Dragon

The first thing to crawl out was a battered electric scooter. Beneath its fractured plastic shell, the wheels twisted and sparks sprayed like weeping tears of blood. Twitching and trembling, two fingers formed of wheel spokes reached out from the warped steel. Two arms—one long, one short—lifted it up to crawl across the ground like a hound! Upon a face pieced together from half a warped LCD screen, crimson fury and madness flared. It opened its maw, spewing thick smoke in a roar. Then it pounced! Right behind it came a second, then a third. One by one, amidst violent tremors and dense smoke, the electric scooters twisted into grotesque creatures with misshapen limbs. Flung forward with reckless abandon, they threw themselves onto Lawrence, tearing with their jaws, clawing with their arms, and discharging bursts of electric current! Then followed the roar of an automobile. Its shattered chassis discarded, a body massive as a bison or an elephant charged in, slamming into the writhing abomination. It crushed down, engine howling as it belched thick exhaust! Some resembled giant spiders; others, grotesque raptors. Wrought from gears and mechanics, the furious steel shrieked, converging into a surging tide. Trampling and crushing one another, they clambered upward in relentless waves, almost entirely submerging Lawrence's mutated bulk. "What the hell are these pieces of shit?!" The deformed monstrosity roared. Two sweeping limbs easily tore through the machines swarming over him. The bizarre Artificer greatblade, Xiao'an, slashed out like a hot knife slicing through wax, meeting no resistance. Nothing more than a minor nuisance! Yet beneath the giant tree, Ji Jue merely raised both hands and slowly brought them together, issuing his very first command to his creations: [Convergence]! At once, the shriek of countless grinding metals erupted anew. Hundreds of intricate machines drew together in a single place. Whether shattered fragments or intact chassis, they slotted, interlocked, and riveted into one another like living creatures, forging a colossal aggregate the likes of which had never been seen before. Ji Jue's vision went dark for a second. He reached out again and clenched his fist! Instantly, brand-new structures sprouted from the mangled machinery. Limbs forged from a fused conglomerate of electric scooters, motorbikes, computers, telephones, and lawnmowers writhed, snapping shut into binding shackles. Then came a second, and a third. Across the shifting mechanical structures, venomous, tormented faces surfaced, roaring at the top of their lungs as billowing smoke poured forth. In a split second, they actually pinned Lawrence to the ground. Opening their maws, they bit down! Blood and gore splattered. Feasting on flesh, savoring viscera, chewing on bone—this unrestrained, gluttonous feast seemed more monstrous than any monster. Lawrence screamed and thrashed, yet looking into the gaze of that face, an unprecedented, overpowering sensation welled within him. Fear! "Get off me!" Xiao'an swept across, only to come to an abrupt halt. Caught in a grip?! It was Minerva! She allowed the edge to slice into her palm. Her five fingers slowly tightened, and amidst the crisp, brittle ringing of proliferating crystals, the blade shrieked in violent vibration—before snapping right in half! Heavenly craft, shattered! Then came the stomp! "This is what you call a dragon?" Wen Wen ground his head beneath her heel, shaking her head in disdain. "Far too weak!" "Ptui..." Gnawed half to death in the mire, Lawrence struggled to open his mouth and spat at her, hissing, "So hypocritical, Minerva... how laughable. "The Path of the Desolate Ruins you revere was forged in the wake of the Dragon to begin with! Is what you pursue any different from what I seek?! Why put on this sanctimonious act?!" "You cling to phantoms, placing all your hopes in something you've never even seen, oblivious to the truth..." Wen Wen remained silent, merely staring down at him. Her expressionless face grew only colder. "—Something that cannot even be considered human will never answer your prayers!" Out of the dead silence, a high, piercing resonance rang out. Right behind her. Crystals ground, multiplied, and grew, unfurling toward the sky into a massive stone wing that blotted out the sun and heaven, bathing the earth in a dreamlike, dispassionate brilliance. Lawrence froze, thunderstruck. Horrified eyeballs popped open from the mangled flesh, blinking incessantly as they tried to discern whether this was another malicious illusion or a figment of his own madness. Yet no matter what, he could not believe it. "Y-You... You!" His voice grew shriller and more anguished, as if swallowed whole by a nightmare. He bore witness with his own eyes to everything occurring across Wen Wen. It was not merely blood, nor was it merely flesh; even her very soul laid bare its true form. Ruthless, majestic, brutal, and immense... A draconification far more complete than his own! "What's wrong? Haven't you been chasing dragons all along, Lawrence?" Wen Wen spoke, her detached voice swelling into thunder that rolled across the heavens, reverberating through the Domain. "Consider this my final mercy... allowing you to die by the hands of the very thing you pursued! "A fitting end, wouldn't you say!" Boom! When she reached toward the sky once more and clenched her fist, what descended was boundless lightning. All the brilliance in the world converged between her five fingers, coalescing into a crystalline lance so dazzling one could not bear to look upon it. This was dragon breath! [Destruction], manifested in physical form! In that final fraction of a second, Lawrence opened his mouth as if to scream, curse, or plead. But it no longer mattered. No one cared. Parasites, blood, fungal strains, monstrosity, the dregs of bitterness and despair, even the foolish dream of turning into a dragon. Everything was swallowed whole by the dragon's breath. Utter silence. Only a fierce blaze capable of scorching all sight away flashed and vanished. A tempest rose abruptly. Ashes drifted up toward the