Brass Dragons in the Dragon World

So, on a scorching hot day, at the most restless moment for the World Tree, the Black King unleashed the domain of Word of Power in the Far East, and flames descended from the sky, burning the rampant trees.

The World Tree itself, far away in the sky, was completely unaware of this small change.

Just as people don't care about minor bumps and bruises while walking, the World Tree has no interest in what's happening in the Far East.

But then, the flames began to spread, a great fire that engulfed the entire world. In the raging inferno, the Black King and the World Tree vied for control of the world.

Compared to the oblivious World Tree, the Black King was far more greedy. He stretched out his black wings to block out the sun, intending to turn the entire world into a polar night, thus limiting the World Tree's expansion.

In that war, the World Tree was the sun, and the Black King was the night; the boundary of their Word of Power became the dividing line between day and night.

One dragon egg after another was created by the Black King, and they became more and more deadly with each generation. The Black King placed their will in the magic net created by the World Tree. Whenever a dragon died, it would emerge from its cocoon and be reborn, absorbing the flesh and blood of the Black King around it and reviving once again.

Under such a terrifying offensive, the Black King led his people to attack the World Tree. His wings brought a cold night, and the World Trees died one after another. The World Trees cried out silently in the darkness, but they were powerless to stop the Black King's advance.

Until that day, the Black King stood beneath the real World Tree, looking at the towering trees as if looking at his own past.

Now, this is the last one.

Chapter 642 The Destined One

The final battle arrived as expected. The jet-black dragon dripped viscous flesh and blood, which split into countless equally jet-black dragon beasts, charging fearlessly toward the radiant World Tree.

The newly born dragons circled around the World Tree, using all sorts of incantations to attack the enormous, boundless trunk. The once mighty World Tree seemed dead, allowing the dragons to push it down.

Although the World Tree is slow-witted, it will not sit idly by and wait for its demise; what it is planning is something even greater.

Amidst the roar of the dragonfire, the World Tree slowly collapsed, its black branches melting away into the darkness. At that moment, every dragon felt an unknown power emerge within its body.

That was a gift from the World Tree, the power he wielded to control the world.

The dragons took over this authority and became the new gods, but none of them told Dickens that every gift of fate comes with a price.

The Black King used Gungnir to erase all the dragons' memories of the World Tree and returned the divine spear to his offspring. It was something that had originally been taken from Odin's body, and in the Black King's eyes, it was simply putting something back in its original place.

It's as natural as putting a good knife on a knife rack.

From that day on, a new Word of Power was created, and the Word of Power called the Prophet became the favorite of the dragons. They used this Word of Power to foresee the future, proudly soaring in the sky, announcing that the next era would be dominated by them.

They spread across the land, and circular cities were built one after another. Humans and gods lived together, gazing up at the towering bronze pillar in the city center.

That was proof that the dragons ruled the world. They held the past, present, and future of a world in their hands, but the so-called future was nothing more than a pre-written script.

On a moonless night, a second-generation species awoke from its slumber, letting out a mournful cry as tears of blood streamed from its eyes. Its brain, which had little emotion to begin with, was unable to comprehend this feeling.

In his dream, he saw his own death, that true eternal sleep.

In the days that followed, more and more dragons saw Ragnarok through the power of words. On that destined day, the dragons fell from the sky, and the World Tree would be reborn from their bones.

At this moment, the Black King finally understood that the authority of the World Tree was not so easy to obtain. All of this was a ritual arranged by the giant tree through death. He divided the authority, which grew in the bodies of the dragons like his own seeds. When the time was right, these seeds would take root and sprout in the dragons' bodies, transforming back into towering giant trees.

But for the other Dragon Kings whose memories were erased, they could only see a dark shadow that blotted out the sky in their premonitions in Lake Mo, and so a rumor began to circulate among the Dragon Kings:

The Black King will one day descend into madness, unfurling his deadly black wings to destroy everything in the world.

But the Black King ignored these rumors, or rather, he simply couldn't comprehend the growing panic in his offspring's heart, just as a fish can't understand the cattle and horses trotting on land.

He had already foreseen his own demise, but the World Tree had taught him one thing: sometimes death is not the end.

So he allowed humans, with the help of the Dragon King, to kill him. The consciousness of hundreds of thousands of humans entered his mind, turning him into a madman who could not move, and then he turned into bubbles and disappeared from the world.

From Ander's perspective, the Black King's will entered the magic network created by the World Tree, and a new round of battles began in that world made of magic.

Like the World Tree, the Black King also used his own bloodline to determine the fate of his offspring: he will be resurrected one day in the future and once again become the ruler of the world.

