Yet the singing continued. That eternal, gentle, and unfathomable rhythm gradually replaced the sound of her heartbeat and the roaring rush of blood in her ears.
Su Cheng closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
But that peaceful darkness did not last long; she woke up to the sound of chiming bells.
This time was even more absurd.
She climbed up from the ground and found herself sleeping in the middle of a street. Surrounding her were towering spires that pierced the hazy night sky like sharp blades.
Heavy clouds hung low, and faint moonlight poured down, diffusing into an eerie grayish-purple hue throughout the mist-shrouded city.
The ground was paved with dark stones that gave off a cold, gloomy luster under the illumination of magic crystal lamps. Prominent cracks and bulges were visible everywhere, with dark green moss stubbornly clinging to the crevices.
Those tall towers featured slender arched doors and windows, but perched or hanging upside down at their peaks were various gargoyle sculptures. Some were hideous stone gargoyles, while others were bats with human heads.
Their heads were all turned toward the street, their hollow eye sockets seemingly searching for prey, looking incredibly terrifying.
Almost all the doors and windows of the buildings were tightly shut, with heavy curtains obscuring the view inside. Occasionally, a few specks of ghostly light seeped through the drapes, flickering from time to time.
The entire street was completely deserted, filled with absolute, dead silence, save for the bleak night wind howling in the air.
Su Cheng immediately released her spiritual energy.
Even if she was not entirely sure where this was, she had roughly guessed a few possibilities.
In short, the excuse of "not sensing the environment for fear of offending others" was completely gone here.
The next second, among the shadows of the towers, a human figure suddenly appeared on a carved wrought-iron balcony.
The person lunged straight at her, crossing a distance of tens of meters, and arrived behind her in the blink of an eye.
Su Cheng did not even turn her head.
The space behind her shattered like a broken mirror.
Along with it, the attacker's body was silently torn to pieces in midair, turning into scattered fragments on the ground.
At the severed ends of the remains, tissue resembling blood vessels was still writhing, and even whole chunks of flesh and bone began to roll around, as if searching for other parts to connect with.
But in the isolated space, they could not touch each other.
After a while, all the fragments completely quieted down and turned into a lifeless corpse.
Those eyes with a cold gleam that had been quietly peering from the corners also extinguished one after another like candle flames blown out by the wind, fading back into the shadows.
Su Cheng crossed those massive arched bridges, strolling through the city that resembled a magnificent mausoleum.
Those bridges and corridors seemed to be forged from the skeletons of some giant creatures—in fact, the only thing in her memory that matched this was the dragon race.
Perhaps some magical beasts in the sea could barely match them in terms of size, but they would not have this kind of bone structure.
She leaned on the bridgehead and looked down, seeing the narrow canals weaving through the city. They were filled with a thick, oil-like liquid that resembled dried blood.
A few black ships, slender as coffins and flying tattered sails, were quietly docked at the empty piers, with no one around.
Su Cheng looked up into the distance again. Above the overlapping towers, at the highest and most central point of the entire city—
There was a shadow almost suspended in midair. It was a cluster of palaces as massive as an island, appearing as if it had grown out of the thick fog on the mountain peak, with spiral, needle-like spires piercing into the clouds.
Floating on the periphery of the palaces were dozens of platforms connected by aerial bridges. Inside them were towers specifically designed to house magic arrays to power them, guarding the royal palace like soldiers.
From a distance, it also looked like a crown exuding an aura of deathly stillness.
Su Cheng was already quite certain of where this was.
The Kingdom of Sersis, the homeland of the vampires that would vanish thousands of years later.
This was not a secret, but most people knew very little about it, and history books only mentioned it in passing.
People only heard that the progenitor of the vampires had established a kingdom here, but later, for some unknown reason, it fell apart, and the vampires scattered all over the continent.
Some believed that the Kingdom of Sersis had participated in the great war between the Church and the Esoteric Order, and was destroyed because it supported the latter.
Others pointed out that the timelines did not seem to align.
