Synopsis: The Snake Sheds Its Skin and Becomes a Dragon
Lin Mo, a young man from the modern era, falls off a cliff while mountain climbing. When he wakes up, he has become a green-scaled snake monster in the Valley of Ten Thousand Snakes. Facing the threat of death at the hands of the Red-Scaled Snake King, the dragon bloodline within him unexpectedly awakens. His snake tail becomes covered in golden scales, and bronze spikes grow from his bones. While fleeing, a bronze fragment carved with a human-headed, snake-bodied totem leads him to the Dragon Transformation Pool, a secret realm floating above a sea of clouds.
When Lin Mo touches the Dragonheart Jade at the bottom of the pool, memories from three thousand years ago roar back to life. The remnant soul of Ao Ling, the white-clad Dragon Maiden, appears and reveals a shocking secret: the so-called Dragon Transformation Pool is actually a dragon tomb, and the Candle Nine Yin worshipped by the snake tribe is none other than Xiang Liu, the incarnation who once bit through the Ancestral Dragon's reverse scales. Lin Mo's transmigration, it turns out, was a closed time loop brought about by Ao Ling, who spent the dragon race's entire fortune to create it.
Nine stages of mortal transformation, each one fraught with danger. The bronze fragments piece together an ancient forbidden formation. The Demon-Suppressing Bureau's dragon-hunting crossbow locks onto his reverse scales, while priests from the Bai Xi Holy Temple plant a blood curse in his veins that gnaws at his bones. When Lin Mo survives the eighth thunder tribulation and transforms into a hundred-zhang Yinglong, he sees the most terrifying truth in the clouds: the skies above the modern city are already riddled with cracks, and the moment he fell off the cliff three years ago was the very moment Ao Ling was pierced through the heart by nine chains.
The final battle erupts at the temporal singularity in the Kunlun Ruins. Lin Mo's dragon claws pierce Candle Nine Yin's netherworld eye, only for him to discover that Xiang Liu's venomous fangs have long since merged with his own. When Lu Tianming, commander of the Demon-Suppressing Bureau, detonates the God-Slaying Formation, Lin Mo chooses to mend the heavens with his dragon bones. But before he vanishes, he hears Ao Ling's final message: "You are the cause and the effect, and the tenth tribulation that will break the deadlock..."