“This is how it all ends,” Ander said listlessly, looking at the scenes unfolding before him. He was now lying on the ground in his dragon form. “So, where are you?”

"I'm here." Zero revealed himself, still dressed in his bourgeois attire of a suit and leather shoes. Ender, however, curled his lip in disdain, turned his head away, and said irritably, "I asked where you are in history, not to come out here!"

Zero stared into Ender's eyes and said casually, "Wasn't that my story just now, the story about the World Tree?"

A giant, verdant tree flashed behind Zero. Ender didn't speak, but stared at his deceptively handsome face and exhaled fiery breath.

After a long silence, Ander said, "You're lying to me. That's a creature without humanity, and it doesn't have any brothers."

Ender had heard of similar deities before, but these tree-transformed deities would hardly possess the rich emotions of Zero, let alone the feelings between brothers.

They have no concept of this at all. Some plant seed pods can contain more than a dozen seeds, most of which will be gradually eliminated during the germination process and then become nutrients for their own offspring.

"Yes, but sometimes there are always some small changes."

The giant tree behind Zero slowly disappeared, and different images began to be projected above Ander. These were the battles between the Black King and the World Tree in the magic network, where they had been fighting each other for tens of thousands of years.

But they forgot that they needed an anchor point to return to the human world after their rebirth.

The World Tree chooses authority as its anchor point. It sends out its authority, and when the newly generated authority merges into one, the World Tree will sprout and grow once again.

The Black King chooses his own bloodline as the source of power. When his offspring devour each other, the Black King is reborn within their bodies.

In order to achieve this goal, both the Black King and the World Tree gave the dragons hints of killing each other. The dragons became an abandoned race, and their only use was to become nourishment for the gods to return by dying.

But they overlooked the subtle humanity within the dragon's body.

In the beginning, the dragons created by the Black King used complete human brains. They were also the generation with the richest emotions. As the first generation of the Dragon King, he possessed the greatest power, but he was also the weakest.

They restrained their nearly out-of-control subordinates, overcame the curse of mutual slaughter, and gradually lay dormant. Ten thousand years passed, but they still failed to achieve the unity that the Black King and the World Tree desired.

Time also changed the two high-ranking gods. They were originally one, but now, high in the sky, within the demonic net, the two gods' already limited free will was gradually worn away by time, until at a certain point, they merged into one.

That is a more powerful being, the only god in the world, and what he seeks is to descend upon the world again.

“He spent many years to achieve this goal,” Zero said in a low voice, his head bowed, “many years to create a suitable body for himself.”

"Capable of slaughtering the entire body of a dragon."

Chapter 643 The Roar of the Ghost

For beings like the World Tree and the Black King, their unit of time is measured in centuries. Under this ridiculously long concept of time, their calculations are always measured in tens of millions of years.

When the Black King and the World Tree merged once more, a true god was born. He roamed freely within the magic network, holding sway over the world's past, present, and future. With a gentle wave of his hand, the world would revolve according to his will.

But this god did not want to be a ghost outside the world; he wanted to be resurrected, to stand firmly on the earth, and to bring the world back into his control.

　So the Black King picked up his failed plan with the World Tree again. Instead of waiting for the dragons to kill each other, he turned his attention to the lowly little creature.

　 A small creature called human.

He needs to achieve the convergence of bloodlines in a human body, and this body is the best material for his rebirth.

Within that magical web, the god began his plan. Ander, watching from the sidelines, saw the radiant tentacle monster turn its gaze to a girl sleeping in a bed.

As the gods watched, the girl's belly gradually swelled, and in just a few seconds she became a pregnant woman who was ten months along.

“Uh, this can’t be…” Ander’s lips twitched a few times as he pointed at the Middle Eastern-looking girl in the picture: “This can’t be that Virgin Mary, can it?”

“The Virgin Mary, the woman who gave birth to the Holy Son in legend,” Zero summoned a set of tables and chairs, but instead of sitting properly, he sat on the table with his legs dangling: “She was not wrong, Mary did indeed conceive the Holy Son.”

On that day, the Holy Son descended into the world, and three doctors traveled from the East to offer their congratulations. Ander looked at the doctors in their elaborate hats and robes on the screen and chuckled, "So these three guys are Eastern hybrids?"

“No, those are dragons. They are dragons loyal to the Black King. Only these three idiots are left.” Zero casually tapped the table beneath him. “Look, that’s the true demeanor of the three doctors.”

Under the moonlight, the Chinese people, dressed in tall crowns and wide belts, transformed into three long dragons of different shapes, circling high in the sky. Then they cut their own necks, and their dragon blood rained down, soaking the holy son below.

"This is the first bloodline recycling. Gods only need to recycle the seed of bloodline, which is what humans call the genome. When the genes of the dragon race converge in a person, that body becomes the best vessel for the god."