However, this remote kingdom, difficult for ordinary humans to visit, left behind too little relevant information thousands of years later, so people could only guess.
Su Cheng decided to go in and take a look.
Because she seemed to feel a faint, familiar presence again—
She hoped it was just an illusion.
The royal palace of Sersis was protected by magic arrays, seemingly rejecting any visitors, but she did not intend to take the conventional route anyway.
Su Cheng pinpointed the direction and teleported directly inside.
She felt the barriers established by the magic arrays resisting the intrusion, but they ultimately could not withstand this level of spatial magic.
Su Cheng entered the royal palace.
She stood in a wide corridor. The walls on both sides were cast from various massive, pale skeletons and molten metal, with pitted and uneven surfaces. Things that looked like coagulated blood vessels and limbs intertwined to form protruding thorn reliefs.
From the vaulted ceiling hung tray lamps flickering with a ghostly red glow, suspended by long cords made of tied arm bones pieced together section by section.
Countless faint and sickly red lights shimmered above, like countless eerie eyes.
The air was filled with the nauseating smell of stale blood, bone marrow, and dust.
Suddenly, a lump of flesh pieced together from countless bone fragments and fat dropped silently from the cluster of protruding skeletons above, writhing on the ground as it lunged toward her.
Su Cheng was speechless.
To her, this posed no threat, but just to be cautious, she used spatial magic to throw it thousands of miles away.
Immediately after, the walls began to writhe again.
Several skeletons struggled out of the walls. They barely maintained a human shape, their hollow eye sockets burning with red light, like rusty clockwork puppets.
Dragging dilapidated weapons, the skeletons stumbled and ran closer, then launched their attacks one after another.
Even more bones came alive from the walls, and dozens of emaciated, elongated skeletal hands extended and stretched with creaking cracks.
Then they grabbed at her body from all directions.
Su Cheng drew her sword.
Relying solely on the battle aura injected into the blade, without even releasing it outward, all the enemies in the entire corridor were pulverized.
The sound of shattering echoed continuously from front to back. The flying energy pierced through the tumorous reliefs, and dark slime splattered everywhere, falling like a shower of black-red blood.
Su Cheng teleported again.
Then she appeared in a hall where skeletons piled up like mountains. A sea of ghastly white bones filled her vision, and with every step, the teeth-aching sound of cracking could be heard.
High up on the mountain of white bones, there was an even more massive bone, looking like a curved rib, slanting down like a scimitar.
Someone was leaning against it, head bowed, with curly silver hair cascading down. That color was as cold as metal, and also like a sharp blade refracting light.
The person's face was handsome, their skin pale without a trace of blood, like a lifeless marble statue.
He was half-naked, his tall, lean, and muscular body exposed. The gold-embroidered black battle robe he wore was torn in half, revealing the bulging muscles on one side of his chest.
On his head rested a broken crown, fashioned from fangs and bones of various sizes.
A few seconds later, he opened his crimson eyes—swirling with blood and fire—and glared over with a face full of fury.
Su Cheng: "..."
Su Cheng: "Sasha?"
She had been wondering earlier if it was him.
To be honest, she was already mentally prepared for the fact that her friends each had their own hidden identities, so it wasn't actually that surprising to reunite with them thousands of years in the past.
When she sensed Sasha's aura outside, she had a feeling it might be an old friend.
But!
How did he end up in such a miserable state!
Sleeping in this bone-filled royal palace was one thing, but even his clothes were in tatters, and he looked incredibly pissed off.
Su Cheng: "If you're just having morning crankiness from not getting enough sleep or something, I can leave. I just came to see—"
The silver-haired young man stared at her coldly. The flames in his red eyes were like the core of a purgatorial furnace, blazing with a fierce and tyrannical wrath.
"You!"
He practically roared, "Stay away from me! You pathetic wretch, bowing your head to those treacherous liars. You reek of their aura from head to toe—"
Su Cheng hadn't expected a friendly reception, but hearing this, she was genuinely confused. "Liars?"
