Long Moya narrowed his eyes and watched Ye Tianxie quietly for a while, then looked away, as though remembering something, and said with a note of melancholy, “Of course I know that skill. Every being with a dragon’s blood possesses it. Every dragon can invoke Dragon Soul Detonation.”
“Detonate the dragon soul. Destroy everything. Those eight characters describe the last, and the most brilliant, radiance of a dragon’s life. Because it is our race’s technique of despair — a forbidden technique that must never be invoked unless one has reached a moment of near-certain death!”
“…” He had already half-guessed it, but hearing Long Moya say it out loud sent a jolt of shock through him all the same. A technique of despair necessarily came with terrifying destructive force — but it just as necessarily came with an appallingly cruel penalty. How horrifying was Dragon Soul Detonation’s power? And how cruel was its price? Lost levels? A forced reduction of attributes? Something else?
“What happens if I use Dragon Soul Detonation?” Ye Tianxie asked.
“If you use it, the destruction it produces is enough to annihilate an enemy ten times, even a hundred times, your strength — enough, indeed, to annihilate anything you wish to annihilate. It is precisely for this reason that other races seldom dare to provoke us. There have been dragons in our history who used it, and every one of them wrought catastrophic devastation, ruin on the scale of heaven and earth; the sight of it is beyond anything you could imagine without seeing it yourself. But the consequences for the dragon who uses it are just as terrible… A dragon may use Dragon Soul Detonation only once in its entire life, because it is a blow of despair drawn by detonating the whole of a dragon’s power, life, will, conviction, and soul. After it is used, the dragon’s body will be a lamp burned dry. Across countless ages, our records name thirteen dragons who used it. Six of them were annihilated in body and spirit in the instant of the detonation, and nothing of them remained. Five were left as mindless, broken husks and died a few days later, the last of their lives spent… And the two most fortunate ones lived — but never again possessed a shred of dragon-power, could not so much as stand… and simply dragged out the remainder of their lives in pain.”
Ye Tianxie: “!?”
“And me…? I’m a human from another world, and I can’t truly die here. If I used Dragon Soul Detonation, what would the consequence be?”
Long Moya glanced at him and said slowly, “Perhaps you would not die… But you would certainly end up like the dragons fortunate enough to survive it. All your attributes would drop to 1 — and could never be recovered, nor new power ever gained.”
Ye Tianxie: (⊙o⊙)!!
Are you kidding me… seriously? If it was true, then what absolute lunatic had designed this monstrosity of a skill… With consequences that horrific, however unbelievably overpowered it was, what idiot would ever actually use it? And what made it worse was that there wasn’t a single note about its power or its penalty — if you didn’t know and set it off by accident, you’d be crying for your mother!
Bear in mind that Fate offered no second chances. Deleting and rerolling a character wasn’t even an option.
“Forget that technique of despair. You are a human from another world; you will never face true despair, and the day you must use it will never come. And there is one more thing I may as well tell you… Even if you survive Dragon Soul Detonation, it carries another terrible side effect.”
“Which is?”
“Oblivion… of feeling.” Long Moya’s gaze went distant as he said it slowly.
“Oblivion of feeling?” Ye Tianxie was taken aback. What kind of side effect was that?
“After using Dragon Soul Detonation, you forget the most important feeling of your life — you forget every person contained within that feeling and everything that happened within it. This comes from our race’s most ancient records, and the two dragons who survived confirmed it absolutely.” Watching Ye Tianxie’s astonished face, Long Moya sighed. “You’re thinking that as penalties go, this peculiar one isn’t so terrible after all? Heh… Oblivion of feeling. When you truly possess a real love pressed into your heart and your marrow, you will understand — it is a punishment crueler than death.”
“I know.” To Long Moya’s surprise, Ye Tianxie showed neither confusion nor scorn. Threads of painful memory and desolation kept flickering across his face and through his eyes. Feeling — what was feeling, what was true feeling? He had possessed it, and lost it… But even if it could only bring him pain, he could never — would never allow himself to — forget it. Forget her. Because to forget every day, every minute, every second he had spent with her would leave him with nothing but a broken, colorless life.
Until I die, I will not forget a single moment of your presence in my life…
Only — where in the world are you now…
Why did you leave alone…
Don’t you know? To the ends of the earth, to the edge of the clouds… even into a bottomless abyss, even into an asura’s purgatory — anywhere you are, I would go with you gladly, smiling…
What kind of unspeakable reason made you, who valued me above the whole world, choose to walk quietly away and never send a word…
In what time, in what place… will I see you again?
