V5C67: Learning from the Dragons

The Ascendant had so much to ask of Long Mingyun beyond that, and naturally asked about as much as she could, at least that which felt appropriate. She had others to ask regarding dragon physiology and other topics that someone who was a million years old would likely not wish to discuss with someone as young as her, and there was no necessity to push it.

Her focus instead went to the matters of decades past, which the ancient dragon was perfectly pleased with explaining in great detail, except for the tendency to go off on seemingly irrelevant tangents making it difficult to piece together everything smoothly.

According to her, the tale of the Fated Dragon Hatchling, as presented in the seventh iteration by a man presumed to be from the Luo District, was not perfectly accurate, but closer than she would have expected after so many years had passed. She did not know how she had been named by her parents, nor what they had been getting up to in their last few years, but the memory of them being torn apart for materials was very much entrenched within her mind ever since it happened. Similarly, the journey to these mountains was also one that matched the tale that the Ascendant had watched, save for the greater number of planar beasts and entities that Long Mingyun had ended up meeting, fighting and interacting with.

The dragon herself thought that this part of her history wasn’t worth talking about, which Wei Yi had to agree with due to the lack of relevancy to modern times and her current state, so she skipped through to the time that she was besieged within these very caves, and the way in which Kong Shi Meng had stepped in to end the fighting.

At the time, she was rather distrustful of him, for he was a human that had arrived alongside so many others, and was also the source of the sudden human expansion into draconic territories. Her birth had occurred somewhere around the initial founding of Yi City, when the might of humanity had begun to rise to the sixth and seventh realms rather consistently, and Kong Shi Meng himself had been progressing into the eighth realm slowly but surely. What did change that was the appearance of the Primordial Deities.

Against them, Long Mingyun couldn’t get hung up on such grudges, and she did come to his aid. They fought together many times, and that had led to the dragon realising that if there was someone to trust in, the Master of Yi City might be the best choice. Thus, they worked together for quite some time.

In the end, she got far closer to the otherworldly man than she had expected, and they learnt far more about one another than mere allies would. His plans regarding his otherworldly gift, and the fact that it existed in the first place, were probably the most significant pieces of information to the dragon, for it allowed her to understand far more about the world than most of her kind, and the contribution of a cultivation method by Kong Shi Meng allowed her to progress almost at the same pace as he had, meaning that they ended up within the ninth realm around the same time, and both got to the third realm before the Master of Yi City vanished.

Where he went, exactly, Long Mingyun had no clue. She knew what he wished to do with the otherworldly gift within his possession, and could tell that he had some modicum of success based on Wei Yi’s presence before her, but she had no idea how he had achieved it nor what it had cost him in the end.

“I hope that I will be able to meet him again… He was a good person, I think.”

“You’re not sure?”

“He kept much to himself, and even his mother only learnt so much. It was not possible to know everything about him, not when much of his language tended to refer to things that I couldn’t understand even when he explained them to me to the best of his abilities. Video games, ballistic weapons, physics, biology and chemistry… Pieces, I could grasp, but the whole was always a step away, no matter how hard I tried to understand.”

That much wasn’t surprising. She might have been young when she met with Kong Shi Meng, but she had lived enough to gain an understanding of the world. Learning something else that so greatly contrasted with it was difficult, and it was especially so in an older age, where knowledge was more scarce, and thus one’s horizons were significantly closer and narrower.

Even Yi Shi Ming, who had listened to her son for many years, and Wei Yi, who had spoken with many otherworldly demons – and slept with two, at least so far – couldn’t entirely understand how nor why many elements of the world Kong Shi Meng came from functioned the way that they did, and when it came to entertainment and the like, it was even more difficult to understand. Their games were odd, and would be very likely to displease the local population if they were released without any changes to the way that they were played, or what their content was.

Still, the original subject had been Kong Shi Meng’s nature, and that was something that Wei Yi had some knowledge of thanks to viewing memories of him through his mother’s eyes, as well as the latest memory of him located within the Shard of Warfare.

