Long Jian Feng was completely bewildered by Ning Yan’s yelling. “All right, all right! Don’t get worked up. What did you see?”
“The ancestral house in the rear courtyard is fucking full of corpses! How many people has your Long family killed? You seriously had no idea? Not even a clue?” Ning Yan was furious. Meeting the old dragon’s cloudy, pain-filled eyes only made him angrier. “Even an anomaly acts more human than the people in your family!”
“I really didn’t know! I can’t go near the ancestral house. The moment I get too close, my head starts splitting apart with pain. I don’t know why…”
“Like hell I believe you!”
Song Zang did not stop Ning Yan.
There was no longer any need to wait for new evidence from the mountain base. The basement beneath this ancestral house alone, piled high with countless crimes, gave the Police Bureau more than enough reason to mobilize its forces and place the entire Long family under control from top to bottom.
Song Zang peeled the dry human-skin mask from his face, revealing his real appearance. “Hello. Can we talk?”
The old dragon stared coldly at Song Zang without reacting.
“How did you get all those wounds?” Song Zang stepped two paces closer, carefully avoiding the dark, horrifying underground chamber. His gaze swept over the old dragon’s bald head before he softly asked, “The raw materials used to make Dragon-Tongue Incense… are they connected to you?”
“ROAR—!”
The question seemed to strike a nerve. The old dragon opened its foul-smelling maw and abruptly unleashed a furious roar.
Song Zang immediately backed away. The instant one foot crossed the threshold of the ancestral house, the old dragon’s feigned biting motion stopped short, and it retreated again with a numb expression.
Poor thing. It really is trapped here and can’t get out.
“We’ll find a way to get you out. But before that, I’d like to make a deal with you.”
The old dragon’s eyes remained numb.
Standing beside the doorway, Song Zang reached into the inner pocket of his tailcoat and took out a neatly folded auxiliary-member employment contract.
That was right. It was the same contract the Deep Sea had signed with damp seawater.
Just in case, Song Zang had recently started carrying a copy wherever he went. This time, it had actually come in handy.
“I’m from the Anomaly Containment Agency. Do you know the Deep Sea? It works for the Agency now too.” Song Zang unfolded the contract and showed it to the old dragon, his expression sincere. “We solved the Deep Sea’s problem. If you’re willing to join the Agency, we can solve yours too. Whatever conditions you have, you can name them.”
The old dragon stared at him in silence for a very long time. Then it suddenly raised one claw, hooked the contract away, and brought it to its nose to sniff repeatedly.
Song Zang waited patiently. A distinctly human flicker of surprise appeared in the old dragon’s eyes. As expected, Legendary-rank anomalies possessed at least some awareness of one another’s existence.
Song Zang hurriedly opened his phone and found the photographs they had taken while dismantling the firearms at the Agency, along with a high-definition close-up of 【Dragon Eyelid】. Holding up the screen, he asked, “Have you ever seen this red sphere?”
Unexpectedly, the instant the old dragon looked closely, it flew into another rage. It thrashed its mottled, ulcerated tail and actually launched itself into the air, repeatedly slamming into the ancestral house’s red-clay walls until blood streamed from its head… yet no matter what it did, it could not escape.
“ROAR! ROAR!”
Its blood-red, hate-filled eyes trembled and bulged wide.
Clutching the doorframe, Song Zang stared unblinkingly at the old dragon’s expression. Then he suddenly realized what had been bothering him.
—There were no eyelids above its eyes at all!
Could they have been cut off? So it isn’t just Dragon-Tongue Incense—the abnormal equipment that appeared inside the Agency and the Police Bureau is connected to this old dragon too?
Song Zang could hardly imagine the sheer audacity of the Long family. They had actually dared exploit an ancient anomaly like this?!
“Director, be careful. Don’t rush. Boss and the others are already on their way here. Take a look at what they found first. I’m going to the front to meet them.”
“All right. Be careful too.”
