Book 2: Epilogue |
Zi Zhen let out a long sigh.
It had been months since he last stepped out of the compounds of his Dark Gate Palace. Never before had he felt so suffocated sitting in one place.
He had cultivated in isolation for years at a time. Slept for months before after consuming too much. Enjoyed the shouts and screams of suffering and terror from war prisoners for longer than even that and he had never once experienced something like this. Zi Zhen wasnt sure if it was a new feature of his elevated status and power, or if he had messed something up during the process of turning Zhong An and Peng Du into cultivation cauldrons to boost his own power.
Yet, as much as he wanted to care about this issue, it could not crown itself as the most important curiosity that he had obsessed over.
What the hell did the vixen see? Where did the Calamity go? Was the Black Dragon the Original Calamity that flipped our world over its head?
Zi Zhen remembered those early moments when the rift had been opened.
The arrival of the Dragons.
His core nearly crumbling from their presence alone. The hysteria he felt for a week''s time, to the degree he had actually approached his hated rivals for a truce to one day battle the end of their existence. A coalition of Demonic, Righteous, and the Neutral amongst the strongest of their ilk. One that he had taken full advantage of to elevate himself from the rest.
It was nigh impossible to tell what had happened exactly.
Though his senses had advanced so far, they still failed to fully grasp the event and the sequence it happened in.
Questions burned him as he struggled to keep them in check.
Who was the second, no Third Calamity that had attacked the Black Dragon with illusion Qi? Why were they fighting or was it for the age old dominion and opportunity to feast upon their world? How did the Third Calamity vanish so swiftly? Did whatever happened to the Black Dragon happen to it as well?
What did Meng Li see afterward? Why would she say likely when assuming the Black Dragons death or survival?
And then the way they ended their impromptu meeting upon the mountain. Zi Zhen couldnt put it together. What did Zhong Da, or was it Dong ZhenKang, and his wife have to do with anything at all? Why did she leave so hastily to bake? She clearly had no Dao in the arts of Baking.
Zi Zhen shook his head.
These thoughts were driving him crazy. Another oddity he never suffered before his newfound power.
It was likely the couple had escaped to the current Righteous Blocs territory using the Original Calamity as a pass through the Bleak Forests without having to deal with any monsters.
It was also likely they had been around the location the Black Dragon had supposedly died or was injured as if he was the Original Calamity.
Zi Zhen had made sure to pinpoint the location during the fighting just in case he needed it.
Lo and behold, he did.
He would need to be careful lest it was still in the area. Getting caught by its weakened form was not something he wanted to experience. He had already learned first hand that even a weakened Calamity was still a Calamity, much to his great displeasure. His initial plans of absorbing one of them after their epic battle had been misguided at best. At worst, he would have ended dead.
He needed to find them as soon as possible
Yet, before that
Zi Zhen smiled a menacing thing. The Hu Ancestor would rue the day it made him an enemy.
He took a sharp left off his original path. Toward the far northern reaches of the Righteous Sects territory and to a land that would be familiar and intimate to him. A land with a lineage he had tried to stamp off the face of the earth for so long. He would return to the Hu Clans lands. Wash upon it the very meaning of his Dao; Death personified. Salt its grounds. Kill any remnant of the once glorious World Tree and make sure nothing could exist there for the next ten thousand years.
A toxic wasteland that would kill any that dared stray too close.