Evolution or Degeneration?

[You opened your eyes. Your luminous white Dragon Eyes turned as you curiously examined your body after its Martial Soul Evolution.]

[Some multicolored dragon scales had appeared on your body, but silver scales still covered most of it. Your hair had also changed from black to black and silver.]

[After examining your body, you turned your attention to your Martial Soul. Suddenly, veins bulged on your forehead, and disbelief spread across your face.]

[You could no longer sense your Martial Soul. Not a trace of it remained, as though it had vanished into thin air.]

[You threw back your head and roared in fury, letting out an earth-shaking dragon's roar that tore through the sky.]

[Anger, fear, and confusion overwhelmed you. Had someone set you up? It had to be those old fossils in Dragon Valley. If they hadn't pushed you toward this, you would never have ended up like this! **"That's right! It was those old fossils in Dragon Valley! I'll tear every last one of you to pieces!"**]

[You roared, venting your rage, then kicked off with both legs and leaped out of the ten-thousand-meter pit.]

[Your physique already rivaled that of a Second-Level God. A mere ten-thousand-meter pit was easy to leap out of.]

[Under the influence of Dragon Blood, your intelligence, already diminished by devouring vast amounts of nourishment, fell even further. Your temperament grew more savage too.]

[On your way to find the Light Dragon King and the Dark Dragon King, you hunched over and moved on all fours. More and more scales grew across your body until you looked like a dragon.]

[Along the way, you encountered a few weakened Dragon Souls. To vent your anger, you bit them to death and devoured them.]

[In the 121st year of the Simulation, you wandered Dragon Valley, searching for anything you could find. When you found the Light Dragon King and the Dark Dragon King, you failed to notice how weak they were. You just attacked, roared, and vented your fury.]

[Having lost most of their power, the Light Dragon King and the Dark Dragon King were helpless before you. You could have killed them at any moment.]

[You pinned them down and beat them savagely. When they were close to death, you wanted to heal them so you could torment them longer. But though your physique and Mental Power were formidable, you could no longer use your Soul Power or Martial Soul. Healing them was impossible. Regretfully, you ate the Light Dragon King and the Dark Dragon King bite by bite, as though they were something delicious.]

[After finishing off the Light Dragon King and the Dark Dragon King, you felt ravenous. You wanted to bite into everything you saw.]

[You ate dirt, using the Light Dragon King's and Dark Dragon King's remains as a side dish to go with the sand.]

[Even after eating the remains of two God Kings, you felt neither satisfied nor full. You were still ravenous. Your eyes grew bloodshot with hunger, and you wanted to devour everything before you.]

[You bit at the air before you and tore off a chunk of space. You chewed and digested it. Having tasted it, you seemed to discover a delicacy. You kept eating handfuls of sand, dragon bones, and Dragon Souls alongside it, but your appetite only grew, driving you toward madness.]

[The more space you ate, the larger the great stomach inside you became. After digesting the fragments of space and the elements within them, your stomach expanded slightly by folding space. But that increase barely registered.]

[Your great stomach was already equivalent in size to five Douluo Stars. Even if you ate all of Dragon Valley and swallowed it whole, you would not feel full. Digesting what you swallowed would only enlarge your stomach and leave you hungrier.]

[As you kept eating, every scale on your body fell away, replaced by strands of black fur. An unnerving red glow shone from your eyes.]

[Your face resembled a human's, but it was closer to that of a strange beast. If your mind had still been clear, you probably would have recognized what you had become.]

[Taotie. A true Taotie, not the Taotie of the Earth Dragon King branch. Your dragon bloodline was being rewritten, while your dragon genes and the karmic ties you had previously taken on were all being converted into nourishment.]

[You ate until almost all of Dragon Valley was gone. Only a small part of its core region remained.]

[By then, you had completely turned into a beast. Your four limbs hovered two or three meters above the ground, and wisps of black Evil Qi rose from your body from time to time.]

[Because of the Evil Qi, you strayed from the proper path of Dragon Race-branch evolution and entered the wrong one.]

[Thus, you became Taotie, a Ferocious Beast of utter evil.]

[When you reached the core region to feed, your instincts warned you of danger. Yet your appetite told you that something beneath the ground tasted better than all of Dragon Valley.]

[You desperately wanted to try it, but the moment the thought arose, your entire body trembled. You felt as though some great terror had fixed its gaze on you.]

[Your bloodline was now no lower than the Dragon God's, but your strength remained a serious weakness. You still cultivated through the Human Soul Master System, yet your progress was slower than a crawling turtle.]

[The more you ate, the stronger your Foundation became. The stronger your Foundation, the slower your cultivation and the more resources you needed. If your Foundation grew too strong, your cultivation could even become unstable and fall.]

[You now had only Third-Level Soul Power, but the three Soul Cores you had formed earlier had not disappeared when your cultivation fell.]

[Due to several factors, cultivating your Soul Power was harder than it was for a Soul Beast. A Soul Beast could at least gain a year of cultivation each year. You couldn't even be sure you would gain a billionth of a unit of Soul Power in a year.]

[Your combat power had grown, but your problems had grown far more.]