At that moment, the new information Lan Yu Heng received further confirmed Song Zang’s suspicion.
Yin Chen and the others had practically dug up every inch of the mountain base. They had found no anomalies, but they had discovered several huge vats filled with unidentified slime, along with numerous strange horns from unknown creatures.
A single horn was five meters long and massively thick. Standing upright, it would nearly reach the height of a three-story building.
The so-called special-training base was actually nothing more than a transfer station for Dragon-Tongue Incense raw materials.
The dragon horns were transported from the Long family ancestral residence to the base, where industrial cutting machines divided them into smaller pieces. The pieces were pulverized into powder, mixed with the thick transparent slime stored in the vats, and then sent on to ordinary production facilities, where the mixture was processed into usable Dragon-Tongue Incense.
…Leaving aside the safety and contamination hazards of this illegal workshop, if they had never infiltrated the Long family and discovered the imprisoned old dragon, no normal person could possibly have imagined what Dragon-Tongue Incense was actually made from—or where those ingredients came from.
“The powder should be from your horns, right?” Song Zang enlarged the photograph Lan Yu Heng had sent him and held it up for the old dragon. “Then what’s this slime?”
“ROAR!”
The old dragon spat forcefully onto the ground.
Song Zang: …
He understood completely now.
Dragon-Tongue Incense was essentially made by grinding a dragon’s horns into powder, then using dragon saliva as a binding agent and mixing the two together into incense material.
Which means Long Jian Feng, ability users like him, and every Long family servant controlled by Dragon-Tongue Incense… have basically been frantically inhaling this old dragon’s spit all along.
Whether judged by law or basic morality, what had been done here was impossible to forgive.
Seeing how readily the old dragon answered his questions, Song Zang also understood that its hatred was not indiscriminately directed at every human being. It hated the Long family members who had imprisoned and exploited it—the monsters who had buried countless children’s bones beneath the ancestral house.
“I understand how much pain you’ve suffered, and I won’t let you keep suffering like this.” Song Zang stepped back into the tiny prison, his tone earnest. “So, will you sign an employment agreement with me? For everyone’s safety, and for your own.”
The old dragon looked at him, then raised one claw and patted the floor, apparently signaling for him to continue.
Song Zang tentatively proposed, “As long as you voluntarily accept containment and don’t attack humans without cause, we’ll provide you with a much larger place to move around. No one will be allowed to use your body for anything. Your safety will be guaranteed.”
“How about this? I’ll write a contract specifically for you first. If there’s anything you disagree with, we can discuss it together. All right?”
When the old dragon showed no sign of resisting, Song Zang immediately asked Ning Yan to steal some paper and a pen. Ning Yan had snatched them from a study somewhere in the Long family’s rear courtyard. In his current furious state, he moved remarkably fast.
Song Zang sat on the threshold and began drafting the document in front of the old dragon.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
The old dragon blew out a foul-smelling breath through its nose, then scratched one character into the tile with a sharp claw:
“Dragon.”
“All right. Thank you.”
Song Zang lifted his fair face and gave the old dragon a polite smile, radiating exactly the kind of obedient, well-behaved air that elders tended to adore.
That was right. The old dragon counted as an elder too.
＊
Notice of Appointment for an Auxiliary Member
—Effective today, the Dragon Nation Anomaly Containment Agency hereby officially appoints 【Dragon】 as an auxiliary member of the Agency.
Classification: A-rank Special Auxiliary Employee.
Compensation: an exclusive free-roaming mountain residence with uncontaminated spring water, covering five hundred mu.
Bonuses: injury treatment and health diagnostics, including two free full-body examinations every year by a professional medical team.
For detailed work standards and regulations, please refer to Anomaly Containment Agency: Employee Rules.
Director Approval: Approved.
…
Elio’s Notes: A mu is a traditional Chinese unit of land area equal to about 666.7 square meters, or roughly 0.165 acre. Five hundred mu is about 82 acres.
