Word Count: 3,041
******
The seven-colored radiance fell into Zhao Xuanzhen’s palm.
The Planar Spirit’s will frantically drew on the vast energy of the Douluo Continent, and countless motes of light streamed in from every direction, forging themselves into a spear.
Ancient inscriptions of mountains, rivers, and trees were carved along the shaft, drifting up and down like living things.
Liquid blood-red light flowed over the spearhead.
Zhao Xuanzhen gripped the seven-colored spear and fixed his gaze on Tang San, still sealed by the Heaven Plate’s Nine Stars!
He drew back, gathered his strength, and hurled it!
The sky was black as ink.
The seven-colored spear tore across it like a meteor, dragging a rainbow trail more than a hundred meters long in its wake.
Wherever the spearhead passed, tree-like cracks burst through space and spread into the distance.
Through those shattered rifts, one could faintly glimpse all things in the world rising and sinking.
The Spear of Planar Vengeance!
The seven-colored spear pierced straight through Tang Wulin’s chest.
Not a single drop of blood fell, yet Zhao Xuanzhen could clearly see blue-gold halos surging wildly out of the body that should have belonged to Tang Wulin alone.
Tang San’s aura withered in an instant.
His blue-gold eyes locked onto Zhao Xuanzhen, and he spoke with cold fury.
“Variable of Fate, Planar Spirit! Do you really think defeating one strand of my divine consciousness is the end? I will return and rewrite this outcome!”
“I’ll be waiting, Tang San.”
Zhao Xuanzhen’s tone did not so much as ripple.
From this day on, Tang San would no longer interfere with the Douluo Continent.
With the Divine Realm’s return still nowhere in sight, he would use this window of heavenly opportunity to clip the God King’s wings one feather at a time and prepare a magnificent funeral for him!
In the end, neither of them spoke another harsh word.
They only stared at each other in silence, as if to carve the other deep into heart and soul, to remember that hatred for all eternity.
They were destined to be enemies who would never rest until one of them died.
BOOM—
The blue-gold light burst apart and Tang San’s divine consciousness scattered on the wind.
Tang Wulin’s whole body shuddered.
He opened his wide black eyes, slightly dazed.
“Where am I?”
High above the ground, Tang Wulin stood on the lingering stellar power the Heaven Plate had condensed and stared down at Eastsea City, which had shrunk to a tiny point far below.
A trace of panic rose unbidden on his face.
He had been meditating in the Class Zero dormitory.
How had he suddenly woken up in the sky?
And why was there a figure wrapped in cloud and mist standing right across from him!
“Who are you?”
Tang Wulin bent forward slightly and forced himself to stay calm.
With the weak spirit power of a one-ringed Spirit Master, there was no way he could see through Zhao Xuanzhen’s true appearance beneath the power of deceit.
All he could do was probe cautiously.
Zhao Xuanzhen was about to respond when something shifted in his senses and his expression turned grave.
The next moment, Tang Wulin felt an abnormally scorching energy erupt inside his body, and an impassioned dragon roar rang out!
That roar was filled with excitement, fury, venomous hatred, and an endless desire to destroy.
Golden light shot straight into the clouds and condensed into a massive illusory golden dragon!
The dragon stretched a hundred meters long, broad and mighty.
Thick bloodline power spread from it in all directions.
Its scales looked like dazzling golden gems carved with magnificent spiral patterns, and its blood-red eyes were full of savagery and bloodlust.
The Golden Dragon King had gone berserk!
Seventeen blue-gold rings shimmered brilliantly around the coiling golden dragon body.
On the weakest of them, faint seven-colored motes of light clung like parasites!
‘The aftershock from that spear…’
Zhao Xuanzhen narrowed his eyes.
Back when the Golden Dragon King had been slain by the God Kings of the Divine Realm, it had, in its dying struggle, driven the core containing all its power into Tang Wulin’s body, hoping to drag him down to hell in a mutual exchange.
Instead, its plan had backfired completely.
Tang San placed eighteen seals on the Golden Dragon King Core and turned it into nourishment for Tang Wulin’s growth.
