Chapter 799: 799 - A dragon’s breath (01)
"Qingyi..." Chen Wei looked at his friend with a complicated expression, his lips curving into a bitter smile.
"It’s all right." Qingyi shook his head, giving his friend a light pat on the shoulder. "Accompany Elder Shen back to the sect. I still have a few things to take care of. When I’m done with everything, we’ll have a good drink together."
"Uh? Aren’t you coming with us?" One of the elders frowned, his face marked by surprise. "We need to file a formal charge against Elder Fey and announce his crimes!"
Qingyi merely shook his head, pulling a gleaming jade tablet from inside his robes and holding it up for the elder to see.
"If you’d like, you can ask my adoptive mother about this. I have a mission to fulfill right now." He spoke calmly, showing the mission he’d picked up from the celestial fairy’s mission hall.
Honestly, he didn’t care whether Fey’s crimes would be exposed or not.
Fey was dead. So was Beifeng.
Now, all he wanted was to hurry up and complete that mission before returning to the sect.
Not that it was really necessary, since the original mission was to investigate and rescue Chen Wei. Since it had already been proven that the bandit stronghold wasn’t responsible for the kidnapping, the mission would be canceled and a new one—an extermination mission—would be issued in its place.
To Qingyi, however, that mattered little.
He was only interested in testing the power of his draconic form in a real battle.
"Ah... there’s no use insisting." Elder Shen approached and gave Qingyi a few pats on the back.
"Just report everything to your pavilion master," he said to the other elder.
As he watched the Qingyi, Elder Shen recalled a conversation he’d had with an old friend shortly after his recruitment.
That young dragon, like all Ascendants of the Immortal Heaven, had only two paths before him.
He would either shock the entire Celestial Heaven, or sink into the most complete mediocrity.
In the entire history of the Celestial Realm, there had never been an Ascendant who had escaped these two categories.
And Qingyi was, without a shadow of a doubt, of the first type—a talent capable of making the entire Celestial Heaven tremble.
Elder Shen was absolutely certain that when Qingyi finally set foot in the central region, the shock he would cause would be no less than what he had caused in the northern region.
"You fought well, young man." Elder Shen let out a warm laugh, shaking his head. "It’s been just over a year since you joined the sect, and you’re already accompanying me... it seems I need to retire already, hahahahaha!"
"The elder is still young and strong. It’s just that I’m even younger and stronger." Qingyi replied with a light laugh, a smile playing at the corner of his lips.
"Hahahahaha, indeed, indeed, hahahaha!" Elder Shen roared with laughter even louder, his body shaking with amusement. "Well, anyway, good luck in eliminating the bandits. We have to report what happened here and find a replacement for this fortress as soon as possible."
The elder didn’t worry for even a moment that Qingyi was going alone; the possibility of him failing didn’t even cross his mind.
He had seen and heard enough about the young man to know that no bandit group in that region had the ability to even come close to harming him.
Qingyi nodded and set off immediately afterward, his eyes cold but holding a hidden glimmer of excitement deep within.
Finally, he could truly test the power of his draconic transformation.
***
In a remote fortress, isolated in the middle of nowhere and overrun by bandits, the leader was celebrating yet another successful raid, laughing loudly amid the chaos of overturned tables, broken bottles, and food scraps scattered across the stone floor.
"Well done, brothers!" he declared, his hands full of Qi crystals that glowed intensely under the dim light of the lanterns. "A few more raids like this, and we’ll be able to leave this life behind to enjoy our fortunes to the fullest for the rest of our days!"
He spoke with exaggerated enthusiasm, but of course, it was a lie.
Perhaps the bosses could get out. But the rank-and-file bandits? Never.
Unemployment wasn’t a real issue in the Celestial Heaven, unlike on Earth.
To be a decent thief in the Celestial Heaven, one needed a cultivation level of at least the Astral Body Realm.
At that level, anyone could simply travel to some ordinary planet and live like a king, since even in the Celestial Heaven, in many places, experts of the Astral Body Realm were already at the top.
Any man capable of stealing was capable of securing a decent job as a cultivator.
Those men had become bandits out of pure greed. To steal. To rape.
None of them would stop simply because, despite the dangers, life outside the law also brought many pleasures.
Their only regret was that there were no women in that loot, and those from the previous raid were all already dead.
The bandits reveled, grabbing all the wealth scattered across the floor and dividing it among themselves, already imagining how they would spend it.
Prostitutes, slaves, various artifacts, and plenty, plenty of alcohol.
That was the standard way bandits like them spent their money.
Unfortunately for them, the happiness wouldn’t last long.
In an instant, everyone froze.
They were stationed at a fortress built on an asteroid—not very large, but stable.
Without warning, the asteroid shook with a deep tremor that made the rocks creak, and all the bandits’ excitement evaporated in the blink of an eye.
The Qi crystals clinked as they fell to the floor, and the drinking glasses toppled over, spilling golden liquid onto the cold stone.
Screams of horror began to echo through the fortress’s corridors below, and the leader dashed toward the top, breaking through the concrete walls in a single leap to look up at the sky.
"A dragon...?..." he murmured, his fists dropping limply to his sides, his face draining of all color as a colossal shadow stretched over the entire fortress.
