Chapter 33 Divine Dragon Body

"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" Zhou Hai cursed inside the golden prison they were trapped in, still stuck to the ceiling. "How did he outsmart us? I don't understand… I don't understand!"

"Y-Young master, please calm down. The only possible explanation to this is that he'd already noticed us following him, and sent out a clone when we weren't looking…"

"But how?! He's only a Body Tempering stage cultivator—how does he have Divine Sense?! We kept enough distance that only Divine Sense would be able to detect us!"

"Young master, correct me if I'm wrong, but… was this not the same boy you accused of hiding his true cultivation a few days prior?" The other master asked. "If that's the case, then he could actually be an Origin Transformation stage master just like us in disguise…"

"No, that's impossible," Zhou Hai muttered, calming down a bit. "If he was, then my father would've been able to tell, as an Origin Monarch stage powerhouse. He's not hiding his cultivation…"

"Then the only other possibility is that he somehow has an incredible amount of powerful artifacts? Is he actually from some prestigious family from far away, perhaps?"

"But if that's the case… didn't we just offend someone we shouldn't have even dared to…?"

The two old masters fell into silence for a short moment, and Zhou Hai interrupted them after a minute.

"It'll be fine. As long as it's not us who killed him… how can his family seek revenge?"

"Young master, what do you mean?"

The two masters were confused at this, but Zhou Hai only smirked in confidence.

"He said it himself, didn't he? This trap was made directly by the Golden Wyvern—and since there are traps here, there are also bound to be treasures that they are guarding, no? When a trap is sprung, the Wyvern will no doubt be alerted, and hurriedly come back to this cave. When that happens… all we have to do is point it in the direction of the real culprit. Understand?"

The two old masters, looking at Xuan in the distance, who appeared to be walking around in search of something, gave a nod.

"I see… young master is truly wise! Even if he is from some prestigious family or hiding his true cultivation, he cannot escape from the claws of a Ninth-Order Golden Wyvern after trying to steal from it!"

"Not only that, but the Wyvern might even let us go as a reward for telling it where the real culprit was! Hahaha!"

As the two old men laughed in joy, Zhou Hai smiled smugly.

'Xuan… you may have bested me momentarily, but I will be the one to have the final laugh!'

*****

While the three idiots were planning all of this out, thinking they were smart, Xuan did not give anything remotely close to a fuck and merely continued searching for the Dragon egg.

Well… actually, it was less searching for the egg and more searching for a way down to it.

The egg itself was right below the chandelier with the golden flame in it, lighting up the entire cavern—in other words, it was easy enough to spot. Obviously, it was positioned there for warmth from the special golden fire, but at the same time, it was also placed in a very deep hole so it could better extract the World Qi of the area—so deep, in fact, that Xuan was left thinking about how to get down.

After some thinking about the techniques he currently had available to him, however, Xuan quickly came up with a plan—the Zodiac Technique's eleventh move: Rooster's Wings.

Did this technique allow him to fly? No. Roosters couldn't fly. They could, however, levitate in the air slightly—as such, Xuan believed he could use this technique to slow his fall. How he was going to climb back out was a different problem altogether, but he would cross that bridge when he got there.

Activating the technique with a single thought, Xuan mused in curiosity as two small rooster wings popped out from his elbows. They were even smaller than expected and could barely do anything except look goofy, but did Xuan care? Not really. There wasn't anyone around to watch him anyway.

… There were the three idiots from the Zhou family, but to Xuan, they didn't count as people—and even if they did, well—dead men tell no tales. The amount of oxygen in that sealed prison would run out sooner or later, and they'd die from suffocation—that is, if they were lucky. If they weren't… the Wyvern would get them, and that wasn't an end even the worst of criminals deserved.

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In any case, Xuan dropped down to the bottom of the pit without so much as a bit of hesitation, and was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the Rooster's Wings technique did, in fact, slow his fall. It wasn't anything too impressive, but it did the job—at the very least, the drop didn't do any damage to Xuan.

After landing at the bottom, Xuan dusted off his clothes, then bent down and inspected the Dragon egg. As expected, it had an incredible gold luster to it, and emitted a thin but incredibly powerful golden energy from it.

'Hm… good. It's almost mature,' Xuan thought, studying the energy waves. 'It looks like it'll hatch pretty soon… just missing one final step.'

