Something moved in him. He stepped up in front of the dimmed ball of light, raised his left hand, and reached out to feel his way forward… If what he had seen before was right, it was his own left hand touching the thing that had set off that strange turn. And he had seen something else — a mark of some kind that seemed to have shown on the back of it at the time.

“You have come.”

His hand had only just reached out when an aged voice suddenly spoke, and he froze where he stood. This was in no way a voice reaching his ears — it was plainly sounding directly inside his mind.

“Who are you?” Ye Tianxie pulled his hand back and turned to look around him, trying to find where the voice came from.

“Heh heh heh heh…” The aged voice laughed mildly. “You will not see me. I am now no more than a thread of divine consciousness, attached to the Holy Mark Beast ten thousand years ago, and it only wakes once it has met you… I am the last clan chief of the Phantom Beast race, and I have been waiting for you all this time.”

“Waiting for me?”

“Yes… Because you are the last hope of my Phantom Beast race… and the only one.” The aged voice gave him an answer that left him stunned.

“Why me?” Ye Tianxie asked. He had never believed in pies falling out of the sky. Earlier, that mark suddenly showing on his hand had let him half guess at something, and had left him more baffled than before.

“Because you carry the Holy Mark. In my Phantom Beast race’s stories, there can only ever be one person who carries the Holy Mark, and one day he will appear. And this person can not only bear the power of my race’s four divine spirits — he can also wake the one thing my race has guarded since the day it came into being — and that has never once woken… the Holy Mark Beast.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“Perhaps for now my words leave you nothing but confusion… Now, take off the thing covering it and look at the back of your own left hand, and you will understand.”

Ye Tianxie did not hesitate. He dismissed the Holy Dragon’s Fang on his left hand, and in the instant the white gauntlet vanished, his gaze froze.

There on the back of his left hand, printed clear as anything, was a four-pointed radiant array the size of a ping-pong ball, perfect in every proportion. Every line of it was giving off a faint, clean white glow. Ye Tianxie went blank for a moment, staring dumbly at his own hand.

This was his own hand.

He was absolutely certain that before this, no such mark had ever existed on the back of it.

What on earth was going on? When had this mark appeared? Where had it come from? And if it had been there before, how could he possibly have failed to notice it all this time?

“There is no need to be startled… It is the Holy Mark. Only, before your power of the Holy Mark woke, it would not show. And now it has truly appeared on you.” The aged voice sounded in his mind and drove off a little of his confusion. He was still looking at it. Then he suddenly raised his head and asked, “What exactly is this Holy Mark? Why has it appeared on my hand?”

“The Holy Mark. In my race’s stories, it is a mark that can only appear on someone who holds light-power of the finest, purest and strongest kind. The highest state of light is sacred power… which is to say the power of guarding. The Holy Mark’s property is guarding, at its root, and my race’s heaven-given destiny is to guard — so it is the mark we longed for above all others. But unfortunately, right up until we were destroyed, not one person carrying the Holy Mark ever appeared — and that, perhaps, was simply my people’s destiny… In the same way, the stories say that someone holding dark power of the finest, purest and strongest kind may have a ‘Demon Mark’ appear on him, and the Demon Mark’s root property is the exact opposite… it is destruction.”

“On the back of your left hand is the true Holy Mark. I could not mistake it, and the Holy Mark Beast’s reaction could not possibly be wrong either. The one thing out of the ordinary… in the stories, the Holy Mark sits on a person’s forehead, and yours has appeared on the back of a hand. For the Holy Mark to appear at all, there must be light-power hidden inside you, pure beyond measure and vast beyond any limit… Only, perhaps your body cannot bear that power, so it has hidden itself away to protect you, and that power of yours has not been able to show.”

The Holy Mark… Ye Tianxie closed his left hand into a fist, flexed it, closed it again, and watched that holy-white trace shift and shift again. Here was one more fact set in front of him that he had no way to explain.

Light-power of the finest, purest and strongest kind… in this world, wasn’t what he held a mixed light-and-dark dragon power? Then how could it be the finest and purest of anything?

“Ten thousand years ago, the Demon God’s waking brought a disaster down on my Phantom Beast race that swallowed it whole. The whole race was wiped out… and the only thing left was the Holy Mark Beast, which had already existed when my race first appeared. My race’s strongest ability is ‘transformation,’ and what the Holy Mark Beast holds is the strongest such ability of all. Through all these countless years it has stayed inside its egg, and has never shown a sign of being ready to come out. And the reason it is called the Holy Mark Beast is that in my race’s stories, only a person carrying the Holy Mark, touching its egg with that Mark’s power, can wake it out of that sleep.”

An egg? This glowing sphere in front of him… was actually the Holy Mark Beast’s egg?

