“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” Whether or not it could still hear him — its voice had gone, having likely spent every scrap of strength it could summon — Ye Tianxie refused it outright. To save it, if he truly meant to save it, the first thing he’d have to do was destroy the Dragon God’s Stone. He couldn’t do that, and even if he’d had the power to, he wouldn’t. From the way Long Moya’s eyes and expression changed when he looked at the stone, Ye Tianxie understood exactly what it meant to the dragon race. Never mind whether anyone was capable of destroying it — if someone actually did, what he would get in return was the hatred and the hunting of the entire dragon race.

They were the most powerful race on the Lost Continent, a race that even humans looked up to and revered. Who would have the nerve to provoke these mighty beings who stood at the very summit of the continent? And besides — if this little fox truly was so formidable, who would dare release it without a thought for the consequences? A beast that the Dragon God of that age had sacrificed his own life to imprison — if it turned out to be an evil beast, who could possibly stand against it?

Without hesitating any further, Ye Tianxie pressed his hand to the Dragon God’s Stone. Instantly, the sensation of two auras merging traveled up his arm. It made him think at once of the God-Summoning Stone that had shattered because of him in the City of Stars. In truth, the two divine stones had a great deal in common: with both, the first step before use was to touch it, connecting your power with its own… The difference was that the God-Summoning Stone used that connection to probe the size and category of a person’s power and potential, while the Dragon God’s Stone used its own power to stimulate the unawakened dragon-power in another, in order to wake it up.

The instant his palm made contact, the pure white glow on the stone spread from his hand across his whole body, until he was wrapped in a layer of luminous white. What it gave him was a warmth that filled him from head to foot, as though his body had been lowered into a hot spring.

Long Moya nodded slightly. “Good. There is indeed unawakened Dragon Soul power within you — otherwise the stone would have shown no reaction at all. You have dragon-power, but you incline far more toward the human. And for one whose father is a man and whose mother a dragon, without the Dragon God’s Stone the dragon-power awakens with agonizing slowness; some never fully awaken it in a lifetime. Even so, because they carry a dragon’s blood, even if they never awaken it — even if they live and grow just as an ordinary human does — their bodies are several times more resilient than a human’s, and their strength several times greater. Because we dragons possess the strongest body and the strongest power of all.”

Ye Tianxie kept his eyes shut and didn’t move, feeling that sensation that his whole body found so intimately familiar, and the searing heat that seemed to kindle inside his heart. But that state didn’t stop him hearing Long Moya’s voice.

Then, abruptly, a white light flashed across the Dragon God’s Stone… And set against the white the stone itself gave off, this white was far brighter, far more arresting — pure and immaculate. It was a holy white without a single impurity, without a single flaw. And at the same instant, that identical white light appeared around Ye Tianxie’s body as well.

Long Moya’s expression shifted, and a deep astonishment came over his face. “Light… your Dragon Soul power carries the light attribute!”

Ye Tianxie: “…”

“We dragons possess the mightiest body and the mightiest power; we look down on the world with our attack and our defense. If one had to give it a category, the power of our race runs the hard, fierce, physical road, and generally carries no elemental attribute at all… But a few dragons of exceptionally high talent break that rule and carry an element — an innate natural attribute within their dragon-power. From the birth of our race until now, only once in several thousand years does a dragon with an attributed power appear, and such a dragon is beyond question stronger than an ordinary one. Once a dragon with an attribute emerges, it inevitably becomes the strongest among us… At present, of all the dragons that have existed from ten thousand years ago until today, only two possess attributed power. One holds the darkness attribute, and its strength has reached the supreme Holy Annihilation realm. The other, like you, holds the light attribute, and is the strongest of the three dragons who have reached Divine Mystery.”

“And you… you are a human whose dragon-power carries the light attribute!” Long Moya could scarcely contain his shock. The appearance of light-power in Ye Tianxie had caught him completely off guard. Only a dragon of the very highest talent could ever possess an attributed power — and to have talent that high, it would necessarily be a pure-blooded dragon with the purest possible power. Every attributed dragon since the race began had been exactly that. Never once had a non-pureblood born of dragon and human carried attributed dragon-power.

And now this human — whose mother was a dragon and whose father a man, who leaned far more toward the human, whose dragon-power hadn’t even awakened — carried the light attribute in his dragon-power. How could he not be astonished? And the light-power reflected by the Dragon God’s Stone could not possibly be a matter of the man having cultivated light magic, because the stone reacted only to dragon-power. It would not touch any other power at all.

