Then the screen of light lit up.
It was not a blinding, explosive flash. Like a projector, it brightened slowly, layer by layer.
Images began appearing on the screen—footage of previous challengers, recorded by some unknown power and preserved here.
The first recording showed a yak as huge as a mountain. Its body stood dozens of meters tall, its four legs were as thick as stone pillars, and dense, long black hair covered its entire body. Its golden eyes looked like two lamps.
It stood at the end of the Nine-Death Dragon-Ascent Path, with a ball of golden light floating before it. The light was too bright to make out what lay inside, but its scorching, oppressive power was palpable. True Dragon Blood Essence.
The yak opened its mouth and swallowed the ball of light. Then its body began to change. Golden light shone out from within it, as though something were burning in its veins.
Its head changed first. Its skull restructured, the bovine head slowly elongating into the shape of a dragon's, with dragon whiskers drifting gently, though the horns atop its head remained. Its mouth grew longer, its teeth sharper, and two slender dragon whiskers sprouted above its nostrils.
Its body changed too. The thick black hair began falling away, exposing the skin beneath. Scales emerged one by one, golden and glittering in the light.
Its tail grew longer and thicker, and whiskerlike fins sprouted at the tip. Its body was no longer bulky and ponderous, but long and supple, like a snake's. Its limbs remained, however, and its claws grew sharp.
The recording froze at that instant. An extraordinary beast with a dragon's head and a bovine body, clad in scales and crowned with horns, stood at the end of the Nine-Death Dragon-Ascent Path and roared