Lin Yang stood in place, not bothering to look at the unconscious Chen Yang behind him. Instead, he furrowed his brow slightly and gazed up at the Golden Sun Demon Dragon looming within the cloud layer, radiating a terrifying aura of dominance.
He muttered under his breath, his tone carrying a faint, barely perceptible note of annoyance:
"What a hassle… Didn't that bald Zhou Shan say there was only one peak third-rank twenty-seven-meter crocodile? How did we end up drawing out this trapped behemoth…"
Only then did he glance back with casual indifference at Chen Yang, who lay motionless on the ground.
Chen Yang was bleeding from all seven orifices, his breath faint — yet his chest still rose and fell. He hadn't died on the spot.
"Tch. Tough life you've got."
A flicker of surprise crossed Lin Yang's eyes:
"A mere sixth level of the Qi Refinement Realm, and he endured the shockwave from a Seventh Rank demon dragon's Dragon's Roar without being shaken to death outright? Is that the Nine Revolutions Body Tempering Art at work, or does he have some other life-saving trump card hidden away?"
He rubbed his chin, seeming even more intrigued by Chen Yang than before.
He raised his hand in a seemingly casual gesture, as if to nudge Chen Yang and check on his condition.
Yet just as his fingers were about to make contact, his movement paused for an instant — and a faint trace of his own aura inadvertently leaked out.
That single, faint wisp of aura was like a stone dropped into a still lake.
It instantly drew the attention of the Golden Sun Demon Dragon high above!
The demon dragon's enormous slit pupils snapped to lock onto the position where he and Lin Yang stood!
It seemed displeased that its earlier Dragon's Roar had failed to completely eliminate the insects below.
Its massive jaws parted once more, and a golden breath — more concentrated than before, carrying a scorching, annihilating aura — shot downward like a divine spear of heavenly punishment!
"How irritating."
Lin Yang complained, yet his tone still betrayed little urgency.
He moved with ghost-like speed, snatching up the unconscious Chen Yang in one motion, his figure flickering backward dozens of meters in what seemed like teleportation!
Boom!
The golden breath struck the very spot where they had just stood. The earth was instantly melted into a bottomless, scorched crater, and the rocks along its edges dissolved into bubbling lava!
Though Lin Yang had reacted with extraordinary speed, the fringe energy of that breath still caught the edge of his robe.
The hem of his moon-white brocade robe was instantly reduced to ash and vanished without a trace.
Lin Yang stopped, looked down at the ruined corner of his garment, and the habitual soft smile on his face slowly faded — replaced by an icy displeasure.
"Wretched beast."
He raised his head and fixed the imperious demon dragon with a calm, level gaze. His voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly to the dragon's ears:
"You dare destroy my robes?"
The Golden Sun Demon Dragon had been preparing to unleash an even more ferocious assault, intent on crushing this audacious little insect that had somehow dodged its breath.
However.
The moment its gaze met the calm, unruffled eyes of that tiny human on the ground below —
A long-forgotten terror, rising from the very depths of its bloodline, washed over its entire body like ice water in a fleeting moment!
Not even the Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators who had besieged it earlier had ever given it such an uncanny and dreadful feeling!
The demon dragon's massive body trembled involuntarily, just slightly.
Its offensive momentum faltered.
At that very moment.
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A jet-black crow glided silently past the demon dragon's enormous head.
It was utterly unremarkable — not a single ripple of Spiritual Energy emanated from it, making it appear no different from the most ordinary bird of the mountain forest. The demon dragon's powerful senses dismissed it entirely.
Just as a human would pay no mind to a mosquito buzzing past their ear.
Lin Yang spoke quietly:
"Huiyu, strike."
Before the words had even finished —
A dim flash of light, as though it had broken through the boundaries of time and space, flickered from the crow's position at a speed that surpassed conscious thought!
The light was so faint it was nearly invisible, and it stirred not the slightest ripple of energy.
In the next instant, at the very center of the Golden Sun Demon Dragon's massive head — right between its brows — a thumb-sized hole appeared without warning, clean through from front to back, dripping with blood!
The demon dragon's enormous body went rigid. Those slit pupils, once filled with majesty and savagery, instantly lost all light and became hollow and vacant.
It couldn't even manage a single dying wail. The radiance that had blazed around it like a miniature sun rapidly dimmed, and its vast life force receded like a withdrawing tide.
Crash!!
The great dragon's head, robbed of life's support, drooped first.
Then its entire colossal body followed — like a collapsing mountain, it came crashing down from the sky, flattening a vast stretch of forest below and sending clouds of dust billowing into the air!
The crow named Huiyu flapped its wings and flew back to Lin Yang's side.
Clutched in its beak was a round pearl the size of longan fruits, blazing with golden light and brimming with an almost unimaginable surge of energy.
