Chapter 651: Final teachings

Ume and Vyaghra’s breath caught in their throats as Maximilian transformed into a majestic black dragon with imposing wide wings and golden eyes that seemed to have been embedded by the heavens themselves.

Even though his form was not even half the size of the eastern dragons hovering in the air on the other side, he somehow still looked more terrifying than them.

Maximilian had never taken his draconic form since breaking through to the Celestial Realm, as he had never found an opponent powerful enough to force him to go all out.

The eastern dragons flinched at the sight of this young black dragon. The aura around him had become even more suffocating, more sinister and far more threatening than it used to be when he was in Valcyrian. After spending years in Riftland, his body had naturally begun carrying the aura of the Abyss.

It was as if...death itself had descended.

The dragon elders clenched their jaws, turning their focus to properly manifesting their domains.

The broken battlefield below and the cloudy sky above began to change.

The land turned into an enormous field of purple flowers. Towering trees spread across it, arranged in the shape of a scorpion constellation, each one gleaming as if a star were hidden in its branches. At the centre of them all, a colossal tree emerged, growing tremendously. Its trunk grew nearly a hundred metres wide, and its branches, sprouting leaves of countless different colours, reached all the way to the sky, which was also changing.

The sky had turned icy blue, with a glitter like a sea of stars spreading to the horizon, where giant glaciers were rising out of the earth. The temperature plunged tremendously, falling far below zero degrees Celsius.

"Wh-what kind of place is this?" Ume murmured, her eyes wide. "I can’t feel my connection with Vyoman here. It’s like I have appeared in a separate dimension."

"Soul Domain..." Vyaghra murmured, knowing this ability all too well since his father also possessed one. "An ability that only High-Tier Cultivators can unleash. The caster of the domain becomes the very god of the small world."

And this domain had been created by combining four Soul Domains together: Celestial Worldtree, Astral Garden, Heavenly Glacier and Frozen Starsea.

"Even one of these domains could easily overpower Father’s domain," Vyaghra muttered, his hands trembling at his sides. His gaze shifted to Maximilian, standing tall before them in the air, and he thought inwardly, ’How is Master going to face four Soul Domains alone?’

As the elders were about to attack, Maximilian ordered Ume and Vyaghra to transform into their small beast forms.

Ume immediately obliged, turning into a small and cute pink fox with six tails. She climbed onto Maximilian’s back, but he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and moved her down to his arm, holding her like a small child in his palm. Her small form was only half the size of his giant draconic hand.

"M-Master, I’m not a child," Ume complained in a soft tone, her eyes fluttering in embarrassment. It was like a parent holding their newborn baby.

"Be obedient," Maximilian ordered. His deep voice hit Ume like a storm even though he spoke softly. He turned his terrifying golden eyes to Vyaghra, who was still in his human form.

"Do it quickly."

Vyaghra only flinched. He had never taken this embarrassing form before, thinking it beneath him as the heir to the Tiger Clan. And now Maximilian was pressuring him to transform into this ridiculous, pet-like form.

"M-master—"

His words stopped mid-sentence as the world around them shifted, the dragon elders unleashing their moves.

The gigantic branches of the Celestial Worldtree descended from the sky, each one as thick as a mountain and long enough to wrap around a city. The leaves hanging from them glowed in red, blue, gold and green, every one of them a miniature star shining with its own light. As the branches swept down, the stars scraped against one another, shedding glittering dust that burned wherever it landed.

"Come quickly or I’m going to abandon you here!" Maximilian snapped.

Vyaghra released a defeated sigh, his eyes almost turning teary as his body shrank, golden fur with black stripes sprouting across his skin. He turned into a cute tiger cub and climbed onto Maximilian’s back. "Master, you can’t tell anyone about this—"

He couldn’t finish his sentence as Maximilian dodged at the last moment.

The branches crashed into the land below, splitting the purple flowers and the earth beneath them in one stroke. Shower after shower of fallen stars exploded behind them, each leaf detonating like a meteor.

As Maximilian skilfully dodged, he taught the duo.

"This place you are currently seeing is called a Soul Domain."

He cut through the space and the attacks alike with a wide swing of his single arm, while his other arm was busy carefully holding Ume’s adorable form.

"Every cultivator forms a Soul Domain during their breakthrough to a high-tier realm. You can think of them like the Supreme Existence of this small world, created by the manifestation of their concept."

Beyond the branches, the scorpion constellation trees of the second elder began to move. Their trunks bent like segmented bodies, each one lifting a tail made of twisting branches tipped with glittering stingers. The stars hidden within them flared, and the stingers lashed out, spraying a mist of poison that glittered like stardust.

Maximilian blocked the first few stingers with his wing and twisted his body to avoid the rest, but the poisonous mist was too thick to evade entirely. Some of the attacks landed, though because his speed was so fast, he suffered only minor injuries.

"Gumi—Ume," he called, correcting himself. He still had the old habit of calling her by her title instead of her name. "You will learn the Soul Domain when you form your seventh tail. But I don’t know what kind of domain you will form, since the world itself is connected to you."

She only nodded in agreement, her pink eyes turning their focus on the small world around them.