Volume 2, Chapter 5: The Graveyard of the Heavens – Echoes of the Dragon Valley
The change was not sudden. It felt more like slowly sinking into deep water. To reach the Dragon Valley, they had to go down through hidden layers of space where broken pieces of old dimensions and forgotten timelines usually gathered like trash.
Lakan led the group. Behind them, part of his massive Phoenix God Star stayed connected to keep a safe path back home. Beside him walked Gu Yuena. Her silver and gold aura shimmered like moonlight on water.
The others followed close behind — Ji Dong, Lie Yan, and Lakan's four wives. The God of Destruction and the Goddess of Life stayed behind in the Phoenix God Star to watch over it.
As they stepped through the last barrier, the bright, lively feeling of the Phoenix God Star disappeared. In its place was a heavy, grey stillness that made it hard to breathe.
The Dragon Valley was not a normal valley. It was a huge floating graveyard hanging in a pocket of dead space. Below them stretched a landscape made entirely of bones.
Giant rib cages, some as big as mountain ranges, arched toward a sky that was always a bruised shade of dark blue. There was no sun here, only a faint, sickly glow from leftover Dragon Spirit Fire — the last bits of energy from millions of dragons who had died in the old war.
"It feels heavier than the old stories said," Qian Renxue said quietly. Her twelve wings glowed with soft purifying light. The thick grief-miasma — a heavy psychic fog made of the final thoughts of dying dragons — tried to cling to her feathers, but her power burned it away instantly. She didn't need protection. She simply stood out like a warm light in the darkness.
Bibi Dong walked with calm, cold grace. Her eyes scanned the endless bones with the sharp interest of someone who understood darkness well. "This place is more than just a graveyard. It's like a storage room. The amount of raw divine power sitting in these bones… it could probably power an entire galaxy if someone knew how to use it."
Lakan didn't focus on the bones. He focused on the feeling in the air. He raised one hand, and a protective field spread around the group. He wasn't shielding his wives or Ji Dong — they were all God-Kings now. He was simply making sure the space around them stayed safe.
"Don't mind me," Lakan said, his voice cutting through the constant ghostly whispers. "I'm just making the air here a little easier to breathe. The original Dragon God's leftover consciousness is everywhere. He's in the very air we're breathing. If we don't keep our own rhythm, he'll try to mix with our souls. And trust me, you really don't want that to happen."
They walked slowly toward the center of the valley, where a massive crystal structure shaped like a dragon's heart pulsed with a slow, heavy beat.
The moment Gu Yuena's foot touched the ground — which was actually crushed dragon-scale dust — a strange ripple spread outward. For a split second, the grey bones flickered and turned into living dragons, only to shatter back into dust a heartbeat later.
A heavy pressure suddenly came down from the dark sky. It wasn't a physical weight. It was the ancient authority of the Dragon Ancestor, commanding all dragons with lesser blood to kneel. Gu Yuena's knees buckled for a moment. The golden and silver energies inside her started to clash, reacting to the presence of their "father."
"Stay steady, Yuena," Lakan said softly. He didn't touch her, but a warm pulse of violet-gold light from his Phoenix Heart God Core reached into the ground and helped hold her soul steady.
The Spirit Fire began to rise. From the shadows of the giant rib cages, ghostly figures started to appear — echoes of the Nine Great Dragon Kings. They weren't the real Dragon Kings, whose souls had long since moved on. These were echoes made from pure grief and leftover power.
A Fire Dragon King echo lunged first. A wave of ghostly white-hot flames roared toward the group.
Ji Dong stepped forward. He didn't draw a weapon. He simply moved with smooth, flowing motions — the same graceful style he used when mixing drinks back in his old life. He caught the ghostly flame in his right hand and spun it into his left.
"You're a bit late to the party, old man," Ji Dong muttered. With a quick twist of his wrists, he compressed the massive fire wave into a small marble-sized bead of dark glass and tossed it aside. The whole exchange lasted only a few seconds, but the control and precision were perfect.
They kept moving deeper into the valley until they reached the very center.
Sitting on a throne made of obsidian and starlight was a figure that didn't make sense in normal space. He looked like a man, but his shadow was that of a colossal nine-colored dragon. He had no clear face — only a swirling nebula where features should have been.
This was the lingering will of the Original Dragon God.
The moment Gu Yuena saw him, her knees gave out. This wasn't a choice. It was the deep instinct of her blood and soul.
"My child…" the Ancestor's voice didn't come from the figure. It came from inside their bones. "You come seeking the crown. You come seeking the heart. But do you have the strength to carry the grief of an entire species?"
The figure stood up. As he did, the entire Dragon Valley began to flip upside down. The grey sky became the ground, and the bones became the stars. They were no longer in a physical place. They had entered the Dragon God's own mindscape.
Gu Yuena suddenly found herself standing in the middle of a beautiful ancient city — the original Divine Realm before the great war. Beside her was a small boy with gold-and-silver hair, laughing as he chased a butterfly.
The Dragon Prince.
"He was beautiful, wasn't he?" the Ancestor's voice whispered in her ear. "And he is going to die. Because you want to be a God. Because you want to succeed where I failed."
The vision changed. Gu Yuena saw the ritual. She saw the betrayal. But this time she wasn't watching — she was the one holding the knife. The Universe's Will had twisted the memory so that the Prince's death felt like her fault.
"The throne is built on the bones of your own kind, Yuena," the Ancestor hissed. "If you take the heart, you take the madness. You take the screams of every dragon I couldn't save. Are you ready to drown in it?"
Gu Yuena's aura started to flicker. The golden half she had just absorbed reacted violently to the grief, flooding her with self-loathing. She began clawing at her own chest, her violet eyes turning dull and muddy.
"Enough."
Lakan stepped into the vision. He shouldn't have been able to — this was supposed to be a trial only for dragon blood. But Lakan didn't care about rules.
Using Buan ng Bukas, he simply folded the logic of the mindscape and walked through the illusion of the dying Prince like it was nothing but smoke.
He stood behind Gu Yuena and placed a steady hand on her head.
"Don't look at the knife, Yuena," Lakan's voice was solid and real in the middle of the illusion. "Look at the result. The Ancestor is trying to drag you into his past. He's a ghost who thinks the world stopped when his heart broke. But I am the beginning of all things. I am the 'now'."
Lakan's Phoenix Heart God Core pulsed, creating a strong stabilizing presence. He didn't fight the Dragon God's ghost. He simply gave Gu Yuena something steady to hold onto — a clear point in the middle of the storm.
"The Prince didn't die because of you," Lakan said, his gaze turning toward the nebula-faced Ancestor. "He died because you, old man, weren't strong enough to protect him from the Universe's Will. You're trying to pass your failure onto her. But she's not alone. She has a Sovereign standing with her."
The Ancestor's figure wavered. The heavy grief-miasma in the mindscape started to boil as Lakan's Seven-Tone Harmony began to change the feeling of the entire vision.
"You are an intruder, Phoenix!" the Ancestor roared. His shadow grew until it blocked out the mental sun. "This is the Trial of the Blood!"
"And I am the one who decides what the blood means now," Lakan replied, his confident smile flashing with quiet strength. "We're just getting started, old man. You want to show her grief? Fine. I'll show you what comes after grief — growth."
The mindscape began to crack. On one side was the crushing weight of millions of years of dragon history. On the other was Lakan's vast, endless power of possibility.
Gu Yuena gasped. Her eyes cleared as she leaned into Lakan's steady presence. She felt the two halves of her soul — gold and silver — finally stop fighting each other and turn to face the Ancestor together.
The real trial was only beginning.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 5