Ye Tianxie’s words did not make the Dark Nether Ghost King angry. But those green eyes threw out a glow more terrible than before, and the presence surging out of the demon made Ye Tianxie’s whole body go tight.

“Heh heh heh heh…” The Dark Nether Ghost King laughed, low in his throat. Perhaps he had gone too long without anyone to talk to; he seemed in no hurry to kill Ye Tianxie, the first living thing to break into this place in three years. “You are not wrong… A hundred years ago, because of that terrible Hour of Fate, all eight of us Demon Kings were sealed on the Tower of Fate… But… hahahaha, the Hour of Fate’s seven sources of power all scattered away in the space of a single day. Heaven would not see my Demon race destroyed!! And now… we need never fear the Fate Cores again… because one of the seven Fate Cores is right here in my hand, hahahaha…”

The wild laughter went on while a withered right hand, dry as a skeleton’s, slid out of the Dark Nether Ghost King’s pitch-black sleeve, and with it came a small knot of orange light that flashed past Ye Tianxie’s eyes… In the demon’s hand was a curved orange fang. It was no longer than a palm and about as thick as a wrist, flat at one end and needle-sharp at the other. A faint orange glow hung all around it — weak, but strange, the kind of light that makes a thing look far away even when it is close.

And that fang — its shape, its size… matched the second hollow in the Hour of Fate… exactly!!

“Master, look, look… in his hand, that’s the orange Fate Core! It really is! …Awoo, his hand is so scary, Guoguo isn’t looking… Master, go and grab it from him, hurry, go!” Guoguo started out shouting, sweet and thrilled; then that terrible hand frightened her, and she shrank down, shut her eyes, and started tugging anxiously at Ye Tianxie’s hair.

If Ye Tianxie had the strength to take it, he would hardly have needed Guoguo to tell him. He would have thrown himself at the thing long ago and not cared who was holding it… But against the Dark Nether Ghost King, even knowing perfectly well that this was Orange Fang, that it mattered to him more than almost anything, there was nothing at all he could do.

Orange Fang. A Fate Core, tied to the secret of the Hour of Fate and tied to Xian’er’s secret. How badly he wanted it in his hand. But a gap in strength that wide left him nothing but helplessness… Strong as he had become among the players, in this world he was still at the very bottom of the ladder, and pitifully weak.

“Heh. Human. Do you know what this is? This is one of the seven Fate Cores, and it is in my hand now. Gathered together on the Hour of Fate, the Fate Cores make a power nothing can match — but scattered… This King has less than half the strength he had in those days, and it is still more than enough to beat this Orange Fang. A pity, though. The Hour of Fate’s power is too strange a thing, and This King cannot turn it to his own use. What This King can do is hold it down and seal it, so that it can never go looking for the Hour of Fate on its own. Hahahaha…”

Still laughing wildly, the Dark Nether Ghost King put Orange Fang away. Finding it at all had been pure accident. The Eight Demon Kings’ power was enormous, and Orange Fang, the weakest of the seven Fate Cores, had lost to him in the end. To save itself it had changed back into its original form, and it had been in his hand ever since.

So the Dark Nether Ghost King was standing there with less than half the strength he used to have… And if he was this terrible at less than half, what had he been at full?

Ye Tianxie’s mind fought with itself, sifting one possibility after another. Orange Fang, one of the Fate Cores, was an arm’s length away, and he could not stand the thought that running was his only choice.

“Dark Nether Ghost King. You tell me all this — aren’t you afraid I’ll repeat every word of it? I’d imagine plenty of people would be very interested in coming out here to give you trouble.” Ye Tianxie’s face had gone dark, and his voice was cold.

“Repeat it? Hahahaha… Stupid, laughable human. Do you think you will get the chance? With that contemptible strength of yours, This King has only to lift a finger to kill you… Heh… They will not need to come and find me. Before very long This King will go and find them, and teach them what it costs to anger my Demon race!” The Dark Nether Ghost King’s voice was shrill and cold, and the glow flickering in those green demon eyes was a horror to look at. “Do you see that ball of light behind you? Inside it is the last hope the Phantom Beast race left behind them — the Holy Mark! Heh, the old stories were true after all. The Holy Mark’s power is greater even than I imagined. A pity that it sleeps, and will never wake of its own accord! Do you know why This King hides himself here? Because in a little more time — two years, perhaps, perhaps not even one — This King will break the last shield guarding the Holy Mark, and its power will become the Dark Nether Ghost King’s own… And then This King will not only have back everything the Hour of Fate swallowed, he will have the Phantom Beast race’s great power on top of it. And who will be left then to stand in This King’s way? Hahahaha…”

Privately, Ye Tianxie sneered. Never mind that he could trigger the Soul of the Evil Dragon and leave whenever he wanted; even if he truly could not get away, even if he died here at the Dark Nether Ghost King’s hands… he was a player. He could not actually die. He would lose one level, and that was all. And then he could tell anyone he liked everything he had seen and heard.