"...Now they call themselves gods." He pulled at the corners of his mouth in a sneer. "As if this word invented by humans is enough to describe what those things are."
Su Cheng nodded. "Those things humans call gods—what exactly did they trick you about? Can you tell me?"
The silver-haired young man tilted his head and looked at her. "Can't you see it?"
The madness in his eyes intensified. This wasn't merely out of mental instability, but rather driven by hatred and fury.
The figure of the king vanished.
Su Cheng twisted her wrist, swinging her heavy sword fiercely upward to block the incoming ghostly red blade.
The silver-haired young man appeared at her side. In his hands were two crescent-like short swords, their edges flowing with a terrifying bloody light, surging with murderous intent.
The explosive clash of metal rang out!
Visible shockwaves spread outward with them at the center, pulverizing the white bones within a radius of dozens of meters and nearly forming a vacuum domain.
Those red blades, fluttering like butterflies through flowers, thrust, sliced, and hacked at unimaginable speeds—weaving a crimson web of death in the air.
The heavy sword brought forth deafening sonic booms as it was swung, blocking the attacks one by one. Black flames plowed countless trenches through the mountain of white bones, and the friction between the blades and the sword produced a shriek like crying.
"...The bones of Caecilius."
The silver-haired young man revealed an incredibly bizarre expression. "How did you do that?"
Even as he asked, his hands didn't stop moving.
The two clashed in the hall like bolts of lightning. The bone dust drifted like snow, swirling wildly into the air, sometimes falling, or sometimes simply evaporating.
"...He gave them to me himself, believe it or not."
"?"
The silver-haired young man suddenly retreated over a dozen paces away. "Ah, He knows nothing, and you know nothing either. You Chaos Dragons—"
A power brimming with malice, ominousness, and resentment violently erupted from his body.
"...You will die, played by this world. They will use everything you have, until you no longer hold any value."
"Well," Su Cheng said, somewhat uncertain, "theoretically speaking, many people's lives are spent just like that. But, could you first tell me what the Ancient Gods lied to you about? Did they make a promise they didn't keep? Or did they make the situation worse?"
The king did not answer her again.
The entire bone hall began to shake violently. The massive vertebrae above let out a chilling groan, and spiderweb-like cracks spread rapidly.
A cold silver light pierced the gloom. A raging tidal wave of air surged upward as a colossal figure roared and burst out of the ruins.
Su Cheng looked at him in shock.
That was a monster with a long, slender, and emaciated skeleton covered in a thin white membrane. It looked like the shape of a dragon, yet not a single muscle could be found on its entire body.
Thus, it couldn't support a normal silhouette, appearing shriveled and deformed, with the shape of all its bones completely exposed.
Even so, this body filled up more than half of the palace, for he was incredibly tall and his wings were vast. The layer of skin on his body emitted an eerie silver-gold phosphorescence.
Jagged bone spikes covered his back like countless broken spears, while his wings resembled two hole-riddled nets.
He let out a howl of agony and indignation, dark red, foul blood seeping and dripping from the skeleton.
The twisted skull opened its jaws, gathering deep red flames within its mouth.
Su Cheng looked down and saw black scales tearing through her clothes.
Then, sharp scales and bone spikes spread rapidly, completely transforming her human body and expanding in midair into an entirely different form.
Beneath the pitch-black, metallic scales, knotted and ferocious muscles coiled and surged. Broad wings whipped up a hurricane, and thick, muscular limbs spread out before landing on the ground.
That was the true form of a Chaos Dragon, the incarnation of ancient legends and power.
Su Cheng charged forward.
She then headbutted the skin-and-bones white dragon, knocking him over and even pinning him down. "...What exactly did they lie to you about?"
The dragon struggled frantically, then twisted his neck, blasting a breath of fire right at her head.
Su Cheng tilted her head to dodge.
The crimson flames, carrying the stench of blood, erupted like a pillar of fire, directly shattering the dome of the hall and piercing into the dark night sky.
The dark clouds on the horizon scattered as a result.
