After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

If this pipeline collapses, Miao Yingying, the Su sisters, and Fatty Wang will all be exposed to the pressure of water sixty meters deep.

With their cultivation level, they simply couldn't withstand that depth.

will die.

Zhou Ran did not hesitate for a moment.

Miao Yingying.

He pulled the water basin from the ground and shoved it into Miao Yingying's arms without saying a word.

Miao Yingying stumbled from the weight of the alms bowl and blurted out.

"Brother Zhou, what should I do?"

"Narrow the scope, just cover the four of you."

Retreat to the water inlet and wait for my signal.

Miao Yingying instantly understood Zhou Ran's intention, and the color drained from her lips.

"you……"

"obedient."

After Zhou Ran finished speaking, he said no more.

He lifted his foot and stepped out of the pipe.

The river water converged from all directions, engulfing him completely.

The pressure of the water, sixty meters deep, was immense; every inch of water carried a force that seemed capable of crushing flesh into powder, squeezing out from all around.

The eardrums were retracted, the lungs were compressed, and the capillaries on the surface of the skin ruptured on the spot, oozing out a fine mist of blood.

Under such pressure, the bones of an ordinary cultivator would be crushed in an instant.

Zhou Ran's bones were not broken.

Although his bones were creaking, the Primordial Overlord Body was excited!

Black and gold scales protrude from beneath the skin, transforming the pressure that could crush steel into a millstone that tempers itself!

Each muscle fiber, when compressed to its limit, rebounds with terrifying force, taut as if it were a steel cable.

He opened his eyes in the water.

The purple-gold demonic eye lit up.

The murky world before my eyes was pierced directly, becoming crystal clear.

Hundreds of representative red dots have already formed an encirclement.

Zhou Ran did not back down.

He charged forward recklessly through the water!

The first water ghost didn't even have time to raise the water-splitting spike.

Zhou Ran's fist had already slammed into his chest, and the Primordial Qi and Blood exploded on the fist, creating a violently contracting high-pressure bubble.

Bubbles expand to their limit in water and then burst!

The shockwave swept outwards from the center of the fist.

Within a radius of five zhang, the sharkskin armor and chest cavities of the three water ghosts were shattered.

Blood mist mixed with fragments of internal organs diffused in the water and was carried away by the current.

Underwater combat allows no room for fancy tricks.

Every punch is a collision of the most primal forces.

Each step leaves a dent the size of a pot bottom in the mud.

Three elite water ghosts, all in the early stages of Foundation Establishment, surrounded the enemy from three directions, coordinating perfectly.

One person stabbed the upper body, another stabbed the middle body, and a third stabbed the lower body from underwater.

The three water-splitting spikes arrived simultaneously, sealing off all avenues for dodging.

Zhou Ran neither dodged nor avoided.

He extended his left arm, the very same Taihuang Qilin Arm, his five fingers spread wide, and grabbed the tips of the three water-dividing thorns.

He crushed the three water-splitting spikes into a lump of scrap metal with his bare hands.

He grabbed the head of the nearest water ghost with his other hand and shoved it hard into the mud.

The primordial energy and blood flowed into his palms!

The water ghost's body swelled up from its head, and a golden-red light emanated from beneath its skin, while the river water inside its body was boiled.

"Bang!"

A muffled explosion.

The body disintegrated from the inside.

Then, with a thought, his Zanpakuto appeared in his hand without him even noticing.

In three minutes, he slaughtered all thirty-two water ghosts.

The waters, spanning fifty zhang in circumference, had been transformed into a murky slaughterhouse of flesh and blood.

The pressure on the front has decreased sharply.

But he did not relax because of this; a strange feeling seized his consciousness.

The water ghost's corpse did not drift with the current.

The bits of flesh and bone fragments were pulled downwards by a force.

They are converging towards the water's eye.

Zhou Ran's demonic eyes tracked the flow of these corpse fragments.

They passed through the silt layer, were captured by the suction of the dark array eye, and decomposed into the purest blood energy and spiritual energy residue, which flowed into deeper depths along the earth's veins and waterways.

