Wushan Town had yet to recover from the previous day's scare, but the children's conversation at the training grounds had already moved on.
"One sweep of that dragon's tail, and the houses crumpled like they were made of paper!" Hadley gestured wildly, spittle flying. "I saw it with my own eyes, right in the middle of town-"
"You weren't even there," thirteen-year-old Fula interrupted. "We were all in the open area to the east. How could you have seen it yourself?"
Hadley's face flushed red, and he turned to find a witness. "Linley was there! Linley, isn't that right?"
Linley stood in the group without answering. There were faint blue shadows under his eyes; he hadn't slept well. Hillman surveyed the grounds and called out in a booming voice, "Everyone, stand straight! Yesterday's magical beast was powerful, but no matter how powerful it was, it got that way through training. Do you want to subdue a magical beast like that someday? Then start now and work harder than you did yesterday!"
The children straightened their backs. Yesterday's fear and astonishment were turning into a vague longing.
Hiri stood at the edge of the grounds, holding Wharton. Wharton looked up at the sky. Thick gray-white clouds hung overhead, and the wind was strong enough to send dead leaves swirling across the ground. As he remembered it, an even greater event was due today-a battle between Saint-level experts.
He didn't know exactly when, but it would happen during morning training.
"Energy Gathering Stance, begin!" Hillman ordered.
The children took their positions. Linley stood among the ten-year-olds, his knees slightly bent and his breathing steady. As Wharton watched him, he suddenly noticed a thin cord around Linley's neck, with a black object tied to it and resting against his chest.
The Coiling Dragon Ring.
The plot was about to reach that point. Wharton's heart beat a little faster. In the original story, Linley was injured protecting him today, and his blood stained the ring, awakening the soul of the Saint-level Magus inside. That was the starting point of Linley's path as a magus.
"Grandpa Hiri," Wharton said quietly, "I need to pee."
"Now?" Hiri frowned. "Hold it a little longer. Morning training is almost over."
"I can't hold it." Wharton squirmed.
With no other choice, Hiri carried him toward the bushes at the edge of the training grounds. They had only gone a few steps when Wharton suddenly heard a sound.
It wasn't coming from the ground. It was coming from the sky.
It sounded like muffled thunder, but deeper and farther away, with a rhythmic vibration to it. Hiri stopped and looked up. The children on the training grounds heard it too, and many tilted their heads, searching for the source.
"What's that sound?" Hillman frowned.
Then the clouds in the east broke apart.
First came a black dot, growing rapidly until it stretched into a winding silhouette. Its scales reflected a dull light, and when its wings spread, their shadow covered half the training grounds. A black dragon, nearly a hundred meters long, circled in the air, each beat of its wings whipping up a fierce wind.
A man in gray robes stood on the dragon's back with his hands behind him, his robes snapping in the wind.
The training grounds fell deathly silent. They had only just seen a velocidragon yesterday, and today an even bigger one had appeared. Hadley stood with his mouth open, unable to utter a word.
Hillman was the first to react. "Everyone, go home! Hurry!" he roared.
The children snapped out of their daze and turned to run. But they had only taken a few steps when the sky changed again.
A hundred meters in front of the black dragon, the air warped, and a middle-aged man in green appeared out of nowhere. With no wings and no mount, he simply stood there in the sky, a longsword on his back. The wind stirred the hem of his clothes as he stared silently at the gray-robed man on the dragon's back.
He was standing in midair.
"Saint-level..." Hillman swallowed, his face turning pale.
Hiri held Wharton tightly, and Wharton could feel the old man's arms trembling. He looked up at the two figures-the gray-robed magus Rudy and the green-clad warrior Tyrone. In the original story, the two fought over a treasure, bringing disaster upon all of Wushan Town.
"Hiri, take the children home and hide them!" Hillman shouted, scooping up the two nearest children, both six or seven years old. "Rory, Roger, help!"
The training grounds descended into chaos. The older children ran on their own, while the instructors tucked the younger ones under their arms and carried them toward town. Linley didn't run. He stood where he was, gazing up at the black dragon, shock and something burning in his eyes.
