Olivia extended her two small claws, cradling the Dragon Pearl in her arms. She lowered her head and gently rubbed her cheek against the pearl's surface.
The faint golden light patterns flowing across the pearl's surface brightened for a moment as they were brushed by her scales, as if responding to her touch.
"I can feel it calling to me."
She half-closed her eyes, her tiny body pressed against the pearl. The Silver Dragon lady who was usually lazy and elegant had somehow gained a few extra points of adorableness at this moment.
Chen Yu: "Respond to it. By the time you wake up from inside it, you should be at the Legendary rank."
"Legendary, huh..."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
She murmured softly, curling her entire dragon soul up, wrapping the pearl between her wings and tail.
Her scales began to emit the same warm, faint golden light as the Dragon Pearl. The outline of the dragon soul gradually blurred as she merged into the pearl.
Only then did the Dragon Pearl's light gradually recede. Even the pearl's own warm luster disappeared, turning into a dull, ordinary rock that landed lightly in Chen Yu's palm.
But his Divine Sense could perceive that a new life was sprouting beneath that ordinary exterior.
Like a seed beneath the spring soil, with nothing visible on the surface, but its roots were already stretching inch by inch in the darkness, just waiting until it had gathered enough strength to push through the dirt and burst forth with its first tender shoot.
Come to think of it...
He weighed the Dragon Pearl that was no different from a roadside pebble in his hand, and suddenly a question occurred to him.
When Olivia wakes up from inside and re-condenses her physical form, will she return in the form of a true dragon, or in the form of a giant dragon?
Truth be told, he still hadn't fully figured out the relationship between true dragons and giant dragons.
In Xu Xuan Heaven, true dragons were natural rulers of laws. They were born resonating with the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth, capable of commanding wind and thunder, controlling the four seas. They were a race above demon beasts.
In Zeyarila, giant dragons also stood at the top of the magical creature food chain. They were born with dragon inheritance and magical affinity. From the moment they hatched from their eggs, they possessed inherited memories beyond other magical creatures.
The two were very similar, yet not the same.
The true dragon's power system was centered on Dao arts and inner cores. The giant dragon's combat style leaned more toward innate magic and physical domination.
The feeling these two gave him was indeed like two sides of the same coin, like two halves of a key split right down the middle.
True dragons were bodies of Dao magic. Giant dragons were bodies of mana. They seemed completely opposite, yet they appeared to share the same most ancient foundational template.
When they were reunited into one, this ancient key might be able to unlock some treasures that even he couldn't predict.
He put the Dragon Pearl back into his Divine Sense and placed it on the soft cushion of the levitating castle's flower pavilion, asking Silver Sparrow to keep an eye on it.
Chen Yu turned to the Old Whale Man, who had been waiting quietly on the sea surface all along: "Those tremors deep in the Abyss, what are they? Tell me every detail you know."
"Dragon Lord, please follow me." The Old Whale Man turned and dove into the water, once again transforming into his original form of a hundred-zhang whale body. His massive whale tail swayed slowly beneath the sea surface, pushing a ring of currents as he swam toward the depths of the Abyss.
Chen Yu followed above him on his flying sword. The tip of the sword occasionally brushed the sea surface, drawing a thin, long silver line across the calm water.
"The so-called Abyss is, in the end, an end that can devour everything." The old man's voice came up from beneath the sea surface, deep and distant, like an echo reverberating from a very deep canyon.
"The waters of that sea area have been flowing in the same direction for thousands of years. No one knows where those waters go."
"Haven't any cultivators gone in to investigate before?" Chen Yu asked.
"There have been some, but in the end, none of them ever returned."
The Old Whale Man's tail flicked underwater, stirring up an undercurrent that pushed several nearby ice floes far away.
"However, that's not to say there were no exceptions."
His voice took on a nostalgic tone: "When I was young, the South Sea was still a magnificent sight. True dragons emerged in every generation. There was even a highly respected Dragon King who built a dragon palace deep in the Coral Sea. Nine dragons coiled around the pillars, a thousand acres of crystal-clear glass served as roof tiles. On full moon nights, merchant ships and cultivators crossing the sea could hear the dragon chants and bell music drifting out from the dragon palace."
