The holy spirits of all races, suffering devastating casualties, fought a desperate battle against the ink-black Colossus under the leadership of the golden dragon and the white ice phoenix!
The Colossus showed neither grief nor joy as it killed silently. Holy spirit after holy spirit fell, their life force extinguished, their sacred blood scattering across heaven and earth.
At last, the mighty Colossus began to stagger.
The golden dragon, stretching tens of thousands of li in length, swooped down from high above, twisting and coiling its massive body around the Colossus, binding it in place and restricting its movements.
The white ice phoenix plunged down close behind, its sharp talons sinking deep into the Colossus's flesh.
One sacred artifact after another, radiating tremendous power, was brought forth by the holy spirits of every race, their auras intertwining in close connection. Among them were the Dragon Clan's Crystal Palace, the Phoenix Clan's Indestructible Wutong, the Kun Clan's Northern Darkness, and the Golden Crow Clan's Fusang Divine Tree…
Sixteen sacred artifacts formed a grand formation. Heaven and earth shattered in an instant as ancestral spiritual energy converged. Massive chains materialized, piercing through the Colossus's body and rendering it immobile. All the holy spirits retreated rapidly. The dragon let out a low, mournful cry, while the phoenix clan keened in grief.
When the holy spirits looked back, they witnessed the scene of heaven and earth collapsing. The golden dragon and the white ice phoenix instantly burned away the essence of their blood, transforming it into layer upon layer of binding force that suppressed the Colossus on the spot.
The ink-black Colossus was simply too powerful. Even the holy spirits could not kill it.
The golden dragon and the white ice phoenix had vanished without a trace. Only a speck of golden light and a mote of white radiance were swept into the chaotic void, disappearing from sight!
Only after the great dream awakened did three more years pass in the blink of an eye!
When Yang Kai opened his eyes again, he felt as though he had lived through an exceedingly long dream, and for a moment he could not quite pull himself back together.
He sat dazed for quite some time before finally recalling fragments of what he had seen in that dream.
He had witnessed the scene of the ink-black Colossus being sealed — accomplished through the sacrifice of the Dragon Clan's Dragon Emperor and the Phoenix Clan's Phoenix Empress, who burned the essence of their blood to achieve it.
Only the most powerful sacred dragon of the Dragon Clan could be called the Dragon Emperor, and only the most powerful among the Phoenix Clan was worthy of being called the Phoenix Empress!
After the Dragon Emperor and the Phoenix Empress fell, their origins were also swept into the chaotic void along with the fracture of the ancestral lands, vanishing without a trace.
If that was the case, then the origins that Su Yan and he had obtained on the Profound Realm back in the day had in fact been inherited from the Dragon Emperor and the Phoenix Empress.
As for why he had been able to see all of this in what seemed like a half-dream, it was clearly due to the power of the Dragon Emperor's origin — an origin that had been passed down from that ancient battlefield.
Qingluan had been right. The sacred artifacts of each race represented inheritance.
But the inheritance was not hidden within the sacred artifacts. Every holy spirit's bloodline carried its own inheritance, and when the bloodline reached a certain level of purity, these inheritances would naturally reveal themselves.
Cultivating with the aid of each race's sacred artifacts made it far easier to awaken the power of inheritance concealed within one's bloodline.
Had he not trained within the Crystal Palace, Yang Kai would never have seen any of this.
What exactly had happened in the primordial age, no one knew anymore. Though Yang Kai had glimpsed fragments of the Colossus's sealing through his own inherited origin, the reason why the Colossus and the holy spirits had fought such a cataclysmic battle remained an unsolved mystery.
Now, at least, he had figured out the origins of his Golden Sacred Dragon blood and Su Yan's Phoenix Clan blood.
He shook his head, clearing away the stray thoughts, and turned his attention inward to examine himself.
The ancestral spirit crystals he had taken out before had all vanished, clearly refined and absorbed by him. And the result of that absorption was that his body had grown once more.
Nine hundred and nine hundred and ninety-nine zhang!
Just one step short of reaching the rank of a true dragon.
But that one step did not appear to be so easy to take.
Had it been before, Yang Kai might not have known what to do. But that great dream had granted him access to a great many inheritances of the Dragon Clan, including their secret cultivation techniques. He already had a plan for how to take that final step.
Lying flat within the Crystal Palace, Yang Kai took out another large handful of ancestral spirit crystals.
This time, however, he did not arrange the crystals around his body. Instead, he stuffed them directly into his mouth. With a series of crunching sounds, the spirit crystals — hard as stone — were swallowed whole, and then enormous bursts of energy exploded within his abdomen.
Yang Kai devoured ancestral spirit crystals ceaselessly, using up nearly eighty percent of his harvest before finally stopping.
The ancestral spiritual energy within his body had grown so vast it defied description, stimulating his dragon bloodline to roar and surge.
Complex dragon-tongue incantations issued from Yang Kai's mouth as he activated his Dragon Clan origin power, supplemented by the Dragon Clan's secret cultivation techniques, to refine the ancestral spiritual energy and purify his own bloodline.
Gradually, Yang Kai felt a scorching heat beneath his lower jaw, as though a branding iron had been pressed against it. The faint discomfort made him toss and turn, his enormous dragon head striking the Crystal Palace walls with thunderous booms.
As time passed, that searing sensation beneath his jaw grew ever more pronounced. The power of his entire dragon bloodline seemed to be converging toward that spot.
Faintly, something wondrous seemed to be taking shape beneath his jaw, with an increasingly powerful wave of energy rising and falling there.
At a certain moment, when that energy wave reached its peak, a thunderous crack exploded within Yang Kai's mind, and his entire being was instantly clarified.
Beneath his jaw, a pearl condensing the power of origin came into existence.
Crack… crack…