With the disappearance of the dragon blood, the originally ordinary holy son has transformed into a ferocious beast. Overnight, he has become a hybrid and is destined to annihilate the dragon race.

Anders watched as Jesus, a tall man who preferred his fists to his words, rampaged through ancient Rome until one day he was betrayed by his own disciples and crucified by the Dragon King.

“Although Angers told me something similar back then, I didn’t expect it to be this outrageous.” Ander glanced at Jesus’s face and found that the guy looked somewhat like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Zero remained silent, while everything on the screen sped up rapidly. Before being nailed to the ground, the Holy Son left behind a child who, upon birth, took over his father's mission and began the relentless struggle against the Dragon Clan.

The scenes kept changing. Sometimes he was an assassin known as the Assassin, carrying the organization's sleeping potion and launching a desperate charge against the dragons who had become Pasha, along with his companions.

Sometimes he is a knight from a small European country, riding his horse towards the dragons that appear on the battlefield.

He is the dragon-slaying hero praised by all, a fool in the eyes of opportunists, and a madman constantly striving for destiny, but no matter how many generations pass down his story, he has one predetermined mission:

Slaying the dragon.

His journey began in the Middle East, then continued westward, from Jerusalem to Venice, from Austria to Germany. When the Age of Exploration arrived, he started his northward journey from Brazil in South America, eventually reaching the end of his collecting spree: the United States.

Those were countless generations of the Holy Son. Under the arrangement of his predetermined fate, he found the love of his life, a woman from China. A few years later, the next Holy Son was born, a girl with deep red hair.

"So it's Giovanni?" Ander lazily looked at the girl growing up in the image. "I thought it was Lu Lincheng."

“No, they are all of them, all of them are one of them.” Zero quietly erased Giovanni’s image, replacing it with an ancient Chinese woman: “They even started earlier than the West.”

Due to its geographical advantages, China attracted a large number of dragon kings, and the gods thus turned their attention to this fertile land earlier. In the picture, an ancient Chinese woman steps on the footprints of a dragon, and then her belly swells as she becomes pregnant.

“Hua Xu stepped on the footprint of a giant and gave birth to Fu Xi in Leize.” Zero read out a passage of ancient text and said calmly, “This is a text recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Eastern Sea Classic, but such records never come out of thin air.”

Ander grinned as he watched the child in the picture grow up day by day. He and his offspring multiplied and thrived on the land of China, fighting against the dragons according to their predetermined destiny. They cut off the heads of evil dragons and decorated them between the thrones.

Thousands of years later, a human being who embodied the genes of all the dragon races in China was born—that was Lu Lincheng.

At Kassel College, two young people met, got to know each other, fell in love, and eventually gave birth to the body that the gods desired:

　Lu Mingfei.

He was an ordinary-looking boy, but he was the core of the gods' millennia-long plan, the ultimate being who brought together the bloodlines of all dragons.

Ander looked at the silly-looking Lu Mingfei on the screen, then turned to Zero and asked the same question again: "So, where are you?"

“How heartless. I was right there.” Zero shook his head, and as he waved his hand, images flashed back: “I am the Black Serpent who congratulated the birth of the Holy Son, the old man who handed the Assassin assassins the sleeping potion, the girl who covered the knight’s eyes…”

"I was born for my brother, a ghost that exists only in the cracks of time!"

Zero's voice trailed off: "I am not a god. I am nothing more than a remnant that fell between his fingers, a remnant that was used to ensure the smooth completion of the plan. Now my mission is over."

After creating the Holy Son, the God created a key to ensure the perfect success of the plan. His concept of time was too different from that of humans, so he could only rely on this method to ensure the successful execution of the plan.

That was Zero, who hid in the cracks of time, drifting through the world like a ghost, changing the course of events time and time again, sending his brother to the battlefield to slay dragons.

At first, he diligently and emotionlessly watched humans die one after another, but over thousands of years, he gradually began to develop some emotions.

When exactly did this happen? Was it when the assassin smiled as he took the secret medicine from him and bravely faced death? Was it when the knight fell into his arms with a smile on his lips? Zero didn't know, but what he was doing had completely deviated from the requirements of the gods.

“Sorry, I lost my composure,” Zero said, regaining his composure. “The experiments at Black Swan Harbor damaged my brain back then, I’m somewhat… schizophrenic…”

“I see, I think I understand now.” Ander didn’t press further, but instead asked Zero another question: “So what is the authority I hold?”

“That’s a branch of the World Tree’s authority, a part that the Dragon King added himself,” Zero said quietly, turning his head away. “The original authority has already been taken back by me.”