By this point, Tang Wulin had already broken through the first seal and absorbed that initial layer of the Golden Dragon King’s energy.
The remaining seventeen seals should have stayed intact, but the Planar Spirit had hated Tang San to the bone.
When the seven-colored spear pierced Tang Wulin’s chest, it not only erased Tang San’s divine consciousness but also began tearing apart the divine seals Tang San had left behind!
“ROAR—”
The Golden Dragon King let out a furious bellow.
The second seal shattered at once!
All seventeen seals were interconnected; disturb one, and the rest would follow.
Tang Wulin had no ability to absorb the second layer’s power yet, so the Golden Dragon King seized control of all that energy and crashed headlong into the third seal!
This golden dragon, the embodiment of the Dragon God’s power and its side of destruction, was trying to smash through every seal in one stroke, descend into the mortal world, and annihilate everything in its path!
“Old Tang, save me!”
Tang Wulin cried out.
As the vessel of the Golden Dragon King Core, he was enduring a destructive impact beyond compare, and his body was already on the verge of collapse!
But Old Tang had already vanished.
Tang Wulin’s call was doomed to go unanswered.
“Old Tang is dead,” Zhao Xuanzhen said flatly.
Tang Wulin’s face flushed an unnatural red.
He endured the pain the Golden Dragon King was inflicting on him and asked in a trembling voice, “You did that?”
“Yes.” Zhao Xuanzhen made no attempt to hide it. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“To use his own words, he had already stepped onto the path to death.”
The path to death?
Tang Wulin instinctively disliked the phrase.
It sounded like a clumsy excuse used to force blame onto someone else.
“Do you think Old Tang was a good person?” Zhao Xuanzhen asked.
“I don’t know.” Tang Wulin paused for a moment.
“We’ve only met a handful of times. He just told me what spiritual items I needed to unlock the Golden Dragon King’s seals, and I gained power through the seals in return.”
“Then have you ever had gaps in your memory? Or found yourself somewhere for no reason, like today?”
Tang Wulin fell silent.
Ever since meeting Old Tang, he had blacked out three times in total.
The first time was not long after he entered Eastsea Academy.
Gu Yue had invited him to Eastsea Park, and his memory ended the moment he saw several strange people walking toward them.
When he came to, they had all vanished.
The second time was during Class Zero’s final exam in the Spirit Ascension Platform, when he was fighting a genius from the Spirit Pagoda.
His memory had gone blank for an instant.
The third time was today.
He had woken from cultivation only to find himself standing high in the sky, completely bewildered, with the Golden Dragon King on the verge of breaking free.
“You mean… Old Tang was the root of all this? And he took control of my body back then?” Tang Wulin was sharp, and he quickly grasped what Zhao Xuanzhen was implying.
“Exactly. With Old Tang dead, he won’t be able to forcefully control you again. But now there’s a problem staring us in the face. The Golden Dragon King is in revolt, smashing through the seals inside you one layer after another. If it breaks through them all, no one on the Douluo Continent will be able to stop it. You, and every human on this continent, will fall into endless death.”
“No! I still have to find my parents!”
Reuniting with Tang Ziran and Lang Yue was Tang Wulin’s greatest wish.
Anxiety filled his face.
“Is there no way to seal the Golden Dragon King again?”
“There is.”
Zhao Xuanzhen gave a slight nod.
“Before all the seals are broken, I can place a second, stabilizing seal on it. The Golden Dragon King Core is one of the greatest treasures in this world. The ones who covet it are not people you can fight, and you won’t be able to protect it. After the second sealing, I’ll take over the Golden Dragon King. In the process, your Martial Spirit will be tempered by the power that leaks from it.”
Tang Wulin did not hesitate for even a second.
He nodded hard.
“Mom and Dad are waiting for me to find them.
I don’t want to die, and I don’t want anyone on the Douluo Continent to die because of the Golden Dragon King either.
They all have parents who love them too.
The Golden Dragon King gave me power, but it also caused me a lot of trouble.
If my appetite hadn’t been so terrifying, if it hadn’t eaten my family into ruin, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have disappeared trying to earn money.
On top of that, the spiritual items needed to break the Golden Dragon King’s seals are far too expensive.