His Divine Asura Eye's appraisal skill then triggered, revealing a list of stats and information of the egg beside the item itself:

<Divine Golden Dragon Egg>

<Type: Egg>

<Grade: Divine>

The egg holding a Divine Golden Dragon, the next heir of Dragon Island. The energy around it can be absorbed to form a special physique.

<Hatch (99%)>

Xuan's eyes widened.

'A Divine Golden Dragon…?'

So that's what this was… no wonder the protector sent to defend it was a Golden Wyvern. Xuan had originally thought it was just a normal member of the Golden Dragon species, which was considered royalty on Dragon Island, but this egg actually held the next heir itself…

Needless to say, this was an extraordinary treasure.

Divine Golden Dragons were the most powerful species amongst Dragons and—by extension—all Magic Beasts. Only one was born every ten thousands years due to the incredible lifespan of Dragons, but if Xuan remembered correctly, the last one—the current Dragon Emperor—was only about 2,000 years old…

'… Oh, wait. I remember leaving him half-dead when I left Dragon Island Temple all those years ago… could it be he's too scared to keep leading the island in case I come back, so he wants someone else to take his place…? I do remember saying something along the lines of 'the more you rebuild, the more I'll destroy' when I left… ah, whatever.'

Shrugging the matter off, Xuan turned back to the egg and sat down. The description of the item said that by absorbing its energy, a special physique could be formed in his body. Since Xuan doubted anything having to do with Dragons could be bad (they represented the opposite, in fact) he decided to give it a shot. And even if it was something negative, well—the Chaos Scripture's Devouring Qi would take care of it all.

Closing his eyes, Xuan began to absorb the egg's energy. He opened his body's various apertures—Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Ears, and Heart—to take in the Qi, and gradually relaxed as a calming warmth entered him.

'Hm…? This is…'

His eyebrow twitched slightly as the energy began flowing through his veins to every corner of his body, taking root there and replacing his human blood with… something new. It was an odd feeling, but not an unpleasant one. In fact, as the transformation process underwent, Xuan felt like he was sitting in a wonderfully tempered hot spring, soaking every pore of his skin in the warm water.

<Physique Unlocked>

<Divine Dragon Body>

<Greatly increased durability, raw strength, and regenerative capabilities.>

<Strength +10,000>

<Defense +10,000>

Xuan's eyes snapped open as the absorption process finished, and he stared at the notifications in front of him in wonder. He could already feel it—his body had grown considerably stronger.

"Ha… haha!"

Laughing boldly several times, Xuan found a sharp rock lying nearby on the ground and made a small cut on his finger (he had gotten used to doing so by this point). What flowed out was not red, human blood, but rather a golden fluid—the blood of dragons, and the purest, strongest type. Not only that, after about 30 seconds, the wound closed completely on its own, and any sign of there ever being an injury there ceased to exist.

"My luck recently has been exceptionally good, hasn't it?" He mused to himself, glancing at his spotless hand in wonder. "Looks like saving that huntress was the right move… the Heavenly Way's karmic laws always delivers. Perhaps I should do more good deeds in the future…?"

Of course, that wasn't to say he was going to become a virtuous monk all of a sudden. He'd killed and tortured far too much in his past life to change his temperament that much, so even if he had been reincarnated, the invisible blood of those he'd slain still coated his body. That said, helping a random stranger out on the road or showing a simple act of kindness every now and then shouldn't be too much to ask, as long as it didn't require too much effort…

'… Nah, too hopeful,' he thought to himself. 'My personality simply doesn't fit that way of doing things.'

Still, he'd try, since the benefits of doing so thus far have proven to be quite worth the trouble.

'Hm… hold on. If my blood's changed to Dragon blood now, then…'

Curious, he made yet another cut on his own finger using the same rock, then used the technique Blood Conjure to create a sword—the same object he'd tried to make last time. This time, however, the image formed much quicker, and when Xuan reached out to grab it, it did not dissipate despite him not focusing on the image anymore.

"As expected…"

To test, Xuan whipped his blade around at the earth all around him, and was surprised to find that the blood sword cut through rock as if it were dirt. Without a doubt, if the blade had been made from human blood, it wouldn't be nearly as strong.

"… Heh. Guess I should start looking for some more blood techniques to learn, huh?"

Just then, however, the ground beneath Xuan's feet shook violently, and he looked up at the chandelier carrying the golden fire, now burning brighter than ever high above the pit he was in. The quake was followed by another in quick succession, and immediately, Xuan recognized what it was before smiling deviously.

"So… the guard's finally returned to its station."