From those fragments of information, she was rather confident in assessing him as someone with a conscience. He was clearly not a psychopath that would do anything and everything for his own gains without a care for any other, for the loss of life during the attack on Primordial Invader had clearly not been pleasant to him. If he was maintaining a façade at that time, then it would mean that he did so constantly, and that would make it nearly impossible to guess what he could truly be.

As such, she didn’t try to guess at it from that perspective. Generally, the more straightforward option was the more likely one, so until she was given a reason to doubt Kong Shi Meng, she wouldn’t.

“By the way, I am not dying yet…”

“What are you saying all of a sudden?” Wei Yi asked, “You do look to be nearing the end of your life, but I didn’t think that it would be coming soon enough to affect the conversation.”

“I didn’t believe that you did. However, with how long we’ve been talking, one might almost come to such a conclusion… We’ll have more time to talk, and you didn’t come here with that expectation, did you? You wished to deal with a threat, and an obstruction, and when we finally awakened, you came here with the hope of finding a method to resolve both…”

“The Great Leeches. Have you heard of them?”

“… I think I know what you mean. A remnant of the past that refused to change with Kong Shi Meng’s will, now draining the world for their own benefit. Am I right?”

“Yes, that’s a suitable way to describe them. The Leeches call themselves the Great Families, and before I began my battle against them, there was a family for every major district of Yi City, three generations in each. Nowadays, there are significantly fewer of those bastards.”

“Good. All leeches need to be removed, as per the standard practices of the dragons, and as per Shi Meng’s order. In a world where so many can do so much, to merely leech from a greater whole and do so intentionally, willingly and deliberately is a worse crime than many that humans see as being significantly more reprehensible,” Long Mingyun stated, with the Ascendant finding no particular room to disagree with her, “Since you are combatting those remnants, you understand the challenge that they pose best. We have quite a few resources down here… and you will doubtlessly find those that would assist you.”

“Would you or the other dragons fight with us?”

“I wouldn’t… I am too old, and it is only the timeless field here that keeps me alive, and lets me retain the ninth realm, even if it only a semblance of it contained within an anchor. The others, however, can leave in small numbers and participate, but most must remain. At a later time, when the world changes, and the energy density rises greatly, then we will be able to emerge in full force, and make our presence known once more.”

The Ascendant nodded, “Good, I’d like some aid. The Great Leeches may be handled soon enough, but even if we breach through the barrier they constructed via the Yi City Web-”

“Ah, if that is the case… I didn’t think that they would… hm…”

“You know something about the Yi City Web?”

“A little bit. His project was vast and great, hidden from all but a few, and I understand the kind of power that it can wield. In part, it can gather vast quantities of energy from the land beneath the world, where no gaze typically falls, but it is also capable of storing such an immense amount of it that, after a million years, it may still not be full… How many nodes are being used?”

“Three. Yi District, Ning District and Chen District.”

“… You will require the seventh realm to break through without damaging the fabric of reality. That much I can absolutely guarantee you.”

“Even with oblivion essence?”

“Only with the amplification of the halos of the Oblivion Halo realm will it be enough… and now that you mention it, your naming of oblivion essence is suitable to the nature of the seventh realm. I suspect that the halos will experience a great change under the influence of your essence, but before then, you must reach the realm and experience its power,” Long Mingyun said, “We have plenty of materials that you may use. I would only say that you should not learn too many new techniques at this point in time. Do you know why?”

“With what I have already, I can already do most things, and have a reasonable combat strategy and system. If I shove more things in, even if I can perfectly cultivate and practise them without somehow damaging my own body, then there will be no significant benefit.”

“Indeed. If you want, you can learn some of our techniques, but that should be the extent of your actions…” the ancient dragon exhaled, her voice clearly tiring after the lengthy talk.

Since she was clearly in a poor state, the Ascendant did not bother her more than necessary, allowing her to rest as she quietly stepped out of the room she sat in. As she did so, she noted that her spiritual perception was able to comprehend just a little bit about her surroundings, something that meant that the timeless aura was indeed dissipating slowly, as the dragon had said it would.

