Chapter 147
Chapter 147
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 147
Chapter Title: For What
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The One-Eyed Dragon was a monster driven solely by instinct.
It had been the same even in its days as a sea demon.
Of course, it had no name back then either.
The sea demon was born in a perilous ocean.
A place where monsters born from corpses eternally clashed, only to ultimately become corpses themselves and sink back down.
A veritable hell.
Even the sea demon could not escape that cycle.
It fought, devoured, and fought again.
It never discriminated when choosing who to kill.
Time passed.
The sea demon finally became the Sea Demon King.
It gained a following.
More time passed.
The Sea Demon King elevated itself into a dragon.
The dragon's legion expanded endlessly.
Around that time, the nascent dragon encountered its mortal enemy.
A near-complete Dragon Orb, an elite legion of diverse composition, and an absolute powerhouse dominating all.
They were a perfect mirror image of each other.
There could not be two absolutes under heaven, so the two dragons and their legions inevitably collided.
Blood, flesh, and shattered bone rained down like a storm.
By the time the piled corpses formed islands, the war ended.
One dragon had lost its right eye, while the other lost its life and its Dragon Orb.
It was a great war that blanketed the sea in death.
Even that mighty dragon legion could not avoid decline.
The one-eyed absolute went into hiding with a handful of surviving elites.
The scarred dragon bided its time.
Its loyal subordinates were building an altar.
The day to complete the two Dragon Orbs drew near.
On the same day and hour, rituals commenced at two distant altars.
The five-colored mists swirled, compressed, and dazzling lightning flashed.
When the rituals ended, two stars were born.
The subordinates offered the completed Dragon Orbs to their master.
The radiant five-colored twin stars captivated the dragon's single eye.
It remembered nothing of what happened afterward.
The dragon floated at the center of the world.
The blood and flesh clinging to its body were quite unpleasant.
Whose remains they were mattered not.
They could have been traces of subordinates trying to dissuade the departing dragon, or remnants of another legion that foolishly charged at it.
But none of it was particularly important.
The Ascension Gate was opening before its eyes.
Soon, the path of clouds laden with Heavenly Tribulation unfurled.
The flow of heaven and earth's spiritual energy shifted dramatically.
The world's center—that vast void—temporarily sealed, giving rise to a dragon ascension current leading to the Ascension Gate.
The twin-star dragon rode the current.
It wrapped its massive body in five-colored clouds and soared.
Following the dragon's instinct and its longing for ascension, it headed to the Immortal Realm.
And then Heavenly Tribulation struck.
The five-colored mists and barriers were pierced in an instant.
Heaven's wrath shattered the dragon's scales and rent its flesh.
The dragon thrashed to ascend.
It manipulated the winds, storms, and thunderclouds to press toward the heavens.
But it could not reach the Ascension Gate.
The flow of heaven and earth's spiritual energy returned to normal.
The Ascension Gate closed, and in its place, the entrance to the Underworld opened.
The battered dragon was swept into the void by the inverted dragon ascension current.
The unconscious dragon kept plummeting.
The Underworld's gravitational pull on its massive form grew exponentially stronger, making escape nearly impossible.
Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of the dragon's hegemony.
But then, an anomaly occurred.
For some unknowable reason, its fated path twisted.
Perhaps the soul of its mortal enemy, trapped in one Dragon Orb, interfered—or maybe it was the weight of the karma the dragon had accumulated in life.
In any case, something moved a piece on the go board.
The dragon regained consciousness.
One beneath its jaw, one in its right hand.
The two Dragon Orbs resonated.
Having finally escaped the void after endless trials, the dragon gazed at the sky and pondered.
It felt the hand that sought to kill it.
It also felt the hand that sought to save it.
So, what exactly was heaven's will?
Moments later, the dragon ceased its thoughts.
It was all futile contemplation anyway.
What mattered was that two opposing wills existed.
The will that sought its death was undoubtedly mighty.
Yet for some reason, it could not fully exert its power.
Otherwise, no matter how great a dragon it was, it could not have survived.
