The Abyssal Beast’s Awakening

A dragon, it is said, can coalesce to form a body or disperse into patterns, riding the clouds and nurturing the balance of yin and yang.

Soaring high among the stars and sun, it embodies the ultimate yang; plunging to the deepest abyss without a ripple, it embodies the ultimate yin.

Above, the winds and rains serve it; below, celestial deities protect it.

When it roams the abyssal depths, fish and flood dragons follow in its wake, and all creatures of the waters obey its summons; when it dwells on high, the Thunder God nourishes it, winds and rains avert their paths, and birds and beasts are never parched.

Truly, its virtue is said to be so immense it rivals the sun and moon.

Legend has it that the dragon bore nine sons; its second son was named Yazi, with a leopard’s head and a dragon’s body, fierce and unyielding by nature, fond of valor and skilled in combat, bloodthirsty and adept in battle. Its image was often carved onto sword rings and hilt mouths to display its formidable might.

Though his disposition was violent, he possessed the bloodline of a true dragon; his true form still commanded supreme divine power.

His golden scales shimmered dazzlingly, his jade claws grasped the sky; auspicious clouds accompanied his every movement, and when he raged, thunder roared in acclamation.

The ‘Yazi’ that Mo Tingbei called out was precisely that descendant of a true dragon from ancient times.

“Yazi,” Mo Tingbei spoke, his voice not loud, yet it pierced through the howling, ominous winds, clearly reaching the deepest part of the rift valley, “Come out.”

The wind in the depths of the rift valley seemed to halt for an instant.

A deathly silence.

A silence more unsettling than any clamor enveloped the surroundings, as if all the malevolence of the world had, at this very moment, contracted, settled, and converged into the boundless darkness at the valley floor.

Then—

BOOM!!!

Like a volcano that had slumbered for eons suddenly erupting, a palpable, violent aura, mixed with nauseating, bloody malevolence, surged skyward from the deepest part of the rift valley!

The earth groaned under the unbearable weight, trembling violently; countless shattered stones floated into the air as if weightless, only to be crushed into dust by an invisible force in the next instant.

A pair of colossal eyes, scarlet as blood moons, snapped open in the dense gloom.

Their pupils were vertical, cold, cruel, and brimming with the most primal desire for slaughter; yet, in their deepest depths, lay hidden a glimmer of nobility, still faintly luminous despite being steeped in venomous resentment for untold ages.

“Insects!”

The low roar seemed not to travel through the air, but rather to directly crush the very soul, like countless rusted, blunt knives scraping within the skull.

The resentment contained within the sound was almost solidified into a tangible form, enough to drive anyone with an unsteady mind to instant madness.

“How dare you insult me?!”

The darkness receded somewhat, like a tide, revealing the true form of the colossal beast.

What a terrifying visage it was—contradictory, yet eerily harmonious!

From the depths of his bloodline emanated the vast majesty of an ancient dragon god, ancient, noble, and potent, compelling onlookers to prostrate themselves in worship;

Yet, the Nine Nether demonic energy imbued him with ultimate filth, deathly silence, and madness, requiring immense courage just to approach him.

These two energies, fundamentally incompatible like fire and water, had disastrously merged, forging a completely corrupted dark deity, risen from the mythical epoch.

He largely retained the form described in ancient legends: a dragon’s head atop a jackal’s body.

However, even if a person from the ancient era were to be resurrected, they would surely find it hard to believe that such a terrifying fiend could be the noble son of a true dragon.

His head still bore the majestic outline of a dragon, though his once magnificent horns were broken in many places, stained with dark, never-drying bloodstains.

His entire body was no longer covered in resplendent golden scales, but rather a dull, dark armor, as if repeatedly tempered in foul blood and demonic flames; each scale was as thick as a shield, its edges sharp as divine weapons, glowing with a metallic chill and writhing with ominous blood patterns.

Along his spine, grotesque bone spikes protruded savagely, like countless despairing swords plunged upside down.

Their tips were wreathed in palpable, inky-black demonic energy, and as the demonic energy churned, it vaguely coalesced into countless faces contorted in agony and wails.

His four sharp claws dug deep into the earth, their tips incomparably keen, effortlessly tearing through the enchanted rock layers that had been reinforced countless times.

Dark red chains of malevolent energy wrapped around his clawed limbs; these were not physical chains, but condensed from the purest resentment and Nine Nether demonic energy, constantly emitting an aura that could freeze one’s soul.

Most horrifying of all, his entire body was covered in massive wounds where blood had long dried, and near the inverse scale on his chest, there was even a transparent hole that almost pierced through his front and back.

Yet, he remained utterly oblivious, moving as if completely unaffected.