"At that time, I was just a minor demon doing odd jobs in the back hall of the dragon palace. I couldn't even fully transform into human form. My biggest wish every day was that after the Turtle Prime Minister finished inspecting the tide levels of the four seas, he would sit on the coral steps, drink a jug of osmanthus wine brought back from the mainland, and tell us little demons stories about the outside world."
"The one name he mentioned most often was that of a Sword Immortal."
Chen Yu's movements paused.
He had already vaguely guessed who it was, but he didn't interrupt.
The Old Whale Man didn't beat around the bush either. "That's right. The one I'm talking about is exactly that Cloud Cliff Sword Immortal from the Three Origins Sect."
"According to the Turtle Prime Minister, this Sword Immortal was the only Golden Core Dao cultivator who had broken into the depths of the Abyss and walked out alive. What's more, not long after that, he achieved Unity with the Dao and ascended, breaking through the void and departing."
"At that time, even the Dragon King in the palace sighed, saying that only this Cloud Cliff Sword Immortal had truly seen what was inside the Abyss. He never spoke of it to outsiders. All others knew was that he went in once, came out, achieved Unity with the Dao, and ascended. That's all."
He sighed, that breath exhaled from his whale lungs, bursting out on the sea surface as a long string of white foam.
"It's just a pity that after that, for some reason, Xu Xuan Heaven seemed to fall into decline."
"First, several large spirit stone mines in the north were exhausted one after another. Many sects relocated their cultivation grounds. The dragon palace couldn't hold on either. Of the nine dragons, some died and some scattered. The crystal-clear glass tiles shattered into sand on the sea floor."
"Since then, true dragons have not appeared, allowing a few snake eels and squids to dominate this sea."
"Even the Golden Core cultivators on the mainland have decreased by more than half compared to when I was young. In the last hundred years, the entire Xu Xuan Heaven has not heard any news of cultivators ascending..."
He suddenly came back to his senses, as if waking from a long, old dream. His voice carried a hint of fluster: "Apologies. I was getting nostalgic and forgot the main business."
He cleared his throat and pulled the conversation back to the current situation of the Abyss.
"The tremors in the Abyss actually started appearing a few months ago. At first, they were very subtle. Only I and a few other deep-sea demon beasts that patrolled the edge of the Abyss could detect them. The frequency was also low, with several days between each tremor."
"Later, they gradually became more frequent. From once every few days to several times a day. The intensity of the tremors also continued to increase."
"I was terrified that something might happen to the Abyss. If it stopped swallowing seawater and instead spat out all the accumulated tides of several hundred years at once, the entire South Sea, along with the coastal lands, would be swallowed beneath hundred-zhang tsunamis."
"That's why I resorted to such a desperate measure, helping that evil snake steal the Legacy Pearl, hoping that after it underwent Dragon Transformation, it would use its true dragon body to suppress the Abyss for the South Sea."
"Today, in front of the Dragon Lord, I dare not seek forgiveness for what I have done. I only beg the Dragon Lord to see with his own eyes the activity deep in the Abyss. If this old man is overthinking things, then there would be no better news in all the world."
"No matter. I'll take a look." Chen Yu unfurled his sword light. The golden rainbow light enveloped the Old Whale Man's whale body and they vanished, heading toward the deepest part of the Abyss.
The further they flew inward, the darker the surrounding light became.
At the edge of the Abyss, there was still gray-white misty daylight illuminating the sea surface. But after flying inward for over a hundred li, even the mist disappeared. There was no longer sky overhead, only darkness.
There were more and more storms on the sea surface. Bolts of lightning struck down from the dark dome, varying in thickness. Some were as thin as an arm, others thick enough to snap a mountain peak in two.
The lightning briefly illuminated the surrounding scene. The pitch-black sea churned with irregular giant waves, their crests so high they could slap into the low-hanging clouds.
No wonder the cultivators of the South Sea all said that only a Golden Core cultivator dared to step into the Abyss.
