The heat of the volcanic cavern pressed against Su Ming's skin again. Standing on the dark stone platform in the innermost layer of the secret realm, his eyes still reflecting the sharp silver light of his breakthrough, he looked down at the bubbling red lake below.
The serpentine avatar of the Ancient Crimson Dragon Soul rose from the molten depths. Its golden, hollow eyes locked onto Su Ming, the massive translucent scales on its body trembling with a chaotic, violent energy.
"Impossible..." The dragon soul's voice did not toll like a bell this time. It cracked, vibrating the volcanic walls with a sudden, raw shock. "How could a mere mortal... how could your consciousness remain intact after this? Your ego should have dissolved. The vessel should have been empty!"
Su Ming did not move. He stood in his demonic form—pale red skin, black lines wrapping around his chest, and the two dark horns steady at his temples. Instead of acting weak or trembling, he rolled his neck, cracking the joints, and looked up at the dragon soul directly into its eyes with a calm, cold gaze.
"Did Senior truly think a few nightmares and a walk across a foggy bridge would erase my mind?" Su Ming asked, his tone dry and casual. "If so, I must thank Senior for the free tempering. The service was excellent."
"You..." The serpentine body stiffened, the wind in the cavern dying down to a tense, suffocating quiet. "Since when?"
"Since the moment I stepped into this secret realm," Su Ming replied, resting his hand casually on the hilt of his blade. "Did you really think I would consume a random lotus and cultivate an unverified body refinement manual without double-checking it? Senior's script had a few too many loose ends."
The dragon soul fell silent.
The gold light in its hollow eyes flared with a sudden, crimson madness, the scales on its serpentine body rising like blades.
"You... a parasite... a human insect... you dare mock me?!" the dragon soul shrieked, dropping all pretense of being a benevolent ancestor.
"Look at your demonic appearance. Look at your red skin, the lines on your chest, the horns on your head. You refined the Primordial Yang Demon Body. The demonic energy has already fused with your marrow, rewriting your flesh!"
The serpentine avatar lunged forward slightly, the heat from the lava rivers rising in response to its rage.
"You are now a monster in the eyes of the orthodoxy," the dragon soul hissed. "The moment you return to your sect, the elders will execute you, seeing your demonic appearance. Your path ends here. You have no other choice but to submit. Let me borrow your vessel. I shall forge the supreme Primordial Yang Demon Dragon Physique and conquer the Nine Heavens. Submit and surrender!"
Su Ming looked down at his hands. The pale red skin was smooth, the black lines humming with residual heat. He raised one hand, touching the edge of the dark horn at his temple.
He looked up at the dragon's massive avatar. His voice was flat, dry, and completely devoid of fear.
"What demonic appearance?"
Su Ming circulated his Yin-Yang Golden Core.
Within his dantian, the balanced core rotated in a tight, rapid way. The high-density Yang energy circulating within his flesh was instantly drawn back into his core, where it was neutralized and converted by his golden core's Yin element.
Right before the dragon's eyes, the transformation began to peel away.
The pale red hue receded from his skin, returning to his natural complexion. The intricate black lines wrapping his chest dissolved, leaving his skin clean. The two demonic horns at his temples softened, shrinking back into his skull without leaving a single scar.
He stood on the stone platform, a perfectly ordinary human cultivator. The chaotic yang energy was gone, leaving only the clean, balanced Qi of his Yin-Yang core.
The dragon soul froze in mid-air, its serpentine scales locking as the realization hit its ancient mind.
Before it could speak, Su Ming reached into his storage ring.
In a single, fluid motion, he pulled out a set of pristine white robes and let them settle over his shoulders. The Ethereal Warding Robe fell into place, the high-grade white silk with silver threads running along the margins of the sleeves draping over his body. The protective cloud runes embroidered along the hem immediately hummed with a soft, pearlescent white barrier.
He reached into his sleeve and triggered the Tranquil Soul Bead around his neck, its deep blue sheen casting a cool, solid shield around his mind. With his left hand, he threw three high-grade protective talismans into the air, letting them form a glowing triangular defensive array around the platform.
Finally, he drew his sword. The blade hummed, reflecting the red magma below.
"You..." The dragon soul's voice carried a sudden, cold terror. "From the first trial... You were playing me."
Su Ming did not answer. He held the blade steady, his stance balanced.