“How does that sound?”
“Roar.”
The old dragon gave a slight nod, its voice seeming considerably calmer.
Song Zang did not yet know that by this point, the old dragon wanted very little. As long as it could leave this ruined prison, it would have agreed to almost anything.
Seeing how peaceful it had become, Song Zang took out the Director’s Seal, which was quietly writhing in his hand, and firmly stamped the document in red. Then he pushed the contract toward the old dragon. “Just press a claw print here.”
Its ancient, inscrutable eyes swept over the paper. Slowly, the old dragon raised its mottled, massive claw and pressed it firmly against the bottom of the contract.
The next instant, a system notification appeared before every player.
【Clear Requirement: Investigate, subdue, and contain (or eliminate) three Legendary-rank anomalies (2/3)】
Victory in the instance was almost within reach. Only one anomaly remained!
Everything had gone remarkably smoothly. Even Ning Yan, still practically bristling with anger, looked a little better. “That method of yours is genius. Once we finish off the Long family, let’s wrap things up fast. I seriously can’t stand staying in this disgusting instance anymore.”
“We’re not finished. We need to free the old dragon first.”
Song Zang carefully put away the contract, ripped the bloodstained Deity-Inviting Talisman from the wall, then pointed toward the mountain of bones piled beneath the floor tiles.
There had to be some vicious mechanism designed by the Long family that prevented the old dragon from leaving the ancestral house—something that happened to exploit the conditions governing its movements. And that mechanism… undoubtedly had something to do with the bones underground.
Ning Yan understood what he meant. He looked down at his phone, then gathered his courage and met the old dragon’s gaze. “Um… Mr. Dragon, here’s the situation. The Long family compound has already been completely sealed off, and the police will be here soon to get you out. We can’t move these bodies around yet. We need forensic professionals to preserve the evidence properly.”
“Roar?”
“You want the people who did something this disgusting to be arrested, brought to justice, and executed as soon as possible too, right? So we need to preserve solid evidence if we want to make sure every single bastard responsible gets exactly what they deserve!” Ning Yan grew angry again as he spoke, clenching his fist.
Thump—
The old dragon’s answer was to playfully knock Ning Yan onto the ground with one claw. Then it gently stroked his head, a kindly, elderlike glow appearing in its cloudy eyes.
Ning Yan did not resist. He lay there and allowed it to pat his head, closing his eyes and letting out a heavy sigh.
He was no longer in any hurry, because Yin Chen had arrived.
The Dragon Nation Police Bureau and the Agency’s combat teams mobilized together, completely sealing off the Long family compound. Heavy forces blocked every entrance and exit. More than a dozen helicopters whipped up powerful winds as they patrolled overhead in formation, searching for anyone attempting to escape.
Just as Ning Yan had said, not even a fly could get out.
Naturally, an unannounced raid like this—especially on Lunar New Year’s Eve—provoked fierce resistance from the Long family.
…The ridiculous part was that the ability users the Long family had cultivated through Dragon-Tongue Incense were quickly crushed by the combat teams and barely managed to put up any resistance at all. Long Jian Feng even took advantage of the chaos. The moment he charged forward, he pretended to trip, dropped to the ground, closed his eyes, and played dead.
Outside the reception hall in the front courtyard, the atmosphere was cold and oppressive.
The remaining Long family elders who had not come forward voluntarily were all high-ranking figures within the clan. They were heavily protected inside the reception hall and showed no intention whatsoever of surrendering.
Now that Yin Chen knew what the Long family had truly done, he felt nothing but disgust toward them. He also wanted to find Song Zang in the rear courtyard as soon as possible and had no intention of wasting time here. Frowning, he raised his gun and prepared to open fire.
Just then, one of the Long family elders interrupted him.
