Ming Lei looked at those identical smiling faces, and a chill sprang through him. He instinctively took half a step back, Profound Thunder surging around him and casting flickering shadows over his surroundings.
"Have you-had your minds ensnared by the Immortal Garden?!"
He demanded fiercely, a lightning spear suddenly condensing in his hand. Inky-black thunder coiled around his body and roamed in every direction.
Yet the dragons merely watched him, their eyes dim and empty. Their expressions and bearing were almost identical, like one person with a thousand faces, or a thousand faces wearing the same countenance.
The sight sent prickles of dread crawling through anyone who saw it.
Ming Lei did not consider himself a coward. After tens of thousands of years of cultivation and countless battles to the death, what eerie spectacle had he not seen?
Yet the scene before him made his scalp tingle and his hair stand on end.
Those dragons were plainly his own kin. He had even witnessed their growth with his own eyes.
But now, they had become "strangers."
It was like looking in the mirror every morning, only for the reflection to suddenly smile one day while the person outside the mirror did not.
"This is definitely not the Immortal Garden's doing!"
Horror gripped Ming Lei. He shook his spear, pointed it at those "things," and demanded fiercely, "What exactly are you?!" "Wanlan" tilted his head. "What are we? We're your kin. Lord Ming Lei, don't you recognize us? I'm Wanlan, and he's Ming Ting..."
He pointed to those beside him, introducing them one by one.
"What kind of joke is this?!"
Ming Lei roared and thrust his spear forward. "How could you possibly be my kin?!"
Inky lightning surged like a frenzied dragon bursting from the sea, only to be blocked