"Linley, hurry!" Hillman grabbed him as he passed.
Linley stumbled a couple of steps and looked back once more before following the crowd toward town.
Hiri carried Wharton as he ran at full speed. Wind roared past Wharton's ears, and he could hear voices behind them. They were too far away to make out the words, but their tones were cold and confrontational. Then came a dragon's roar that made his chest feel tight.
"Hide in the cellar!" Hiri rushed into the backyard of Baruch Mansion and lifted the cellar hatch, ready to lower Wharton inside.
"Wait!" Wharton grabbed his clothes. "Where's my brother?"
"Young Master Linley is behind us-" Before Hiri could finish, an explosion sounded in the distance.
It wasn't just one explosion, but a continuous series of deafening blasts, like hundreds of thunderclaps going off overhead at once. The cellar hatch bounced, and dust rained down. Hiri gritted his teeth and pushed Wharton inside anyway. "Wait here. I'll go find Young Master Linley!"
"Together!" Wharton tried to climb out.
"No!" Hiri held him down and closed the hatch.
Darkness enveloped him once more. Wharton sat in the cellar, listening to the increasingly terrifying sounds outside. This time was different from yesterday. Yesterday's battle had been concentrated in the center of town; today, the bombardment was indiscriminate.
He clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms again. In a two-and-a-half-year-old's body, he couldn't do anything; he couldn't even get out of the cellar. The sense of helplessness was stronger than it had been yesterday.
Hogg's voice came from outside, close by. "Linley! Where's Wharton?"
"The cellar!" Linley shouted, panting. "Grandpa Hiri went to look for me. Wharton's in the cellar!"
"Go hide in the cellar. I'll go find Hiri-"
"Father, I'll go!"
Then footsteps rapidly receded. Wharton pounded on the hatch. "Brother! I'm here!"
There was no answer, only the increasingly frequent explosions outside and the rumble of collapsing houses.
A dull thud suddenly came from above the cellar, and the whole space shook as clods of earth fell on Wharton's head. He covered his head and huddled in a corner. One impact followed another, as though something were striking the roof.
I can't stay here.
Wharton crawled through the darkness to the cellar entrance and pushed hard against the hatch. It wouldn't budge; something was weighing it down. He shifted position and shoved with his shoulder, but it still didn't move an inch.
Linley's shout came from outside, close by. "Wharton!"
"Brother!" Wharton pounded frantically on the hatch.
"Wait there, I'll move the stones!" Linley's voice was urgent. Scraping sounds and heavy panting followed. The rocks holding the hatch down were moved aside bit by bit, and light slipped in.
Wharton saw Linley's flushed face, his forehead covered in sweat and his hands smeared with dust. He was bracing his shoulder against a chunk of stone half as tall as a person, pushing it outward little by little.
"Hurry, get out!" Linley shouted.
Wharton crawled out of the cellar and froze.
The backyard was no longer a backyard. Most of the surrounding wall had fallen, and the storeroom roof had collapsed, scattering tiles and beams across the ground. An earthen-yellow light covered the sky. A stone giant nearly ten meters tall was locked in combat with the green-clad warrior, and every punch it landed on the ground sent out a shock wave. Farther away, the black dragon breathed fire, its flames pouring down like a waterfall.
Linley pulled Wharton to his feet. "To the basement!"
They had barely taken two steps when a piercing whistle came from the sky.
Wharton looked up and saw countless black dots falling from high above, rapidly growing larger. They were chunks of stone, each the size of a house, crashing down in a dense rain. They were fragments blasted loose when Tyrone shattered the Earth Guardian, and now they had become deadly stray projectiles.
"Get down!" Linley tackled Wharton and rolled behind a section of broken wall.
The first stone crashed down ten meters away, shaking the ground violently. Fragments flew up and pattered against the broken wall. The second landed closer, smashing half a side room and sending a cloud of dust into the sky.
"We can't make it!" Linley looked toward the main house. The rain of stone was too dense; the route from the backyard to the main house's basement was a death zone.
Another wave of whistling sounds drew near. Wharton saw a boulder nearly two meters across hurtling straight toward them. Its trajectory was clear: it was headed right for their section of broken wall.
