Who let him join the Sword Sect!

Chapter 465 Earthly Folklore, Celestial Evil

The city of Moguan is not quiet tonight; a primal restlessness is everywhere.

Not only because tomorrow is the festival marking the change of eras, but also because tomorrow there will be a grand feast for every brave dragon.

The flesh and blood of the fallen strong are limited; only the brave are entitled to share them.

Those that have already qualified can choose to quietly wait for the festival to end and welcome the birth of the next dragon in the next era.

Alternatively, one can choose to enter the dragon arena and, witnessed by a bloodthirsty audience, become the victor and feast on blood.

Or become part of the feast.

"Are you going to join?" In a roadside butcher shop, a yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex gnawing on a plate of roasted dragon head asked its companion indistinctly.

"I won't go. I'm just a scholar; I don't have the power of you." The green sword-backed dragon shook its head, then ignored its leader and began sharpening its sword tail.

The yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex continued talking to itself, "Then I'll go. I heard that the current leader achieved his current status by eating the flesh of the previous leader."

"I'll go ask Afei and Canjiao later. They might have some ideas. We can form a team then."

The green saber-backed dragon glanced at its leader.

"Then you'll be disappointed. Ah Fei is a lazy dragon. It definitely finds this kind of thing troublesome and will not participate at all."

"As for the broken horn," the Stegosaurus sighed, thinking of that brute blue-skinned Triceratops.

"It got an upset stomach and probably won't be able to attend the festival tomorrow."

Tyrannosaurus Rex, "What did it eat?"

Just as the Saberback Dragon was about to speak, the red pterosaur Afei happened to fall from the sky.

While the eldest wasn't looking, it snatched the roasted eye socket meat from the plate, which was the most delicious part and had been saved for last.

It spoke up in front of the eldest brother.

"A new chili sauce shop opened in Mo Guan City, and that idiot Can Jiao ate half of the shop's inventory. I reckon he'll be living in the toilet tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after that."

While listening to the dinosaurs' discussion, Zhang Ze stealthily made his way towards the dragon arena.

Shang Yang's body was left there. At the same time, that area was also the Legalist school's base in Mo Guan.

Whether it's preferential treatment or simply a long-standing tradition, the security around this dragon arena has been taken over by the Legalist dragons.

These guys were quite dedicated; their eyes were wide open, like copper bells.

Its long neck scanned every corner of the surroundings from every angle, while the array beneath its feet swirled, monitoring any unusual activity underground.

In addition, each dragon was surrounded by dozens of spatial restriction runes, whose runes shimmered and formed various warning signs in the pitch-black night.

Zhang Ze felt that this group of dragons should be renamed the Security Family rather than the Legalist Family, since each of them was practically a born Security Saint Body.

Those warnings that threatened execution or even death, replaced with "welcome home," would be perfectly acceptable.

Unfortunately, the dragons' tight defenses protected them from other dragons, but not from human beings.

Wearing a colorful bodysuit, Zhang Ze, in the instant the two spatial restriction talismans intersected, simply turned sideways and squeezed through the fleeting gap.

No dragon noticed.

After passing through the security guards' blockade, Zhang Ze strolled towards the center of the Colosseum.

As he walked, he suddenly felt something was wrong. Logically speaking, in such an important place, in addition to the Legalist security guards outside, there should also be people patrolling inside.

But there wasn't a single dragon inside.

Zhang Ze stood still for a moment, his feet barely touching the ground, trying to discern the sounds, but he couldn't hear anything.

After confirming that no one was there, he squeezed through the crack in the door again and came to the center of the fighting arena.

Zhang Ze looked at the scene before him and clicked his tongue.

The center of the site had now become a morgue.

A total of seven giant coffins of varying sizes were placed in the center of the venue.

In the center of the arena, the sand, soaked with blood and broken bones, seemed to pulsate slowly as if it were alive.

As the formation shifted, the remaining life force of those dragon corpses was worn away and released back into this enclosed world.

The ceremony has begun.

And perhaps it's a local custom, but a sign was thoughtfully hung in front of each coffin.

The painting depicts the portraits of these powerful figures, each one incredibly lifelike, and below each portrait is written the specific aristocratic family or faction to which they belonged.

And other miscellaneous information such as whether it was a voluntary sacrifice, or whether it was cut down and sent here, whether it did any good deeds for dragons in its lifetime, and what achievements it had.

Some of the information was of dubious veracity, and some of it was so outrageous that Zhang Ze was afraid of violating regulations if he read it aloud.

'They're playing pretty big,' Zhang Ze thought to himself.

Out of caution, Zhang Ze did not act rashly. He circled the coffins three times to make sure that no one was around and that there were no three hundred sword-wielding dragons lurking inside the coffins before carefully floating to Shang Jun's coffin.

He climbed over the wall.

The blood inside the coffin had been drained by the magic array here, and the spiritual energy and vitality it contained had almost completely dissipated, leaving only a wisp of Shang Jun's spiritual essence and origin.

These are the prizes for tomorrow's Dragon Arena.

Zhang Ze was not interested in this power; he drifted toward Shang Jun's empty abdomen.

He felt something was wrong here.

