Just as the young man was looking up coldly, a ripple spread out next to him. A brawny man with a fierce aura appeared right next to him. The brawny man had a robust physique and his facial features were not like all other’s. While those, who cultivated had a refined and jade like face, his was unrefined and fierce. His hair was white but short, his eyes were narrowed as he looked at the young man and nodded. When the young man also nodded, the bulky man wearing the white armour turned his eyes towards Zhi.

Seeing his progress, he was surprised but then said, “Your nephew has improved again.” The young man’s cold expression had softened as he slowly shook his head, “It is astonishing that he has reached this far with such pathetic resources and cultivation grounds. If he wants to contend with the true Clan Geniuses, he still has a long way to go.” The bulky man looked at the young man with a bewildered gaze as he said, “His talent and comprehension could be classified as Saint Level. Against these so called “Geniuses” of the Ancient Clans, his progress far outstrips them. Even though the Qi is scarce in this Realm, his combat experience far outstrips these Geniuses, who have only grown up in the safety of their four walls.”

The young man’s eyes flickered as he heard this but he soon cast his head down before he said in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter, if anyone learns that Xiaomei is dead and he is her son…. Even the Heavens can’t protect him then.” The bulky man’s eyes flashed but soon he could only sigh as well, “Xiaomei, the only person in the Ancient Dragon Clan to be born with the Five Clawed Golden Dragon physique. Her peerless beauty coupled with her cultivation talent, she was the most sought out Goddess in our Quadrant. The number of people who tried to court her could be counted in worlds.”

Hearing this the young man’s face fell, however, he did not say anything at all. Seeing this, the bulky man just shook his head, “After she left the Clan, she abolished her cultivation and sealed her physique. The only person, who knows what happened to her afterwards, disappeared without a trace.” When he was saying this, he looked at the young man intensively. The young man looked at the bulky man but didn’t say anything again.

The bulky man’s face turned serious as he asked, “You were the rising star of the Ancient Dragon Clan. Your Golden Sovereign Dragon physique loses to the Five Clawed Dragon’s only by a hair. Why would you damn your future by playing a Dao Guardian for a nephew in this kind of place?”

The young man just smiled bitterly as he said, “For the same reason you have not told anyone about this place.” The bulky man just cast his head down as the young man continued, “I do not know how your Peerless Tiger Clan raises your junior generation but our Ancient Dragon Clan has a primitive way. Those, who survive until the end are those who grow up. The rest become road of corpses which pave the road for the survivors.”

Hearing this the bulky man’s face flashed. All of the Ancient Clans had their unique ways of raising their juniors. The Peerless Tiger Clan he was from, isolated all off the juniors and threw them to Danger Zones. It was all in order to grow their character and make them rely on their own power not others.

Although they had a Dao Guardian to protect them there were still some casualties every once in a while. However, the Ancient Dragon Clan did the opposite, they gathered all of them together and those that survive were those that killed all of the rest. Although the Ancient Dragon Clan had the least number of people of the Ancient Clans, all of them were battle hardened people who could beat 10 at the same stage as them. The bulky man just sighed and said, “As long as he survives, it is all well. If he dies, my little sister would flip. It is all thanks to me coming to keep her updated of his status every once in a while that has kept her from leaving the Clan.”

The bulky man just sighed as he felt a headache. The young man just smiled, “It isn’t easy for you either. Your little sister is the next Clan Tiger, isn’t she?” The bulky man just sighed as he said, “Yea but she doesn’t give a damn about the Clan. All she knows is that they didn’t give a damn about her and threw her to that Battlefield. She has told me many times that she wishes nothing to do with Clan and would like to just be by that boy’s side.”

The young man just smiled lightly as he said, “Well, this truly is getting interesting.” The bulky man was confused as he looked towards the young man. The young man just traced Zhi with his eyes as he said, “He was born from the Five Clawed Golden Dragon. His talent and comprehension is extremely high. His Dao Guardian is a person who was regarded as one of the brightest stars of his generation back in the day, his lover is a little lady who is destined to become the next leader of the Peerless Tiger Clan.” The young man just smiled but the bulky man had a thoughtful expression on as he said, “Anyone of those things would be heaven defyingly lucky chance. As to how far he-” The bulky man didn’t get to finish his sentence as the young man said, “And he has the Crystallized Essence of Dao that belonged to the Black and White Emperor.”

