Chapter 4: Dragon Blood Tempering the Spirit Pearl
The Three-Headed Flood Dragon's inverse scale glowed with an eerie bloody light under the illumination of the qingmu spirit pearl.
The moment Lu Qingyang's fingertip touched the scale, the entire dark river suddenly swirled into a vortex.
Su Li's bronze box cracked with spiderweb-like fissures, and a Dragon's roar, carrying ancient pressure, shattered the stalactites on the dome, causing crimson lava to pour down like a waterfall.
"Catch!" The young girl threw half a bronze fragment towards the center of the vortex, but used the recoil to leap onto a protruding rock on the cliff face.
Lu Qingyang was struck on the left shoulder by the Dragon's tail, and the hourglass phantom in the Spirit Pearl space actually froze at this moment—the poisonous flames spewed by the Three-Headed Flood Dragon solidified into an amber-like crystal, sealing the two individuals and the Flood Dragon within a three-zhang diameter lava sphere.
The qingmu spirit pearl suddenly slipped from his control, hovering and spinning wildly at the Flood Dragon's seven-inch mark.
Lu Qingyang looked at the charred wound burned through his palm and suddenly realized that the patterns revealed after the rust on the pearl's surface faded perfectly matched the cracks on the bronze box.
When he endured the intense pain and pressed the fragment into the Spirit Pearl's groove, the river of time burst forth.
Inside the sphere solidified from lava, the flow rate of time surged a hundredfold.
The Three-Headed Flood Dragon's scales aged and peeled off at a visible rate, and Su Li's dark hair at her temples turned white in an instant.
However, the hot current surging in Lu Qingyang's Dantian became even more turbulent; the dragon grass in the Spirit Pearl space mutated wildly under the acceleration of time, its dark green leaves transforming into Dragon-scale-like hard armor, and its roots piercing the Void Realm to plunge into the Flood Dragon's corpse and flesh.
"So it needs to devour Dragon blood..." Lu Qingyang vomited black blood streaked with gold, his right arm's Meridians bulging like gnarled tree roots.
When he tore open the Flood Dragon's head with his bare hands and dug out the demon core, the hourglass above the Medicine Field within the Pearl exploded, and the temporal turbulence tore open a fissure in the lava sphere.
The moment Su Li grabbed his collar and leaped into the fissure, the bronze fragment completely fused with the Spirit Pearl, and the bursting green light solidified into ancient seal script in mid-air—"Jianmu reaches the heavens, Azure Emperor lives forever."
The two fell into an underground Cave covered in fluorescent moss; Su Li's crane cloak had long been shredded by the temporal turbulence.
She covered the deep bone-visible wound on her shoulder and sneered, "Daoist Lu, you have quite the scheme, even daring to refine the core of the ancient Jianmu."
Vines hanging from the cave ceiling suddenly grew wildly, binding her into a cocoon and suspending her upside down in mid-air—the ends of these vines actually had Dragon-tooth-like barbs.
Lu Qingyang leaned against a stalactite, panting, as the Spirit Pearl condensed into an emerald short dagger in his palm.
"Since Su Gu Niang recognizes Jianmu, she must also know that tempering spirits with Dragon blood requires a living sacrifice."
He deliberately used the dagger to open the young girl's waist sash, revealing the Taiyi Pavilion's Restriction imprint on her lower abdomen.
The moment the blade tip pierced the imprint, a muffled sound of mechanisms turning came from deep within the Cave , and three hundred and sixty sword-wielding Dao Soldier reliefs appeared on the rock wall.
Su Li's pupils constricted.
"You knew all along that this was the formation core of the Eastern Barren Ancient Tomb!"
As she struggled, the silver needles hidden in her hair shot out like a rainstorm towards the Dao Soldier reliefs.
Lu Qingyang rolled into a tributary of the dark river, watching as the silver needles triggered the mechanism, and the eyes of the three hundred and sixty Dao Soldiers lit up with crimson blood light.
The foremost sword-wwielding stone statue suddenly took a step, and where its sword tip pointed, the rock wall cracked open, revealing a rust-covered Alchemy room behind it.
"Thank you, Su Gu Niang, for clearing the way."
Lu Qingyang flung out a corpse-binding rope and snatched the lid of the Pill Furnace; the lingering scent of the Nine Revolutions Dragon Tiger Pill within the furnace caused the Dao Soldier formation to fall into disarray.
Su Li took the opportunity to shatter the vines, her bare feet stepping on the heads of the Dao Soldiers as she lunged towards the Pill Furnace, only to be entangled by a bronze chain that suddenly extended from the bottom of the furnace.
