“Who are you?” Ye Tianxie asked, his brow low.
His voice turned the man’s eyes toward him, and in the instant their gazes met, Ye Tianxie felt as though he were looking into the eyes of a dead man… cold, dull, ashen, deathly still… without a trace of the color a living thing ought to have.
Wind sounded in his ears. The blue-haired man lifted Ye Tianxie into the air with him, and after a lateral shift that seemed to skip across space itself, the two of them were standing on the peak of a small mountain. The man still hadn’t answered him. His gaze simply returned to the two beasts battling in the distance. Ye Tianxie frowned and turned to look as well.
The earth shakes, the mountains tremble — the ground splits, the peaks collapse. Neither would have been an exaggeration for what was happening out there.
The blue wolf and the Blood Phoenix traded blows like a raging storm: bodies colliding, energies colliding, dragging catastrophic destruction along in their wake.
Boom… boom… boom… boom…
Dozens of consecutive body-slams brought dozens of deafening detonations. The wolf couldn’t match the phoenix’s mastery of the air, but its agility and raw strength far outstripped it, and its attacks came fast as a gale, driving the phoenix back inch by inch until it had no opening at all to launch its blood-flame. Finally, with another explosive crack, the phoenix was hammered high into the sky. It shrieked, twisted around in midair, and snapped its enormous crimson wings wide — and blood-colored fire, as though falling from beyond the heavens, rained down over the land below.
The blue wolf, in a frenzy, hurtled up through the air — into the blood-flame — and slammed headlong into it. A titanic detonation roared out, and the earth for a kilometer in every direction was torn open under the force of the fire, a colossal wave of flame surging ten-odd zhang high, blotting out everything in sight. That whole region had become a land of death, saturated with lethal power.
And out of that nearly all-consuming sea of fire, a single unmistakable blue shape shot upward, and with a tremendous roar it crashed into the Blood Phoenix’s body like a blue meteor.
An anguished cry rang out as the phoenix was hurled violently away, tumbling through countless rotations high in the air before it could barely right itself. Phoenix and wolf faced each other across a hundred meters, and both sets of eyes were flooded with the same bestial ferocity. Then, together, roar and shriek — and they hurled themselves at each other again, wind and fire colliding once more into a purgatory that ruined earth and life alike.
“Woooow! Master, so pretty!” Guoguo’s eyes sparkled as she watched, delighted, at the gorgeous spectacle the two beasts were painting across the sky — like a child watching a brightly colored cartoon… with absolutely no regard for the fact that these two had nearly killed Ye Tianxie twice in a row moments earlier.
To be fair, she had no reason to be afraid… given her peculiar body, never mind the phoenix and the wolf — ten of them couldn’t touch her, couldn’t hurt her. As for whether her master Ye Tianxie might come to harm… well, that wasn’t really her concern.
Ye Tianxie: “…”
“Also, master, this mister is really weird. He just feels off somehow. Do you know him?” Guoguo stole a careful glance at the blue-haired man; the utter, feelingless coldness of him left her a little frightened.
“No,” Ye Tianxie said.
He was answering Guoguo, of course — but to anyone who couldn’t see her, Ye Tianxie had simply spoken up out of nowhere for no reason… and yet he noticed, quite distinctly, that his speaking hadn’t provoked the faintest reaction from the blue-haired man beside him. The man’s eyes hadn’t so much as flickered.
This person…
“Ah!! Master, I completely forgot… That weird phoenix has the scent of the Blood Feather on it! Master, hurry and beat that weird phoenix, the Blood Feather must be hidden on its body, and it’s a really, really important thing for you—” Guoguo scrambled up onto his shoulder and hollered directly into his ear.
The corner of Ye Tianxie’s eye twitched… Beat the Blood Phoenix… He hadn’t lost his grip on reality quite that badly. Even against an enemy several times his strength, he wouldn’t give up easily — he’d exploit every factor he could lay hands on to win. But he and the Blood Phoenix weren’t even on the same plane of power. What was he supposed to beat it with?
“Hm…” Guoguo, mid-excitement, abruptly went quiet. Her bright eyes blinked a few times, and her gaze settled on the magnificent, enormous blue wolf. She stared blankly for a little while, and then her soft jade lips parted slightly. “That blue wolf… why does it feel so familiar…?”
BOOOOM!!!!
Wind laced with savage ice and violent fire collided again, and as the space around them filled once more with the elements of catastrophe, the deadlocked battle finally shifted.
A bolt of blue lightning shot up out of the elemental purgatory and, with an enormous roar, smashed square into the Blood Phoenix’s head. The wolf’s speed was that of gale and thunder; the phoenix’s body had already been struck who knew how many times, but this blow all but shattered its consciousness outright.
Body contorting, the phoenix screamed, thrashed violently in the air for a moment, and finally plummeted from the sky. The airborne wolf dove after it, moving faster than the phoenix’s own free fall, and its yawning jaws clamped down brutally on the phoenix’s neck, tearing at it as it dragged the body down out of the sky.
