: Baptism by Dragonfire and Bone
Dragon Valley was silent, but its silence was a roar. The weight of epochs pressed down, not just on Huo Yuhao's body, but on his soul. Every glittering bone underfoot, every spire of ribcage reaching for the twilight sky, thrummed with residual power and profound grief. The song of the seven Dragon Scion souls within him was now a clear, mournful dirge, guiding him like a heartbeat through the ossuary.
"This way, Child of Promise," the intent of the White Dragon soul (governing Light and Purification) whispered, its voice like sunlight on ice.
"Beware the lingering spite," growled the Black Dragon soul (Darkness and Destruction), a rumble of volcanic anger. "Not all who fell did so peacefully. Their rage still walks."
Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Detection was rendered nearly useless. The entire valley was a blinding maelstrom of dense, conflicting spiritual residues. He could only trust the internal guidance of his dragon passengers.
The first guardians were not specters of full form, but Dragon-Will Phantoms. They coalesced from the mist and marrow-dust—translucent, shimmering shapes of draconic energy, their eyes empty sockets of ancient fury. They were the final, stubborn echoes of dragon pride, attacking not to kill, but to test, to see if the small human walking among their bones was worthy.
A phantom shaped from jagged ice (a descendant of the Ice Dragon) lunged. Huo Yuhao didn't dodge. He remembered the principle: resonate, don't oppose. He focused on the Ice Dragon Scion soul within him and let its aura, amplified by the proximity of the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Lotus, emanate outward. The phantom's icy claw stopped inches from his face, shimmered, and instead of striking, it dissolved into a shower of harmless snowflakes that bowed, as if in recognition, before vanishing.
"Good! You learn quickly!" Brother Heavenly Dream cheered.
A second phantom, wreathed in crackling lightning (a Storm Dragon remnant), descended. This time, Huo Yuhao extended his hand. He didn't use a Spirit Skill. He used the First Level of the Sun Moon Star Technique, but directed it at the construct of the phantom itself, at the spiritual energy holding its aggressive form together. He willed it to reduce to its base, harmless components.
A wisp of silvery energy left his fingertips. The lightning-wreathed phantom contorted, its form unraveling like thread from a spool, dissipating into a neutral mist of ambient spirit power.
"Marvelous," Electrolux breathed. "You are applying the technique to spiritual constructs. That is a significant leap."
Huo Yuhao pressed on, the dragon souls within him growing more excited with each acknowledgment from the valley's echoes.
The Tomb of the Dragon God
At the valley's heart lay the tomb. It was not a mound of bones, but a colossal, perfectly hemispherical crater, as if a star had fallen there. At its center stood a single, sublime skeleton. It was not the largest, but it was unmistakable. Its bones were not white, but a crystalline, rainbow-hued material that refracted the valley's gloomy light. This was the core fragment of the Dragon God's skeleton.
Before it, hovering in the air, was a pulsing orb of chaotic, nine-colored light—the lingering will and soul fragment of the Dragon God itself, a mindless storm of grief, pride, and unimaginable power.
The pressure here was catastrophic. Huo Yuhao felt his bones creak. The seven Scion souls within him fell silent, radiating pure, subservient sorrow.
"The trial is communion," the Gold Dragon soul (Fortitude and Leadership) intoned gravely. "You carry a piece of our Father within your treasury. To awaken the skeletal legacy you possess, you must present it and endure the Father's gaze. Your body will break. Your spirit will be scoured. You may die."
Huo Yuhao looked at the chaotic soul-orb and the sublime skeleton. He thought of the "Primal World-Walker Skeleton" in his treasury and the "Dragon's Blood baptism" required. This was the crucible.
He took a deep breath and reached inward, not to the Black Book's main vault, but to the specific seal holding the Primal World-Walker Skeleton. With an effort of will that strained his soul, he manifested it.
Before him, materializing from motes of golden light, appeared a second skeleton. It was humanoid, but utterly alien. Its bones were a dark, nebulous gray, like compressed space dust, and they seemed to subtly phase in and out of reality. It did not radiate dragon power, but a strange, boundary-less potential—the innate ability to traverse worlds. This was the ultimate treasure for body refinement.
The moment the World-Walker Skeleton appeared, the Dragon God's soul-fragment orb erupted.