Forget the ancient demon beasts lurking in the sea that even the Whale Man might not recognize; just this natural disaster alone was enough to tear ordinary cultivators to shreds before they could reach the end of the Abyss.
For an ordinary person's ship to enter these waters, the lightning would snap the mast in two before the waves even hit the deck.
But it was in this chaotic environment that Chen Yu clearly heard the kind of tremor the Old Whale Man had described.
It was as if someone had hammered the very foundation of this world, the vibration transmitting through space itself.
A ten-thousand-zhang wave surged, rolling from the sea surface all the way up into the clouds, swallowing even the falling lightning bolts in its black waters. Even his sword rainbow was heavily pressed down into the depths of the wave, with icy seawater flooding in from all directions.
Only after the tremor had completely disappeared did the entire Abyss Sea finally calm down.
The madly surging ten-thousand-zhang waves vanished into thin air. The sea surface was so flat it didn't show the slightest ripple, not even a single circle of ripples. It was as if the entire sea area had been instantly frozen into a boundless black mirror by some force.
The storms and lightning overhead had also disappeared. There was no sound in the dark dome, so quiet that he could clearly hear the rustling sound of water flowing over the scales beneath the Old Whale Man's tail.
The Old Whale Man looked into the darkness ahead. "Dragon Lord, ahead lies the Abyss. Please see what is happening there."
Chen Yu fully unleashed his Divine Sense, extending it toward the end of the Abyss, passing through the ancient reefs that floated in the darkness.
The end of the darkness still showed no terminus. After his Divine Sense entered a certain range, it lost its sense of distance, as if stretched and twisted by some force. All perceived directions were simultaneously pointing to a single point, while also pointing in all directions at once.
Using only Divine Sense to investigate revealed nothing abnormal.
He didn't hesitate. With a thought, he split off a gel incarnation.
That incarnation nodded at him, then transformed into a golden rainbow light, flying straight into the end of the sea known as the Abyss.
After the incarnation entered the Abyss, Chen Yu's first sensation was pitch-black darkness.
Light and sound could not propagate here. Even the perception of Divine Sense felt as if it had been immersed in some extremely viscous medium. Every inch it extended forward required dozens of times more mental effort than it would have outside.
Then came the spinning and vertigo. Up and down reversed. The direction of gravity kept flipping in his perception, from up to down, from down to left, from left to nowhere to escape.
Even though the foundation of his soul was far more solid and tenacious than an ordinary Golden Core cultivator's, this chaotic spatial turbulence churned him up until he felt nauseous.
He didn't know how long passed. The incarnation was carried along by the seawater like this, surging into a strange space.
The moment it surged into this space, his connection with the incarnation seemed to become abruptly, incomparably weak due to the extreme distance, and then it was directly severed.
He could no longer see what was happening on the other side.
Just as he thought his investigation had failed, something miraculous happened.
His slime body in Zeyarila connected with this gel incarnation.
He opened his eyes. What came into view was a boundless silver sea so vast that there was no reference point to measure distance.
Countless semi-transparent silver threads floated in the void, like the dreams of countless sleepers being torn apart and casually scattered across this space.
But before he could see clearly what kind of place he had fallen into, a shadow pressed across his entire field of vision.
The size of that shadow was absurdly large. Even using all his strength to look up, he couldn't see its boundaries at all. It was like trying to see the shape of the entire sea surface from the bottom of the sea.
That shadow passed by. It only bumped into him, and the entire gel incarnation was smashed into gel paste.
In the last moment before his consciousness disappeared, he heard the dull, heavy sound of that shadow colliding with some kind of barrier.
After the collision, he also seemed to hear a vague wail, like a whale song coming from tens of thousands of li beneath the seawater, very deep and low.
Outside the Abyss, Chen Yu's eyes snapped open.
He now had one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.
The good news was that the flood catastrophe the Old Whale Man had worried about didn't exist.
The tremors in the Abyss were not caused by accumulated seawater. That terrifying wave that spread from the depths of the end every so often had nothing to do with the intake or output of seawater.
