A dragon begets nine sons, and none are true dragons, yet each is unique.
Though these nine were not pure-blooded dragons, their father was none other than the legendary Ancestral Dragon, the mightiest of them all. Each son had inherited one of his divine abilities, making their individual legacies the nine supreme inheritances within the Dragon Domain.
But the Azure Dragon was different.
While it also took the form of a dragon, it was not born of flesh and blood. It was a celestial deity, a divine manifestation of the heavens themselves, one of the sacred Four Symbols. Now that the final and most powerful of the ten great inheritances was about to open, the Dragon Domain was filled to absolute capacity.
Unlike the dragons of whimsical folklore, these beings wielded genuine, world-shattering power. And in just ten days, the brutal battle for their legacies would begin.
"This is… quite the crowd," Su Min muttered, hovering above the seething masses on her flying sword, her expression unreadable.
As a transmigrator with a player's insight, her special Five Elements Holy Body allowed her to adapt to almost any inheritance. But she faced two critical problems. Time was severely limited; pursuing another legacy would mean forfeiting the Azure Dragon's. Capacity was also a hard limit; no one could endlessly stack powerful inheritances without consequence. Greed here led only to a shattered foundation and a dead-end path.
For Su Min, the Azure Dragon's legacy was non-negotiable. It was the essential key to unlocking the next stage of her Five Elements Holy Body. Below her, the vast Dragon Domain was overflowing with tens of thousands of cultivators, their combined auras creating a palpable storm of spiritual pressure.
"Besides me, there are three others bearing the Azure Dragon's mark," she whispered to Xie Yingying, who stood steadfast beside her. "The most dangerous is that Wood Madman. He has brought over twenty Golden Core experts with him, all likely elites."
Since the other marked individuals had not detected her yet, she had no intention of revealing herself prematurely. The inheritance trial itself would be a bloodbath designed to weed out the unworthy. And those who dared to compete for a top-tier legacy like this? None would back down without a fight.
The chaos did not last long.
Violent clashes erupted almost immediately.
Most of the inheritance seekers were core disciples of major, ancient sects, while others, like those from the remote, impoverished Wei Wu Province, had no backing at all. They had been suppressed by the Heavenly Dao for too long and now saw this as their only chance at glory. But reality was relentlessly cruel. In a single, bloody day, the once-bustling grounds were dramatically emptied. Only the truly strong survived.
"Trash."
A towering, muscular man wielding a massive, serrated battleaxe sneered, his foot deliberately crushing a pulverized Golden Core beneath his heel.
"You lower-realm rats should crawl back to the garbage heap where you belong."
Su Min watched the scene coldly from her vantage point. These major sects were ruthless, but not foolish. They only purged the weakest, those who had barely survived the Three-Nine Heavenly Tribulation and posed no real threat. As for Su Min and Xie Yingying, no one dared provoke them. Two verified Nine-Nine Tribulation survivors, one of whom was a renowned Grade Four alchemist? Only a suicidal idiot would make enemies of them without cause.
Soon, the crowd thinned to a few hundred. But every single one left was a monster, a genuine elite who had survived at minimum the Six-Nine Tribulation. Among them stood a green-haired man, one of the three marked by the Azure Dragon. He approached Su Min with a carefully crafted, polite smile.
"Lady Su, which of the three great inheritances here interests you?" he asked, his tone deferential.
"The Azure Dragon's, of course," Su Min replied without hesitation, her lips curling into a faint, knowing smile. "Its domain is said to brim with wood-element vitality, perfect for nurturing spiritual herbs. An ideal environment for an alchemist like me, would you not agree?"
The man's smile stiffened for a fraction of a second, but he quickly recovered and nodded enthusiastically. "Naturally, naturally! It is a perfect match for your esteemed profession!"
No one present dared to argue. Who would be foolish enough to fight a master alchemist over access to herbs? It was far better to stay on her good side; who knew when they might need her services later, and offending her could mean exorbitant prices or outright refusal.
At the very center of the Dragon Domain stood a colossal, five-hundred-meter-tall stone pillar, intricately carved with the coiling, majestic form of the Azure Dragon. Its material was mystically indestructible. Even Su Min, who could once shatter city walls with a single strike, knew she could not leave so much as a scratch on its surface.
There were nine other, slightly smaller strange statues surrounding the central pillar, each over two hundred meters tall, representing the nine sons of the dragon. Their inheritances were also hidden here, but every time the Golden Core Avenue opened, only one or two would fully manifest. Which ones would appear this time was a mystery.
But more than half of the people gathered here were aiming for the Azure Dragon Secret Realm, primarily because of the coveted divine objects rumored to be within. One had to understand that the Azure Dragon and Vermilion Bird inheritances had a special characteristic, they were unique. Once claimed, they might not reappear for millennia.
