The black dragon at the bottom of the lake

The lake water was icy cold and so utterly clear it seemed not to exist.

Blue daylight shone down from above, penetrating three hundred zhang of deep water to shimmer hazily across the lakebed.

The lake was broad at the surface, covering more than a hundred mu, but its bottom was only a few dozen zhang across. A huge, flat boulder lay in the middle, and Shi Feiyang was now sprawled upon it, heaving sigh after sigh.

Though submerged, he felt no need to hold his breath, for his body was now that of a dragon.

Several days earlier, he had sat the national college entrance examination.

The four options for one multiple-choice question were so similar that every one looked correct. Even after racking his brains, he could not settle on an answer, so he drew a Qimen Nine Palaces chart on his scratch paper to divine it.

He had been interested in the occult since childhood. His fate had been full of twists and hardships, so he had taught himself the I Ching and divinatory arts, even dreaming once of defying Heaven and changing his destiny.

After years of practice, the accuracy of his predictions remained deeply troubling: nine readings out of ten were wrong. Everything clearly made sense in theory, yet the results stubbornly refused to match reality.

He believed the divinatory arts were real; the materials he had collected were simply incomplete, with much knowledge lost to time.

He had a pride of his own. If the ancients could do it, he reasoned, so could he. He poured his heart and lifeblood into studying day and night, constantly practicing, reviewing, and drawing conclusions. Defeated again and again, he fought again and again, determined to fill every gap.

His exam results were far too important to take lightly. He gave it everything he had, his left fingers rapidly counting through the calculations while his right hand held a pen, working out the chart on his scratch paper: concealed evasion and yang evasion, the Three Wonders and Eight Spirits, the Six Instruments under punishment, the Nine Stars in reverse resonance, the Great Surge Heavenly Horse, the Jade Maiden guarding the gate...

All these intricate details churned through his mind. His brain raced, working harder than it did on trigonometric functions, yet the more he calculated, the more excited he became.

At last, he arrived at an answer: choose B!

He picked up his pen and began filling in the answer sheet. He had barely made two strokes when a violent wave of dizziness flooded his head, and he collapsed onto the desk.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in this lake. His body was no longer human—he had become a dragon!

Shi Feiyang's dragon body was very long. By his own estimate, it measured more than thirty meters. Black scales covered him from head to tail, and his four sharp-clawed limbs were powerful and strong. Two horns crowned his head, their six branches propping up the sky. His eyes flashed like lightning, and every turn of his gaze radiated majesty.

Not only had he acquired this Black Dragon's body, but he had also gained his memories.

The Black Dragon had lived for more than twenty-nine hundred years and had originally dwelled in the Yangtze River. In this world, the Yangtze stretched thirty-six thousand miles, with its broadest reaches spanning more than three hundred li. Its mighty waters rolled on in vast, surging torrents, teeming with fish and dragons and countless beasts that had cultivated into Monster.

In the black dragon's memories, this world held many formidable immortals. The most renowned was Elder Longbrow, the founding patriarch of the Emei Sect, who had fought across the world without finding a match. There was also Elysium Immortal Li Jingxu, who had reshaped his body with the quintessence of the five elements and roamed the mortal world in a child's form, as well as Yan Yingmu of Mount Dongting in Suzhou. All were mighty figures who could move mountains and overturn seas with a wave of their hands.

He also knew of a formidable hunchback living in Wuxia Gorge, a particularly tyrannical old hag on Mount Heng named Luo Ziyan, the White Bone Lord on Mount Lu who cultivated with the bones of the dead, and a wanton fox on Mount Huang who called herself Lady Baoxiang...

More than a hundred years earlier, he had overheard two Sword Immortals talking as they crossed the river. They said Dinghu Peak on Mount Xiandu had been where Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan refined elixirs and ascended in ancient times. Legend held that the Yellow Emperor had left a Heavenly Book and wondrous treasures there. Many Sword Immortals had come seeking those treasures over the years, and these two wished to try their luck as well.

With nearly three thousand years of cultivation, the Black Dragon had refined a bellyful of Monster fire and formed two Inner Cores, gaining the ability to soar through the heavens and plunge into the seas. Taking advantage of the overcast night, he concealed himself among the clouds and followed the two here, then used water evasion to lurk nearby.

The two searched every corner of the lakebed and determined that the Heavenly Book and treasures were hidden inside the central boulder. Using calculations based on the celestial cycles, they worked out how to open it. The instant the boulder opened, the Black Dragon struck, killing them both and seizing the treasure within.