Standing at the entrance to the reception hall without the slightest panic, the old man gave him a meaningful warning. “Wait, Mr. Yin. You wouldn’t want news that Anomaly Containment Agency employees indiscriminately slaughter innocent people to spread everywhere, would you? Not everyone who came here for the ancestral ceremony belongs to the Long family. Everyone present can see what happens…”
Yin Chen looked at him expressionlessly. The outer corners of his narrow eyes lifted in faint mockery.
Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
Bang—!
The front courtyard fell deathly silent.
Good. The first annoying person was down. Yin Chen’s irritated mood improved slightly.
“This gun sounds unpleasant.” Yin Chen spoke unhurriedly as he pulled a sharp dagger from his white coat and weighed it in his hand. “A knife feels better. Who wants to die next?”
Everyone’s expressions stiffened.
Zhang Ming Shen quietly lowered his head and played with his Divination Coin. Lan Yu Heng had long since grown accustomed to seeing Yin Chen like this, as though all his restraints had been removed.
Still, after thinking about it, she quietly reminded him, “Boss, how about… arresting them first? Your better half’s reputation is tied directly to everything you do.”
That hit Yin Chen precisely where it hurt.
He fell silent. After lowering his eyes for a moment, he broke the icy dagger in his hand with a crisp snap! A faint, restless resentment appeared between his handsome brows.
“So annoying.”
Boss is always like this. He looks as though murder is the only thing on his mind, and even the slightest self-restraint makes him act unwilling. But the moment something is good for Song Zang, doesn’t he obediently rein himself in anyway…
Lan Yu Heng discreetly curled her lip, picked up a loudspeaker, and called toward the reception hall. “You illegally concealed a Legendary-rank anomaly. The evidence is conclusive. There is no point in resisting any longer.”
The Police Bureau negotiator immediately followed up. “Cease resistance and surrender immediately!”
After they repeated the message several times, another gaunt old man finally walked out of the reception hall.
This one was far more cautious. First, he carefully observed Yin Chen’s expression. Only after confirming that Yin Chen no longer seemed eager to kill someone and that his mental condition appeared marginally more normal did he subtly breathe a sigh of relief.
“Mr. Yin, please put down your weapons and come inside alone so we can talk.”
Yin Chen raised an eyebrow, suddenly interested again. “Sure.”
He brought no one with him. Instead, he willingly removed the white coat stuffed with weapons and leisurely followed the old man into the reception hall alone.
A group of gaunt old men sat inside. Their faces all looked strangely similar, giving the scene a faintly eerie atmosphere.
Yin Chen showed no fear whatsoever. He grabbed the old man sitting in the seat of honor by the collar, threw him aside, and took the seat himself.
The displaced elder did not become angry. He merely smiled. “Mr. Yin, do you prefer Da Hong Pao or pu’er?”
Elio’s Notes: Da Hong Pao, literally “Big Red Robe,” is a famous and highly prized Wuyi rock oolong tea from Fujian.
Looking at the two freshly brewed cups already waiting on the table, Yin Chen smiled without smiling. “Trying to poison me?”
“Hahaha, of course not. Mr. Yin, the Long family has wanted to recruit you for quite some time. We also understand how many grievances you’ve suffered inside the Agency.”
“Go on.” Yin Chen did not seem surprised. He raised an eyebrow thoughtfully and looked back at him.
After all, the relationship between the Long family and the Guangming Consortium was somewhere between enemy and ally. They competed with each other while secretly carrying out plenty of unsavory cooperation behind the scenes. Naturally, these old men knew certain things about the Agency—especially about Yin Chen, that pitiful student and assistant. Trying to exploit that sore spot to win him over was hardly surprising.
Unfortunately, trying to appeal to Yin Chen’s emotions was the worst possible strategy.
The elder stroked his gray-white beard and smiled. “The Long family’s foundations stretch back more than a thousand years. Our knowledge of anomalies is richer than that of any other faction. With the Long family supporting you, becoming the next Director is practically guaranteed.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course. Young man, you possess genuine talent. You should never have been buried beneath someone else. When the time comes, we can work together to overthrow that useless man and put you in his place. The Agency will unquestionably grow even stronger, and together we can create a glorious future!”
