, Chu Zeming's words, "Continue tomorrow," promptly knocked Xuan Mo from the human world back into hell.

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

Watching Chu Zeming's carefree departing figure, Xuan Mo stood in 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 grounds every day to supervise your cultivation?" A bare-chested body-refining junior disciple beside him leaned over and asked.

Eldest Senior Brother had always been a lone wolf, but recently he had suddenly become keen on pushing 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 efficiently.

Before nightfall, the drills had ended.

After leaving the training grounds, Chu Zeming flew straight to Yue Lian's residence.

Two outer-sect disciples stood at the entrance to Yue Lian's residence. Chu Zeming was somewhat surprised—Ling Yunzi had actually arranged servants for Yue Lian? The difference in treatment was far too obvious.

Aside from the prisoners in the forbidden prison, not a single disciple in the entire Nine Pure Vast Righteous Sect received such treatment.

In this enormous sect, everyone else was a little cabbage fending for themselves, while Yue Lian alone lay flat like a salted fish in complete ruin, taking it as a matter of course. The moment he thought of how he had gone looking for the dragon egg in the middle of the night only for Yue Lian to cut him off, Chu Zeming felt terrible again.

Chu Zeming waited at the entrance.

Before long, Yue Lian came out.

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

Chu Zeming nodded and once again pulled Little Black, which was wriggling against his chest, from his robes. "This hatched from my egg."

Yue Lian looked at Little Black, whose three heads were tangled together in a knot, and said delightedly, "It hatched. A black dragon."

Hearing the words "black dragon," Chu Zeming felt much better. He tucked Little Black back into his robes and said, "Let me see your dragon."

Yue Lian obediently lifted his sleeve, removed the "green 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 strip—thin and long, but... not forked.

Chu Zeming: "..."

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

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

Listening to the Little Azure Dragon's earnest hissing as it sprayed energy, Chu Zeming felt completely awful.

Because his dragon did not breathe dragon breath... it stuck out 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 following days, apart from training Xuan Mo, his number one little strategist, 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 library pavilion, yet failed to find a single image of a spirit beast that resembled Little Black. There were quite a few black snakes, but a three-headed black snake that had hatched from an egg glowing red... not one.

The handsome man in elaborate, luxurious dark robes sat before a desk, propping his cheek on one hand as he stared at the little snake named Xiao Hei playing in an empty inkstone. His mind had entered a half-paralyzed state—

Chu Zeming took a deep breath, scooped up Little Black and stuffed it into his robes, then left the library 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 assignment in the lecture hall tomorrow. For the next half month, it was his turn to lead his junior brothers and sisters in their morning lessons.

Chu Zeming froze.

He had truly forgotten—

When reading the book, the perspective had always 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 Pure Vast Righteous Sect, he needed to teach morning lessons.

Sitting on the cold jade bed, Chu Zeming wore a blank expression, his gaze vacant.

He was thinking about what to do tomorrow.

As half an illiterate, how was he supposed to explain the Daoist arts in books to everyone? In the Scripture Pavilion, without Xuan Mo's explanations, he could not even recognize many characters. If he made things up off the top of his head, would they see through him...

Or perhaps he could 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 different magical implements. Would Autumn Water Sword Intent be too useless?

Pulling his scattered 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 Little Black from his robes and tossed it into the air—

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