The dragon stared at the Dragon Orb in its right hand, then embedded it into its empty eye socket.
The orb resized itself, filling the blood-and-pus-soaked socket.
Old wound mingled with new.
Soon, its long-lost right field of vision was restored.
The dragon took in all four continents in its sight as it flew upward.
It intended to grow even stronger, overcome Heavenly Tribulation, and ascend.
Thus, the One-Eyed Dragon was born.
*****
The first strike belonged to the One-Eyed Dragon.
Three Dragon Orbs, three stars resonated.
Dazzling lightning blanketed heaven and earth.
Seoran evaded with acrobatic maneuvers.
Dancheong deflected the blasts with counter-thunderbolts.
The Vastsea Roc endured, shrouded in its dharma-flame barrier.
Seoran and Dancheong formed the same hand seal simultaneously.
With a ripple of spiritual power, their joint spell activated.
The sea began pouring toward the sky.
In an instant, a prison of water was complete.
The One-Eyed Dragon wrapped itself in five-colored mists and barriers.
Immediately, the assault began.
From the inner walls of the prison, water infused with spiritual power jetted out at high pressure.
A deluge of death tore into the One-Eyed Dragon's barriers.
The One-Eyed Dragon swiftly interfered with Seoran and Dancheong's spiritual power, dispersing the spell.
Vast quantities of seawater plummeted back to the surface.
A million purple-eyed effigy legion, launch sequence complete, greeted the freed One-Eyed Dragon.
Thanks to Seoran and Dancheong buying time, the Vastsea Roc had safely emptied its hangar.
Purple eye-glow flashed, followed by a barrage of invisible ultrasonic beams.
The entire legion executed a joint formation.
The spiritual power, which destabilized barriers, rapidly crumbled the One-Eyed Dragon's defenses and five-colored mists.
But group battles were the One-Eyed Dragon's specialty.
In its days commanding the dragon legion, it had been a strategist, vanguard captain, and undefeated legion commander.
It effortlessly devised countermeasures amid the chaos.
The One-Eyed Dragon immediately reshaped its barriers.
It divided the single wall into thousands of layers, filling the gaps with five-colored mists.
The barriers replenished far faster than the invisible beams could erode them.
With breathing room secured, the One-Eyed Dragon counterattacked.
With a grand ripple, a massive area-of-effect spell activated.
Indiscriminate thunderbolts and gales swept through the sheet-like flying purple-eyed effigy legion.
Nearly half its forces were neutralized in one go.
Actual shoot-downs were rare.
Most turned to dust on the spot.
The surviving owl puppets spread out.
As expected, minor attacks were utterly ineffective.
They needed to create openings with feints and kill with one strike.
The Vastsea Roc and purple-eyed effigy legion fell back a step.
Thus, a colossal circular arena was born.
A slaughter between spirit beasts was about to commence.
Just then, the flow of heaven and earth's spiritual energy shifted.
The half-open Ascension Gate fully parted, while the Underworld's entrance sealed.
A massive dragon ascension current linked sea and sky.
The mortal realm's absolutes clashed toward each other.
Seoran's blade of water cleaved the heavens.
The One-Eyed Dragon's storm whip lashed the sea.
Dancheong's hurled lightning spear pierced heaven and earth.
Each spell could shatter mountains and overturn rivers.
Exchanges that astounded the heavens and shook the earth.
A true world-shaking battle.
With the dragon ascension current between them, three supersonic craft traced erratic paths.
Cascading spiritual power ripples, spells activating and dispelling repeatedly, roiling barriers and evasion maneuvers.
A brutal contest of strength raged on.
Seoran and Dancheong were clearly stalling.
Not out of reckless intent to wear down the One-Eyed Dragon in a prolonged fight.
It was a ploy to end the battle in one decisive blow.
Half a shichen—one hour—had passed since combat began.
The moment Seoran and Dancheong had awaited arrived.
The dagger to pierce the One-Eyed Dragon was finally here.
Dancheong activated a sealing spell.
The winds of the region constricted around the One-Eyed Dragon at his command.