“You think he’s useless, while I have genuine talent?”
Yin Chen quietly repeated those words. This time, he could no longer suppress the mockery in his smile.
“You don’t know anything.”
“We know.”
The elder looked supremely confident. Clearly, the Long family had been planning to recruit Yin Chen for some time and had prepared thoroughly.
He actually produced a complete file containing every piece of personal information on “Song Zang” from birth to the present.
There was the newborn screening report marked 【Male Infant: No Ability Detected】, humiliatingly poor report cards from middle school and high school, and even evidence that he had colluded with the Guangming Consortium during university to plagiarize and fabricate research…
Every page was a genuine official record. If they handed these materials to the police, there was enough evidence to prosecute Song Zang immediately.
They did not even need to go through the Dragon Nation Police Bureau. If Yin Chen leaked only a fraction of this information to the media, Song Zang’s reputation could be completely destroyed within an hour.
Yin Chen rapidly flipped through the thick stack of paper, scanning all the evidence. Then, without warning, his lips curved into a smile.
The elder smiled too, his aged eyes filled with certainty that victory was already his.
Then he heard Yin Chen quietly muttering to himself as though no one else were present.
“I chose this role so no one else would get the chance to bully him… What the hell am I thinking? Am I really that ridiculous?” Yin Chen lightly rubbed the edge of the paper between his fingers, quietly mocking himself.
The elder did not understand. “What? What role?”
“Mm. I suppose I am ridiculous. But so what?”
“Mr. Yin, you—”
“Only I get to do whatever I want to him. Who the hell are you?”
Yin Chen abruptly lifted his icy phoenix eyes, picked up the scalding tea, and poured it straight over the official documents covered in black text.
Printed ink and red official seals bled into the tea, rapidly blurring and fading until the pages became a filthy pulp.
Yin Chen was already slowly rising to his feet. A bone-white chopping blade appeared from nowhere and stood upright before him.
No one inside the reception hall saw where the weapon had come from. Their vision merely blurred for an instant, and then Yin Chen was smiling as he raised the blade and rested its razor-sharp edge against the gaunt elder’s trembling carotid artery.
“Now you’re my hostage. Surrender immediately. There are no outsiders here, so I can easily kill one hostage and replace him with another.”
His wrist turned slightly.
The blade precisely sliced open the skin along the elder’s neck, and fresh blood instantly ran down its tip.
“…Gulp.”
＊
Song Zang knew nothing about the outrageous things Yin Chen was doing.
Ning Yan had told him to stay hidden in the rear courtyard, so Song Zang sat on the threshold and chatted with the old dragon, soothing the anomaly as it impatiently waited to escape its prison.
Only after Ning Yan returned with a professional forensic team from the Police Bureau, who rushed into the ancestral house to photograph and preserve evidence before beginning to recover the remains, was Song Zang finally free to move around.
As the small white bones were carried out one set after another, the old dragon’s aged, haggard appearance somehow became more and more spirited.
“ROAR—!”
The old dragon forcibly restrained itself until the forensic team had carried the remains out of the danger zone. Then it raised its head and released a long roar before abruptly launching into the air.
It smashed straight through the thatched roof that had imprisoned it for countless years. Its bloated body awkwardly dragged dirt and debris along as it escaped, rose into the sky, and roared wildly in utter collapse, crying out again and again as though it could not possibly vent thousands of years of anguish quickly enough.
Yet despite being overwhelmed by such violent emotion, the old dragon did not damage a single one of the recovered remains.
Its battered, mottled scales gleamed beneath the brilliant golden sunlight, as though they too had begun to shine again.
“What’s the contamination reading?” Song Zang asked worriedly.
“It’s fine. We aren’t detecting any contamination.”
“That’s good.”
