Chapter 197

The human body beneath the black scales was an eerily porcelain-like, cold white. Even though it was this close, Ye Zheng found it difficult to detect even the slightest hint of breathing from it. They felt like beings pulled straight out of undead legends.

Ye Zheng tentatively reached out her hand. Instantly, the dragon-human’s black scales flared open, and a low, threatening hiss squeezed out from deep in its throat. The massive wings behind it snapped upright, rigid and tense.

Yet Ye Zheng didn’t hesitate at all. In the very next moment, her right hand moved forward and touched the cheek directly in front of her.

Ye Zheng activated 【Mother of All Things】.

The human torso at the top was the most vulnerable part of a dragon-human. Since it had chosen to extend its human form toward her, she had no reason to fear it. Instead, she should respond to that gesture with complete sincerity.

The instant her fingers made contact, the dragon-human closest to her went completely still. Its unfocused black eyes seemed to empty out, or perhaps it was carefully observing the human standing before it.

The skin beneath her fingertips was colder than she had ever imagined, so cold it almost made her doubt whether it was truly a living body at all. However, 【Mother of All Things】 was clearly telling Ye Zheng that the life energy within it was overwhelmingly vast, far beyond anything she could have conceived.

The energy within a living being was like surging water. If an ordinary person’s body was equivalent to half a bucket of water, an ability user would be a small pond, and a powerful ability user would be like a river or even a lake.

Ye Zheng’s eyes were tightly shut. Her eyelids twitched slightly, as though she couldn’t believe what she was sensing, and then she abruptly opened her eyes.

The dragon-human right in front of her had a body roughly the size of a single room, yet the life energy contained within it was equivalent to a vast, surging ocean with no visible boundary at all.

Ye Zheng awakened Mercè.

『Such immense energy… I’ve seen it before.』

“On the Demonic dragon?” Ye Zheng asked.

Mercè let out a soft sigh.

『They look almost like… descendants of the Demonic dragon.』

“They became like this after losing control due to dragon bones being implanted. Is there any way to restore them to human form?”

『You’ve gotten familiar with 【Mother of All Things】 these past few days. The larger the lifeform, the harder it is to transform. You can easily drain a small puddle dry, but can you shake an entire ocean?』

After hearing Mercè’s answer, Ye Zheng fell into a brief silence.

“I can’t do it yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to in the future.”

Mercè smiled softly. 『Alright then. Let me remind you of one more thing. Although their current bodies are enormous, they aren’t true Demonic dragons. It’s unnatural for them to carry such an excessive amount of life energy. I suggest you take a look at the condition of the other children as well.』

Ye Zheng withdrew her hand from the dragon-human in front of her. Mari had a point. She should check the others first.

Whether it was just her imagination or not, Ye Zheng felt that after activating 【Mother of All Things】, all five dragon-humans present had become noticeably quieter. Their massive dragon bodies lay sprawled lazily on the ground.

She easily made contact with the remaining four dragon-humans and examined their conditions one by one.

Ye Zheng quickly discovered an even more astonishing situation.

Every life was unique. Even an unremarkable leaf had its own distinct veins and patterns. Through 【Mother of All Things】, Ye Zheng was able to distinguish the subtle, unique energy belonging to each life.

Yet these five dragon-humans, five entirely different individuals, all displayed exactly the same life energy.

『I can’t perceive them together with you, but I suspect their energy shares the same origin as the Demonic dragon from before.』

Mercè analyzed calmly, 『The demonic dragon’s overwhelming energy has suppressed their individual consciousness and life force. Their current condition is similar to being the aberrant dragon’s avatars.』

『If you want to save them and return them to how they originally were, I’m afraid you’ll have to completely strip the dragon’s power out of their bodies.』

Ye Zheng stayed silent. She’d already closed her eyes, her right hand pressed firmly against the dragon-bodied figure’s cold form. She poured all her strength into it, trying to disturb the immense energy surging within the other party.

