Chapter 49: Dragon-Swank Power Fantasy (48)

The borders of the northwestern realm are vast and boundless. The Demon Domain had dispatched the Void-Treading Horned Dragon to lead the vanguard, intending to launch a surprise attack. However, the Demon Lord never anticipated that the Snow Demon would rebel first, nor that the Void-Treading Horned Dragon, a master at the Great Perfection of the Tribulation Crossing realm, would have its head severed by a mere cultivator in full view of the public.

The Void-Treading Horned Dragon was a capable and trusted general under the Demon Lord, holding a prestigious reputation within the Demon Domain. Commanded by it, tens of thousands of fierce beasts were sent to assault the northwestern realm, the most thinly defended area. Not only was their commander beheaded, but the cultivators actually managed to hold the northwestern frontier.

What utter humiliation!

Meanwhile, the Devil Domain's assault on the eastern realm also suffered a defeat in its opening battle.

Despite the Demon Domain's meticulous planning over many years, it still lost to the mere human race. Not only was the Demon Lord furious, believing that he had been played for a fool by the realm of cultivation, but high-ranking devil-generals and demon-generals who were on good terms with the Void-Treading Horned Dragon—such as the Crimson-Soul Phantom Tiger, the Soul-Crying Hidden Beast, and the Blood-Feathered Sky Wolf—were also eager for a fight, unanimously turning their hostility toward the realm of cultivation.

Given the revered and exalted status of the Void-Treading Horned Dragon within the Demon Domain, and using the pretext of the Horned Dragon being beheaded by a nobody before the two armies, the Demon Domain suddenly made things difficult for the cultivation world, completely omitting the malicious intent behind their initial dispatch of tens of thousands of beasts to assault the northwestern realm of the realm of cultivation.

Among them, the Soul-Crying Hidden Beast and the Crimson-Soul Phantom Tiger were fierce beasts whose powers had already reached the Mahayana realm.

The Tri-Realm Alliance Pact was torn to shreds, and the Devil Domain used the exact same pretext to launch an assault on the eastern realm within a mere three days. This time, the Devil Lord personally led two of his high-ranking devil-generals, whose cultivation bases were both at the Mahayana realm, to formally declare war on the cultivation world.

Following the beast assault, Jinshuai City began to reallocate its military forces.

The pressure on the front lines was intense. The three Mahayana-realm masters of the cultivation world—the Carefree Sword Sovereign maintained order in the eastern realm, while Daoist Zhuolian and Venerable Yutan alleviated the pressure in the northwestern realm. With two Mahayana-realm venerables guarding the northwestern realm, aided by the Snow Demon, and the initial wave of beast attacks having severely damaged the morale of the demon race, there was no need for excessive worry.

However, while three Mahayana-realm masters guarded the borders, the Candle Dragon about to emerge at Descending Dragon Peak was far more tricky to deal with than these so-called Demon Lords, Devil Lords, and high-ranking generals. Yet, because the God-Slaying Dragon-Suppressing Array merely showed anomalous signs—contrasting with the burning emergency of the Devil Lord personally leading the charge alongside several top Demon Domain generals—Descending Dragon Peak could only receive a slight reinforcement of troops deployed in successive layers, with defensive arrays constructed to prevent any unforeseen changes.

Sure enough, before good news from the front lines could arrive, Descending Dragon Peak—the unpredictable ticking time bomb—finally caught everyone off guard on a rainy night.

The rain in the Fallen Mountain Range fell with unusual frequency.

Torrential downpours and fierce winds lashed the entire mountain range, casting pitch-black tree shadows that surged in layers amidst the peals of thunder. Three disciples stood guard outside the first-tier array of Descending Dragon Peak when they spotted a streak of sword light hurtling toward them from afar.

A young woman stood atop the sword.

The rain poured heavily, and muddy torrents rushed down the gentle slope. Without wearing a hood, her thick, dark hair was tied up high. She leaped down from the sword, leaving a trail of footsteps in the mud and scattered stones.

Amidst the roaring thunder, a flash of lightning illuminated her eyes.

Through the pattering curtain of rain, those eyes resembled a fierce beast lurking in the night, as calm and steady as a deep pool, yet the pool was thousands of feet fathomless, akin to an endless abyss.

The disciple on the far left had recently commissioned someone to buy quite a few folk vernacular tales, all of which were eerie stories of severed hands and legs. Catching sight of this solitary young girl suddenly intruding upon Descending Dragon Peak, he instantly felt a succession of chilly drafts brushing past his ears, turning his heart ice cold.