The One-Eyed Dragon promptly shattered the seal.
The response took only an instant.
But that was enough.
The One-Eyed Dragon's position was fixed, if only for a moment.
The first improved bamboo shoot ballistic missile arrived.
The bamboo shoot ballistic missile was the key countermeasure for the One-Eyed Dragon battle.
It had undergone numerous enhancements—power amplification, miniaturization, improved propulsion and efficiency—but the most crucial was the micro-barrier applying wind-element spells.
This allowed the improved bamboo shoot ballistic missile to completely ignore air resistance.
Seoran had signaled the launch site via the orbital construct Golden Bamboo Flower the moment battle commenced.
Right after launch, the missile accelerated sharply to a top speed of ten thousand times the speed of sound.
As a result, it covered the distance Seoran's group had traveled in three months in mere half a shichen.
The One-Eyed Dragon's coordinates, gathered by the Vastsea Roc and purple-eyed effigy legion, were transmitted directly to the orbital Golden Bamboo Flower.
The spiritual processors and analysis engines aboard the space construct successfully locked on.
The instant Dancheong bound the One-Eyed Dragon's movements.
Moving thousands of kilometers per second, the ballistic missile plunged like a beam from beyond detection range.
To the target, it felt like instantaneous teleportation.
Even with precognition, evasion or defense was no guarantee.
Scorching flash, colossal shockwave, and trailing roar.
Light like the sun crashing down blinded the eyes.
The rapidly expanding shockwave drowned out sound.
The excessive roar numbed the sense of touch.
It wasn't over yet.
More bamboo shoot ballistic missiles rained down relentlessly.
In the extreme conditions where communication was impossible, Seoran, Dancheong, and the Vastsea Roc proceeded as planned.
Dancheong's dragon eyes captured the One-Eyed Dragon beyond the flash.
As expected, it wouldn't die so easily.
It endured the missile barrage, channeling all its power into defense.
Dancheong activated the sealing spell once more.
This time, there was no room to break it.
The One-Eyed Dragon's movements were fully locked, its coordinates relayed to the Vastsea Roc via Dancheong's horn.
Light beams originating from beyond the horizon struck true.
Into the sea surface, the seafloor, the deep sea, the bedrock below.
The One-Eyed Dragon was helplessly smashed downward.
While Dancheong and the missile barrage pinned its limbs, Seoran and the Vastsea Roc prepared the finishing blow.
The purple-eyed effigy legion gathered the region's heaven and earth spiritual energy.
The energy converted to primordial spiritual power via Seoran.
At the end of that flow stood the Vastsea Roc.
Immense spiritual power surged in.
But the puppet core and analysis engines fully controlled and compressed it.
The destructive force converged at the Vastsea Roc's beak.
The Vastsea Roc's beak, primed for firing, opened.
Perfectly timed, the missile reserves depleted.
The onset and end of the two assaults aligned without a hair's breadth of error.
The ultimate five-colored beam, fired with the giant puppet as cannon barrel, struck the One-Eyed Dragon dead-on.
The atmosphere, sea, and crust collapsed in unison.
The aftermath rocked the celestial barriers; the light was visible from all continents east, west, south, and north.
The long—yet short—assault ceased.
Overloaded, the Vastsea Roc entered dormancy and plummeted into the sea.
The region's seawater rushed into the collapsed bedrock, forming a massive whirlpool.
Seoran didn't bother uttering a cliché like "Did we get it?" inviting resurrection.
No need to wonder.
Dancheong's expression said it all.
With a heavy pulse, the whirlpool erupted upward in reverse.
Amid the vortex, a soaring shadow glimpsed.
Bathed in five-colored radiance, the One-Eyed Dragon emerged, shredding the dragon ascension current.
The initial goal of a quick victory had failed.
The Vastsea Roc and purple-eyed effigy legion were out of commission; Seoran and Dancheong were heavily drained.
Despite its haughty demeanor, the One-Eyed Dragon was covered in wounds.
All that remained was a desperate slugfest.