Dragon's Cry Across the Nine Heavens
Meng Changyuan arrived faster than expected.
Eleven days after the Ore Core Stone was intercepted, Shen Mo's informant reported back that Meng Changyuan hadn't waited for the next batch of supplies; he had personally led a team towards the Heavenly Wolf Mountain Range. Their objective wasn't to retrieve the Ore Core Stone, but to search the mountains directly. He possessed data on the location of chaotic energy accumulated during the operation of the Reverse Fusion Device. Although Long Tian and Yu Jin's auras were mostly concealed, the Reverse Fusion Device had captured a set of fuzzy coordinate calculations at the last moment before its dismantling. The range narrowed to the middle section of the mountains, with a radius of about twenty miles, and the stone house fell precisely within this area.
As dusk fell, Long Tieshan stood on the slope outside the stone house and gazed for a while at the southern edge of the forest. In the twilight, several moving gray shadows were slowly advancing on the slope at the edge of the pine forest, their spacing even and their speed unhurried, more like a hunt than a search. He counted five, then retreated back into the stone house and closed the door.
"He came. He brought five people, ranging from the Third Ring Road to the Fifth Ring Road. He brought up the rear."
Long Tian stood in the center of the room, activating his six Soul Ring one by one. The gray-gold light of the Origin Return Pearl Yu Jin stood up from the stove and followed behind him. Long Tieshan reached out to stop him, but stopped halfway. He watched his son's back cross the threshold and disappear into the twilight outside, his hand falling back to his side.
The twilight in the open space in front of the house was narrowing, and the last orange-red streak on the horizon was receding towards the ridgeline. Five gray figures stopped at the edge of the pine forest surrounding the open space, spaced out in a semi-circle. About twenty paces behind them, in the shadows of the trees, stood another, taller figure, the brim of his cloak pulled low, but the lingering purple Soul Ring beneath the brim were exceptionally clear in the darkness.
Long Tian stood still in the center of the open space. The moment the six Soul Ring rose one after another beneath his feet, a gray-gold light surged from his dantian and covered his entire body. He looked up through the twilight at the figure in the shadows of the forest.
Meng Changyuan walked out from the edge of the pine forest, his steps slow and deliberate. The pressure of each step was absorbed by the soft layer of fallen leaves, making almost no sound. He stopped at the edge of the clearing, looking at the six Soul Ring beneath Long Tian's feet and the gray-gold light covering his body from about ten steps away.
"We've reached the sixth ring road." His voice was calm, as if he were assessing a freshly baked product, ready to be taken out at the right moment. "It's something that comes naturally from within."
He raised his right wrist, and the Soul Power patterns on the dark metal bracers lit up. Two purple Soul Ring rose from his feet, spiraling upwards along his ankles to his knees before dispersing. The two purple rings rotated evenly and slowly, like two well-trained mountain guardian beasts that had seen too many prey and were in no hurry to bare their teeth.
The moment Meng Changyuan raised his hand, Long Tian moved. A gray-gold Dragon Shadow burst from his right palm, skimming along the ground and heading straight for Meng Changyuan's feet. Meng Changyuan didn't dodge; he simply stomped on the ground—a purple ripple of Soul Power spread out from beneath his feet. When the Dragon Shadow collided with the ripple, it tilted half an inch, like a stream being deflected by a Shitou thrown into a river. But the Dragon Shadow wasn't scattered; it automatically corrected its direction in its deflected trajectory, bypassing the outer edge of the purple ripple and cutting diagonally towards Meng Changyuan's side.
For the first time, Meng Changyuan's eyes lit up. He blocked with his right arm to the side, and the patterns on his purple wristband suddenly tightened—with a bang, the shockwave from the head-on collision of the Dragon Shadow and the purple Soul Power pressed a circle of fallen marks into the withered grass on the open ground. The Dragon Shadow scattered into fragments of light, but those fragments of light re-aggregated in the air and did not dissipate.
Yu Jin attacked simultaneously from three zhang behind Long Tian. His Power of Origin surged from his palm and injected into the regrouping fragments of light from a distance. The two auras of the same origin reconnected within the remnants of the Dragon Shadow. The scattered light dust solidified again in the interweaving of gold, black, and gray-white, transforming into a small gray-gold dragon that was thicker than before, attaching itself to the outer edge of Long Tian's right palm like an extra glove.
Meng Changyuan looked down at the shallow gash on the side of his wrist guard, a gash slashed by the Dragon Shadow. The gash slowly healed under his gaze, but the moment he looked down at it lasted longer than any other. He looked up again at the layer of gray-gold and gold-black light membrane that had merged behind Long Tian and Yu Jin, and when he spoke, his voice remained steady, but with a very subtle change, like a newly grown root touching the side of a tree root deep in an old forest.
"Your two cores have begun to interlock."
Long Tian did not answer him. A layer of gray-gold light spread from his right palm to his entire right arm, and then from his right arm upwards to cover his shoulder, chest, and scapula. He could feel the Origin Return Pearl spinning at an unprecedented speed deep within his dantian, and the gold and black interlaced patterns on its surface were collapsing towards the center of the pearl—not collapsing, but contracting. The entire pearl was continuously shrinking its volume, compressing all the fused light and dark energy inwards to the limit, like a furnace drawing all its flames into a single point.
