Xiao Lin had a very strange dream. A vague figure appeared in it, and he could neither discern who it was nor see the other party’s face. All he saw was a rough outline. The person seemed to want to tell Xiao Lin something, but the dream came to an abrupt end there.
Xiao Lin regained consciousness and groggily opened his eyes. The blood-colored sky was the first thing that he saw, but the brown soil no longer had dry bones and discarded equipment, only a bare crater.
“Does this mean I survived? Or is this the netherworld?” Xiao Lin was absolutely stupefied. He did not believe that he had the ability to survive the dragon might.
“Is China’s netherworld even capable of controlling Planet Norma?” Lilith taunted.
Xiao Lin looked at the direction of the voice. He discovered Lilith sitting next to him with a fatigued look on her face and exhaled deeply. At the very least, it was a sign that they had survived. The black knight was nowhere to be found, but Xiao Lin found his Holy Soul Sword. The death energy inside the sword was perceivable, which meant that the black knight had probably returned to the Holy Soul Sword.
Where was the black dragon?
Xiao Lin scanned the surroundings and his gaze finally landed on a mountain not far away. The woman in black armor was standing there quietly with her eyes closed, like a sculpture. She seemed to be resting and listening to the silent world.
Lilith explained away his confusion, “The woman retracted her dragon power at the last moment. There’s no turning back once you start something, and although I haven’t reached Legend-rank yet, I’m well aware that strengths of that level would flow back into her body and cause very strong repercussions.”
Xiao Lin was taken aback. “She’s injured?”
“I think so. She was there when I woke up, so it should be a healing method that’s unique to the dragons,” Lilith guessed.
“She forcibly retracted her dragon power in order to save us and was therefore injured by the repercussion?” Xiao Lin repeated in disbelief.
“Who knows? Maybe her emotions were moved because she suddenly thought that you were handsome?” Lilith shrugged and teased casually, but Xiao Lin did not see the humor in that joke at all.
Xiao Lin kept quiet for some time. The black dragon became more and more confusing. She was moody and changed her temper faster than turning the pages of a book. Her killing intent came out of blue, but then she stopped it at the last minute and rescued them.
“Have…you met her before?” Lilith hesitated and asked suddenly.
“Huh? Who?”
“Her!” Lilith felt that Xiao Lin was pretending to be confused, so she gave him an angry look, and pointed at the dragon lady standing in the distance.
“What are you playing at? It’s only been more than four months since I enrolled in the academy. How do you suppose I’ll know an old woman who’s tens of thousands, or actually, hundreds of thousands of years old?” Xiao Lin paused, then asked in confusion, “Why did you suddenly ask me this?”
A look of suspicion flashed in Lilith’s eyes and she finally shook her head. “Nothing. I was just asking.”
Then came a wait. It was a very long one, and the two humans felt that it was best not to disturb the black dragon at that moment. Fortunately, they found a few nearby fruits that they had eaten previously, which were more or less able to curb their hunger.
About seven or eight days later, the dragon lady finally opened her eyes again and walked to Xiao Lin’s side. Xiao Lin and Lilith both had their guards up even though they both knew that it was pointless to do so.
However, the black dragon did not seem to have the slightest intention of attacking them and did not even take out her sword. When she approached, her gaze was fixed on Xiao Lin’s face, with those deep and bright dragon eyes seemingly capable of penetrating right through his heart. Her look was rather odd, and weird thoughts flashed briefly in Xiao Lin’s mind. For some reason, he suddenly remembered the strange dream he had before waking up, specifically the blurry figure which he was unable to see clearly.
“What’s your name?” The dragon lady’s voice was a little hoarse. She retained a low and indifferent tone, but it was lacking slightly in terms of haughtiness.
Xiao Lin was stunned for quite some time. When they first came in, the black dragon did not even bother asking their identity or name at all, because they were regarded as two ordinary humans at best and were no different from the bones scattered on the floor.
“Xiao Lin.” The two words which he spoke in Normese were a transliteration, causing the black dragon to frown and groan for some time before nodding.
“You’re not from this world,” the dragon lady said in a definite tone.
Xiao Lin and Lilith looked at each other. Throughout their entire time there, they never revealed that they were Earthlings. From the initial reaction of the black dragon, she had been trapped here for thousands of years and seemed not to realize that Planet Norma had already been invaded by Earthlings.
Xiao Lin nodded in acknowledgement. His subconscious told him that there was no need to hide those things.
“Is it that blue planet covered completely in water? It’s a very beautiful world. I’d like to go there again,” the black dragon inexplicably mumbled to herself.
Xiao Lin was overcome with shock once again. Was the blue planet filled with water Earth? From her tone, could it be possible that she had been to Earth before?
The joke was getting out of hand!
Xiao Lin carefully observed the black dragon’s expression, but he could not tell if the other party was playing tricks on him or whether she was somehow stealing his and Lilith’s memory and deliberately using those words to cloud their judgement.
The black dragon was actually observing Xiao Lin’s expression, but she eventually just shook her head in disappointment. Not once did she look at Lilith nearby even though Lilith looked inquisitively at the two of them and began wondering to herself.
The atmosphere became a little weird. Xiao Lin was suddenly very interested in the black dragon’s past, but because of the huge power disparity between the two individuals, he hesitated whether or not to take the initiative and ask.
“Are you here to take away that shard? ” The dragon lady nodded as she said, “I’ll just give it to you.”
Lilith finally could not help it anymore and spoke up. “Didn’t you say that your duty is to guard that fragment? Why would you suddenly give it to us now?”
The dragon lady squinted her eyes and stared at her. “I’m just returning it to its original owner. Besides, I said I’d give it to him, not you.”
An irked Lilith was lost for words.
“Is that shard from the Book of Creation?” Xiao Lin asked hesitantly.
“Oh? So, you do know its origins? I guess it isn’t so surprising that you’d know about it.”
Xiao Lin smiled wryly and did not quite understand what the black dragon meant by ‘it isn’t so surprising that you would know about it’. The only reason his guess about the Book of Creation turned out to be correct was purely because Ivan had once told him about it.
After returning from The Final Land, Ivan’s residual memory told him that the Book of Creation had become fragments distributed throughout time and space. Xiao Lin created the Miracle skill because he absorbed the fragment. Lilith ought to possess a similar fragment too if everything happened as it did back then.