Chapter 689: Sword Divines Heavenly Tribulation (1/2)

“Whatever that was… is that what you were hurt by?” Qing Yu withdrew her three connate spirit roots before asking.

“Not quite,” the Azure Dragon King chuckled ruefully. “I was injured by a rotten kun from the underworld… don’t worry, I’ve slain it already.”

“A rotten kun?” Lu Yun blinked.

“When a kunpeng dies in the underworld in its fish form, it turns into a corpse. When decay sets in, that corpse transforms into a rotten kun—an extremely powerful zombie. If it was allowed to enter this world, its corpse poison would pollute everything it made contact with. Both earth and sky for millions of kilometers around would be turned into zombie spawning grounds.

“That’s why I had to kill it,” sighed the Dragon King. “The underworld is on the brink of disaster too, it seems. A rotten kun…

“Send me back into the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals. I feel like my body is about to fall apart again.” The Azure Dragon King opened his palm, producing a tiny gold dragon in his hand. It was the ancestor vein he’d taken with him prior.

“Why did you mention the Blood Sea, then?” Lu Yun was dumbfounded. He thought that a creature from the Blood Sea was responsible for the Azure Dragon King’s injuries, but if it were something from the underworld… that made much more sense.

Holy Lord Ashu was evidence enough of what kind of terrors lurked in those depths. The so-called rotten kun had likely swum out from Ashu’s domain.

Qing Yu complied with the request. Upon returning to the scroll, the Dragon King turned into a mountain that served as the painting’s dragon vein.

“Roooaaawr!” an immature growl suddenly sounded. A flash of golden light later, a tiny dragon no more than a meter long had… gulped the floating vein right down. With a satisfied burp and a swish of its tail, it tunneled into the void and disappeared.

Lu Yun traded a bewildered look with Qing Yu.

“Did… did it just eat Nephrite’s ancestral vein?” He asked, still not entirely sure what he’d seen was real.

“…yes,” came her stunned reply.

After a lengthy silence, Lu Yun screamed at the top of his lungs. “Liu—Qing—miao, get out here right now!”

On the other side of Dao City, the baby-sized Liu Qingmiao pulled the tiny dragon’s tail as tightly as she could. “Did you get in trouble again, little guy?”

“Rooooaaawr!” The dragon whelp growled as innocently as it could, then glowed and leaped onto Liu Qingmiao’s arm as a new tattoo.

……

In the end, Lu Yun didn’t press his disciple about the kerfuffle with her pet. After all, he’d never intended to return the ancestral vein in the first place. He hadn’t expected the tiny dragon to eat it in such an unexpected manner before the Azure Dragon King could make use of it, but that was no matter.

The tiny dragon he’d brought out from the North Sea skydragon tomb had accepted Liu Qingmiao as its master. Liu Qingmiao was his number one disciple, having completely divorced herself from the Panorama Pavilion to join Dusk Province.

She displayed little respect even for the Pavilion lord, much less the rest of the merchants. However, there was nothing the Panorama Pavilion could do about it. Dusk Province had robbed it of the girl formerly slated as its heiress.

Of course, the trading guild and the province were diehard allies now. It was all thanks to Dusk Province that the thirteen mercantile organizations had been able to form their alliance.

The Panorama Pavilion was a business association with fairly loose ties. Its members were unified solely by the pursuit of profit. So, too, was the motivation behind the recently formed merchant alliance.