-200000, -200000, -200000, -200000…
Enormous damage numbers streamed up above the phoenix’s head, hauling its life away with them, and with a thunderous crash the two beasts hit the ground together, the wolf still locked onto the phoenix’s throat, pinning it down into the crater its body had punched into the earth.
The phoenix struggled, wailing, but its power lay in flame — in raw strength it was no match for the wolf at all. Its body rolled and thrashed in the fire, and yet it could not shake the wolf’s grip no matter what it did, its health draining fast in its despair.
Kreeeeee—
A phoenix’s cry split the heavens, scattering the few clouds drifting by overhead. Above the Blood Phoenix’s brow, a crimson light suddenly blazed, and the searing glow spread from its head across its entire body in an instant — and in that same instant, its scorching, violent power surged several times over…
BOOM!!
An immense force of fire exploded outward with the phoenix’s body at its center, blasting the wolf far away. And at that moment, Guoguo let out an exaggerated shriek in Ye Tianxie’s ear: “Master! Look!! On that phoenix’s head… that’s the Blood Feather, it’s the Blood Feather!!”
He hadn’t needed her to tell him. From the instant the crimson light flared on the phoenix’s brow, Ye Tianxie had already seen it — because in the glare of that light, on the phoenix’s forehead, there was a feather of blood-red so vivid it hurt to look at, like a small cluster of burning flame!
That was… one of the seven Fate Cores. The Blood Feather!?
Why was it on the body of a bizarre phoenix…
The wolf, hurled away by the blast, crashed down into the elemental purgatory the two of them had made — but the moment its body touched the ground, a ball of overwhelmingly intense blue light blazed up from it… and the intensity of that blue far surpassed the crimson glow of the Blood Feather. In the instant the blue light rose, the wolf flipped upright with unbelievable speed and shot forward, driving straight at the phoenix as it was climbing back to its feet, and with a roar it clamped down on its throat once again.
“Ah!!” The moment the blue light appeared, Guoguo cried out involuntarily.
“What is it?” Ye Tianxie, who had rarely seen Guoguo this startled, turned his head and asked with a frown.
“That light just now… that wolf… it’s — it’s the Blue Soul! The Blue Soul, of the Cyan Spirit and Blue Soul among the Fate Cores!” Guoguo stared at the wolf, wide-eyed, and said it as if in a daze.
Ye Tianxie: “!!”
A wolf… the Blue Soul… a Fate Core… A Fate Core could be a living creature!?
“It must be. I could never mistake the power of a Fate Core. No wonder I had such a familiar feeling just now.” Guoguo clutched at his clothes, muttering to herself.
On the Hour of Fate, the sixth hollow counting from the top had an indescribable, irregular, twisted shape, and in sunlight, the area around it reflected a faint blue glow. But this was a wolf — an impossibly powerful wolf…
And in that same instant, Ye Tianxie suddenly realized… that extremely irregular hollow, whose shape he had never been able to identify, looked exactly like a wolf, head thrown back, howling!
“Big sister said the powers of the Fate Cores are all very strong, and once they leave the Hour of Fate, they go looking for a suitable energy vessel on their own — and with their abilities, even if they don’t go looking, they’re perfectly capable of turning themselves into living things… Master, you don’t just have to beat the phoenix, you have to beat the wolf too! The Blue Soul has the second-strongest power in the Hour of Fate, right after the purple core — it’s way, way stronger than the Blood Feather… Wooow! I’m so happy, we found the Blood Feather and the Blue Soul all at once!”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
A blood phoenix and a giant blue wolf — either one of them powerful enough to make the entire Lost Continent shudder — and both of them had been born from the Fate Cores of the Hour of Fate. Beneath Ye Tianxie’s calm exterior, his heart was trembling deeply… trembling at the wonder and the strength of the Fate Cores… and he couldn’t help but think: if a single Fate Core was already this powerful, then just how powerful was the Hour of Fate itself, with all seven fused into it?
The Blood Feather…
The Blue Soul…
How on earth was he supposed to get them!
The gap in power between Blood Feather and Blue Soul was now on full display. The phoenix, its whole body wreathed in crimson light, had seen its presence and its power surge to their absolute peak — and still all it could do was cry out in anguish, thrashing under the wolf’s jaws, and thrashing, visibly, with less and less strength…
-720000, -720000, -720000, -720000…
At full power, the Blue Soul was dealing seven hundred and twenty thousand damage per second to the Blood Feather. If they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, what player would ever believe a damage number that heaven-defying could exist in the world of Fate? Who would believe the beasts here could be strong to such a degree?
To a player, a number like that was a truly, permanently unreachable astronomical figure.
And this giant blue wolf, Ye Tianxie was certain, could tear the entire City of Stars apart if it felt like it.
If it really was the incarnation of a Fate Core, then how was he supposed to get it back into the Hour of Fate… Would he have to talk it around, or would it return of its own accord? Subdue it? Heh… not a chance in the world.
(End of Chapter 104)