Although cultivators had embarked on the path of cultivation, the realm of cultivation was currently fraught with danger; no one dared to slacken the tense string in their mind.

Moreover, his cultivation was at the Nascent Soul realm, yet he could not detect even the slightest aura from this girl. This...

Could she really be a ghost?!

"Who goes there!"

He raised his voice and shouted sternly, "Without a passage token, unauthorized entry into the forbidden grounds of Descending Dragon Peak is prohibited!"

His voice was infused with spiritual energy; even a deaf person could hear him speak. Yet halfway through, his voice trembled slightly and imperceptibly, betraying that the speaker's inner self was not as calm as his volume suggested.

"Su Bai."

The newcomer answered calmly, pulling a token made of white jade from her bosom: "Elder Ruogu told me to come in."

The three of them were thunderstruck by the name Su Bai.

A forty-year-old cultivator at the Spirit Severing realm, the creator of the number one sword in the world, the Suozhao Sword, the youngest champion at the Three Thousand Daoist Laws Assembly, wielding the Dragon-Singing Sword with the endowment of a innate sword heart.

It was also she who, relying on her own strength, severed the head of the Void-Treading Horned Dragon amidst the chaotic armies, deterring tens of thousands of fierce beasts with a single sword strike.

The Void-Treading Horned Dragon, at the Tribulation Crossing realm, possessed an astonishing array of self-preservation methods as one of the few spatial-attribute fierce beasts, yet it inexplicably lost its life under her sword before it could even display its skills on the battlefield.

Numerous impressions of her circulated on the communication jades. The three of them exchanged glances, and amid two or three peals of thunder and lightning in the gloomy rainy night, they recognized that the upright young woman before them indeed bore a seventy to eighty percent resemblance to that renowned champion.

"So it is Daoist Su! Please forgive my lack of respect!"

The guards instantly breathed sighs of relief, feeling all the more that this girl was reliable the more they looked at her.

What killing intent?

What demons and ghosts?

This was clearly a wellspring of absolute safety!

Just as Su Bai entered Descending Dragon Peak, she heard a deafening roar. The entire mountain mass shook along with this roar.

Rolling debris chased one another down the mountain slope, and mud poured down like a waterfall. Su Bai raised her head. In the deep, bottomless rainy night, the overlapping mountain peaks looked like fierce beasts lurking, and faint, low roars could be heard echoing in succession.

The 888 system said in her sea of consciousness: "Oh no, the Candle Dragon has emerged ahead of schedule!"

The mountain mass was collapsing rapidly. A fissure suddenly appeared beneath the girl's feet, and chunks of earth erupted and cracked, being forced open inch by inch. The fissure widened accordingly, snapping like firecrackers all the way down the mountain.

"San'er!"

Su Bai gave a clear shout, and a three-headed dragon crawled out from her wrist.

Su Bai leaped up and straddled the three-headed dragon.

She flew ten thousand miles high into the sky.

Streaks of lightning cleaved through the violet-purple cloud layers, and the sound of the rain intensified, pattering down like falling beans.

The Fallen Mountain Range was the spine of the Candle Dragon, and Descending Dragon Peak was the body of the dragon. Dust filled the air; even though a fierce tempest and heavy rain fell outside, raging fires ignited within the mountains.

Specks of light continuously fled from that area of chaos.

Those were the disciples who had dutifully guarded Descending Dragon Peak, but now had no choice but to flee for their lives in a panic.

The realm of cultivation only had three Mahayana-realm venerables, while the Demon Domain and Devil Domain launched their assaults simultaneously, sending high-ranking generals and devil-generals at the Mahayana realm to lead the vanguard. Coupled with the dormant threat at Descending Dragon Peak, Jinshuai City naturally chose to prioritize preserving the defense lines of the northwestern and eastern frontiers.

Blood-red eyes blinked wetly in the rainy night. The dragon's body stretched for a thousand miles, shaking off the thick, tangled dirt and rock from its body inch by inch to reveal black scales like iron and stone, reflecting a faint, bright white metallic luster.

"It's the Candle Dragon! The real Candle Dragon! Run!"

"Where is my sword? Where is my sword?"

"Venerable Xuangũ, please leave! Your divine soul suffered a backlash just now... You cannot stay here any longer!"

