Silence reigned for a long time after this until it was broken by something most unkind.

“Human die for me!” A roar of anger rang out as Long Nuhuang looked upward to see First Claw Long Jin with killing intent blaring descending upon her to destroy her entirely!

****

Long Nuhuang didn’t have the strength to resist.

She fell to her knees, not to the calamity currently bearing down on her, no, it was to the exhaustion that threatened to take her.

Little spots of darkness freckled her vision, heralding the coming of her consciousness’s loss. She forced her head to remain skyward, or whatever counted as sky in this godforsaken place. She wanted to take in the dragon and all its features. She wanted to immortalise this scene, to know that this, this right here, would be the closing chapter of a most novel life.

How hateful was this?

It was almost funny, actually. She had a powerful urge to tell Long Di this story, to see if he would finally laugh when she was done.

For a minute, for a blissful, hopeful minute, she led herself to believe that her path would end in her success. Instead, she died to those damnable things for exceeding their expectations. An overachiever… much like her son.

She wanted to meet him to let him know that she tried her best to avenge him.

Maybe this was for the best, to succumb to the embrace, to step deeper into the abode of death. To let it take her, let it hold her and reunite her with that piece of her stolen soul.

This line of thought somehow slipped a semblance of peace to her. The idea of seeing Long Di again, to accompany him through the yellow springs.

“Mother?”

His voice echoed out within the darkness.

She actually saw him there, saw him treading that path on his own. She ran after him, ignoring the bloodstained dust that she kicked up along the way.

“Wait!”

She yelled in excitement at seeing him again, though she only saw his back. It was his back. Long Di’s back!

She tripped several times and scraped her knees, wounding herself as she laboured to close the distance.

To get to him, to embrace him.

Yet… the distance… it… widened?

“Di’er, wait! It’s your mother!”

Her cries fell on deaf ears as Long Di cruelly moved forward, not even turning around to acknowledge her.

“D-Di’er! Long Di!”

As she ran after him, she felt the ground give way beneath her, revealing pitch-black darkness underneath.

And just like that, her footing doomed her and she fell once more into a darkness that was as far from peaceful as it could ever be. Not one of peaceful death, unfortunately, it was one of…

…

“Long Nuhuang!”

A shout echoed through the darkness, and eyes seemingly filled with gravel blinked open. A cave caked in darkness immediately came into view and a raggedy gasp preceded deep breaths before a hacking cough took hold.

Strong hands descended and gently pressed her down.

The coughs eventually ceased, returning silence to the cave.

It took a long while before anyone spoke.

It was the soft voice of Long Nuhuang that dismantled the deadlock. “How am I alive?”

A man in the corner, covered in wounds from head to toe, wracked with worry and guilt stared at her for what seemed like forever.

Naturally, it was Long Huangdi; he looked worse for wear and oddly enough; the wounds were not the prominent guilty party here.

A trace of anger appeared in his eyes when he heard this question. “That’s the first thing you ask?”

His deep voice reverberated in the quiet cave. His words didn’t come through smoothly like normal. It was hoarse and raspy like he had just finished bellowing or crying and his voice sought refuge for a much-needed recovery.

This didn’t hide the sharp edge in his voice, though.

He stared at his wife, waiting for an answer. Her face wore dried tear marks from some nightmare he would reckon. Though he would be hard-pressed to speak of something more nightmarish than everything arrayed against them.

“What else should I say?” her tone was even throughout as she drew another question to parry his.

“What you just did? Maybe!?” He trembled as he struggled to keep his rage in check. “I-”

“I find it hard to care,” she replied, her as even as ever.

Long Huangdi was on the verge of exploding. “This is all for you. I collected the shattered remains of myself for you!” A furious hiss escaped his lips at the last word. His anger now unceasingly bled into his words.

