Tao lifted his head and stared at Old Man Gu.
His gaze was like that of an apex predator staring at its prey.
"You…" His voice was a whisper in the night, cold and sharp like a blade.
Old Man Gu's body shivered involuntarily. Shock coursed through him—he was a bonafide Earth Immortal realm cultivator. For a mere boy, not even thirty years old, to speak a single word and strike fear into his soul was a humiliation beyond measure.
Thinking of this, a ball of anger rose within him.
"Ah, so you're awake, brat! Tch, I knew something about you was different when I first laid eyes on you. Who would have thought your soul was fully healed and firmly settled in that body!"
Tao remained silent. His pale blue eyes bore into Old Man Gu with an emotionless intensity, as if he were already a dead man.
"This…" Old Man Gu faltered, feeling as if an abyss was swallowing him whole.
That feeling enraged him even further.
And in response to this frustration, Old Man Gu said something that would seal not only his fate, but that of his entire bloodline.
With a twisted grin, he sneered, "Tch, what? You miss mommy, huh? Heh, you're a thousand years too young to glare at me like that. Even your dear mommy's corpse didn't have that expression when me and my fellow members took turns—"
BOOOOOM!
Old Man Gu's words died in his throat as an invisible wave of unspeakable majesty and wrath burst from Tao.
Tao's mouth opened, his teeth grinding so hard that blood seeped from his lips. A dark, abyssal aura erupted from his body, twisting around him in a suffocating embrace as his voice—no longer his own—resounded like the roar of a primordial beast.
"YOU! YOU DARE DEFILE MY MOTHER'S CORPSE! YOU FUCKING WITLESS PIECE OF SHIT WORM!"
Tao's fists clenched so tightly that his muscles rippled, veins bulging like writhing snakes beneath his skin. The chains binding him groaned under the strain, straining against his monstrous strength—but they held, just barely.
Old Man Gu's eyes widened in utter disbelief. Those chains were top-tier spiritual weapons, treasures forged to suppress beings far stronger than Tao. Yet this mere child was on the verge of breaking them?
Tao cared little for Old Man Gu's shock—his rage burned hotter than the sun.
"I, TAO, VOW ON THIS DAY THAT I SHALL SURVIVE LONG ENOUGH TO HUNT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU DOWN—ALL OF YOUR MEMBERS, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR LOVERS—EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU! I WILL FIND YOU!"
As he spoke, the very blood in his body boiled like molten lava, his skin glowing red-hot, steam rising in thick waves. His body began to change.
Each word he uttered ignited a transformation.
His teeth sharpened into jagged razors. The edges of his face and limbs cracked as a black, scaly substance pushed through his skin—the budding signs of his true form.
But they did not fully emerge. It was as if they awaited something… something greater.
And then, in that moment, the last flicker of his humanity was swallowed whole by the abyss.
A chilling metamorphosis overtook his eyes.
The whites of his eyes blackened into endless voids, and his pupils turned an eerie, glowing white, slashed through by inhuman vertical draconic slits.
They were mesmerizing. Malevolent. A gaze so unfathomable that Old Man Gu's breath hitched in his throat.
"MARK MY WORDS, YOU WRETCHES. I WILL NOT DIE TODAY. I LOOK FORWARD TO THE DAY I HUNT ALL OF YOU DOWN…AND I WILL ANNIHILATE YOUR ENTIRE BLOODLINE!"
"IF GODS GET IN MY WAY, I WILL KILL GODS! IF DEVILS GET IN MY WAY, I WILL KILL THEM! EVEN IF THE VERY HEAVENS THEMSELVES STAND AGAINST ME…"
Tao tilted his head back, glaring into the sky, and roared with the force of a thousand storms:
"I… WILL… OBLITERATE… HEAVEN!"
BOOOOOM!
The sky itself answered his defiance.
Dark red lightning erupted from the heavens, illuminating the night with violent streaks of fury. The clouds churned, surging across the void like an enraged sea.
The stars vanished. The world itself darkened.
And then, the heavens struck back.
A torrential wave of divine pressure descended upon them, crushing everything in its path. Old Man Gu collapsed to his knees, his mind unraveling at the sheer might of the Heavenly Dao's fury.
"It's over… it's over… it's over…" he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.
His mind snapped.
Never—not in his wildest nightmares—did he imagine a mere child, a mortal without cultivation, would provoke the Heavenly Dao itself.
And yet…as Tao stood beneath that apocalyptic might, his body bloodied and breaking, he did not kneel.
He did not fall.
The more the heavens bore down on him, the angrier he became. His bones cracked, his muscles tore, his flesh split apart, yet he stood tall, unyielding.
