When red clouds burned across the sky like embers, Ouyang was still inside the Karosen Kingdom. He looked up, and a defiant shout skimmed his ear like wind along a cliff. "Weird. Where have I heard that voice?"
He lowered his head, thoughts circling like leaves in a whirlpool, yet he couldn’t place it.
"Whatever. First I’ll hit Dragon Gorge and bag a mount, something flashy as thunderclouds. I’m a Demon King—if those old cronies hear I’ve got no ride, they’ll die laughing."
Sleepiness washed over him like noon heat. He yawned, then shuffled toward the Nightfall Forest, a lone shadow under a blazing sun.
Days later, stepping into Nightfall Forest again, he found its life thinned like a river in drought, the air still as dust.
This forest had taken calamity after calamity, like a drum beaten raw: two castles dropped by him, then Valiant and the Rabbit tearing through like storms. It was a wonder anything still breathed.
He swept his gaze over scorched trunks and gutted clearings like land after wildfire. Calling it a forest felt wrong—more like a desert wearing bark.
As if sensing thunder on the horizon, Valiant arrived with the Rabbit, their figures cutting through the pale air.
"Lord Ouyang, I missed you so much..." The Rabbit bounded over like a flying puff of snow, clamped onto Ouyang’s thigh, and rubbed its furry head like a warm brush.
Soft felt nice as moonlight on silk, but disgust spiked like a thorn. Ouyang thought a beat, then kicked the Rabbit skyward like a dandelion puff.
"Rabbit, you haven’t bathed in centuries, have you? I can see the fleas dancing on you like black hail!"
The image of countless fleas hopping like sparks made his skin crawl like ants. He grabbed the Rabbit by the ears and flung it into the lake ahead, a mirror of blue glass.
"Don’t come ashore until every last flea has drowned." His order fell like a gavel; last time he’d missed it, and cold sweat had slid down his back like meltwater.
"Rabbit, soak in the lake. Valiant and I are heading to Dragon Gorge to handle business." His voice cut like a blade across water.
They left, and the Rabbit panicked like a chick in the rain once its guards were gone. "Lord Ouyang, don’t leave me!" it cried, but the lake held it like a sealed jar.
At Ouyang’s nod, Valiant raised a magical barrier, a shimmering film like ice over the surface, and the Rabbit bobbed miserably like a cork.
"Valiant, did the Karosen Kingdom deliver the building materials?" As they walked, memory surfaced like a fish breaking water.
"They did. As you ordered, I stacked them in the forest’s heart. Lord Ouyang, are we really building a temple here?" Valiant’s tiger face looked honest as a farmer, big-eyed and slow.
Ouyang shook his head, breath easy as a breeze. "A temple? Don’t overthink it. I’m building a big city, a beacon like a mountain of lights."
"But for a city, those materials won’t be enough," Valiant rumbled, doubt fluttering like moths around a flame.
Ouyang dropped his gaze, thoughts grinding like millstones. After a while he hmmed, a spark in the dark. "Materials aren’t the problem. Maybe not in the Gorge proper, but the Dragon Nest will have them."
The Dragon Nest lay in a pocket space within Dragon Gorge, a hidden valley like a folded fan. Dragons lived there and slipped out like shadows, so people named this canyon Dragon Gorge.
When Ouyang stepped into Dragon Gorge, rime coated everything like a funeral shroud. The canyon had become a glacial trench, deep and deathly still.
"Hmph. A layer of sky-blue ice crystals, and you think you can stop me? Seal the passage to the Nest, and I’ve got no way?" Anger rose like a storm tide. He spoke to the empty air.
"Young. Far too young," he added, voice flat as winter.
He gripped the Divine Sword, its glow like a thread of dawn, and traced the ice with a light stroke. The blade slid like tofu, cleaving slabs like paper.
Was the ice that brittle? Valiant, the beastman with a tiger’s head, raised a fist like a boulder and slammed it down. The floor didn’t even crack; not a ripple broke the blue glass.
"My lord, this ice is too hard." Valiant blinked, stunned like a cow in thunder. His full-force blow left no mark. What in the heavens was this stuff?
He turned and saw Ouyang lazily carving the floor with the Divine Sword, shaving the blue crystal to ribbons like curled frost. His heart tangled like vines; words failed.
Ouyang glanced up, then swept the Divine Sword everywhere, hacking the blue ice into jagged shards, beauty shattered like a stained window.
"Alright. Warm-up’s over. Time to cut open the block that seals the Dragon Nest’s door." He strolled to a shadowed corner like a cat to a mouse, stretching with a dry pop.
Before he moved, a voice drifted through the cold air like a bell through fog.
"Don’t. Whatever you do, don’t." A silver-haired man in white appeared, his body warping now and then like a bad signal in a snowstorm.
"Throwing out a projection to haggle with me?" Ouyang’s eyes flashed like flint. He lifted the Divine Sword, ready to swing.
