87: Zhulong Zhujiuyin

In the center of the sea of consciousness, the blood-red pupils of the Snake God Medusa split open in the Void Realm. Her petrifying gaze, like a tangible stream of serpentine energy, drilled along the mental fluctuations. At the brow of the Azure Dragon, which bore the brunt of the attack, the cyan scales were suddenly covered in a greyish-white petrification frost.

The blood-colored curse mark slithered along the mental connection like a venomous snake.

The first to detect the anomaly was the Origin Dao Pattern on the Azure Dragon's forehead. That touch of pure Eastern Qi of Wood suddenly rippled, and the purple-gold petrification energy was seeping in along the cracks of the curse mark.

The great Dragon suddenly raised its head. Its dragon pupils reflected the giant eyes of the Snake God that had split open in the Void Realm—Medusa's petrifying gaze transformed into thousands of amethyst chains, weaving a cage along the spatial nodes of the sea of consciousness.

"Crack—" The first crisp sound of scales cracking echoed throughout the sea of consciousness. The dragon-patterned Dao mark on the Azure Dragon's forehead was eroded by the petrification frost, creating cracks, yet gold-red Origin blood light oozed from the fissures.

This was not the crimson blood of an ordinary Dragon Clan member, but the blood of an ancestral Dragon, one of the ancient ones of the Dragon Clan; every drop could transform a deep-sea flood dragon into a Divine Beast.

The speed at which the petrification frost spread suddenly stalled. For the first time, ripples appeared in Medusa's snake pupils—her petrifying power seemed to be undergoing decomposition by an even older force.

The Azure Dragon's massive dragon body coiled and rotated around the light core. Wherever its dragon tail swept, the star map of the Seven Mansions of the East emerged in the starry sky.

Jiao, Kang, Di, Fang, Xin, Wei, and Ji—the radiance of the seven mansions transformed into seven cyan beams of light that poured into the dragon's body. On the surface of the scales that had originally been petrified, fine crimson veins grew, like tree roots taking hold within rock.

When Medusa's second wave of petrifying gaze transformed into thousands of snake shadows and lunged over, the Azure Dragon finally opened its dragon maw, spewing a mouthful of red-gold dragon breath mixed with star sand.

This mouthful of dragon breath was not merely an elemental attack, but the manifestation of the Origin power passed down through generations of the Dragon Clan's Legacy.

The instant the dragon breath collided with the petrified snake shadows, the time and space of the entire sea of consciousness seemed to have been pressed with a pause button: every scale of the snake shadows was clearly visible, yet the star sand within the Azure Dragon's breath burrowed into the snake shadows' joints like living creatures, decomposing the petrification energy into the most fundamental Yin and Yang Qi.

At this moment, the petrified dragon head underwent a miraculous change—the original single pupil gradually split, the left eye transformed into a scorching golden sun wheel, and the right eye condensed into a cold silver moon disc.

Medusa emitted a sharp hiss, and the phantom of the Snake God's true form manifested in the sea of consciousness.

Her snake body, covered in amethyst scales, was fully half the length of the Azure Dragon, yet it formed an absolute suppression in terms of aura.

However, just as the Snake God's fangs were about to bite the Azure Dragon's seven inches, the golden veins beneath the dragon scales suddenly erupted with sun-like radiance. Every dragon scale transformed into a miniature Eastern star map, and the Dao patterns at the center of the star maps were resonating intensely with the divine patterns on Medusa's forehead.

"Boom—" The firmament of the sea of consciousness was on the verge of splitting, and a half-cyan, half-purple Yin and Yang fish mark appeared on Shen Guyan's brow.

The Azure Dragon's dragon claws underwent a mutation when colliding with the Snake God's fangs: the front five claws maintained the sharp hook-claw form of the Dragon Clan, while the rear three toes gradually fused into snake-like suction cup structures, and the surface of the scales simultaneously displayed vine patterns of the Wood attribute and crystalline ridge patterns of the petrification attribute.

The most astonishing change occurred at the dragon head—as a third vertical eye slowly opened from the brow, its pupil actually reflected the flow of time within the sea of consciousness.

