Chapter 254
Chapter 254: He Ascends to Become a Dragon God and Leaves the M31 Star System With Only Jiang Tea Tea Behind
Outside the lightning, under the dark clouds, Jiang Tea Tea looked back at him: “I rescued you not so you would remember to repay me. Just focus on crossing your Lightning Tribulation. I believe you will make it through, transform from flood dragon into true dragon, ascend to the upper realm, and become a Dragon God who blesses this land!”
Jin Lin endured bolt after bolt of huge lightning smashing into his body, yet he still thanked Jiang Tea Tea: “Thank you, Senior.”
Jiang Tea Tea shook her head at him and did not speak again, letting him focus on his Lightning Tribulation.
During a Lightning Tribulation, he might directly undergo dragon transformation and continue his cultivation, or he might ascend straight away. But it was even more likely that he would fail to become a dragon at all and have his soul scattered to nothing.
She did not talk to him because she did not want him to be distracted.
He was the only demon she knew in this world. She herself could not leave this place for now, so she hoped he could leave, and it would be best if he could ascend in one stroke and become a Dragon God!
Thunder roared. Coupled with flashes of lightning and heavy dark clouds that seemed to cover the entire sky, the lightning that flickered inside the clouds made them look especially ferocious and terrifying, like an evil god about to descend.
Photography lovers, people stargazing at night, and sleepless folk who had nothing better to do saw this spectacle from far away. They recorded videos and took photos and shared them online.
Whether video or photo, every angle they captured carried a sense of awe and fear.
On StarNet, the sleepless users staying up late flooded the videos and photos with comments: “This lightning is way too scary, it looks like a thunder punishment from the Beast God!”
“There has been a large outbreak infecting nearly ten or twenty thousand people in the Zhenlin Empire, and they still have not given any proper explanation. Could it be that the Beast God cannot stand it anymore and is starting to punish the Zhenlin Empire, sending lightning to strike the mountains first to warn them, so all the star systems in the M31 Star System will know the Zhenlin Empire is starting to go downhill?”
“Wow, this is great, so great, seriously great. The Beast God is sending down divine punishment, the Zhenlin Empire will be fully infected by the Super Virus, and our Insectoid race will take every planet in their star system without losing a single soldier.”
“From then on, the Insectoid race will return to the richest star territory in the M31 Star System, the Zhenlin Empire will be destroyed, and there will be no more Zhenlin Empire in the M31 Star System.”
“You two above and above that, raise your pillows a bit while it is still dark. Good night, Makka Pakka.”
“You are useless, your whole family is useless, your whole country is useless. Our Zhenlin Empire is awesome. We have only been a great power for a few years and have not ruled the M31 Star System for long, but we will last for ages and stay strong in the M31 Star System for hundreds of billions of years!”
“Hahaha, every time I see the Insectoid race daydreaming like this, I cannot help laughing. I really want to grab a few bugs to dissect and see how their brain circuits and brain structure even grew.”
“Dark clouds pressing down, fierce wind and heavy rain, this is just a very common natural phenomenon. How did it become heavenly punishment from the Beast God in your mouths?”
“If the Beast God were as petty as you guys say, why call it the Beast God at all? Just call it the Petty God.”
“Yeah, yeah, those of you taking photos and videos, post more. It looks great, I love watching it.”
“Exactly, such a grand and magnificent natural phenomenon is rare. Look, even the color of the lightning seems different.”
“Sometimes you should think about whether this is really just lightning, or if there is some lightning-element ability user with very strong supernatural abilities practicing how to control lightning.”
“Oh my, the person above just woke me up with one sentence. The most powerful lightning-element ability user in the Zhenlin Empire is Commander in Chief Chong Ming. If he keeps calling lightning over and over at night, it would not be strange to see something like this.”
“Scouts on the front line, keep investigating, keep posting, keep filming. We are waiting for you to show us the most amazing videos and photos…”
The photography lovers and the night owls who could not sleep saw how popular their photos and videos were. Delighted and full of confidence, they started filming again.
The air currents were too strong, and they could not get close to the area of lightning. On Chong Ming’s warship, the captain reported to him and asked: “Commander in Chief, do we need to use artificial weather weapons to break up this bad weather?”
They were still a hundred kilometers from the thickest mass of lightning-filled clouds, and at the warship’s speed they could reach it in moments.
But the lightning was too strong and the weather too harsh. As soon as the warship got a little closer, many of the monitoring systems on board started sounding alarms.
Unless they used weather weapons to blast the clouds apart and disperse the lightning, they could not reach the place where the lightning was fiercest.
Chong Ming answered the captain: “Keep the warship in a safe zone. There is no need to use weather weapons.”
The captain snapped a salute: “Yes, Commander in Chief.”
After the captain left, Chong Ming tried to contact Jiang Tea Tea, only to find that the call could not get through at all. There was no signal on her side, none at all.
Chong Ming’s gaze grew heavy. He pondered for a moment, suppressed the urge to go find her in person, and turned back to handling the nation’s major affairs at hand.