This was the Abyssal Beast, Yazi.

A tragic, hateful, undying relic of a bygone era.

But how many still remembered that, in the beginning, he was not like this?

He was once a sacred being, guarding the Eye of Nine Nether; though fierce and combative by nature, he was nonetheless a part of order.

Until a wisp of primordial demonic energy leaked out, he resolutely sealed it with his own body to prevent a great calamity.

Yet, he overestimated himself and underestimated the defilement originating from the world’s primal darkness.

The demonic energy corroded his soul and consumed his bones; ultimately, he won, and he lost.

He did indeed prevent the demonic energy from instantly polluting the world, and delayed the emergence of a terrifying demonic lord who had once annihilated an era.

But no one expected that a millennium after the Nine Nether Lord was vanquished, he would resurface.

However, the one who awoke was no longer the true dragon’s son who had sacrificed himself to suppress the demonic forces.

His consciousness had been devoured by demonic thoughts; all that remained was his magnified nature, his stubborn insistence on vengeance twisted into tyranny and cruelty.

He began indiscriminately slaughtering living beings, devouring souls, and contaminating leylines; wherever he passed, fertile lands turned into barren death zones, and cities became ghostly realms.

His hatred no longer required reason; his very existence became synonymous with calamity.

The Three-Unity Sword Sect, with its mountain gate situated precisely within his rampage’s core, bore the brunt of his fury.

The initial conflicts were merely passive defense.

The Three-Unity Sword Sect, mindful of the true dragon’s son’s noble origins, was unwilling to kill him.

They merely protected their mountain gate and the surrounding living beings, while attempting to awaken the true dragon’s son’s original consciousness.

But soon, the Three-Unity Sword Sect discovered that this fallen dragon’s son had marked their sect as the focal point of his hatred.

Perhaps it was because the sect’s cultivators’ strenuous resistance wounded his pride; perhaps it was due to the vast Spiritual Vein beneath the sect, which held a fatal allure for him; or perhaps, it was simply that his mind, twisted by demonic energy, needed to find a sufficiently weighty target to unleash his endless venomous resentment.

From that moment, the spiral of hatred began to accelerate.

The Seventh Sect Master, leading the sect’s elite, deployed the ‘Nine Heavens Dragon Slaying Array’, severely wounding Yazi.

However, his own Dao foundation was utterly destroyed; his elders and disciples suffered heavy casualties, almost all perishing; the sect’s lineage was nearly broken.

In that battle, Yazi’s dragon horns were completely shattered.

The Thirteenth Sword Son, a prodigy of astonishing talent, created the ‘Nirvana Sword Intent’.

He pursued Yazi alone for thirty thousand li, ultimately falling with him into a netherworld rift.

His sword broke, and he perished, but not before piercing Yazi, leaving wounds that had not fully healed even to this day.

Where his dragon blood spilled, not a blade of grass grew for a thousand years.

The Twenty-Fifth Mountain Guardian Elder, during one of Yazi’s frenzied assaults on the mountain, to protect the retreating disciples, burned his divine soul to activate an ancient forbidden spell, transforming his body into a monument, temporarily sealing Yazi outside the mountain gate for three days.

Ultimately, his soul was utterly extinguished, and Yazi, suffering a backlash from the spell, became lame in one leg.

Blood debts accumulated, compounding over generations.

Gradually, the sect no longer referred to this ancient remnant, utterly corrupted by Nine Nether demonic energy, as ‘Yazi’ or ‘the true dragon’s son’.

Instead, they called him—‘the Abyssal Beast’.

Every generation’s sect master and powerful cultivators of the Three-Unity Sword Sect regarded ‘suppressing the Abyssal Beast’ as one of their highest missions.

They laid countless forbidden spells around this rift valley, reinforcing them generation after generation, as if weaving a colossal cage.

And this Abyssal Beast, in turn, assailed these forbidden spells countless times; each assault signified the blood and sacrifice of the Three-Unity Sword Sect’s disciples.

He remembered the aura of every person who had wounded him.

He remembered the pain and obstruction this sect had brought him.

This hatred, nourished by demonic energy, had long fermented into something deeper than the Nine Nether itself.

And for the Three-Unity Sword Sect, the Abyssal Beast was far more than just a powerful fierce beast; he was a sword hanging over their sect, a burden of shame and responsibility tied to the blood and tears of countless ancestors, a flowing nightmare that absolutely had to be brought to an end.

Mo Tingbei’s master, the one who brought him back from the purgatory of blood and fire, also died in the suppression of the Abyssal Beast’s rampage.

Now, Mo Tingbei stood at the eye of the storm where generations of grievances converged.

His journey here was precisely to bring an end to it all.