Ye Tianxie said nothing more and put Orange Fang away in his pack. The second Fate Core had come into his hand after one strange turn strung onto another. Xiaobei’s efforts, running into the Dark Nether Ghost King, touching that mysterious ball of light, taking the form of the Holy Sword War God, the Blue Soul’s sudden charge… take away any one of them, or shift it by the smallest degree, and the result would have been completely different.
The ball of light…
Ye Tianxie looked back at the Phantom Beast Ruins, most likely buried now, and his brows twitched. In the fury of attacking the Dark Nether Ghost King he had been too focused, and had lost track of that strange ball of light floating in the underground space, the one that had given him all that power… and of an old man’s voice.
“Tell me who you are.” His face darkened as he stared into those eyes, where no feeling stirred at all.
It was because of this blue-haired man in front of him that he had gotten Blood Feather, and the “Rebel-Boned Evil Dragon” class as well… he ought to have felt gratitude toward him, from the bottom of his heart. But… more than gratitude, there was a surge in his chest he could not put down.
A riddle…
A blue-haired man like a riddle.
That he had turned up beside Ye Tianxie, and the help he had given, and the feeling buried deep behind his eyes whenever he looked at him — none of that could be accident.
And the stir he set going in Ye Tianxie’s own mind was no illusion either.
He wanted to know everything about him, more than he could say. This second meeting was already something completely different from the last one, when he had watched the man’s back as he left. He was beginning to feel that somewhere beyond seeing, there was a thread between them… a thread thin and faint as mist, and it shook the deepest part of his soul.
“On the day you defeat me, you will know.” The blue-haired man gave Ye Tianxie an answer that did not surprise him.
Defeat him…
Ye Tianxie turned and let out a long breath. He raised his eyes and said quietly, “Then goodbye.”
However badly he wanted to know who the man was, his character settled it: he would never be the sort to cling and beg for it all to come out. Defeat him… and know everything…
Then defeat him. Get stronger. Make him the reason he had to get stronger.
There is nothing in the world that is impossible. The Dark Nether Ghost King, who had felt stronger to him than this man and the Blue Soul together, had just been abused one-sidedly — so what reason did he have not to believe he could beat this one?
He did not give the blue-haired man or the Blue Soul another look. He started toward the Phantom Beast Ruins, which the Holy Sword War God’s power had turned into rubble. He had to feel his way back in and find that mysterious ball of light. It must still be down there.
“Wait.” A quiet voice called him back. The blue-haired man had not moved from where he stood, and watched Ye Tianxie’s feet stop, his back still turned. “You obtained the power of the Holy Mark?”
“Maybe.” Ye Tianxie’s answer was short. What exactly had happened in there he did not know himself, which was why he had to go down and find that ball of light and get a clear answer out of it.
Somewhere below thought he longed to meet the blue-haired man, and below that again he dreaded any contact with him at all… because he was afraid of what terrible truth the man might give him. On this second contact, feeling for it deliberately, the man reminded him more and more of one particular person.
He had always trusted what he felt.
And this feeling frightened him.
The blue-haired man was silent for a little while, and then, just as Ye Tianxie was lifting a foot to go, he suddenly spoke again. “To have obtained the power of the Phantom Beast race’s Holy Mark — perhaps that is your fate leading you, and what belongs to you is fated to be yours… But in the end that is not a power of your own. Your Dragon Soul has woken, but… it is only the shallowest kind of waking. Nor is the Dragon God’s Stone at fault for guiding you too weakly. It is that the Dragon Soul power you hold is too unusual a thing.”
Ye Tianxie turned around at last and said, “What is it you want to tell me?”
“Your Dragon Soul power has an endless potential no ordinary dragon power could ever have, but it is harder to wake than ordinary Dragon Soul power, many times over. As you grow, your Dragon Soul power will grow slowly… slower than even the most ordinary dragon power. Do you want to truly open the Evil Dragon’s power that belongs to you alone, and become stronger?” The blue-haired man’s voice was low and still, and every word of it shook Ye Tianxie’s mind.
“What do I have to do?” Ye Tianxie asked.
“The Seven… Deadly… Sins!” The blue-haired man looked into his eyes and said it slowly, a word at a time.
“The Seven Deadly Sins? What do you mean?” Ye Tianxie was thrown for a moment.
“The Seven Deadly Sins are the seven sins at the root of every evil in humankind. They are Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony and Lust. If you want to truly wake the Dragon Soul power that belongs to you, you have to pass through the baptism of these seven sins. Do you understand?” The blue-haired man’s face was serious.
