Chapter 35: Spawning a Great Sage-Level Flood Dragon

(Day 1, Noon)

"Roar!"

Another series of cries, heavy with agony and brutality, echoed through the air. Jiang Tingting watched as countless shattered fragments of the Imperial Array’s runic chains plunged into the dark clouds like vipers, thick, black blood-mist swirling within the gloom.

She could sense that the vast sea of clouds was, in fact, black, frigid fog condensed from an incredibly high concentration of Yin-煞 energy. Even if one were to drain ten thousand Yin-煞 ley lines from beneath the cold pool where she stood, it would not be enough to condense even a fraction of those clouds in the sky.

Accompanied by the pained dragon roar, a serpentine body writhed and struggled within the clouds. The mere speed of its thrashing was so great that Jiang Tingting, a powerful cultivator at the Second Heavenly Layer of the Sendai Realm, could not even track its movements.

How colossal was that figure?

Looking up, the parts of it barely visible through the clouds resembled pillars of darkness that eclipsed the sun and sky. With her divine sense, she observed that its diameter alone spanned dozens of kilometers, while its length was a terrifying thousand kilometers or more.

Her divine sense confirmed with certainty: this was no magical art of projection or enlargement—this was a physical, tangible body.

It was simply too massive!

The gargantuan figure seemed like a star pulled down from beyond the heavens, completely shrouding the entire visible sky from the ground. Sharp scales covered its pitch-black, snake-like body like mountains of blades. On its massive spine, jagged, mountain-like sword-ridges stood upright, emitting an aura that tore through the clouds, shattered the void, and sent sparks flying from the golden runic chains of the Jiang family’s defensive array.

One had to remember, these were the remnants of an Imperial Array laid down by the Great Emperor Hengyu of the Jiang family eons ago! Even without being fully activated, it was an array capable of suppressing cultivators at the Great Saint level!

Yet, despite this powerful, incomplete array inflicting wounds on the terrifying dragon—causing rivers of black blood as vast as a celestial waterfall to pour down from the heavens—the blockade was already on the verge of collapse. Ear-piercing, grating sounds emanated from the runic chains; they were on the brink of being shattered by the sheer, overwhelming strength of the colossal beast.

The next instant, a massive pressure descended from the sky, accompanied by a gaze that locked onto her, filling Jiang Tingting with a sense of mortal peril.

A head of unimaginable size emerged from the black clouds. Two eyes, as dark as abyssal, frozen pools, revealed emotions of profound agony and unbridled cruelty. Its head was so absurdly large that if one were to take ten thousand of the hundred-meter-tall Godzilla monsters from the films Fang Zheng had once watched, they would not be enough to satisfy a single bite of its maw—they would barely be enough to get stuck between its teeth.

The gargantuan body, spanning over a thousand kilometers, would be the kind of theater-version boss that would require the Ultramen to combine into a new form just to defeat.

At that moment, the trembling of her flesh and soul in the face of such a crisis—the feeling that she was less than an ant—told Jiang Tingting everything. It told her that this was an entity far beyond the level of a Saint!

Under the suffocating weight of this intense crisis, she didn't even think of the two Imperial artifacts in her possession—the Taiyin Moon Blade and the Human Emperor Seal. Her pupils contracted, and she was left in a state of shock and bewilderment. "How is this possible?"

"The Jiang family’s Imperial artifact, the Hengyu Furnace, is currently in a state of full awakening! How could any member of the Demon Clan infiltrate the Jiang family?"

"Could this be a Supreme from the Forbidden Zones? No! While this flood dragon is powerful, it is still too weak compared to the masters of those life-forbidden zones!"

"Wait!" Jiang Tingting noticed something amiss. "Why does this flood dragon look so much like..."

"A mob spawner? Could it be?!" A realization dawned on her.

Her pupils shrank as her divine sense swept over the small flood dragon slowly rotating within the nearby spawner.

"It’s identical!"

Jiang Tingting was utterly shaken by her own conjecture. She spoke with difficulty, "Is this... what Senior Fang Zheng meant by 'grinding mobs'?!"

Just as she was struck speechless by her own theory:

*Roar...*

A dragon's cry, filled with pain and brutality, descended from the horizon, accompanied by the sound of runic chains being forcibly snapped.

The incomplete Imperial Array that enveloped the entire Jiang family had, after all, not been manned or fully activated by anyone. If an enemy had attacked from outside the defensive array, it would have been more than sufficient. But when an enemy appeared inexplicably inside the array, the fact that it had autonomously activated its defenses to temporarily seal a Great Saint-level entity was already its limit.

At this moment, the sky-filling runic chains were snapping rapidly, forcibly torn apart by the terrifying, thousand-kilometer-long body of the cold-flood dragon, which possessed the raw physical strength to drag dozens of stars at sub-light speeds. If not for the lingering effects of the incomplete Imperial Array, even the mere shockwaves from the dragon’s body moving through the air would have been enough to turn the entire Jiang family territory into a hellish wasteland.

The Jiang family’s Hengyu Furnace, although it had been in a state of full awakening for some time, and its internal deity should have been conscious, remained strangely silent and did not strike. If this situation continued, the Jiang family might truly be doomed.

"Hmph!"

Just as the runic chains on the horizon were about to snap completely, a cold snort echoed from a hidden secret realm within the Jiang family, causing the flood dragon to tremble all over.

"A mere loach, how dare you be so insolent!"

An old man, his face so wrinkled it could trap a fly, bent and hunched, exuding an aura of decay so profound he looked like a walking corpse, suddenly shattered the divine source that had sealed him.

His name was Jiang Wen, the tenth-generation descendant of the Great Emperor Jiang Hengyu. He was a cultivator who had reached the Third Heavenly Layer of the Quasi-Emperor Realm eons ago. Having lost hope of further breakthroughs and nearing the end of his lifespan, he had sealed himself within divine source and was stored away in the Jiang family’s secret realm—an ancestor-level figure to be awakened only when the Jiang family faced the threat of annihilation.

Jiang Wen first bowed respectfully toward the direction of the ancestral hall, toward the Hengyu Furnace that was mysteriously fully awake. Then, he tried to communicate with the furnace’s deity using his divine sense, but he received no response.

Frowning, he turned to the elder standing nearby. "What is going on? Why has the Hengyu Furnace awakened? You have awakened me—is there some crisis that requires me to take command of the furnace?"

Being woken up by his descendants did not put him in a good mood, for it meant there was a thorny problem to solve. His expression was grave.

The elder looked at his ancestor, bowing his head with a bitter smile. "Ancestor, we do not know why the Hengyu Furnace has fully awakened. Ever since the various life-forbidden zones stirred a few days ago, the furnace has been like this. The specific reason... only the Clan Head knows."

"Forbidden zone riots, then..." Jiang Wen was silent for a moment. He sighed softly, remembering the past. "Is another Dark Turmoil about to begin? How many will die this time..."

Before he could sink into his sorrow, the elder bowed again. "Ancestor, we awakened you this time to deal with that Great Saint-level demon dragon outside. Although the Hengyu Furnace has awakened on its own, for some reason, it has not acted. The Jiang family has no one strong enough to contend with a Great Saint-level demon dragon. If you do not intervene, the Jiang family faces total destruction."