Traversing through space was quick and painless, accompanied by the same weird phenomena, with his spherules greedily gorging on energies gathered within the void. Sadly, he was in and out in so little time that even his god sight recorded just one blurry image. The distance between locations was negligible from the perspective of spatial travel.

  Before they parted ways, Day Night provided him with two important objects, one of which was a void compass. This was an artifact from the spirit’s time, and he had no idea whether it was still in use today. It allowed the recording of spatial coordinates for any place he had visited and performed all the necessary calculations to open a long-distance void traversal tunnel. All he needed was sufficient comprehension of spatial laws and soul qi.

  The spirit made sure to input the data for the Thousand Life Pavilion Divine Realm into the compass so he could freely come and go once he had mastered the basics of spatial travel.

  The second gift was far more personal and especially important to him—the Red Reaper Scripture. It was stored on a memory crystal, but its shape was highly unconventional. Instead of the typical, small rectangular slip, Night handed him a smooth orb made of golden crystal the size of a large fist. Under his god sight, the orb shone like a beacon of mostly unknown laws, with thousands upon thousands of wriggling threads. Surprisingly, laws of life were present among them as well.

  Cade curiously injected a spark of blood qi into the crystal sphere, only to sigh with disappointment. Regrettably, most of its contents were hidden behind a hard cultivation lock. He couldn’t preview a single thing. Other than a couple of flesh formations—one for lightning resistance, one for fire—and a single reservoir-related technique, to his current self there was nothing else available.

  Night suggested, in a very roundabout way, that the Scripture’s primary purpose was to help him cultivate the godseed, develop his god eyes, and refine the golden tribulation lightning. Once he had formed his wraith, he’d be able to learn more.

  “Knowledge,” Night said, “is the cultivator’s greatest weapon. But some knowledge can just as easily harm you as it can hurt your enemy. Master knew exactly how much information he should drip through the Scripture without harming you. You have to be patient.”

  Cade wasn’t about to argue, so for now he focused on the matters at hand.

  The spatial tunnel spat him out some three hundred feet above the ground. According to the spirit, this was a safe area with no temporal bubbles around. The moment he found himself in the air far above the ground, he wrapped ribbons around his body, having no issues concealing them under his tribulation robe, then shifted into War Form.

  The bones in his forearms creaked and extended by another inch. His fingers thickened, forming sharp claws at their tips. Blood qi swirled inside his muscles, expanding them. Devil king hydra laws inside his skin flared, forming tough, protective scales on every part of his body. The process was a little quicker this time than when he had originally tested the ability.

  He could finally see his scales in daylight—or as close to it as he could get right now—and realized they were indeed the same color as the hydra’s reverse scale: charcoal with a faint touch of dark blue. Despite the scales covering his whole body, he could still see the flesh formation glowing softly under the robe on the left side of his chest. The sense of imperviousness War Form provided him was intoxicating. He felt like this was the true form of the Asura, not the human mask he always wore.

  Cade tore away from examining his armored form and curiously looked around as he refilled his voracious heart. He immediately saw all the time bubbles dotting the sky far in the distance. This was great news, as time bubbles were his biggest concern while moving inside the Realm. Now he could fly at full speed without worry.

  The Asura began stuffing the internal pockets of his tribulation robe with bloodstones, ensuring they wouldn’t fall out. He was likely in for a big fight. Bloodstones were no longer as useful as they used to be—or rather, his most powerful abilities required too much blood qi. Right now, a single large bloodstone could provide him with maybe a tenth of his heart’s full capacity.

  As Cade finished refilling his voracious heart, he focused on his target. On the edges of his life sense—which now covered close to fifteen miles around him—were frantically moving life signatures, chased by a blazing life force of what he assumed to be the true dragon.

  I wonder… could my eyes reach this far? he muttered, focusing his sight on the life signatures in the distance. Previously, he could tell people apart at up to six, maybe seven miles on a good, clear day—but now, his new eyes carried his sight directly to the unfolding scene. Grinning like a child, he observed the fight, or rather, a chaotic escape with frantic attempts to slow down the silver-scaled behemoth.

