The Rat Cultivator

Chapter 175: Dharma Treasure Takes Action

ROAR!

A heaven-shaking, earth-shattering bellow erupted from the abyss.

A crimson flood dragon, wreathed in a tornado of soaring black-red flames, violently burst from the depths of Snake Valley. Its scarlet eyes locked onto Wu Yuan, radiating an endless, mindless frenzy of pure killing intent.

This was a fire-attribute flood dragon operating at the absolute peak of Qi Condensation. Its massive, horned skull alone measured over sixty-six feet in length. Standing before it, Wu Yuan looked as insignificant as a speck of dust.

Watching the apocalyptic beast from a safe distance, Wu Yuan’s heart pounded with a mix of shock and scientific awe.

Is this the sheer, reality-bending might of a Dharma Treasure? he marveled inwardly. Even as an incomplete, starved prototype, it possesses the power to forcefully mutate a mundane garden snake into a peak Qi Condensation flood dragon!

However, his analytical eyes quickly noticed the beast’s fatal flaws.

The flood dragon was suffering. As it breached the abyss, it slammed into the suffocating wall of the Spiritual Qi barren zone Wu Yuan had orchestrated. The absolute vacuum acted like a greedy, invisible maw, viciously tearing the latent Spiritual Qi right out of the dragon’s scales.

Furthermore, Wu Yuan spotted faint, cyan-red geometric patterns glowing beneath the beast’s fiery scales—an energy signature entirely incompatible with a fire-attribute demon.

The ancient seal, Wu Yuan deduced. The demon king’s seal is suppressing the artifact, and by extension, its biological puppet.

Snapping back to reality, Wu Yuan tapped his Karma Pearl, his tone laced with annoyance. “You assured me the Dharma Treasure Embryo couldn’t reach me. Care to explain the giant fire dragon?”

[Blue Intelligence: The fire flood dragon was artificially and forcefully elevated from a mundane snake. The host’s physical vessel cannot endure the genetic strain. It will suffer total cellular collapse and perish shortly.]

“Acceptable,” Wu Yuan muttered. “I forgive you.”

ROAR! The flood dragon shrieked in agony. Its overwhelming aura began to plummet at a visible rate. The structural integrity of its massive body wavered, and it began to sink back toward the abyss, unable to sustain its own mass.

Desperate, the beast ignited its own blood and vitality. Crimson, blood-fueled flames erupted across its scales. Its Demon Power surged in a suicidal burn, permanently dropping its overall cultivation down to the late stage of Qi Condensation just to secure enough thrust to break free of the pit’s gravitational pull.

Though the catastrophic decay of its aura slowed, it continued to bleed energy into the vacuum.

Fighting the crushing suction of the barren zone, the flood dragon leveled its massive head and charged directly at Wu Yuan. Its clouded, feral eyes betrayed a total lack of sentience. A single, overriding command echoed in its hollow skull: Kill him! Kill him!

Wu Yuan analyzed the incoming leviathan with deadpan precision. It’s a biological kamikaze. The Dharma Treasure Embryo hijacked a weak vessel and pumped it full of raw power. Its mind is shattered by the bloodline mutation, and its body is actively tearing itself apart.

If I simply dodge and stall for a few minutes, the creature will liquefy into useless gore.

Wu Yuan’s eyes gleamed with intense, predatory greed.

But I want to harvest that specimen intact.

A wicked grin split Wu Yuan’s snout. He casually raised his paws and clapped them together.

In an instant, a colossal, cyan-tinted Formation flared to life around the perimeter of the Spiritual Qi barren zone. Countless illusory cyan feathers materialized in the air, swirling into a hurricane that perfectly encapsulated the dead zone.

This was the First-grade, High Grade Formation: the Hundred Feather Wind Controlling Thousand Changes Formation!

Wu Yuan had long ago mastered the foundational First-grade, Middle Grade Hundred Feather Wind Controlling Formation. While reverse-engineering its ultimate Top Grade evolution—the Spirit Wind Thousand Changes God-Destroying Formation—he had successfully synthesized the ‘thousand changes’ matrix into his base array, forcefully upgrading it to High Grade.

Little Wolf, the Winged Tiger, and Bibo instantly took their positions, acting as the living Formation eyes to anchor the spell matrix.

Inside the dome, hurricane-force winds manifested as thick, invisible ropes, lashing around the fire flood dragon and violently restricting its movements. The gale scooped up tons of water from nearby reserves, crashing it down like a localized tsunami to suppress the beast’s blood-flames. Immediately following the water, a localized blizzard froze the dragon into a towering pillar of ice.

