“Its ability… this is one of the Divine Mystery items Goddess Xiyao bestowed on our five main cities of Sun, Moon, Star, Starlight and Mystery. Divine Mystery items are powerful beyond compare, and rarer than you would believe, and on the whole Lost Continent you could count them on your fingers. Each of the five became the treasure that guards its own main city. What its ability is, I can’t tell you… All right, little brother, I’ve told you everything I’m able to. Now you ought to be lending me that sheepskin, oughtn’t you?” The City Lord of Heaven’s Sun got through all that with his patience intact, and put it to Ye Tianxie with a serious face.

“City Lord, you want to repair the ‘Seven-Colored Dusk’ in order to wipe out the Fire Spirits in the south?” Ye Tianxie did not answer him, and went on asking instead.

The City Lord’s beard-covered face twitched, but in the end he pushed the temper down and said, “That’s right.”

“Which is to say the Seven-Colored Dusk has very strong offensive power?”

“No. It has no offensive power at all. Of the Divine Mystery items Goddess Xiyao bestowed on our five main cities, the least offensive is the ‘Seven-Colored Dusk.’ The most offensive is the ‘Lost Dawn.'”

“The Lost Dawn?” Ye Tianxie started. The Seven-Colored Dusk, the Lost Dawn… they sounded very much as if they were connected.

“The ‘Lost Dawn’ belongs to the City of Starlight, at the far north of the Lost Continent, separated from the Seven-Colored Dusk as north is from south — and that is their fate as well. They are a pair cursed by heaven, like two people in love with a thousand threads of connection between them that cannot be cut, who in the end can never be together. The Lost Dawn and the Seven-Colored Dusk have been forbidden words for many years now; the two must never be spoken together, because what lies hidden behind them is the grievous tangle of feeling between two lovers of different races… and the destruction of the strongest magic race, the Fairy race, and the strongest archery race, the Elf race… Hell! What are you asking so many questions for, lad!! Hurry up and lend me that sheepskin!!”

Having said very nearly everything he knew, the one-track City Lord suddenly noticed what he had done, flew into a rage, and finally roared aloud.

This time Ye Tianxie did not ask anything more. He obediently took out Grey Goat’s hide and set it in front of the City Lord.

“Mm. When this is done, I’ll be sure to thank you properly.” The City Lord was reaching for it, thoroughly delighted, when Ye Tianxie whipped his hand back.

“Lad, what’s the meaning of this?” The City Lord, feeling he had been played with, said it with his beard bristling and his eyes bulging.

Ye Tianxie thought about it very seriously and said, “I was thinking. This hide is the only one of its kind under heaven. What happens if you borrow it and don’t give it back?”

The City Lord’s temper came boiling straight up. His eyes went round, his hair stood on end, and he let out a roar. “That’s a load of crap!!!!”

That one roar from the worked-up City Lord was no small matter. The guards outside were left with both ears ringing, and the whole residence seemed to shudder faintly under it. Ye Tianxie, closest to him of anyone, was very nearly knocked senseless — but he recovered his composure in an instant and stepped back two paces, perfectly naturally.

“Would I, the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun, damn well cheat one little sprout like you? My character is known all over the world. Who doesn’t know that I’ve always been a man of my word! Am I the sort who goes back on what he says? Am I!!”

“City Lord, don’t get worked up yet.” Ye Tianxie waved his hands, then said, “Today ought to be the first time the two of us have met, oughtn’t it?”

“And what if it is!?”

“Then how am I supposed to know what sort of man you are, or whether you keep your word? If I believed whatever you happened to say, wouldn’t that make me a fool… For instance: whatever I say right now, would you believe all of it?” Ye Tianxie said it very calmly.

“Crap! How could I be the same as you!? I’m the City Lord of Heaven’s Sun. Am I going to cheat some lad who’s come running here from the City of Stars!?”

“Of course you are…” The corner of Ye Tianxie’s mouth moved, and he said, with an odd look on his face, “You can’t deal with the Fire Spirits of the Inferno of Lava yourself, and you have to rely on repairing the Seven-Colored Dusk to handle them — and now you’re sending me off to wipe out a thousand Fire Spirits… Have you got the nerve to tell me you aren’t setting me up? Hm?”

The City Lord blinked, his beard twitched, and after a long while he finally squeezed out a sentence. “Weren’t you so damned impressive you could even drive off the Dark Nether Ghost King!! Next to the Dark Nether Ghost King, what the hell are a few Fire Spirits!!”

“Yes… I did drive off the Dark Nether Ghost King… but did you believe it!! If you really believed I’d driven off the Dark Nether Ghost King, you’d have been flat on the floor thanking heaven for me, near enough on your knees — would you still be here hemming and hawing at me with your beard bristling? If you really believed it… you’d have handed the whole Fire Spirit business straight to me. Would you still be in this much of a hurry to catch Red Goat and repair the Seven-Colored Dusk?”

Ye Tianxie’s words came over like a string of shots, and every one of them hit the City Lord where it hurt. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open… and this time he could not squeeze out a single word.

Ye Tianxie shook his head, worn out and helpless. “Ah, City Lord, what am I supposed to say about you. You didn’t believe me from the very start, and you set up a suicide quest to send me off to die… and now you tell me your character is known all over the world… If you were me, would you choose to believe it?”

