Slime True Immortal

The sky was heavy and dull. Winter in the Dark Realm already rarely saw sunlight, and the Gray Mist lingered year-round, as if someone had draped a thick, permanent felt over this land.

“M…m…”

On top of the Mage Tower in Darkness City, two Slime Mages were dutifully bouncing on the tower’s rooftop platform, monitoring movements in the sky around the tower.

After the last time a mage from Dawn City rashly flew across the border without being detected in time, Chen Yu and the Slime Scholars had researched and improved a batch of sensing formations from Xu Xuan Heaven.

This composite surveillance array, officially named the "M-Eye," consisted of twelve nested sub-arrays. Some monitored shadow fluctuations, some sensed life auras, some detected temperature shifts, and others specifically probed soul disturbances….

Although they were essentially small arrays similar to those Foundation Establishment practitioners used to guard their Cultivation Grottos, they consumed very little spiritual energy while covering far wider sensing ranges than spells of the same tier. A standard Mage Tower could thus cover every conventional perception dimension within dozens of miles.

Most importantly, the creatures of Zeyarila had never seen formations from Xu Xuan Heaven and generally did not know how to guard against them.

The decision council’s Slime Scholars approved the construction of thirty such Mage Towers. Most were deployed along the mountain border and the Dark Realm, while Outposts and the Gel Network covered the remaining areas.

Together they formed a vast perception web that nearly enveloped all of the empire’s key regions and remained connected to the Gel Network in real time.

Any abnormal fluctuation would be delivered to Silver Sparrow’s core at the first moment, then distributed by her to the relevant stationed legions and the Slime Palace according to threat level.

The two Slime Mages on duty at the tower’s summit remained diligent. One crouched beside the Formation Eye of the primary sensing array, while the other went back and forth, checking the operation of the twelve sub-array plates.

The Dark Realm was as quiet as ever. The Gray Mist flowed slowly, the mountain range in the distance sketched out blurred black silhouettes, and a few shadow bats that flew through the fog were captured by the detection array and automatically marked as routine wildlife activity—no alarm triggered.

The Slime Mage assigned to patrol the arrays had been bouncing back and forth for hours. Finally he couldn’t hold on any longer, flopped beside an array plate, and the orange gel bubbled with small air pockets as he sighed about another peaceful day.

The other Slime Mage, still on duty, suddenly widened his tiny eyes and his entire body bounced backward several times before he steadied himself, then collapsed onto the soft mat.

“M! A dragon! A huge dragon!”

“Silver, heading west, target: Winterhold!”

The orange slime on the ground was so frightened by his companion’s shout that he rolled and bounced, slammed into an array plate several times, and then, dizzy, flopped toward the gel communicator and sent the information into the Gel Network as fast as he could.

Moments later, the message relayed across one Gel Signal Tower after another, reaching the Merchant Alliance.

Chen Yu was inspecting the Merchant Alliance’s newly built oceanic warehouse district at the port, listening to the Alliance’s financial officer report the quarterly import totals for Gray Gravel Crystal.

Silver Sparrow’s cool voice sounded in his Divine Sense.

“Master, the Darkness City Mage Tower M-Eye reports an unregistered silver dragon crossing border airspace from east to west. The dragon is enormous. Based on flight trajectory prediction, the target is Winterhold.”

“When did the empire get so popular that even true dragons came to join the party,” Chen Yu muttered.

Despite the joke, he already had a rough idea of the dragon’s purpose.

True dragons weren’t the kind of Magical Creatures you just bumped into out in the wild; the number of draconic winged lineages under that little Lu’s domain could be counted on one hand.

And the only person in Winterhold who had anything to do with strongsha was Olivia.

Olivia’s family wouldn’t host outsiders for no reason.

Normally, he would be quite curious—chatting with a dragon-winged elder about Astral Realm explorations might yield tidbits about Xu Xuan Heaven.

But Olivia was still sleeping outside the Dragon Pearl, and his old dragon body lay under the snow.

Yes, that uneasy premonition felt really bad….

Oros flew through the Dark Realm’s winter gloom.

When his wings swept through the Gray Mist, the vapor churned under the dragon’s wingbeats, occasionally revealing scattered lights on the ground below.

