Dragon Clan: Starting with the Azure Dragon Fruit

"When he finishes his mission and is at his most relaxed moment... we'll go and give him a quick death."

Chapter 76 The Night of Valpurgis (10,000 words, please add to your favorites)

By the time we got back to the guesthouse, it was completely dark.

After tidying up their equipment, the two went to bed early.

As the night deepened and all was quiet, the white fog outside the window grew thicker and denser, seeping into the room in wisps through the cracks in the window.

Lin Yuan was sleeping soundly. Between his steady breaths, his Observation Haki detected an ancient and sorrowful obsession mixed in with the thick fog.

Gradually, he developed a strange resonance with the thick fog that enveloped the entire town.

Immediately afterwards, my body lost its weight, and I sank continuously, as if I had fallen into a deep sea.

But the floor beneath your feet is no longer the floor of the guesthouse, but a wet bluestone path.

Medieval-style pointed-roof wooden houses stand vaguely on both sides. The original chill in the fog is gone, replaced by a smell of pine needles and coal ash.

Lin Yuan raised his hand, and all he could see was a semi-transparent outline.

This feeling was very familiar; it was the same perspective I had when I was observing Ah Mei's memories.

Lin Yuan realized that this was clearly a strange "spiritual vision" unique to him.

But before he could be distracted to investigate why he had been pulled into this mental space again, the thick fog in front of him suddenly surged.

A woman's figure is emerging from the mist, bathed in the morning light.

The villagers called her Valpuja.

Her features possess a serene and gentle beauty, her long, light golden hair is casually tied behind her neck, and her emerald green eyes exude a soothing gentleness. Even dressed in simple cloth, she cannot conceal her ethereal气质 (qi zhi - a kind of refined elegance or otherworldly charm).

But in Lin Yuan's view, beneath this gentleness lies a unique power.

As the morning light brushed across her cheeks, a barely perceptible halo of dark gold shimmered within the gentle, verdant depths.

This is a mixed-race individual, and their lineage is definitely not low.

With the power that came with her bloodline, she could have easily seized wealth and power that ordinary people could not attain even in their entire lives.

But Valpuga abhorred the Secret Service's practice of treating its own kind as tools of power and killing, so she went alone into the remote Hearts Mountains and lived a life of ascetic poverty.

However, she did not completely reject the gifts that this power brought.

Walpuga used healing words and simple alchemy on the villagers in the mountains.

She would set the bones of miners whose legs were broken in cave collapses, deliver babies for women experiencing difficult labor, and even help villagers mark safe mineral veins deep within the rock strata.

In this way, kindness gradually took root and sprouted in the deep mountains.

Lin Yuan looked at a little girl with pigtails, stood on tiptoe, and placed a crooked flower wreath he had woven himself on her head. He looked up at her dirty little face and called her "Fairy of the Forest".

Walpuga bent down and smiled as he tidied the little girl's messy hair at her temples. His eyes, which had been slightly cold due to "The Sorrow of Blood," were now filled with human warmth.

But human survival is always accompanied by the continuous exploitation of nature.

As surface deposits gradually deplete, miners are forced to dig into deeper and more dangerous rock formations.

To prevent these mortals from encountering poisonous gas or underground collapses, Valpuga ventured alone into the deepest rift valley of the Hatz Mountains.

Lin Yuan's perspective followed her as she continued to descend into the tunnel.

The surrounding rock walls grew increasingly ancient, and the originally cold, damp air was gradually replaced by a pungent sulfurous smell.

After descending to an unknown depth in the darkness, the space ahead suddenly opened up, revealing a huge natural cave deep underground.

Valpuga held up his kerosene lamp, its dim yellow light barely illuminating what lay ahead—a colossal dragon.

He dwells in the boundless darkness, his scales dim, like a lonely mountain forgotten by the world.

In the ancient texts compiled by the Secret Society, the appearance of pure-blooded dragons is often accompanied by their tyrannical and destructive nature, capable of burning the heavens and boiling the seas.

