277: Swallowing top-grade mother gold, a hundred-meter-long metal dragon is born!

Inside the treasury, the concept of time became blurred.

The High-Grade Spirit Stones that were once piled like mountains had mostly vanished by now.

A thick layer of greyish-white stone powder covered the ground—residue left after the Spiritual Qi had been drained dry.

The air was thick with a dry, oppressive heat and the pungent scent of metallic rust.

"Forty-ninth vertebra... reset."

Lu Sheng was bare-chested; his once robust muscles now appeared somewhat shriveled, his eye sockets sunken like a refugee who hadn't eaten for three days and nights.

Yet his eyes shone as bright as searchlights, reflecting a focus bordering on madness.

On the open ground before him, there were no brilliant spiritual light effects, only a massive, bone-white skeleton radiating a sharp, chilling aura.

A full hundred meters long.

Every rib and every phalange was forged from high-purity Metal-Element Rules, forcibly compressed, woven, and solidified.

This wasn't some "rule prototype" condensed by a Spirit Source User; it looked more like the chassis of a killing machine being assembled.

In the distance, Luo Tianfei sat cross-legged by the Wutong Wood Heart, surrounded by swirling Purple Fire, looking as elegant as a goddess.

Occasionally, she would open her eyes and look at the man crouching on the ground, hammering away, her gaze as if she were looking at an irredeemable madman.

"Abandoning the fluidity of spiritual power to pursue extreme material hardness?"

Luo Tianfei shook her head, a cold sneer curling her lips. "Lu Sheng, you've narrowed your path. No matter how hard the metal, it's just a dead object. Rules without spirituality are nothing but a pile of scrap iron."

She had already refined most of the Wutong Divine Wood in her hands. The Divine Phoenix Phantom behind her grew increasingly lifelike, even letting out a few clear Phoenix cries that made the surrounding fire elements dance with joy.

This was the true path.

This was the grandeur a Spirit Master should possess.

Lu Sheng turned a deaf ear to her mockery.

Between his fingers, he held the Taibai Essence Gold Mother, which had been unraveled until only its core remained.

It was now only the size of an egg and no longer solid, but transformed into a mass of writhing, boiling silver liquid metal.

The space around it was filled with fine black cracks, as if no container in this world could hold its sharp edge.

"The skeleton is done; all that's left is the flesh and blood."

Lu Sheng licked his cracked lips, his voice as raspy as sandpaper.

Ordinary spirit source filling couldn't support this body.

If he was going to do this, he would go all out.

Lu Sheng made a move that nearly scared Luo Tianfei into a Qi Deviation.

He tilted his head back, gripped the mass of liquid Mother Gold that could slice through space, and without any hesitation, swallowed it like a raw egg—

Gulp.

He swallowed it in one go!

"Are you looking for death?!" Luo Tianfei screamed, her purple protective divine fire nearly collapsing.

That was a top-tier metal-element treasure, Mother Gold!

Swallowing it was like swallowing ten thousand high-speed rotating meat grinders; it could mince one's internal organs into mush in an instant!

"Ugh—!!!"

Lu Sheng's body suddenly arched like a shrimp.

Terrifying agony instantly swept through his entire body.

He could clearly feel that the moment the cold mass entered his throat, it exploded.

Countless tiny golden shards sliced wildly along his esophagus and stomach walls, attempting to completely dismember this mortal body from the inside out.

Pfft! Pfft!

Countless mists of blood erupted from Lu Sheng's skin, and in the blink of an eye, he was covered in blood.

"Suppress... for me!!"

Lu Sheng roared in his heart, his eyes as crimson as blood.

On the system panel, the Dragon God Sequence was sounding frantic alarms, but driven by Lu Sheng's suicidal will, the dragon blood in his body boiled to the extreme, turning into golden shackles that death-gripped the rampaging Mother Gold.

It wasn't digestion.

It was guidance.

"Since this is my Domain, I shall consecrate it with my blood!"

Lu Sheng suddenly straightened his back, his Adam's apple bobbing as he opened his mangled mouth toward the cold, hundred-meter skeleton.

"Blegh—!!"

A torrent of dark-gold dragon blood mixed with silver-white Mother Gold liquid was violently spat out by him.

Sizzle, sizzle—!

The scalding metal torrent poured onto the spine, producing a tooth-aching sound of quenching.

At that moment, a miracle occurred.

The once lifeless bones, upon contact with this "specialized blood," seemed to be endowed with a bizarre vitality.

They began to writhe and grow.

It wasn't the growth of flesh and blood, but the proliferation of metal.

Clack, clack, clack!