“Now you wish to die!?” The fuse was lit, and it was apace approaching the collective explosive it was bonded to. “Am I just supposed to lose you!? Am I just supposed to sit back and watch you die!? Should I take your ‘I don’t care,’ as a salve for my mental wounds and lick myself clean like some dog!? Heavens I-’”

“I saw him,” she replied, cutting him off and dousing the fuse that was just about to let all hell break loose in the process.

Long Huangdi didn’t need to hear the name of who it was she saw. The pain that flitted across her face spoke volumes of who it was.

“He’s gone…” he said quietly, glaringly similar to how he spoke when he was a broken man. Or maybe he was still broken, just broken in a different way… dare he say, in the right way?

“I know. I was going to meet him there. He was so lonely…” her voice was laced with sadness and tears easily escaped her once more travelling the well-trodden path of earlier passage.

He took her small bloodied hands in his and squeezed, not too hard but reassuringly enough. He wanted to pass on some warmth to her, to let her know that the world isn’t all cold.

“I’m sorry…” she said after a while.

“Me too,” his voice scraped along his throat.

She struggled to sit up, but found it a losing battle and decided to stay down. “What happened?”

Long Huangdi sighed and leaned back on his hands before he stared at the cave ceiling in rumination. She said nothing and waited for him, knowing he was collecting his thoughts before he retold them.

When Long Nuhuang heard what transpired after she passed out, her eyes widened in surprise.

It seemed that Long Jin had indeed wanted to kill her for her sin of not just touching but destroying a dragon’s reverse scale, and he would have had it not been for Long Cang.

The reverse scale was a peculiar scale among the countless on a dragon or ascended dragon kin where it was weakest and most important.

The purest of their heart essence blood collected here, and it was also here that was most vulnerable compared to the rest of a dragon.

Not to speak of destroying it, just touching it would engender anger on a level never before seen from a dragon or dragonkin.

Dragons were prideful beings and saw others as beneath them. They considered their lives and others as trash. They would rather break than submit, always.

Yet, a dragon would kill itself to drag an ant down with it if the latter destroyed the former’s reverse scale. This would be the case even if the ant wanted to escape at the last minute.

This humiliation ran blood and soul deep and couldn’t be reconciled until it ended with one of the other’s end!

Moreover, damaging a dragon’s reverse scale in front of other dragons sparked a feeling within their own reverse scale that sent them into a blood rage.

Long Huangdi even felt bone-chilling, killing intent from Long Cang!

Long Huangdi was sure that his wife would face her end here. Surprisingly, however, Long Cang turned his rage towards Long Jin.

He fought tooth and nail against First Claw Long Jin with everything he had and had been grievously injured in the process.

Truthfully, grievously injured was putting it lightly, he was beaten to within an inch of his life and was left in a state where he couldn’t move.

As soon as Long Jin was about to kill her for her transgression, Long Cang declared on his pride as a dragon that he would self-explode and kill everyone here if Long Jin proceeded to kill her.

Long Jins’ rage reached a new peak at that moment and it caused other existences to find their way here and restrain him.

When the existence of the Long family was made known it caused another uproar at the time and their death was all but confirmed.

However, Long Cang in his last moments of consciousness told them of Long Nuhuang and what she did. He made sure to leave out the destruction of the wyrm’s reverse scale and instead focused on the strange markings on her body.

Ever since then, their sentence was put on hold and they had been locked up without a word of their fate.

Long Nuhuang took it all in with a surprising level of calm.

“Where is everyone else?” she asked, wanting to know if the rest of the family was safe.

Long Huangdi gestured across her with his head, and she turned to look.

The cave they were in was quite large. The rest of the family was situated a fair distance away from them and were all seated in the lotus position, cultivating.

Their eyes were closed, and despite the wounds that riddled them, they bitterly cultivated.

“They’ve been cultivating ever since it happened. They hadn’t even tried to heal their wounds. They said they wanted to use the intent left in their wounds to temper their spiritual and mental strength.”

A hint of pride could be heard in his voice.

Long Nuhuang’s heart brightened just the tiniest bit to see how hard their family was working.

She then looked at her husband. “What now?”