The invisible warship hung silently in the sky. Everyone inside could clearly see the distant clash of lightning and hear the thunder roaring.
Jiang Tea Tea saw the lightning grow more and more intense, until Jin Lin was blasted back into his true demon form.
During the Lightning Tribulation she could not help him. She could only watch helplessly as bolt after heavenly lightning struck down on him again and again.
Time crawled by like years. From the first half of the night to the second half, the lightning did not weaken at all. Instead, every strike became stronger.
Jin Lin was struck until he was covered in blood and all his scales had fallen off. He let out a heart-rending roar and charged straight up into the lightning.
Seeing this, Jiang Tea Tea tapped the ground with her foot and rose up, landing on the highest treetop nearby. Standing on the tip of the tree, she held her Flame Staff in one hand and used the other to draw a secret-realm Protective Barrier, blocking Jin Lin off from the outside world to give him a Guardian Rite.
“Commander in Chief, there is a dragon in the lightning.”
Cai Xi Chao turned toward all the surrounding surveillance systems. In the feed from the camera aimed at the loudest lightning, she saw a dragon.
Although it was a bit far, the images from the surveillance system showed that the dragon was at least a hundred meters long, covered in blood, and being struck by lightning.
Chong Ming enlarged the image she had pulled up. It looked like a dragon but not quite, like a snake but not exactly. It looked very much like Jin Lin, Jiang Tea Tea’s good friend.
He lifted his eyelids and looked at Cai Xi Chao: “Only still images? Do we have live surveillance?”
“Yes…” Cai Xi Chao answered. Her hands moved over the virtual keyboard, tapping quickly. Then she said, “It is gone, Commander in Chief. The live surveillance is gone. It was just there a moment ago…”
“No, that is not right. The lightning has stopped…”
Chong Ming frowned slightly: “The lightning stopped?”
He looked at the surveillance feed. There was indeed no more lightning.
But just moments earlier, the lightning had still been raging.
Cai Xi Chao’s hands never stopped moving over the virtual keyboard. Staring at the screen in front of her, she answered respectfully: “Yes, the lightning has stopped. It was there just now, but now the cameras cannot see anything. It is pitch-black…”
“It is raining, raining hard, Commander in Chief. Within a two-hundred-kilometer radius around us, it is raining everywhere, a torrential downpour.”
Cai Xi Chao switched through all the surrounding surveillance feeds. Rain poured down in sheets, crackling and rushing. The visibility on the cameras was extremely low.
“This is bad, Commander in Chief. The dragon that was struck by lightning just now was filmed by photography enthusiasts and posted on StarNet.”
A new holo projection screen popped up in front of Chong Ming. On it were the videos and photos taken by those photography lovers, much clearer than the shots Cai Xi Chao had captured.
He was silent for a moment, then said: “Do not worry about the photography enthusiasts. Inform the Meteorology Department on the capital planet to issue a severe weather warning. Have them also mention that some lightning-element ability user took advantage of the bad weather to practice calling lightning. Tell the public that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, and that later we will find this ability user and educate and punish him.”
Cai Xi Chao replied with a quick “Yes” and hurried off to notify the Meteorology Department.
Countless holo projection screens floated in front of Chong Ming, but none of them showed the place where the lightning had been most intense. He still could not see Jiang Tea Tea at all.
The head of the Meteorology Headquarters on the capital planet received the order from Commander in Chief Chong Ming and immediately had people issue a severe weather warning. They also condemned the lightning-ability user for using his supernatural powers in such bad weather and making the situation even worse.
The Meteorology Headquarters posted statements, videos, and images, which instantly drew a crowd of StarNet users to discuss them: “Hahaha, I knew it, I knew it. With such a violent lightning scene, there definitely had to be some ability user involved.”
“The dragon in the photos and videos is probably the main culprit who made this bad weather even worse.”
“But from the photos and videos, it looks like he got struck by lightning himself.”
“Beast God above, just thinking about how he used his own lightning supernatural ability and then got struck by nature’s lightning, and later the Police Bureau will go after him too, I cannot help but laugh, hahaha.”
“Right, when I first saw the photos and videos, I got so scared. I thought it was some tribulation scene from a movie or drama. Turns out it was some unknown dragon from the dragon clan using supernatural abilities and getting struck by lightning.”
“Exactly, exactly. I think he is undergoing a tribulation, using lightning to transcend and go to a higher-dimensional space than our M31 Star System.”
“Our exploration of the universe and our understanding of dimensional space are still too shallow. I have always believed that besides the M31 Star System, the universe has other star systems, other species, and other dimensional spaces.”
“Just like the Beast God, who stays in a higher-dimensional space and is not in the same dimensional space as us, he is undergoing tribulation to go to a higher dimension.”
“As long as he can go to a higher-dimensional space and then return to our low-dimensional space, he will be like the Beast God, acting without anyone noticing.”
“Oh wow, you people with such wild imaginations, why not just say that the dragon getting struck by lightning is the Beast God himself?”
“Say what you want, but do not be disrespectful to the Beast God. Be careful or the Beast God will send lightning to strike you dead.”
