Understand? Ye Tianxie could follow the words, but how was he supposed to understand?
Because none of what the blue-haired man had laid out had ever appeared anywhere in human knowledge, or in any textbook. Thin and far-off as it was, it sounded more like someone setting out the worldview of some myth. All he could do was listen passively and take it in passively; actually “understanding” it was completely beyond him.
In all his memory, nothing he knew could explain any part of what the man was saying.
Now he could feel that he really was inside that “whirlpool” the blue-haired man had spoken of. Only, the place where this whirlpool sat was not on the plane human beings live on… as to which plane it was, he had no idea.
“How does it start?” He put the speculation aside and asked straight out.
“When you are ready.” That was the blue-haired man’s answer.
“When I’m ready?”
“That’s right… The Seven Deadly Sins, seven sins at the root of everything. Once I have drawn the source of the sins out, your mind will tend toward those sins… Don’t worry, it is not that it will be controlled. It is that you will want to do those things naturally, and at that point your mind will be hard for you to control, and you should not control it. By then you ought to have thought this through — the baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins across seven times seven days. If you are not prepared enough, the first to suffer will be the people around you. So you must be prepared — and prepared for everything,” the blue-haired man said.
“I understand.” The man had named exactly what had worried Ye Tianxie most from the moment he made up his mind to accept the baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins for Xian’er’s sake. Yes… he had to prepare, and at the very least see to it that when those sins broke out they would not reach the people around him.
“Mm… that Holy Sword War God just now was your transformation, and it truly is an extremely strong power. But the flaw in it is too obvious. Transformation at that level has a strict time limit, and if the Dark Nether Ghost King had not been frightened out of his wits, without the time or the nerve to so much as look back, the situation would have been completely different from what it is now,” the blue-haired man said, and then frowned slightly. “Still, at the strength you hold now, even with the standing to transform at that level, you should not have had the ability, and yet you held it that long. That I don’t follow… No matter. It’s just as well. All I want is for you to get stronger and stronger, and when you are strong enough to defeat me, come and find me… however you defeat me is fine, including this transformation ability you have only just come by…”
The blue-haired man gave Ye Tianxie one last look, turned cleanly on his heel, and walked toward the gap in the barrier with the blue wolf beside him. “Go and do what you should be doing. Goodbye.”
“When the time comes, how do I find you?” Ye Tianxie called after him.
“You won’t find me… When I need to appear, I will appear.”
“There’s one more thing I want to know…” Ye Tianxie’s face was heavy. “If I really do accept that baptism of the Seven Deadly Sins… over those forty-nine days, will the change in my nature affect… the real world?”
“It will.”
As the word fell, the blue-haired man and the blue wolf vanished together, gone a thousand li away.
Ye Tianxie closed his eyes and went over what the man had said, quietly, again and again. Then he turned and walked toward the Phantom Beast Ruins, which had become one wide heap of rubble.
The buildings that had looked like old castles had all collapsed, and there was no trace left of that great gate. Ye Tianxie wandered around for a good while and at last found an unblocked gap he could drop through, and jumped straight down.
He used Netherfog and landed steady. This was the underground level of the Phantom Beast Ruins. As he came down, a wave of surprise went through him. While he had been attacking the Dark Nether Ghost King as the Holy Sword War God, he had wondered about this underground space the whole time. He had felt exactly how strong the Holy Sword War God’s power was, at full measure. And power like that needed only one blow to bring an enormous underground space down completely and bury it. But he had gone on attacking down here for a long while, and this place had only shaken and had its surface wrecked. It had never caved in.
At the time he had half guessed that some power was protecting this place — the same kind of power as that barrier outside. Now that he saw it, he was more certain his guess had been right.
He went forward the way he remembered, through the first two halls, and then his feet stopped and he looked ahead without a word.
This had been a fairly short, narrow passage.
But now that passage was blocked with one enormous stone after another, fallen from overhead and piled up solid.
Ye Tianxie went up and tried to lift one of them. For everything he put into it, the stone shifted very slightly and would not move out of position at all.
Having seen Xiaobei’s absurd strength before this, Ye Tianxie was in no hurry. Because for size and for hardness alike, these stones were nowhere near the boulder she had once kicked over with one foot — better than three meters long, three meters wide and three meters high.
Xiaobei came out, gave the pile ahead a look, patted her paws together as usual, and swaggered over to stand in front of the very stone Ye Tianxie had not managed to budge for anything. One cat paw reached out, caught at the surface of the stone, and then the arm came up…
Rumble…
That stone was wedged in the middle of the pile and held fast, a full twice the size of Xiaobei’s body — and she dragged it straight out with the one paw, lifted it overhead, and flung it away with a toss of the arm. And the pile in front of them, having lost the support in its middle, collapsed by nearly half with a muffled sound. Xiaobei put both paws to it, one stone in each, and threw them casually behind her.
