On Changban Slope, the battle flames burned fiercely, and fresh blood soaked the land like a surging tide, mercilessly.
Zhao Yun raised his hand to wipe the blood plasma obscuring his right eye; the broken spear shaft was deeply embedded in his palm, sending waves of stinging pain.
A Dou, held in his arms, suddenly burst into loud cries, and that crying seemed to contain a mysterious power, causing the shouting Cao Army to halt abruptly.
This cry resonated strangely, like the first cry of a young dragon, shaking the earth and startling everyone's state of mind.
"Stop that white-robed general!"
The roar of a Cao General came like thunder from the southeast. Seven Tiger and Leopard Cavalry charged forward swiftly in a wedge formation; as their war horses' iron hooves trampled over the corpses of their comrades, what splashed up were not ordinary blood spatters, but eerie blue flames.
Those flames outlined mysterious talisman shapes under the bright daylight, exuding a chilling aura.
Zhao Yun's pupils contracted sharply; he keenly sensed that this battle was far more bizarre and dangerous than imagined.
The Azure Gown Sword moved like a cold moonlight, carving out an arc like a half-moon, and three helmeted heads flew into the sky.
The moment the sword tip pierced the fourth cavalryman's throat, Zhao Yun suddenly felt the sword hilt grow hot.
The blood of the dead did not fall to the ground but suspended as droplets in the air, slowly forming distorted oracle bone script.
"Heaven and Earth are unkind..."
He subconsciously recited these words, and instantly, the entire battlefield seemed frozen by an incantation, falling into a dead silence.
The burning banner was fixed in the moment of toppling, and crushed stones splashing out hung three inches from noses, unmoving.
Only A Dou's crying grew louder, and golden-red blood threads seeped from the gaps in the swaddling clothes, weaving into a giant character for "Dragon" in the air, emitting a mysterious and majestic aura.
From the northwest came the familiar and bold roar of Zhang Fei.
"The man from Yan, Zhang Yide, is here!"
The sound wave crashed like a surging tide, and the moment it struck the remnants of the Changban Slope bridge, the ground beneath Zhao Yun began to pulse violently.
That was not the tremor of an ordinary earthquake; it was more like some colossal creature turning over underground.
The Cao Army's war drum sound suddenly synchronized with the subterranean heartbeat; every drumbeat shook his Dantian Qi Vortex, making it feel as if his internal organs were about to shatter.
"Zilong, hurry and go!"
Jian Yong's shout tore through the air and reached Zhao Yun's ears.
He turned his head to look, and the most bizarre scene of his life was reflected in his pupils.
Jian Yong's figure holding the torch was fading, like an ink painting being washed away by rain, gradually becoming indistinct.
Further away, the Cao General whom Zhang Fei had speared with his Eight-Foot Serpent Spear dissolved into green smoke, as if he had never existed.
The swaddling clothes in his arms suddenly became as heavy as a mountain. Zhao Yun looked down and saw A Dou's pupils turn into vertical golden slits, and the infant's tender hands were pressing against his chest.
Countless memory fragments surged into his mind like a tidal wave: a bronze collar with a tiger-head crest, a burning towering tree, a crowned skeleton—these images flashed by, leaving deep confusion in his heart.
The sky seemed to be torn apart by an invisible giant hand, and a pitch-black rift slowly split open above his head.
Semi-transparent tentacles stretched out from the rift, emitting a strange aura. The first Cao Army cavalryman touched by them instantly shriveled, and the human skin wrapped in armor drifted away like fallen leaves, leaving only empty armor behind.
Zhao Yun blocked with his sword guard, but the Azure Gown Sword let out a mournful cry of being unable to bear the strain. Where the blade met the tentacles, seven-colored light burst forth, illuminating the star sand swirling deep within the rift; that star sand seemed to hide endless mysteries.
"Hourglass?"
He glimpsed a giant timer formed by starlight. The upper half was the bloody battlefield of Changban Slope, while the lower half showed strange mountains and rivers shrouded under a purple moon.
When the last grain of bloody sand fell, A Dou's cry transformed into a clear dragon roar. Darkness, like a surging tide, instantly swallowed his five senses.
At this critical moment between life and death, Zhao Yun instinctively circulated his inner qi. The Dantian Qi Vortex spun wildly, actually forming a visible Yin-Yang diagram around his body, emitting a mysterious glow.
He felt himself drifting in a viscous river of time, his ears filled with the murmurs of billions of living beings: incantations from Elves, war songs of the Beast Race, and the low chuckles of demons intertwined, as if telling an unknown secret.
Intense pain exploded from his left wrist, surging like a violent wave. In the chaos, Zhao Yun saw fragments of the swaddling clothes embedded in his skin, transforming into azure scale patterns.
The remaining Azure Gown Sword blade was stuck in the spatial rift, and the sword body reflected his own face growing younger.