"Long Zhanye, you'd better be ready. This time, I'll definitely break through to the advanced level!" Lu Ling told her through a mental transmission.
"Hm? Oh." Long Zhanye answered lazily, looking utterly unmotivated.
She curled up listlessly. Clearly, Lu Ling's repeated promises that he would definitely break through had already worn away all her patience and drive.
"Tch, just you wait!" Lu Ling spat, immediately entering meditation and throwing all his strength into breaking through the Summoning System's barrier.
He swore he wouldn't leave seclusion until he broke through!
Meanwhile.
On the Ancient Desolate Continent, atop the Heaven-reaching Mountain Range.
This was where the Heavenly Star White Dragon, Long Zhanye, and Lu Ling had first met. This mountain was also the Heavenly Star White Dragon's territory.
Long Zhanye slept comfortably and let out an enormous yawn.
"Yaaawn~~~ Stupid human. I really misjudged him back then. That Spirit Body must be fake, right? He cultivates so slowly..."
Boom!
Like war drums setting the plains ablaze, it thundered between heaven and earth!
The Heavenly Star White Dragon's eyes snapped open, her golden dragon pupils gazing down upon the world.
No, not between heaven and earth, but inside her body! The thunder of war drums felt like her own heart beating at tremendous speed, continuously giving rise to even greater power!
Long Zhanye raised her head and looked toward the distant horizon.
This feeling... Could that human have broken through?
Before she could think further, a warm energy began coursing over her body, gradually turning violent and flooding every limb and bone.
"Is this the power of a Spirit Body?! This human is good for something after all." Long Zhanye sensed her growth rate instantly increase nearly a hundredfold. Brimming with motivation at once, she prepared to break through!
The Heavenly Star White Dragon's aura climbed steadily, already surpassing the limits of the Commander rank, and it was far from stopping there. Her body was pushing toward thirty meters!
If the current Heavenly Star White Dragon faced an ordinary Great Commander, she could easily pin them to the ground and coddle them like a baby!
Suddenly, the Heavenly Star White Dragon stopped growing.
White light enveloped her entire body, growing ever more dazzling until she had almost become a sun. That radiance kept shrinking, then shrinking further...
An hour later.
"...No!"
"How could this happen! This isn't how it's supposed to be!"
A heart-rending wail rang throughout the Heaven-reaching Mountain Range. Except that voice sounded... a little childish...
"..."
"Long Zhanye? Is that you? How did you end up like this?" Having sensed that the Heavenly Star White Dragon had broken through a major realm, Lu Ling's soul crossed over between worlds, but he couldn't see even a trace of her.
Only after following the guidance of the contract mark did Lu Ling confirm that the tiny little thing before him was the towering, mighty Heavenly Star White Dragon who gazed down upon the world.
But... why had she turned into a little girl?
White-haired, roughly 1.3 meters tall by his estimate, and even shorter than Ling Ling.
"Don't look at me!" The white-haired little girl's small body trembled as she squeezed out those words.
That voice, belonging to someone no taller than 1.3 meters, sounded utterly bereft of the will to live. When Lu Ling had communicated mentally with Long Zhanye before, he had thought she was a mature beauty.
So could someone tell him why the Heavenly Star White Dragon could take human form?
Suddenly, Lu Ling felt an enormous shadow fall over him.
"Wait... what the hell is that?!"
In Lu Ling's field of vision, an incomparably gigantic white-scaled dragon quietly watched him and Long Zhanye, her enormous purple slit pupils carrying supreme majesty.
A single scale looked bigger than a taxi. With such a massive body, she stood there like a true mountain peak.
Even Austin, the Black Dragon Emperor in the Tyrant Mountain Range, could be no greater than this!
Definitely an Emperor!
What is this place? Ten Thousand Dragon Valley?!
The Emperor dragon fixed her gaze on Lu Ling, who stood beside the Heavenly Star White Dragon. As though she could see through the plane to Lu Ling's actual body, her stare made him shiver involuntarily.
"Ling, we meet again."
A woman's voice echoed between heaven and earth, seemingly reaching directly into Lu Ling's mind.
"Meet again?" Lu Ling was still shaken.
He could tell that this Emperor dragon was also a Heavenly Star White Dragon, and her relationship with Long Zhanye was anything but shallow.
A dazzling light flashed, and Lu Ling instinctively closed his eyes.
By the time the light faded, the hundred-meter dragon had vanished, and a proud figure in a plain dress stood before Lu Ling. Purple eyes, silver hair, and a sacred aura she made no effort to conceal.
"You are...?" Lu Ling asked in confusion.
He hadn't expected Heavenly Star White Dragons to be able to take human form.
"I was the one who told her to follow you back then. I said that as long as she followed you, she would grow up in no time." The silver-haired mature beauty did not answer his question, instead looking at Long Zhanye, who was huddled off to one side.
"...So did it fail?" The corner of Lu Ling's mouth twitched. So the woman before him was his great benefactor!
He seemed to understand a little of why Long Zhanye was so heartbroken.
The woman in the plain dress before him was more than beautiful. Her beauty was beyond compare, and even her figure was extremely... stunning.
The "growing up" Long Zhanye wanted must have meant becoming like the woman before him. What an artless reason. She really had only wanted to "grow up."
"It didn't fail. She was simply too impatient." The silver-haired mature beauty smiled. "Once her strength reaches Emperor-level, she can become like me."
"You old hag! You damned liar!"
Long Zhanye, who had been immersed in sorrow, immediately bared her teeth at the silver-haired mature beauty. Crystal tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes; she seemed to have been crying for quite some time.
She had actually brought even a dragon to tears. Who knew how heartbroken she was?
"I didn't lie to you. Without the Spirit Body's help, it would have taken you several hundred more years to grow this much." The silver-haired mature beauty raised one hand, effortlessly holding back the clawing, flailing Long Zhanye.
"So, Lu Ling, you only need to focus on cultivating. There is no downside whatsoever to having her follow you. Mental strength is indeed the key to your cultivation. Only when your mental strength grows will your other powers grow along with it," the silver-haired mature beauty said.
"Uh..." Lu Ling nodded. This powerful white dragon seemed to know his circumstances extremely well...
"Let's leave it at that." The silver-haired mature beauty raised a finger, and a streak of silver light flew from its tip and sank into Lu Ling's brow.
"This is..."
The scene flashed, and Lu Ling opened his eyes in the real world.
"...What?"
Lu Ling carefully examined the sensation and tried meditating for a while.
"The rate at which my mental strength improves seems... to have gotten faster."
Could it be a cultivation buff that Mysterious Dragon Emperor just gave me? Connecting it to what the Mysterious Dragon Emperor had said about cultivating mental strength, he became certain of that answer.
So she's a dragon who primarily cultivates the mind... Lu Ling recalled her deep purple dragon pupils. They had looked exceedingly noble.
If he weren't outside the Ancient Desolate Continent right now, Lu Ling really would have knelt to thank her! She had laid bare his cultivation problem in a single sentence and even given him a treasure to speed up his cultivation!
He was also extremely glad that he had received the Vermilion Bird's help early on. Otherwise, his cultivation would probably have been even slower.
His future cultivation would most likely focus on mental strength as well. The problem was that he was already at the ninth realm stage. If he kept cultivating, could he still break through further?
The tenth realm stage?