The struck chord left Ye Tianxie’s mood heavy and low. He forced a smile at Long Moya. “Old master dragon, I think it’s time I left here — if there’s nothing else you need my help with.”
“You may leave whenever you wish. The Dragon God’s Stone is gone, but I have stayed here several thousand years and grown long accustomed to everything about this place. There is nowhere else for me to go, so I expect I shall remain. And if you can, in the future, it would be no bad thing to come and talk with an old man who has nothing left to strive for… Though I would very much like to witness your growth with my own eyes.” Long Moya nodded with a smile. Nothing like the cold, hard face Ye Tianxie had met when he first arrived, he was gentle now, like an old man in his final years wanting nothing from the world.
“Mm. I’ll come back often,” Ye Tianxie said with a smile — and he wasn’t merely being polite. He had committed this place to memory, and with Netherfog in hand, he was confident he could jump down from up there again and land safely. Of course, his promise to visit often had nothing to do with any warm concern for Long Moya’s company… but rather with the possibility of squeezing more benefits out of him. Gifting powerful equipment, gifting powerful skills — was there a more loving, more generous old man anywhere?
“The Dragon God’s Stone is gone, and every dragon of my race will sense it. They will gather here as quickly as they can, and at that point your name will spread through the entire dragon race… I can see you are a man who likes to be unbound, who dislikes interference from others. That situation would not be a bad thing for you, but it would not be a good one either. Much as I would like to bring you before the lord of my race — do as you will. With a Dragon Soul that fuses darkness and light, and the Mystic Fox having forced you into mastership, a quiet life is already impossible for you. I look forward to your future… Now then. This is a special space; your town-return items will not function here. Let me send you out.”
Long Moya lifted his head, and a layer of pale light settled over Ye Tianxie’s body. Ye Tianxie nodded — and then something occurred to him. He looked up. “Wait, old master. You’ve existed for ten thousand years, so you must have seen and heard a great deal. Have you ever heard of the Fate Cores?”
“The Fate Cores are the power-cores of this world’s energy heart, the Hour of Eternal Fate. There are seven in all, existing in seven colors: the Blood Feather, the Orange Fang, the Yellow Abyss, the Green Wave, the Cyan Spirit, the Blue Soul, and the Heaven’s Heart. Each of the seven can exist independently, and each holds a terrible power beyond ordinary imagining — especially the purple Heaven’s Heart, the most powerful and the most mysterious of them. It is said that the power of the Heaven’s Heart alone surpasses the combined power of the other six. And when all these cores are gathered together upon the Hour of Eternal Fate, they form the ultimate instrument capable of maintaining the energy balance of the Lost Continent… That is all I know about the Hour of Fate.” Long Moya finished flatly, then turned a probing look on Ye Tianxie.
Blood Feather, Orange Fang, Yellow Abyss, Green Wave, Cyan Spirit, Blue Soul, Heaven’s Heart… red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple… Beyond the Blood Feather and the Blue Soul, Ye Tianxie now finally knew the names of every last Fate Core, and he carved all seven into his heart. Something in him was saying that if he could find these seven cores, he could unravel the secret of the Hour of Fate… and perhaps learn where she had gone… and who she was.
“Do you know where these Fate Cores are now?” he asked.
Long Moya shook his head calmly. “The Hour of Eternal Fate has vanished, and with it the seven Fate Cores. No one knows where they have gone… Ah — if anyone must know, then it could only be Goddess Xiyao, supreme deity of the Lost Continent, and the Seven Sages who survived that terrible battle. They are the ones most likely to know where the Hour of Fate and the Fate Cores have gone… However—” Long Moya’s brow shifted, and he asked, his face grave, “why do you ask after the whereabouts of the Fate Cores?”
“I heard someone mention them in passing a while back — that getting hold of even one Fate Core would make you incredibly powerful. So I was curious, that’s all.” Ye Tianxie said it with utter casualness, without a trace of unnaturalness or a single crack in his expression.
Long Moya studied him a moment longer, then said mildly, “The Fate Cores are not as simple a matter as you suppose, and their possession is not something an ordinary creature can hope for. Every Fate Core has an independent consciousness of its own — some mature, some not. So although I do not know where they are, they are not entirely without pattern: their consciousness will drive them toward the places most suited to their existence… For example, it is said that the green core, the Green Wave, holds a terrible power of poison, and would necessarily favor an environment of extreme toxicity. Still, even if you truly could find them as you are now, you could never make them your own. Now then — let me send you on your way. What I most want to see is the day you reach your peak. You are destined to be a miracle of my race!”
The pale light enveloping Ye Tianxie flickered slightly and carried him away from that bottomless black chasm.
(End of Chapter 116)