The Dragon King was startled upon hearing that name and looked at Liu Taixuan in surprise.
"You! You are truly from that family's bloodline?!" a happy surprise appeared in Old Long's voice.
He might hate humans for what they had done, but apparently dragons still placed great value on and remained loyal to the friendship of those who helped them, even if it was many generations ago.
Aotian, of course, could perceive this easily and admired the simplicity of beasts.
'If humans could be that simple…' He sighed bitterly as he remembered how treacherous and cruel his own race could be.
"Hmm…" Liu Taixuan nodded firmly and imposingly to the dragon as he introduced himself. "I was the patriarch of the Liu Family about two thousand years ago, before passing the position to my grandson."
"Grandson? Not son?" the dragon asked, confused, which also attracted the attention of the little girl beside him.
"It is a long story. Just understand that my son was born with a five-element root, which did not allow him to persist in this world for very long." Liu Taixuan sighed and summarized, not wanting to dwell too much on that painful subject.
"Oh! I understand. The love many humans have for their children is worthy of admiration, even to us spiritual beasts." The dragon nodded sympathetically.
"Uhh… senior Your Highness, the dignified and powerful, majestic Dragon King, from what you say, would it be different in the world of beasts?"
To everyone's surprise, Cang Song, seeing that the atmosphere was favorable, gathered courage from somewhere to ask. Of course, with a bit of excessive caution and respect—his trademark.
The Dragon King looked at him strangely, while the one who asked the question showed only two eyes and a forehead peeking out from behind poor Hui Lang's back, who wore a gloomy expression.
"Human child, you speak funny… but I like it! Hahaha!" Senior Long laughed heartily, approval on his face, not humble at all. "As for your question, well, it depends. For beasts of lower intelligence, if the offspring shows weakness, it may normally be eaten for sustenance, or simply cast aside."
He spoke simply, which made everyone's mouths twitch and caused Aotian to curse internally.
'Damn it, I just praised the simplicity of beasts and immediately get slapped in the face!'
Fortunately, Old Long elaborated, not paying attention to the audience's reaction.
"On the other hand, more intelligent and powerful races, like our dragon race, usually love and value their descendants greatly, regardless of talent, although it may be somewhat humiliating to have a weak offspring, as it becomes synonymous with the parents' bloodline and power being of low level, and that is why their descendant was born without talent—which is often true."
The Dragon King explained with his powerful and vibrant voice, even in his aged body, and shook his head as he continued:
"I believe humans are more or less like this as well, just a little different. The need to maintain face, matters of succession and inheritance, that kind of issue exists in both races, and all of it ends up being harmed by a weak child. But we all still value greatly the little life we helped bring into the world, and thus we guard it carefully in our hearts, even being willing to go to war if someone despises it."
A smile appeared on everyone's faces upon hearing those words, finally easing the previously macabre atmosphere.
Indeed, both races could be different in many aspects, but sometimes love broke those boundaries.
"Well, let's return to the matter," Aotian suddenly spoke, seriousness returning to his face as he turned to look at Liu Taixuan. "Grandpa, what happened after that back then?"
The old man rolled his eyes at him, but still answered, grumbling while Rihai smiled in amusement.
"What else could have happened? We were discovered by those scoundrels from the other families. My family paid a bloody price just to barely save a portion of the dragons' bloodline, with several members even self-destructing when captured so as not to reveal their identity, but even so, we were discovered."
He snorted in displeasure, especially when thinking of those families, whose current patriarchs were the same ones who had joined together to kill his grandson.
"And how did our family survive?" Rihai asked gently, curious and admiring of the family.
With his great-granddaughter asking, Old Liu's face immediately changed. His scowl disappeared, and a gentle grandfatherly softness appeared in his expression.
"We were spared, but burdened with a heavy duty by those families."
He spoke gently to her, as if afraid of frightening her, which made Aotian discreetly roll his eyes.
"What they wanted from us was for us to manage the places that came to be called the Shadowfallen Burial Domain. Which were the four mountains belonging to the dragons in the mid-continents, and the main small world in the central continent."
"Do not think the plan was as simple as merely throwing dispersed impurities into one place and leaving, allowing humans to enter to purify them. Those impurities are extremely fierce, and remaining in their environment for too long is impossible for any living being. Even brief exposures take a very long time to purify, so it would be impossible to fight the impurities by trying to cleanse them in that manner."
"So it was decided that the impurities needed to be purified, but without direct exposure to them, or it would become unviable to continuously send people as disposable material. The demand would simply exceed the available manpower. It was not kindness, it was calculation."
"That was when the idea emerged: Beasts exist in great numbers, they are living beings and, of course, enemies of the human race. The solution? Throw them into the impurities to fight until death and, in the process, purify part of them with their final strength."
"And that was how we discovered that shadow beasts, beasts corrupted by impurities, retained large quantities of them stored within their bodies, and were easy to purify once removed from those shadow fields. But as materials, they lost all value."
"With that discovered, the rest was easy. They threw beasts into the testing grounds, allowed them to be corrupted and store large amounts of impurities in their bodies, and finally, every ten years, attracted most of the impurities from the shadow domains back to the world tree, allowing people to enter to battle and retrieve the beasts' bodies."
"Those who entered also, unknowingly, carried a certain amount of impurities within their own bodies to purify outside over the following years."
