That was the ceiling of the enormous hall in which he found himself. Starlight glittered down onto a middle-aged man who sat atop a woven rush mat. His face was calm, without the slightest hint that he might be dead. And yet, his entire person emanated an aura of rot.
He was almost like a statue that had been sitting there motionless for countless years.
He wore a simple robe and a scholar’s hat. He sat there cross-legged, his lips turned up in a slight smile. In his hand he held a scroll of bamboo slips, and a glowing sphere of starlight hovered around him, flickering.
In addition to this, there was a pill furnace, without any cover. Inside of the furnace was a swirling mass of seven-colored mist, making it impossible to see clearly whatever was inside. Above the pill furnace, occupying Meng Hao’s entire field of view, was… a dragon.
It was… a dragon cast from bronze, its long body twisted around the columns that supported the roof. Cracks spread out from the areas where the dragon’s claws sank into the column, and its tail disappeared into the darkness. Its head hung down directly above the pill furnace, into which it was gazing with an expression of greed. Its mouth was open as if it were about to consume whatever was inside the pill furnace.
The bronze dragon was incredibly realistic, even down to the scales, making it almost look alive. Meng Hao even noticed several areas on the dragon’s body where the scales were severely damaged, as if they were scars earned from hundreds of battles.
As he looked at everything around him, Meng Hao began to pant. He almost couldn’t believe that this was merely a bronze casting of a dragon; to him, it almost felt as if it were a real, flesh-and-blood dragon.
One of the reasons for that sensation was that when he looked at it, the Immortal meridian inside of him began to pulse violently and emit an aura of longing, as if it wanted to completely absorb it!
Meng Hao hesitated for a moment. In a situation like this, he would not act rashly. He scanned the huge temple hall, and then decided to skirt the pill furnace and head over to the man sitting on the rush mat. He looked at him sitting there meditating, and realized that he looked exactly like the statue outside.
“First generation Patriarch….” murmured Meng Hao. As he looked at the man, his blood began to thrum, as if it were a resonance between the two of them.
After a long moment, Meng Hao knelt down and kowtowed to the man.
“Fang Hao of the Junior generation offers greetings, Patriarch,” he said, his voice sincere. Although he might have a bit of enmity toward the Fang Clan, he only had feelings of respect for the first generation Patriarch who had founded the clan.
After kowtowing, Meng Hao got to his feet and looked at the sphere of starlight hovering around of the first generation Patriarch. Deep inside the light, he could just barely make out a fingernail-sized asteroid.
As the starlight entered his eyes, Meng Hao’s breathing sped up a bit. From what he could tell, this object… was probably a manifestation of the One Thought Stellar Transformation.
He tried to reach out and grab the starlight, but no matter how he attempted to take ahold of it, it did no good, as if the sphere were completely ignoring him. It just continued to orbit the first generation Patriarch.
Meng Hao thought for a moment, then abandoned any attempts to force the matter. After all, the sphere of starlight was hovering around the first generation Patriarch, so any attempt to forcibly take it away would probably involve making contact with the Patriarch’s corpse, a level of disrespect that Meng Hao wouldn’t show.