Dragon Tamer

At the end of the valley lay a continuous stone wall.

There were many cracks in this stone wall as if it had been crushed by some heavy object.

The unusual chill that they had felt before seemed to surge from these very fissures.

This was supposed to be a sheer cliff, and behind it should have been a thick layer of rock; logically, there shouldn’t have been such an air current.

“It seems to be right here,” Zhu Minglang said, pointing at the stone wall at the end of the valley.

However, the cracks were actually not large, and it was impossible for a person to pass through. Zhu Minglang turned his gaze to Li Xinghua at his side.

Li Xinghua approached the vast and extensive stone wall, and extended her palm to gently press it against the rocky barrier.

At the same time, a faint light slowly emanated from the cracks, as if there was a hidden pool within the stone wall, and the light it emitted was like that of noctilucent algae.

Soon, dense and intricate lines appeared on the continuous stone wall, following these dim trails of light, Zhu Minglang saw a pitch-black crack, resembling a secluded valley passage, hidden beneath that solid layer of rock!

There were actually Ancient Ruins!!

Gazing at that dark crevice, Zhu Minglang could not help but walk curiously toward it.

Li Xinghua’s eyes also brightened, beautiful and confident, she followed at Zhu Minglang’s side, stepping into the spatial fissure hidden at the valley’s end. Despite not knowing what the world abandoned by the years inside the crack was like, the desire to explore still dominated everything.

“The entrance to the Ancient Ruins generally has more than one opening. Those Mourning Dragons did not discover this fissure,” Li Xinghua told Zhu Minglang.

“This crack, it shouldn’t be one-way, right? Once we go in, we can’t come out?” Zhu Minglang asked.

“No, it’s just that some cracks may change, possibly disappearing or new ones may appear, but those are changes that occur only every few decades or centuries,” Li Xinghua explained.

Entering the fissure, they were engulfed in darkness, and the surroundings felt somewhat cramped as though walking within a crevice of a giant rock layer. The previously biting wind attacked them, making the discomfort grow.

Zhu Minglang led the way, and after about ten minutes, the luminous glow akin to that of a hidden pool appeared in front of them again!

Passing through the luminescent patterns of the pool, another valley materialized before their eyes.

For an instant, Zhu Minglang felt as if he and Li Xinghua had merely passed through the stone wall to another side of the valley. However, as they fully stepped into the valley and noticed everything was disproportionately large, Zhu Minglang then realized they had indeed entered the Ancient Ruins!

The ‘enormous’ Zhu Minglang referred to was everything he could see.

The trees here were truly towering enough to overshadow the sun and cast the entire valley ruins into semi-darkness.

Ahead was a dense thicket, yet walking within this growth, one would be completely submerged. At times, what were once the most ordinary wild rabbits, were now as large as adult oxen, their cute natures, in this place, somehow frightening.

“There should be a stream up ahead,” Li Xinghua said.

They made their way through the undergrowth, and a long valley stream appeared before them.

To call it a stream was an understatement; it was no different from a river. In this ruin, everything seemed to have been magnified several times by the Creator—even the pebbles in the stream were the size of a human fist, not to mention the creatures within the stream!

Zhu Minglang saw a Long-necked Ancient Dragon, its shoulders alone measuring fifty meters in width, and that did not even account for when it lifted its neck. Standing before such a creature, indeed, a person was no different from a mosquito.

The Long-necked Ancient Dragon was drinking water. It was clearly a herbivorous creature and showed no interest in humans, such small beings. Even if one walked past it, the dragon would not attack.

Zhu Minglang took out the water bags he had prepared and gathered the clean water from this source.

With Bai Qi’s Universe Magic, he was able to carry enough water for all the people and dragons to drink for three days.

Once he had enough water, Zhu Minglang scooped up some stream water himself to taste, to see if there was anything different about the millennia-old water from the Ancient Ruins. Indeed, water was still water!

“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

A series of noisy sounds arose, and from the grassy woods that Zhu Minglang and Li Xinghua had walked past, a swarm of black-striped, red-headed poisonous flies emerged, attacking the gentle Long-necked Ancient Dragon!

The poisonous flies were large, the size of hawks in the outside world. When such flies swarmed together, the poison they carried was too much for even dragon beasts to withstand.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the Long-necked Ancient Dragon to be overwhelmed. The poison spread throughout its body, leaving it without the strength to flee.

“Look at the stream,” Li Xinghua said urgently, pointing at a spot.

Some of the poisonous fly’s venom had sprayed into the stream, and the water quickly showed signs of contamination…

However, it was unclear whether the streams of the Ancient Ruins possessed their own cleansing abilities or if nature’s cycle here was remarkably fast. The contaminated stream recovered quickly without the pollution spreading to the entire stream.

“Buzz!!!!!!”

A terribly noisy buzz rang out, and from the dense bush flew a ferocious and terrifying dragon—it was a Poisonous Dragonfly!

The Poisonous Dragonfly drove away the other poisonous flies and enjoyed the Long-necked Ancient Dragon by itself. It had a semi-transparent poison sac on its abdomen, very similar to the Polluted Night Mourning Dragon!

Indeed, the fearsome and powerful Mourning Dragons of Pear Blossom Gully were originally from these Ancient Ruins.

Some of the overly bizarre and dominant ancient creatures within the Ancient Ruins caused the Mourning Dragons, which should have gone extinct, to evolve, endowing them with terrifying abilities.

Because these powers came from the ancients, it was difficult for humans to find countermeasures, and it was even harder to find antidotes in nature due to the absence of corresponding substances to counteract the poison.

Since they had seen the Poisonous Dragonfly, finding an antidote wouldn’t be hard, as most highly toxic creatures had antidotes in their habitat.

This was common knowledge in nature, not because highly poisonous creatures feared poisoning themselves and thus placed antidotes nearby. Rather, it was because these creatures carried terrible toxins which would undoubtedly have adverse effects on their surrounding environment. If certain plants and creatures coexisted peacefully, it inherently proved they had immunity to the toxins.

Tracking the Poisonous Dragonfly, which had eaten its fill, Zhu Minglang and Li Xinghua found its nest on a strange tree that looked covered in tumors.

The Magic Tree was surprisingly large, with dozens of main trunks and hundreds, if not thousands of branches. The size of each branch was comparable to the trunks of ancient pines!

“These resins can detoxify,” Li Xinghua said with certainty.

Without hesitating, Zhu Minglang immediately had Little White grind its claws on the thick tree bark, while he used an empty water bag to collect an adequate amount of tree resin.

With this resin, the water source of Pear Blossom Gully could be purified!

At least, a major crisis was alleviated!