Chapter 224: Racing Against Time

So if they wanted to form a tug-of-war with the ancient dragons and lure them out of Da Qin, the only breakthrough was to rely on agile and ever-changing ground speed.

After all, the ground terrain was complex and ever-changing, allowing the bait to use that complicated landscape to dodge the ancient dragons' attacks at critical moments, catch a few breaths, and avoid dying the instant they laid eyes on the ancient dragons.

At the time, he, Shi Yu, had relied on the body of a Banzhu with extremely fast ground speed—the Thunderlight Wolf—to snatch one of the slots first.

Later they learned that the ancient dragons had been searching all along for an incomparably precious treasure, and that treasure was now in the hands of their Empress.

Since the treasure could be cherished so highly by the ancient dragons, and its shape was a part of some creature's limb, they even suspected it was the limb of a powerful being among the ancient dragons, or even of their progenitor!

If they could successfully analyze a part of such an existence and use it as the main ingredient for a dragonification potion, they might truly be able to contend with the ancient dragons!

Of course, these matters here were not the focus; those were things for the Empress and those exceptionally wise scholars to consider.

All they needed to do was make good use of the three precious red fragments that the Empress and her people had painstakingly peeled off, and lure the ancient dragons away.

As long as the fragment carrier spread the aura of the fragment and was detected by the ancient dragons, the dragons would pursue the carrier with reckless abandon.

Therefore, in order to lure the ancient dragons away, the fragment carrier not only needed extremely fast speed, but also quick and agile reactions—only this way could they lure the ancient dragons far away from Da Qin for a long time.

And the Characteristic of this task also decided that the bait had a nine-in-ten chance of death, but would those men, who had come to understand the danger of their human race's situation, care about that?

It was nothing more than a mere seven-foot body; before the safety of the human race, if it was gone, then it was gone!

Among them, he, Shi Yu, considering the importance of the red fragment, as the first bait, had a sudden flash of inspiration.

Since all that was needed was the aura within the fragment, could he grind a small portion of the fragment and mix it into his blood, so that his blood would carry this part of the aura?

This way, he wouldn't have to carry the entire fragment and worry about losing the rare thing along the way, yet could still draw the ancient dragons to chase him.

If this could work, wouldn't it raise the task's fault tolerance? Even if he failed, it wouldn't cause the fragment to be lost, letting the ancient dragons discover the truth and causing the subsequent luring to fail.

When this plan came out, at first it also made Zhou Qingqing, who heard of the matter, freeze for a beat, but it was indeed worth a try.

Unlike the terrifying defensive power and repair speed of the Crystal as a whole, although this small fragment that had been taken off was still incomparably hard, after undergoing isolation measures, it was still feasible.

With this, he, Shi Yu, became the very first ancient dragon-person to carry the aura of the Crystal within his blood!

Now it seemed his conjecture was feasible!

Listening to the angry dragon roar coming from behind, Shi Yu, who was sprinting wildly, also smiled inwardly and exerted more strength to quicken his pace.

At the same moment, he swerved directly into the dense forest.

As the giant wolf wrapped all over in thunderlight plunged into the forest, an extremely bizarre thing happened!

The electric light across the giant wolf's body began to extinguish, and its entire figure directly became illusory; at this moment, under the cover of the dense forest, this illusory figure began to appear and disappear.

In response, the Flame Dragon currently in the sky behind, watching the giant wolf vanish into the dense forest, also let out an angry roar.

However, it did not choose to descend back to the ground, because it knew well where its advantage lay.

It looked at the dense forest below and began to constantly flap its broad, cloak-like Dragon Wing; the next moment, dense crimson fire powder could be seen constantly spilling out from between its broad Dragon Wing.

And this fire powder, driven by a mysterious force, began to gather into a rotating wind vortex and head toward the forest below.

"Bang bang bang——!!!"

In an instant, a large number of continuous explosions began to sound.

At this moment, the earth was shaken, countless great trees that had stood for ages collapsed with a rumble, and dust filled the air.

Yet within this, the complex terrain below began to become clear.

In a flash, the faintly visible giant wolf below also began to slowly become distinct.

It was obvious that its stealth posture should be closely tied to the surrounding environment; now that the environment was destroyed, its stealth was directly broken.

"Damn it!"

Shi Yu shot a resentful glance at the ancient dragon above, but did not stop his fleeing pace; he kept dodging those terrifying explosions one after another, while leaping sideways into the forest that had not yet been destroyed.

With this, the ancient dragon in the air and the giant wolf on the ground began a tug-of-war of fleeing and chasing.

But just looking at the giant wolf, where danger appeared time and again, one could tell it was only a matter of Time before it was caught by the ancient dragon.

At this moment, it was not only here that such a chase scene was unfolding.

Across the entire Da Qin region, there were two other similar scenes.

Those were the other ancient dragon-people luring the ancient dragons in pursuit.

However, compared to the relatively lucky Shi Yu, the others did not have such good fortune.

Some of the unluckier ones had only just found the ancient dragon's location and, before they could even begin the lure, were discovered by the ancient dragon, and then turned into a puff of ash under a blast of scorching flames.

Or they had only just begun luring the ancient dragon when they were caught by the ancient dragon's sudden Burst, and were ultimately grasped in the ancient dragon's palm; at the moment of death, they could only leave behind a single suspenseful last word.

Fortunately, thanks to Shi Yu's suggestion, the current baiters all directly merged the aura of the fragment into their own blood.

Only this narrowly kept the mission from failing outright.

At this point, at three locations, three different ancient dragons began to chase relentlessly toward the same direction, far away from Da Qin.

……

At the same time, Hai Zhi Dao.

At this moment, on this still desolate little island, a massive ship had docked at some unknown time; not far behind the large ship, a large group of people were frantically building another slightly smaller strange ship, with bird-like wings growing on both sides.

"Faster! Faster! Pick up the pace!"

"Right now, a large number of our brothers up ahead are risking their lives to lure the ancient dragons away; we support troops in the rear absolutely cannot hold them back at the critical moment—faster!"

A square-faced man with a scar on his face kept urging and directing the personnel shuttling back and forth carrying all kinds of large materials, while occasionally stepping forward to lend a hand.

And in a crude wooden hut nearby, Zhou Qingqing, under the assistance of various personnel, also began using all kinds of methods to try to peel off a large piece of mysterious Crystal from the crimson Crystal at the very center of the hut.

Whether this Crystal could be peeled off now would decide whether the subsequent plan could succeed.

After all, simply luring the ancient dragons away from Da Qin was far from the moment of final success.

Those clever ancient dragons were not mindless wild beasts; once they left Da Qin, they wouldn't know the way home, and they would sooner or later discover the truth, and in their fury return to Da Qin.

When that happened, the situation might be even more severe than now.

Therefore, she had to make those ancient dragons unable to return to the Da Qin region for a long time due to some reason, so that the human race could get a chance to catch its breath.

……

(End of chapter)