Within the Unreturning Pass, the Dragon Clan was divided into three branches—Fu, Zhu, and Ji—with bloodlines carried down through these three families alone.
What struck Fu Guang as strange was that he couldn't detect the bloodline aura of any of these three families from this junior.
Moreover, if he wasn't mistaken, the first time he had sensed this junior, the other party had been using the ancient method to temper his veins—meaning he hadn't yet reached the Ancient Dragon stage.
Yet now, upon closer observation, the other was already a nearly seven-thousand-zhang Ancient Dragon. In just over a year, the improvement had been so immense it was virtually unimaginable.
Even someone with his own extraordinary natural talent couldn't pull off such a thing. In all of dragonkind's long history, no dragon had ever grown this fast. It completely defied everything dragons understood about cultivation.
As he questioned the junior, Fu Guang casually glanced at the two dragon claws of Yang Kai's.
When the Sun and Yin marks had appeared moments ago, he had witnessed the whole thing. He knew full well that this junior's rapid growth and the severe depletion of the Dragon Pool's power were undoubtedly tied to those two marks.
"I answer the Senior—I am not a dragon of the Unreturning Pass," Yang Kai replied. Now that he had confirmed the other was Fu Guang, he had nothing to fear. At the very least, the man wouldn't strike him down without reason.
"Not a dragon of the Unreturning Pass?" Fu Guang said, a hint of surprise in his voice. "Did you come from outside to claim your ancestral lineage?"
Yang Kai shook his head. "Not that either. I was born of the human race, and through a fortuitous encounter, I refined a source of dragon bloodline. When I advanced to the Ancient Dragon stage, my bloodline was purified."
Fu Guang grew even more astonished. "The human race? Those old stubborns actually let you come down here?"
He clearly knew just how inflexible those Ancient Dragons were. The Dragon Pool was the very foundation of dragonkind—aside from pure-blooded dragons, who else had any right to set foot in this place?
Yet they had actually allowed a human to descend into the Dragon Pool. He couldn't fathom what they'd been thinking.
He gave a slight nod. "Regardless of whether you were born of the human race, your bloodline is now pure. That makes you a dragon—one of the Ancient Dragons, no less."
As he spoke, he cast a leisurely glance at Yang Kai, his thoughts stirring. A Golden Dragon source—and an extraordinarily powerful one at that. If he wasn't mistaken, it should be the source that one had lost to the outside world.
No wonder those old stubborns in the clan had allowed him to descend. They must have had this in mind as well.
Setting aside his own assumptions, Yang Kai blinked after hearing Fu Guang's words and said with a faint sense of melancholy, "That's right. I suppose I am a dragon now."
Fu Guang chuckled softly. "What's this? From the look on your face, it seems you're reluctant to let go of your human roots?"
"Not exactly," Yang Kai said. "It's just… I'm not quite used to it yet."
Fu Guang nodded gently. "Though someone like you is rare, our dragon archives do record a few similar cases. I can't fully understand how you feel, but being a dragon isn't without its advantages. At the very least, at the same tier, dragons are far more powerful than humans."
He shifted the topic. "I noticed you just activated two marks. Those came from Zhuo Zhao and You Ying?"
"Your eyes are sharp, Senior. Indeed, they are from Zhuo Zhao and You Ying."
Huang Siniang had been able to discern the true nature of those two marks at a glance—there was no way Fu Guang couldn't. Yang Kai wasn't the least bit surprised.
Fu Guang circled around Yang Kai once, thoroughly bewildered. "Those two marks can actually draw upon the power of the Dragon Pool? I've never heard of such a thing. But those two are beings of unfathomable capability—having such a power is hardly strange. What puzzles me is how you managed to withstand such an enormous influx of power into your body. By all rights, you should have been torn apart long ago."
He had been watching Yang Kai intently the entire time, and the situation baffled him completely.
Yang Kai explained. "Back then, those two each left a strand of their power inside my body—one yin, one yang. When I drew the Dragon Pool's power into myself, those two forces formed a millstone that ground the Dragon Pool's energy down, allowing me to rapidly absorb and refine it."
Fu Guang was greatly astonished. "Those two even had such a method?"
He had never heard of this before. Not just him—probably no one in the entire Dragon Clan knew about it, or it would certainly have been recorded in the archives.
But this youth before him bore the marks of Zhuo Zhao and You Ying, had been granted their power, and seemed to be held in considerable regard by those two.
The power of Zhuo Zhao and You Ying was not something given out lightly. At the very least, he had never heard of anyone else receiving such an opportunity.
"Come, come—activate those two marks again and let me see." Fu Guang's face was alight with keen interest.
Yang Kai shook his head vigorously like a rattle-drum. "I can't, Senior. The yin-yang forces of those two have been completely depleted. If I were to draw upon the Dragon Pool's power the way I did before, my body wouldn't be able to endure it."
"What are you afraid of? I told you to try, so try it. I'm here." Fu Guang wore the expression of a man telling someone to go ahead without worry—leave the safety net to him.
This take-charge attitude left Yang Kai unsure of what to do. He couldn't tell what Fu Guang was after, but considering the other was a being close to the Sacred Dragon rank, there was nothing Yang Kai could do to resist him if he truly intended harm.
Besides, if it was just a brief test, it probably wouldn't matter all that much.
At that thought, Yang Kai nodded. "Then this junior will make a fool of himself."
With that, he activated the Sun and Yin marks on his two dragon claws. The instant the marks manifested, the dense Dragon Pool power in the surroundings surged toward him.
Yang Kai had intended to stop after only a taste. After all, without the yin-yang millstone inside him, he genuinely couldn't withstand much of the Dragon Pool's power flooding in.
However, the moment he activated the marks, Fu Guang had already moved. His nearly ten-thousand-zhang dragon body vibrated rhythmically, each and every scale standing on end.
And with his movement, Fu Guang's dragon form suddenly seemed to transform into a bottomless abyss, frantically devouring the incoming Dragon Pool power.
His dragon veins surged and roared, his dragon bones crackled with explosive sound, and his dragon eyes blazed with brilliant light.
Yang Kai, on the other hand, felt almost no pressure—because nearly eighty percent of the Dragon Pool power drawn in by the Sun and Yin marks had been intercepted by Fu Guang.
Only the remaining twenty percent flowed into Yang Kai's body.