Pingyangzi's body began to mutate.
The first changes came below his waist. His pale blue, patch-covered Daoist robe suddenly swelled, as if something inside were struggling desperately.
The sound of tearing cloth rang out in quick succession, crisp and grating.
Red tendrils burst from the rift like a ruptured high-pressure water pipe.
The tendrils were dark red. At an unimaginable speed, they stretched in every direction, twisting, tangling, winding around one another, and piling up in layer after layer like a rapidly swelling tumor of flesh.
Bones grew amid that flesh with a crunching creak. Muscle fibers twisted together like braided rope. Skin formed from nothing and covered them, only to be torn apart, pierced through, and replaced from within by new tendrils.
The entire process was so fast it made the eye blur, like watching a flower bloom at hundreds or thousands of times speed—except what bloomed was not a flower, but a colossal, twisted, nauseating body.
When the mutation finally ceased, Pingyangzi's lower body had completely vanished. In its place stood a massive monster.
The monster looked like a fusion of a lizard and a bird. It was roughly the size of Sansun, Norton's Dragon Servant, far smaller than Fenrir or Naga in their complete dragon forms, yet the oppressive presence it exuded far surpassed that of any Dragon King Lu Mingfei had seen before.
Two pairs of wings extended from its back. They were not dragon-like membranous wings, but raven-black feathered wings. The feathers were not soft and lustrous like those of ordinary birds, but dry, rough, and steeped in an aura of decay.
Four slender, chicken-claw-like feet extended from either side of its torso. Their talons were sharp as scythes and dug deeply into the ice, each toe as long as Lu Mingfei's arm. A long