Time seemed to slow.
Linley saw it too. Almost without hesitation, he pushed Wharton beneath him, shielding him with his entire back.
"Brother-"
"Keep your head down!"
The boulder struck the remains of the storeroom, blasting rubble and beams outward like cannonballs. A broken beam swept across Linley, and he grunted, tightening the arm he had around Wharton. Fragments of stone pelted his back and head like hail.
Pinned underneath, Wharton pressed his face against the ground and smelled damp earth and the faint scent of blood. Linley's body was trembling, but the arm protecting him didn't loosen.
The thunderous noise continued for about a dozen seconds before gradually dying away, leaving only scattered falling debris and the rumble of battle in the distance.
Linley didn't move.
"Brother?" Wharton called softly.
Linley still didn't respond. Wharton wriggled out from under his arm and turned to look. His heart skipped a beat.
Linley lay facedown, blood flowing from the back of his head. Dark red blood had soaked his hair and was running down his neck into his collar. His eyes were closed and his face was pale, but his chest was still rising and falling.
"Brother!" Wharton pushed him.
Linley's eyelids fluttered open a crack, and his voice was faint. "...Are you all right?"
"You're bleeding!" Wharton wanted to cover the wound with his hand, but didn't dare touch it.
Linley tried to lift his head, but a wave of dizziness made him drop back down. "A little dizzy... Don't move. Wait for Father..."
The thin cord around his neck had slipped out, leaving the black Coiling Dragon Ring dangling in the blood, stained all over.
Wharton stared at the ring. In the original story, this was when the blood seeped into it and awakened Doehring Cowart. But the ring before him lay still. It wasn't glowing, and there was nothing unusual about it. It was simply an ordinary ring stained with blood.
Could my transmigration have changed something?
"Wharton!" Hogg's voice came through the dust, tinged with panic.
"Father! Over here!" Wharton shouted.
Hogg rushed over, and his face went deathly pale the moment he saw Linley. He knelt to examine the wound, his hands trembling. "His head's split open... Hiri! Hiri!"
Hiri ran over from the direction of the main house, also covered in dust. "Master!"
"Get clean cloth and water!" Hogg's voice was strained. "Hurry!"
Hiri glanced at Linley and ran off. Hogg carefully turned Linley over and rested his head on his lap. The blood was still flowing, so Hogg tore off the hem of his own shirt, folded it, and pressed it against the wound.
Linley was half-conscious, his brows drawn tight and his lips pale.
Wharton knelt beside them, his eyes fixed on the ring. Blood was still dripping onto it. The black band had absorbed the blood and grown darker, but there was still no response.
The sounds of battle stopped in the distance. A gust of wind swept through, clearing some of the dust. The black dragon could be seen flying southeast, and all that remained in the sky was the turbulent elemental energy left by the earthen-yellow giant's disintegration.
Wushan Town had undergone another baptism.
Hiri brought cloth and water, and Hogg carefully cleaned Linley's wound. It was on the right side of the back of his head. It wasn't too deep, but the gash was sizable, with the flesh turned outward. Linley twitched in pain as it was cleaned, but he didn't wake.
"It needs stitches," Hogg said. "Hiri, fetch a needle and thread, the boiled ones."
"Yes." Hiri ran off again.
Wharton reached out and gently touched Linley's hand. It was cold.
"Father, will Brother die?" he asked.
Hogg's hands paused for a moment before he continued bandaging the wound. "No. A head wound looks frightening when it bleeds, but the bone wasn't damaged. He'll be fine after some rest."
He spoke calmly, but Wharton saw his Adam's apple bob.
Hiri brought the needle and thread, and Hogg heated the needle over the fire before beginning to stitch the wound. Even unconscious, Linley trembled with pain. Hogg worked quickly, making close, tight stitches. Once he was done, he applied medicine and bandaged the wound again.
Throughout it all, the ring hung against Linley's chest, the blood slowly congealing on its surface.
Only after he had finished bandaging Linley did Hogg notice the ring. He picked it up and examined it, frowning slightly. "Where did this come from?"
"Brother picked it up," Wharton said. "In the old house in the backyard."