While outside the city, he sensed something amiss; a familiar yet strange aura emanated from the blood-red corpse within the coffin. Now that the spiritual energy and magical power had dissipated, it was actually a good thing for Zhang Ze, as it eliminated any interference.

After entering, he circled around, and finally reached out and touched the base of a broken rib, taking something out of the bone crevice.

Like the spiritual energy within the corpse, this thing had also dissipated most of its power. However, Zhang Ze was 100% certain that this thing was the source of his familiar yet strange feeling.

A tiny 'mist', about the size of a grain of rice, almost the same color as flesh and blood.

A solidified 'cloud' resembling aerogel.

Zhang Ze carefully put the condensed cloud of mist into the right pocket of his colorful bodysuit.

He then left Shang Jun's body and entered another coffin.

The famous Gongsun family possessed a Spinosaurus, its body intact. According to the plaque outside the coffin, it had died of natural causes due to the exhaustion of its lifespan and was sent to Moguan yesterday.

Zhang Ze circled Gongsun's corpse twice, and finally found an identical clump of solidified mist at the corner of its eye.

He put the solidified cloud of mist into his left trouser pocket.

Zhang Ze also checked the remaining five coffins, but this time he did not find anything strange again.

'This thing was only found on Shang Yang and Gongsun Shi… Is it time?'

According to the biographical information on the plaque in front of the coffin, the two had no connection whatsoever; the only thing that could link them together was the time of their deaths.

These coffins were not sent to Moguan together.

Apart from the Logicians Gongsun and the Legalists Shang Yang, the others were sent here by their clansmen a week or even half a month ago.

The time of Gongsun Shi and Shang Jun's deaths was somewhat close to the time when Feng Ge and A Li entered this secret realm...

That aerogel-like thing looks somewhat similar to the evil entity that Brother Feng mentioned, the one that entered this place with him.

Thinking of this, Zhang Ze summoned the Azure Lotus Dust and once again entered it.

He released his innate Dao body and used a one-click costume-changing technique to replace the colorful bodysuit.

Holding the two solidified clouds in his hands, he stepped over to the thief who stole the dragon.

The creature was already full and, with its round belly, was playing the arcade game that Zhang Ze had placed there to keep it from getting bored, while burping.

Upon seeing Zhang Ze arrive, it quickly stopped, then turned around and looked at Zhang Ze ingratiatingly, rubbing its hands together as it asked.

"Your Majesty, what are your instructions?"

The thief who stole the dragon was knowledgeable and experienced. He had seen the statue of the saint in the temple and had also visited the ancestral tombs of the strategists. He had seen the paintings there, and although he could not see the face clearly, the saint looked just like Zhang Ze.

It has no scales, long claws and legs, a round head, and five fingers.

Most importantly, not only did they not kill it, they also gave it good food and fun toys.

Having come this far, in the eyes of the thief who stole the dragon, he was more than a saint, if not a saint himself.

"Have you seen this?"

Zhang Ze placed the strange cloud of mist he had just retrieved from the corpse in front of Thief Dragon and cast a microscopic observation spell so that Thief Dragon could see the two things clearly.

"I don't recognize it, I've never seen it before!" After looking at it for a long time, the thief who was almost interested shook his head, indicating that he had never stolen anything like it and had never seen anything like it before.

Seeing that there were no clues here, Zhang Ze waved his hand, indicating that they could go back and continue playing.

Zhang Ze then took the two grains of solidified mist, each the size of a grain of rice, to another lotus petal.

Then he began emptying the bag of junk.

I'm planning to find a few magical artifacts that can be appraised.

However, before long, when Zhang Ze casually took out a Tai Sui and tossed it aside, the two seemingly lifeless solidified clouds suddenly began to move.

As if they had come to life, they quickly floated to the Jujube tree and immediately took root.

Almost in the blink of an eye, the two solidified clouds merged into one, began to grow, and began to change shape.

Under Zhang Ze's gaze, the clouds and mist took on a physical form, transforming into a black tentacle.

The tentacles instinctively lashed out at Zhang Ze.

"The Wall of White Frost!" Zhang Ze shouted.

This spell was developed by Shi Xiu, a senior brother from the Heavenly Sect, when he was young. Back then, he had a chuunibyou (middle school syndrome) and needed to mobilize his breath during the spellcasting process. All spells had to be shouted out to unleash their maximum power.

Heavenly Fire, Rapid Freeze, Wall of Frost, Netherworld Walk, Agile and Swift, Chaotic Meteorite—this is a set.

It's a bit cringey, but it's really useful.

As if by magic, the black tentacles were instantly frozen, and the blue color on the inside of the tentacles became exceptionally clear and translucent after being frozen.

Looking at that blue color, Zhang Ze frowned slightly.

He recalled the source of this strange sense of familiarity.

It's Fuhita.

Fuhime said she used to have a nightmare, but she separated it a long time ago.

Because the world is unaware of the connection between the two, this 'nightmare' that the rotten princess doesn't want is called the Nine Serpent because it has many tentacles and often appears near water.

Zhang Ze had seen it twice before, once during the chaos of the Ten Kingdoms period and once in the northern border region at the beginning of the Eastern Qi Dynasty.

This is the third time.

(End of this chapter)