  It was worth pointing out that the dragon was enormous—close to 500 feet of thick serpentine body, with four clawed limbs. Its head must have been at least 30 feet in height. Each of its teeth was as long as a sword, thick as a man’s thigh at the base, and sharp as a spear’s point at the tip. The creature had short blood-red horns curling to the back of its massive head.

  However, this was not the dragon’s true body. Cade’s eyes could pierce through the silver scales, revealing the real dragon was a humanoid being nested inside this massive serpentine form, connected to it through a dense web of veins built of soul qi, spiritual qi, and blood qi. Watching the beast move made him gasp, as its undulating silver body phased between locations. Although the sight was captivating, Cade’s brow creased with concern.

  It’s ridiculously quick! Whether all true dragons were this fast or just this one was impossible to tell, but its blood should be a great match for the second stage of his War Form.

  He followed the dragon as it chased after the disciples. Night had explained how this type of unique shapeshifting worked. Back in her days, it was called spiritshifting, as parts of the dragon's soul were used to form the outside shell. This shape was much stronger and more durable than any projected body, retaining somewhere between eight and nine-tenths of the dragon’s full battle power. As long as the beast wasn’t damaged, it could recover most of the energy spent shifting between shapes by rapidly retracting the veins, returning to its humanoid form.

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  This powerful silver dragon had at least one weak point—seriously hurting the creature’s spiritshifted shape would cause a soul wound, substantially weakening it. Low-ranked spirit beasts didn’t possess immortal souls; therefore, dying in any way was final for them. The upside was their souls recovered many times quicker than those of humans or the Asura. However, the dragon was unlikely to allow this and would probably switch to its true, humanoid form to prevent any serious harm to its soul.

  Which was all the better.

  Cade’s first objective was to force the beast to reveal its true form. After that, his plan was simple: beat the dragon until it could no longer move, then take its reverse scale. The Asura had many abilities that could help, but he was limited in what could be associated with his War Form. He couldn’t use Legion or the red mist, and he really didn’t want to use his Blood Wings unless he had no other choice.

  Brute force it is, then. It just so happened he hadn’t yet had a chance to use his War Form in combat, and this would be a great opportunity to test its capabilities.

  As he continued to observe the dragon, learning its attack patterns, his eyes shot wide open with a muted crackle of released golden lightning.

  Aria…? How did she find herself in this mess?

  Even though most of these people were from Shadow Dao Palace, there were three disciples from Sword Dao, Aria among them. The other two were unknown core disciples, evident from their white robes. Cade was surprised for the second time when he realized Aria’s cultivation had reached the peak of Foundation Establishment. It had to be the Spirit Pool.

  He couldn’t understand why she came into this middle of nowhere. There didn’t seem to be anything of interest around—only bare, dead ground and a few ruined buildings. The disciples were scrambling away towards the Beast Battlefield, which was likely where they had originally come from. Cade swallowed a curse and launched himself in their direction, surrounded by a crimson glow.

  —

  A Realm-shaking roar tore into their bodies, nearly forcing their blood to run in reverse. Tarron spat out a mouthful of bright scarlet liquid, barely evading the snapping, monstrous jaws.

  “Run!” he yelled hoarsely, his white robes covered in crimson stains, eyes wide in terror as he caught a glimpse of the silver dragon’s malevolent gaze. What terrified him even more was that the beast’s deafening roars contained words in a guttural, alien language—a clear sign of advanced intelligence. None of them could understand the meaning, but they comprehended the intent: the dragon thirsted for their blood.

  “Wasn’t it supposed to be stuck in a bubble?!” Aria screamed, pouring all her spiritual qi into flight and glancing back constantly. A huge silver-scaled tail whipped right over her head, the wind tossing her through the air. It smashed into one of the Shadow Dao Palace disciples—she didn’t know his name, but his cultivation was low. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his body erupt into a crimson cloud, small chunks of bone and flesh raining onto the parched ground below.

  “It was! Whatever shook the Realm must have brought it out!” Tarron yelled back, grabbing her hand and helping her stabilize. The situation was dire—already three of their group had suffered violent deaths. They continued to flee for their lives, several dark dots chased by an enormous beast.

