The Path Toward Heaven

The greed and cruelty in the Old Dragon’s eyes changed to bewilderment.

He didn’t understand why Jing Jiu had stopped short and took that.

And moreover, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t reach up a bit more to bite his opponent to death.

The Old Dragon turned his head downward and saw his body. By now he understood what had just happened; he let out a dreadful, draconian scream.

The dragon scream was soundless, but others could still feel its dreadfulness. It was because the pain in his pupils was so evident.

The black body of the Old Dragon tightened suddenly.

It seemed as if someone was pulling him down forcefully from below.

The icicles created by the dragon breath were drifting in the Empty Realm.

The Old Dragon crushed those icicles while dropping quickly to the ground.

As he dropped, his pupils stared steadfastly at Jing Jiu. His eyes were full of resentment and anger.

…

…

Countless eyes saw the Old Dragon leaving Zhaoge City and pursuing the black speck.

The huge black head of the dragon had disappeared in the sky, and it should have entered the Empty Realm; but the dragon’s tail was still inside the ruins of Taichang Temple. The black body of the dragon stretched from the ground to the sky for at least ten miles long, resembling a tornado.

Xiang Wanshu and other Center Sect disciples looked at the incredulous scene extending from heaven to earth with the pale faces, but their eyes showed a warm emotion.

Besides fear, their eyes displayed something more akin to pride; it was because the dragon was the divine guardian animal of the Center Sect, and their great grandmaster: the Old Dragon!

The amazing and grand scene shocked many people. It was terribly quiet inside and outside Zhaoge City.

Royal Concubine Hu was shocked more than anybody else. Her face was pale, and her body was trembling. She leaned against the Emperor as she could barely stand up straight.

The Emperor suddenly laughed noiselessly, and displayed an expression of relief. He gave the Jade-Egg of Rosefinch back to Royal Concubine Hu.

Royal Concubine Hu was stunned, and hurriedly held it carefully with both of her hands, musing on what had happened. She followed the Emperor’s gaze to look in the direction of Taichang Temple. She suddenly wondered if her eyes betrayed her; otherwise…why did the body of the dragon look a lot thinner than before?

…

…

Outside the ruins of Taichang Temple, Yue Qianmen craned his neck to look into the sky, waiting for the return of the divine dragon while thinking about something else.

The presence of the divine dragon violated the accord reached by the Center Sect and the imperial court, and he also destroyed many residential homes; but these were all trivial matters.

What he was concerned the most was, who was that man who had escaped from the Fiend Prison in the beginning? How could he make the divine dragon so furious?

Yue Qianmen brought back his gaze and looked at the two masters of the Royal Palace not far from him. His expression was grim, wondering if the incident had something to do with the imperial court.

If that were the case, he would advise the Immortal Sect Master, when he arrived here, to rip up the accord with the imperial court, which was reached by both sides a great many years ago.

Now that the divine dragon had already left the underground, he should not come back here again, instead going directly back to the Cloud-Dream Mountain.

Yet, Yue Qianmen suddenly felt something out of place. As he looked at the black wall amid the dusts and chaotic rain, his expression changed a bit.

More than a minute had passed, and the divine dragon had already entered the Empty Realm, but why was the dragon’s tail still in the ground?

Was it because the divine dragon sacrificed himself as the Fiend Prison and purged the demons and devils on behalf of the human race over the years, and his prowess had improved so that his body grew longer than when he was on the Cloud-Dream Mountain?

The chief commander of the Pure Heaven Bureau, Zhang Yiai, as well as Xiang Wanshu and others who were Cultivation practitioners trained at the Center Sect also noticed this, showing a puzzled expression.

Sir Niu and Sir Jing, the two principal guards of the Royal Palace, drifted backwards slowly, as if facing a formidable foe.

In the ruins.

The speed of the body of the dragon moving out of the ground slowed.

The glow on the black scales was not as bright as before.

Every dragon scale looked like a section of the wall.

The space between each scale had increased visibly, exposing the flesh between the scales.

A sound that was difficult to describe occurred inside the dragon’s body, as well as above the ground.

It was the sound of tearing, or separating; it was more like the sound of a building being crushed to the ground under the tremendous pressure of a huge mountain.

As the dusts settled, the people around Taichang Temple could see clearly that the black body of the dragon had grown thinner!

