276: He's gone mad! He actually wants to hand-craft a five-clawed golden dragon in the treasure vault!

Deep within the treasury, the Spiritual Qi was so dense it had nearly liquefied; every breath felt like drinking a high-concentration energy drink.

Lu Sheng sat cross-legged atop the mountain of Spirit Stones he had sliced in half, cradling the liquid, flowing globule of Taibai Essence Gold Mother in his palm.

The silver-white metallic sphere pulsed restlessly in his hand, the surrounding space constantly shredded by its sharp aura, emitting a fine, sizzling sound.

"Spirit Master level, controlling local rules."

Lu Sheng stared at the metal sphere, his lips curling into his habitual wild arc.

"It sounds mysterious, but isn't it just about stuffing this thing into my body and making it behave?"

His logic was simple: I am a Dragon, and Dragons can devour all things.

Since this thing contained the Law of Metal, he would eat it clean and digest it into his own power.

Simple, crude, and efficient.

Lu Sheng took a deep breath, and the Dragon God Sequence within him began to roar. That domineering will belonging to the top of the food chain surged out along his Meridians, transforming into an invisible giant maw that bit down hard on the Taibai Essence Gold Mother in his hand.

"For me... melt!!"

Boom!

The moment his spirit source touched the liquid metal, a sudden change occurred.

The previously flowing metal sphere suddenly solidified, followed by an explosion of an extremely repelling and sharp will. It wasn't like a tamed sheep, but more like a neutron star being detonated.

Rules are not fuel.

They are the skeleton of the world, the defined truths.

You want to eat 'Truth'? Then be prepared to have your teeth shattered.

"Ugh—!!"

Lu Sheng's pupils constricted.

He felt a sharp aura thousands of times sharper than a blade surge up against the flow of his spirit source, instantly crashing into his Dantian and into his yet-to-be-formed embryonic Domain.

There was no buffer.

The golden dragon shadow coiled within the Domain, upon contact with this power of Law, was like a ragdoll stuffed into a meat grinder.

Bang!!!

A dull, heavy explosion erupted inside Lu Sheng.

It wasn't an explosion of spirit source, but a collapse of rules.

Countless golden metal storms radiated out from Lu Sheng as the center, shooting madly in all directions.

That was the out-of-control Law of Metal; they were sharp enough to slice atoms and violent enough to tear space apart.

Ssh-ssh-ssh-ssh-ssh—!

Lu Sheng's expensive black combat suit instantly disintegrated into flying strips of cloth. Next was his skin, which was comparable to divine gold.

Blood splattered.

In the blink of an eye, Lu Sheng looked as if he had been subjected to the death of a thousand cuts, his entire body covered in thousands of bone-deep wounds, dripping with blood—a horrific sight.

The mountain-like piles of Spirit Stones nearby were caught in the storm, instantly pulverized into ash, kicking up a sky full of crystalline dust.

The commotion was too great; even the entire independent Small World was trembling violently.

In the distant fiery red region.

Luo Tianfei, who was carefully refining the Parasol Wood Heart with Divine Phoenix Fire, was startled awake. She snapped her head back and saw Lu Sheng looking like a bloody gourd; a flash of bewilderment crossed her beautiful eyes, followed by unconcealed mockery.

"Pfft."

Luo Tianfei crossed her arms, the Divine Phoenix phantom flickering behind her, her voice cold and laced with schadenfreude: "I thought you were going to pull off some world-shaking feat, but it turns out you're just committing suicide?"

She saw the problem at a glance.

"Rules are meant to be comprehended, woven, and guided; they are the foundation for building a Domain." Luo Tianfei shook her head, as if looking at an uncivilized barbarian, "You actually tried to swallow them raw? Lu Sheng, you have a big appetite, but some things will rot right through your stomach if you eat them."

Lu Sheng wiped the blood from his face, his wounds rapidly squirming and scabbing over under the terrifying self-healing power of the Dragon Clan.

He didn't argue.

Because this Big Stupid Bird was right.

This time, he had thought about it the wrong way.

"I was hasty."

Lu Sheng spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, looking at the Taibai Essence Gold Mother in his palm—still aloof, seemingly mocking his overestimation of himself—the ferocity in his eyes only grew heavier.

If he couldn't even handle a dead object, how could he talk about crashing the Holy Land?

Since 'eating' didn't work, he'd change his method.

"System."

Lu Sheng barked in his mind, his voice frighteningly calm.

"Don't play dead. Give me full-power analysis; I want to see through eighteen generations of this thing's ancestors."

【Ding! host request received!】

【Dragon Eyes... operating at full power!】

【Warning: This mode consumes an immense amount of Mental Energy. host, please act within your limits!】

Buzz!

