Chapter 1309: The Lonesome Hero of the Primordial Zone

[Ding!]

[Host’s Soul has bonded deeply with the Void! Host’s Soul Realm has undergone a vast evolution!]

[New Soul Ability Awakened!]

[Ability: Cosmic Dragon Bond!]

Phei had stared at the name for a moment before the explanation unfolded beneath it.

[Cosmic Dragon Bond: Host can form a mutual Soul Bond with another Dragon. When both Dragons possess the same element, the dragon with the same but weaker element their element may rise toward the stronger, allowing both Dragons to draw upon the highest mastery of that ability between their souls.]

That alone had made Phei’s attention sharpen.

The Dragon imprisoned above him possessed Ice Element that was for sure:

—Phei possessed Void-Ice.

—his element stood higher ranks above her; Infinity Control!

The next part made the purpose of the sudden ability even more obvious:

[When either bonded Dragon is in an unavoidable life-and-death peril, the endangered soul may pull upon the other through the bond, allowing physical escape toward the bonded Dragon. While should two Dragons face the same danger, one soul may still draw upon the another (a third dragon) Without the third or more bonded Dragons, the ability is useless!]

There was of course the unpleasant part.

[Soul wounds suffered by either Dragon shall be shared through the bond. The burden borne by each soul depends upon the number and strength of the souls sharing the Bond.]

Phei had read that particular line twice, looked up at the imprisoned Dragon and then returned his gaze to the System.

"Of course there’s a catch."

Another feeding tendril pulsed inside the ice.

Blood suddenly escaped Phei’s mouth.

He touched his lip in surprise, and when another pulse travelled through the Dragon’s imprisoned body, pain answered somewhere inside his own soul. Whatever had pulled him here was already resonating strongly enough between them that her suffering had begun brushing against him before the bond even properly existed.

For a few seconds Phei stood beneath the enormous prison and considered exactly how stupid this decision could become.

He knew absolutely nothing about the Dragon.

Nothing about where she came from, nothing about her personality, nothing about what she might do after awakening and certainly nothing about whether bonding their souls would eventually become one of those catastrophic decisions people looked back upon immediately before dying.

Then Phei looked at the tendrils feeding from her.

The System had said she possessed months.

His hesitation survived roughly less than one second.

"Fuck it."

He accepted.

The Cosmic Dragon Bond formed immediately:

A vast black-white symbol appeared across the Dragon’s frozen body, luminous lines spreading between white scales, sweeping across her chest and reaching toward the base of one enormous wing. The mark pulsed once and the ancient ice around her groaned. On the second pulse, Phei finally felt the Dragon’s soul clearly.

Weak and buried beneath exhaustion, frightened somewhere beyond consciousness.

And cold in a way even this Primordial Frozen Zone had never taught him to understand.

Then her Ice touched his Void-Ice through the bond.

The weaker element began to change. ℯ

Black-white essence travelled into her frozen power, darkness threading through the brilliant white-blue cold until the Ice Elements she possessed started rising toward the same Void-Ice and achieving Infinity Control too that was living inside Phei. That was how she later gained the ability to wield it.

Phei had not simply shoved some foreign element into her body.

Cosmic Dragon Bond had found what their souls shared and pulled the weaker element and evolved it into the stronger on; his.

Had her Ice stood above his own, Phei would have been the one benefiting instead.

And that was only the beginning of what the bond could do.

Breaking the prison openly would have been suicide. The disturbance alone would summon everything inside the abyss before Phei managed to remove even half the tendrils, and several had sunk too deeply into the Dragon to simply rip free without causing more damage. So he did the only reasonable thing available to a seventeen-year-old possessing a spatial power and a questionable relationship with caution.

He left her there.

’Temporarily.’

True Void Steps carried him upward through one hollow after another until the abyss disappeared behind him. Phei continued travelling beyond the territory where the largest groups of thralls could sense his movement, eventually putting enough distance between himself and the imprisoned Dragon that an entire country could have fit comfortably between them.

Only then did he stop.

Blood stained the corner of his mouth while the new Cosmic Dragon Bond burned inside his soul.

Phei reached for it: "Come on..."

Somewhere impossibly far away, the Dragon’s soul pulled against his own.

Space screamed and reality between them buckled so violently that black-white fractures spread through the air before Phei.

Then something enormous appeared above him.

