Dragon's Origin

Wang Sheng had been living comfortably these past few days. The Dai family seemed very trustworthy, showing no intention of making things difficult for him. They provided him with food and drink, and aside from the shackles that couldn't be removed, they tried their best to satisfy any request Wang Sheng made. They would probably even offer him women if he asked.

His spiritual energy was completely sealed. Wang Sheng had tried everything, but no method could mobilize the spiritual energy within his body. Without external spiritual energy, even the Nine Words Secret couldn't be used.

These days, the Dai family couldn't spare the time to deal with Wang Sheng. Dai Sheng's injuries required Song Lian to use all his strength to stabilize, and it was unknown how much effort it would take to recover. As for Dai Xiao, he was currently making his final preparations and was equally preoccupied.

In a secret chamber within the Dai family's courtyard, Dai Xiao's face was contorted with a grimace, his expression fully conveying his current pain. Strangely, Dai Xiao's limbs were all bound, just like Wang Sheng, unable to move at all. His body twisted in agony, looking exceptionally unsightly.

Directly opposite Dai Xiao sat Dai Hao, who had spoken with Wang Sheng earlier. His expression was calm as he watched Dai Xiao, seemingly finding nothing wrong with the situation. Beside Dai Hao was the Dai family's Great Elder, also with a calm face, though his eyes occasionally flashed with anxious light, directed towards Dai Xiao's face.

After a long while, Dai Xiao finally calmed down, his complexion gradually returning to normal. In that short time, Dai Xiao looked as if he had just experienced an extremely brutal battle, covered in sweat and nearly collapsing.

Leaning against the shackles that bound him, Dai Xiao finally steadied himself. After sitting upright, he breathed rapidly for a while before nodding at the Great Elder. The Great Elder glanced at Dai Hao, and upon seeing Dai Hao's nod, he rushed forward like a lackey and quickly released Dai Xiao's restraints, handing him a pill and a large bowl of water.

Dai Xiao swallowed the pill in one gulp and then drank the water in large gulps, as if he had been thirsty for days. One bowl wasn't enough; he drank three bowls in a row before he truly calmed down. Only then did Dai Xiao accept the towel personally handed to him by the Great Elder, wiping away the sweat bit by bit. It wasn't that he was treating the Great Elder as a servant, but only the three of them were in the secret chamber, and given Dai Xiao's condition, the Great Elder couldn't possibly ask Ancestor Dai Hao to do these things.

"How is the devouring going?" Dai Hao asked, watching Dai Xiao complete all of this with a blank expression.

"Very difficult! Only absorbed a little bit," Dai Xiao shook his head, answering pessimistically. "Basically the same as three days ago, no substantial progress."

"Asking you to simultaneously absorb four thirteenth-level realm nascent souls is indeed a bit demanding," Dai Hao sighed, explaining to Dai Xiao, "But if we don't seize the time, those four nascent souls will dissipate, and there won't be a better opportunity than this in the future."

"Ancestor, I understand," Dai Xiao quickly put on a smiling face. "How could I not understand the cultivation that you and the other ancestor have bestowed upon me? I would never have any complaints."

"It seems that your nascent soul does indeed have先天缺陷 (xiān tiān quē xiàn, congenital defects)," Dai Hao nodded. If Dai Xiao couldn't see this and still had complaints, then he wouldn't be worthy of being the Dai family's patriarch.

Dai Hao had emerged from the sealed formation relatively early, so he knew many things about the Dai family, including the origin of the nascent soul within Dai Xiao. Upon hearing that Dai Xiao's nascent soul was a unique one that could grow by devouring other nascent souls, Dai Hao immediately had an idea.

The four experts who had no descendants were not necessarily people they had to kill. As Gan Qingquan had said, to cultivate to their level, one had to take some things lightly. The four might not necessarily bear a grudge against the various families, as anything could have happened in the past five hundred years, and the extermination of their descendants might not have been the fault of those families.

However, Dai Hao and Dai Sheng harbored ulterior motives, actively promoting the proposal to kill the four, ostensibly to eliminate future troubles once and for all, but in reality, it was for the nascent souls of the four thirteenth-level realm experts.

During these five hundred years, Dai Hao had comprehended a unique technique that allowed him to forcibly extract the nascent soul of a human expert within half an incense stick's time after their death, and then transfer it to another person's nascent soul space for longer preservation.

The four thirteenth-level realm nascent souls were obviously forcibly extracted by Dai Hao and sent into Dai Xiao's nascent soul space. Originally, they thought that Dai Xiao's nascent soul could devour the four nascent souls, allowing Dai Xiao to improve his cultivation realm by at least one and a half to two levels, directly advancing from the Legendary realm to the twelfth level. However, they encountered a problem in the most confident step of devouring.

Although the four nascent souls were all at the thirteenth level, because the individuals were already dead, their nascent souls could not receive any spiritual energy replenishment. Logically, they should have been powerless against Dai Xiao's super-strong devouring nascent soul. However, contrary to expectations, the four nascent souls were able to replenish themselves from Dai Xiao's own spiritual energy, which Dai Hao had not anticipated.

As a result, during the devouring process, Dai Xiao's spiritual energy had to be locked, allowing Dai Xiao's nascent soul to face the four thirteenth-level realm nascent souls alone. Fortunately, these four nascent souls had been possessed by humans and did not have the wildness of the original super nascent souls, and would not actively devour Dai Xiao's nascent soul. Otherwise, Dai Xiao would have become a cripple long ago due to his nascent soul being devoured and his nascent soul space shattered.

With this arrangement, Dai Xiao was finally able to rely on his nascent soul's natural devouring ability to devour the four nascent souls. Initially, the devouring went smoothly, but after each of the four nascent souls had only been devoured by five percent, it was as if they were gnawing on a stone. Every day, they could only gnaw off a little bit, and the progress was incredibly slow.

In addition, during the devouring process, Dai Xiao had to endure the backlash from the four powerful nascent souls. Without the support of spiritual energy, Dai Xiao would be in as much pain as if he were being tortured.

If Dai Xiao had enough time, he could rely on his strong will and the gradual erosion every day to completely devour the four nascent souls. But the problem was that the four nascent souls could not last too long even in his nascent soul space. If they were not devoured as soon as possible, the four super nascent souls would also slowly dissipate, turning Dai Hao, Dai Sheng, and Dai Xiao's plans into nothing.

How could Dai Hao and Dai Sheng allow such a situation to happen? After thinking about it, everyone could only think of one reason: when they collected the nascent souls, they missed collecting a carp, so it was not perfect enough to devour more strongly.

The missing carp was the one that Wang Sheng now possessed, which was also a nascent soul of the Legendary realm.