Garon's scales were as new and mirror-like as ever, without a trace of the passage of time. His dragon claws were thick and strong, his dragon wings like sails, his dragon tail like a spear, his whole body exuding an aura of power.
Most striking were his pair of platinum dragon eyes and the ring of closely interlocked black scales embedded around his neck.
The dragonet stage for dragons was between zero and six years old.
However, Garon, only about a year and a half old and still in the dragonet stage, already possessed the size of a near-juvenile dragon, equivalent to the size that dragons over twenty-five years old would have.
This growth rate astonished Garon himself.
It was as if the flow of time was much faster for him.
But after understanding his own power, Garon gradually accepted this monstrous growth rate.
With multiple periods of slumber and growth, Garon's current vision of the world was not just a simple sky, earth, ice, and living beings... He also saw an illusory river, invisible to other creatures.
This was the River of Time.
Accurately speaking, it was a concrete form of time, just appearing as a river in Garon's eyes. Perhaps in the understanding of other creatures, it was a towering giant tree, or wisps of gentle breeze.
The entire Prime Material Plane, no, all planes, even the phlogiston layer between the planar crystal walls, were within the River of Time.
The River of Time enveloped everything. All things were within it: falling snowflakes, flowing glaciers, blowing cold winds... the sky, the earth, the sun, moon, and stars...
When Garon breathed, besides inhaling air and elemental energy, he would also swallow wisps of the illusory water of the River of Time, obtaining a unique power that Garon called the Power of Time.
The obtained Power of Time was also the energy source he used to manipulate time.
As for why he first mastered time acceleration instead of deceleration or reversal, it was because the River of Time always flowed forward, and going against the current was always much more difficult than going with it.
As a young Time Dragon, he seemed to be a strange being favored by the River of Time, and with the River of Time's help, his growth rate was more than ten times that of ordinary dragons.
Moreover, the passage of time, besides making him increasingly powerful, had not left any negative effects on him.
Ordinary white dragons, besides having shiny, mirror-like scales when they were just born, would gradually become rougher and show the marks of age later on.
But Garon's scales still had a mirror-like luster, beautiful and dazzling, as if they had never experienced the baptism of time.
Only natural disasters and man-made calamities could kill a Time Dragon; the passage of time was powerless against them.
Under the night sky, Garon, who had grown a lot, felt somewhat worried.
"The White Dragon Mother's gaze towards me has been increasingly strange lately. She probably doesn't want to raise me anymore."
"Without the White Dragon Mother, the life of stable development will be gone forever."
Logically speaking, a dragon mother would at least raise her dragonets until they had passed the dragonet stage and reached the juvenile stage with a certain degree of self-protection ability before driving them out of the nest to fend for themselves.
Even the coldest and most cruel evil dragons wouldn't directly let their dragonets fend for themselves from birth.
But Garon, a small dragonet only a little over a year old, already had the size of a near-juvenile white dragon.
The White Dragon Mother's gaze towards Garon was now filled with vigilance and impatience. It was estimated that it wouldn't be long before she drove Garon out of the dragon nest.
Although Garon now had a certain degree of self-protection ability and had mastered new abilities besides Time Manipulation, he was still no match for a true adult dragon. In this perilous world, leaving the White Dragon Mother would mean he had to be extremely cautious, walking on thin ice.
Garon was already making plans for himself.
He would occasionally risk flying to the edge of the White Dragon Mother's territory, looking out into the distance from high up, searching for a suitable place to develop, so that he could quickly find a safe haven after being driven out.
A life of wandering was not what Garon wanted; it was too dangerous.
Under the night sky, Garon flapped his wings. The mirror-like dragon scales on his body not only didn't attract attention due to reflection but instead reflected the night sky environment, becoming a good camouflage.
If someone with poor eyesight saw Garon flying through the night sky, they would most likely mistake him for a black cloud.
At this time, the night sky over the extreme northern ice field was adorned with a myriad of stars. Stars and the moon appeared simultaneously, the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, like a scene from a dream. Garon felt that the surrounding air seemed much more active as he flew under such a night sky.
Although it wasn't his first time flying, the feeling of freedom while soaring in the high sky always brought Garon joy, no matter when it was.
After a while, Garon flew to the edge of the White Dragon Mother's territory.
The area where the White Dragon Mother resided, besides the massive thousand-meter-high ice cliff, was generally a relatively open plain environment. Several thousand miles to the south was a continuous mountain range composed of countless mountains and hills, inhabited by countless magical creatures, humanoid creatures, and subterranean aberrations.
And the direction Garon was flying was precisely towards this faintly visible giant continuous mountain range.
If possible, he actually didn't want to approach the continuous mountain range, because it was more dangerous than the extreme northern ice field.
Garon had crossed the thousand-meter-high ice cliff and continued moving deeper into the extreme northern ice field to the north, but the further north he went, the colder and more barren the environment became, and the living creatures were pitifully scarce.
In such an environment, Garon wasn't confident in finding enough food.
His appetite was huge. He needed to eat several times his own weight in food every week just to barely meet his needs. Going deeper into the godforsaken extreme northern ice field might lead to starvation even if he wasn't killed by external enemies.
The news of a Time Dragon starving to death would make all intelligent beings laugh their heads off.
However, although he was flying in the direction of the southern mountains, it was only to find a suitable place. Before having sufficient strength, Garon had no intention of leaving the extreme northern ice field.
Because in this world, the most dangerous creatures were actually humans.
One of the favorite reputations of human adventurers was Dragon Slayer. Once the figure of an evil dragon was discovered, countless human adventurers would flock to become the hero who slayed the dragon.
A dragon's body, whether it was teeth, claws, scales, was all excellent magical material, representing countless wealth in the human world.
"My former kin are now the ones I need to be most wary of."
Garon deeply felt the capriciousness of fate, and the blue planet floated into his mind.
He thought that after he became strong enough, maybe he could return to Blue Star for a trip and show off his divine powers.
This wasn't an impossible thing.
The material rules of different planes varied greatly. Since the material rules of Earth and the Prime Material Plane were roughly similar, Earth was likely somewhere within the Prime Material Plane.
Planes, in Garon's current understanding, referred to a collection of countless worlds.
These worlds varied in size and shape. They might be a continent, a planet, a star system, or even a vast universe.
The relationship between planes and worlds was like a large bubble containing countless small bubbles.
The membrane separating the 'bubbles' was called the crystal wall, and between the crystal walls was an amber-like fluid called phlogiston. Besides powerful items like teleportation arrays and magic ships, and certain special spells, some powerful creatures possessed the ability to directly traverse worlds and planes.
Time Dragons were one of them.
Garon had a premonition that after he became strong, he would definitely be able to travel through the River of Time, even going to the past and future.
But getting back to the present, he was still just a small dragonet worried about being driven away.
Garon circled in the high sky, his gaze looking down at the earth, searching for a suitable hiding place.
After a while, his eyes lit up, locking onto an area.
Located roughly fifteen kilometers away from his current position was a winding small glacier river.
Any dragon was an amphibious creature, capable of living on land, in the sea, and in the air. Garon felt that he might be able to live underwater for a while in the future.
Making a nest at the bottom of the glacier river would be second to none in terms of concealment and safety.
Thinking of this, Garon decided to first scout near the small glacier river to see if there were any creatures he couldn't afford to provoke, such as frost giants or winter wolves.
He glanced back at the location of the dragon nest, took a deep breath, and then left the White Dragon Mother's territory.
After leaving a certain invisible boundary, a pressure that had always existed, belonging to a powerful dragon, disappeared.