Chapter 24: The Dragon Bone 2

Days passed.

While other cultivators in the Azure Cloud City continued their daily routines, Ao Kuiba did not. He had spent all of his time reinforcing formations, marking lines of stone, placing pillars and inserting spirit stones at particular intervals.

The calm courtyard suddenly seemed to pulse with latent energy. At the center of it all was a circular formation almost thirty meters in diameter, with intricate markings that shifted when looked at in certain ways.

Ao Kuiba stood above it, looking at the last node.

"This should suffice."

He knelt down and placed two fingers on the formation.

A single thread of spiritual energy laced into the formation.

The courtyard trembled.

One formation after another activated in succession. The first gathered surrounding qi, the second filtered it, the third compressed it. The fourth, the largest Ao Kuiba had worked on, created a stable spatial link.

It was not a cultivation formation.

It was a qi transfer system.

Adam’s memories had taught Ao Kuiba everything he knew about energy systems, spatial properties and the workings of matter on the smallest scales. His own eight thousand years of life had earned him knowledge of spiritual energy, formation craft and the laws that governed cultivation.

Ao Kuiba had combined them all into this very formation.

He activated the final node.

Cracks of energy raced through the network of spirit stones, bending and warping the air until a transparent distortion shimmered several meters above the courtyard like a thin layer of hanging water.

The surrounding qi gathered itself and pulled towards the disturbance, rustling leaves and raising dust along the way, before vanishing into the shimmer.

Inside the Mini World something else happened.

The spiritual garden was the first to react. Herbs swayed in phantom winds and seedlings that had barely survived their first few days eagerly fed at the incoming energy. Even the Core Formation beast reared its head to look at the sky as the qi spread through the Mini World.

Ao Kuiba watched over his connection and shut the formation down after several minutes.

The distortion vanished from the courtyard. The Mini World continued producing qi on its own, albeit on a much smaller scale. It took a couple of minutes for Ao Kuiba to finish watching the process.

"Good."

The external formation would greatly assist the growth of his Mini World without making it completely reliant on itself.

The qi itself was not what interested Ao Kuiba however.

Time was.

Inside the Mini World time moved at a different pace. Years could pass within while only minutes passed outside. While to ordinary cultivators even a decade was a considerable stretch, Ao Kuiba had no intention of wasting another eight thousand years rebuilding what he had lost.

The Azure Heaven Realm was useful to him. But it was not his home.

The Vermilion Grotto-Heaven was.

And somewhere within Ao Kuiba knew were the people who had tried to kill him.

His brothers.

The ones behind the succession conflict. The ones who had poisoned him and pursued him through the Forbidden Forest.

His golden eyes burned with a cold fury.

He would return one day.

But not yet.

Not before he gained strength.

---

Ao Kuiba entered the Mini World and spent an hour reinforcing its defenses. He expanded the cultivation area’s protective formation and fine-tuned its qi circulation array. He expanded the spiritual garden and marked new borders for the Core Formation beast.

Ao Kuiba glanced at the beast one last time before continuing with his preparations.

He did not need a servant. He needed a guardian. One that the beast would be more than willing to provide.

Ao Kuiba returned to the center of the cultivation ground when he finished.

The Mini World was a quiet place. The sky above continued to be crude. The land was still small compared to the vast worlds Ao Kuiba had seen.

But it was his.

A world that would grow alongside him, a place he could cultivate without interruptions.

Ao Kuiba sat down and opened his spatial ring.

Several rings of objects appeared around him. Spirit stones, formation materials, rare ores, spiritual herbs and pills. All of the things Ao Kuiba needed he already had with him.

He reached in once more.

The bone of a dragon appeared.

The air around it crackled with energy.

The bone was not white like polished jade or white crystal. It was old, worn and covered in faint markings that had long since faded.

Ao Kuiba ran his eyes over the strange bone several times.

He had examined it numerous times since purchasing it, but every time he did he got this strange feeling of familiarity.

It was not unfamiliar however.

It was just that he did not recognize it.

That bothered him.

Ao Kuiba had seen plenty of dragon remains over his eight thousand years of life. He had studied bloodlines, techniques and records. Ao Kuiba could not identify this bone, and that in itself made it valuable.

Ao Kuiba extended a hand towards it.

The moment his fingers got close the bone shivered.

His golden pupils narrowed.

The bone floated towards him on its own accord, settling right in front of his chest. The markings on the bone glowed, a faint golden hue spreading like veins through the material.

Ao Kuiba’s dragon bloodline reacted and his pupils turned completely golden. His horns became more apparent against his silver hair and fine scales appeared along his neck and arms.

The pressure around Ao Kuiba grew.

He remained seated.

"Interesting."

Ao Kuiba made a few hand-seals.

The formation around the cultivation ground activated.

Spirit stones cracked as massive amounts of qi were funneled into the formation. Spirit stones cracked as the qi focused on the dragon bone.

Then the bone let out a sudden wave of spiritual energy.

Ao Kuiba’s face changed.

That qi was different. Incredibly pure. More powerful than anything around him. Something old lived within it, something that had survived for eons.

Ao Kuiba started feeding the power into his body.

The qi entered his body, shaking his meridians, igniting his blood. His entire body seemed to awaken at once.

The formation around him was having a hard time containing the energy Ao Kuiba was feeding it. He adjusted a few nodes to redirect the excess into his own meridians.

Ao Kuiba’s cultivation was rising.

Foundation Establishment became denser, stronger.

Then something else happened.

The flow of energy changed.

Some of it was going towards his soul instead of his dantian.

Ao Kuiba’s eyes opened.

"What--?"

The world around him disappeared.

---

The cultivation ground vanished and so did the Mini World, and so did his body.

Ao Kuiba did not feel himself falling. He simply was somewhere else the moment he blinked his eyes open.

Ao Kuiba looked around.

A strange sky stretched out before him, filled with impossibly large stars. The constellations did not match any he had seen before. The spiritual atmosphere was old, older than even the Azure Heaven Realm or anything Ao Kuiba had encountered since entering this realm.

Mountains dotted the horizon, massive structures of stone. Some of them were so tall they seemed to pierce the clouds while others were broken, their peaks laying in pieces across the ground.

There was a civilization in the distance.

Massive palaces adorned the landscape. Colossal formations encased entire buildings and a vast amount of structures stretched into the sky.

Above it all floated enormous black gateways.

Ao Kuiba’s eyes darkened.

Spatial gates, but these were not like anything he had seen before.

Something moved beyond the city.

Ao Kuiba’s eyes widened as a shadow passed across the sky.

The pressure alone sent tremors across the world.

A dragon. An impossibly large dragon. Its coils were so long they disappeared beyond the horizon.

Ao Kuiba stared.

For the first time since arriving here Ao Kuiba felt genuine surprise.

This was not an Imperial Dragon of the Vermilion Grotto-Heaven. It was older, vastly older.

The dragon slowly lowered its head.

Its enormous eyes opened and locked onto Ao Kuiba.

The creature opened its maw.

The world was consumed by...

ROOOOOOOOOOOOAR!

The sound of the roar shook the mountains, the gateways and the ancient city. Ao Kuiba stood motionless as a storm of golden light consumed him.