Chapter Sixty-Four: Refining the Dragon's Corpse!

When Yang Ye entered, Long Xiaoqing was standing in front of the dragon's corpse, lost in thought.

He approached her, reached out, and gently brushed a scale on the dragon's body with his finger. Where his fingers passed, a bright, clear, black gleam emerged, shining with a metallic luster.

“This dragon corpse—who knows how long it’s been stored here? It’s all covered in dust. Even the Emperor of Jiuyuan may not know there’s an underground cave here, let alone that beneath it lies a dragon’s corpse,” Yang Ye remarked calmly.

As he finished speaking, Long Xiaoqing snapped out of her reverie, her eyes lighting up. “Husband, I… I want to devour this dragon’s corpse. The power within it will let me grow up quickly!”

Yang Ye was surprised. “There’s still energy left in the corpse?”

Long Xiaoqing nodded. “Before this dragon died, its core was shattered, but most of the energy from the core was dispersed and stored throughout its body.”

Yang Ye understood; the “core” she mentioned was, in fact, the dragon pearl. Long Xiaoqing was still a young dragon—only when she matured would she be able to condense her own dragon pearl.

Yang Ye smiled. “I thought seeing this corpse would make you sad.”

“Not at all!” Long Xiaoqing shook her head. “Even if I came across a living dragon, if I could kill it, I’d finish it off and swallow it too!”

With that, she slid out from the wooden statue that housed her physical form. The moment she left, the statue crumbled into a heap of sawdust.

Once her dragon form was revealed, Long Xiaoqing opened her maw and spat forth crimson dragonfire, which fell upon the dragon’s corpse. The moment the flames touched the body, it was as if gasoline had been poured over it—a great roar sounded as fire spread, enveloping the entire corpse.

The dragonfire’s heat was immense; the wave of hot air forced Yang Ye to retreat more than ten meters before he could stop.

Under the blaze, the dragon’s corpse began to “melt” before his very eyes.

It would take some time. Yang Ye turned and surveyed the stone chamber.

It was a square room, each of the four corners holding a large brazier that was burning when Yang Ye had entered. At the time, he hadn’t noticed the writing on one of the stone walls.

Now, as Long Xiaoqing continued to breathe fire and the corpse burned, the chamber was flooded with light, and the words on the opposite wall became clear to Yang Ye.

He immediately circled around the corpse and went to read the wall.

The inscription was in ancient Chinese script, much of which Yang Ye could decipher.

The gist of the words was this: In the early Tang dynasty, a divine dragon descended from the heavens and crashed outside the outskirts of Chang’an.

Since dragons symbolized the emperor, the fall of a divine dragon was considered an ominous sign for both the emperor and the fledgling dynasty. Thus, all commoners who witnessed the event were executed. No historical record was permitted to mention any phenomenon relating to the dragon’s corpse.

During this time, a Daoist priest named Li Dian was ordered to handle the dragon’s remains. Li Dian secretly transported the corpse to an island in the East Sea. Under imperial command, he attempted to refine an elixir of immortality using the dragon’s body.

Li Dian gouged out its eyes, sawed off a horn, and plucked some scales as ingredients for alchemy. Yet after more than a decade, no matter how many methods he tried—using dragon’s eyes, blood, horn, and so on—all attempts ended in failure.

To save his life, Li Dian persuaded his guards’ captain to help him. Together, they sailed out to sea with the dragon’s corpse, eventually arriving in Fusang, where the remains were hidden underground.

These words had been carved by Li Dian himself. In the end, he lamented that there was no fire in the world capable of melting a dragon’s corpse; otherwise, perhaps he might have succeeded in refining the elixir of immortality.

Though the account was brief, Yang Ye could imagine the extraordinary events it hinted at. Why had the divine dragon died so grievously wounded? Who had struck it down? By what means had Li Dian managed to transport such a massive corpse to the coast? How many people had been involved and lost their lives as a result? And after arriving in Fusang, how had Li Dian managed to hide the corpse here?

All of this could fill the pages of an epic. Yet, buried by imperial secrecy, it had faded into the river of history. For over a thousand years, the dragon’s corpse had lain hidden here, undiscovered—a miracle in itself. If Long Xiaoqing, herself a dragon, had not come and sensed its presence, who knows when it would have been found? Perhaps it would have sunk into the sea along with this land, never to be seen again.

When Yang Ye came back to himself, nearly an hour had passed. The light in the stone chamber had dimmed considerably.

He turned, and saw that the once-massive dragon corpse had vanished, refined by Long Xiaoqing into a pitch-black sphere the size of a fist, wrapped in crimson dragonfire.

At this moment, Long Xiaoqing’s eyes were filled with exhaustion and resolve.

Yang Ye watched with nervous anticipation.

Suddenly, the black sphere began to writhe like viscous liquid, slowly splitting into six parts. From the largest sphere, five smaller beads, each about the size of a fingertip, separated.

Long Xiaoqing withdrew her dragonfire, opened her mouth, and swallowed the largest bead. Then she said to Yang Ye, “Husband, you should take these five—I kept them just for you!”

“You… Xiaoqing, after all this effort, you saved these five for me?” Yang Ye was astonished.

“Of course! If there’s something good, I can’t keep it all to myself—I have to leave some for you!” Long Xiaoqing replied with a laugh.

Deeply moved, Yang Ye waved his hand and stored the five black pearls in his storage ring.

With a swish, Long Xiaoqing transformed into a beam of azure light and entered Yang Ye’s body. “Husband, we must leave at once and return to the Dragon Palace.”

“All right!” Yang Ye responded and immediately slipped out of the stone chamber.

Over an hour had passed, and Yang Ye still worried that the cultivators of Fusang might take advantage of the situation and harm Zhou Hun and the others.

But when he emerged from the imperial palace, everything was as he had left it: the Emperor of Jiuyuan still knelt motionless in place, as did the other cultivators.

Yang Ye no longer cared about any of them. After storing away the thirty-six chests of beast cores, he waved his hand and said coolly, “Let’s go!”

Though they found it odd that “Lady Ye” had not appeared, Zhou Hun and the others obediently followed Yang Ye out of the capital.

As Yang Ye and his party disappeared from sight, the Emperor of Jiuyuan closed his eyes and let out a long breath. After losing over twenty star-level cultivators and most of his reserves, at last this fiend surnamed Ye had departed.

Casting a cold glance at the remaining cultivators, he said icily, “If anyone acts without orders again—kill them!”

With that, he stood up and strode back into the palace.

Yang Ye and his group made haste, soon returning to Yokohama port.

The Sky巡 had already come ahead of time.

Once everyone was aboard, by Yang Ye’s order, the ship sped away from the port, heading straight for the waters where the Dragon Palace lay.