  Suddenly, Aria felt a sharp yank on her hand. Turning her head, she saw Tarron’s pleading gaze as the dragon caught one of his legs in between its dagger-like teeth, shaking its head with terrifying force and tearing the leg out from the hip joint. With a sorrowful wail, the young elf’s body fell onto the ground, bouncing off its surface with a flat, weighty thud.

  “Tarron!” Aria screamed, sensing herself entering the dragon’s focus. The beast roared once more, nearly deafening her, intense terror briefly overwhelming her mind and disrupting her control over qi. The massive head instantly shot forward, its jaws open wide, intent on biting her in half. A glimmer of triumph passed through the dragon’s incensed gaze, as it salivated at the thought of tearing apart the silver-haired fey.

  Aria caught a stench of blood from within the creature’s maw, and she knew it was over for her. Everything around her slowed down as her last moments played out—right when a red blur smashed into the top of the beast’s skull with a grating roar, hurtling its massive body toward the ground. The mighty blow was accompanied by a potent shockwave that forced Aria to cough up blood, sending her spinning through the air.

  Swallowing back whatever precious liquid she could, Aria stared with utter bafflement at a powerful scaled figure, its eyes crackling with golden lightning. It calmly hovered in the air, arms clasped behind its back, overlooking their struggles like a dark, indifferent god. Then it once again burst into motion.

  —

  “Your opponent is me!” Cade roared in Chthonic, driving his scaled fist into the dragon’s skull. He had only ignited a fraction of his blood qi, yet the force behind the blow surprised even him. The strike detonated with a thunderous boom that echoed for miles, releasing another rippling shockwave.

  The dragon was hurled from the sky, crashing into the earth with a bone-shaking rumble. Its jaws punched into the dead ground, collapsing the nearby area into a large pit, a storm of dirt and stone surrounding its stunned shape. The beast’s massive head convulsed as it attempted to shake away the daze, but Cade wasn’t someone who’d give his opponent time to recover.

  His body phased, tearing through the air at full speed—but somehow, the dragon was quicker. Its shimmering form left a silver afterimage as Cade’s heel smashed into the freshly upturned soil with a stomach-churning boom, causing the pit to collapse further.

  How can it move so fast?!

  “Good! Very good!” Cade laughed boisterously, rising from the crater, far above the dust clouds. “The quicker you are, the better!”

  The dragon’s body reappeared in the air. Cade could see it had used a large amount of qi for this one move, the veins connecting its energy core with the spirit body pulsating with several times more intensity than he rest.

  “Asura?!” the beast roared with indignance. This one word sounded almost exactly the same in Chthonic and Common, and the stunned disciples turned their gazes toward the red-robed figure, and so did Aria.

  Idiots! Why are you not running?!

  He knew watching a high-scale fight could be helpful to cultivators, but this was a life-and-death situation, not a tournament.

  Cade’s gaze briefly passed over them, accidentally meeting the unharmed Sword Dao core disciple’s eyes, who sharply turned away, wincing in pain. This was surprising—it seemed the god’s eyes didn’t lose their mind-piercing quality; it was just weaker and required direct eye contact.

  He briefly stopped at Aria, ensuring to close his eyelids first as he made a small shooing gesture with his clawed hand. The fey immediately understood, bowing and cupping her fist at him before shooting downward to pick up Tarron’s unconscious, mauled body.

  The Asura turned his attention back to the dragon.

  “I have to say your luck is quite bad. I really don’t know which god you have offended. You’ve barely regained your freedom, only to stumble upon me,” he sighed with mock compassion.

  “Do you have a death wish, Asura cur?! These ants are my prey!” the dragon roared in ancient Chthonic. Yet, it was hesitating to act. It couldn’t tell what Cade’s cultivation was, as he had already disabled his fake spiritual fluctuations. Not to mention, the earth-shattering blow it had just received doubled its wariness, even if its life signature remained unaffected.

  “Tsk-tsk. Who knew dragons were so rude?” Cade shook his head with feigned disappointment. “Anyway, good chat. Now let’s see whose life is hardier!” He ignited the red mist within his concealed Blood Wings, and his body blurred with a deafening blast.