On one hand, this was a positive for her, as it meant that she would be able to scan through all of the items of the dragons easily enough once the aura lifted a little more, but the fact that the heavens would get a better notion of what was happening here was much less to her liking. In theory, at least, the heavens would be able to do anything to her or the ancient dragon just by learning what hid in the mountains, for the Laws of the heavens were already imposed and it was only the will that was negatively affected in any way. The dragon’s lifespan had a limited value, and it was not one that the heavens should alter based on all of their actions so far.

In fact, she suspected that there was already some discrepancy in the lifespan of Long Mingyun, as she was very near to death but had lived for four hundred thousand years fewer than a human would need to in order to reach the end of their lifespan. This could be explained by various methods that use lifespan, a difference in the lifespan of humans and dragons – a very likely thing, except that she would expect dragons to be able to live longer than humans – or some distortion caused by the timeless aura.

A fact that would alter her stance on the second point was that dragons were long-lived from the start, having a far greater lifespan than regular humans from birth. It was said to be near to a hundred thousand years at least, and a million years at most. For a species like that, which started with a fifth realm cultivation from birth, it was possible that the increases to lifespan in the higher realms were reduced significantly, to the point that a dragon at the ninth realm – reaching it once should be sufficient to provide that increase to lifespan, even if it was currently sealed by the world itself – might only have a million and two hundred thousand years of life in total. In that case, Long Mingyun wouldn’t have even needed to sacrifice her lifespan to be in the state she is now.

“You’ve finished? It took less than expected,” Li He said as she saw the Ascendant emerge, having sat down near the doorway sometime after bringing her there, “I had not known her in her younger days, but my mother would often tell me how much Long Mingyun could speak about even the simplest of topics…”

“We both identified the fact that she wouldn’t be going anywhere else just yet, so I ought to get some help with my problem and then resolve that prior to continuing to talk about all kinds of things that barely even have relevance anymore,” Wei Yi answered, “As such, I would like to postpone the continued flirting for just a little while longer, and would instead ask you to bring me to any technique libraries, artefact and treasure vaults, as well as whatever else you might have here. I need anything that would allow me to rush to the seventh realm as quickly as possible.”

“Actually, flirting could help with that, since your technique-”

“I know, dual cultivation, and you likely have a bunch of dragons in the seventh realm around here. However, I would need the conventional methods first, such as a bunch of planar stones, if you have those.”

“Tch. Fine, but you ought to know that your physique will be very popular amongst us. You’re fit and strong, but not overly affected by yang, meaning that you retain a proper feminine beauty, which is very much to our liking,” the young dragon said, “I didn’t mention it before, but sitting around and waiting can be rather boring, meaning that my mind went to a different place.”

“That both makes sense, and really doesn’t, given how you’ve been here for a while already. What did you do around here before?”

“For one, there’s a difference between waiting a while longer when nothing is happening, and waiting for a while after interacting with a human for the first time in… well, a long time. The second matter is that we didn’t actually sit around the whole time. Most of us… could you guess it, perhaps?”

Although she said that, her gaze did travel around the hall, prompting the Ascendant’s attention towards the things that surrounded them. Aside from stone and the like, the most common thing to be found within the underground hall were the scaled and rough eggs, all in different shades and all containing the clear warmth of life, greatly contributing to the overall heat found in this area. Since the stone couldn’t be the answer to any question the dragon might wish to pose to her, the only answer that remained was rather obvious.

“Is it normal for dragons to return to their eggs?”

“No, that’s not normal at all. In fact, it shouldn’t happen at all, but when the entire world decayed, we couldn’t remain. Long Mingyun had her power suppressed back into an anchor, and many of us were sealed in eggs… truth be told, I don’t fully understand how or when that happened, only that not long ago, we had begun to awaken.”

“Was that the source of the sigh?”

“Indeed. I, and many others, awoke from a long slumber, and we felt the world once more… In a number of ways.”