Cold sweat gathered across her forehead. Ye Zheng finally pulled her hand back with a sharp breath, forcing herself to steady it as a flicker of reluctance passed through her dark eyes.

She’d probed the other party’s body using 【Mother of All Things】. The sensation felt like steering a gigantic ship across the open sea. No matter how large the vessel was, it was still insignificant compared to the vast ocean.

The Demonic Dragon’s physical body had long since perished, yet its power and lingering shadow still loomed over the entire nation.

Why had it appeared back then? Could the prophesied world-ending Aberrant Realm five hundred years later be tied to this dragon?

Even though the “God of Hope” from that era had supposedly killed the dragon, although the gods had already abandoned this land, the Demonic Dragon had sunk its roots deep into the earth beneath their feet. Its remains lay buried beneath the bustling streets, and its bones kept on giving rise to new “dragons.”

Ye Zheng stared at her own palm. A fragment of dragon bone was embedded there as well.

Dragon bones only affected women. Could that also be tied to the dragon’s origins?

“Mercè, have you ever come into close contact with the Demonic Dragon?”

『I only ever saw it once from a distance. You should be able to find it in my memories.』

Ye Zheng lowered her gaze and deliberately accessed memories that didn’t belong to her. It came from the second year after Mercè had obtained 【Mother of All Things】. As the war situation worsened, ability users were being sent to the front lines without pause. Mercè, as a healer, had stayed in the rear. But one day, the front line suddenly collapsed entirely. The Demonic Dragon advanced at a speed no one had expected.

She saw a colossal black figure slowly pushing forward through sand and dust that blotted out the sky. Buildings crumbled one after another, and the ground caved in beneath it.

It was far too enormous. She couldn’t even distinguish its specific body parts. It was like a spreading darkness that kept devouring the bright human world and swallowing the endless cries and screams that filled the land.

Amid the despair, Mercè, who’d been fleeing with the crowd, heard the cry of a young girl. She instinctively turned her head, only to catch sight of a human head flashing through the air. It appeared for an instant within the churning sand and dust before disappearing again, as though it had been swallowed whole by the pitch-black monster.

The crushing weight of despair was so intense that even Mercè didn’t dare to look back. Her mind went completely blank as she kept running straight ahead.

“…A human head?”

『What is it?』 Mercè asked.

Ye Zheng paused to think for a moment, still immersed in that scene. Slowly, a bold conjecture began to take shape in her mind.

“Mercè, the head you saw back then might not have belonged to a human the dragon was hunting, but instead to the dragon’s own body, just like these girls. 

You said earlier that they’re like kins of the Demonic Dragon.”

Ye Zheng reached out again and gently brushed the cheek of the dragon-bodied figure beside her. The figure lay there with their eyes closed, completely still, as if she were resting. Her head leaned ever so slightly toward Ye Zheng’s touch, while the massive black dragon body behind her rose and fell in a steady rhythm, like a small mountain breathing.

Silence hung in the air for a long moment. Then Mercè’s voice came again, her usually steady tone carrying a faint, almost imperceptible tremor, clearly shaken by the idea.

『That memory’s always been one of my nightmares. I never really examined it carefully. That said the dragon was bigger than a city and that it devoured humans, so I just assumed the head belonged to its prey…』

Mercè’s voice gradually steadied, but a trace of restrained anger still lingered within it. 『You’re right. That head was most likely part of the dragon’s true body. The real Demonic Dragon has a human form, just like them!』

Both women were intelligent. No further explanation was needed for them to immediately grasp the shocking and infuriating truth behind this revelation.

Five hundred years ago, the empire had intentionally hidden the Demonic Dragon’s true form, deceiving everyone into believing it was the same kind of malevolent dragon shown in children’s picture books.

In truth, the Demonic Dragon possessed a human body, just like the girls with dragon bodies.

So why did the empire go to such extreme lengths to conceal the dragon’s real appearance?

