As mysterious and powerful as the Spirit Root was, there was another thing that placed selective cultivators at the top of the food chain.

A few cultivators’ spirit roots mutated and gave birth to Spirit Fire—a phenomenon so rare that literal clans had been built around a few bearers. It elevated its owner beyond the conventional limits of their Spirit Root tier.

It burned through cultivation at a pace others could only watch from below.

And Emperal had neither. But what he had was a...plan.

Two purposes were folded into one, exactly the way Vraelyn loved. The Dragon princess was quietly building something inside the tournament. Hand-picked loyal extremists under the cover of a marriage competition.

Vraelyn couldn’t look directly without the court or her husband, the Dragon Lord, noticing.

A half-blood nobody with a trash Spirit Root...should’ve been invisible to people like that.

Until...he wasn’t.

Top twenty.

Emperal clawed his way to the top twenty through sheer sword skills and will. Despite the early surprise, he was later discovered to have a Tier One Dormant Spirit Root. And that’s when it started.

The lackeys of the princesses and some other thugs took advantage of the princesses’ authority and his worn-out condition. In front of the entire crowd of cultivators, they humiliated Emperal.

They made their intention extraordinarily clear.

Emperal looked down at the jade slip resting in his hands. It was ancient and sealed.

He closed his fingers around it and exhaled lightly, "Let’s see if you are worth the humiliation I bore."

Emperal carefully looked at the milky jade in his hands. At first glance, it didn’t seem all that special, until one learned that even the great Dragon Empress herself couldn’t decipher the jade or understand the contents inside it.

"Let’s begin."

He looked around one last time and scanned each corner for around three miles, confirming that there was no beast or entity above his level. He squeezed the jade. From his open wounds, a stream of blood dripped down the jade.

His blood wasn’t deep crimson; instead, it had an illuminating glow. It was his half-Elven bloodline.

The moment it dripped onto the jade, the carvings drank it in. Line by line, the inscriptions began to fill, like a map being drawn in real time.

The jade lit up, but it didn’t glow. It simply became readable. For a split second, nothing happened.

But Emperal felt it. The vibrations of the jade travelled up to his shoulders and wreaked havoc in his wounds.

"...Tch."

Emperal snorted, but he didn’t attempt to swallow the pill inside the bottle.

"It would be way too foolish if I used up the healing pills at this moment,"

He thought. After all, it was unknown what would happen to him if something dangerous came out of the jade.

The vibrations intensified, and under the shocked eyes of Emperal, the jade cracked!

Crack!

A tyrannical pressure descended on him, or more like his soul. It was so intense that Emperal almost lost consciousness.

A brilliant light flashed, blinding his eyes. When his vision cleared, a multicoloured drop of blood hovered silently above the ground.

It was as if it disdained the notion of touching the ground or staying up in the sky. But before Emperal could ponder any longer, the shattered jade pieces turned into a beam of light and entered his skull!

He immediately lost consciousness. His body fell on the ground with a dull thud.

...

When he reopened them, he found himself in an eerie, dark world. It was vast and endless. Emperal frowned when he saw this. "Was this the work of the jade? If so, where did it even take me?"

Looking down, he saw that his body was almost illusory. But he, of course, dismissed that. Before he could try moving...his body froze.

"Hmm? What am I seeing here? How could the soul of a mortal be this...volatile?"

An ancient, heavy voice echoed. That threw his mind into chaos. His figure flickered violently for a moment before calming.

"Huff...Hufff...Huffff." Emperal took deep breaths. Through sheer will, he managed to look up. And the moment he did, his eyes widened in surprise.

Because in the next moment, ’it’ arrived. There wasn’t any warning or any sort of cosmic build-up. It was just an ancient, overbearing presence. Its huge figure descended on the void like a continent shifting.

"...The Infernal Dragon of legends."

Emperal muttered absent-mindedly. His words surprised even himself.

"Was the jade really related to...these?"

It wasn’t just this one question; there were thousands of them, revolving in his head like a fractured constellation of forbidden truths.

As the figure of the dragon stretched wide, it was so huge that Emperal estimated it to be around nine to fifteen miles!

And it was just his estimation. The endless darkness was illuminated, and fire filled the room. Emperal’s eyes reflected the scales, the colour of cooling magma, each one larger than the ones below them.

Although the figure of the dragon was vague, its eyes...they were clearly visible. It had eyes like two furnaces that had been burning since before Draven had a name.

It looked down at him, or more specifically, his volatile soul.

Emperal’s illusory body did not—more specifically, could not move. The sheer pressure alone pinned whatever he was in this place completely. It wasn’t hostile or aggressive, just the weight of existing near it.

It continued to look at him. "Hmmm, ruffgh. A half-blood, huh? But...how are you even alive? Half Elf and Half Dragon? This is not normal. How...what kind of existence are you?"

Emperal blinked. His eyes widened when he heard those words.

"Why? Is an offspring from an Elf and a Dragon really that rare?" Emperal couldn’t help ask.

"Hmm, yes. Although it pales in comparison to my uniqueness, yes. This is the first time for me as well." The Infernal Dragon finished speaking. The corners of Emperal’s mouth twitched.

"What an arrogant dragon."

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the Infernal Dragon’s eyes directly.

"Sir, tell me. Tell me how I can obtain the power within the jade."

The moment his words echoed, absolute silence filled the dark void. It was eerie. Even the Infernal Dragon looked at him speechlessly.

"You...obtaining our powers? Hah! What a joke!"