As an ancient silver dragon over fifteen hundred years old, he had lived long enough to remember the faces of every lord who had ruled this land.

Long ago, this place had been a giant’s hunting ground. Those mountain-sized beings regarded dragonkind as their only rivals.

When the giants declined, the land was carved up by dark races: the vampire clan, the Stone Descendants, the Gargoyles, and various shadowy Magical Creatures... they fought bloody wars here for centuries.

None of that much mattered to Oros. He did not belong to this kingdom. As a scholar he merely glanced more closely whenever he passed through, trying to guess who would be the next owner of this realm.

On his last tour of the Dark Realm, he had seen the vampire clan’s grip on this shadow world. If trends continued, this land should have become a place of chaos.

But he had been wrong—and to his surprise.

Olivia had briefly mentioned in a secret letter that a kingdom led by Slimes had been established.

At the time Oros had thought she was telling a child’s fable. Returning now, the reality he found was far more exaggerated than anything she had described.

He saw a well-ordered empire.

This vast entity ruled by Slimes spanned mountains, swamps, the Dark Realm, the White Horse Kingdom.... nearly the entire eastern continent.

He had been eager to speak with the granddaughter he hadn’t seen in almost a century: to talk about this nascent empire, changes in the Astral Realm, and how rowdy the newborn silver hatchlings in the dragon lair had become.

Long years had hollowed most of his interests, but he still worried about the young dragons forced to leave the nest long ago.

He did not want a careless moment to allow certain ill-intentioned black dragons to do something irreversible to those stranded children.

Now, however, he was also intrigued by the new empire. If possible, he wanted to officially visit the young monarch as a scholar, observe their conduct and thinking, and then include them in his biography.

He imagined how Dawn City’s newspaper would scramble over printing rights; the old editor who had nagged him for decades would surely be ecstatic.

He pulled his thoughts together and looked down at the dim world.

Past an as-yet smoldering volcanic range he saw the planar rift standing at the border. His Astral Realm perception told him the rift opened into a vast Elemental Plane; Winterhold, the city he was searching for, lay beyond.

He could also clearly feel the silver dragon aura coming from the other side of the rift.

Oros uttered a low chant in Dragon Tongue, casting a precise astral locating spell; the silver dragon’s coordinates were quickly locked.

He lifted a talon and tore the air.

Where his claw sliced, ethereal gray mist surged like living water from the void and instantly formed an unstable fissure wide enough for his entire body to pass through.

He tucked his right wing slightly and plunged into the gray mist as the rift took shape.

On the other side the temperature dropped sharply.

A blizzard drove crystalline ice in from all directions, scraping his silver scales and producing a harsh, grating sound.

Such storms were child’s play for an ancient silver dragon.

He lowered his head to scan the snowplain and soon found the city rising in the center of the white expanse.

What he saw then was unforgettable.

Over the crater left by the floating castle, clusters of ice crystals had blossomed like mountains, and deep within the frost a slender silver dragon’s body lay preserved.

The dragon wings were tattered, the scales darkened, and scars still marked the swollen shoulders from old wounds.

This was the child he had once personally guided through storms and rifts to this place.

Olivia—this child—was dead.

Oros froze mid-flight in the blizzard.

He beat his wings to hover above the ice cluster, his snout lowered. The reflected image of that delicate dragon form trapped deep within the ice filled his vertical pupils, and something within his chest silently cracked.

He remembered the excitement when the child said she had found a cure. He remembered personally leaving her on that eternal snowplain and telling her she would be safe inside the castle.

He had promised her.

He had promised that when she recovered he would take her back to the dragon lair, back to the Astral Realm.

He did not know what had happened, but he saw his granddaughter dead and the castle that should have protected her completely vanished from this plane.

The old dragon did not roar.

He simply stared at the thin dragon silhouette trapped beneath the ice, fury burning in his eyes in a silence that grew ever hotter.

Then he suddenly beat his wings and unleashed the storm, sweeping across the sky toward Winterhold.

At the exact same moment, the protective arrays of Floating Winterhold activated. Layer upon layer of pale blue formation shields rose from the city walls.

But when the storm slammed down, those shields shattered in layers—like panes of glass hammered into pieces in a blizzard.