"Ten years was enough for beasts to leave offspring behind, and for a new generation of humans to enter and carry the impurities once again."
"The idea was cruel, but effective. The growth of impurities within the world tree entered a delicate balance, and what should have lasted only a thousand years before the tree could no longer endure was dragged out to the present day, more than ten million years later."
"And what about our Liu Family? Well, branded as traitors to humanity, we were not exterminated, but forced to become the guardians of those shadowy lands and the ones responsible for sending millions of beasts every year into those places, to become the fuel that sustains the world."
"From human traitors, we became the executioners of beasts."
A dark glint flickered in Liu Taixuan's eyes, shocking everyone around him.
At that same instant, an extremely heavy and furious aura fell upon everyone.
The old dragon's eyes were red as he stared at Liu Taixuan with extreme fury.
"You!!" A hoarse shout, accompanied by a roar that pressured everyone and seemed to make the world tremble, came from the dragon's throat. "How could you?! You swore to be our allies!"
"Silence!"
An even louder shout came from Liu Taixuan, his face dark, freezing the atmosphere.
Old Liu clenched his fists as he stared coldly at the dragon.
"Hmph! Do you know what you're talking about? There is nothing more loyal than the sacrifice my Liu Family made for you dragons. Because of you, for millions of years we became unwanted rats in the Lingxi world."
"Do you think we wanted to become the guardians of those places? Do you know how many members of my family fell in that endeavor, whether capturing beasts or entering that shadow world to verify whether the formations were functioning properly?"
"We are loyal, but we have our own families, and they come before you dragons to whom we swore loyalty, and far before ten trillion beasts with whom we never had any agreement. Can you imagine how cruel humans can be? What they would have done to my family at that time if we had refused to take on that burden?"
"I tell you, the millions of years of humiliation we suffered afterward would not compare to what they would have done back then if we had refused their demand. Torturing our men, raping our women, enslaving our children—those would have been the bare minimum."
"Even if we hid in our ancestral small world, many people would be left behind to bear their wrath, and they would have thrown all the impurities of the tree into our branch until we collapsed, just as they did with this Mahayana mansion."
"In the end, we would have suffered a fate worse than death, and they would continue sending beasts to the shadow domains in greater numbers and in an even crueler manner than us."
Old Liu snorted, dissatisfied.
He did not feel ashamed of the choice his family made back then, because they simply had very little choice. But even so, each person had to live with their sins, and the Liu Family had never been proud of those acts.
After that outburst, he calmed down considerably and finally explained the rest, more for his frightened great-granddaughter than for the others, who stared at him in silence, surprised and bitter.
"It was only later that we discovered that if we planted spiritual herbs and set up formations to shield them from impurities within those domains, the surrounding Shadow Beasts—unable to destroy them—would instead absorb the impurities into themselves. This, in turn, greatly nourished the herbs, allowing them to grow to superb quality."
"Ironically, in doing so, the Shadow Beasts came to resemble guardians of the very herbs they sought to destroy."
"Since then, with a paradise for powerful herbs to flourish at our disposal, my family secretly turned this advantage toward our own growth. One day, those same families who once humiliated the Liu Family suddenly discovered that we had cultivated enough strength to crush them. Although we could not face them all at once, our power was sufficient to establish a delicate balance, preventing them from daring to wage war lightly."
"Thus, we went from one of the most decadent families among the Mahayana families to the strongest and absolute one."
"And even so, after everything we went through, we still remembered the old friendship, and with our influence, we interrupted the formations that sent impurities to this branch, where the Dragon Sovereign's Mahayana mansion was located—something those families had to accept against their will."
"If not for that, the branch where this mansion is would not have fallen only about ten thousand years ago. On the contrary, it would have been completely destroyed millions of years ago."
With those words, the old man fell silent with an unsatisfied expression.
Senior Long looked at him in shock, and many things that he and his ancestors did not understand in the past finally became clear.
About seven million years ago, the dragon descendants had been on the verge of collapse, and even with the help of the mansion's formations, many of his family had died due to the fierce impurities. But then, one day, the uninterrupted flow of impurities simply stopped, finally allowing them to rest and making a counterattack possible.
Although even today they still suffered and had lost many to the remaining impurities inside the mansion, at least they were alive. And apparently, it was because of these allies who had saved them—allies who had also lost as much as they had back then to protect them, and whom he had now wrongly judged.
Remaining silent for a while, which worried the little dragon girl, who tugged at his robes with a distressed look, Senior Long finally spoke.
"Forgive me. I sincerely thank your family and your ancestors for not forgetting us."
The dragon's words were sincere, and a bitter sigh left his mouth.
He no longer blamed them. Everything had simply been an enormous tide of misfortune, with disasters happening one after another.
Except for the cruel human families, it could not be said that it was anyone's fault. If the immortal world had not been in that state, the sovereign would not have been corrupted, and everyone's fate would have been very different.
No one could predict the future, only adapt to circumstances.
Liu Taixuan snorted for a moment, but accepted the apology, restoring their friendship.
But only he knew how divided his heart truly was.
What he had not made clear was that even after gaining the right to speak for themselves, his family continued sending beasts to those places as their responsibility, thus prolonging the world's lifespan to the present day.
Whatever the case, he could never say he was innocent, and his hands were as stained with blood as anyone else from those families.