“No.” Ye Tianxie shook his head. As if he could possibly not know about the Seven Deadly Sins. They are where every evil in humankind comes from, the seven categories of wickedness. Every person alive commits at least one of the seven in the course of a lifetime; the only difference is how far.
But what connection was there between waking the Dragon Soul’s power and these seven sins? What did he mean… the baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins?
“It is very simple…” Wuming raised his head slightly and began to explain in a level voice. “The baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins means committing every one of those sins inside seven times seven days — forty-nine days — with each sin lasting seven days…”
“Pride. Under this sin you will turn arrogant and overbearing. You will look down on everyone and despise everything you see. Strong or weak, man or woman, human or beast… you will feel that all of them are infinitely small, and you will think it beneath you to fight them, or even to go near them.”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Envy. Under the sin of Envy you will resent everything another person has that surpasses what you have… If he has more money than you, you will envy him. If he is better-looking than you, or if his partner is beautiful enough to bring down a city, you will envy him. In this world of Fate, if the other side has better equipment or a higher level than you, you will envy him just the same, and hate him for it… and past the envy, you will use the power you have to plunder, to seize, or to destroy whatever it is he has that surpasses you. Envy is the foundation of them all; you can find the shadow of Envy in the other six.”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Wrath. Under the sin of Wrath, your anger will break out at any moment. Even if it is only one careless word from someone that offends you, you will be furious, and then in that fury you will use your power to vent it, to get even… And at the same time, the people and the things that ever made you angry before, you will go and find them to take it out on, in a rage that needs no reason at all.”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Sloth… the sin of Sloth is not a wicked sin, but it is the beginning of a person’s ruin. Under the sin of Sloth you will have no pursuit left but sleep. Even starving to the point where your life is about to run out, you will be too lazy to move a hand to eat, and will only lie there slack and let other people feed you… And then, however strong your power is, anyone could easily kill you… because you simply cannot be bothered to lift a hand, or hit back…”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Greed… Greed is a terrible sin. Under this one, whatever the thing is — even if you have more of it than anyone else, more than you could use up in a lifetime — you will still crave more, like a madman. And so you will go and take it from other people… money, objects… even things with no substance, even honor…”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Gluttony… Under the sin of Gluttony your craving for food will swell to a truly terrible degree. You will not simply eat and drink to excess; you will devour every edible thing you see. And when there is nothing edible left, you will go completely out of your mind, the way an addict does when the craving comes on…”
Ye Tianxie: “……”
“Lust… of all evils, lechery is the first. Lust may be called the greatest of the sins, and once you have fallen into it, the hardest to get free of. Under the sin of Lust, for seven days no woman will be safe from you. Every woman near you will be used and abused at your pleasure, and at the same time that terrible desire, which cannot be controlled or held back, will make you lust after any good-looking woman you happen to see, and force yourself on her against her will… whoever she is.”
Ye Tianxie: “!!!!”
“Now do you understand?” The blue-haired man finished his explanation with nothing moving in his face at all, as if the scenes he had just laid out, enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, were the most ordinary things in the world. “Once I draw the source of the Seven Deadly Sins out of your body, then over the forty-nine days that follow you will fall in turn into the abyss of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony and Lust… And in those forty-nine days you must also hold down every good impulse you have, and let the Seven Deadly Sins wash through your body and your soul as they please… After forty-nine days, you will be remade.”
While the blue-haired man was laying out those seven terrible sins in that cold voice, Ye Tianxie’s face had changed and changed again. Now that he was being asked, he moved his gaze away and said flatly, “I have never thought of myself as a good man, but I will not let myself become an utterly evil one either. If my power has to be raised by the evil I commit… then I can do without power like that! Goodbye!”
And with that he turned and left without hesitating. He was not a good man, but he had never done what he himself thought was evil. Commit even one of the seven completely and it is already unforgivable — let alone seven of them, one after another. If he were alone in the world, wanting nothing and needing nothing, tasting the baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins might not be out of the question. But if he did it, how would Xian’er look at him… how would Su Feifei look at him… how would the friends around him look at him… and worse, there was every chance those sins would harm the people around him as well.
Watching him go without hesitating, the blue-haired man’s expression did not change, and a faint sound slipped from the corner of his mouth. “A perfectly correct choice. If I were you, I would refuse flatly too… Tianxie, there is one thing I have to tell you… and then you can make your choice over again…” He paused, and then said, in a voice like a sigh, each word clear, “If you do not pass through the baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins… you may never see… Li — Xian — er — again.”
Ye Tianxie’s body went rigid all at once, as if a bolt of heaven’s lightning had struck him.
(End of Chapter 247)