His eyes widened.

"Oh, fuck."

The wounded Dragon crashed into the frozen plain hard enough to split the ice for kilometers, and for several seconds Phei could only stare at the sheer amount of Dragon suddenly occupying his immediate surroundings. Sensing something huge through True Void Sense was one thing. Having it drop directly in front of him and steal most of the horizon was considerably more convincing.

That was also when Phei discovered she was female.

Some details, apparently, remained surprisingly obvious even when the creature involved was large enough to qualify as weather.

She was dying.

The forced escape had ripped the feeding tendrils free, leaving terrible wounds beneath and between her crystalline scales while centuries of draining had weakened both Dragon Core and Dragon Heart Scale so severely that the exhaustion travelled straight through their new bond.

The thralls did not locate them immediately, which gave Phei time to discover another important fact.

Healing a Dragon the size of a moving mountain was exhausting as hell.

Healing Touch worked, thankfully, but it took nearly an entire day. Phei moved from wound to wound since she was so huge, healing torn flesh beneath the white scales while the Dragon’s own regeneration slowly began answering again. Cosmic Dragon Bond helped stabilize her soul, while the newly awakened Void-Ice flowing through her essence seemed to awaken something that had been sleeping beneath centuries of weakness.

Phei still remembered when her breathing finally steadied.

Then those immense eyes opened.

The first thralls had reached them shortly afterward.

Phei had expected to fight alone.

Instead, the weakened Dragon forced herself upright beside him, lowered her enormous head and drew a breath so deep that the surrounding storm bent toward her jaws.

Void-Ice gathered.

Her roar shook the frozen plain.

Cold exploded outward and swallowed the charging thralls, trapping every one of them inside black-white crystal before the first rank came within striking distance. Then the Dragon moved; one wing smashed through the frozen creatures and broke them apart by the dozens, while her tail followed through the survivors and scattered glittering pieces across the snow.

Phei had stared for several seconds before an enormous grin spread across his face:

"Okay. We’re definitely keeping you."

The Zone Lord apparently disagreed.

More thralls came the following day, then again the day after that, and before long the pattern became almost routine. For nearly a year, the God being beneath the abyss kept trying to reclaim the meal Phei had stolen from it, and every army sent after them became another training ground for him instead.

The Dragon recovered, Phei grew, their Void-Ice deepened together.

Phei refined his Primordial Blood through endless battle, expanded his mastery over the Void and tempered his new until the young Mortal Sovereign cultivator who had once slipped nervously into the abyss ceased to resemble the monster now returning toward it as a Sky Sovereign!

The Dragon grew alongside him.

And somewhere during that year, the Zone Lord stopped sending hunters after wounded prey and it started feeling like it was feeding two increasingly dangerous Dragons with armies.

The last mountain range finally disappeared beneath them.

Phei opened his eyes completely.

The abyss waited ahead.

Its edges stretched beyond sight in both directions, an enormous black wound dividing the Primordial Frozen Zone while frozen mist continuously poured from the darkness below. The surrounding ice had turned almost blue-black, and the cold rising from the chasm carried enough weight that even Phei’s evolved Void-Ice stirred beneath his skin.

The Dragon slowed as they approached.

Phei stood upon her back, all thoughts of looking impressive forgotten now.

His long white hair streamed behind him while his gaze remained fixed upon the darkness below. Through Cosmic Dragon Bond, he could feel the unease passing through the Dragon beneath his feet, and without saying anything at first, Phei lowered one hand against an enormous crystalline scale.

"We’re back," he finally said, his voice far quieter than the storm.

A low growl rolled from the Dragon.

Phei’s smile slowly returned.

A year ago he had entered this abyss hiding from everything that moved, discovered a Dragon dying beneath the ice and escaped before the creature feeding upon her realized its meal had vanished.

Today there was no reason to hide.

Void began cracking around Phei.

Primordial Blood stirred beneath his skin while Void-Ice answered from the cliffs surrounding the abyss, ancient frost groaning awake beneath his presence. The Dragon spread her colossal wings until white crystal filled the darkened heavens above them, and somewhere far below, something moved.

The entire chasm trembled beneath it.

Phei felt the movement rise through the ice and into the Dragon beneath him.

His smile widened as he looked into the darkness.

"Yeah," he murmured, excitement beginning to creep into his voice. "We’ve reached it."