Hua Yang Zhenjun's bloodied fingers trembled against the shards of his shattered crucible. The five-clawed bone dragon's remains smoldered around him, its necrotic aura dissipating into the seawater like ink in a storm. Yet victory tasted of ash and bile—his Celestial Azure Crucible, eight centuries of spiritual refinement, now lay scattered across the throne hall as worthless fragments.
"You..." The True Monarch's venomous gaze found Zhao Rui through the settling debris. Crimson ichor drippedfrom his perforated torso, each drop hissing where it struck dragonbone. "This was your design! Your... petty trick!"
Zhao Rui leaned casually against a half-melted jade pillar, the Ten Thousand Laws Tome glowing faintly at his belt. "You should thank me, Zhenjun. Few witness a dragon's true death throes."
The sarcasm ignited Hua Yang's crumbling composure. His remaining hand blurred through mudras older than the Dragon Palace itself. "I'll carve your tongue from—"
A wet cough interrupted the threat. The True Monarch staggered, golden core energy leaking through claw wounds that refused to heal. Reality itself seemed to warp around his injuries—temporal fractures spiderwebbing from each puncture.
Dun Che materialized from shadow, stolen dragon fang dagger gleaming. "Brother, his dantian's rupturing. Even if—"
"Even if he survives," Zhao Rui interrupted, fingers brushing the Tome's pulsating cover, "he'll never regain his former glory. Look."
Golden motes swirled around Hua Yang's wounds, their light revealing the truth—the dragon's final curse had etched anti-cultivation glyphs into his very essence.
A Monarch's Last Gambit
Hua Yang's laughter bubbled with madness and blood. "You think... this changes anything?" His remaining eye glowed with stolen dragonfire. "The Crucible was but a vessel! My true power—"
The seawater boiled.
From his ravaged meridians surged the stolen essence of ten thousand cultivators—souls consumed over centuries of dark ascension. Their agonized faces writhed beneath his skin as he drew the Dragon King's Golden Blood vial from spatial folds.
"Witness... transcendence!"
The amphora shattered in his grip. Liquid sunlight flooded the hall, its radiance momentarily outshining the Tome's glow. Hua Yang's body distended—ribs cracking as stolen divinity reshaped flesh into something other.
Dun Che's dagger clattered to the floor. "Ancestor's whiskers... he's becoming—"
"Not becoming." Zhao Rui's spatial bracelet flared. "Regressing."
The truth unfolded in horrific clarity. The Golden Blood reacted not with Hua Yang's stolen cultivation, but with the dragon glyphs etched in his bones. Scales erupted across his buckling skin as his spine elongated into a grotesque parody of the vanquished leviathan.
Twisted Reckoning
Hua Yang's final scream contained multitudes—the Dragon King's wrath harmonizing with his victims' eternal torment. His hybrid form thrashed against collapsing architecture, half-human hands clawing at the mutation consuming him.
"Now." Zhao Rui's whisper carried the weight of inevitability.
The Rahu Bow materialized—a crescent of void-black energy humming with antediluvian hunger. As Zhao Rui drew the string, the Tome's pages fluttered open to reveal a sigil burning with stolen dragonfire.
Dun Che gaped. "Since when could you—"
"The debt comes due."
The arrow took form—not wood and steel, but concentrated oblivion. It drank the hall's fading light, the mutated Hua Yang's stolen radiance, even the Tome's golden motes.
Hua Yang's mismatched eyes widened in primal recognition. "Y-You can't..."
Zhao Rui's smile held no mirth. "The dragons send their regards."
Eclipse
The release shook reality's foundations.
Hua Yang's abomination lunged in final defiance, dragon-jawed maw gaping to swallow the projectile. For a heartbeat, darkness prevailed.
Then—
Light returned in a supernova burst. The mutated form disintegrated from within, stolen essences streaming back to their rightful owners across space and time. The Dragon King's golden blood crystallized mid-air, falling as harmless dust.
When the glare faded, only three things remained:
Hua Yang's jade hairpin, embedded in what remained of the Dragon Throne.The Ten Thousand Laws Tome, now bound in dragonhide.A perfect circle of void where seawater refused to flow.
Dun Che prodded the unnatural emptiness with a cracked claw. "Did we... win?"
Zhao Rui examined the Tome's new binding—scales shifting to reveal the Dragon King's final commandment. "We survived. That's victory enough."
Somewhere in the lightless deep, something ancient stirred.