“There are only two attributes our race can possess: one is light, one is darkness. A dragon with the power of light is a Holy Light Dragon — it not only has the same formidable body and strength as any dragon, but also extraordinary protective power, self-healing, even light-attribute attacks. A dragon with the power of darkness is a Dark Demon Dragon, possessing greater destructive force and a darkness power that terrifies all who face it. And the emergence of elemental power depends not only on talent in one’s dragon-power, but on the dragon’s own nature. If a dragon’s nature inclines toward the holy path, and its talent is exceptionally high, then it may be born with light dragon-power. If a dragon’s nature inclines toward the demonic, then, driven by that same exceptional talent, it may awaken dark dragon-power. A dragon with the power of darkness is not necessarily a truly evil dragon, for darkness does not mean sin — but it is certainly never a good dragon. At present, the king of our race is that dragon of holy light. And the strongest Dark Demon Dragon left the race a very long time ago; no one knows where he has gone. Though he holds the strongest, unmatched power, his demonic nature meant he could never, in the end, inherit our race’s duty of guardianship.”

Long Moya was explaining all of this in exhaustive detail… because here was a human who plainly did not have pure dragon-power and yet possessed the dragon-power of holy light, and the emergence of such a human was certain to send an enormous tremor through the dragon race. These were things he ought to know. At the same time, that he could produce light dragon-power meant he had the heart of the holy path — he could not possibly be an evil man.

The white light on Ye Tianxie’s body was slowly intensifying, the heat within him still there, and a feeling of swelling kept rising and receding in his heart… It was power. Power, awakening, and dissolving into his body, becoming his.

The awakening of dragon-power wasn’t accomplished in a single stroke; it required a relatively slow process. Long Moya said nothing more, quietly feeling out the gradual rise of Ye Tianxie’s dragon-power.

And then the change came — the one that struck Long Moya to the core of his soul.

The holy white light on Ye Tianxie abruptly went out. Extinguished, without a trace. And at the same time, the layer of holy white light on the Dragon God’s Stone vanished completely as well, leaving only its original white glow. Before Long Moya could even register his surprise, a ball of utterly pitch-black light appeared before his eyes…

In an instant, every source of light vanished, and everything around them turned to darkness. The only things visible were Ye Tianxie’s body, and the black radiance on the Dragon God’s Stone, still starkly distinguishable within the dark.

Darkness…

Long Moya’s heart, still as an ancient well for so many centuries, seemed to stop beating. His cold face sat frozen in blank stupefaction for a full three seconds before a voice of absolute astonishment came out of him. “Darkness… dark dragon-power…”

“Impossible… this is impossible!!”

Only a moment ago, that had plainly been light dragon-power, and it had shocked him. And now the power of darkness had appeared on the very same body… the power and radiance of dark dragon-power.

Light and darkness — the only two elements a dragon’s power could ever hold. Very, very few dragons possessed either. But never once had a single dragon’s power manifested both. Because light and darkness were, by their very nature, two elemental forces that suppressed and repelled one another; they could not possibly appear in one living being at the same time. Their mutual repulsion and suppression carried a cruel absoluteness to it, more violent than that between fire and water. They were two elements that truly could not be reconciled. Where there was darkness there would be no light; where there was light, no darkness could exist.

And yet here it was — a scene that overturned everything Long Moya knew, appearing before him so abruptly.

“Impossible… impossible… how can light dragon-power and dark dragon-power appear at the same time… this is impossible!” Long Moya stared, muttering to himself, so unaware of his own state that he didn’t notice the hood covering his head sliding back to reveal a full head of white hair. And it wasn’t just him — whichever of the dragon race had witnessed this scene, they would have been too shaken to believe their own eyes.

Set aside the fact that light and darkness could not coexist… The one who could produce light dragon-power had a holy heart that grieved for the world; the one who could produce dark dragon-power had a cold and shadowed demon’s heart. Two natures so contradictory, two characters so opposed — they could not possibly exist in the same body.

What in the world was going on…

The black radiance wrapped Ye Tianxie’s body and rattled Long Moya’s eyes. After several seconds of deathly silence, the dense black light on Ye Tianxie and on the Dragon God’s Stone pulsed once, in unison, then abruptly weakened — and in the very next instant, it was replaced by that earlier light-power.

Light finally returned to the dark space. But what was still playing in Long Moya’s mind was that pitch-black radiance. And the light that had returned didn’t hold for long; it dimmed just as the darkness had, and after a few seconds of struggle it was replaced by black once again, and darkness reclaimed the room.

The darkness held for three seconds before being replaced by light. And then, on Ye Tianxie and on the Dragon God’s Stone alike, the glow began alternating — darkness and light, darkness and light — and the speed of the alternation went from slow to rapid, from once every several seconds, to once a second, to several times a second…

(End of Chapter 110)