Anxious and flustered conversations drifted up from the high altitude.

"Are you the running dog of the God Realm?"

A low, powerful voice rang out in the dark night.

The Candle Dragon slowly raised its head, twisting its dragon body section by section.

A single blood-red pupil was almost as tall as the young girl.

It stared fixedly into the girl's eyes, its crimson pupils, resembling a pool of blood, seemingly steeped in a faint aura of bloodlust.

"Tribulation Crossing realm?"

The Candle Dragon exhaled a few breaths of dragon Qi, seeming extremely surprised by this: "I remember that in the past life, you didn't like cultivation."

"Back then, you went to great lengths to enter the Devil Domain, and then deliberately put on a frail appearance to approach me."

The Candle Dragon fell into reminiscence: "You don't look like her either. No... you aren't her... Although you share the same identity, every time this world is rebooted, you become a different person... using the same identity to help that brat Qin Yang slay the dragon."

"So—"

The Candle Dragon looked at her meaningfully: "Where is Qin Yang?"

"Dead."

Su Bai said indifferently: "Killed by the Holy Venerable."

"Ah—so he was killed. This is different from the past..."

It drew out a sighing tone, paused, and then its hoarse yet resonant voice echoed through the valley once more: "But I forgot, you pre-destined gods of the God Realm are always so shameless, cunning, arrogant, and conceited, thinking yourselves different from everyone else in this world..."

There was anger in the Candle Dragon's tone.

Of course it was angry.

When Su Bai first entered this world, 888 had mentioned that the previous Mary Sue saint system had subleased this script to the Mary Sue Harem system.

The host of the Mary Sue Harem system had originally relied on her overpowered golden finger and universally adored halo to run amok, idling about every day. Not only did she cuckold Qin Yang countless times behind his back and scatter her misplaced charm everywhere, but one day she also had a sudden flash of inspiration to try slaying the dragon herself.

Thus, apart from frantically adding charm points and beauty values to her attributes, the host of the Mary Sue Harem system had no interest in fighting and killing. Therefore, after several days of secluded contemplation, she decided to take the lead in entering the Devil Domain to find that strand of the Candle Dragon's divine sense, attempting to use her omnipotent charm halo to seduce the Candle Dragon into turning over a new leaf.

Even failing that, settling for a tragic and deeply affectionate romance would do.

After all, that was the Candle Dragon!

The most powerful and omnipotent existence in this world; even someone as strong as the Holy Venerable could only exhaust his life to seal it.

As for those men—be they the Demon Lord, the Devil Lord, the Sword Sovereign, or the elders—they were all so dull and tedious. It only took a flick of her finger, a slight smile, a few pleasant yet hollow pleasantries spoken with her gorgeous, pretty face, paired with sparkling and admiring eyes, for them to be utterly infatuated and obey her every command like dogs.

Yet now, she could choose to conquer a dragon that was the embodiment of evil, to gain the supreme pampering of the Candle Dragon, to make those foolish men bow in submission to her, and ultimately become the true savior.

Such an idea would indeed have a decent probability of materializing if this were a different novel.

Unfortunately, as a thoroughbred villain, the Candle Dragon did not have a single attribute point invested in a romantic brain.

The host of the Mary Sue Harem system lived up to expectations and failed.

The cost of that failure was the Candle Dragon realizing that all these plot lines were set by the Heavenly Dao, all intended to assist Qin Yang in slaying the dragon on behalf of the Heavenly Dao. Since all plots had been predetermined long ago, was the very existence of the Candle Dragon also a part of a grand scheme long plotted by the Heavenly Dao?

Perhaps when the Heavenly Dao originally tacitly permitted the Candle Dragon to eliminate all evils, it had already begun playing a larger game. The Candle Dragon thought it was utilizing this world to obscure the Heavenly Dao and recuperate, but in reality, the Heavenly Dao was utilizing this world to imprison the Candle Dragon, allowing the Holy Venerable to seal the Candle Dragon for ten thousand years, only to wait ten thousand years for a Son of Destiny to slay the dragon.

It slammed its dragon tail heavily onto the ground, its blood-shot eyes igniting with towering fury.

The earth trembled, and rivers were blocked.

The Candle Dragon narrowed its eyes and stared fiercely at her: "You want to stop me?"

"You also want to slay the dragon for the Heavenly Dao?"

"No."

Su Bai looked at him and said, "I am slaying the dragon for a girl."