Chapter 254
Chapter 254: He Ascended as a Dragon God and Left the M31 Star System. Only Jiang Tea Tea Remained
Jiang Tea Tea had already called up her magic power, shrinking distance until the land folded beneath her feet. She reached Jin Lin’s mountain at the fastest speed she could manage.
Thunder and lightning struck over and over, deafening, earth-shaking, as if the sky itself were tearing apart.
Jin Lin, enduring the bolts, saw her and shouted hoarsely through pain.
“Senior! Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for buying me this mountain. I digested four dragons and triggered tribulation!”
“If I pass and ascend, your kindness—I’ll never forget it. I’ll repay it forever. If I fail but survive, please save me again. If I’m struck until my soul scatters… I’ve wronged you!”
Jiang Tea Tea stood outside the thundercloud, beneath the heavy black sky, and called back to him.
“I didn’t save you so you’d repay me. Focus on your tribulation. I believe you can pass it. I believe you can transform from flood dragon to true dragon, ascend to the Upper Realm, and become a Dragon God who blesses the world!”
Lightning smashed down again and again, carving pain through Jin Lin’s body. Still, he forced out his gratitude.
“Thank you, Senior!”
Jiang Tea Tea shook her head and stopped speaking. She didn’t want him distracted.
Tribulation could end in many ways.
He could become a true dragon and continue cultivating.
He could ascend immediately.
Or he could fail and be erased.
He was the only demon she knew in this world. And she couldn’t leave yet.
She wanted him to leave.
Better yet—she wanted him to rise in one leap and become a Dragon God.
Thunder boomed. Lightning flickered inside clouds so thick they seemed to swallow the entire sky. Each flash made the clouds look more monstrous, like a wicked god about to descend.
From far away, sky-watchers, amateur photographers, and sleepless night owls saw the spectacle and filmed it. Photos and videos flooded the net—every angle carrying the same breathless fear.
Starnet exploded with comments.
“This lightning is insane. It’s like Beast God’s punishment!”
“Zhen Lin Empire has nearly twenty thousand infected and still no answer. Maybe Beast God got fed up—first he strikes a mountain to warn everyone that Zhen Lin is collapsing!”
“Yes! Yes! Beast God punishes them! Zhen Lin will be infected, and we insect clan will take their whole system without losing a single soldier!”
“Go to sleep with your pillow stacked higher. Good night, idiot.”
Some tried to reason.
“This is just a natural weather phenomenon.”
Others argued back.
“Do you see the lightning color? It’s different.”
“Could be a lightning-element ability user practicing control.”
“Wait—Zhen Lin’s strongest lightning-element ability user is Chong Ming, the Commander-in-Chief. If he’s summoning lightning at night, this isn’t strange.”
More people filmed, thrilled by the engagement.
On Chong Ming’s warship, the captain reported grimly, “The airflow is too violent. We can’t approach the lightning zone.”
He hesitated, then asked, “Commander-in-Chief, should we use artificial weather strikes to disperse the storm?”
They were still a hundred kilometers away. At full speed, a warship could close that in moments. But the lightning field was too powerful. The closer they got, the more alarms screamed across their systems.
Chong Ming answered calmly, “Hold the ship in a safe zone. Do not use weather weapons.”
“Yes, Commander-in-Chief.”
When the captain left, Chong Ming tried to contact Jiang Tea Tea.
No signal. Nothing.
His gaze darkened. He pressed down the impulse to rush to her personally and returned to dealing with urgent state affairs.
The warship hovered invisibly in the sky. From that vantage, the crew could see the distant lightning more clearly—hear the thunder like cannon fire.
Back on the mountain, Jiang Tea Tea watched the bolts intensify until Jin Lin was forced into a more monstrous shape under the punishment.
She couldn’t help him.
All she could do was watch the sky hammer him.
Time crawled, from the first half of night to the second. The lightning didn’t weaken—it grew more vicious.
Jin Lin bled, scales torn away, and then released a roar that shredded the air as he surged upward into the storm.
Jiang Tea Tea reacted instantly. She sprang onto the highest treetop, one hand gripping her flame staff, the other drawing barrier art in midair.
A concealment barrier.
She cut Jin Lin off from outside eyes and sound—shielding him from the world while he fought the heavens.
“Commander-in-Chief,” Cai Xi Chao reported from the surveillance array, “there’s a dragon in the lightning.”
She pulled up the clearest image they could get. Even at distance, the silhouette was unmistakable—over a hundred meters long, blood-slicked, being beaten by bolts.
Chong Ming leaned in, eyes narrowing. The shape was half-dragon, half-serpent.
It looked like Jin Lin.
He lifted his gaze to Cai Xi Chao. “Still images aren’t enough. Do we have live feed?”
“We did,” Cai Xi Chao said, fingers flying. “But… it’s gone. Commander-in-Chief, the live feed is gone. It was there a second ago—”
She froze. “The lightning stopped.”