For thousands of years, this remnant soul had waited in the dark. It was the last fragment of an ancient Crimson Dragon that had died in the great war, its physical shell turned to ash. It had taken shelter in the Thunder Fire Secret Realm not to find a successor, but to cultivate a vessel. A Primordial Yang Demon had slain the dragon in the past, prompting the dragon to devise an elaborate plan to forge and occupy that very same supreme physique.
It had needed a talented human to walk in, refine the demonic body, and empty their mind in the trials, leaving a perfect, mindless demonic container ready for possession.
The trials were designed to break and erase him. Even with the dragon's reduced power, its soul was too massive to be contained in a mortal body. Over the millennia, Su Ming was not the first to arrive in this secret realm; many before him had come.
But they had all failed, and their minds and flesh collapsed. None of them had been able to handle the weight of a draconic soul, a reality that had forced the dragon to devise this elaborate, multi-staged plan in the first place. Patiently cultivating and tempering a perfect vessel through the trials before attempting possession, that was its plan.
The final trial was designed to erase his very sense of self.
It was a perfect plan, devised over millennia. But Su Ming had ruined it. He had walked in, taken the treasure, refined the body, crossed the soul sea, broken the mind trial, and purified the vessel right in front of the dragon's face.
"You!!!!"
The dragon's scream shook the stone pillars, the red lava rivers erupting in massive plumes of fire. The serpentine avatar swelled, its scales turning a deep, bloody crimson as it unleashed its full power.
*ROAR!*
A spiritual shockwave slammed into the platform, ten times fiercer than anything Su Ming had faced on the hundred-step path. The sheer force of the sound wave cracked the stone floor, sending debris flying.
Su Ming did not retreat. He gripped his hilt, his feet anchored to the stone.
As the crimson shockwave hit, Su Ming slammed his blade against the stone, unleashing his own refined Dragon's Will, which he had tempered in the Soul-Shattering Sea Trial.
Boom!
The two invisible pressures collided in the air, creating a spatial ripple that distorted the secret realm.
The dragon soul lunged, its massive claw sweeping down, wrapped in red lightning. Su Ming parried, his blade meeting the phantom claw. The shock of the impact rattled his bones.
He did not yield. He pushed his will against the dragon's ancient pressure. With each clash of his sword, the spiritual friction hammered his own Dragon's Will, refining it further, forcing the newly formed will to settle deeper into his soul.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
They clashed multiple times in the space of a breath. The dragon soul's avatar was incredibly powerful, its raw elemental force pushing Su Ming back step by step. His Ethereal Warding Robe flared with bright white light, absorbing the electrical arcs that rolled off the phantom claws, while the defensive talismans around him cracked one by one.
Realizing that this human could not be easily defeated, the dragon soul grew desperate. The secret realm was collapsing; the ancient formation was already unstable.
With a final, furious roar, the dragon soul let go of its control over the realm's stability.
It abandoned the arrays holding the realm together, drawing every ounce of residual spiritual Qi in the chamber into its serpentine form. The magma lakes turned black as their heat was siphoned away, the cavern ceiling cracking as massive boulders began to fall.
The crimson dragon avatar grew to fifty feet, its scales burning with white-hot lightning.
"Die here, mortal!"
The dragon soul unleashed a final, devastating roar, a physical torrent of crimson lightning and fire rushing down like a falling mountain.
Su Ming had his Essence Sight and Halo of Insight running at their absolute limits; no movement of the dragon went unnoticed.
Realizing exactly what was coming, he abandoned all restraint. He spun his Yin-Yang Golden Core to its absolute limit, pushing his meridians to their extreme capacity. The golden-violet Yin-Yang Origin Flame coiled together along with his newly tempered Dragon's Will as he executed his own sword strike.
Yin-Yang Origin Flame Dragon's Roar Break.
From the coiled gold and violet flames, an unholy, dual-colored dragon rose, roaring as it lunged forward to collide directly with the dragon's falling mountain of flame and lightning.
Although Su Ming's power was not as overwhelming as the ancient beast's original might, it was not weak either. The violent clash sent destructive shockwaves rolling across the cavern. Now that the dragon had abandoned its control over the secret realm to launch this final strike, the space itself began to tear up, fissures ripping open in the ground and stone pillars collapsing into the dark void.
As the two dragons faced off, locked in a struggle of pure force, Su Ming pushed forward. Deep within his soul sea, the Twilight Nether Lantern lit up with a blinding, magnificent brilliance. Supported by the newly acquired Samsara Resin, his soul sea stabilized instantly, absorbing the massive strain and preventing his meridians from tearing apart under the pressure.