At the center of the river, the ripples gradually congealed.
The Naga's mountainlike body emerged from the water and stopped dancing.
As she went still, the crumbling rock walls, the tearing earth, and the raging river waves all seemed to have had a pause button pressed.
Yet everyone could feel it—the ground beneath their feet was still trembling faintly. Deep within the earth's veins, that terrifying power had not dissipated. It had merely changed from a surging torrent into an arrow held back from release, resting silently on the bowstring, aimed at the entire world.
Wa Master's human body was on the slender, petite side, but even so, the snake body beneath her was still a dozen meters long. On ordinary days, when she straightened up, she stood around three meters tall, enough to look down on anyone.
But now, before this sixty-meter-long shadow coiled in the middle of the river, she seemed as tiny as an infant. The Naga only bent slightly, and the shadow she cast swallowed her whole.
In the Naga's eyes, that primal madness and ferocity receded like the tide, replaced by an almost innocent curiosity. Her scarlet forked tongue flicked softly in and out, as if catching some familiar yet distant trace in the air.
"So you are an old friend's descendant." The Naga's voice was even, with no anger in it; instead, it carried a touch of contemplation. "No wonder. I kept thinking you looked somewhat familiar."
She paused, her massive head lowering a little.
"Then, what business do you have with me?"
An old friend's descendant? Does she mean me? My ancestor knew her? Wa Master muttered inwardly.
According to legend, Wa Master's line had begun when a Dragon Kind maiden with a human body and a snake's tail met a handsome human