Hearing this, the bulky man’s face changed as he looked at the young man in astonishment. Soon he remembered something and then just took the young man by his collar as he yelled at his face, “ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE? Why did you allow him to absorb the Essence of Pride? Are you trying to kill him, unless the person was the reincarnation of the Black and White Emperor, to pass the Third Tribulation with that Essence is impossible!” As the bulky man raged in the young man’s face, the young man was completely calm. The bulky man however felt cold sweat pouring down his back when he thought about what would happen when Zhi died during the Tribulation.

After having raged at the young man, he let him go and immediately started looking for Zhi. His only chance to have him survive was to extract the Essence. Just as he located Zhi and tried to go to him, he was blocked by the young man.

The young man’s eyes were cold as he said, “Did you truly think that I would give him the Essence If I didn’t have a guarantee that he would survive?” The bulky man stopped in place as he looked at the young man with mixed emotions. He knew that he wouldn’t go through the trouble of being his Dao Guardian if he just waited for him to die. The bulky man stopped but he looked at the young man coldly as he said, “You better tell me what this method is and how big his chances of survival are. Don’t forget that neither of us is going to have a fun time when the Little Miss finds out that we were both involved in that boy dying.”

The young man thought for a second and then just shook his head. He then just pointed to the Island below and said, “Have you still not recognised this Island?” The bulky man was confused but as he inspected the Island, his expression became more and more blank. In the end, he just looked at the young man with an agape jaw as he asked, “Th-This i-i-is t-the Imperial Palace o-o-o-of the Black and White Emperor.” The young man nodded but the bulky man felt is mind go numb.

After the Black and White Emperor fell, the Fortress Type Artefact, on which his Palace was built, was lost in the flames of war. Now, he truly felt that Zhi’s future was becoming more and more unpredictable. Without saying anything more, the two stared at each other.

***

Zhi knew nothing that had happened between the young man and the bulky man. He didn’t even know that the two of them were protecting him from the shadows like that. After he had straightened out his relationship with Fanghong, he felt relieved. He could now focus on his cultivation without any distracting thoughts.

He didn’t know what the Guardian Fruit was but he felt as though it had sentience. He couldn’t explain or understand it properly but he felt as though there had always been an invisible hand guiding him. The occasional insights he gained from the Fruit were also very abstract and although they helped him a lot in terms of progress, he felt as though, they were wrong. There were countless Dao’s in existence and each person gained different insights. Each person had experienced different things so it was virtually impossible for two people to gain the exact same understanding of a Dao.

The only reason he had unconditionally followed the Fruit’s orders until now was because they were the best at the time. Now that he didn’t have to worry about his life all the time, he could take the time to ponder on other cultivation Arts and such. The more familiarized himself with different Arts, the more he felt that the Fruit wasn’t something naturally made but something that was man made.

Although, he had never heard of the Crystallized Essence, he felt as though the Fruit was something that was created from one person’s insights to the Dao and the Art he practised. The other high level Arts were something that had been passed through the hands of countless people and refined like that to take the least amount of shortcuts. In his mind, the Art he practised was rather unrefined and crude.

A lot of the place were abstract and profound, making it very difficult for juniors to practise it. Refined methods usually scaled with their profoundness, in the beginning, they were more simple but as the person progressed, the Art became more profound. It was like this because even if you gave a blind man the most beautiful paining in existence, he wouldn’t be able to see it. It was the same with cultivation Arts.

Even if you gave a junior an extremely profound Art, he wouldn’t be able to see what was so special about it because he couldn’t understand it. Zhi had been constantly pondering about this point lately. It was clear that the Art he practised was extremely profound and complex, however, at the same time, it was all over the place. The way the Art was divided into sections and he could only practise the next part if the Fruit permitted made his life a lot harder.

He was blindly walking along without knowing what the hell he was doing. Since he didn’t know what came next, a lot of things didn’t make sense to him at first but as he progressed they did. Then he could only sigh. If he knew the true purpose of the thing he had obtained, he could have used it a lot sooner.

These kind of nuances were the most annoying thing to him. As Zhi cleared his mind, he entered cultivation mode again, pouring in all the effort he could to fuse the Soul with the Core, so he could birth the Nascent Soul. However, what he did not know was that he was in for a calamity from the moment he ingested the Fruit. He was a Dragon, his Soul held the Arrogance and Pride of a Dragon. The Flames of Life and Death were the same, they were the two most supreme Flames. If a person tried to fuse two completely opposite things, they would be in for a bad time.