Whenever the Golden Core Avenue opened, many ancient inheritances would reappear. But after the last great spiritual energy trough, many top-tier powerhouses could not withstand the five decays of heaven and man and vanished from the world. The sole inheritances they held would also disappear, lost to time. This meant that there were many such powerful, one-time-only legacies hidden here, which was what drove countless geniuses to near madness in their pursuit.
Suddenly, a brilliant azure light erupted from the dragon statue's eyes. The massive stone pillar audibly cracked and split open, revealing a shimmering, mirror-like portal swirling with immense power.
"It is open!"
The three marked cultivators exchanged wary, competitive glances before simultaneously plunging inside. Su Min and Xie Yingying followed close on their heels.
The moment they stepped through the spatial gateway, they found themselves transported to a lush, vibrant valley teeming with life energy so dense it was almost palpable. But Xie Yingying's warning came a moment too late.
"Be careful! This trial is designed specifically to test potential inheritors. There will be traps and mechanisms, and we might be separated—"
Seeing Su Min already looking around with eager, calculating eyes, Xie Yingying immediately tried to stop her from rushing forward. But before she could finish her sentence, both of them were instantly captivated by a sight not far away.
There were three dazzlingly beautiful flowers, their petals glowing with an ethereal, soul-nourishing light.
Of course, pure beauty meant nothing to the two of them. What held their attention was the flower's identity, the Heavenly Soul Infant Fruit Flower. Its use was simple and immensely valuable, it was the core material for refining the legendary Nascent Soul Pill.
"There are actually flowers like this here," Su Min exclaimed, her voice filled with genuine shock and excitement. "I had planned to wait a hundred years after leaving the Avenue before scouring the world for them."
After seeing the flower, she looked at Xie Yingying beside her, and a wordless understanding passed between them. Both were utterly determined to claim these flowers. The difficulty of advancing from the Foundation Establishment stage to the Golden Core stage was relatively low, with the main danger being the terrifying heavenly tribulation.
But the transition from the Golden Core Stage to the Nascent Soul Stage was a true, formidable chasm. The danger level was no less than facing a Heavenly Tribulation, because it required the cultivator to find a way to safely shatter the solid Golden Core in their dantian and rapidly condense a new, nascent soul in its place. This step could be said to be extremely dangerous, with a high rate of failure resulting in death or crippling.
The Nascent Soul Pill could not only protect the mind during this volatile process but also significantly accelerate the formation of the Nascent Soul itself. With this pill, the difficulty of entering the Nascent Soul stage was reduced by at least half.
But before they could take a single step toward the precious flowers—
SCREEEECH!
A deafening cry tore through the air as a gigantic eagle, with a wingspan of over ten meters, descended from the skies. Its piercing golden eyes locked onto them with the lethal focus of a predator sighting its prey.
"A guardian beast," Su Min stated flatly, her grip tightening around the hilt of her Nanming Lihuo Sword.
This creature was at the late Golden Core Stage, and it clearly fed on and protected these very flowers. A life-or-death battle was inevitable.
"I will distract it. You find the opening and kill it," Su Min commanded, her strategy formed in an instant.
Her hair flowed and turned snow-white, and her White Cloud Heart Armor materialized over her robes in a flash of light. She blitzed forward, a crimson streak against the green valley.
CLANG!
The first clash was brutal. Her sword met the eagle's terrifyingly sharp talons, and the impact sent her flying back a hundred meters, her boots carving furrows into the earth.
"Damn, it is strong," she grunted, checking her armor, which now bore deep, glowing claw marks that slowly began to regenerate.
The eagle's feathers were as hard as refined steel, and every strike carried enough force to tear through her defenses if she was not careful. But Su Min was not worried. Her Nanming Lihuo was the ultimate weapon, its searing heat burning through everything. Every hit she managed to land seared the beast's pristine plumage, leaving smoking, blackened patches. The eagle shrieked in rage and pain, and soon—
"AHHHH!"
it screeched in agony, momentarily retreating to assess this fiery opponent.
"Now!" Su Min shouted, seeing her chance.
Her hands came together in a flash, forming two complex, ancient seals that glowed with immense power: "卍" (Swastika) for Suppression; "雷" (Thunder) for Paralysis.
The two massive symbols shot forward, ensnaring the giant eagle in a net of binding light and crackling lightning, locking it in place mid-air.
Xie Yingying did not waste the perfect opening.
"Frost Prison Divine Strike!"
A gigantic, spear-like spike of pure black ice materialized in the air above the eagle and shot downward, impaling the massive beast from within its own body with a sickening crunch.
BOOM!
The subsequent explosion of icy and spiritual energy sent Su Min tumbling backward, shielding her face with her arm. When the dust and frost cleared, the guardian beast was undeniably dead, its body shattered by the internal detonation.
"What a waste," Su Min sighed, picking up the now-cracked and dimmed demon core from the remains. "You blew up all the good materials. The feathers, the talons, all ruined."
Xie Yingying simply shrugged, her expression cool and pragmatic. "It was that," she said calmly, "or we die. The core is still usable. I call that a fair trade."