Chapter 1 The Kerba Empire, the Northern Cobol Mountains

Everything was silent. Withered woodlands and snow tracks stretched across the landscape, littered with corpses.

The black poisonous mist released by the World Serpent had dissipated, but the lives lost would never return.

After running for a long time, entering the mountains, and with Aura's body and artificial core reaching their limits due to prolonged activity, Su Zhou allowed her to proceed slowly. This also gave him a chance to observe the surrounding situation.

The Cobol Mountains were a typical fold mountain range, formed by the collision of the northern continental plate and the polar plate. Further north were a series of active volcanic areas. The collision of ice and magma was a spectacular sight at the border. If it weren't for the Dragon Orb War, hundreds of thousands of tourists would come here every year for vacation and sightseeing.

But now, the once scenic and magnificent Cobol Mountains were a desolate and silent wasteland.

The physical collision between Jormungandr and Leviathan had completely changed the terrain of a small portion of the mountain range. Su Zhou observed the peaks that had been either crushed or blown away, and then estimated the power output of his true form, shaking his head.

Although the true form of the Undying Dragon was already enormous, it was still slightly lacking compared to mythical beasts like Jormungandr and Leviathan, which were thousands of meters long and could devour an entire mountain in one bite. To defeat them, he needed a powerful energy burst, not a foolish contest of brute strength.

One must know that the complete forms of these behemoths were likely planet-level super monsters. Competing with them in that regard was pointless.

Because the aftershocks of the battle between the dragons had killed almost all the creatures in the entire mountain range, Su Zhou hadn't seen any living magical beasts along the way—although there were plenty of corpses. Outside the withered pine trees and caves, one could often see large wild beasts that had been either poisoned or shaken to death. In life, they might have reached the Awakening stage, and some even the Transcendent stage, probably the local beast kings.

Su Zhou observed these magical beast corpses mainly to utilize any useful parts, hoping to provide some help for the restoration of his true form. Unfortunately, his true form was at the commanding high level, and these wild beasts, aside from being small in size, didn't even have spiritual organs strong enough to meet Su Zhou's requirements.

Troubled by this, the youth often looked towards the distant mountain peak, at the enormous corpse of Jormungandr.

It had to be said that Jormungandr was three to four times larger than when it first fought Su Zhou—its appetite unleashed by its summoner, the ravenous serpent had devoured a mountain peak on the spot before engaging in a fierce battle with its enemies.

If it continued to eat, destroying the world would be no surprise.

Of course, it was eventually defeated. Su Zhou could see that the serpent's head was scorched black, clearly blasted to death by Yinglong with a Five Directions Divine Thunder attack, accumulated with the power of heaven and earth.

This was similar to the Norse myths—the giant serpent being killed by lightning, another version of the same tale.

As for why Su Zhou didn't directly use Jormungandr's flesh and blood, the answer was simple.

He didn't have a stomach right now.

And he didn't have the time to utilize it.

The requirements for flesh and blood used to shape the true form were very high. At the very least, it should have a close relationship with the shaper himself—Su Zhou was able to use the flesh and blood of the Water God to shape his true form because he had gone through the 'eating and transformation' process, turning the Water God's flesh and blood into his own.

But now, Su Zhou's true form was just a head. Eating was possible, but he lacked the strength to transform it.

Of course, this didn't really stump Su Zhou. He could use the starfish method to directly digest Jormungandr's flesh and blood externally... Admittedly, it was a bit grotesque, but as mentioned before, transcendent beings are transcendent beings…

But the most important thing was the lack of time.

Jormungandr's flesh and blood were, in a sense, the spoils of war for the dragon combination of Leviathan and Yinglong. Su Zhou was certain that once he started using Jormungandr's flesh and blood, those two parties would notice and come to attack him—and at that time, he would be busy with the transformation, unable to defend, let alone counterattack. He would certainly be killed with one blow.

Even if he set up traps and formations and let Aura control them, it was impossible for the artificial girl to suddenly master formations and block the combined attack of two dragons.

Therefore, Jormungandr's flesh and blood were currently just for show, and couldn't actually be used.