Chong Ming frowned. “Stopped?”
On the monitor, the lightning had vanished. The area was now a sheet of darkness.
Then Cai Xi Chao’s voice sharpened. “It’s raining. Heavy rain. Commander-in-Chief, within a two-hundred-kilometer radius—downpour.”
She pulled up surrounding cameras. Visibility dropped to almost nothing—white sheets of rain.
Then her eyes widened. “Commander-in-Chief… a photographer posted the lightning dragon on Starnet.”
A new screen appeared in front of Chong Ming—video, photos, clearer than military surveillance had managed.
Chong Ming paused only a beat. “Ignore the photographer. Notify the Capital Planet meteorological department. Issue a severe weather warning.”
“And add this: a lightning-element ability user was practicing lightning summoning during extreme weather. Inform the public this behavior is unacceptable. We will locate the ability user and discipline them.”
Cai Xi Chao saluted. “Yes.”
Chong Ming watched endless screens, none showing the true center of the storm anymore.
None showing Jiang Tea Tea.
He let the public chatter run free. Let the theories multiply. True mixed with false.
It was easier to guide the masses when they argued among themselves.
On the mountain, Jiang Tea Tea held her concealment barrier and poured magic power into it until her body shook.
The barrier covered a hundred kilometers.
A normal barrier wouldn’t have cost so much. But tribulation lightning didn’t just strike Jin Lin. Its residual force hammered the barrier constantly. To keep it stable, she had to keep feeding it.
Her magic power dwindled.
She couldn’t stay upright. She fell from the tree and landed, her lower body transforming into tea tree roots that stabbed into the soil. Above her waist she stayed human.
To replenish herself quickly, she drew the land’s essence—and poured the Yellow Dragon blood Jin Lin had given her onto her roots.
Her roots rejected it.
Not just refusal—revulsion.
Yellow Dragon blood should have been a potent tonic. Why wouldn’t her roots absorb it?
Was it because the dragon hatchlings inside her had grown used to Chong Ming’s blood?
She refused to believe it. If her roots wouldn’t absorb it, she’d drink it herself.
The blood reached her lips.
The scent hit her throat.
She gagged violently.
She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t even bring herself to try.
Breathing hard, she returned the blood to her storage button and forced down the nausea.
No dragon blood meant no shortcut replenishment. So she used her roots to hunt large aberrant beasts in the mountains—feeding herself by brute, natural means.
Thunder still rolled. Rain still poured. Jin Lin endured attacks from every direction within the storm.
Jiang Tea Tea could do nothing but stare upward, helpless.
Eventually the rain eased. A wild rooster cried out loud, clear.
That crow was followed by a final thunderclap that cracked the sky open.
In the darkness, a tear appeared, leaking threads of black-gold light.
A roar—dragon but not dragon, beast but not beast—rolled out from the clouds, vibrating from the heavens down.
Jiang Tea Tea’s roots transformed into legs. She planted her flame staff and shot upward, riding it like a spear.
In the storm, she saw it.
A dragon.
One to two hundred meters long.
Black-gold.
It swam through the clouds like a living legend.
The tear in the sky widened, as if silently calling.
The black-gold dragon roared again and came toward Jiang Tea Tea.
She hovered high, standing on her flame staff, watching it draw near with joy blooming in her chest.
Jin Lin had passed.
He had become a true dragon.
The dragon reached her and released three clear roars—gratitude, farewell, vow.
It circled her three times, moving through cloud like water, then turned and flew toward the black-gold tear.
Jin Lin didn’t just pass.
He ascended.
That tear was the ascension path—the way to the Upper Realm, to become a Dragon God.
A 1301-year-old Dragon God.
If he’d ascended in the demon realm, he would have become the realm’s greatest living myth. Serpent clan and carp clan would have worshiped him as an idol.
The dragon vanished into the black-gold light.
The storm dispersed. The clouds dissolved. Rain stopped.
Dawn broke.
Jiang Tea Tea’s concealment barrier faded. White mist rose from the mountain. She stood on her flame staff, hair whipping in the wind, staring at the empty sky where Jin Lin had disappeared.
For a long time, she didn’t move.
Then Chong Ming appeared, riding a flying board, stopping in front of her and blocking her view.
Only then did she blink back into herself.
“You came,” she said quietly.
Chong Ming looked at her pale face, her reddened eyes. A flash of pain crossed his golden gaze. He reached out his hand.
“Yes. I’m taking you home.”
Jiang Tea Tea forced a small smile. “I don’t want to go back yet. I want to stay on this mountain for a while—”
“Fine.” Chong Ming cut her off. “I’ll stay with you.”
She didn’t offer her hand. He took it anyway, pulled her forward, and drew her into his arms. His hand cupped the back of her neck, pressing her to his throat.
“Your face is too pale,” he murmured. “Your lips have no color. You need dragon blood.”
He turned his head slightly, offering his artery.
“Come. Bite.”