“Tch, I do not believe it, not even if you beat me to death.”
Chong Ming let the photos and videos stay online and did not let anyone on the net suspect that the dragon being struck by lightning was Jin Lin. He allowed them to keep making all kinds of wild guesses.
These discussions were harmless. There were similar topics on StarNet all the time. His method of guiding public opinion was the classic mix of truth and lies. That way he could smoothly lead the StarNet users to discuss things the way he wanted and never get close to the real truth.
Under the lightning, Jiang Tea Tea kept the Protective Barrier up. Maintaining it burned through too much of her Spiritual Power. Her body could not take it anymore, and she fell from the treetop. When her feet touched the ground, they turned into tea tree roots that burrowed into the earth, while the upper half of her body from the waist up stayed human.
To quickly replenish her strength and Spiritual Power, she absorbed the essence of Mother Earth. She poured the yellow dragon clan blood that Jin Lin had given her around her tree roots.
She thought she would be able to absorb the blood of the Yellow Dragon clan member, but once the dragon blood seeped into the ground, her roots automatically rejected it. They did not like it and did not absorb it.
The Yellow Dragon clan’s blood was also a powerful tonic. Why would her tree roots refuse to take it in? [Could it be that the dragon cub in her belly was already used to Chong Ming’s blood?]
Jiang Tea Tea refused to accept that. Since her roots could not absorb it, she raised it to her own mouth to drink. But as soon as the dragon blood reached her lips and she smelled the strong blood scent, she reflexively started retching and could not even think about swallowing it.
Jiang Tea Tea dry-heaved several times, then put the dragon blood back into her space knob storage device. She took several deep breaths before she finally pushed down the urge to gag.
Without dragon blood to quickly restore her energy and Spiritual Power, she could only use her root system to capture large aberrant beasts in the mountains and eat them as nourishment.
The thunder still rumbled and the rain poured down. In the midst of the lightning, Jin Lin endured attacks from bolts coming at him from every direction.
Jiang Tea Tea still could not help him and could only tilt her head back and watch. Time slipped by in the pouring rain. There were no more flashing arcs, only heavy lightning strikes.
She did not know how long had passed before the downpour gradually eased. A wild pheasant in the mountains let out a loud crowing call.
Right after the bird’s call faded, a crashing peal of thunder shook heaven and earth. The pitch-black sky seemed to be torn open, and thin strands of black-gold light floated out from the crack.
“Rooaaar…”
A dragon roar that sounded like something between a tiger and a bull came from within the clouds, echoing from the top of the sky down to the earth.
Jiang Tea Tea’s tree roots transformed back into human legs. She planted her Flame Staff on the ground and stepped onto it, riding it straight up. From there she saw a giant dragon darting through the dark clouds, a black-gold giant dragon about one to two hundred meters long.
The crack in the sky that spilled strands of black-gold light grew larger and larger, as if silently calling out.
“Roar!”
The dragon roar sounded again. The black-gold giant dragon weaving through the thick clouds turned and came toward Jiang Tea Tea.
Standing on her Flame Staff, Jiang Tea Tea hovered high in midair. As she watched the black-gold giant dragon draw closer and closer, she felt happy for Jin Lin. He had passed his Lightning Tribulation and transformed into a true dragon.
The black-gold giant dragon came up beside her and let out three roars at her, as if in thanks. Then it circled her three times, treading on the clouds like a swimming dragon, and headed toward the crack that shone with black-gold light.
Jin Lin had not only survived his tribulation; he had ascended.
That crack was the passage of ascension. He was going to the upper realm to become a Dragon God.
At one thousand three hundred and one years old, as a Dragon God, if he had ascended from their demon realm, he would have become the top legend of the demon realm. The serpent clan and the carp clan would definitely have treated him as an idol and praised him to the skies throughout the demon realm.
Jin Lin disappeared into the crack that glowed with black-gold light. The dark clouds dispersed. The black-gold light spread and spread until it filled the whole sky. The rain stopped, and dawn broke.
The Protective Barrier Jiang Tea Tea had drawn faded away, and white mist rose through the mountains. Standing on her Flame Staff with her long hair flying, she stared at the place where Jin Lin had disappeared in ascension.
She stayed lost in thought for a long time, until Chong Ming appeared in front of her, riding a hoverboard and blocking her view. Only then did she come back to herself: “You are here?”
Chong Ming looked at her pale, bloodless face and her reddened eyes. A flash of heartache passed through his golden eyes as he reached out a hand to her: “Yes. I am here to take you home.”
Jiang Tea Tea lifted the corners of her lips in a smile: “I do not want to go back yet. I want to stay in these mountains a little longer. You…”
“Fine, I will stay with you.”
Chong Ming cut her off, taking over her sentence. Even though she did not offer her hand, he reached out and grabbed it himself, pulling her forcefully into his arms. He cupped the back of her neck and pressed her face against his own neck.
“Your face is far too pale, and your lips have no color. I think you need dragon blood. Come on, bite.”