Go and nourish that heart that has been beating for four thousand years.

An idea took shape in his mind.

These water ghosts didn't come to kill him.

They came here to die.

From the very beginning, the leader of the Pai Sect never expected these water ghosts to be able to stop him.

They are fuel.

With each death, the remaining spiritual power and resentment are absorbed by the dark array eye, transforming into a blood sacrifice that incites the old dragon to rampage.

The more he kills.

The older the dragon, the crazier it becomes.

The cold voice above them rang out again, carrying an air of unwavering confidence.

"Keep killing."

"With each one you kill, it gets one step closer to breaking free of the seal."

"I eagerly await Mr. Zhou's personal nurturing of the dragon for me."

Zhou Ran's fist froze in mid-air.

The blood foam on his palm was diluted by the water flow, and he was suspended in the black water sixty meters deep, surrounded by churning mud and sand and mangled limbs.

Within the Demon Eyes, the dark array eyes were visibly accelerating their devouring pace.

Deep underground, the ancient heart began to beat at a different frequency.

It's no longer the slow pendulum of the past.

It is accelerating.

The mud beneath our feet began to tremble.

A massive crack stretched across the riverbed, originating from Zhou Ran and extending outwards to both sides.

The crack was over ten feet wide and its depth was unfathomable.

The water inlet is fully open!

A tremendous surge of dragon energy erupted from the crack, shooting straight towards the water's surface!

The shockwave, carrying the malevolent intent of four thousand years, swept everything in the river into a deep-water storm.

And at the very center of that shockwave.

The very bottom of the abyss rift.

A pair of scarlet vertical pupils slowly and silently opened.

The diameter of that vertical pupil exceeded ten feet.

They locked onto Zhou Ran.

A dragon's roar.

The sound didn't pass through the eardrums; it came directly from the depths of the bone marrow.

That was the low-frequency resonance emitted simultaneously by the entire Yangtze River.

Its frequency is so low that ordinary people cannot hear it, yet it can make everything tremble along with it.

The reaction on the river surface was more obvious than that underwater, with turbid waves more than ten feet high crashing against both banks, and flood warnings were sounded simultaneously in three counties along the river.

From the cracks in the water, jet-black scales were the first to emerge from the earth's surface.

Each scale is the size of a door panel, its surface covered with grooves eroded by time.

It was so black it didn't reflect light, like obsidian peeled off from the depths of the earth.

After the scales, comes the body.

The diameter of the cross-section of the dragon's body exceeds five meters.

It squeezed out half of its body from the crack, yet it already filled the waters within a radius of two hundred feet of the eye with a heavy sense of oppression.

The enormous head rose, its single horn piercing the water, a faint golden-red light emanating from its tip.

A sign of transformation into a dragon.

Just one step away, just the last step.

This four-thousand-year-old dragon is only half a step away from transcending its tribulation and becoming a dragon.

Its vertical pupils did not immediately launch an attack.

Those scarlet eyes stared at Zhou Ran, but the pupils did not reflect any killing intent.

It is an examination.

A surge of dragon's might swept over from the vertical pupils.

This is not spiritual pressure released by a cultivator, but a high-dimensional shock imprinted in the genes of all things.

Even cultivators at the peak of the Foundation Establishment stage would kneel down on the spot under this dragon's might, their souls suppressed.

Zhou Ran's Primordial Overlord Body violently protested under the crushing force of the dragon's might.

The black and gold scales on the skin's surface were forced to become fully visible, and blood vessels bulged out under the skin like earthworms.

The primordial energy surged wildly within his body, directly confronting the dragon's might.

He didn't move an inch, not even taking a single step back.

But his expression changed.

What changed his expression wasn't the dragon's might, but rather what he had seen clearly about the old dragon.

chain.

Nine purplish-black chains were wrapped around the dragon's body, from head to tail.

Each chain is as thick as an iron pillar, made of neither gold nor stone, and exudes an aura that is familiar to Zhou Ran to the core.

Too desolate.

These chains still retain the aura of the Primordial Overlord Body!