But the giant dragon before them was unusually quiet.

The "King of Earth and Mountains" lineage is the most composed branch of the dragon race.

The long lifespan and the darkness underground have further diminished its remaining ferocity, and now the dragon simply sleeps alone deep underground.

According to the rules of the Secret Society, if a hybrid discovers a dragon, it should be reported immediately, followed by a full-scale annihilation.

The faint light illuminated the dragon.

Somehow, Valpuga sensed a similar predicament in Him.

That was a loneliness that was also pushed away by the world, with nowhere to settle down.

Finally, she extinguished the lantern, sealing the secret back into the darkness.

From that day on, Valpuga went underground more and more frequently.

She was no longer looking for mineral veins, but had come to the cave where the dragon slept.

At first, Valpuga simply sat on the rock at a distance, talking quietly to himself.

She described how the first snow fell on the mountain, how the thick snow broke dry branches, and how the villagers, wearing leather boots, would make a dull creaking sound when they stepped on it.

The little girl in town who used to braid flower wreaths for her is now at the age of losing her baby teeth. She speaks with a lisp and covers her mouth with her dark little hands when she laughs.

Or perhaps it describes how the early summer sun bleeds the fallen leaves on the hillside until they become brittle, and how you can smell a slightly bitter resinous aroma when you grab a handful of dry pine needles and crush them in your palm.

These seemingly mundane and trivial things, which are commonplace to humans, became the only vibrant colors in this darkness.

It's unclear when it started, but those two golden eyes, like molten gold, no longer just silently gazed.

Whenever the kerosene lamp illuminates the cave, this enormous creature will retract its bony spikes, lower its head, and cautiously approach, gently touching Valpuga's outstretched palm with its warm nose.

When the cold winds of the underground river pass through, the dragon will clumsily move its body and quietly lower its wings to shield her from the biting cold.

A self-exiled hybrid, a dragon forgotten by time.

In the dark depths of the earth, they transcended the hatred between species and forged a strange bond.

But the good times didn't last long.

That day, Walpuga leaned against the dragon's jaw as usual, weaving a wreath to give to the little girl.

Suddenly, the dragon raised its head sharply, its dark golden vertical pupils instantly narrowing into two dangerous beams of light.

It let out a restless growl, its massive body rubbing uneasily against the rock wall, leaving a trail of blinding sparks in the darkness.

Immediately afterwards, Valpuga also sensed it.

A muffled rumble came from deep within the rock strata beneath our feet, and the entire cave ceiling began to shake violently. Large and small stones rained down like raindrops.

Catastrophe has struck.

Dragons belonging to the lineage of "King of Earth and Mountains" have an almost instinctive sensitivity to changes in the earth's crust.

He didn't even need to use his spiritual power to know that the rock layer above his head wouldn't last long, and that the entire valley and town would be swallowed up in this catastrophe.

But what does this have to do with Him? The noble pure-blooded dragons never show mercy to mortals.

The dragon simply spread its broad wings to shield Walpgar beneath it, preparing to withstand the impending collapse.

"No...no!"

Valpuga looked up in the shadow of the membrane, her emerald eyes filled with terror and pleading: "Up there... everyone in town will die! Please...!"

The dragon lowered its golden eyes and silently gazed at the woman.

In His logic, the law of the jungle is the only truth, and natural disasters are merely a means for nature to select living beings.

But the compassion and pleading in the human being before Him made Him feel inexplicably irritated.

The dragon didn't care about the town's survival, but it instinctively sensed that if all the reptiles above died, the person before it would be very sad.

By then, probably no one will bring Him pine branches covered in morning dew, nor will anyone touch His nose with warm palms.

The dragon irritably exhaled a plume of scorching white smoke from its nostrils, and gently nudged Walpuga's trembling shoulder with its chin; it gave in.

The enormous body, which had been dormant for hundreds of years, suddenly exerted its strength and stood upright.

As a third-generation species, it does not possess the power of a monarch to easily reshape the landscape.