“Is it true, then, that the dragons are incredibly lustful creatures that would kidnap princesses and cause noise at the level of a thunderstorm for days in a row before bringing back the same princesses with a large belly and a rather intense desire to return to the dragon?”

“That’s not true at all! We would never kidnap a princess, nor would we impregnate someone without permission. We’re not savages, even if humans were and clearly still are, given that they cannot ensure that accurate information is passed along in their records,” the young dragon shook her head, “On a slightly more serious note, though, we have a greater sexual drive than most humans, and we happen to be attractive to a number of humans. Hence, there were few difficulties in finding willing partners among the humans, no matter what kind of thing a dragon may wish to do with them, with very few exceptions.”

‘I would like to continue bringing up certain negative stereotypes of dragons, if only because it is somewhat amusing, but that experience is rather similar to my own. That does mean that there might be less interference from the mysterious Dao of Lust than I keep assuming there is, although I shouldn’t rule out the possibility… A Dao of Dao would very much be helpful, but then that’s just the Great Dao, and that’s a little beyond my current level.’

To get a step on the Great Dao, she would theoretically need to master a Dao to the level of Great Dao Completion, the equivalent of the Dao Ascension stage for techniques, or else achieve at least a single true realm, or a proper step onto a Dao that does not rely on the power of the heavens whatsoever. Only then could she possibly use her Dao of Law to do more than simply imposing her Law on the world, and actively influence the other Dao directly. At that point, she would be able to see how the other Dao affect reality, and from there, comprehend exactly how her Dao of Lust impacts the people around her, if it has any effect at all.

If there is indeed no impact from the Dao of Lust, she would be incredibly annoyed at herself, and at whoever or whatever had led to it growing to such an extent and scaring her for so long.

“I’ll consider whether I wish to spend any time with the other dragons after I know what else I’m working with, so please hurry up already. Provided that you aren’t lying to me, you should be making things more difficult for yourself as well as me by delaying, so let’s not do that any longer,” the Ascendant suggested, and the young dragon appeared very happy to accept.

With an excited gait, Li He led her through the halls once more, this time walking far less and bringing her to a large library that appeared to have partially melded with the stone that it should have stood on separately. There weren’t many books within, but all were clearly ancient and also at the point of turning to stone due to how long they must have laid there, untouched and unused by the dormant dragons. A few of them were essentially collections of jade slips, which would take a little longer to go through than usual due to the limited depth that her spiritual perception was able to go to for the moment, but the books were scannable just fine.

Thus, she quickly took in as much as possible, and quickly verified that Long Mingyun’s advice wasn’t wrong at all. Even if she adapted all of these techniques to be usable by a human body, meridian network, and her particular cultivation, managing to make use of all of these techniques and principles within her own combat style would be rather challenging, to say the least. The dragons specialised in techniques that created singular eruptions of power, relying on brief, fearsome battles above all else.

The Ascendant did like that kind of approach, but it relied too greatly on singular attacks while she needed to fight against multiple opponent frequently and would thus exhaust herself in a manner that wasn’t solved by her nascent rift.

Integrating her Obliteration, Dao of Law and the rest of her abilities into the draconic techniques would also be highly difficult, for they were focused around the draconic bloodline and body, neither of which the Ascendant possessed. The former was easy enough to grab if she so wished, but the latter wouldn’t be attainable unless she somehow transferred her mind into the body of a dragon, but that would require either killing one of the living dragons and stealing their body – and compromising all of her abilities as a result, due to everything that had built up within her – or forcing herself into the egg of a dragon hatchling and effectively killing a dragon nonetheless. That would give her more room to incorporate her own power into the developing body, but it wouldn’t guarantee that she could transfer everything.

In short, it would be significantly worse than simply understanding the techniques and using them to improve her techniques and Dao.