Countless hair-thin golden metal fibers erupted from the gaps in the bones like greedy pythons, using them as base points to interweave, entwine, and stretch.

That was muscle.

Muscle bundles made of pure metal, possessing extreme toughness and explosive power!

Next came the fascia, blood vessels, internal organs... every organ rapidly took shape before Lu Sheng's eyes in a way that defied biology but conformed to mechanical aesthetics.

The sound of dense clicking echoed through the treasury, like a precision munitions factory running at full power.

The beast that was once just a skeleton was rapidly filling out.

Layers of dark-gold dragon scales, like scale armor, clicked and locked into place, seamlessly covering the metallic muscles.

Sharp Dragon Claws extended, cold light glinting; the mere weight of them hanging naturally pressed four deep pits into the hard basalt floor.

One minute.

Two minutes.

When the last drop of Mother Gold liquid was exhausted.

Lu Sheng gasped for breath, slumped on the ground and covered in blood.

But he smiled.

He laughed wantonly, laughed with utter arrogance.

Before him.

A hundred-meter-long Five-Clawed Golden Dragon, its body a weave of dark gold and silver-white, lay coiled in the center of the treasury.

It was too real.

So real that one could even see the ancient textures of time on its scales and the rotation of its metal eyeballs beneath the eyelids.

It didn't breathe; it didn't need to.

It was the manifestation of the rules of slaughter itself.

"A dead object?"

Lu Sheng wiped the blood from his face, stood up shakily, and turned to look at the completely stunned Luo Tianfei in the distance.

"Big Stupid Bird, keep your eyes wide open and watch closely."

Lu Sheng raised his hand and snapped his fingers sharply at the massive dragon head.

"Wake up."

Hum—!

Those tightly closed metal Dragon Eyes snapped open.

ROAR——————!!!!

A roar erupted.

This sound was no longer the spiritual energy-simulated dragon cry from before.

This was the boom of two tectonic plates grinding together in the deep sea! It was a sonic storm generated by tens of thousands of tons of metal vibrating at high speed!

The sound waves hit the enclosed treasury space like a physical sledgehammer.

Rumble!

The specialized diamond floor instantly cracked into countless fissures, and the night-luminescent pearls on the ceiling shattered and fell like rain.

"Pfft!"

In the distance, Luo Tianfei didn't even have time to react before her blood and Qi surged from the pure physical sound waves, and she spat out a bolt of blood.

The eighteen layers of Divine Phoenix protective barriers she was so proud of shattered like paper before this roar, exploding into a sky full of purple sparks.

"What... what kind of monster is this?!"

Luo Tianfei looked up in horror, not even bothering to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth.

In her sight.

The massive metal dragon slowly lowered its noble head, two jets of scorching white steam snorting from its huge nostrils, scorching two charred pits into the ground.

And Lu Sheng stood beneath the dragon's head.

He was covered in blood, yet he looked like an Asura King who had just fought his way back from Hell.

That kind of pressure was simply not something a Spirit Master should have.

Luo Tianfei had originally thought that condensing a "Divine Phoenix Phantom" and gaining preliminary control over fire-element rules was enough to be proud of.

But now.

Watching that physical dragon, whose claws scraped sparks from the floor and whose every movement carried the weight of ten thousand tons, a crack appeared in her proud Dao Heart.

She had lost.

Not just a loss in power, but a complete defeat in philosophy.

While she was playing with fire tricks, this madman had directly built a war machine!

"Well?"

Lu Sheng patted the cold, hard dragon scales beside him, producing a crisp "clang."

He looked at the pale Luo Tianfei and grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth.

"Is this thing... hard enough?"

Luo Tianfei bit her lip hard until she tasted blood.

She wanted to argue, to say this was just pure violence and lacked any beauty.

But the massive metal dragon head was staring coldly at her, and the suffocating feeling pressing against her made her realize—before absolute mass, any fancy techniques were a joke.

"Pervert..."

After a long pause, Luo Tianfei squeezed those words through her teeth.

She was truly convinced.

This guy's mental wiring definitely wasn't something a carbon-based lifeform could grow.

"Thanks for the compliment."

Lu Sheng shrugged nonchalantly.

He didn't stop there.

This Five-Clawed Golden Dragon.

Was just the first step.

His gaze fell upon the Earth Core Red Lotus Core he had been clutching in his right hand.

"How can one Five-Clawed Golden Dragon be enough?"

"I have to make a Five-Clawed Fire Dragon too!"

PS: Everyone, I'm updating diligently, rest assured I will finish the book! I'll notify you when the new book starts; it's guaranteed to be a power fantasy too!