Chapter 44: Stronger Than Any Epic

The sun rose and set, and time quietly slipped into five months later.

In the morning mist, Iron Cedar Hill was shrouded in pale white fog; Luo Si buried his snout into the dew-drenched needles of iron cedars, icy droplets rolling along the gaps between his scales, carrying away the lingering heat from yesterday’s training.

Five months ago.

After the adventurers’ brief interruption.

Luo Si put away the map, then continued his usual life as if nothing had happened—hunting powerful ferocious beasts and demonic creatures, training his body and excavating magical arts, interspersed with brief rests.

During this time, the Earth Spiders kept coming and going, bringing back oil-soil.

Samantha refined the oil-soil into black oil, which Luo Si consumed as his energy source, filling him with a pumping surge of vigor, greatly boosting his training efficiency.

“Strong! Strong! Strong!”

He took a mouthful of the last remaining black oil.

Instantly awake, Luo Si snapped to attention, eyes gleaming, then shot skyward into the morning light, hunting ferocious beasts and demonic creatures, honing his killing techniques and combat reflexes.

When noon arrived.

Having hunted and devoured an 8th-rank wild giant lizard, Luo Si began his flight training.

Under the golden brilliance of the midday sun, Luo Si’s wings gleamed with a cold, metallic sheen, yet still soared freely through the sky.

Without magic energy—only his own wings.

Through relentless training and strengthening, the flexibility of Luo Si’s wing-joints exceeded that of an ordinary young dragon by more than double, and his endurance was astonishing—he could fly for hours straight through desert sandstorms without landing.

Today’s exercise was a dive-stop maneuver.

Luo Si beat his wings, diving from the sky toward the earth; when he was dozens of meters above ground, he fully spread his wings and halted midair.

This movement inflicted tremendous impact on his body.

As he repeated it, the membrane at the base of his right wing eventually tore.

Luo Si calmly licked away the dripping dragon blood.

This level of pain had long become routine.

When daylight faded and the twin moons rose, Luo Si returned to Iron Cedar Hill for his most dangerous resistance training—letting Samantha breathe her dragon breath upon him.

The red dragon’s flame was no ordinary fire.

It was scorching, brutal, and carried immense force.

Even a fire-type dragon facing it head-on still suffered serious injury.

When Luo Si first endured Samantha’s dragon breath directly, he was blasted away, his body seared with agony—but now, due to further changes in his buffer scales, he was different.

Behold.

The red iron young dragon basked in rolling flames; the iron-like markings on his buffer scales darkened under the fire, slowly extending upward without bursting—instead, absorbing the heat and impact.

Two seconds later.

CRACK! One buffer scale reached its limit and exploded.

Fragments, still burning and glowing iron-red, shot outward, striking an iron cedar and unleashing a deafening roar, detonating a burst of flame that split the tree clean in half.

Now, the buffer scales.

They didn’t just absorb impact—they had gained the new ability to absorb heat and then explode.

Luo Si renamed them—Explosive Scales.

These Explosive Scales were not yet fully evolved; they could only explode when subjected to fire-based attacks. When Luo Si struck them purely with physical force, they absorbed kinetic energy while their temperature rose.

In time,

Luo Si estimated, they would convert kinetic energy into heat—or absorb his own magic energy to generate explosive power, unleashed as the scales shattered.

Only then would they be fully evolved.

When Samantha collapsed from exhaustion, Luo Si had the Earth Bear use its earth-element skills to attack him, exhausting it too until it lay limp on the ground, then shot skyward to the wasteland training ground.

There,

He trained his ice and lightning resistance using the Silver Frost Ring and Lightning Tail Ring, raised his defense and muscle strength with Rishan’s sun and earth, interspersed with dragon breaths to strengthen the power and duration of all his dragon breaths.

When midnight arrived, the day finally ended.

And Luo Si repeated this day after day, night after night.

At night, the star-strewn sky seemed like countless watching eyes, silently observing the vast land.

Luo Si lay alone on a rock platform in the wasteland, in his rare moment of rest, feeling the stars and his own transformation.

It had been roughly a year since he left Iron Dragon Mother’s territory.

At eight years old, Luo Si had grown to seven meters and twenty centimeters in length.

His body had grown heavier and stronger; his muscles, scales, and bone density far surpassed those of an ordinary young dragon.

The iron-like patterns on his Explosive Scales were slowly extending toward his spine; when they reached it entirely, the Explosive Scales would be fully evolved.

The electric sensation beneath his tail scales had grown stronger, as if an invisible web of lightning now wove through them.

His wings, continually coated with alchemical tools and daily training, had thinned the traditional dragon membrane; dense, feather-like fine scales now overlaid them, gradually turning fiery red, sparking with friction as he flapped.

None of this happened overnight or formed instantly.

They were pieced together through minute progressions—Luo Si’s own unique path of growth.

The wild offered no legendary encounters—only day-after-day accumulation; every shattered scale told a strength more real than any epic.

—This was Luo Si’s true source of strength.

Legendary alchemical artifacts, compared to this will, were trivial trinkets.

His life rank remained at 7th—no increase.

Luo Si had initially wondered why so many changes hadn’t raised his life rank, but after careful thought, he understood.

Life rank was merely a reference—it couldn’t measure true strength. Below legendary, all were still within the realm of mortals.

He guessed that if he fought his 7th-rank self from a year ago, he couldn’t guarantee a kill—but he’d certainly crush him.

And

Luo Si’s evolution wasn’t a direct increase in life rank—it was an increase in “potential.”

Like a domestic cat becoming a young tiger.

Perhaps the size remained the same, but the future prospects were utterly different.

It was normal his life rank hadn’t risen—he was only eight.

An eight-year-old 7th-rank dragon? Only the Golden Dragon could reach such a level.

The Golden Dragon was universally recognized as the single strongest among normal dragons—the most favored by the Dragon God, beyond even the Red Dragon’s reach. An eight-year-old Red Dragon might be only 6th rank, and weaker ones barely 5th.

“If I faced a Golden Dragon of the same rank, I wonder if I could win.”

Luo Si gazed at the starry sky, blinked his eyes, and thought.

Next came more day-after-day, relentless training and strengthening.

But only five days passed.

Luo Si encountered a problem—the black oil was gone.

For two or three days, not a single Earth Spider had returned; no oil-soil had been brought back, no raw material for black oil, and Luo Si had used up his last supply.

“Something seems wrong.”

“Could the oil-collecting Earth Spiders have been discovered?”

Luo Si paced back and forth in dappled shadows, a quiet unease stirring within him.

Unexpected events meant uncertainty.

Uncertainty meant danger.

Due to the Earth Spiders’ abnormal disappearance, Luo Si sensed danger in the air.

PS: Double moon tickets after midnight tonight—don’t vote now, save them and ask for them later.

(End of Chapter)