"Chapter 1: Introduction. Section 1: Defining dragons. I. Delineating the concept of dragons: 1. Historical development and etymological analysis; 2. Intension and extension; 3. Debates among different schools and their analysis. II. Principles of dragon classification: 1. Dragon phylogenetics based on bloodline purity; 2. Dragon phenotypic taxonomy based on Word Spirit attributes; 3. Dragon biogeography based on geographical distribution. III. Research methods in dragonkind biology..."
It was all the same waffle. Expressionless, Lu Mingfei closed the book and tossed Introduction to Dragonkind Biology to his right.
Lu Mingfei had witnessed the destructive power of Angels in the previous world, but he still knew nothing about this world's dragons. He had heard Lu Mingze shoot his mouth off, but he had never believed him. If dragons were that badass too, this world should have been a bleak, apocalyptic wasteland.
Yet information about dragons in this world was completely divorced from everyday life, which meant dragons simply couldn't beat humans.
Lu Mingfei rubbed his aching brow, feeling a headache coming on.
Was humanity really set? Did I just have to coast through life here?
He had read thousands of years of human history recorded by hybrids: dragonkind had been defeated, the Dragon Kings had been sealed away, and hybrids had established secret organizations to maintain order in the world.
But the victors' history books would never say how close they had once come to defeat.
Just then, a hand reached across the table, opened a thread-bound book, and gently pushed it in front of Lu Mingfei.
Zero had taken the seat opposite him at some point. She extended a slender, pale finger and tapped a page.
It was a photocopied thread-bound book: "Shahe County Gazetteer, Xingzhou, Xining Era: Disasters and Anomalies."
"In the seventh month of autumn, in the first year of Xining, the earth shook violently with a sound like thunder. The ground split, springs gushed forth, and black sand and water surged out. Mountains shifted thirty li, and the river, obstructed, became a marsh. That day, heaven and earth were plunged into darkness. A black vapor like a dragon wound through the mountain ridges; wherever it passed, rocks crumbled to powder and every dwelling was destroyed. After three days, the vapor dispersed. The dead and wounded were beyond counting, and cries of misery filled the land."
The King of Earth and Mountains!
Lu Mingfei was about to thank her and ask how she had known what he was looking for, and how she had such obscure historical sources at her fingertips...
Smack.
Another book landed in front of him. This one was an ancient volume bound in sheepskin, with a Latin title stamped in dark gold.
You came prepared! Lu Mingfei glanced beside Zero's seat, wanting to see just how much material she had brought.
Zero opened the book. Lu Mingfei lowered his gaze to find nothing but twisted letters, like a swarm of earthworms wriggling every which way.
"I can't read this," Lu Mingfei admitted, scratching his head.
Zero seemed to have been waiting for those words. She walked around the corner of the table, came over to Lu Mingfei, and sat beside him.
"In diebus illis, aqua quae erat supra caelum et aqua quae erat sub terra..."
"In those days, the waters above heaven and the waters beneath the earth..."
"...convenerunt in unum, et facta est abyssus magna, cuius os non videbatur nec fundus inveniebatur."
"...gathered into one, and a great abyss formed; its mouth was unfathomable, and its bottom could not be found."
"Et in abysso habitabat Silentium, et Silentium erat unum cum Profundo. Qui intraverunt in abyssum, non redierunt, quia aqua oblivionis deleuit memoriam eorum."
"In that abyss dwelt Silence, and Silence was one with Depth. Those who entered the abyss never returned, for the water of forgetfulness erased their memories."
Lu Mingfei frowned. Zero's voice had a strange cadence, as though she were reciting poetry.
Lu Mingfei blinked. "Is this... a Word Spirit?"
Zero stopped and turned to glance at him.
"This is a work by a Roman Alchemist from the second century AD, called the Book of the Sea."
Her finger moved across the page, pointing to another passage.
"It says here: 'His pulse draws all waters, and His sigh raises a thousand waves. Wherever there is water, there is His authority; wherever there is an abyss, there is His domain. He is the primordial ocean, the remnant of chaos, the ultimate embodiment of all that flows.
Only the fire within fire, the water within water, can reach His realm.'"
"There's another passage here," Zero continued.
"Oceanus et Aquarum Rex, Dominus Abyssi, Pater Aestuum."
"King of Oceans and Water, Lord of the Abyss, Father of the Tides."
Lu Mingfei leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment.
"So... what is this passage actually trying to say?" he asked. "Besides praising how powerful He is."
"This passage reveals the nature of the King of Oceans and Water," she said.
"His nature?"
"Water flows. It cannot be severed. Strike water with a blade, and it closes up again. Burn water with fire, and it turns into vapor and rises into the sky," Zero explained. "That is water's first essential property-change."
Lu Mingfei jotted down the key word in his notebook.
"The second is pressure." Zero tapped the sheepskin-bound book lightly. "'His dwelling lies beneath all waters, in the lightless depths.' The Dragon King doesn't need to withstand that pressure the way humans do, because He is part of the water itself. Water pressure is as natural to Him as air pressure is to humans."
Lu Mingfei thought for a moment. "So He can move freely in the deep sea, while humans can't."
"The third is tidal force," Zero continued. "'His pulse draws all waters'-that isn't a metaphor. Certain Word Spirits of the King of Oceans and Water can directly control the movement of fluids, producing effects similar to tides. The difference is that tides operate on a global scale, while His Word Spirits can be localized and extremely powerful."
Lu Mingfei wrote in his notebook: "Tidal force → can generate tsunamis?"
"Yes," Zero said. "And He doesn't need to expend as much energy as an earthquake does to trigger a tsunami. He can directly apply acceleration to the entire body of water in a stretch of sea."
"The fourth," Zero said, her voice dropping slightly, "is the relationship between pressure and depth. In alchemical texts, 'abyss' is a specific geographical concept: an ocean trench. The deeper the water, the greater the pressure. The authority of the King of Oceans and Water grows stronger with depth. In the deep sea, He is virtually invincible."
Lu Mingfei looked down at the four lines in his notebook: change, pressure, tidal force, depth amplification.
He asked, "Then what are 'the fire within fire' and 'the water within water'?"
"Terms used by ancient Alchemists," she said. "They believed 'the fire within fire' was the source of all energy, and 'the water within water' was the source of all fluids. The King of Oceans and Water is the personification of 'the water within water.' Only the former can neutralize Him."
"Nuclear energy?"
"At least nuclear energy."
Lu Mingfei leaned back in his chair, turning it over in his mind.
Judging by the book's descriptions, a Dragon King's destructive power could indeed rival an Angel's, but it was still too mythological to say what that looked like in practice. Besides, Angels had S² Engines inside them, giving them an almost unlimited power source. Historical accounts involving Dragon Kings, on the other hand, always came with words like "slumber" and "awakening."
That meant a Dragon King's energy was finite. As long as there was a limit, humanity could throw lives at it until it ran out. At the cost of instantly leveling a few cities, saturating the area with modern high-yield nuclear weapons would probably vaporize a Dragon King completely.