That scared the man pale as frost. "Ouyang, you damned cutthroat, put down that Supreme Artifact if you’ve got guts!" A blond man appeared too, flickering like heat haze, clearly another projection.
"Yo, White Dragon Emperor, look at you, actually teaming up with that guy." Curiosity bloomed like a lantern as Ouyang studied the silver and the gold standing side by side.
"Kid, rein it in," the blond snapped, his tone sharp as a spear. "It’s not your era anymore. Push us, and even dying, we’ll drag you into the abyss."
The silver-haired one winced, surprise rippling through him like rain across a pond. He knew that was the wrong string to pluck.
Sure enough, Ouyang grinned like a wolf showing teeth, the Divine Sword humming as it wrote arcs in the air. "Look at you two guppies growing fins. I could stomp you then, and I can stomp you now."
Suddenly—whoosh—the blade split the air. Ouyang’s cut licked out, and the blond’s right arm snapped off like a brittle icicle.
"How... how is that possible?" The blond clutched the stump, wailing like a wounded beast. The silver-haired one stared, dumb as stone, just as lost.
They were projections, shadows on a wall, not their true bodies. Yet Ouyang had severed the arm of a projection, and the pain carried back like someone stepping on your shadow and breaking your spine.
"Heh. You really thought I couldn’t touch you through a projection? The toy in my hand is top shelf. It once ripped the starry sky and cut the long river of time. And you weaklings think you’re safe?"
The silver-haired man’s face twitched like a candle in a draft. He weighed his options like stones in a scale, then spoke. "Name your terms. Even in death, we won’t let you into the Dragon Nest to ravage the hatchlings."
"Now you’re talking." Ouyang slid the Divine Sword away and hefted it onto his shoulder like a farmer’s pole. "First, get me a mount, something flashy, thunder-on-wheels flashy. Second, bring like eighty to a hundred tons of seven-colored glazed stone, Tranquility tiles, Water of Life, Primal Chaos ore, windbell flowers..."
"Just wipe out our entire race instead!" the blond burst out, voice cracking like dry wood. This was bullying—no, dragon-bullying!
"A hundred tons? Even the Divine Realm might not scrape together one ton of seven-colored glazed stone. Primal Chaos ore? In the Divine Realm, that’s a myth." His outrage sizzled like oil on flame.
In short, even slaughtering the dragon race wouldn’t gather that much. The conclusion slammed shut like a door.
Back then they’d picked the wrong side for a heartbeat, and Ouyang had skewered several Dragon Gods for a barbecue, smoke rising like a bad omen. For ages the dragons had no high-end force. These two had finally clawed up to Dragon God, and this calamity in human skin had shown up again.
"In that case, I remember your Dragon Nest has a stash of glazed roof tiles, those glittering beauties I love. Hand them all over." Ouyang looked every inch the bandit, swagger thick as summer haze.
The projections of the gold and silver vanished like sparks in wind; clearly, they went to confer in the dark.
"Lord Ouyang, I’ve got a bad feeling," Valiant murmured, his ears flattening like leaves before rain.
"Relax. Those two cowards wouldn’t dare play dirty, not with a hundred borrowed guts," Ouyang said, confidence ringing like bronze. "If they do, I’ll swallow dung and die on the spot—"
Before the words cooled, the blue crystal floor yawned into a black hole like a dragon’s maw, and Ouyang dropped straight through, a stone swallowed by night.
Valiant froze, tail stiff as a spear. He shouted into the dark mouth, voice echoing like thunder in a well. "Lord Ouyang, are you alright?"
"I’m... still alive..." The answer rose faint and thin, like wind leaking from a punctured bellows; the hole was deep as a bottomless sea.
"Oh, good. Then, Lord Ouyang, about that ‘swallow dung and die’—when’s the performance?" Valiant called, innocence shining like a full moon.
In the pitch-black shaft, Ouyang had fallen hard enough to numb half his body, pain buzzing like wasps. Hearing that, he nearly spat blood like a burst pomegranate. "Bastard, of all pots, you lift the one with a hole. Just wait, I’ll make your life a living hell!"
He shook his head until the stars cleared like dust, ready to plot a way out, when the opening sealed above, ice knitting like a blue lid.
"Little Gold, Little Silver, remember this. If I don’t get you on a spit and roast you, I’ll read my name backward," his voice rolled through the dark like distant thunder, and up above, both Dragon Emperors shivered.
The silver-haired one let out a breath, chest tight as a bound drum. "That bastard won’t get out for a while. Let’s move the treasures out of the Nest, fast. Honestly, a human, fighting us over shiny things."
"Save the chatter. Notify the youngsters to hide deep, like fish in winter mud. His current power may look weak, but I swear he’s even more dangerous than in his prime," the blond said, panic beading like dew on his brow.
So the two Dragon Gods set to work, hauling treasure like ants before rain, and planning to dust their tails and flee.