“Ah… it must have been a very kind dragon once,” Ning Yan said, folding his arms and staring up at the sky with a sigh.
“How are things in the front courtyard?” Song Zang asked. “Why are we still hiding back here?”
“Well… your better half threatened me ahead of time and insisted that I keep you somewhere safe.” Ning Yan clicked his tongue. “Damn it. When is a single dog like me ever going to have someone worry about me?”
Elio’s Notes: “Single dog” is Chinese internet slang for an unmarried or unattached person, usually used jokingly and self-deprecatingly.
Single dog?
Song Zang needed several seconds to figure out what Ning Yan meant.
“But Brother Ning, if you actually wanted to find someone, I don’t think it would be difficult. You’d probably be really popular on the dating market.” Song Zang looked completely serious. “You’re very handsome.”
“Who’s very handsome?”
Without warning, Yin Chen’s cool voice came from behind them.
Ning Yan jumped in fright, while Song Zang suddenly realized that he had already grown accustomed to Yin Chen appearing without making a sound.
He turned around and looked at Yin Chen. Whatever the man had been doing, the edges of his previously snow-white coat were now stained with splashes of blood. Unfortunately, the time and place were unsuitable, or he probably would have changed into a clean coat already.
Song Zang looked Yin Chen up and down several times and sensed that something was wrong. Frowning, he stared carefully at his face. “Yin Chen, why are you so pale? Are you hurt?”
“…Of course not.” Yin Chen froze slightly, then answered Song Zang with deliberate nonchalance. He even let the previous question go.
Song Zang, however, had no intention of letting Yin Chen off so easily.
He remembered that in Carp Nation, Lan Yu Heng had specifically sought him out in the middle of the night to talk about Yin Chen’s physical condition… Looking back now, there had been plenty of suspicious signs.
He also remembered that the next morning, Yin Chen’s complexion had looked exactly like this. Clearly, he had not been in good condition then either.
Song Zang’s method for judging Yin Chen’s condition was brutally simple. When Yin Chen was healthy, his slightly curved lips were rosy-red, as though he had just finished a glass of red wine, carrying a subtle, tipsy flush that looked soft and beautiful.
When he was unwell, his lips were not nearly as red.
Song Zang disliked seeing him like this. He drew in a breath and abruptly became forceful. “Go back and rest.”
Yin Chen had no intention of agreeing. “Teacher, I still need to—”
“We can handle everything else ourselves, but you have to go back and rest. That’s an order,” Song Zang said fiercely.
Yin Chen stared at him in surprise for a moment.
Meeting Song Zang’s bright black eyes, which were utterly serious, a flicker of bewilderment and helplessness appeared in his gaze, as though he had suddenly drifted somewhere far away. There were also complicated emotions Song Zang could not understand.
After a long while, Yin Chen gave a very soft “Mm.”
Then he obediently turned around and left.
Ning Yan had been completely unable to insert himself into their strange interaction. He stared at Yin Chen’s quickly retreating back with his mouth hanging open.
“You—you… you’ve completely won him over already?”
What does he mean, “won him over”?
Song Zang frowned and looked sternly at Ning Yan. “We’re teammates. He’s helped us a lot too. How could I let him keep working in that condition? Brother Ning, if you tried to push yourself like that, I’d scold you too.”
This was Ning Yan’s first time seeing Song Zang with his presence fully unleashed. The rebuke left him even more stunned. After taking a long moment to recover, he scratched his head and lightly coughed. “The Director is right. From now on, I absolutely need to pay attention to my body, my health, and my personal safety.”
“Good.” Song Zang nodded in satisfaction.
He knew very few people and had even fewer friends, so every one of them had to stay safe. Absolutely nothing could happen to them!
＊
Even without Yin Chen, the well-trained staff remained extremely efficient. Before sunset, they had searched the Long family compound from top to bottom and begun a complete decontamination operation.
After venting its emotions, the old dragon displayed astonishing self-control and rationality.