The Snake God's petrifying gaze experienced a momentary disorder at this instant. In this short one-second gap, the Azure Dragon's scales had already completed three rounds of transformation: the first layer of lapis lazuli scales shattered and peeled off, revealing a second layer of semi-transparent scales flowing with gold-red Bloodline; the Bloodline patterns, after absorbing the petrification energy, condensed into crystalline bone spurs, and on the surface of the bone spurs grew a third layer of gilded scales covered with space-time runes.

When Medusa realized something was wrong and wanted to retreat, the Azure Dragon's tail had already transformed into a crimson snake tail.

Deep within Shen Guyan's Sea of Consciousness, a low dragon roar from the Azure Dragon resounded, and the projection of the long river of time in the pupil of the third vertical eye suddenly flowed backward.

The petrified dragon head recovered its lapis lazuli luster during the time reversal, yet amidst Medusa's scream, it actively met a new round of petrification—

This time, the petrification energy was no longer eroding, but was being decomposed and reorganized by the runes on the surface of the dragon scales.

When the Snake God's purple-gold energy completely merged into the dragon body, the Azure Dragon's dragon pupils underwent a complete transformation: the left eye's golden wheel burned with Southern Bright Li Fire, the right eye's silver disc surged with Northern Underworld Profound Ice, and the vertical eye controlled the space-time rift between the two.

The final transformation began.

The Azure Dragon's body expanded to three hundred zhang, its dragon head rising above the firmament of the sea of consciousness, and its dragon horns split into twelve branches, each corresponding to the power of time of the twelve double-hours.

Its scales were completely transformed into a semi-transparent crystal texture, and what flowed inside was no longer blood, but the Chaos Origin composed of Yin and Yang Qi, the power of the Five Elements, and space-time fragments.

When Medusa's phantom completely disintegrated, turning into amethyst light spots that merged into the Azure Dragon's body, the instant the evolution was completed, the space Law of the sea of consciousness was completely rewritten.

The newly born red dragon phantom coiled around the Chaos core, its dragon head causing ripples of time with every sway, and wherever its dragon tail swept, strange crystals interwoven with amethyst and cyan jade grew on the spatial nodes.

When Medusa's phantom was sucked into the vertical eye of the dragon head and turned into energy nourishment, the Azure Dragon roared to the sky, the sound waves mixed with the hiss of the Snake God and the roar of the Dragon Clan; the two completely different Origins evolved in resonance into a certain ancient existence—the Candle Dragon.

The instant Shen Guyan's consciousness returned, he discovered that his right hand had transformed into a dragon claw: crimson scales covered it up to the elbow, the tips of the nails shimmered with red-gold light, and the patterns on his palm were exactly the same as the long river of time in the sea of consciousness.

The Yin and Yang fish mark on his brow slowly rotated; the left half was the Azure Dragon's Yi Wood cyan radiance, the right half was the Snake God's purple-gold petrification, and at the central intersection was the vertical eye phantom of the newborn Candle Dragon.

This evolution that took place in the sea of consciousness did not know how long it lasted, but it caused a subtle change in the entire Dragon Clan's Origin mark.

Every detail of this evolution was filled with pain and opportunity: when the petrification energy eroded the dragon head, the Azure Dragon chose to actively accept rather than resist, allowing the Yi Wood power to complete its transformation in adversity; when Medusa's Divine Power attempted to destroy the sea of consciousness, Shen Guyan's human consciousness instead became the key to reconciling the two forces, prompting the space-time Law to awaken within the Bloodline.

This evolution, which defied common sense, was precisely because of the Azure Dragon's special status as the ancestor of the Dragon Clan, and Medusa's top-tier Bloodline as a Snake God; under the forced Fusion of the soul seizing plaque, it gave birth to a brand-new existence that transcended traditional Divine Beasts—the Candle Dragon, Zhujiuyin, a Chaos Divine Beast that controls the alternation of day and night, and the flow of time and space.

At this moment, in the Chaos core of the sea of consciousness, the phantom of the Candle Dragon was slowly closing its dragon eyes, yet the space-time runes on the surface of its scales were still operating autonomously. Shen Guyan knew that the changes this evolution brought to him seemed to go far beyond this...

"So, this is the possibility that the Azure Dragon projection brought me?" Shen Guyan's mental Incarnation shifted his thoughts, and everything seemed to return to normal, while that remnant soul of Medusa seemed to have been suppressed in his sea of consciousness by the newborn Candle Dragon Bloodline.