That point stopped deep within his dantian.
Then came the rebound.
A powerful light emanated from the center of his chest, not the usual cascading flow from his palms, but a simultaneous outward diffusion from the center of his body in all directions. The grey-gold light enveloped his entire skeleton—the outlines of his shoulder blades, spine, and ribs gradually revealed within the light, like a lamp being lit, revealing the full structure hidden beneath a thin shell for the first time. On his back, along the entire spine from his cervical to lumbar vertebrae, a new layer of scales was taking shape—not just covering his palms or forearms, but growing along the entire spine from beneath his skin, each scale thicker, larger, and denser than the previous ones. They refracted an eerie glow of grey-gold, dark gold, and light black in the twilight, like a complete pattern being embroidered stitch by stitch onto his back.
He looked up.
In those eyes, the left eye shone with a deeper luster than ever before, like an old well illuminated by moonlight; the right eye shone with a continuously burning golden flame. The two colors existed separately on the same face, without any gap between them, simply shining side by side.
A gray-gold Dragon Shadow rose from behind him. It was larger than any of the dragons he had just unleashed. Beneath the gray-gold light, a core of gold and black was clearly visible within its body—a two-headed dragon, one on the left and one on the right. The left head was gold, and the right head was dark. The two necks merged into one in the middle of the body, extending along the spine to the tail. Six eyes grew on the top of the dragon's head, three on each side, their color gradually changing from pure white to deep black, as if the boundary between day and night had been condensed into a single gaze. It floated in mid-air behind Long Tian, and the gray-gold light dust flowing along the edges of its scales dyed the twilight of the entire open space with a new color never before seen.
Long Tian opened his mouth, and a breath surged out from his throat.
The sound wasn't a shout or a roar, but a deep hum, like the first toll of a centuries-old bell. The echo reverberated through the chest, jaw, and skull, spreading outwards from between the open lips and teeth. Within the area covered by the hum, the density of the air seemed to change—the branches of several old trees at the edge of the pine forest drooped for a moment before springing back to their original positions, and the pebbles and withered leaves on the ground bounced slightly as the sound waves passed, as if the earth itself was being gently caressed by an unseen hand. The rotation of the two purple Soul Ring beneath Meng Changyuan's feet suddenly slowed by half a beat, like two mountain-guarding beasts, accustomed to the gazes of all their prey, seeing for the first time something even more ancient than themselves in each other's eyes—not newly sprouted branches, but a section of rock strata finally turned up after ten thousand years underground.
The Origin Return Pearl spun to its limit in his dantian, and all six Soul Ring resonated with it simultaneously. The two-headed Dragon Shadow behind Long Tian continued to glow in the twilight, its six eyes fixed on the face illuminated by the purple rings in the shadows of the forest ahead. The evening breeze blew in through a gap in the mountain wall, brushing against the newly grown scales on his back. The edges of the scales rubbed together, making a soft sound like shattered ice colliding, which was suppressed by the wind and then resurfaced.
Yu Jin stood behind him, out of the corner of his eye, without stepping forward. The light emanating from the dark gray bead on his chest resonated steadily with the gray-gold light layer on Long Tian's body, like an anchor point standing still from the side, firmly anchored in its position. He neither retreated nor moved forward, but stood there, letting the two beams of light from the same source continuously touch their edges in the air between them.
Meng Changyuan's gaze lingered on the two-headed Dragon Shadow behind Long Tian for a long time. The rotation of the two purple rings returned to normal, but his wrist did not rise again. He took half a step back, and the pine needles at the edge of the pine forest made a compacted sound as his boot heels crushed them. By the time the sound reached the area in the center of the clearing, which was illuminated by the gray-gold light, it had narrowed to only a faint echo.
"Let's go." He turned around and took his first step into the depths of the pine forest, his voice steady and unwavering, as if telling his followers that there was no need to go any further today. As he took his second step, the hem of his cloak brushed against the branch of a dwarf rhododendron. The branch bounced back, scattering a few petals that landed in the footprints he had left behind. The edges of the petals were tinged with the lingering purple Soul Power, gleaming with a very faint purple light, like a few new leaves soaked in night dew.
After Long Tian slowly withdrew the Dragon Shadow behind him. The six Soul Ring disappeared into his dantian one by one, the rotation speed of the Origin Return Pearl slowly decreased, and the new scales that had grown along the spine on his back gradually receded. The gray-gold light gathered back to his body layer by layer, finally settling into the faint light on his chest. His breathing was heavier than usual, and there were some beads of sweat on his forehead, but he stood straight. He turned his gaze away from the direction where Meng Changyuan had disappeared and looked down at his hands—the gray-gold base color of his palms was a layer deeper than before he activated it, like the residual warmth left on the inner layer of burnt charcoal after it cooled down. He turned his hand over and looked at it. The scales had all receded, but a very shallow layer of lines remained on the surface of the skin on the back of his hand, like the faint watermarks left on the brick surface when the first snow was about to melt.
Yu Jin came up from behind and stood beside him. The two stood side by side in the center of the clearing, where the moonlight and the afterglow met, without saying a word. The last twilight in the forest sank behind the ridgeline, and the stars in the sky had already lit up. When the night wind blew into the clearing, it carried a damp coolness seeping from the pine branches, blowing away a corner of the thin layer of gray-gold dust on their shoulders.