In fact, it was a trap, used to lure Su Zhou, who was missing his body.

"Let's go, Aura, to the other side… Hmm, wait?"

Su Zhou guided Aura to advance discreetly through the mountains. After looking around, he found that there were indeed no magical beast corpses that he could use, so he planned to change areas.

However, when the artificial girl asked with some puzzlement, 'Is the other side the left or the right, the top or the bottom?', Su Zhou suddenly changed his mind: "Aura, go to the corpse of that magical bear over there, let me get closer and see the situation."

"Okay."

Nodding obediently, Aura quickly leaped to the location of the magic bear—as expected of a specially-made artificial being for summoning dragons, Su Zhou felt that the other party's physical standards, even without using spiritual energy, were at the middle or high Awakening stage. If she learned to use the power within her body, then relying on the 'artificial core' that had already become a transcendent organ, a quick Transcendent stage wouldn't be a dream.

And as he approached the magic bear, Su Zhou controlled his hair to carefully touch and sense this magic beast corpse, which was probably poisoned to death by Jormungandr's snake venom, and revealed a thoughtful expression.

"This magic bear was implanted with dragon blood after birth—and looking at the scales under the skin, and the degeneration of the internal organs… it's actually Yinglong bloodline?"

"What exactly have Matvey's group been researching in the northern mountains for these past ten years?"

After receiving the information from Mikhail, Su Zhou was quite familiar with Matvey. He knew very well that this priest, who had betrayed the church and joined the royal family's camp, had been staying in these mountains since he first appeared in the north more than ten years ago, doing who knows what.

Although it was now known that he was probably searching for the Dragon Orb obtained by the hunter Fent, located in the ancient Dragon Worship altar underground, there was no doubt that he hadn't been idle during this time of searching for the Dragon Orb.

Afterwards, Su Zhou and Aura analyzed the corpses of several other magical beasts together.

The result was not unexpected. The bodies of most of the magical beasts had traces of dragon blood modification to varying degrees. This modification was not aimed at making these beasts stronger, but seemed to be observing a certain phenomenon. Su Zhou's dragon eyes could observe that the dragon blood was integrated with the flesh and blood of these magical beasts, as if they were inherently one, without any rejection reaction.

It had to be said that this zero-rejection technology, even if it were placed on Earth now, would be an extremely valuable thing—for example, the brain chips that the American Federation was developing, the most important thing was to eliminate the rejection reactions between the chip and various electronic implants and the body.

This was a subject that several national-level research teams had not been able to solve. He didn't expect that Matvey, an ordinary priest, would actually complete this research by relying on dragon blood… Of course, it was also possible that the life constitution of this world was special, after all, it was said that all races were differentiated from the 'Dragon of Life'.

"What does no rejection mean…"

Su Zhou didn't have a laboratory or more information now, so he couldn't deduce what it was specifically for, but at least he knew that the experiment Matvey was conducting here definitely had a purpose, and he had to restore his strength as soon as possible to prevent the other party from completing the plan.

"What is Su Zhou troubled about now?"

Just as Su Zhou was pondering, the white-haired artificial girl hugged her head and asked with some puzzlement: "For the victory of the Dragon Orb War, I will fully assist you."

"The main problem is that I need high-quality magic beast flesh and blood to restore my body—but the largest and highest-quality flesh and blood cannot be used."

Although Su Zhou didn't think Aura could give any suggestions, he still seriously stated his current predicament, which was a minimum of respect: "So I am now troubled whether to piece together a 'chimera' (mosaic) body with some low-quality flesh and blood, and then slowly assimilate and restore it to my Undying Dragon true form, or take a gamble, devour Jormungandr's flesh and blood to restore my strength, and then see if the enemy comes faster, or I recover faster."

Neither of these two methods was perfect, and they both had their own obvious drawbacks—the former was too weak and took too long to recover. Although it wouldn't attract attention, who knew, by the time Su Zhou recovered, the royal duo would have already gathered five Dragon Orbs and come over for a four-on-one fight with the two dragons and two summoners, while the latter might cause the other party to come over for a four-on-one fight now.