The Slime Mages on the Mage Tower were flung off the array plates by the formation’s recoil and tumbled across the rooftop, struggling to get up.

The storm intensified, and the final layers of the city wall’s protective runes began to flicker.

At that moment, a pale green light streaked across the sky from the direction of the rift.

The light moved at incredible speed, leaving only a fading green arc between the rift’s mouth and the airspace where Oros hovered.

Chen Yu hovered in the heart of the blizzard, his Red Cloak snapping in the gale.

With a flick of his gel hand, the levitating castle materialized out of nowhere, expanding until it loomed between him and Winterhold, blocking the ravaging blizzard from the city.

He glanced downward at Winterhold, nearly swallowed by the storm.

The magical lights on the walls still blinked. Slime guards on the streets were organizing residents toward underground shelters, and several juvenile slimes cowered together in a corner of the wall, trembling.

After blocking the storm, he fixed his small eyes on the ancient silver dragon in the blizzard.

He had rushed here as soon as he could, planning to talk to this unfamiliar dragon.

But this old dragon had not asked a single question—without a word he nearly buried the entire city under snow.

Ah, what a temper. Looks like he would have to give this old beast a beating.

However, when Oros saw the levitating castle Chen Yu summoned, he immediately understood something. His reaction far outstripped his earlier anger.

He roared skyward, fury spewing from his chest.

“Alex! Your descendant is the same as you, with the same despicable nature!”

“Your lies, your betrayals, will all pay the proper price!”

Alex?

The only person he associated with that levitating castle was the Cloud Cliff Dao Master, but before Oros could ponder further, the ancient silver dragon beat his wings and dived toward him.

Silver wings sliced through the blizzard, the claws screaming through the air as he dove.

Chen Yu flicked his gel hand.

[Primordial Unity True Technique]

Layer upon layer of golden protective runes appeared in front of him, the small arrays spinning and interlocking rapidly, resonating into a single defensive formation spanning the sky above the snowplain.

As the runes flowed they cast blazing golden light that pushed the blizzard back dozens of yards.

The dragon slammed into the gold formation with its claws. The impact sent shockwaves outward; the formation shattered layer by layer, but the dragon’s momentum was forcibly halted.

Chen Yu allowed no time for the dragon to recover.

[Primordial Unity True Technique]

[Dragon Bloodline]

[Gel Mimicry]

The gel swelled violently, dragon scales erupted outward, dorsal spines arched up along the spine, and when the wings unfolded the wind pressure swept away the falling snow. Chen Yu swelled from a rotund slime into a jet-black giant dragon whose size rivaled Oros.

He roared and charged, crashing directly into Oros’s chest. The collision of the black dragon form shoved the ancient silver dragon backward several hundred feet.

Once Oros steadied himself and saw the whole black dragon before him, the rage in his vertical pupils not only failed to subside but flared up as if doused with oil.

“Damn black dragon!”

His roar trembled across the entire snowplain.

He lunged again.

[Multiple Claw Strikes]

His claws tore the air and slashed sparks across Chen Yu’s scales while his jaws snapped for the thinnest scales on the black dragon’s neck.

Chen Yu felt that Oros had misunderstood something, but before he could correct the old dragon’s assumption, he planned to land a decisive blow.

With a movement of his Divine Sense, the levitating castle rose higher and crashed into Oros.

The entire castle slammed solidly into the ancient silver dragon’s belly. Oros was hurled away by the impact and beat his wings several times in midair to barely regain control.

But he was a seasoned veteran, far more experienced than Chen Yu. The moment he steadied himself he used the momentum to veer around to the castle’s flank, opened his maw wide, and unleashed a frosty breath from deep within his throat.

Where the breath passed, even the air itself froze into tiny ice crystals. The affected ground on the snowplain instantly erupted into ice mountains.

Chen Yu opened his maw too, and forth came corrosive acid breath laced with dark violet flashes caused by Mana Explosion.

The two breaths collided head-on in midair, producing continuous thunderous detonations as steam and acid vapor spread outward.

Half the impacted snowplain froze into solid ice, while the other half was corroded into pits and black scorched marks.

When the steam cleared, the black and silver dragons faced each other across the levitating castle, both breathing slightly hard.