His mother's words echoed in his mind.
Never bow. Never compromise. Never submit.
His soul burned like a newborn star. His will was sharpened to an unbreakable edge.
And then, something shifted.
The Heavenly Dao, for all its vast, boundless power, realized a terrifying truth.
This child would not bow. Not to it. Not to anything.
The heavens trembled. And in that moment of realization, the Heavenly Dao made its decision.
It would crush him completely.
The clouds above swirled, gathering a divine executioner's blade—not for Tao.
But for his mother's corpse. A bolt of divine punishment lightning fell like judgment itself, striking her remains.
Slowly, agonizingly, her body began to burn.
The black gas shielding her twisted and writhed, fighting in vain to protect her, but piece by piece, she crumbled into ash.
Time crawled.
Tao watched, helpless, as the destruction consumed her—her feet, her waist, her shoulders… until only her face remained.
And then, in that fleeting instant before oblivion took her, her right eye flickered open.
Lightning flashed in her gaze as she looked upon her son one last time.
Her eyes conveyed only one thing.
"I love you."
And then, she was gone.
The ashes of her body were carried off by the wind—scattered like worthless refuse.
Tao's mind cleared just enough to witness it.
The world fell silent.
The crushing might of the Heavenly Dao no longer registered. For Tao, there was nothing else—only the memory of his mother, her last gaze, and the ashes that fluttered away like a cruel dream unraveling.
Drip....Drip....
Tears—not clear, but dark crimson—began streaming from Tao's eyes. His glowing white pupils pulsed with a blinding radiance, the vertical slits at their center shining like blades forged in the void.
A pressure unlike anything before stirred deep within his soul.
It surged like a rising tide.
From his soul, it poured into his blood, igniting every vein, boiling him from within. His skin turned a deep, blistering red. Steam erupted from his body in violent waves, and his form shimmered with heat, warping the very air around him. He now looked less like a boy and more like a red demonic figure born from pure wrath.
The pressure escalated.
The wind howled and cracked like thousands of whips lashing the heavens. Rocks fractured and crumbled into dust beneath his feet, unable to endure the force radiating from his body.
And then a monstrous, serpentine shadow exploded from within Tao's frame.
A long, ancient black silhouette—a serpent-like dragon spirit—whirled around him in majestic arcs before slamming back into his body.
The black nubs on his head stretched, becoming ten-inch long horns—curved, jagged, and darker than the void itself. His skin darkened as the black substance coating his body solidified into armored, black-and-white dragon scales that shimmered with divine malice.
His fingers extended, transforming into gleaming obsidian claws, each one glinting with lethality.
Then, his jaw shifted—his lower face slightly elongating, reshaping his mouth with a subtle, beastly curve.
He was no longer just Tao.
He was becoming something else—something ancient and sovereign.
As the transformation neared its end, the searing red glow faded from his skin. The steam dissipated, but the pressure did not wane.
It grew.
A black-and-white aura ignited around him like celestial fire—a living flame that wrapped his form in unshakable might.
Slowly, Tao raised his head.
His eyes—those glowing, slit-pupiled eyes—locked onto the heavens. There was no fear in them. No respect. Only defiance. A gaze that no child should possess.
The Heavenly Dao stirred uneasily.
It sensed something wrong, something unnatural. It prepared to send another bolt of red punishment lightning—this time directed at Tao himself.
But before it could act—the aura around Tao exploded like a tidal wave.
Then, he roared.
A sound ripped through existence—a roar of such devastating power that it carried both draconic majesty and demonic fury.
"ROARRRRRRRRR!!"
The very sky shook.
Tao's demonic dragon roar obliterated the incoming lightning before it could strike. It dispersed like smoke in the face of a hurricane.
The force of his cry shattered the clouds above, slicing through the storm like a divine blade. The roar didn't stop at the sky—it continued upward, piercing into the dark chaos of the void beyond.
It echoed like a war drum across the realms.
It shook the hearts of weak cultivators. It broke meditation across sacred mountains. It startled sleeping beasts and disturbed the stillness of ancient tombs.
Heads turned.
In countless directions, eyes opened. From across the void, from realms hidden in mystery, from palaces lost to time—every gaze turned toward the source of that roar.
It traveled far, farther than reason could comprehend, to a place hidden in the deepest reaches of the void.
And those who heard it knew.
They remembered.
That sound—It belonged to one race. And one race only.
A race primal in instinct, divine in blood, brutal in nature, and supreme in strength.
A race feared and revered by all.
A True Dragon.
Tao had awakened the call of his ancient blood.
And the world would never be the same again.