Faced with the collapsing mountains, He could only use the most clumsy method to push the authority belonging to the "King of Earth and Mountains" lineage to its limit.

Dark golden light patterns, like spider webs, struggled to climb outwards along the rock face, attempting to piece together the fragmented mountain range.

But the immense power that could overturn heaven and earth far exceeded the limits He could withstand.

The dark golden light patterns repaired one crack, but more cracks appeared. It couldn't keep up with the speed of the earth's collapse and could only do its best to prevent this catastrophe from engulfing the entire Hartz Mountain.

The violent tremors eventually reached the ground, causing the town to shake violently and wooden houses to collapse in droves, but the abyss beneath their feet, which was large enough to swallow everyone, finally stopped spreading.

The town miraculously survived with minimal casualties.

Deep underground, the dragon's massive body suddenly collapsed, and its once dazzling golden eyes now dimmed.

Upon seeing this, Valpuga rushed over, his emerald green eyes filled with panic.

Before she could even check his injuries, the dragon laboriously raised its head and, as usual, gently touched her trembling palm with the tip of its nose, seemingly clumsily reassuring her: "It's alright up there, you don't need to worry."

As Valpuga felt the scalding dragon blood in his palm, his heart felt as if it were being gripped tightly by something.

But reason prevailed over her grief. The dragon's relentless suppression of the ley lines caused elemental turbulence that shone like a beacon in the darkness.

The Secret Service's keen-nosed hounds must have already sensed it, and it won't be long before they follow the fluctuations to find us.

Once discovered, this dragon, severely injured while saving people, will soon be turned into a specimen preserved in formalin and an alchemical material.

"Hide here... No matter what happens, never come out."

Valpuga held the dragon's chin, asking for his assurance.

The dragon had no strength to respond; it simply closed its eyes slowly within her palm.

Valpuga stood up, took a deep look at the silhouette in the darkness, and turned to walk back.

She had to get back to the surface before the Secret Service hounds arrived, drawing all eyes to her.

Misfortune arrived as expected.

The next morning, several men dressed in black robes stepped into the Hatz Mountains.

They dragged their buzzing alchemical instruments as they tracked them all the way to Valpuga's cabin.

The woman's strong dragon-like aura was impossible to conceal, and the officers were convinced that she had had contact with dragons, ordering her to reveal the location where the dragon slept.

Valpuga simply watched them silently, without saying a word.

Seeing that she remained obstinate, the judges put away their swords and decided to try a different approach to force her to submit.

In just half a day, rumors about a witch having an affair with an underground devil and causing a major earthquake spread throughout the Hearts Mountains, fueled by the Secret Society.

The executor declared that only by purifying the witch with fire could the devil be stopped from devouring everyone's souls.

Fear is the fastest-spreading poison in the world.

The miners she had healed, and the mothers she had personally delivered, were filled with fear and fascination at the unknown disaster. They raised pitchforks and torches and surrounded the wooden house.

Hatred and terror surged in their eyes.

Lin Yuan floated in mid-air like a ghost, coldly observing this absurd farce.

He knew perfectly well that with Valpuga's bloodline, if she wanted to, not only these villagers, but even those few Secret Party executives would be no match for her.

But her gaze cut through the throng and landed on a little girl hiding behind her mother's skirt.

The little girl who once tiptoed to put a flower wreath on her is now looking at her with eyes that look at a demon with terror.

At that moment, the light in Valpuga's eyes went out.

She lowered her arms and allowed the Secret Service executive to push her toward the town square.

The tall stake for execution was erected.

A torrential downpour began, but the firewood, soaked in kerosene, still roared with scorching flames.

The flames licked at the woman's skirt and skin.

In the moment her life ended, she turned her neck with difficulty, her gaze piercing through the thick rain and the frenzied cheering crowd, looking deep into the depths of the Hatz Mountains.

Her sorrowful yet noble blood, mixed with the cold rain, dripped down the cracks in the flagstones of the square.

Through the soil, through the rock layers, it plunged into that bottomless darkness, flowing towards her only connection in this world.