The time was very late during the night, a few dozen years prior to Xu Ling's defeat under Tian's hands. As for the place, it was a space separated from the outside world by six, thick walls of golden light. The total of six glowing barriers came together to form a closed-off area in the shape of a gigantic cube. Occasionally, ripples would appear atop the object's surface, as if a rock had been thrown into a formerly calm pond. Above the golden cube lay a golden-scaled dragon the size of a whole mountain range. Its body extended for dozens upon dozens of miles and was coiled up into a single spiral. Crimson strands of hair made up its goatee and mane, while five sets of claws were attached to the beast's middle body.
Although its body was rock-still as if it were sleeping, the dragon's pair of golden eyes were opened wide. The gigantic golden irises and its pitch-black pupils would flicker in sync with the golden cube's occasional ripples.
Witnessing the happenings within the closed-off space with an amused smile spread across its fearsome face, the golden dragon was very much awake. Its gaze was lost inside the glowing, golden cube, just as gargantuan as it was: like the dragon, it spanned for tens, hundreds of miles, and enclosed within a huge stretch of land.
Within the cube a strange scene was taking place; inside it, two figures entwined nonstop in a sky that had been dyed golden, engaged in a deadly ballade of blades, claws and explosions. Clearly, what the two silhouettes were engaged in was no simple dance: it was instead a brutal duel.
The smaller of the two figures was incredibly agile and fast. Within seconds, the distance it would cover was on the verge of instantaneous movement. Making use of his inhumane speed, the small figure would dash from one end of the cube to the other, fiercely striking at its opponent each he passed by.
Unlike the first figure that was both too small and too fast for the naked eye to make out, the second could be seen clearly. This was because it was both much slower and countless times bigger than its opponent: the second fighter was actually... a gigantic black serpent! Although if compared to the gargantuan golden dragon it would barely amount to a single one of its scales, the sheer size of this gargantuan snake was enough to level a mountain with a single flick of its tail!
The beast that was thousands of feet long was completely black, with the only exceptions being a few small cuts spurting golden blood, and six thin, fearsome eyes glowing an eerie white color; the wounds were few and far from lethal, but their number kept on rising by the second. The serpent was enraged by this, but it couldn't catch up to its opponent's speed and thus could only roar powerlessly and glare as the silhouette but a few feet tall dashed left and right, up and down, and inflicted countless small wounds as time went by.
The roars shook the earth, and the glare was so fierce whole mountains could very possible be erased with just a single glance; even whole armies of hundreds of thousands would become so terrified they would be unable to stand up straight after staring in those eerie, white orbs! Those six eyes and gigantic python-like body made the beast look as if it had just come out from some hellish nightmare! This apparently extremely powerful beast was fighting someone and, judging by the blood gushing out from several wounds on its body, it could easily be deduced that it wasn't really fighting what could be called an easy battle...
Its opponent was something that in its perspective would barely be any different from an ant: it was but a mere human! Be it size or lifespan, this 'snake' innately surpassed humans by such a large margin that usually the two shouldn't even appear in the same sentence… However, this human was not a simple human. Instead, it had turned out being a huge pain in the black beasts' reptilian ass!
Finally, the black snake grew tired of this boring game of cat and mouse. He locked his gaze straight at the human's pupils. The speeding figure looked back: immediately afterwards, three pairs of slit-like, white eyes glowed a bright green as a plethora of fierce mental attacks were shot towards the speeding human's mind! Having ensured eye contact with their target, there should have been no way those attacks could have possibly failed. Let alone halting his advance, the poor human would pass out as soon as those mental attacks landed!
However...
Slash! Stab! Slash! Stab! Slash! Stab!
Not only did the human's onslaught not grow to a stop, he even seemed to be... getting faster? It was as if he had grasped upon a new source of energy as his figure sped up, more and more… The speed seemed to be increasing exponentially with each moment that passed! But was it truly like that? Of course not. It was not just the human who had gotten faster, it was the black dragon that had begun to grow slower, and slower, and slower...
Instead of shocking and terrifying the opponent, as soon as he had entered an eye contact with the blue-eyed human youth, the dragon had actually started to wither! Its strength, its life-force, its soul...all of them had turned into streams of energy and were slowly being absorbed by the strange golden sun in the human's left eye!
It was really too bad that this gigantic, black snake had spent so much time away from the human world; had he witnessed first-hand the fights of the human known as the Evil Saint, there would have been no way the black-scaled beast would have been so foolish to look at Xu Ling in the eyes: to all those who sided with the Nine Heavens of Tian, those pair of blue eyes that might be beautiful and mesmerizing to look at for others, to them they would only spell death!
After having found out the hard way that its mental abilities wouldn't work and that using them would only turn out being detrimental, the dragon was in full retreat, but it couldn't hold a candle to the human in speed. Even though it wasn't the speed of lightning falling from the heavens, he truly did look like one as he attacked the humongous monster, not leaving it any space to breathe. As for the golden cube? It only served to contain the damage, as otherwise the aftereffects alone of the techniques being displayed would have been enough to slaughter anyone below the Immortal Realm who would be passing by.
The one-sided battle only went on for twelve more hours. Other than laying down that barrier, the golden dragon had not even needed to lift a single finger: in the end, the black-scaled serpent had been subjugated and was made into a mount by that one human in exchange for sparing its life.
