I have added this story to my Patreon. You can support me and read the 40 latest and advanced chapters there. It also fed and motivate me to write more chapters!
Link: Patreon.com/AVRkingsTL
—------------------—
......
"Hum—"
The lightning's radiance dissipated!
That blinding, ghastly white glare lasted less than a second before being instantly swallowed by the surging darkness and thunderclouds closing in from all sides.
That massive dragon bone, etched with intricate lightning patterns, once again vanished into the pitch-black abyss where one could not even see one's own hand.
"Trying to hide? Too late!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Luo Nan sharply altered his trajectory, diving like a black falcon tucking in its wings.
Braving the crushing pressure of the surrounding violent thunder, he plunged straight down toward the spot where he remembered the dragon bone to be.
The surroundings were pitch-black, and the violent electromagnetic field generated by the lightning severely impaired vision; an ordinary person would be effectively blind here.
Yet, Luo Nan remained calm.
He slowly closed his eyes, and a burst of deep, purplish-black light erupted from the center of his brow.
It was the power of the 250,000-year-old Abyss Dark-Thunder Demon Dragon skull bone he had just absorbed!
Luo Nan unleashed his immense spiritual power—which had already touched the threshold of the Divine Origin Realm—spreading it out instantly like a vast, invisible net.
Even in this hostile environment of raging thunder and absolute darkness, his spiritual power locked onto the fluctuations of the thunder's source energy on the ground below with pinpoint accuracy. "Found it!"
Luo Nan paused in mid-air before landing steadily on a patch of scorched earth that was as hard as iron.
He slowly extended his hand; his fingertips brushed against a massive object that was incredibly hard and radiated a terrifying heat along with powerful lightning-aspected energy fluctuations.
As Luo Nan's fingers gently traced the surface, a storm of astonishment raged within him.
This was no ordinary bone!
Only at such close range did he truly grasp its immense scale.
The section exposed above ground was so thick that it would take at least three strong adult men, holding hands, to barely encircle it.
Deep within the pale-gold bone structure, a substance resembling liquid lightning seemed to flow sluggishly.
It was the primordial lightning essence of the Ancient Lightning Dragon King. After tens of thousands of years of erosion and sedimentation,
it had thoroughly permeated every inch of the bone marrow; enduring the passage of ages without fading, it exuded an aura that compelled one to bow in reverence.
Luo Nan took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the excitement surging within him.
He knew that a fragment of the Lightning Dragon King's skeleton of this magnitude could never fit—intact—into the space of his current storage soul device.
Moreover, the bone appeared to be fused with the very foundation of the Nine Dragons Mountain Range; forcibly extracting it could well trigger a violent, uncontrollable surge of lightning energy throughout the entire mountain range.
Just as Luo Nan was pondering how to handle this peerless dragon bone, his spiritual sense suddenly picked up something.
He lowered his gaze and noticed something amidst the scorched earth at the base of the massive dragon bone.
Something seemed to be flickering faintly—a gleaming golden stone that stood out strikingly against the darkness.
Luo Nan crouched down and dug the golden stone out of the soil.
He wiped away the charred dirt from its surface and examined it closely in his palm.
"No... this is absolutely not just an ordinary golden stone!"
A startling, brilliant gleam instantly flashed in Luo Nan's eyes.
Resting in his palm was, in fact, a dragon scale!
The scale was quite small—no larger than an adult's palm. Compared to the massive dragon bone nearby—so thick it would take three people linking arms to encircle it—this object appeared utterly insignificant, creating a stark visual contrast.
Logically speaking, for a primordial behemoth like the Ancient Thunder Dragon King—whose body length could easily span thousands of meters—even a mundane scale shed from its body ought to be the size of a house.
Had Luo Nan not sensed the aura of the Ancient Thunder Dragon King emanating from this tiny dragon scale, he would certainly have assumed it didn't belong here—thinking instead that it was merely dropped by some low-level dragon-type spirit beast.
Luo Nan held the scale up before his eyes, scrutinizing it closely by the faint light of the surrounding lightning.
The scale displayed a deeply noble, dark golden hue, and its edges lacked the usual sharp, serrated points.
Instead, a halo of eerie blue electric light shimmered around the rim, as if the scale itself had been condensed and solidified from the purest lightning.
At the very center of the scale, the texture did not form the fan or diamond shapes typical of ordinary dragon scales; rather, the patterns coiled intricately, resembling a twisting, powerful dragon.
Even more striking was a dazzling, pure-gold thread that ran vertically from the base of the scale all the way to the top.
That golden thread held a terrifying amount of vital blood energy; it looked as though a single drop of the Ancient Thunder Dragon King's pure blood was forever flowing and burning within the scale itself!
"This is... the Thunder Dragon King's *ni-lin*—its reverse scale! Or, if not that exact one, a scale from that very same region!"
Luo Nan reached this conclusion.
Only a unique scale—one that concentrated the Dragon King's core bloodline essence—could possess such a compact size combined with such terrifying energy density.
The value of this palm-sized dragon scale far surpassed that of the massive dragon bone lying nearby! Without a moment's hesitation, Luo Nan carefully stowed the dark-gold reverse scale into his highest-grade soul storage device.
However, the very instant the scale was cut off from the outside world and secured within the device...
"ROAAAR—!!!"
A deafening dragon's roar—piercingly shrill and filled with boundless rage and fury—erupted from the sky!
The atmosphere over the entire Nine-Dragon Mountain Range underwent a sudden, violent transformation!
The massive lightning pillars surrounding Luo Nan—each as thick as a large water vat—instantly surged to a hundred times their original size, defying all natural logic.
They morphed into terrifying beams of lightning, a hundred meters thick, connecting the heavens and the earth!
The lightning-elemental energy in the surrounding air spiked violently, reaching a critical threshold capable of tearing the very fabric of space.
The entire core lightning zone felt like a massive powder keg on the verge of detonation.
"BOOM—!"
Endless waves of lightning surged forth like a tsunami!
The sky seemed to collapse, carrying the earth-shattering might of an ancient dragon as it transformed into a vast ocean of purple-white lightning.
It crashed down toward Luo Nan's position with the crushing weight of a falling mountain!
The sheer power involved far exceeded the limits of what any human Spirit Master could possibly withstand!
"Holy crap!"
Sensing the terrifying power overhead—force enough to instantly vaporize him into nothingness—
Even the usually arrogant Luo Nan was startled, and a curse involuntarily escaped his lips.
He never imagined that simply taking a single dragon scale—no bigger than a palm—
Would trigger such a terrifying, ultimate killing formation in the burial ground of the Lightning Dragon King!
Just as he faced this critical, life-or-death crisis...
A flash of inspiration, swift as lightning, struck Luo Nan's mind.
"The Nine Crowns of the True Dragon!"
He had an incredibly strong intuition!
If he brought out the "Nine Crowns of the True Dragon"—a supreme treasure he had extorted from the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect—
It might just resolve this seemingly hopeless situation! Something truly wonderful might even happen!
......