The entire royal palace began to melt in the intense heat. Everything warped in the thermal waves, and the torrent of white bones evaporated like melting snow.
"They said..."
That last strike seemed to have exhausted all his strength.
The white dragon's body completely collapsed and stopped struggling, only letting out a hoarse, wheezing sound.
"They wanted to save this doomed world, so they needed help, and they could also let us gain more wisdom..."
He spoke in a low voice, "When I woke up, I saw my friends tearing at each other. Everyone had turned into deformed dragons. I think they just wanted to satisfy their curiosity and greed. They wanted the power of the dragon race, and we were just experimental subjects..."
Su Cheng listened, completely bewildered. "Were you once normal dragons? Or—"
He fell silent for a moment.
"...We were elves."
As the first creations of the God of Genesis, the primordial elves of the ancient era could be called perfect beings—in a sense, they were almost like weakened Ancient Gods with fixed forms and humanoid bodies.
They had no lifespan limit, were untroubled by disease and death, possessed abundant magic, and could easily master all kinds of complex knowledge.
They didn't need to eat, were unbothered by any negative emotions, and each had a gentle and kind disposition. Whether studious or diligent, they would care for injured animals.
Some wild beasts received their blood, becoming the ancestors of the magical beasts that came later.
"...I heard someone say that the Serpent of Truth's favorite students were the elves."
The two of them sat in the ruins of the royal palace, facing the cold night wind blowing through the broken walls and debris, talking on a mountain of white bones and rubble.
They had both transformed back into human form.
Su Cheng could already tell that His Majesty the King's mental state was not very good either, but transforming into a dragon took a massive toll on him, and he was completely exhausted now.
So he didn't even have the energy to fight anymore, and could only suppress his anger to talk to her.
—His hostility towards her mainly stemmed from the blessing of the Ancient Gods. He obviously thought of her as a dragon who had defected to the Ancient Gods, but she also carried the aura of the Black Dragon King.
So he seemed quite confused as well.
Su Cheng said thoughtfully, "So, it's mainly because the elves spent a long time with Him, He knows how to communicate with this race, and they have a high aptitude for learning?"
"...Not entirely."
After a long while.
The silver-haired young man next to her slowly spoke, his voice slightly hoarse.
"For Logos, there is no such thing as liking or disliking. He will satisfy those seekers of knowledge who meet the conditions, regardless of who they are. Elves just happen to have a longer lifespan, so it's easier for such individuals to appear among them..."
Undisguised disgust surfaced in his crimson eyes. "Those things have no heart..."
Su Cheng thought for a moment. "They literally don't have hearts, so, I guess that makes sense."
He turned his head to stare at her.
"That doesn't mean I support anyone," Su Cheng spread her hands. "I haven't fully understood the whole story yet... but I don't mind cursing Them out with you."
He seemed confused by her sudden change in attitude. "What?"
"Because," Su Cheng rested her chin in her hand and looked at him, "you look exactly like someone who would become my friend. Even though you might be a bit detestable, you're the kind of friend who would help and support me."
He stared at her blankly, then suddenly turned his head away somewhat unnaturally. "Is that so."
A hint of red spread across his pale cheeks.
Su Cheng: "?"
She couldn't believe that the Sasha of the past was actually this kind of person.
She didn't know what he had experienced over these past few thousand years to turn him into the person he became later.
She decided to tease him a bit, so she deliberately grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to turn half-way around to look at her.
The silver-haired young man stared at her blankly, astonishment and surprise welling up in his crimson eyes, before they darkened again.
"...The aura on you is too mixed."
He said faintly.
Su Cheng was very calm. "I bet you'll get used to it."
Otherwise, how would he be teammates with the Ancient Dragon King and the Ancient Gods in the future?
However, the other party seemed to have misunderstood this sentence.
The silver-haired young man looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Perhaps."
After saying that, he held her wrist and gently kissed the back of her hand.
Su Cheng: "?"
He raised his head and fell silent for a few seconds, then suddenly turned his back to her and made a retching motion. "No, I still hate Them."
Su Cheng: "............"
