The shell pulsed again that night.
A faint chime, like a fingernail tapping against a crystal cup, echoed through Xu Mang's consciousness as he slept. He opened his eyes instantly. The dorm room was dark, but the Black Tortoise Pendant was glowing beneath his uniform, casting slow-moving ripples across the ceiling like reflections from deep water.
Xu Mang sat up, heart steady, eyes sharp.
Not a dream, he thought. The Summoning Plane is stirring again.
He placed his hand over the pendant. At once, the familiar tug — a pull from behind his ribs, as if something was hooking his soul forward — rippled through him.
The last time he'd gone through, he had nearly died.
He'd returned broken, half-crushed by the dragon's aftershock, clutching the Lightning Calamity fruit like a man dragging treasure from a burning building.
But tonight felt different.
The pull was not violent. It was a… summons.
"Fine," Xu Mang murmured. "Let's see what's calling me."
He closed his eyes, straightened his spine, and let himself fall.
—
The world shifted.
At first there was only darkness, then a thin silver ring opened beneath him like a moon splitting the sky. Xu Mang stepped through and found himself once more above the Lightning Plane — that broken land of charred earth and endless thunder.
But it had changed.
Three months ago, lightning had fallen in mad sheets. Today, the storm was quieter, simmering with an unsettled hunger. Bolts flickered in the distance like the nervous tremors of an injured beast.
Xu Mang hovered above the shattered terrain in his spiritual form. The pendant tethered him like an anchor; he could feel the limit of his connection. He couldn't wander far. His beginner's cultivation could only hold the link open for minutes at a time.
Below, where the Crystal Tree once stood, there was now a crater.
Black, cracked, and humming with lingering power.
Xu Mang descended, touching down lightly on the broken ground. His soul-body pulsed with faint silver light, steady but fragile.
He crouched beside the crater and extended his senses.
Faint sparks of elemental residue brushed against him — remnants of the Lightning Calamity, still alive in small pockets beneath the crust.
This is where it happened… the last bolt, the fall of the mountain, the dragon's claw.
He waited, listening.
Then he heard it.
A low, drawn-out exhale.
Distant, but unmistakable.
The hair on Xu Mang's arms rose.
Dragons did not die easily. Even struck by peak calamity lightning, such ancient beings clung to existence with a stubbornness older than time.
The exhale came again, closer.
Xu Mang turned slowly.
There, half-buried in magma-blackened stone, lay a creature the size of a small hill. Its scales were fractured, glowing faintly as electricity crawled through them. A wing hung torn, half-disintegrated from the calamity's baptism. Its eyes were closed, breaths ragged and shallow.
It survived…?
He approached with caution. Even dying, a dragon could erase him like dust.
The dragon's eyelids twitched. Blue-white lightning spilled from the cracks between its scales, illuminating the world around it.
Then—
Its eye opened.
A vertical pupil, ancient and blazing with stormlight, stared directly at him.
Xu Mang did not move.
Neither did the dragon.
They regarded one another in heavy silence, two beings connected by an event neither could forget.
Then the dragon's gaze shifted—not to him, but to the shell in his hand.
A soft crack sounded from within the egg, like ice breaking on a frozen lake. A faint light seeped through the fractures — a gentle blue glow that made the near-dead dragon inhale sharply.
Recognition.
The beast understood what he held.
The child you came to eat, Xu Mang realized.
The last of a lightning lineage that survives because I stole it first.
The dragon's chest rose and fell heavily. Its gaze softened, anger melting into something older — a kind of instinct, maybe even reverence.
The shell pulsed again.
The dragon responded with a low rumble that vibrated through the ground.
Xu Mang's breath caught.
The dragon wasn't here to kill him.
It was here to submit.
In the Summoning Plane, bloodlines meant everything. If a child of a royal lineage survived a calamity, every lesser creature bowed to it — and every greater creature acknowledged it.
Even near death, the dragon bowed its head.
"You…" Xu Mang whispered, stunned. "You're offering allegiance."
The dragon closed its eyes and lowered its broken wing, revealing its throat — the universal gesture of binding oath among high-level magic beasts.
Lightning gathered in the creature's chest. Slowly, painfully, it shaped itself into a small orb of crackling light.
A Soul Brand.
A dragon's blessing.
Something that could raise a mere human to terrifying heights — if the human survived taking it.
Xu Mang's fingers tightened around the egg. He could feel the little life inside stir, responding to the dragon's presence. The pendant grew warm, as if urging him to accept.
"Not yet," Xu Mang whispered. "I can't… not like this. I'm not strong enough."
The dragon rumbled again — softer, almost gentle — then pressed its snout to the ground, nudging the Soul Brand forward.
A gift.
Not a contract.
A promise.
In the distance, Xu Mang felt the pull of his physical body — the tether weakening.
"I'll return," he said quietly. "When I'm stronger. When I've earned the right."
The dragon's eye half-closed as if approving.
Xu Mang reached out with his spiritual hand and touched the Soul Brand. It flickered, shrinking to a faint spark before absorbing into his chest, marking him lightly — a thread of connection, not yet a chain.
The Summoning Plane shook once more, the silver ring below him widening.
Time was up.
He tightened his grip on the egg. "Sleep a little longer," he whispered to the unborn spirit. "When you wake, we won't be weak."
The pendant yanked him back.
Lightning flashed.
The world folded.
—
He woke in his dorm with a sharp inhale, the taste of thunder still on his tongue. Sweat beaded his forehead. The egg in his arms glowed faintly with warm, pulsing light.
Xu Mang leaned back against the wall, breath unsteady. He remembered that Lu Jun was trying to become an emperor. He knew that Mo fan was going to become the Next God of Evil but none of them had the knowledge he had.
"So the dragon lives…" he murmured. "And its debt lives with it."
He closed his eyes. This is a true dragon on par with the Black Dragon Emperor "AUSTIN" if I can claim him I will become truly invincible even before my plan of become the Undead King.
Bo City remained peaceful for now.
Classes went on as usual.
Students complained about tests.
Teachers gossiped about his absence.
But in another realm—
A dragon waited for him.
A child of lightning grew beneath its shell.
And the Summoning Plane had begun marking him as one of its own.
The storm was gathering again.