Crossing
In a small unknown town of the southern part of the Blue Star City, China, the light drizzling of the rain had stopped, and the sun was shining through the clearing clouds onto the wet streets, bringing a touch of warmth to pedestrians walking by.
While carrying a fish, Xia Yu carefully avoided the fresh puddles on the road.
Suddenly, there was a sound of rapid honks, and a fully loaded truck quickly approached him from around the bend.
"Fuck!"
Xia Yu leapt sideways, perfectly clearing himself from the truck's path, but no sooner had he avoided the truck than his rapid plummet started.
'Which goddamn thief stole the manhole cover?!'
This was Xia Yu's last thought before he lost consciousness.
PS: A rather fancy and shady way to die.
***
Tens and thousands of years had gone by, yet he felt as if only a split second had passed. Xia Yu regained traces of consciousness and instinctively stretched his body only to be hit by a barrier.
Xia Yu found himself immersed in some kind of sticky liquid, curled up in a dark and narrow space; however, there wasn't any discomfort, instead, it felt inexplicably warm and cozy, as though he was encapsulated in the loving embrace of his mother during childhood.
'Where is this? Is this the hospital?'
Suddenly, a splitting pain assaulted his head and a massive influx of information flooded his brain.
Inheritance of the Dragon!
The rudimentary knowledge of dragons, including their inheritance of magic, geography and other miscellaneous knowledge filled his brain without order; as if the knowledge and memories were his, to begin with.
Xia Yu was horrified when he discovered that he had transmigrated. In addition, he had reincarnated as the disgrace of dragons in this magical world: a white dragon. Though he was only an embryo inside a dragon egg at the moment.
As an old hand at reading books, he had read no less than a hundred novels that had this kind of a rotten plot but never had he ever imagined that he'd experience the bloody thing by himself one day.
His poor parents had brought him up on their own, and he did not even get the chance to repay them. Now he could only hope that his younger siblings would take good care of them.
Xia Yu gradually understood that moping and grumbling in grief had no benefits other than bringing more trouble to him. Staying calm and having a clear head was the best choice he had at the moment.
A developing embryo couldn't support long-term mental exertions and Xia Yu fell asleep again.
***
After a long time, Xia Yu woke up from his deep slumber, and the pressure from all directions told him that the space in the dragon egg could no longer accommodate his fully developed body.
'It is time!'
Xia Yu gathered the strength of his whole body and slammed his head against the shell of the egg.
Crack!
The eggshell cracked. A dragon's head popped out of the shell and followed the age-old tradition. Xia Yu's voice was tender and dignified. The first sound of the newborn echoed:
"Amos Citlandim Buwanren … Galili Aldridge."
After loudly proclaiming his true dragon name to the world, Xia Yu struggled to get out of the eggshell. He then began licking the viscous and transparent liquid from his feet and tail with his narrow and rough tongue. Only then did he begin to look at the surrounding environment.
It was a narrow, vase-shaped cave, it was covered in ice and had generous space inside it. There was a wide enough split acting as its opening. Gold coins and precious stones occupied a large portion of the cave's surface and there were strange pillars that were covered in fine scales.
'Scales? Pillar?'
Discomfited and apprehensive, Xia Yu slowly raised his head. What caught his eye was a fierce dragon with long and narrow snake-like pupils. Those amber eyes were looking at him with keen interest. The dragon had a pair of antelope horns that stuck straight towards the skyline, with a long lissome neck and a set of large wings protruding from the sides of her streamlined body. Standing over 20 meters tall with white scales covering her. She was beautiful, robust, and magnificent.
Facing the terrible behemoth in front of him, Xia Yu didn't feel scared at all but felt a kind of blood-related intimacy and awe.
'She is my mother in this life.'
Guru~ Guru~
His belly began to protest. The newborn Dragon needed to replenish his energy. Without the slightest hesitation, he turned around and ate the crumbled eggshells.
As a high-level magical creature, the giant dragon eggshell contained rich magical energy in addition to inorganic matter, which could effectively help a young dragon to survive the initial period of debilitation.
After cleanly sweeping the eggshells and licking the white speckles off the floor, Xia Yu's hunger had subsided a bit. That said, he felt he could eat more so he timidly said to his mother in Draconic Tongue, "Hungry."
***
This chapter is scrapped from readlightnovel.org
A few minutes ago.
Salilina found it a little strange as she looked at one of the five eggs that kept trembling—which indicated the struggle of the cubs before they hatched out of the egg.
She was a little confused; this was not the first time she had raised an offspring.
Generally speaking, eggs from the same batch would hatch no more than two days apart, but according to her calculations, there was still around a week before the hatchings took place.
'Is it an anomaly?'
"Oh, it's coming out!"
The cub called out his true dragon name, and by the looks of it, he seemed healthy. (Calling out a true name symbolises the successful acceptance of the dragon heritage.)
"Tiamat's blessings!"
"What a strong baby!"
"He'll be, at the least, two full laps larger than the ordinary cubs!"
"Hungry!"
Hearing the appeal, Salilina looked at the newly hatched cub, only to find Xia Yu's clear eyes looking back at her, shining with the light of wisdom. The sight shocked her.
Among the five kinds of dragons—red, blue, green, black and white, respectively—white dragons were the weakest in strength and intelligence. And unless, it entered adulthood or stepped into the legendary realm, getting baptised by the world's laws and fundamentally enhances the essence of its soul, only then, will it obtain the wisdom rivalling that of an average adult human.
Although the Dragon Inheritance came with the Draconic Tongue, memory and proficiency were two different things. Under normal circumstances, the intelligence of a newly born white dragon was no different from a wild beasts': it could only blubber, incomprehensibly. Which was about the same as a newborn human baby.
Only with practice and day-to-day communication with its mother, could a white dragon cub improve and gradually master the Draconic Tongue. While the other dragon cubs were far better compared to the white dragon due to their marginally superior intelligence.
Though Xia Yu had only uttered a single word, that too in a nonstandard form, it was enough to prove his remarkable talent.
How could Salilina have known that the infantile cub in front of her held the soul of an adult?
Salilina was stunned. It took her a while to come back to her senses and she stopped thinking much about it. To meet the cub's request, she went out of the cave in search of food.
Xia Yu looked at his image on the ice surface, except for his size—which was only as big as a pony—he looked like a striking copy of Salilina.
"From now on, I am Amos Citlandim Buwanren Galili Aldridge, Hmm, aka Amos Aldridge."
To reduce any more exertion and tyring himself, Amos lay on the ground thinking about his new life as a dragon.
He knew from his inheritance that the world he lived in was called Nordhill Continent and that its land area spanned about fifty times the size of the earth.
In addition to sentient beings such as humans, elves, and orcs, there were also dragons, monsters, and many other extraordinary creatures. The ancient dragon race was the leader among the exceptional creations.
The weak and the strong was the perpetual theme of this world.
After he was done scratching just the tip of the iceberg, which was his inheritance and the vast knowledge it held about the world, Amos set a goal for himself. A goal to become stronger, then to live and improve the standards of his living.
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