“Waiting this stubbornly for a Holy Mark bearer to arrive can’t have been simply to wake the Holy Mark Beast, surely?” Ye Tianxie thought it over and said.

The aged voice answered him. “It was not… I hope that you can take the Holy Mark Beast away with you, and then go looking for the four lost divine spirits. The Holy Mark Beast is my race’s beast of heaven-given destiny, and so long as it follows at your side, you will not have to search deliberately — fate itself will guide the two of you to the four divine spirits of the old days… They were destroyed in body and spirit alike to seal the Demon God Lixiao, but divine spirits are divine spirits after all. Before they perished, they already had the foreknowledge of their end and the acceptance of it, and so, for the sake of passing down the Phantom Beast race’s power, they left the most important part of that inheritance in the soil of the Lost Continent before they sealed the Demon God Lixiao… If you can find what they left behind, then with the Holy Mark you carry you will be able to borrow that matchless power of theirs.”

“The four divine spirits were settled at the east, south, west and north of the Lost Continent. Their powers were all different, and all beyond measure — none of them had a match. They carried on my race’s mission of guarding. The one who kept the west in those days had the strongest attack of all, and his heaven-given calling was mercilessness and destruction: the Annihilation Asura. The Ragnarok in his hand is a spear of ruin that makes divine spirits themselves tremble, and with his power you will hold the strength to break through any obstacle under heaven. In the east was the Abyss Knight, whose calling was guarding. His power to guard put enemies into despair, and the Eternity’s End in his hand is a shield that truly holds up the sky. He alone could guard a whole city, and whatever he meant to guard, no one had ever managed to break it. In the north was the Azure Demon Emperor, whose calling was judgment. His magic was strong enough to move heaven and earth, and when he let that vast magic of his go, even the sky would shrink from it and go dim… With his power you can destroy a thousand li in an instant. In the south was the Holy Sword War God, whose calling was battle. You have felt his strength for yourself, and against an enemy with an evil heart he is the most terrible nightmare of all. The one the Demon God Lixiao feared most in those days was him, too.”

“The Holy Sword War God’s power was left in these abandoned and forgotten ruins, and you have already received the inheritance of it. All you need do now is go and obtain the inheritances of the other three divine spirits.”

“And then? Once I have these powers, what am I supposed to do for the Phantom Beast race?”

Receiving the inheritance of all four divine spirits’ power — what a thing that would be to set the blood surging and the heart pounding… Ye Tianxie kept a good hold on his own feelings. There is no free lunch under heaven. A truth shallow enough that everybody knows it.

“You… do not need to do anything.” The old man’s voice gave him an answer he had not expected. “I only hope that the Phantom Beast race’s strongest divine power can be passed on, instead of lying quiet forever in ground nobody knows… If you can wake the Holy Mark Beast, you will already have done my race an enormous favor… From the first day my race existed, there was a prophecy handed down among us from no one knows when or where — when the Holy Mark Beast wakes, the Phantom Beast race will never perish. And the one who can wake the Holy Mark Beast… has finally appeared today.”

“Still…” The old man’s voice paused, and then went on. “The Phantom Beast race of those days was wiped out entirely at the Demon God Lixiao’s hands. And Lixiao was defeated by my race in turn — at the price of my race’s destruction, and of a sealing that cost the four divine spirits their divine souls entirely. If that had bought the Lost Continent lasting peace, my race would have had no complaint even wiped out to the last… But the Demon God Lixiao has come to the Lost Continent again, and the shadow of darkness has covered this land we gave everything to guard, all over again… How can my race accept that! How can we accept it!!”

Ye Tianxie’s face shifted. He frowned and asked, “Wasn’t the ancient Demon God Lixiao sealed permanently by the ‘Heaven-Parting Array’? Do you mean he didn’t die after being sealed… and that he is about to wake?”

“No… it is not that he is about to wake… it is that the Demon God Lixiao woke long ago, and is wandering this land right now. In the moment my last thread of divine consciousness woke because of you, I felt his presence. Lixiao’s presence I could never mistake, not ever… He exists, without question. Perhaps he came free of the Heaven-Parting Array a very, very long time ago.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

The Demon God Lixiao’s name was not one he was hearing for the first time. He had first heard it from the Dark Nether Ghost King’s mouth. And… as strong as the Holy Sword War God was, even he had needed to join with the other three divine spirits, and to pay with the destruction of body and spirit, before Lixiao could be put down… Just how terrible this ancient Demon God was could be imagined from that alone.

If a Demon God like that had truly come free of the Heaven-Parting Array and returned to the Lost Continent… what a terrible source of disaster that would be.

(End of Chapter 250)