When the inscriptions on the chain lit up, she was shocked to find that her Spiritual Qi was being frantically drained.
Lu Qingyang pressed the demon core into the Pill Furnace's formation eye, and the bronze chain immediately changed direction, attacking the Dao Soldiers.
While Su Li was entangled with the Dao Soldiers, he flashed into a secret compartment in the side wall of the Alchemy room.
The qingmu spirit pearl illuminated the room full of Jade Slips; the topmost scroll, "Eastern Barren Dragon Burial Record," recorded the Taiyi Pavilion's millennium-long scheme—to nourish Dragon veins with a hundred thousand souls, and to reshape the path to the heavens with the Jianmu Spirit Pearl.
The secret compartment suddenly vibrated violently, and the Spirit Pearl in Lu Qingyang's arms automatically flew towards the star map on the ceiling.
As the positions of the twenty-eight constellations were lit up one by one by the Spirit Pearl's green light, a loud sound of chains breaking came from underground.
Su Li, covered in blood, crashed into the secret compartment, clutching half a shattered Earth Evasion Talisman in her hand.
"Lu Qingyang! You've triggered the Ancient Tomb's core Restriction!"
The entire Cave began to collapse.
Lu Qingyang grabbed the "Eastern Barren Dragon Burial Record" and leaped towards the star map's opening.
The moment the Spirit Pearl passed through the opening, it released a Jianmu phantom; its gnarled roots plunged into the Void Realm, forming a temporary passage.
The instant Su Li grabbed his ankle, the Three-Headed Flood Dragon's demon core suddenly exploded within the passage, and the spatiotemporal turbulence threw the two in different directions.
Lu Qingyang landed heavily in a soft pile of decaying leaves, the familiar scent of rotten bone flower lingering in his nostrils.
When he recognized the crooked willow tree in the distance, cold sweat instantly soaked his back—this was actually the back mountain where the Old Drunkard was buried!
The fresh earth on the grave mound hadn't dried, but there were seven more corpses with holes in their chests under the tree; judging by their clothing, they were low-level Disciples of the Taiyi Pavilion.
"Fellow Daoist, you certainly have a tough life."
A Cultivator in black robes emerged from behind the tree, the golden lotus patterns on his cuffs stained with fresh blood.
The compass needle in his hand spun wildly, finally settling on the "Eastern Barren Dragon Burial Record" in Lu Qingyang's arms.
When a sword Qi struck him in the face, Lu Qingyang instinctively raised the Jade Slip to block, and the golden light suddenly shot out from between the pages actually melted the Flying Sword into molten iron.
The black-robed Cultivator retreated three zhang, forming a hand seal to summon his Lifebound Treasure, the "Nine Heavens Thunder Seal."
Lu Qingyang took the opportunity to press the Spirit Pearl into the Jade Slip's groove, and the Jianmu phantom reappeared.
This time, its roots directly pierced into the Cultivator's crown, sucking him into a mummified corpse amidst his mournful screams.
When the Jade Slip poured the Cultivator's memories into his Sea of Consciousness, Lu Qingyang finally understood the truth behind the Old Drunkard's theft of the Spirit Pearl—the Taiyi Pavilion had calculated a hundred years ago that he was the fated person for the Jianmu Spirit Pearl.
Green smoke suddenly rose from the grave mound, and the Old Drunkard's remnant soul flickered indistinctly within the smoke.
Lu Qingyang gripped the Spirit Pearl and sneered, "Even after death, you're still setting up a trap?"
The remnant soul, however, pointed towards the southeastern sky, where bloody tribulation clouds were gathering.
When the first bolt of tribulation lightning struck the crooked willow tree, the Jade Slip in Lu Qingyang's arms automatically unfolded, revealing a geographical map of the entire Eastern Barren.
Each Spiritual Qi node was marked with the location of a Taiyi Pavilion hidden post, and the most conspicuous red dot was precisely where he stood at that moment.
"What a 'lure the king into the urn' tactic..." Lu Qingyang waved his sleeve, dispersing the remnant soul, and deeply stomped the grave shovel into the earth.
The sound of swords breaking through the air came from afar; he swallowed a disguise pill, transforming into the Old Drunkard's appearance, and walked with a hunched back towards the small town at the foot of the mountain.
The qingmu spirit pearl slowly rotated in his Dantian, converting the devoured Flood Dragon essence blood into gray Spiritual Qi—that was the unique aura of the "Filthy Earth Longevity Art" recorded in the "Eastern Barren Dragon Burial Record."