Exclusive Publication
Author: Song Jian Xiao Niao
At three in the afternoon, the flow of people on Mingzhu Road was pitifully sparse.
A slender young woman walked under the newly lush canopy of trees.
The owners of the tobacco and liquor sundry shop, the barbershop, and the lottery ticket stand all poked their heads out, their tacit gazes falling upon the plainly dressed woman.
The woman’s face had a touch of baby fat, making her look round and cute. Even without a smile, she still had a likable appearance.
“Shen Jiang, is your grandmother alright?” The proprietress of the sundry shop was the first to speak, her tone filled with concern.
Shen Jiang turned her head. Remembering that the proprietress had been the one to help call the ambulance that day, she forced herself to rally her spirits and replied vaguely, “She’s okay.”
Seeing her stop, the others began to ask questions all at once. “Was that person from last week caught? Causing such a huge scene, it was terrifying.”
“You don’t get it. That person was causing a medical dispute. They were probably jealous of Mingxintang’s good business and came to make trouble. Right, Shen Jiang?”
“Not necessarily. That’s not what I saw people saying online…” The person speaking had a loud voice, but they immediately fell silent when they saw the unfriendly glares from the crowd.
The coldness on Shen Jiang’s face was so faint it was almost invisible. She didn’t listen any further, instead walking forward until she took out her keys and opened the main door to her family’s clinic. Golden dust motes in the air danced about as the door opened and closed. A shadow fell, blocking out all the probing and judgmental gazes from outside.
Unlike the flourishing greenery outside, the clinic was cold and deserted. The only thing that greeted Shen Jiang was a complete and utter mess. Medicinal herbs were scattered across the floor, mixed with shards of broken glass. Not far away, there was a dark stain of blood.
It wasn’t just anyone’s blood; it was her grandmother’s.
Shen Jiang quite agreed with what one of the neighbors had just said. She also felt that this medical dispute was orchestrated by a rival who was jealous of their good business.
In this era dominated by Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine had long fallen out of favor.
Mingxintang’s daily capacity of fifty patients was clearly enough to make their competitors green with envy.
As the successor to her grandmother’s traditional Chinese medicine practice, personally trained by the woman herself, Shen Jiang knew her grandmother’s medical skills better than anyone. How could she possibly harm a patient?
The general environment was poor nowadays. The quality of Chinese medicinal herbs was declining, no longer comparable to the past. A dose that used to require 10g of herbs might now need 30g to have the same effect.
Among all the clinics, big and small, in Nanze City, their Mingxintang had the best quality medicinal herbs. They were all authentic, high-quality herbs that her grandmother had painstakingly sourced from various places. Besides themselves, probably no one knew the effort her grandmother had spent on these herbs.
But on that day, no one had anticipated that things would spiral so completely out of control. Her grandmother had been shoved by that man and hit her head directly.
For an elderly person, any fall could be serious, let alone a traumatic brain injury that could be fatal.
Shen Jiang had spent all their savings at the hospital, barely managing to snatch her grandmother back from the jaws of death.
Shen Jiang bent down, took a broom and dustpan from the storage room, and began to clean meticulously.
Starting tomorrow, this place would no longer be open for business.
She was preparing to sell it.
Ten days had passed, and the police still hadn’t found the man who caused the trouble. Naturally, there was no sign of compensation, and Shen Jiang had no intention of trying to crowdfund from netizens. Firstly, they still had the clinic, so they weren’t desperate enough to beg. Secondly, the public opinion fermenting online was entirely skewed in favor of the troublemaker. Unlike their familiar neighbors who still showed concern, Mingxintang had been torn to shreds online.
These past few days, her and her grandmother’s phones had been flooded with an overwhelming barrage of harassing calls and abusive messages.
At first, Shen Jiang had no mind to deal with any of it. She had been standing guard outside the hospital’s ICU day and night and hadn’t even looked at her phone. Later… later, someone found out which hospital they were at, and the harassment escalated from online to offline.
Only then did Shen Jiang belatedly realize that her grandmother, the victim, had been turned into a quack doctor condemned by all, thanks to the amplification of online outrage.
As dusk settled, the aroma of cooking fires rose from the neighborhood.