A beam of concentrated, nine-colored dragonfire—not heat, but pure, primordial creative and destructive energy—lanced out. It did not strike Huo Yuhao. It struck the space between him and the manifested Skeleton, creating a seething, terrifying Baptismal Font of chaotic draconic essence.
An irresistible command, woven from the will of the valley and his own dragon souls, filled his mind: ENTER. MERGE. OR PERISH.
There was no choice. Huo Yuhao stepped into the font.
Agony and Rebirth
Pain became the universe.
It was not a single sensation, but every sensation atomized and magnified. He felt his own bones splintering, not from force, but from being compared to the perfection of the two skeletons before him—the divine rainbow crystal of the Dragon God and the phasing void-stuff of the World-Walker. His blood vaporized, replaced by searing streams of the nine-colored energy. His meridians burned away and were re-knit with threads of light in an instant, only to burn again.
He screamed, but had no mouth. He tried to cling to consciousness, but the pain was a tidal wave erasing the shoreline of his self.
Deep within, the Divine Golden Clock chimed a frantic, stabilizing rhythm. The Life Gold in his treasury bled a constant, desperate stream of vitality, repairing cells faster than they died. The Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Lotus emitted a field of perfect cold, not to numb, but to preserve the template of his consciousness, a backup copy in ice so he wouldn't be entirely unmade.
"HOLD ON, LITTLE BROTHER!" Heavenly Dream's voice was a distant, fading shout.
"The process is logical! You are being deconstructed and remade! Observe the pattern!" Electrolux urged, but his voice was breaking up.
The two external skeletons—the Dragon God fragment and the World-Walker—began to dissolve under the baptismal fire. They turned into streams of multicolored and gray nebular particles, swirling into the maelstrom that was Huo Yuhao's disintegrating form.
This was the refinement. The World-Walker Skeleton provided the foundational, boundary-less potential—the "blank canvas" of a body that could theoretically adapt to any law. The Dragon God's skeleton provided the ultimate archetypal power—the pinnacle of physical and spiritual strength within this world's laws.
The baptismal font was forging them together, using Huo Yuhao's original body as the catalyst and the crucible.
Time lost meaning. It was an eternity of annihilation.
Then, a change. A new sensation beneath the pain: strength. Not the strength of muscle, but the strength of a mountain range, of tectonic plates. He felt his new bones forming—not white, nor rainbow, nor gray, but a deep, lustrous obsidian-black shot through with veins of swirling, star-like light. They were denser than neutron star matter, yet lighter than air to his spirit.
His blood, now regenerating, felt like liquid mercury charged with lightning. His meridians settled into a new, radiant golden lattice, impossibly wide and resilient.
The baptismal font began to dim. The last of the skeleton particles fused into him. The chaotic soul-orb of the Dragon God, now calmer, pulsed once with a final, approving warmth before dimming to dormancy.
Huo Yuhao collapsed onto the crater floor, whole and screamingly new. He was naked, his skin gleaming with a healthy, subdued light, his hair now tipped with an almost imperceptible silver, as if touched by frost and starlight.
He lay there for hours, breathing in gasps. He was alive. He was remade.
Tentatively, he reached inward. The Primal World-Walker Skeleton was gone, fully integrated. The Dragon God Scion Resonance was no longer a separate archive; the seven souls now felt like elder brothers woven into the fabric of his being, their power accessible. His Spirit Eyes, when he finally opened them, saw a world of breathtaking detail and layered energy he could scarcely comprehend.
He had survived. His body was now a vessel worthy of a god's legacy. The first and most perilous requirement of the Black Book's treasures had been met.
As he shakily stood up on legs that could now kick down a castle wall, a final, clear whisper from the Multiverse Chat Group sliced through his exhaustion, a voice laced with sudden, alert curiosity:
"Report: Anomaly in Lower Plane D-774 (Douluo). Local 'Dragon God' energy signature has spiked and… fundamentally altered. Cause: Unknown external contaminant. Flag for observation. Potential deviation from the Plan."
Huo Yuhao looked up at the twilight sky of Dragon Valley, his new, powerful fists clenching. The "Plan" was watching. And now, he had finally given it something unexpected to see.
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