“I am the dragon race’s current guardian — Long Moya. I have kept watch beneath the Hidden Dragon Abyss for several thousand years. In all that time, you are not the first ‘dragon’ to come here — but you are the first to appear in human form.”

Ye Tianxie said nothing, waiting for him to go on, filing the name Long Moya away in his memory.

“Among beasts, only those whose strength has reached the Holy Annihilation realm gain the ability to take human shape. For our dragon race, Heaven-Severing rank suffices — a privilege bestowed on us by the heavens, you might say. At present, including myself, only four of our race possess the power of transformation. Your dragon-power, meanwhile, is pitifully weak — had I not exerted my full perception, I could not even have detected it. And yet you can exist in human form. Do you know why?”

“No.” The question genuinely stumped him… Why? Because he was a human, a living, breathing human from a real world with no dragons in it. This old man surely didn’t seriously take him for a dragon!?

Though — a dragon needed Heaven-Severing rank to take human form, which meant the old man in front of him was at least Heaven-Severing… no weaker than that terrifying blue wolf at the blue-haired man’s side.

He wondered what the old man’s original draconic form looked like — whether it resembled the five-clawed golden dragon of Huaxia myth, or something like it. Seeing a dragon of this world with his own eyes would carry a realness and visual force far beyond anything on a screen.

The old man raised his eyes to him and said slowly, “It is because… when human and dragon are joined, if the father is a dragon and the mother a human, the child born is a dragon-child, existing in draconic form, able to assume human shape once its strength reaches the Divine Mystery realm. But if the mother is a dragon and the father a human, the child born is a human-child, existing in human form, its dragon-power lying in an innate, sleeping state. It awakens with extraordinary slowness — some never fully awaken it in an entire lifetime — and such a person, once his strength reaches a certain point, may likewise transform into a dragon’s body. And you: your father was a man, your mother a dragon. That is why you, whose dragon-power never awoke at birth, have never truly opened the dragon-power that belongs to you, and naturally maintain human form. Someone like you may be called a man, but not a dragon.”

The corner of Ye Tianxie’s mouth twitched, and he suddenly wanted to laugh… His father was a man — granted. His mother was a dragon… heh…

Thinking of his childhood, of that mother whose love had never faltered, his heart felt as though a needle had been driven into it again. No matter how much time you crossed, or how vast a distance, the string of family feeling could never be cut. Even after more than ten years — even after he had walked out of the shadow and grown into a man — every time he thought of that nightmare of a night, the violence inside his chest still felt ready to detonate.

“And you have come here for some purpose — to awaken the dragon-power that is yours!” Long Moya looked at Ye Tianxie, every flat word carrying a suffocating weight.

“That’s right.” Ye Tianxie nodded, turning his gaze to the crystal sphere. “It’s said that the Dragon God’s Stone can perform an initial awakening of the Dragon Soul power within a dragon’s body. If I’m not mistaken… this should be the Dragon God’s Stone.”

The Hidden Dragon Abyss… the Dragon God’s Stone… Everything Kong Xiu had once told him in that thoroughly uncertain tone of his was now laid out complete before his eyes. All of this, arriving out of nowhere because a blue-haired man had shoved him off a cliff, sent a sudden shaft of hope through him… By Kong Xiu’s account, if he used the Dragon God’s Stone to awaken the power inside him, he could finally have a class — a class that belonged to him alone, generated from his own power as its vessel, exactly like Wuming, the number one expert.

“Correct. This is the Dragon God’s Stone, the thing I must guard with the whole of my life.” The old man inclined his head slightly, and when he looked at the stone his gaze turned solemn and devout, as though this were a stone of faith more precious to him than his own life. He went on slowly, “From the most ancient of ages, our dragon race and humanity have been friends; there has never once been strife between us. You are human, and half the blood in you is a dragon’s. And there is no aura of sin on you that would disgust or repel me. So you are fully qualified to use the Dragon God’s Stone to awaken your dragon-power.”

Ye Tianxie finally smiled, anticipation and hunger and hope swelling in him fast — and more than that, astonishment and curiosity… curiosity about all these strange things happening to him, and what the reason behind them truly was.

“You are impatient, I see.” Noticing the change in his eyes and expression, Long Moya stepped aside and retreated a few paces. “The Dragon God’s Stone was forged by the greatest Dragon God of our race in ages past, at the cost of his life and the whole of his power. It was not created to serve as a catalyst for awakening dragon-power. It was made to imprison an unspeakably terrible enemy — because against an enemy so terrible, it was the only way. Afterward, this stone has been guarded at all times by one of the dragon race’s strong, who periodically feeds dragon-power into it to keep its strength from waning and letting that terrible enemy escape. A hundred years on, its powerful and pure dragon-force led our race to discover that it could easily awaken the latent power in our own kind — and from that time, the Dragon God’s Stone became more important still among the dragons. You may now use it to awaken your sleeping Dragon Soul power.”