Lu Sheng's eyes instantly changed.

In the center of those originally dark-gold vertical pupils, countless fine concentric circles split open, like a high-precision microscope rapidly focusing.

The world changed.

Luo Tianfei's figure turned into a stream of burning purple particles; the Spirit Stones beneath his feet became neatly arranged energy lattices; and the Taibai Essence Gold Mother in his hand... was no longer a metal ball.

It was a mass of countless golden chains!

Dense, extremely complex golden runes were linked end-to-end, constructing tiny 'Law Chains'.

They intertwined, coiled, and vibrated, each vibration emitting the definitions of 'hardness' and 'sharpness'.

"So that's how it is..."

Lu Sheng's heart pounded as he looked at this magnificent and grand microscopic world.

This was the essence of rules.

Not energy, but code.

The underlying logic that constructed this material world.

Earlier, he had tried to wrap these chains with spirit source; it was like trying to wrap red-hot wire with cotton—naturally, it would be shredded.

The correct way was to become the weaver.

Use Mental Energy to dismantle these chains, and then reassemble them according to his own will!

"I get it."

Lu Sheng closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the previous mania was gone, replaced by a focus as deep as an abyss.

He extended a finger, and a thread of Mental Energy ten thousand times thinner than a hair condensed at the tip, carefully probing into that microscopic storm of chains.

"Go ahead and laugh."

Lu Sheng spoke to the distant Luo Tianfei without turning his head.

"Just don't let your jaw hit the floor in a moment."

Luo Tianfei frowned, about to snap back, but suddenly shut her mouth.

Because she felt a strange aura.

It wasn't a burst of power, but a heart-palpitating... sense of order.

Lu Sheng's fingers twitched slightly in the Void Realm, his movements so fast they left afterimages, yet as precise as if he were performing brain surgery.

He was 'stealing' rules.

Drawing out golden runic chains one by one from the Taibai Essence Gold Mother and then introducing them into his embryonic Domain.

"A Golden Dragon... shouldn't just be a phantom."

In Lu Sheng's mind, the visualization map of the 'Five-Clawed Golden Dragon' began to collapse and reorganize.

Since he was going to play with rules, he might as well play big.

What he wanted wasn't a fake dragon condensed from energy.

He wanted to forge a... real, metallic, invulnerable—Five-Clawed Golden Dragon!

Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—!

With Lu Sheng's movements, the air in front of him began to warp.

Countless golden light particles were madly converging, compressing, and arranging.

This wasn't magic; this was material reorganization on a physical level!

One minute.

Ten minutes.

One hour.

Lu Sheng's forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat, and his face was as pale as paper—signs of Mental Energy exhaustion.

But the light in his eyes grew brighter and brighter, frighteningly so.

"For me... condense!!"

The final runic chain closed.

Ding—!

A crisp, pleasant metallic chime, like heavenly music, abruptly rang out in the silent treasury.

Luo Tianfei's eyes widened suddenly.

She saw a palm-sized object slowly descend in front of Lu Sheng.

It was a dragon scale.

A physical dragon scale—entirely dark gold, edges sharp as a knife, its surface flowing with complex natural patterns!

It wasn't a manifestation of spiritual power, not a phantom.

It hit the ground with a 'clang', instantly slicing through the hard basalt floor, half of it becoming embedded.

It was real matter!

"This... how is this possible?!"

Luo Tianfei cried out in shock, her figure flashing as she appeared before Lu Sheng, reaching out to touch the dragon scale.

"Don't touch it." Lu Sheng grabbed her wrist, grinning to reveal a row of white teeth, "Careful, or you'll lose your hand."

Luo Tianfei looked down and saw that the air within three inches of the dragon scale had been sliced into a vacuum zone by that restrained sharpness.

Luo Tianfei looked at Lu Sheng as if she were looking at a monster.

"This is called talent."

Lu Sheng let go of her hand and bent down to pick up the dragon scale.

The heavy weight and cold touch made the blood in his body boil instantly.

This was right.

This was the path he should take.

One scale was one divine weapon.

If all thirty-six thousand scales were forged... Lu Sheng could almost see a terrifying beast spanning the star river, its entire body cast from ultimate metal, every cell inscribed with Law runes.

That would be the hardest shield in the world, and also the sharpest spear.

"One scale isn't enough."

Lu Sheng turned to look at the mountain of Spirit Stones, then at the more than half-remaining Taibai Essence Gold Mother in his hand; the greed in his eyes erupted again, even more intense than before.

"System, again!"

"I'm going to hammer this dragon out... piece by piece!"

Inside the treasury, the golden storm swirled once more.

Only this time, the storm had a master.