Hua Yang Zhenjun's aura thickened like congealed blood, his fury manifesting as crackling arcs of violet lightning that scorched the air. The Celestial Azure Crucible—a jade-green censer etched with primordial runes—hovered above his palm, its apertures vomiting ribbons of annihilation that painted the throne hall in hues of slaughter.
"Vermin!" The True Monarch's roar liquefied coral mosaics beneath his feet. "You dare steal from Heaven's chosen?"
Zhao Rui's spatial bracelet flared as he teleported behind a petrified dragon rib, the Ten Thousand Laws Tome clutched against his chest. The stolen scripture pulsed with alien warmth, its vellum pages squirming like live tissue. Across the hall, Dun Che's ursine form blurred between collapsing pillars, his claws shredding a path through Hua Yang's spectral blades.
"Now, Brother!" The fox demon's mental shout carried the acrid tang of fear.
Zhao Rui lunged from cover, his fingers closing around the crystal amphora of Dragon King's Golden Blood. The artifact thrummed with contained violence—a miniature sun trapped in glass. Hua Yang's enraged shriek followed instantly, the Celestial Azure Crucible pivoting to vomit a storm of prismatic blades.
The Dance of Blades
Reality itself seemed to fracture under Hua Yang's assault. Spectral swords materialized from water molecules, their edges singing with entropy. Zhao Rui danced through the lethal ballet, his movements guided by the God-Sealing Tome's golden motes—each dodge calibrated to atomic precision.
A blade grazed his forearm. Blood welled black before the wound cauterized itself—the Tome's influence knitting flesh with threads of stolen time.
"Persistent cockroach!" Hua Yang's fingers contorted through Nine Heavenly Seals. The hall's remaining dragonbone pillars detonated in sequence, each explosion birthing gravitational anomalies that warped light into spirals of madness.
Dun Che's answering roar shook loose stalactites. "Eat lightning, baldy!"
The fox demon's Soulflame Barrage—a technique perfected through centuries of tomb raiding—erupted in a supernova of stolen spirit energy. Ghostly foxes woven from necrotic qi swarmed Hua Yang, their fangs seeking the gaps in his golden core defenses.
A Monarch's Rage
Hua Yang's laughter dripped venom as he batted aside the spectral assault. "You think mortal tricks can harm one who's transcended tribulation?"
The Celestial Azure Crucible inverted. From its depths poured not light, but absence—a hunger that devoured Dun Che's foxes mid-leap. The fox demon stumbled, blood frothing at his nostrils as the backlash ravaged his meridians.
Zhao Rui's spatial bracelet flared again. He reappeared mid-lunge above Hua Yang, the Dragon King's Golden Blood amphora raised like a dagger.
"Fool!" Hua Yang's palm met Zhao Rui's chest in a Shattering Mountain Palm Strike. Ribs splintered. The world became a blur of pain.
Yet the Tome's golden motes swarmed faster.
Dragon's Whisper
As Zhao Rui crashed through petrified merfolk statues, a single drop of Golden Blood escaped the cracked amphora. It fell.
The hall held its breath.
Where the golden droplet kissed a dragon femur, time itself stuttered. The bone—dead for millennia—twitched. Then twisted, jagged edges knitting into scales still glistening with primeval seawater.
"No..." Hua Yang's sneer faltered. "The Draconic Rebirth Cycle was a myth!"
The resurrected bone lashed out. Hua Yang's crucible intercepted in a shower of sparks, but more skeletal fragments were stirring now—a creeping resurrection spreading through the hall like ink in water.
Opportunity in Chaos
Zhao Rui spat blood and grinned. The Tome's pages fluttered open of their own accord, their glyphs resonating with the awakening leviathan.
"Dun Che! The western arch!"
The fox demon, still clutching his ruptured dantian, lobbed a stolen frost grenade. The explosion collapsed a section of ceiling, burying Hua Yang under tons of prismatic debris.
"Run!" Zhao Rui's teleportation carried them both into the collapsing corridor beyond, the Ten Thousand Laws Tome guiding their flight through crumbling spacetime. Behind them, the Dragon King's awakening roar shook the ocean floor.
Aftermath
Three li beyond the disintegrating palace, Zhao Rui collapsed against a thermal vent, the Tome's golden motes frantically repairing his shattered ribs. The amphora in his grip now bore hairline fractures spiderwebbing across its surface, through which the Golden Blood's light pulsed like a captive star.
Dun Che prodded a still-twitching dragon claw impaled in his thigh. "Remind me why we thought this was a good idea?"
"Because," Zhao Rui wheezed, watching the distant throne hall implode into a singularity of reborn draconic fury, "now we hold the spark that terrifies even gods."
Above them, the ocean shuddered—not from collapsing ruins, but in answer to the Tome's triumphant croon.