Ye Tianxie wasted no more words on the demon. His brows stayed drawn down and his mind kept turning fast, hunting for any way at all to get Orange Fang out of that hand. And it was then that the force pinning him finally changed, and turned bitterly, unbearably cold…

“This King has lain quiet here for so many years, and now a human stands in front of him. It is almost a shame to kill you… But die you must, and now. Since the day This King broke free of the Tower of Fate, you will be the first human he has killed. Take that as your glory. Your blood will stain This King’s hands and become the sacrificial blood we Eight Demon Kings will use to wake the Demon race’s great ancient Demon God — Lixiao! Now die! Hahahaha…”

It was as if Ye Tianxie had dropped into a pit of ice. He went horribly cold, and worse than the cold, under that presence he had lost all control of his body — moving a single finger was almost beyond him. Savage light flared in the Dark Nether Ghost King’s green eyes. He lifted a hand, casually, and a knot of pitch-black smoke burst out of him and drove straight at Ye Tianxie’s chest, and the sheer weight of the pressure it carried stopped his breath in his throat.

Power like that was enough to one-shot him a hundred times over. A thousand…

Sealing the Eight Demon Kings had taken the Twelve Sages’ combined strength, and the power of the Hour of Fate on top of it. What was one player, barely arrived on the Lost Continent, supposed to do against one of them? Ye Tianxie sighed to himself and called out, low, “Soul of the Evil Dragon!”

Zzzt…

A transparent dome of light took shape around Ye Tianxie’s body, and in the instant the Evil Dragon’s wall opened, every trace of the Dark Nether Ghost King’s pressure vanished and his body was his own again. At the same moment a deep, hollowed-out weakness came over him and he could barely keep his feet — and only then did he notice that he was soaked from head to foot in cold sweat.

The Evil Dragon’s wall shut everything out — including the demon’s presence pinning him in place.

The black smoke struck the shimmering Evil Dragon’s wall, made a dull grinding sound, then broke apart in an instant and was gone without a trace. The vicious grin froze on the Dark Nether Ghost King’s face; the two points of green in his eyes wavered, plain to see. Then the twisted smile came back. He did not attack again, only said, low, “A wall of absolute defense, no less… Heh. Interesting. To be able to get in here — you really are not as simple as you look. But that laughable ant’s strength of yours can do nothing in front of This King but struggle and fail! Now This King finds he would very much like to see how long that shield of yours can keep up an absolute defense.”

Ye Tianxie slowly raised the right hand holding the Town Portal Scroll, looked the Dark Nether Ghost King straight in the eye, and said flatly, “Dark Nether Ghost King. Stay here and wait, like a good boy. One of these days I’ll come back for you.”

And with that his right hand closed hard.

“Ding… You are inside a powerful barrier. Town Portal items cannot be used.”

What!?

The prompt in his ear turned Ye Tianxie’s whole body rigid. He went several degrees colder, and the right hand holding the Town Portal Scroll shook once, violently.

A powerful barrier… the very barrier that covered and guarded the entire Phantom Beast Ruins and kept every living thing out. Inside a sealing barrier, teleportation of every kind was blocked outright — otherwise it would hardly deserve to guard this place at all. And inside one, naturally, a Town Portal Scroll did nothing at all.

He had been frightened a moment ago, facing the Dark Nether Ghost King. But it was now that Ye Tianxie’s heart dropped all the way to the bottom. Even standing this close to that terrible thing, he had been confident the whole time that the Evil Dragon’s wall would carry him out safely. And that last resort had never existed at all…

Zzzt…

Zzzt…

The Evil Dragon’s wall shimmered, and his health was falling at ten percent a second. Every second that passed took him one step closer to death.

“Come back for This King? Heh heh heh heh. Laughable. Truly laughable… You carry yourself well, but there is no chance for you now, and what a pity that is! Be the wretched creature that dies at This King’s hand!” The demon’s hand came up again. A thick knot of black mist began to gather between those withered fingers, and the green eyes stayed fixed on the transparent wall around Ye Tianxie. The moment the Evil Dragon’s wall went out, that dark attack would come down on him without mercy.

Five seconds… six seconds… seven seconds…

Death, that close.

He set his teeth hard, and still could not find one single way to save himself. In front of absolute power, every struggle and every calculation came to nothing.

But losing his last way out did not mean he would stand still and wait to die. With no hope left at all, Ye Tianxie went cold and steady instead. His eyes narrowed; his gaze swept the space to either side of him, ahead and behind, looking for anything he could use to get away. And all the while his body was stepping backward… one step, two… until his back struck something. As he stopped, his left hand went back by instinct to catch himself, and came down flat on the ball of light with its drifting white mist inside.

Zzzt…

Nine seconds passed and the Evil Dragon’s wall went out — and in that same instant, where Ye Tianxie’s left hand met the ball of light, a blaze broke out that no words could describe. It drove the dimness of the place away entirely, and it swallowed even the dark power the Dark Nether Ghost King had just finished gathering in his hand. The whole space was filled, top to bottom, with a brightness that could not go any further.

“This… what is this!!”

The Dark Nether Ghost King let out a roar of pure alarm. He staggered backward, both hands clamped over eyes the white light had all but blinded, and could not get them open again.

Absolute light is more terrible than absolute dark. In that world of light at its limit, everything turned pure white, all of it, and nothing at all could be told apart. And yet in all that whiteness one thing showed with perfect clarity: a turning, four-pointed radiant array. It was white too — but a white of an entirely different kind, and it easily overpowered light that was already blinding.

And the four-pointed radiant array had appeared on the back of Ye Tianxie’s left hand.

(End of Chapter 241)