Thud… Thud… Thud…
The sound of stones flung out and dropping to the ground came seven or eight times running, and a gap wide enough for a person had opened in the blocked road. Ye Tianxie gave Xiaobei a long, extremely odd look, then stepped through the gap and walked on, opening his attribute panel at the same time… and only now took a look at that “Phantom Beast Herald” class he had just come by.
It was because of this class, arriving out of nowhere, that he had suddenly transformed into the matchless Holy Sword War God. Just what kind of powerful class was this?
Phantom Beast Herald: A class born for the Phantom Beast race. A bearer of the Holy Mark, on being acknowledged by the Phantom Beast race’s Holy Mark Beast, is forcibly changed into this class. One who holds this class will be acknowledged by the Phantom Beast race’s strongest divine spirits, and will hold the standing and the ability to use their power.
Class skill — Heart of Kindred Minds: The people of the Phantom Beast race all have a strong ability to communicate with beasts, and from it a powerful ability to command beasts and even to transform into them. Effect: for every 20 levels gained, the maximum number of pets that may be brought out to fight at once increases by one. The higher the level, the lower the chance of a pet turning on you; past level 50, the pet companions you hold will never turn on you. Past level 50, there will be a certain chance of understanding the speech of beasts; on reaching level 80, you may communicate with beasts freely.
Phantom God Transformation · Holy Sword War God — Calonandis: Drawing on the power of the Holy Mark as its source, transform into Calonandis, the ancient battle god of the Phantom Beast race. You will hold all of the power he held at his height. Because your present ability is too low, your level drops by 509 after transforming, and the Phantom God state can be held for at most 20 seconds.
【Author’s note: Students with high IQs are welcome to work out what that “509” up there is based on. It is not a number that just jumped out at random.】
This Phantom Beast Herald class had only two skills for the moment — one passive, and one of another sort entirely, and powerful beyond compare: Phantom God Transformation. When he had finished reading the description of the first skill, “Heart of Kindred Minds,” he let out a long breath of astonishment.
One more pet allowed out to fight for every 20 levels — that one attribute on its own was enough to set the blood going. At his level now… it meant he could summon three pets at once to fight together. And being able to communicate with beasts — a skill like that could only be described as miraculous.
But at the second skill, “Phantom God Transformation,” when he saw the two lines of description behind it, Ye Tianxie nearly drove his head into the ground.
Holding the transformation for twenty seconds at most was one thing, but after transforming, his level dropped… 509 levels!!
Was this some kind of joke!!
After Phantom God Transformation he was strong — a strength that could take complete hold of everything in the world and trample it all, a sense of being unbeatable that no power could stand against. He admitted it: he was greedy for the way that had felt, and he wanted nothing so much as to stay in that state forever… the state in which even the matchless Dark Nether Ghost King could be abused one-sidedly.
But a “heaven-defying” skill like this turned out not to be truly heaven-defying, and a truly heaven-defying skill basically could not exist at all. He could still transform into that powerful Holy Sword War God… but the consequences…
As the Holy Sword War God he could go unbeaten under heaven and sweep everything before him, could destroy a stretch of land or a walled city in the lifting of a hand. But one simple line of description turned it into a genuinely dead-weight skill.
At the very least, even if he faced the Dark Nether Ghost King again right now, even with a knife at his throat, he would not use this skill again. Being killed by the Dark Nether Ghost King only cost him one level, and the consequence of Phantom God Transformation was twenty seconds of being unbeatable and then… a drop of 509 levels. At Ye Tianxie’s current level of 20, what did a drop of 509 even mean? Would it fall to level 0 and stop there, or would it fall to… minus 489? He did not dare try it.
If this skill had allowed unlimited transformation into the Holy Sword War God… he would not have believed it himself.
And the reason he had been able to hold Phantom God Transformation for a full three minutes before this, with no side effect at all, was entirely down to the power the ball of light had given him, which let him hold the Phantom God state naturally.
With Xiaobei’s help he got through one obstruction after another. He passed the wall, riddled with holes and already fallen in. Ahead of him the dark finally ended and a faint glow came up. Further on, he saw the white ball of light again at last. It was still floating quietly in midair where it had been, white mist coiling inside it, and something seemed to be hidden in the mist. Only, the light it was putting out now was far dimmer than when he had first seen it, and no longer pure brightness either. There was a dull grey-white in it now.
(End of Chapter 249)