Zhi didn’t know that he was currently running towards his destruction instead of walking towards it in a snail pace. The more he focused on fusing the Soul and Core, the more backlash he felt. In the beginning, he didn’t turn much attention to it because he felt as though it was normal. However, as time went on, the collision between the Flames and the Soul became more and more violent. After the collisions started affecting his Qi Palace, did he realize that something was very wrong.

When he decided to stop the fusion for now to find a reason for this happening, the two sides went completely out of control. Zhi just felt a stabbing pain in his Soul as he coughed a mouthful of blood. The rampage of the two side had completely exited his control, he could do nothing any more. As the bone tearing pain engulfed his body, he let out a yell of pain.

***

The young man and the bulky man were still locked in their stare off when suddenly both of their faces changed. They felt an extremely powerful Soul Ripple and as they looked towards the source, their faces were drained of all blood. Without even thinking about it, they hurriedly laid down protective formations so no one could possibly see what was happening inside.

As they did so, they flew towards Zhi, however, when they reached Zhi, the both of them had an ugly face on. Zhi was laying on the ground covered in blood. His body excluded only a very faint aura of life and even that faint aura was on the verge of collapse. In the air above him, three illusionary figures were locked in a stalemate.

Two old men, one with pitch black eyes and black long hair dressed in black robes, the other had completely white eyes and white long hair and was dressed in long white robes. The two were both staring at the black crystal dragon to the opposite of them. The Dragon was 400 meters long, it’s eyes were completely crimson and it body was covered in black crystal scales. It looked at the two old men in anger and the two old men were currently looking at the dragon with ugly faces.

The old man in black opened his mouth and said in an enraged tone, “You worthless little snake dare to try and overpower this Emperor!?!” After saying so, the old man let out an enraged howl as black flames materialized around him.

With a sweep of the man’s hand, the flames all shot towards the Dragon. Seeing this, the Dragon just took a deep breath and then roared loudly, even the young man and the bulky man had to cover their ears in order to protect their eardrums from breaking. As the roar sounded out, most of the black flames were extinguished but a few still headed towards the Dragon. The Dragon just coldly looked at the flames with ridicule in his eyes as he smashed all the flames away with his tail.

Seeing his attack completely deflected like that, enraged the old man even more. The young man and the bulky man felt their scalps numb from this sight. Even they felt danger from those black flames but the Dragon had deflected all of the flames so easily. Suddenly, the Dragon’s eyes lost their crimson glow and normalised. The eyes looked exactly like Zhi’s but the aura the Dragon excluded was completely different from the one Zhi had.

The Dragon also grew from being 400 meters long into a one that was 600 meters long. The Dragon opened his mouth and said for the first time, “You little bald monkey didn’t die all those years ago. Now you try to possess my descendant like this, did you start regretting escaping?” Hearing this tone, everyone’s faces changed. The the four people still conscious all knew who this aura and voice belonged to.

The old men’s face grew even uglier but the young man and the bulky man had a nervous face on. If the Dragon truly was the person they thought it was, then this is going to be trouble. The old man just let out an enraged howl as he cursed loudly, “You shitty lizard, after so many years of taking care of you four, you decided to betray me like that. I will one day have revenge on you!” Hearing this enraged the Dragon as he started excluding a murderous aura, “You old senile fart think that you took care of us? You little prick shackled out bodies and enslaved our minds to do your bidding! You treated us as nothing more than slaves and you have the arrogance to say that we betrayed you?!”

As the loud words echoed out in the cultivation room, the Dragon turned completely enraged as his mighty aura started pushing down on the two old men. When the aura hit them, they were instantly nailed to the floor as their images started cracking. The Dragon looked at the two old men as though they were insects and said, “You managed to hide a remnant of your consciousness in the Crystallized Essence and in hopes of taking over the person, who ingested the Essence, you were very careful and patient. However, who would have ever thought that the person you tried to take over would be someone, who I can directly link with through the Soul.”

The Dragon let out a little laugh as he said, “It seems that even the Heavens want you to be completely eradicated.” As these words echoed out, the two old men let out final shrieks of pain as they completely shattered.

When the light dots that they were, faded away, the Dragon looked towards the young man and said, “You have 10 breaths of time to explain everything to me junior.”