Shen Jiang took the broom to the corner to turn on the light. After a round of cleaning, she was covered in dust.
Click.
With the sound, light arrived as expected, but it wasn’t the familiar incandescent bulb.
A shimmering, golden door suddenly appeared before her.
It hung in mid-air, so abrupt it was utterly unreal.
Shen Jiang froze, stunned by the sight that defied all cognition. She raised the broom and threw it at the door.
The golden door seemed to have some sort of ward triggered. The broom was forcefully repelled by an invisible force, and then a light flowed out like water, wrapping around Shen Jiang’s legs. It spread upward to the top of her head, irresistibly sucking her entire person into the door.
So hot.
A massive heatwave washed over her, and the air was almost devoid of moisture. Shen Jiang licked her lips subconsciously.
Her feet finally touched solid ground. Incredulous yet helpless, Shen Jiang accepted the bizarre event that had befallen her—she had transmigrated.
And when she saw her surroundings and the creature not far away, all her composure turned into stunned silence.
In that instant, all the blood in her body seemed to rush backward, straight to her brain.
The light in the vast, craggy space was dim, but the massive, hill-like body was still incredibly conspicuous. With the rise and fall of its breathing, its hard, black scales reflected a fine, mysterious light. The tooth-like protrusions on its spine were razor-sharp, and its enormous wings were folded behind its back, only a small corner visible.
Every detail screamed that the giant creature before Shen Jiang was an absolutely lethal beast.
The only thing that comforted Shen Jiang was that it currently had its eyes closed and seemed to be in a deep sleep.
But even though the other party was still asleep, Shen Jiang was rooted to the spot by the oppressive feeling brought on by its sheer size.
Shen Jiang: …
She wanted to go home.
The oppressive feeling from the black, hill-like behemoth was simply too strong. Crushing her would be as easy for it as crushing an ant.
She couldn’t imagine what would happen if it opened its eyes and saw a person suddenly appear in its bedroom…
Without hesitation, Shen Jiang tiptoed and began to move quietly.
She crept cautiously toward the nearest cave wall, trying her best to minimize her presence, then headed toward the source of light at the cave entrance.
Like a very slow-moving sloth, she carefully inched her way toward the light filtering in from the other end.
Shen Jiang couldn’t help but feel fortunate that she was wearing cloth shoes today. The soft soles made a barely perceptible sound as they stepped lightly on the rock, which made her feel that the situation wasn’t entirely hopeless.
As she moved, she got closer and closer to the cave entrance, which inevitably also brought her closer to the enormous black beast.
As the light changed, sunlight somehow began to spill in from a fissure above the cave, brightening the interior considerably. The massive pile of things beneath the giant beast was revealed. A dazzling light flashed in Shen Jiang’s eyes. She squinted to see, and her vision was filled with glittering, sparkling, brilliant gems that nearly blinded her.
In this highly tense environment, Shen Jiang’s brain was unusually active. Legend had it that powerful dragons loved shiny treasures.
Could this big fellow be a dragon?
Without looking any longer at the magnificent yet terrifying magical combination, Shen Jiang lowered her head.
She recalled a magazine article she had read in the past. It said that one’s gaze carries an energy field; if you stare for a long time, the other party can sense the corresponding heat of being watched.
The mere shadow of the mountain-like body was already overwhelmingly oppressive. Shen Jiang could even clearly hear her own heart, which had already leaped into her throat.
Thump. Thump.
In a state of high mental and physical tension, a person’s stamina is consumed at an astonishing rate. The further Shen Jiang went, the more strenuous it became.
For some reason, she felt the temperature in the cave was getting higher and higher, drying up the moisture in the air and burning away what little oxygen there was.
Sweat had long since soaked the clothes on her back.
The string of tension in Shen Jiang’s mind grew tighter and tighter. Fortunately, she had made it through most of this perilous path without incident. Just a few more steps, and she could be outside, breathing fresh air.
The Tyndall beam of light not far away carried all of Shen Jiang’s hopes.
Soon, that hope was dashed.
After rounding a protruding rock wall, the cave entrance appeared right before her eyes.