To avoid attracting attention when leaving the Long family compound, it twisted its body and transformed into a miniature golden snake. With a quick zip, it slipped straight into Song Zang’s pocket and obediently hid itself away.
Song Zang patted the pocket soothingly. He was slightly tempted to let the old dragon coil around his wrist the way Brother Chen did, but ultimately kept quiet.
Brother Chen is pretty possessive. If it happens to be in this instance too and is secretly hiding somewhere watching me, it’ll probably die of anger.
Forget it, forget it.
The servants and ability users addicted to Dragon-Tongue Incense were temporarily sent to the hospital. Everyone else suspected of criminal activity was arrested without exception and taken back to the Agency for strict contamination screening and overnight interrogation.
The elder Yin Chen had held at knifepoint was the easiest to break. He seemed thoroughly terrified. With Yin Chen absent from the interrogation room, he became extraordinarily cooperative.
His only condition for talking was that Agency staff protect him from Yin Chen…
Thanks to Yin Chen’s earlier intimidation, the elder revealed many of the Long family’s absurd secrets.
—The old dragon had not originally been a dragon at all. In fact, Dragon Nation had originally had no dragons.
According to legend, the Long family ancestor had been the first powerful ability user to appear in Dragon Nation. At only eighteen years old, he was already capable of fighting anomalies. He personally captured a great serpent hiding in the mountain forests, trained and subdued it, and kept it as a companion.
Under the ancestor’s training and overwhelming strength, the serpent gradually became more powerful. Somehow, its ancient traits awakened: horns grew from its head, its scales gleamed like gold, and it gained the ability to soar freely through the sky.
After transforming into a dragon, the serpent was worshiped like a guardian deity from ancient legend. At the height of its glory, it fought alongside the Long family ancestor, defeated foreign enemies, and helped lay the foundations for thousands of years of prosperity in Dragon Nation.
…So how had the old dragon fallen from a legendary, almost divine existence into its present miserable state?
Before the ancestor died, he left only five Deity-Inviting Talismans to his descendants. If the Long family ever faced a crisis threatening the destruction of the entire clan, the talismans could summon his old comrade to protect the family.
But anomalies were inherently unstable. To prevent the old dragon from losing control and causing an irreversible disaster, he also left behind a method for temporarily confining it.
【One bowl of vital blood from a virgin boy or girl, poured out each month, combined with the primal essence of a descendant carrying Long family blood, offered once each year.】
At first, the Long family treated the old dragon with immense respect. But as the ages changed and anomalies spread unchecked through chaotic times, five Deity-Inviting Talismans were nowhere near enough.
At precisely that time, while protecting the Long family’s descendants, the old dragon endured several brutal battles and had one of its horns torn off alive. The Long bloodline survived because of it. Asking for nothing in return, the wounded dragon simply left.
Yet that enormous severed horn became the origin of everything that followed.
Driven to desperation, the Long family took the horn away and ground it into powder. They quickly discovered the powder’s terrifyingly addictive properties. Then, after mixing the powder with dragon saliva and burning the mixture for divination, they were delighted to discover that it predicted the danger posed by anomalies with unprecedented accuracy.
The Long family, which had nearly been wiped out, recovered and flourished throughout the chaotic era, dominating all around them. They amassed wealth, expanded their power, sold the “incense,” used addiction to control subordinates and ordinary civilians, and even reclaimed the residue afterward for reuse…
But once all the Deity-Inviting Talismans and the dragon horn were finally used up, how could the family preserve its glory for generations to come?
—By forcibly imprisoning the old dragon, of course, and turning every valuable part of its body into property for the Long family to exploit.
That was right. The heroic ancestor who had once fought for Dragon Nation probably never imagined that his descendants would become so cruel and deranged that they would attempt to squeeze every last drop of value from his old companion.
And the “temporary confinement” method he had left behind had long since been thoroughly studied and transformed into a horrific prison many times more vicious than the original technique.
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