The bottom of the abyss was, unsurprisingly, pitch black — not a trace of light anywhere, and no place for light to come from. But just as Ye Tianxie was pulling out the Lamp of Light that the little girl called Shasha had given him back in Windfall Town, Guoguo’s voice snapped his attention taut: “Huh? Huh? Master, there’s something over there that’s glowing! It’s blinking, on and off — like… like a little star in the sky.”

Though he was standing in total darkness, Ye Tianxie discovered, strangely, that he could see Guoguo’s body with perfect clarity. She seemed to be giving off some kind of strange light that let him see her plainly… and yet that light eerily failed to affect anything around her. Her surroundings remained utterly black.

A world of darkness, and a little girl no bigger than half a normal person’s arm drifting to and fro with a face full of curiosity. The sight made Ye Tianxie pause for a moment. There really were, he had to admit, an awful lot of strange things about Guoguo.

Following where she was pointing, Ye Tianxie caught sight of the point of light at once. In a world this completely dark, that solitary point should have been easy to spot — it was only that it was so small, small enough to be all but negligible. And that meant one of two things: either it was a very small object emitting a faint glow, or it was very, very far away.

“Let’s go take a look.” He plucked Guoguo out of the air, where she’d been spinning in circles with her eyes darting everywhere, set her on his shoulder, and started walking toward the light.

Unexpectedly, the ground at the bottom of this ten-thousand-zhang chasm was remarkably flat. Never mind uneven terrain — he hadn’t even trodden on a single loose stone. Ye Tianxie couldn’t help but grow suspicious. The floor of a naturally formed abyss ought to be an irregular mess of pits and swells, nothing like this level. Unless… someone had paved it.

His step faltered slightly… A world of darkness, the floor of an abyss — so were there horrifying monsters down here? Or some other extraordinary element? After all, simply being able to reach this map was a miracle in itself, and a map like this surely didn’t exist merely for the sake of existing.

He walked for more than half an hour and the ground stayed flat. He never ran into a rock face or any other barrier, never tripped over anything. The little point of light was still there ahead of him, noticeably larger now than when he’d first seen it — and as he drew nearer, that faint glow gradually stirred something strange in the depths of his heart… a feeling he couldn’t name or explain. If he had to describe it, it was a faint trembling in his body and his soul, as though they sensed something was about to happen — or as though something out there were making them resonate.

Tap, tap, tap, tap…

His footsteps were startlingly clear in this silent world. Slowly the point of light grew larger and larger in his vision, and what had begun as a mere speck became a whole sphere of light. He walked on a while longer and, without quite noticing it, found himself standing directly in front of it, close enough that his body nearly brushed against it.

This was…

Crystal? A crystal that glowed?

It was a perfect sphere roughly a meter across, held up by a stone pedestal nearly a meter high, translucent all the way through, quietly emitting a white light from some source he couldn’t identify. The light wasn’t strong, but in this world of darkness it was unmistakable.

“Wooow, what a big glass ball. And it glows… Huh? That’s weird — why does it glow?” Guoguo’s small body circled the “great big glass ball” round and round. At the bottom of an abyss, an object like this really did carry far too heavy an air of the fantastic.

“Hm…” Guoguo made another small noise, stopped drifting, and floated slowly forward until she was practically lying flat against the sphere. “Master, look! There’s something inside the big glass ball!”

“Mm. I see it,” Ye Tianxie answered, his brow knitting, his gaze fixed on the center of the crystal sphere… And at its center was a living creature — asleep.

From the first glance, Ye Tianxie was certain it was a fox — though a small one, and not quite like an ordinary fox. What came to mind first was the snow fox, the rarest of rare creatures, which he had only ever seen on television.

Not a single hair on this little fox’s body was off-color. Its white was without a single discordant flaw, and even that white was the purest, most immaculate white imaginable — as pure as a snowflake that had only just drifted down from the sky. Its body was tiny, about the same size as Guoguo’s. Two dainty snow-white ears stood up in sharp points, and its nose was jet black, like a black diamond. Its eyes were closed tight, and it lay curled in a crouching posture, resting quietly at the center of the crystal sphere… and it had held that posture for who knew how many years.

Beneath an abyss, a snow fox sealed inside a crystal sphere… The colors of a dream were crowding in ever thicker in Ye Tianxie’s heart. He stretched out a hand and reached for the crystal in front of him.

“Do not touch it!”

The voice wasn’t loud, but it fell as heavy as a boulder striking the heart. Ye Tianxie’s heart and body jolted in unison, and his outstretched hand froze in midair. He raised his head and narrowed his eyes at the space in front of him… The one who had spoken had made no effort to conceal where the voice came from. He was directly ahead.