Shen Jiang was stunned to find that the exit here wasn’t on the ground, but a wide opening several meters high in the ceiling. The cave walls were smooth, offering no possibility of climbing out.
Bright sunlight poured down from the opening, illuminating the stark white bones on the ground.
Suddenly, the faint, almost imperceptible smell of blood became omnipresent.
Even though she had dealt with cadavers countless times in class and had never once frowned or flinched, seeing this pile of bones that resembled human tibias now made the hair on her back stand on end.
Don’t panic. There must be another way out.
Shen Jiang looked up and estimated the distance from the opening to the ground. It was at least four or five meters high.
This must be the gate the giant beast had prepared for itself, allowing it to soar into the sky directly.
Shen Jiang looked around for anything she could use, but even if she included this pile of bones, it was obviously too late to build a platform.
If she could move that huge pile of jewels from under the beast to below the opening, she might be able to climb out using the height.
Shen Jiang’s eyes lit up.
Perhaps when the beast went out to hunt, she could try this method. For now, she had to find a suitable place to hide.
As Shen Jiang was tiptoeing back, she didn’t notice that the black dragon had long since opened its eyes. The black dragon’s golden vertical pupils were like translucent, flowing gems. It looked down from on high at the uninvited human, its cold gaze like it was looking at a dead person.
An overconfident ant, daring to step into his home as if it owned the place.
Godwin·Westzer’s golden draconic eyes followed the human’s slow movements, but his expression grew stranger and stranger.
This was an extremely young human female. Her skin was as delicate and tender as pale pink rose petals, and her slender figure possessed none of the powerful beauty that dragons appreciated. She didn’t fit the standard of a mature human knight at all.
There were no magical fluctuations on her body, which was why Godwin·Westzer hadn’t noticed her presence at first. After all, he had never bothered with the foolish insects that wandered into his cave.
Look at the clothes she was wearing, a single, extremely soft, thin layer. One must know that humans were exceedingly fragile; a dragon’s hard, sharp claws could easily disembowel them.
This was the first time Godwin·Westzer had ever seen a human not wearing armor.
Godwin·Westzer was slightly stunned. Everything about this ordinary human conveyed a single message: fearlessness born of confidence.
As long as she had normal reasoning abilities and wasn’t a fool, then she must possess some extraordinary confidence to dare to wander into his dragon’s lair looking like this.
How did she enter his lair so silently?
Before Godwin could figure it out, the human glanced at the treasure beneath him with an extremely familiar, greedy look.
Godwin’s fists clenched.
A gust of wind suddenly rose in the cave.
Caught off guard and thrown to the ground by an extraordinary, absolute force, Shen Jiang couldn’t help but gasp. She hadn’t even seen how she was knocked over.
The dragon’s excessively large, triangular claw pressed firmly on her slender body, leaving no room to breathe. The intimate contact between her back and the ground was swift, and pain shot through her limbs. A muffled groan escaped Shen Jiang’s throat.
In a daze, Shen Jiang looked up at the giant beast pinning her to the ground. At that sight, her heart stopped for several beats.
Looking it in the eye at such a close distance, the visual impact was even more intense. Not to mention, its claws were harder than the rock beneath her. With that absolute power crushing down on her, the fact that Shen Jiang didn’t faint on the spot was her last act of defiance.
She remembered news reports of tourists who accidentally fell into the tiger enclosure at a zoo, torn to bloody shreds… Her heart was gradually filled with the bitterness of rising despair.
She had been just one step away from getting out.
One dragon, one person, staring at each other.
Neither moved.
Shen Jiang was completely unable to move. Her body was held fast, the rough, uneven texture of the ground pressed against her back. The huge black claw on her chest was incomparably sharp, emitting a cold, chilling glint.
The giant beast before her leaned down, its lantern-sized eyes staring straight at her from the side—cold, fierce, indifferent, brutal, with a condescending scrutiny.
Even though her whole body ached as if it had fallen apart, under the effect of the surging adrenaline, Shen Jiang instantly forgot the pain.
The black beast stared at her with unfriendly eyes, yet it didn’t strike. This couldn’t help but raise a question in Shen Jiang’s mind.