The second seal alone costs tens of millions of federation coins.
And without Old Tang, I don’t even know what items the remaining seals require, let alone how to deal with other people setting their sights on it.
Possessing a treasure invites disaster.
If I keep trying to force the Golden Dragon King Core to stay inside me, I might even pay with my life.
Take it.
I want a peaceful life.”
Tang Wulin was remarkably clear-headed.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in his heart, growing up safely and finding his parents mattered far more than the Golden Dragon King Core.
“Good.”
Zhao Xuanzhen laughed softly.
“Suppressing this Dragon King will cost me quite a bit, but compared with a Dragon King Core, that little price is hardly worth mentioning.”
The night of blazing stars had not yet ended.
The Heaven Plate’s Nine Stars suddenly flared to life, trembling as they drew in stellar power without end.
The Heaven Plate shook violently, and fine spiderweb cracks spread across its surface!
The Heaven Plate… shattered!
The surrounding stellar power broke through its limit!
Tang San had only been a strand of divine consciousness, while the Golden Dragon King was an entire core.
The gap between the two was an unbridgeable chasm.
Fortunately, Tang San had done some real work after all.
The Golden Dragon King’s seals were still reasonably firm.
Even in its frenzy, the Golden Dragon King had only managed to crash its way to the fifth seal!
Zhao Xuanzhen lightly tapped the air with his fingertip and spoke in a low voice.
“Eight Divine Powers, Teng She. The Heaven Plate amplified by blazing stars. The Planar Spirit’s remaining power. And… the Human Plate’s Eight Gates!”
Four terrifying auras erupted simultaneously.
The sky twisted violently under that pressure, and within a hundred-mile radius the sea of clouds churned and blasted outward in an instant.
Zhao Xuanzhen’s entire body turned molten gold.
Fierce golden flames burned across him.
Tang Wulin stared, unable to look away.
The strongest person he knew was Spirit Emperor Wu Zhangkong.
Never in his life had he witnessed a spectacle of this magnitude!
“ROAR—”
The Golden Dragon King roared in furious rage.
Since the day of its birth, its life had been spent almost entirely in confinement!
When the Dragon God split into the Golden Dragon King and the Silver Dragon King, the Silver Dragon King fled while the Golden Dragon King was defeated and sealed in the Divine Realm’s Forbidden Land.
After finally clawing its way into a second life, it had been nailed to death by the Sword of Three Trials, only for its prison to change from one place to another until it ended up sealed inside Tang Wulin!
And now it was facing yet another seal!
Would this never end?!
Stellar power surged like rushing rivers.
The light was so dazzling it was impossible to look at directly.
Eight gates stood guard in the eight cardinal directions, and the radiance they traced intertwined into a gigantic formation that trapped the Golden Dragon King within.
“Eight Gates, Soul Suppression!”
The final plate of the Eight Trigrams Qimen—the Human Plate, which governed human harmony— the Human Plate Eight Gates Art!
The Golden Dragon King struggled wildly.
Its mountain-like dragon body slammed into the Human Plate’s Eight Gates again and again, every impact triggering a world-shaking explosion.
The eight gates did not budge.
Behind them stood the Heaven Plate’s seemingly endless amplification of stellar power.
And the Golden Dragon King had not yet broken enough of its seals.
Its dragon roars gradually weakened!
Then the Golden Dragon King’s illusory form froze, as if struck by Medusa’s Gaze.
It turned rigid and began to crack apart.
Under the trembling stare of those blood-red dragon eyes, the enormous body collapsed and condensed into a single brilliant golden crystal.
The Golden Dragon King Core!
It was diamond-shaped and the size of a fist, covered in sharp crossing lines, with a slightly raised center.
Tyrannical bloodline power radiated from it without restraint.
The instant Tang Wulin lost the Golden Dragon King Core, his first feeling was actually one of relief.
Then a wave of searing heat swept through him.
His blood boiled as if it had turned to fire, and every pore in his body vented hot steam.
He gave a muffled groan and nearly lost his footing.
Golden mesh-like lines traced across his forehead.