Aura nodded seriously to this, and then began to think.

Su Zhou could even hear the sound of the other party controlling the blood in her body to rush to her brain, accelerating her thinking.

And then, a soft, and questioning voice sounded.

"Why do you need to transform?"

In Su Zhou's serious listening, without holding much hope, the artificial girl honestly said the first thought she had come up with, using her own mind: "This step of transforming the flesh and blood into the Undying Dragon true form is actually unnecessary, right."

"Just like we artificial beings can replace each other's hands, feet, or heads, there is no need to 'transform' other people's flesh and blood into 'one's own', because they can be used in common anyway… Although Su Zhou and Jormungandr are both dragons, not artificial beings, I think that if it is Su Zhou, he should be similar to artificial beings—why insist on transforming into his own true form?"

At this moment, the scene of the girl holding the youth's head next to the huge magic bear corpse was quite convincing—in Aura's eyes, Su Zhou, who could remove his head at will, was indeed no different from an artificial being who could replace his hands and feet at will.

"What you said… seems to be indeed…"

At first, he didn't quite understand, Su Zhou first blinked, thought for a while, and then suddenly realized: "Oh, that's right!"

"As expected of you, Aura!"

Inspired by the artificial being's specific thinking, Su Zhou suddenly realized that his thinking didn't seem modern enough—yes, that's right, why did he have to think about restoring his Undying Dragon true form?

To put it bluntly, his true form was just a composite weapon, like a multi-functional chariot, loaded with a large number of cannons and rockets he designed himself. It was very easy to use. 100 points of combat power could be used to exert 120 points.

However, on the battlefield, it was normal for the chariot to be destroyed, and at that time, if the driver was still alive, he would either fight as an infantryman, or use the parts scattered on the battlefield to rebuild a chariot.

Su Zhou's own cognitive bias lay in this point—he was too good at using the parts scattered on the battlefield to re-manufacture his chariot, so that when he found an enemy camp's chariot that was barely usable after some repairs, he didn't think about driving it himself, but instead about tearing it down and modifying it into his own chariot!

In that case, the time spent would be enough for the enemy to react and directly kill him who was repairing… But what if he just sat in and started it directly? Then, even the most responsive enemy wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on, right?

At that time, Su Zhou, who had gotten into someone else's chariot and could exert 70 to 80 points of combat power out of 100, would have the time and leeway to either continue transforming his body, or adapt to the new chariot!

After all, unlike other dragons and snakes, Su Zhou held the 'Yala Undying Blood', which was closely related to all the dragons and snakes in the entire multiverse, and had no rejection reaction!

"Thank you, girl!"

The youth seriously praised Aura, and the artificial girl also nodded generously, as if saying 'as expected of me'—but in fact, Aura was just using the basic reactions in the artificial being system to respond to gratitude.

At this time, Su Zhou turned his head and looked at Jormungandr's corpse in the distance with fiery eyes.

Now, the flesh and blood of that behemoth, in his eyes, had changed from 'a pile of excellent parts' into 'a chariot that could be used'!

"Isn't this still pretty intact? Sure enough, it's because my true form was shaped by devouring the flesh and blood of the Water God, so I fell into this cognitive bias… This is probably cognitive impairment."

"No time to waste—Aura!"

Saying so, calling out the artificial girl's name, the modern dragon's tone was solemn: "Take me there!"

"Go to the mountain in the front left, where 'Jormungandr's corpse' is located!"

And just as Su Zhou broke through the cognitive bias and found a way to break the situation.

North of Maya Territory, on the edge of the wilderness, at the foot of a small mountain, an unmanned logging cabin.

A woman with disheveled hair was squatting in a corner of the room, hugging her knees, motionless.

One could see that this lady, whose appearance was not bad and whose temperament was quite elegant, had a blank look in her eyes at this moment, without any anxiety.

At this moment when the progress of the Dragon Orb War had already reached more than half.

The summoner of Gorgon, the wandering mage Evelyn, had fallen into deep confusion for various reasons.