Because the moment its human form was revealed, someone would inevitably recognize who the dragon had originally been!

Ye Zheng gently cupped the dragon-bodied girl’s cheek with her right hand, while her left index finger softly tapped the small mole on it. Even though black scales covered most of her face, Ye Zheng could still match that exposed mole to the archived records.

The girl standing before her was named Gu Xue. She had been seventeen when she vanished, the same age as Ye Zheng. She came from the Western Lower District and had been studying at an ability academy in the Middle District.

So then, who exactly was the Demonic Dragon five hundred years ago?

What was her name? Where had she come from? And for what reason had she transformed into a dragon?

In Mercè’s memory, that head had only flickered briefly across the distant sky. Aside from confirming that it was human, no other details could be made out.

After Mercè rose to become Papess and founded the Church of Hope, she had consistently stood in opposition to the imperial family. In the time leading up to her death, she had been investigating the royal family’s connection to the dragon’s remains.

From what she uncovered, the Demonic Dragon wasn’t some being from another realm. It was something the imperial family had secretly nurtured long before the descent of the Aberrant Realms, its true origin still unknown.

However, before Mercè could continue digging deeper, she was assassinated.

The Demonic Dragon was the imperial family’s greatest and most closely guarded secret.

Back then, the royal family had intentionally misled the public about the dragon’s appearance and hidden the truth that it possessed a human body. It was highly likely that the Demonic Dragon’s true form had once been a well-known figure of that era, someone many people had actually seen with their own eyes.

The moment someone recognized the dragon’s real identity, it would mean a certain secret had been exposed. That was exactly why the royal family had to keep it buried. This way, even if someone accidentally discovered the tiny human body on the dragon, they’d simply assume it was the leftover remains of human prey the dragon hadn’t finished devouring.

『Curse their souls!』 Ye Zheng heard Mercè curse. Her tone was completely unlike the elegant and gentle image of the teacher and Papess preserved in her memories. It was as if all the resentment she’d suppressed for so long had finally erupted in one violent surge.

Mercè went on furiously, 『Those damned Astons! Treacherous scum! Wretches! If I’d been able to live just ten more years back then, how could I have let them live so comfortably all the way to today…』

Ye Zheng didn’t even have the spare energy to feel shocked at Mercè’s loss of composure. Her eyes darkened, her expression tightening as she methodically organized every clue she’d gathered up to this point.

Whether it was the Demonic Dragon or the Aberrant Realms, the source of all these disasters pointed straight at the royal family. To be more precise, it most likely pointed to Aston XIV, the emperor from five hundred years ago, who’d once been praised as a young genius.

He’d lived through an era of imperial decline and royal decadence, all while weathering the shock of a rising new age. Then he led the empire in resisting the sudden catastrophe, rallying the entire nation to support the God of Hope in defeating the Demonic Dragon. In the end, he rebuilt the empire, and the Aston royal family once again became the guiding light of the nation.

Ye Zheng refused to believe that the emergence of the Demonic Dragon and the descent of the Aberrant Realms had been mere coincidence. The one who benefited the most from that disaster was very likely the mastermind behind everything!

She subconsciously bit down on her lip. Her dark eyes grew heavy, and her face turned ice-cold.

What a pity that Aston XIV was already dead. How could such a hypocritical, deeply sinful bastard be allowed to bask in glory and then die peacefully of old age, just as the history books claimed?

“Demonic Dragon… Royal family…”

Ye Zheng ground those two words between her teeth. She suddenly realized that the current royal family must still hold clues from that distant era. For five hundred years, they’d continued to preserve that secret. They’d never once given up on exploiting the power of the Demonic Dragon.

For example, Sykes, who’d been born through reliance on dragon bone.

Was his birth truly meant to counter the world-ending Aberrant Realm foretold in the prophecy?

Perhaps the fact that Sykes would go berserk during her coming-of-age ceremony was also tied to the royal family’s hidden secret concerning the Demonic Dragon.