To imprison an unspeakably terrible enemy…

An unspeakably terrible enemy…

Could it possibly be…

The Dragon God’s Stone, this crystal glowing with its faint white light, did have a living creature sealed within it — and only one…

That so-called unspeakably terrible enemy was this little fox, which even he had looked at and wanted to scoop up and carry off, and which had nothing whatsoever “terrible” about it!?

“And this little fox is—?” Ye Tianxie turned, pointing at the snow-white fox at the heart of the stone.

Long Moya’s expression stayed placid; the question clearly didn’t surprise him. “It is the terrible beast that the mightiest Dragon God in our race’s history imprisoned. Too much time has passed. No one knows its origins any longer, nor how powerful it had grown. All I know is that the Dragon God of that age called it… the Mystic Fox.”

“The Mystic Fox…”

“Do not let its appearance deceive you… The Lost Continent today is the domain of humans, but in that age it was the domain of beasts, and savage struggles raged year after year without end. In that time, the land our dragon race guarded was the South. It’s said the Dragon God of that era had reached the very peak of the Holy Annihilation realm; there wasn’t a single beast on the Lost Continent that could stand against him. And just as the great Dragon God had driven the North to the brink of ruin, the Mystic Fox appeared for the first time… What happened then, no one alive knows. All that is known is that the great Dragon God spent his life and the entirety of his power — and did so purely to imprison it. How terrible it must be, you can imagine for yourself.”

Ye Tianxie: “…”

He glanced at the little fox sleeping with its eyes closed and still couldn’t find a single thing about it that could be called terrible. A beast could not be judged by its face. What kind of fox was this?

“How is the Dragon God’s Stone used?” Ye Tianxie changed the subject, his gaze burning as he studied the enormous crystal sphere. He was beginning to understand what that faint stirring of some power inside him had been as he approached — that had to be his own power resonating with the power of the Dragon God’s Stone.

Wait…

Something jolted in his heart. Resonance… If it really was resonance, then did that power truly exist inside his body? And the strange power he already possessed… could that be the very same thing? Was the mysterious power he had in the real world akin to this world’s Dragon Soul power?

“Relax your body, empty your mind of stray thoughts, place your hand upon the Dragon God’s Stone, and quietly feel the flow of its aura. When your power connects with the power of the stone, the Dragon Soul power that belongs to you will awaken of its own accord.”

Ye Tianxie nodded, stepped forward, and laid his hand gently against the Dragon God’s Stone.

“Save… save… me…”

His hand stopped short of the stone. He stared blankly ahead… He hadn’t misheard, and he couldn’t have misheard. Just now, a voice had come from inside his heart. There was no mistaking it: a voice, rising suddenly from the deepest part of him — and unmistakably the voice of a young girl. It was very soft and very faint, and within its frailty was an obvious strain, a trembling, as though she were struggling bitterly against something even as she spoke. That voice made an image bloom instinctively in Ye Tianxie’s mind: a pitiable girl, thrashing in despair, spending the last of her strength to cry for help.

But apart from himself and Long Moya — and Guoguo, chattering away and being wholly ignored — there was no one else here at all… And if there had been, how could he and Long Moya both have failed to notice?

“Save… me…”

The insubstantial voice came again, and this time Ye Tianxie heard it with perfect clarity, and doubt was no longer possible. And it truly did come from within his heart. He gathered his focus and, testing, spoke inwardly. “Who are you?”

He wasn’t disappointed. His voice reached her, and the girl’s voice, on receiving an answer, grew visibly more urgent — even as it shrank, trembling with weakness, into something fainter and fainter. “…You… in front of you… save… me…”

Her voice sank lower and lower, until it fell entirely silent.

In front of him?

Ye Tianxie’s pupils contracted violently, and his eyes fixed on what was directly before him… the little fox inside the Dragon God’s Stone.

It!? The only thing in front of him was it…

Was it the fox crying to him for help? Sealed in there all these years, and its life still hadn’t been extinguished — it still had consciousness!?

In that moment Ye Tianxie truly grasped, for the first time, just how terrible this little fox was. The age of beasts went back a million years, perhaps ten million — and sealed in the Dragon God’s power from that time until now, the thing still hadn’t died!

And more than that. It was plainly a beast — so why was the voice it transmitted to him a human voice? And the voice of a young girl, at that.

(End of Chapter 109)