Did this big guy just freeze up?
Shen Jiang didn’t care what was wrong with it. Since it hadn’t dealt her a fatal blow, there was room for negotiation.
Shen Jiang tried her best to force the most harmless and friendly smile, attempting to send a friendly signal to a wild beast. Her eyes were fixed on it, not daring to relax for a second.
It was rare for Godwin·Westzer to see a human give him such a fawning smile. Although he didn’t want to admit it, he still had to say that this human’s smile was uglier than her crying.
The originally cute and pleasant human face was twisted into an extremely awkward expression. Her eyes were full of unease, but the corners of her mouth were turned up without any emotion. The muscle lines of her entire face were ugly to the extreme.
This sight was simply challenging the bottom line of the dragon with the best aesthetic taste in the world.
Godwin couldn’t bear to look at such a distressing scene, yet he was helpless against the fearless human under his claw.
Yes, he was helpless.
This was the first time Godwin·Westzer had encountered such a situation. His eyes couldn’t help but reveal a hint of astonishment, his probing gaze sweeping back and forth over the frail human under his claw.
This human was truly bizarre.
Just now, he had personally confirmed that her breathing had stopped, that there were no signs of life.
But a few breaths later, the human before him, who had been like a lifeless rag doll, her crushed chest gradually filled out and began to rise and fall. The specks of blood that had splattered on her vanished into thin air, and her rosy-pink face was as delicate and white as before.
And that pair of doe-like black pupils were the same as ever, looking at him in terror, just like their very first encounter, with no difference at all.
After the first test, Godwin had eventually developed a killing intent, his every move fatal.
Once, twice… in the end, he himself couldn’t remember how many times, only the numb, mechanical motions.
He, the world’s greatest and most outstanding fire dragon, Godwin·Westzer.
Couldn’t kill an ordinary human?
As the strongest among the dragon race, Godwin·Westzer had never known defeat. But this time, a momentary bewilderment finally appeared in his translucent golden eyes.
This human was very wrong.
She clearly had no combat power, yet she was the most difficult opponent he had ever encountered in his life.
He could easily kill her with any kind of magic, but this human would always return to her original state after dying, looking at him with those moist, black pupils, terrified and helpless.
He simply couldn’t kill her, so why did she have to feign fear?
What kind of evil black magic was this?
The human before him was too weak. With his power, a single strike would kill her on the spot, making it impossible to just lightly injure her.
He really didn’t know what the point of cultivating such magic was. To wait for someone to kill you and then revive?
Only offense is the best defense. Godwin·Westzer looked down on this strange black magic from the bottom of his heart.
Only pure, powerful strength like his was the goal that every magical creature should pursue throughout their life.
This human had no combat power at all. Although he couldn’t kill her, she couldn’t escape from his grasp either. A hint of mockery flashed in the black dragon’s eyes.
“Insignificant and despicable human, do you think that by mastering such an unpresentable, strange trick, you dare to dream of slaying a dragon and seizing its treasure?” A cold snort suddenly escaped from Godwin·Westzer’s throat.
The majestic, deep voice exploded above her head like thunder, its tone carrying obvious contempt. Despite the sweltering heat, Shen Jiang could still feel the bone-chilling cold in his tone.
Shen Jiang had long thought this black beast resembled a dragon, but she hadn’t expected it to actually be one.
And a talking dragon at that!
Ignoring the fact that her worldview had collapsed once again, Shen Jiang had no time to ponder the principle behind her ability to understand the draconic language. A thrill of joy from the depths of her soul made her tremble. Shen Jiang knew that her sliver of a chance to live had appeared!
Shen Jiang’s brain went into overdrive, and in an instant, inspiration struck.
Ignoring her wretched posture, Shen Jiang spoke with utmost sincerity, “Respected Lord Dragon, I am by no means a dragon slayer! In fact, I am your admirer! I traveled thousands of miles just to witness your heroic and unparalleled grace!”
The black dragon Godwin·Westzer looked at that pair of extremely beautiful, innocent black eyes and was suddenly at a loss for words. “…”
He was, after all, an unparalleled and powerful existence on this continent. How could he possibly have such a despicable and shameless admirer?