Deep within the underground maze beneath the Western Barrens, an ocean was on the move.
Billions of gallons of high-pressure ice-slow water surged through the ancient granite channel at dizzying speed. The flood raced five hundred li downstream from the unsealed springhead. Then, it approached the massive underground junction known in First Age hydrologic texts as the Sanjiang Sluice Nexus. The great three-way bifurcation where the main aqueduct divided into three independent blood branches.
Here lay the greatest peril of the entire land-wide relief expedition.
If the incoming deluge slammed into the dividing granite castle walls with unchecked linear driving force, the moving shock would blow apart the underground water gate gates. The resulting total flash-flood would punch through the surface fault lines, drowning tens of thousands of mortal farming villages in the lowlands before the water could ever fill the dry riverbeds.
In the foaming rapids at the head of the surge, a brilliant sapphire light ignited.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
A dragon roar of breathtaking, majestic deep ring tore through the rushing cave.
Xiao Long, who had grown from a fragile little carp gasping for breath in a muddy puddle on the day Lin Xiao first awakened into an amazing two-hundred-foot Azure Flood Dragon, let loose the full glory of his bloodline.