sky. Countless squirming scarlet spiritus evaporated into nothingness, and the giant tree crumbled apart, dissolving into phantom mist. Aside from a massive crater that bore not even a trace of scorch marks, nothing remained. Not even fragments of an explosion or torn debris could be found. A portion of matter had vanished from the mortal realm for all eternity, leaving not a single particle behind. Such was the power of a dragon. In the protracted silence, Wen Wen stood before the deep crater, the colossal wing behind her gone without a trace. "Phew. That's why I didn't want them coming to help." She murmured softly and let out a sigh. Tilting her head to look back, she cracked a grin. "Hey, Ji Jue, remember to keep this a sec..." Her words caught in her throat. The smile froze on her face. Perhaps she didn't need to worry about anyone leaking this secret after all. Amidst the ruins and the blood-soaked mud pit, Ji Jue slumped on the ground, wheezing heavily, in utter wretchedness. And across his body, the residual dragon blood was still slowly spreading, mutating his flesh, warping his frame, and sprouting an eerie layer of scales that gradually robbed his eyes of their human radiance. Corruption. The horrific mutation that struck terror into the hearts of the Celestial Chosen was spreading. He was on his last breath. Yet he seemed entirely unbothered, even though he had long since pushed past his absolute limit. "What's up, Sister Wen?" Ji Jue raised his head. Across his grime-streaked face, he forced a faint smile. "Did I... manage to accomplish something today?" "..." Caught completely off guard, Wen Wen fell silent. Suddenly, she remembered their parting words from the day before, along with the youth's smile back then—so steady, so calm, just like now. "Yeah. You did." She reached out, solemnly wiping the dust from his face, and said, "It was an honor to know you." "Huh?" Ji Jue went blank, completely lost, terrified her next line would be something along the lines of 'you're not looking half bad yourself.' Immediately after, he watched as Wen Wen stood up with grave solemnity, took a step back, and raised her hand once more to grip the crystalline lance of thunder that descended from above, leveling it straight at his face. "Rest easy. I won't let you feel any pain." Her eyes seemed faintly rimmed with red as she asked softly, "Any last words?" "Fuck, wait, don't!" Ji Jue's face turned stark white with terror, and he shrieked, "I think I can still be saved!" *Big Sis, what the hell are you doing?! I thought you were just after my body, not my damn life!* "You don't have to lie to me anymore, Ji Jue. Once corruption sets in, both soul and flesh collapse in agonizing torment." Wen Wen took a deep breath, her slightly trembling hand steadying once more. "Don't worry. I'll make sure you keep your dignity as a human being." "I can keep my dignity while alive, Big Sis! I'm just suffering from blood loss, don't scare me like this!" Ji Jue could no longer afford to play dead. His mind frantically hammered the prompt flashing on his watch: [Active aberrant spiritus detected internally. Extract?] *YES! YES! YES!!!* *Hurry the fuck up and extract it all!!!!* With a series of crisp, brittle cracks, every trace of spreading mutation and every scale growing across Ji Jue shattered, turning to dust and scattering into the wind. The irreversible mutation vanished in an instant. "..." In the dead silence, Wen Wen froze where she stood, staring blankly at what had just happened before her eyes. For a long time, she nearly forgot she was still holding dragon breath in her hand. Only an awkwardness, multiplying exponentially by the second, filled the air. "...Huh?" After a long while, she let out a dazed squeak, looking more bewildered than a baffled cat. *Who am I? Where am I? What just happened?* *Did I just watch someone's signs of corruption reverse and vanish? The kind of thing that would blow the minds of those psychos at the hospital clean out of their skulls, something I've literally never heard of in my fucking life?!* *Then what the hell was I doing just now?* She suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to look in a mirror to check whether there was a little red ball on the tip of her nose. *You little bastard, give me back the tears that almost fell from my eyes!* And... *Is it too late to silence him now?* Gradually, a dangerous glint entered her eyes. "Sister Wen, don't be like this, I have a family!" Ji Jue was practically weeping tears of genuine fright. "Spare my miserable life! I'm skilled, I'm not clingy, and my service is top-notch! Wouldn't it be such a waste to wait until I'm cold to use me?!" *Thump!* In a fit of mortified rage, the lance of dragon breath zipped past the side of Ji Jue's neck and lodged firmly into the masonry beside him, leaving a terrifying web of cracks. "..." Wen Wen hoisted him up by the collar, warning him through gritted teeth, "If you want to see tomorrow's sun, take everything about me and everything about you reversing corruption to your grave. You tell no one who asks, you don't even mumble it in your sleep, understand?!" "Ah? Ah?! You weren't after my bo—cough, cough, right, absolutely!" Ji Jue nodded furiously, head bobbing so hard his brains nearly scrambled. "I bumped into something and passed out! I don't know a single damn thing!" "Very good." Wen Wen nodded, her smile turning sweet and gentle as she straightened his collar and patted it twice. "And where was it that you accidentally bumped? Would your head do?" "Huh?" Ji Jue stared, slack-jawed, instinctively opening his mouth to say something. The last thing he saw was Wen Wen's raised fist—dainty, delicate, and utterly adorable, showing not the slightest hint of how many lives it had snuffed out. And then... *Smack!* Having survived Vortex Planting, spiritus erosion, despairing nightmares, the Celestial Selection Rite, a desperate counter-kill, and a narrow escape from death, Ji Jue's vision went black. He was knocked out cold. Cause of 'death': friendly fire. Didn't even have team damage turned off. Reality truly was a dogshit game.