Finally, thousands of wind blades, as fine and sharp as razors, crisscrossed through the air, flaying the beast and leaving a dense grid of lacerations across its scales.

Pushed to the brink of absolute fury, the flood dragon’s eyes burned scarlet. It unhinged its massive jaws and vomited a devastating, concentrated pillar of fire that tore through the ice and swept toward Wu Yuan like a liquid sun.

Wu Yuan didn’t flinch. He activated his Wind Walk Technique, his physical body blurring as he merged seamlessly into the ambient airflow of his own Formation. He vanished like a ghost, effortlessly sidestepping the incinerating beam.

He reappeared outside the blast radius, hands clasped behind his back, calmly observing the monster’s frenzy.

“Brainless brute,” Wu Yuan sneered disdainfully. “You actually think you can touch me?”

The fire flood dragon thrashed, violently ramming its colossal bulk against the cyan barrier. With every impact, the Formation rippled and flickered, groaning under the sheer kinetic force.

However, the massive array of Spirit Stones Wu Yuan had buried underground—the very stones that had drained the Dharma Treasure’s reserves—now continuously pumped that stolen Spiritual Qi back into the barrier, sustaining its structural integrity.

Wu Yuan threw his head back and laughed. “I am using your master’s own stolen Spiritual Qi to power the cage I am beating you with! How does the irony taste?!”

The crimson in the dragon’s eyes darkened to the color of fresh blood. It craned its neck toward the heavens and unleashed a roar that physically shattered the clouds.

Instantly, the sky boiled over with dense, blood-red thunderclouds. The fire flood dragon vaulted into the sky, merging its physical form with the rolling red clouds. Its serpentine silhouette swam through the storm as streaks of liquid fire began to rain down. Deafening thunder clapped; an apocalyptic storm of fire and lightning was about to strike.

“Sky-Burning Thunderfire!”

Wu Yuan recognized the spell matrix. It was a localized, degraded variant of the apocalyptic Thunderfire Tribulation. Judging by the suffocating atmospheric pressure, a direct hit would instantly vaporize an ordinary late-stage Qi Condensation cultivator.

To possess the genetic memory to cast this, Wu Yuan calculated, this mutated bloodline is remarkably pure. It sits at the very apex of the flood dragon tier!

Yet, Wu Yuan made absolutely no move to interrupt the casting.

First, the dragon was hovering directly over the dead zone. The spell’s yield was too high; approaching it would be a tactical error.

Second, attempting to channel a spell of this magnitude while actively being drained by a Spiritual Qi vacuum was biological suicide. It would accelerate the beast’s cellular collapse. Wu Yuan was more than happy to let it burn its own engine out.

The heavens tore open. A torrential sea of liquid fire plummeted from the sky, laced with jagged, crackling lightning. The ambient air superheated, generating concussive sonic booms.

Seeing the incoming apocalypse, Bibo and the others frantically channeled their Demon Power, over-clocking the Formation’s defensive shields.

The sea of fire slammed into the dome. The interior of the Formation was instantly submerged in blinding, scarlet plasma, the heat threatening to glass the very earth beneath it.

BOOM!

The cyan barrier bulged outward like an over-inflated balloon before violently detonating, shattering into a million shards of dissipating spiritual light.

Wu Yuan executed an Earth Walk, diving into the bedrock. He grabbed Bibo and Little Wolf by the scruffs and dragged them deep underground. The Winged Tiger dissolved into a wisp of untouchable wind, scattering before the shockwave hit.

Moments later, Wu Yuan breached the surface. The surrounding landscape had been reduced to a smoking, glassed crater.

“Impressive,” Wu Yuan noted objectively, dusting off his robes. “The raw output of a late-stage Qi Condensation flood dragon is truly formidable.”

The wind coalesced beside him, reforming into the Winged Tiger. The beast stared at the devastation in sheer horror. “Great King! Even if the Wind Feather Magical Artifacts anchoring the array were of lower quality, it shouldn’t have been utterly vaporized while operating in a barren zone! That had to be a Top Grade spell!”

High above, the fire flood dragon poked its scorched head out of the dissipating thunderclouds. The catastrophic energy expenditure had severely crippled it; its aura was violently fluctuating, barely clinging to the late-stage threshold.

Refusing to yield, it locked onto Wu Yuan and dive-bombed toward him for a final, physical strike.

Wu Yuan’s expression remained as placid as a still lake. Standing amidst the smoking ruins, he simply raised his paws and casually clapped them together a second time.

Even with its completely degraded, feral intelligence, the fire flood dragon saw the gesture. Its massive, scarlet eyes bulged in mid-air, a very human flicker of sheer, unadulterated doubt crossing its gaze.