20 REQUESTING A sHELLISH NIGHTMARE DRAGON BULLY HOTLINEs (1/2)

The time was very late during the night, a few dozen years prior to Xu Ling's defeat under Tian's hands. As for the place, it was a space separated from the outside world by six, thick walls of golden light. The total of six glowing barriers came together to form a closed-off area in the shape of a gigantic cube. Occasionally, ripples would appear atop the object's surface, as if a rock had been thrown into a formerly calm pond. Above the golden cube lay a golden-scaled dragon the size of a whole mountain range. Its body extended for dozens upon dozens of miles and was coiled up into a single spiral. Crimson strands of hair made up its goatee and mane, while five sets of claws were attached to the beast's middle body.

Although its body was rock-still as if it were sleeping, the dragon's pair of golden eyes were opened wide. The gigantic golden irises and its pitch-black pupils would flicker in sync with the golden cube's occasional ripples.

Witnessing the happenings within the closed-off space with an amused smile spread across its fearsome face, the golden dragon was very much awake. Its gaze was lost inside the glowing, golden cube, just as gargantuan as it was: like the dragon, it spanned for tens, hundreds of miles, and enclosed within a huge stretch of land.

Within the cube a strange scene was taking place; inside it, two figures entwined nonstop in a sky that had been dyed golden, engaged in a deadly ballade of blades, claws and explosions. Clearly, what the two silhouettes were engaged in was no simple dance: it was instead a brutal duel.

The smaller of the two figures was incredibly agile and fast. Within seconds, the distance it would cover was on the verge of instantaneous movement. Making use of his inhumane speed, the small figure would dash from one end of the cube to the other, fiercely striking at its opponent each he passed by.

Unlike the first figure that was both too small and too fast for the naked eye to make out, the second could be seen clearly. This was because it was both much slower and countless times bigger than its opponent: the second fighter was actually... a gigantic black serpent! Although if compared to the gargantuan golden dragon it would barely amount to a single one of its scales, the sheer size of this gargantuan snake was enough to level a mountain with a single flick of its tail!

The beast that was thousands of feet long was completely black, with the only exceptions being a few small cuts spurting golden blood, and six thin, fearsome eyes glowing an eerie white color; the wounds were few and far from lethal, but their number kept on rising by the second. The serpent was enraged by this, but it couldn't catch up to its opponent's speed and thus could only roar powerlessly and glare as the silhouette but a few feet tall dashed left and right, up and down, and inflicted countless small wounds as time went by.

The roars shook the earth, and the glare was so fierce whole mountains could very possible be erased with just a single glance; even whole armies of hundreds of thousands would become so terrified they would be unable to stand up straight after staring in those eerie, white orbs! Those six eyes and gigantic python-like body made the beast look as if it had just come out from some hellish nightmare! This apparently extremely powerful beast was fighting someone and, judging by the blood gushing out from several wounds on its body, it could easily be deduced that it wasn't really fighting what could be called an easy battle...

Its opponent was something that in its perspective would barely be any different from an ant: it was but a mere human! Be it size or lifespan, this 'snake' innately surpassed humans by such a large margin that usually the two shouldn't even appear in the same sentence… However, this human was not a simple human. Instead, it had turned out being a huge pain in the black beasts' reptilian ass!

Finally, the black snake grew tired of this boring game of cat and mouse. He locked his gaze straight at the human's pupils. The speeding figure looked back: immediately afterwards, three pairs of slit-like, white eyes glowed a bright green as a plethora of fierce mental attacks were shot towards the speeding human's mind! Having ensured eye contact with their target, there should have been no way those attacks could have possibly failed. Let alone halting his advance, the poor human would pass out as soon as those mental attacks landed!

However...

Slash! Stab! Slash! Stab! Slash! Stab!

Not only did the human's onslaught not grow to a stop, he even seemed to be... getting faster? It was as if he had grasped upon a new source of energy as his figure sped up, more and more… The speed seemed to be increasing exponentially with each moment that passed! But was it truly like that? Of course not. It was not just the human who had gotten faster, it was the black dragon that had begun to grow slower, and slower, and slower...

Instead of shocking and terrifying the opponent, as soon as he had entered an eye contact with the blue-eyed human youth, the dragon had actually started to wither! Its strength, its life-force, its soul...all of them had turned into streams of energy and were slowly being absorbed by the strange golden sun in the human's left eye!

It was really too bad that this gigantic, black snake had spent so much time away from the human world; had he witnessed first-hand the fights of the human known as the Evil Saint, there would have been no way the black-scaled beast would have been so foolish to look at Xu Ling in the eyes: to all those who sided with the Nine Heavens of Tian, those pair of blue eyes that might be beautiful and mesmerizing to look at for others, to them they would only spell death!

After having found out the hard way that its mental abilities wouldn't work and that using them would only turn out being detrimental, the dragon was in full retreat, but it couldn't hold a candle to the human in speed. Even though it wasn't the speed of lightning falling from the heavens, he truly did look like one as he attacked the humongous monster, not leaving it any space to breathe. As for the golden cube? It only served to contain the damage, as otherwise the aftereffects alone of the techniques being displayed would have been enough to slaughter anyone below the Immortal Realm who would be passing by.

The one-sided battle only went on for twelve more hours. Other than laying down that barrier, the golden dragon had not even needed to lift a single finger: in the end, the black-scaled serpent had been subjugated and was made into a mount by that one human in exchange for sparing its life.

This event, together with the fearsomeness of the Evil Saint Xu Ling, the being known as the Hellish Nightmare Dragon (renamed Little Black by his friends/captors) remembered it very well even up to this date.

And Cheng Hao, the reborn Evil Saint, of course would not let a chance to re-instill that memory slip by: it was time to bully this arrogant mount of his!

As the gates slowly opened, the darkness inside the first floor dwindled a bit. Light slowly creeped in, allowing the golden-eyed youth to finally gaze upon the imprisoned beast's outlines.

Six fierce eyes, glowing an eerie white, stood out from the surrounding darkness and they all glared hatefully at Cheng Hao's projection. With an enraged roar, a long, snake-like creature charged towards the outside world! Suddenly, the golden light from the Immortal Ascension Tower inundated a part of the creature's face, revealing the beast's features to an unconcerned Cheng Hao.

The head resembled that of a dragon, a completely black dragon, except in the place of its upper jaw and mandible was an exoskeleton resembling a long, sharp and pointy beak. Countless small, triangular, sharp fangs were exposed as the dragon opened its beak-like mouth and let out a loud cry, a sound that was halfway between a roar and a hiss.

The six, eerie-white eyes were all glinting with fury and hatred: if looks could kill – which in this beast's case it wasn't too far from the truth as they could easily shock a weak-minded person to death – Cheng Hao might have needed to start looking for another few miraculous golden sparks down in the underworld.

The young, golden-eyed boy smiled in his mind: indeed, that appearance that had scared off entire armies back in the day was still as horrifying ugly as ever.