Only after killing them did the Black Dragon discover that the boulder contained a brilliantly shining Jade Casket. Its six sides fit together without the slightest seam, as though it were a single piece of jade, and golden seal-script talismans were engraved upon it. The slightest force made it emit light and repel the assault. He tried every method he could think of, but could not open it.

Shi Feiyang compared and combined the Black Dragon's memories with his own knowledge, confirming that he had entered the world of The Swordsmen of Shu Mountain—and become the ill-fated Monster dragon of Dinghu Peak.

This Monster dragon had originally been only a flood dragon. From birth, he shed his skin once every thirty years, and each shedding brought a transformation to his body. Only after shedding a hundred times could he become a true dragon.

The miserable part was that whenever he shed his skin, he had to go outside to absorb the sun's true fire, basking for two months. During those two months, he would lose consciousness completely every night at midnight, becoming no different from a corpse. Even an ordinary village butcher could chop him into pieces!

After all, Shu Mountain belonged to a traditional world of immortals and martial heroes. In Journey to the West, even Manjushri Bodhisattva could be tied up by mortals and immersed in water; in Ji Gong, a dragon prince could be butchered and eaten by common folk. However vigorous one usually was, brimming with a dragon's vitality and a tiger's strength, one would become terribly weak when tribulation arrived.

Worse still, the Jade Casket left by the Yellow Emperor was in his possession. Not many Sword Immortals knew of this, but a few certainly did.

He carefully worked out the dates. In a little over a year, he would shed his skin again. Matching this against the unfolding plot of the Shu Mountain world, a cruel and ruthless female sword immortal, Wei Fengniang, would come with her lover, Demon Monk Buluyinjia, to kill him, hack him into a heap of splintered bones and mangled flesh, and finally seize the heavenly book!

Once he understood his present circumstances, Shi Feiyang's first reaction was to flee at once. But as long as Xuanyuan's Legacy Treasure remained with him, Sword Immortals would hunt him wherever he went. He would be better off staying at the bottom of this lake, where the Golden Seal Heavenly Talisman inscriptions carved into the surrounding stone walls could protect him and repel his enemies.

If giving up the Heavenly Book would truly make everything safe, he could bear to part with it.

But he still had to shed his skin twice more, and each shedding would be a tribulation. The final one in particular would be perilous in the extreme, all but certain death. If he could open the Jade Casket, retrieve the Heavenly Book and treasures within, and make good use of them, he would still have a thread of hope. If he abandoned it now, he might eke out a few more years, but when his time came, his body would perish and his spirit would be extinguished all the same!

After brooding for a long time, Shi Feiyang decided that his hope of survival still lay in the Heavenly Book. He prepared to spit out the Jade Casket and study it thoroughly.

After obtaining the Jade Casket, the Black Dragon had swallowed it and roasted it day and night with his Pill Fire. Not only had this achieved nothing, but the more he refined it, the harder it became.

Brute force could not open this thing; he had to find the right method. Shi Feiyang vaguely felt that the Golden Seal Heavenly Talisman inscriptions on the surrounding stone walls must be connected to the talisman markings on the Jade Casket. They seemed to hold the key to opening it.

He stirred his dantian and spat out the Jade Casket, setting it on the flat boulder.

The Jade Casket was seven cun long and three cun wide, its jade a crystalline yellow. A layer of golden light curled around its surface like flames, with a red radiance arising beyond it. The moment it emerged, it illuminated the lakebed. Light flowed and water surged, like swaying rainbows, dazzling colors coming alive.

Shi Feiyang leaned closer and concentrated on the talisman markings, comparing them with the Heavenly Talismans on the surrounding stone walls. There were indeed many similarities.

The Golden Seal Heavenly Talisman inscriptions on the stone walls consisted of countless line segments and dots, packed together like stars filling the sky, with no discernible pattern. They stood roughly a zhang high and encircled the lakebed, without beginning or end.

The talisman engravings on the Jade Casket were composed of individual strokes, resembling seal-script characters, yet also looking like pictures.

He searched the walls for Heavenly Talismans corresponding to the engravings on the casket. The casket bore seventy-two Heavenly Talismans in all, accounting for only a small portion of those on the walls. He worked out their patterns and separated them into individual talismans. After going around the entire circle, he had identified three hundred and sixty.

"Three hundred and sixty, arranged in a circle—exactly the number of a full celestial cycle..."

As Shi Feiyang pondered this, he suddenly heard someone speaking on the lakeshore above. "Golden light and red radiance keep surging through this lake. A treasure must be emerging down below!"