This event, together with the fearsomeness of the Evil Saint Xu Ling, the being known as the Hellish Nightmare Dragon (renamed Little Black by his friends/captors) remembered it very well even up to this date.
And Cheng Hao, the reborn Evil Saint, of course would not let a chance to re-instill that memory slip by: it was time to bully this arrogant mount of his!
As the gates slowly opened, the darkness inside the first floor dwindled a bit. Light slowly creeped in, allowing the golden-eyed youth to finally gaze upon the imprisoned beast's outlines.
Six fierce eyes, glowing an eerie white, stood out from the surrounding darkness and they all glared hatefully at Cheng Hao's projection. With an enraged roar, a long, snake-like creature charged towards the outside world! Suddenly, the golden light from the Immortal Ascension Tower inundated a part of the creature's face, revealing the beast's features to an unconcerned Cheng Hao.
The head resembled that of a dragon, a completely black dragon, except in the place of its upper jaw and mandible was an exoskeleton resembling a long, sharp and pointy beak. Countless small, triangular, sharp fangs were exposed as the dragon opened its beak-like mouth and let out a loud cry, a sound that was halfway between a roar and a hiss.
The six, eerie-white eyes were all glinting with fury and hatred: if looks could kill – which in this beast's case it wasn't too far from the truth as they could easily shock a weak-minded person to death – Cheng Hao might have needed to start looking for another few miraculous golden sparks down in the underworld.
The young, golden-eyed boy smiled in his mind: indeed, that appearance that had scared off entire armies back in the day was still as horrifying ugly as ever.
Seeing the enraged expression on the monster's face, Cheng Hao closed his eyes and smiled gently: he simply opened his mouth and began to count calmly, "One... Two... Three... Four..."
He waved his left hand: a stream of white energy materialized and coiled around his forearm. It was a seemingly ordinary white gaseous mass, however those few that had been unlucky enough to meet that white stream's path, not even a single piece remained intact, and had instead been turned into white ash and scattered to the winds!
He waved his right hand: a stream of black energy appeared and focused above his right palm. The gaseous mass was akin to a black flame as it floated in the air unnaturally, tongues of fire seeking to burn everything into nothingness!
The power of these two flames, at least as they were now, was nothing worth of mention. Surely, when faced with the enraged charge of a few-thousand-foot-long charging dragon, they would be as useless as specks of dust. At least for the moment, their power was in no way comparable to that of the past. Only a massive cold and blazing intent remained, but even those would barely amount for little to no help in front of the Hellish Nightmare Dragon. But if that were truly so, why would Cheng Hao bring them out now?
Simple;
It was because, sometimes, an image would count for more than a thousand words. That was especially true when a trauma of almost being roasted alive by those same flames was present...
Who knew that my joking of eating the black-scaled serpent back then if it misbehaved would have brought such benefits? I should have done things like this more often!
As expected, after witnessing the appearance of the two flames, the monstrous head stopped in place almost immediately! The expression of anger also swiftly turned into one of terror! The beast's disbelief and astonishment were clear from the fact its beak-like mouth kept opening and closing without making a sound. Even its eyes that were originally very much like slits had opened so wide they seemed to be about to pop out!
"Five... Six... Seven... Eight..."
Cheng Hao raised his head… and the only thing now visible on his face was his left eye, which was glowing so brightly it vastly eclipsed every other color in its surroundings!
This left eye of Cheng Hao's looked like a vortex to another world, wherein seas of blood flowed, mountain of corpses rose and a cold, golden sun shone down eerily... Cheng Hao's right eye was something that could keep people awake at night and anyone who glanced in it would also start withering just like those corpses in the vision!
As for his right eye, it was also wide open. Hints of what looked like a pitch-black pair of fauces appeared, gnawing at the outside world from within Cheng Hao's left pupil.
"EEEEEEK!" Recalling a certain experience from a long time ago, the gigantic monster shrieked and the few parts of him that had successfully come out of the massive doorway immediately jumped back into the tower! Let alone coming out, the beast had even slammed the gate shit of its own volition! The monster's voice was now feeble even, as if it had run a long distance away from the gates and was hiding in some corner of the tower's floor!
That child was barely eight or nine years old and it clearly did not match with 'that person's' age?
So what?
The brat was only at the Inferior stage and the gargantuan snake could literally dispose of him with a single blink of an eye?
SO WHAT?
He had just signed a contract, and if he failed it would be akin to selling his own soul?
SO BLOODY FUCKING WHAT?!?
DO YOU THINK I HAVE TIME TO FUCKING THINK ABOUT THIS RATIONALLY?
FUCK THIS SHIT, I AIN'T COMING OUT OR GOING ANYWHERE ANYTIME SOON!
Why was the Hellish Nightmare Dragon so shaken? Well, the answer was pretty simple. The bullying Xu Ling had put the poor beast through was only second to Blindlight's. And Blindlight had revolutionized both mental and physical torture thanks to the 'studies' he had conducted on this poor beast. With that in mind, the question should instead be changed to: don't have Hellish Nightmare Dragons have a bully hotline or something?
Well... Unfortunately for them, they don't.