Hogg asked no further questions. He took the ring off and tried to wipe away the blood, but it had already seeped into the fine grooves, and he couldn't get it clean. He looked at it, then put it back on Linley.
"Hiri, help me carry him back to his room," Hogg said.
The two carefully lifted Linley and carried him toward the main house. Wharton followed, repeatedly looking back.
The sky had returned to its gray-white color, and the clouds were still thick, but that terrifying pressure was gone. Cries and shouts came from the streets, more distressing than yesterday's. This time, the rain of stone had fallen indiscriminately, and the entire town had suffered.
Linley was settled in his own bed. Hogg sat at his bedside, keeping watch, while Hiri went out to help deal with matters in town. Wharton leaned against the edge of the bed, looking at his brother's pale face.
The afternoon passed, and Linley didn't wake, though his breathing grew steadier. Toward evening, Hogg was called away to handle something, leaving the two brothers alone in the room.
Wharton brought a small stool to the bedside and sat down, staring at the ring.
Still no response.
Could my appearance have delayed the ring's awakening? Or does it need something else?
He reached out and gently touched the ring. It was cold, and the blood on its surface had dried and turned black.
"Doehring Cowart," Wharton murmured the name in a very low voice.
The ring didn't react at all.
The sky slowly darkened. Hiri brought dinner, but Wharton set it aside after a few bites. Hogg came back to check on Linley once and felt his forehead. He had no fever, so Hogg went out again.
As the night deepened, the whole house grew quiet. Wharton fell asleep leaning against the bed, his hand still resting on Linley's.
A faint sound woke him.
"Hummm-"
It was very quiet, like a mosquito flying by his ear, but deeper and more regular. Wharton opened his eyes. The room was dark, with only a little moonlight coming through the window.
The sound was coming from Linley's chest.
Wharton pushed himself upright and saw the Coiling Dragon Ring glowing faintly. It wasn't a dazzling light, but a hazy shimmer, like a firefly on a summer night. The glow was dim, but it was definitely there.
Then the light separated from the ring, floated upward, and gathered beside the bed into a vague human shape.
The figure gradually became clear. It was an old man with a white beard, dressed in a pale, moon-white robe. His face was kindly, and his eyes shone with wisdom. He floated there, looking down at Linley in bed, then at Wharton.
Wharton neither moved nor cried out. He knew who this was.
The old man noticed Wharton looking at him and seemed somewhat surprised. "Little fellow, can you see me?"
The voice appeared directly in his mind; he didn't hear it with his ears.
Wharton nodded.
The old man was even more surprised. He floated closer and examined Wharton carefully. "Are you the master of the Coiling Dragon Ring?"
"No." Wharton pointed at Linley. "He is."
The old man turned to look at Linley, a complicated expression in his eyes. "So it's him... The blood contract is complete. I am Doehring Cowart, a Saint-level Magus of the Pouant Empire. What's your name?"
"Wharton Baruch."
"How did you end up in the ring?" Wharton asked.
Doehring Cowart sighed and briefly told his story: two Saint-level experts had ambushed him, and he had sealed his soul inside the ring, where he had slept until Linley's blood awakened him.
"Then will you stay with Brother from now on?" Wharton asked.
"Yes. I'm the spirit of the ring, and he's its master." Doehring Cowart looked at Linley, his gaze gentle. "This child has good talent, and his spiritual power is stronger than that of others his age... When he wakes up, I'll teach him magic."
Wharton nodded. The plot was back on track.
"You don't seem afraid," Doehring Cowart said, looking at him. "Most children would have screamed by now at the sight of a soul."
"I've seen scarier things," Wharton said. "A velocidragon yesterday, and a black dragon today."
Doehring Cowart laughed. "True enough. It seems this era isn't very peaceful either."
Wharton said nothing.
Doehring Cowart looked at Linley again, and his figure began to fade. "I have to go back. I've only just awakened, and my soul power is still unstable. When he wakes up, I'll formally meet him."
"Aren't you going to wake him now?"
"Let him rest." Doehring Cowart's voice grew fainter. "He's badly hurt and needs sleep to recover."