It was none other than the Demon Core the Golden Sun Demon Dragon had cultivated over hundreds of years — its value comparable to the golden core of a human Core Formation cultivator!
Huiyu placed the Demon Core into Lin Yang's palm.
Lin Yang turned the scorching, potent Demon Core over in his fingers, a contemplative gleam passing through his eyes:
"Strange… This Golden Sun Demon Dragon — by all logic, even after Dragon Transformation, it should belong to the Earth Dragon lineage, bound to the earth. How did it come to soar through the heavens and achieve the form of a Heavenly Dragon? Unless… it came into contact with some heaven-defying spiritual treasure, or perhaps…"
His gaze sharpened abruptly, and he murmured to himself:
"…Could it be the legendary 'Feathered Ascension True Blood'? If so, that would truly be capable of turning the mundane into the divine — helping it shatter its Bloodline Shackles…"
Suddenly, his brow gave a faint twitch as he sensed several powerful auras rapidly approaching from the distance.
"Someone's coming." He tucked away the Demon Core and gave Huiyu a signal.
Huiyu obediently took flight and vanished into the shadows of the forest.
Lin Yang cast one last regretful glance at the demon dragon's corpse, which lay like a small mountain:
"What a shame — that Dragon Bone and Dragon Scale would make exceptional materials for Artifact Forging. Can't take them along. I suppose they'll be a windfall for whoever comes next."
With that, he lingered no longer. He hoisted the still-unconscious Chen Yang under one arm, flickered through the undergrowth in a few swift movements, and vanished silently into the depths of the dense forest.
As though he had never been there at all.
* * *
It was some unknown time later before Chen Yang's consciousness slowly clawed its way free from a sea of chaos and darkness.
He forced open his heavy eyelids. The familiar wooden ceiling and beams of his loft greeted his eyes.
"This is… my loft?"
He blinked in bewilderment and struggled to sit up, only to find his entire body aching as though it had been torn apart — especially his head, which rang and throbbed as if it had been struck by a heavy hammer.
He turned his head — and froze. Someone was sitting right beside his bed!
Moon-white robes, a folding fan in hand, and that inscrutable, androgynous smile on his face.
It was Lin Yang!
Chen Yang's heart lurched. He instinctively tried to circulate his spiritual energy in defense, only to find his qi sea utterly depleted and his meridians sluggish — he couldn't muster even a shred of strength.
He opened his mouth, wanting to demand why Lin Yang was here.
But then he discovered, with a jolt of horror, that he couldn't hear a single sound!
Not even his own voice!
He could see Lin Yang's lips moving, apparently saying something to him, but all he heard was dead silence — and the ceaseless roaring inside his skull!
"I… I can't hear?!"
Chen Yang's eyes went wide, his face a mask of disbelief and panic, as his hands instinctively flew up to cover his ears.
Lin Yang watched Chen Yang's dazed, helpless expression and seemed to find it mildly amusing.
He shook his head, extended two fingers, and let a faint cyan glow bloom at their tips. Then he gently pressed them against Chen Yang's ears.
A gentle, cool current flowed from his fingertips into Chen Yang's ears, nourishing and repairing the eardrums that had been shattered by the Dragon's Roar.
After about thirty minutes, the ringing in Chen Yang's ears gradually subsided, and the sounds of the outside world began filtering in — broken and muffled at first, but growing clearer.
"Brother Chen, can you hear me now?"
Chen Yang shook his still-aching head and struggled to focus his gaze on Lin Yang. He asked in a hoarse voice:
"Lin… Lin Yang! Why… why are you here? And I… wasn't I being hunted down by that thirty-meter crocodile? What happened after… after that?"
He strained to recall, but his memories were shrouded in thick fog — they stopped at the image of himself being relentlessly chased by the thirty-meter crocodile, fleeing for his life.
Beyond that, there was only a blank, save for a few vague and terrifying fragments.
A massive shadow.
A roar beyond all description.
And the extreme, bone-deep terror of being on the verge of death.
Lin Yang wore a warm smile and lightly tapped his palm with his folding fan, his tone relaxed and easy:
"I was gathering herbs outside Butterfly Valley when I ran into a junior brother named Zhou Shan. He told me you had drawn away some demon beasts for his sake and were being hunted by a fearsome one — that the situation was dire. Since I happened to be there, I naturally couldn't stand by and do nothing, so I followed the direction he pointed and went looking for you."
He paused, then continued:
"When I found you, you were already unconscious nearby. The crocodile demon seemed to have been startled off by some commotion deeper in, or perhaps an Elder passing through had dealt with it in passing. Seeing that your injuries were serious, I brought you back here."
"Is that so…"
Chen Yang furrowed his brow.
He tried hard to recall more details, but his head felt as though it were about to split open. Of how Lin Yang had rescued him, and what had truly transpired afterward, he had absolutely no memory.