A lengthy dragon howl rang out through the world behind the Gates of the Abyss as a young dragon slowly crawled out of the netherwood coffin. It was slightly over three meters in length, and covered in crimson scales that twinkled like extravagant blood crystals.
Head, horns, whiskers, claws, body, tail...
It looked exactly like the dragons of Lu Yun’s memories. However, it wasn’t a living dragon, but an undead one. The bronze outer-coffin and netherwood coffin had turned the dragon princess of the North Sea into a strange zombie. It was neither bloodcorpse nor zombie king, but something so much worse.
Roar!
After the howl, the dragon elicited tall waves from the boundless ocean of blood with a turn of its body, threatening to submerge the netherworld.
“A blood dragon!! Kill it! Kill it now!!” A terrified voice screamed from above. The dormant divine obsession that’d been aimlessly drifting around was startled into wakefulness by the crimson zombie dragon. It morphed into a human face that shrieked and wailed and raged hoarsely.
“A blood dragon?” Lu Yun tapped into the world’s power through the Tome of Life and Death to keep the ocean at bay. A trace of confusion colored his face when he heard the divine obsession.
A blood dragon? Was that a subgroup of dragons?
Xuanxi’s memories informed him of different levels of dragons within the clan, but there was no mention of a blood dragon.
“Disaster, disaster!! A blood dragon is born and blood wafts through the world! Kill it, kill it!” The divine obsession’s speech grew disjointed as terror suffused its hoarse voice.
Seemingly oblivious to the wailing and shrieking, the blood dragon tossed and turned in the crimson ocean, throwing up petrifying waves to fight the power of the netherworld.
“Xuanxi!” Lu Yun called out. The river god immediately returned from the Dusk River to appear in front of him.
“That’s the princess!” The dragon was the first sight that greeted her as soon as she set foot past the Gates of the Abyss. “But why? How did Her Highness become a, a blood dragon??” She staggered back, her countenance white as a sheet and nothing but shock and disbelief in her eyes.
“You know about them? Why can’t I find any information about them in your memories?” Lu Yun frowned.
A pillar of black light shot up from the Tome of Life and Death, gathering and compressing the terrible crimson ocean. With the power of this world entirely under his control, he was unbeatable here.
Outside, the dragon would easily drown all of Dusk Province within the crimson ocean, but in here, it was no match for Lu Yun.
“It’s an ancient curse, a bad omen for the world. Everything I know about blood dragons has been erased and was only retrievable when I encountered one.” Xuanxi’s face paled and her voice grew hollow.
Indeed, Lu Yun was now able to recall some legends about the blood dragons from her memories. Blood dragons weren’t really dragons, but corpse demons.
All living beings could turn into blood dragons after their deaths. They were bad omens, harbingers of great calamity. It was said that a blood dragon had been sighted a hundred thousand years ago, right before the terrible war of immortals.
A blood dragon is born and blood wafts through the world...
The creature brings bad luck and disasters like a feng shui layout. No, it’s more like a living layout! It’s the combination of a layout and a zombie!
Lu Yun quickly made the connections in his head. There were living layouts in the burial mound, and the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers had manifested from the dragon vein in Dusk Province.
Who was buried in the physical coffin that the nine dragons bore? Could it be another blood dragon?
“What was that Wayfarer trying to do? Why the hell did he create such a monster??” Lu Yun could sense the chilling presence of eldritch bad luck and misfortune from the blood dragon.
Myriad Formation Summit falling from the sky, the disturbance from the ancient tomb in Dusk Province, the restriction against golden immortals, the Dusk River Sacrament, the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers in the governor’s manor… and even the corpse coffin in Yueshen’s body!
All that had been set up to nurture the blood dragon!
“Thank heavens the last Dusk River Sacrament was interrupted! Though I released the dragon, it isn’t fully mature yet. Die!” roared Lu Yun.
Whoosh!
Hellfire set the crimson sea ablaze. The blood dragon struggled within, whimpering and keening with pain. Through the agony brought about by the hellfire, the dragon reared to the skies and voiced a summoning call.
Out of nowhere, nine enormous dragons bearing an even bigger coffin slowly descended upon the world.
“Enneawyrm Coffinbearers! This is the layout’s true form!” Lu Yun put two and two together when he saw the nine dragons and coffin. This Enneawyrm Coffinbearers wasn’t just shadow forms, but the real deal! He could even observe minute details of the dragons and the coffin.
All man-made feng shui layouts were based on something real, whether natural phenomenon or other lifeforms. The layout of Ghost Yanking Feet, for example, was inspired by a corpsefish’s tentacles. The nine dead dragons and the giant coffin before Lu Yun was the source of inspiration for the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers that scared all feng shui masters.
“That’s… the nine dragon lords!” Xuanxi exclaimed in shock. “Even the supreme dragon lords fell in the calamity a hundred thousand years ago!?”
The nine dragon lords were second only to the dragon emperor himself, and rivaled the celestial emperors of the majors in status and authority, but were much stronger than them. They’d long since reached a height that current immortals couldn’t even comprehend.
In the eyes of the dragon race and cultivators of the water spirits that served them, their emperor and his nine lords had definitely survived the great war, though that calamity had claimed even the lives of celestial emperors.
But here they were, the bodies of the nine dragon lords.
“But who’s in that coffin? If nine supreme dragon lords serve as its coffin-bearers...” muttered Xuanxi. “Is it the dragon emperor? No, not even he would be important enough for this arrangement.”
“The bodies of nine dragon lords?” Lu Yun’s eyes flashed. “Good! Stay and have some tea since you’ve come!” He extended his arms to the sound of great cracks!
Hellfire blazed while bolts of black lightning danced frenetically and peals of thunder boomed. The entire netherworld had come alive under Lu Yun’s command. The ocean of blood was compressed into a grounded orb, atop which sprawled the crimson dragon.
Wham!
His fire ignited the world. An inferno of black flames hurtled toward the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers in the air.
“Hell...” a deep, raspy voice suddenly emitted from within the giant coffin.