The scene and the sound made the crowd think the worst of the situation.

It seemed that they were able to see in their mind’s eyes two coarse hands, full of calluses, holding the head and the tail of the black snake and pulling forcefully on both sides.

But, no two hands in the world were so big as to hold the head and the tail of the Old Dragon.

At least, this was the common opinion for the people present.

Then, there could be only one explanation.

One unimaginably powerful force in the deep part of the underground kept the dragon’s tail there.

The force was most likely at the place where the dragon’s tail was.

That is to say, the force was in the deepest part of the Fiend Prison!

The sudden turn of the event made everybody feel stunned, speechless. Yue Qianmen and the Cultivation practitioners of the Center Sect were both surprised and furious. They rushed toward the ruins with no thought the filthy and cold intent coming out from the ground.

Sir Jing and Sir Niu of the Royal Palace knew that the members of the Center Sect were on the verge of going insane at the moment, so they didn’t stop them.

Yue Qianmen was the first to arrive at the deep end of the ruins, and looked at the underground.

…

…

Liu Ada had been hiding at the deep end of the ruins, under a stone slab.

He was waiting for the Old Dragon to leave the ground and expose the weakness; yet, he didn’t see the dragon’s tail after a long wait, but instead witnessed such an amazing scene.

His eyes opened wide, full of shocked and perplexing emotions.

Liu Ada thought that though this dragon was immensely stupid; he should have perceived that his body had been stretched twice as long as it was before!

Was it because his limited intelligence had been totally consumed by his anger?

Liu Ada wondered if his extremely small dragon brain had been filled by Jing Jiu with the garbage in the Fiend Prison.

…

…

A gust of strong wind suddenly rose in Taichang Temple.

The black scales suddenly shrank, and the speed of shrinking sped up. Gradually, the black scales became a black line, impossible to see with the naked eyes.

The dragon’s body pulled back to the underground at an unimaginably fast speed, and clashed with the edge of the large hole in the ruins, causing plumes of dust to form which shot out in all directions like dense arrows.

Yue Qianmen grunted once and covered his face with his hands, backing up swiftly.

Xiang Wanshu and others were in much worse condition. Their bodies were hit many times along with the thumping sounds, and they fell down to the ground while spitting blood.

The angry screams of the Old Dragon could be heard from the high elevation in the sky.

The screams got increasingly closer.

It sounded like the thunders striking the ground, echoing in Zhaoge City.

The Old Dragon was like the black rubber band being held by two huge hands at two ends and pulled to its limit.

Then, the hand in the sky let it go.

In fact, the hand in the sky was the Old Dragon himself.

It was not his fault. Once the Old Dragon came back to his senses, he would let it go for sure.

If he had flown a bit higher, his body would have broken in two pieces.

Liu Ada raised his right paw and covered his eyes, because he couldn’t stand to see the subsequent scene.

The scene would be too appalling.

…

…

The Old Dragon fell down from the sky.

He, after losing control of his body, couldn’t enter the underground precisely from where he had come out.

The streets around Taichang Temple had been destroyed completely by the huge body of the Old Dragon.

The tremendous booming sound spread to the outside of Zhaoge City. The loud noise seemed like thunder occurring within earshot, and many people were so scared that they passed out as a result.

Zhaoge City experienced the most violent earthquake, and incalculable number of buildings had collapsed.

After a long time, the dusts had eventually settled.

Though the officials of the Pure Heaven Bureau and the soldiers of the magic army had backed up some distance in time, many of them still sustained injuries.

Yue Qianmen stood in front of all the others, soaked with muddy water, a bloody stain on one corner of his eyebrows.

Even he looked terrible, and one could only imagine just how powerful the dragon’s clash with the ground was.

The commotion caused by the dropping of the Cloud Platform into the West Ocean a few years ago was not as frightful as what happened today.

Yue Qianmen rushed to the ruins of Taichang Temple once more, and looked at the place where the Fiend Prison had been.

Countless cracks of about one hundred feet long extended to a large hole. The water filled the large hole to form a lake inside.

The lake was full of the violent and dreadful energy, and it was impossible to enter it.

One could vaguely see a dragon’s whisker wiggle feebly in the lake water, and then sink to the bottom of the lake, out of the sight.