The City Lord: “……”

This time the City Lord really was struck dumb. Setting Ye Tianxie to wipe out Fire Spirits had been sending him to his death in the first place. The lowest-level Fire Spirits are level 50, and they come out in swathes across whole hillsides; if Ye Tianxie went there, all he could do was stare… Because the City Lord himself was a great fire-element Magic God, and had inherited a temper as violent as fire with it. But his fire, used on Fire Spirits… would not destroy them at all. It would make their abilities grow, and make them more active into the bargain. Fire Spirits are condensed out of fire to begin with, and they absorb fire-element attacks without the least ceremony.

With the Seven-Colored Dusk, though, things would be completely different. Wiping out those Fire Spirits would be as simple as kicking sand.

“If you were me, would you feel easy about ‘lending’ something precious to a man who not only doesn’t believe you, but wants to set you up and send you off to die?” Ye Tianxie went on, curling his lip without any mercy at all.

The City Lord’s face went red and then white, and he could not argue back. He was in no way a petty man; his temper was as explosive as fire, but men like that are usually straight as well, and no good at quibbling… and this time everything Ye Tianxie said was right, down to the word. He really had meant to set Ye Tianxie up — to punish him for bragging without any bounds at all.

Because that really was what he had been thinking, his one-track mind could find no answer at all.

“Then… what’ll it take to get you to lend me that hide!” After holding it in for a long while, the City Lord finally said something that was plainly a surrender. If Ye Tianxie had been an ordinary man, he would have been slapped clean across the room for daring to talk that way. But Ye Tianxie had Grey Goat’s hide, and that was the greatest hope of repairing the Seven-Colored Dusk and getting the City of Heaven’s Sun out of its present crisis. He had no choice but to push the temper down and make his tone a little gentler.

Ye Tianxie pressed at his forehead, then looked up and said, “Mm, let me think… It’s very simple, City Lord. You give me something and we’ll make a trade. When you’ve caught Red Goat and found that gourd, you give the hide back, and I’ll give back whatever you handed me. How’s that?”

The City Lord roared almost without thinking, “Fine! Then that’s settled!”

He whipped a fiery red bracelet off his own wrist. “This is the ‘Ring of the Fire God’ the Lost Emperor bestowed on me back then, a special Immortal Spirit-grade bracelet. Now you can set your mind at rest, can’t you!”

A bracelet made of red jade, with what looked like burning flame flowing inside. One glance and a faint wave of scorching heat seemed to come off it… An Immortal Spirit item — and not only an Immortal Spirit item, but bracelet-class equipment, which is extremely unusual and essentially never appears. The only other bracelet-class piece Ye Tianxie had ever seen was the Seven-Colored Bracelet he had given Su Feifei.

But it was plainly meant for a fire-element mage. Ye Tianxie moved his attention off it, shook his head, and said unhurriedly, “City Lord, you know perfectly well that Grey Goat was made out of a Leaf of Luck that grew on the Wishing Tree. There is only one of her under heaven, and a second could never appear — which is to say there will only ever be this one Grey Goat hide. And the experts who want to get hold of it are beyond counting; in several hundred years nobody has succeeded. And this hide is now tied to the safety of your entire City of Heaven’s Sun… Between its rarity, the difficulty of obtaining it, and its value to the City of Heaven’s Sun… do you think a mere Immortal Spirit item is fit to be mentioned in the same breath?”

The City Lord’s eyes bulged. Put that way, every sentence of it seemed to make sense. He frowned and asked, “Then what do you want? Out with it — what is it of mine you’re after? Apart from my city seal, for the sake of the City of Heaven’s Sun I’ll put up anything I’ve got! Say it!!”

Ye Tianxie gave a pleased smile. “Since you put it that way, City Lord, I can set my mind at rest… I’ll hand this hide over right now. But you have to take… that already-broken Seven-Colored Dusk and trade it for the hide.”

Everything went quiet, and then came a blast of a roar from the City Lord. “Go and dream!!”

“Oh… goodbye then.” Ye Tianxie backed up two steps, then waved a hand without hesitating, turned, and walked off.

The City Lord had not expected Ye Tianxie to turn and go quite that cleanly. He panicked a little, hurried a few steps to block Ye Tianxie’s way, and said viciously, “You, lad… The Seven-Colored Dusk is the divine object Goddess Xiyao bestowed on my City of Heaven’s Sun. It can absolutely never fall into another man’s hands. You…”

“Didn’t you just say, City Lord, that apart from the city seal, anything would do?”

“I damn well didn’t think you’d have the nerve to open your mouth that wide!”

“That wide?” Ye Tianxie’s face was all innocence. “It isn’t as if you don’t know — the ‘Seven-Colored Dusk’ as it is now is damaged. Whether it’s in your hands or in mine, it’s of no use at all. Even if I got it, all I’d have is one more piece of junk taking up room in my pack, and no use to me either. The reason I want it is that as it is right now, it’s both extremely important to you and completely unusable. That way I don’t hold you up over anything, and I don’t have to worry about you going back on it later. Isn’t that the best of both worlds?”

(End of Chapter 259)