“Wah! A voice, a voice! There’s actually somebody here… who could it be?”

Guoguo’s astonishment and excitement weren’t a fraction of the tremor going through Ye Tianxie’s heart… What secrets, exactly, were hidden in this mysterious map of the World of Fate…

Truly something to look forward to.

He heard no footsteps, and yet the image of a person emerged from the darkness, growing clearer and clearer in his vision. It was someone in a pitch-black cloak, the cloak wrapped around nearly his entire body and covering most of his face, so that Ye Tianxie couldn’t make out his features. But this was a person — a living, breathing person, without a doubt.

Astonishment and wariness rose together in his heart. Ye Tianxie steadied his breathing and asked, “Who are you?”

“That is a question I should be asking you. Human, that you were able to come here astonishes me. But this is not a place you ought to be.” The mysterious cloaked man’s tone was flat as still water, and not friendly. From the voice, he had to be an old man well past sixty — and the crushing weight of the presence and pressure carried within that voice sent a private jolt of alarm through Ye Tianxie.

“We have never provoked you humans of our own accord, so I have no wish to make things difficult for you. Leave here at once. There is nothing here worth your staying for.” The man raised his head slightly, and a razor-cold line of a gaze shot out and fixed on Ye Tianxie — there and gone in an instant, but it made his brow snap tight.

The way he’d addressed him was… human. And “we have never provoked you humans”… at the bottom of an abyss… A flash of understanding shot through Ye Tianxie’s mind, and he quickly gathered his focus, seizing hold of the thought as it took shape…

“You’re… a dragon?” Ye Tianxie raised his head, phrasing it as a question but delivering it with absolute certainty.

And then he distinctly felt a faint tremor run through the other man’s heavy presence. The last shred of doubt in his heart vanished, and he turned his gaze toward the warmly glowing crystal sphere, thinking. At the same moment, the blue-haired man’s cold face and desolate figure surfaced in his mind… So this is what he meant when he said he’d help me one more time…

But why did he know about all this? Before he had met Kong Xiu, he hadn’t even known it himself…

“But you are not a dragon.” The aged voice gave Ye Tianxie his answer — and this time he did not repeat his demand that Ye Tianxie leave. Clearly, that one sentence had begun to arouse a deep interest in him… or perhaps he had been alone for so long that, in his heart, he didn’t want the one person who could finally speak with him to simply walk away.

“How do you know I’m not?” Ye Tianxie’s mind turned, and he smiled as he said it.

The man fell silent at once — and in the next second, Ye Tianxie’s body shuddered outside of his control. He could distinctly feel an extraordinarily powerful aura lock onto him and begin seeping rapidly into his body. Ye Tianxie gave nothing away, watching him in silence as though he had noticed nothing at all.

Several seconds later, the aura abruptly vanished. The man across from him slowly raised his head, revealing the face of an old man — a face utterly ordinary, and yet one you would remember for the rest of your life after a single glance. A pair of eyes without a trace of cloudiness fixed on Ye Tianxie. “It seems too long a silence has dulled my spiritual senses. I failed to notice, until now, that your body carries the power of a dragon… Though what you possess is not the blood of a pure-blooded dragon. But we of the dragon race have never rejected union with humans… What is your name?”

A union of dragon and human? Something turned over in Ye Tianxie’s heart… Kong Xiu hadn’t lied to him. Even this old man could sense the aura of a dragon on his body. But what he hadn’t expected was the implication of the old man’s words: that he was the offspring of a human and a dragon coupling… That left him somewhere between laughter and tears, though he didn’t say so aloud. It was a thing you could only get away with saying inside a game. In the real world it would have been a bit too absurd — what, were his parents dragons? Thinking of his dead parents, his expression dimmed slightly, then returned to normal at once.

But why did Kong Xiu and this old man both say he carried the aura of a dragon…? Was it some strange setting of this world, or was there another reason…? For now, no amount of thought could untangle it.

“Xietian,” he said, giving the name he went by in this world.

“Xietian?” The old man murmured the name back, showing a flicker of surprise at it, and then asked, “And who is your mother? Who is your father?”

Ye Tianxie was silent. Then he shook his head, calmly. “They’ve been gone a long time. I’ve forgotten their names.”

“Then who guided you here?” The old man showed no surprise at the answer, remaining as flat as dead water.

“Fate.”

“Good…” The old man nodded, and the tension in his expression eased at that. He came forward a few steps to stand before Ye Tianxie and said, evenly, “The wavering in your eyes tells me that although you have come here, you do not really understand why you have come. In truth, though you carry the power of a dragon, neither should you have come here at all. But since fate has guided you, I will honor your choice.”

Ye Tianxie raised his head, and their eyes met.

(End of Chapter 108)