That didn’t take too long, which she found to be the case with most learning nowadays. By comprehending even pieces of one Dao, she ends up grasping bits and pieces of their greater substance, and from there things that are affected by and fall under the same principles end up being absorbed far more quickly. She had a grasp of the Dao of the Heavens, Planar Dao, Dao of the Elements and Fire Dao, which meant that the primarily fire-based techniques of these dragons were effortless to learn for her.

There were quite a few other elements and techniques in the draconic arsenal, but fire was the primary element simply due to the draconic heart’s constant flaming ember of power. It led to frost dragons breathing frost flame instead of simple yin, gold dragons being able to breathe out lightning flame, which would act far more like fire than lightning and land on foes and set them alight, if only relatively briefly, and even legendary dragons like void dragons breathing void flames.

She couldn’t verify whether that last part was true, for she had no idea what a void flame would even look like, but the tendency towards flame was clear and undeniable. For her, flames were limited to one fifth of one fifth of true planar energy, which was one miniscule aspect of the overall nature of reality, so to bind herself to flame on her road to improvement would be a poor choice by any metric.

“Are you already done?” Li He asked.

“I am. I have a very big mental library, and an immense capacity for processing information, so most things generally take me a few moments to process. Combine that with my mind’s ability to accelerate to the point that time effectively slows down around me, and I don’t need long to do anything.”

“That-”

“That is not normal, Wei Yi,” the voice of Long Mingyun suddenly appeared in their ears, with Li He freezing in place while the Ascendant simply looked in the direction of the ancient dragon’s chamber, “You ought to have realised this by now, but processing so much shouldn’t be possible even by entities that are specialised in the field of the mind. You are a human, and although you have a few interesting bloodlines, you are not one of those entities.”

“I know. However, I’m guessing you have no clue why I might have these capabilities, right? I have far too many things to be concerned about already, and I’d rather not add this to it.”

“And yet, I would suggest that you do keep this in mind. Something like this doesn’t just happen.”

“Can’t it?”

“Shi Meng and I had a good understanding of the natural limits of the world. It was, in part, with my aid that we established criteria for who a good successor to him would be. I had hoped that he would never make use of them, but…” Long Mingyun’s pause was the exact length of one of her sighs, “There may be a danger to your power that can be exploited.”

“I’m sure that there are plenty of methods to exploit any of my abilities, but I have a decent enough understanding of my foes at the moment. Both the current ones, being the Great Leeches, and the future ones, like the sealed Primordial Deities or the things that had intimidated Kong Shi Meng.”

“The Hunger of the Beyond… No, they are not adept at this, and they wouldn’t be acting in the favour of the world… not that we ever grasped their exact natures and desires,” the dragon said, going silent for quite a while after that. With the suppressive property of the timeless aura, there was significant challenge in grasping exactly what she was up to in that time, but Li He did recover during that time and managed to simply pretend not to be listening while also glancing in the Ascendant’s direction any time anything interesting was mentioned.

Given the nature of their conversation, it meant that she was pretending not to listen while paying as much attention to it as was humanly possible, making it rather ineffective.

“You have done well enough so far, from my understanding, so I ought not to push you into any course of action. Do what you think is best, and take precautions where possible. If you fail to do so, and no-one is near to aid you at a time when you are weak, then you shall have only yourself to blame… and I will be highly disappointed.”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t disappointed myself yet, and I might have higher standards than you will.”

Although that sounded extremely odd when talking about a dragon of such an immense age, who was familiar with one of the strongest cultivators in the known history of the Western Continent, and would thus be likely to compare her to him, the Ascendant was well aware that she had been aiming above all of that for a while. She couldn’t be sure when the very idea of imposing some notion of Justice upon the world had begun to form in her head, but it had remained with her for a long while, as did the preference for the Dao of Law and the wish to surpass the heavens and any other force that might stand in her way, whether there was only the source of the otherworldly demons, or countless others.

From what she knew, Kong Shi Meng simply wanted to bring some stability to the world, make the lives of people in his Yi City better, and prevent the world from being destroyed. It may seem like a lot in comparison to the usual person, but neither of them could really be called that.

“… Perhaps. Do as you will.”