Tang Wulin instinctively summoned his Blue Silver Grass Martial Spirit, and thick blue vines as wide as fingers burst out, spreading around him without pause.
The Blue Silver Grass expanded rapidly and claimed a small corner of the sky.
Blue light sparkled over it like crystal, and regular golden veins appeared along the center of each blade.
Martial Spirit Evolution, Gold-Patterned Blue Silver Grass!
The Golden Dragon King was half of the Dragon God.
A mere trace of its leaking power was enough to evolve Blue Silver Grass.
Zhao Xuanzhen had not stripped away every last drop of the Golden Dragon King’s bloodline.
The power contained within the first five seals amounted to little more than scraps shed from the Golden Dragon King’s body.
Tang Wulin had handed over such a precious gift; letting him receive some benefit in return was only fair.
Zhao Xuanzhen would not place Tang San’s filthy deeds onto the shoulders of an ignorant ten-year-old child.
Tang Wulin jumped up in excitement.
With Blue Silver Grass evolving into Gold-Patterned Blue Silver Grass, he could clearly feel the tremendous improvement in the origin of his Martial Spirit.
The speed of his spirit power circulation was several times greater than before, which meant his future cultivation speed would increase drastically!
Blue Silver Grass had always been the classic trash Martial Spirit of the Douluo Continent.
Fused with the Golden Dragon King’s power, Gold-Patterned Blue Silver Grass was undoubtedly a top-level plant-type Martial Spirit!
Trading away a ticking time bomb like the Golden Dragon King Core in exchange for top-level talent as a Spirit Master and a broad, smooth path of cultivation ahead, Tang Wulin felt that his future was full of promise.
He would no longer need to worry about the money required to break the seals.
All he had to do from now on was cultivate well and search for his parents!
Contentment brought happiness.
Tang Wulin had always been an optimist.
“Thank you… huh?”
He had wanted to thank Zhao Xuanzhen, but only then did he notice that the other party looked anything but well.
Crisscrossing bloodstreaks covered his body, and the slightest movement sent arcs of blood spraying out.
Strangely, none of the wounds bled heavily; instead, they were closing at an astonishing rate.
“You look like you’re spurting blood everywhere… Are you okay?” Tang Wulin asked weakly.
“Burned through it all…”
Zhao Xuanzhen casually wiped away some blood.
Even with Teng She bearing the brunt of the pressure, his frail body as a three-ringed Spirit Elder had still been pushed to its absolute limit.
He used his True Self Martial Spirit to precisely control his muscles and forcibly staunch the bleeding.
Probably only a Body Martial Spirit could manipulate bodily functions so perfectly.
The Heaven Plate had overloaded and shattered.
The Human Plate was now occupied suppressing the Golden Dragon King.
Two of the Eight Trigrams Qimen’s Four Plates were temporarily unusable.
The price he had paid was by no means small.
Still, all of it was worth it.
Only three world-shaking threats remained on the Douluo Continent: Blue Silver Empress Ah Yin, who was devouring the Plane’s Life Core; the Abyssal Plane, which eyed the continent like a tiger watching its prey; and the Demonic Plane, observing from the shadows.
Both the Abyssal Plane and the Demonic Plane lay beyond the Douluo Continent’s borders, so the first threat Zhao Xuanzhen had to face was naturally Ah Yin.
Once she finished devouring the Ancient Golden Tree, there was a very good chance she would emerge from seclusion to seek revenge on him.
‘Blue Silver Empress first…’
Zhao Xuanzhen made his decision in silence.
Then he turned to Tang Wulin, and to the stalks of Gold-Patterned Blue Silver Grass that stood tall and unbending no matter how fiercely the wind blew, and spoke slowly.
“I once heard a saying: individual lives differ, but the world’s total measure of good and evil never changes. From the moment they are born, everyone plays a role of their own. Some are good. Some are evil. From now on, with no outsider interfering in your life, what kind of person you become depends only on you.”
“Mm! I’ll definitely be myself!”
The boy gently stroked his Gold-Patterned Blue Silver Grass, his eyes shining bright.
In this life, the Tang in Tang Wulin no longer came from his biological father, Tang San.
It came from his adoptive father, Tang Ziran.