The bad news was that the catastrophe itself was real.
There was a creature outside the world trying to get into Xu Xuan Heaven, and it was not an ordinary creature.
As weak as his incarnation was, it was still a solid Legendary incarnation. Placed in the South Sea, it would be enough to sweep through most sea fiend grottos. Placed in Zeyarila, even going up against Legendary Professionals, it could last for a long time.
But that creature had only accidentally bumped into him while passing by, and the incarnation was obliterated.
This meant it wasn't a Golden Core, nor a Legendary, but it was far more terrifying than either.
He organized the last perception transmitted back by the incarnation and sent it directly to the Old Whale Man through Divine Sense.
After the old man saw it, the color visibly drained from his face.
"Dragon Lord, what should we do now?"
"From what we can see right now, it won't be easy for this demon creature to truly enter Xu Xuan Heaven. But as for later... that's hard to say."
Chen Yu's eyes looked toward the darkness at the end of the Abyss, a darkness even he couldn't see through. "It's best to inform all the cultivation grounds of the Eighteen Islands of Zhan County about everything that has happened here as soon as possible. Have them send people to notify the various sects of the Righteous Path on the mainland. Strictly guard the entrance to the Abyss. Do not allow any demon creatures to take advantage of this to cause trouble."
"This calamity requires everyone to face it together."
He turned to look at the Old Whale Man. "Go. I will stay here and keep watch until you return."
Upon hearing this, the Old Whale Man bowed deeply to Chen Yu. "Yes, Dragon Lord. I will go at once."
His whale body re-formed. The hundred-zhang-long giant whale broke a long wake across the calm, black sea surface, swimming rapidly toward Guanshan Island. In a few moments, he disappeared into the gray-white mist of the Abyss.
Chen Yu watched him leave, and his consciousness gradually sank back into Zeyarila.
That Astral Realm creature wouldn't find it easy to break through the end of the Abyss.
The space in Xu Xuan Heaven was completely different from Zeyarila's.
In Zeyarila, Legendary Professionals could use magic to tear open planar rifts. Demons could jump from the Abyss to the Material Plane. Otherworldly creatures could also slip from the Astral Realm into dreams.
But in Xu Xuan Heaven, even a Golden Cloud True Person exerting their full strength could, at most, make their flying sword fly a bit faster. Breaking through the void was nearly impossible.
To shatter the void, there was only one path: ascension.
That creature had been ramming for months and still hadn't gotten in. At the very least, it meant the rules of Xu Xuan Heaven were still effective against it.
Either it couldn't get in, or it would take at least a few more years.
And, clearly, that place was closer to Zeyarila. It was time to start considering the Empire's exploration of the Astral Realm and other planes.
...
Chen Yu's day in the Empire was quite leisurely. He only flew along the Empire's borders, inspecting the recent situations in various places.
The city hall clerks at the port were processing long-term berth procedures for the third batch of Southern merchant ships. The Slime Engineers at the mines were testing the excavation speed of deep vein tunnels with new rune drill bits shipped from Slime City. The first batch of gel greenhouses on the Golden Tassel Plain had already had their frames assembled...
Everything was operating in an orderly manner.
Of course, he also picked up quite a few strange and peculiar rumors along the way.
Passing by their neighbor, the Golden Radiance Valley, he heard some news from the valley's city-states.
A sect called the Demon King Cult had recently risen among these city-states.
It was said that the believers of this Demon King Cult firmly believed that the world would eventually submit to the rule of a great Demon King, and that only by believing in the Demon King could one preserve their life in the impending doomsday judgment.
They would gather at night in mountain valleys outside the city, light candles, kneel facing the moon, and chant prayers praising the Demon King in unison with deep voices.
Chen Yu had seen the portrait of the Demon King they had drawn.
He had originally thought it would be some kind of terrifying demon, but to his surprise, it was a pitch-black entity.
A round, pitch-black Demon King?
Wasn't that just him?
Chen Yu fell into deep thought.
He didn't seem to have established this thing, did he?
Where was this all coming from?