“Four! He lit up a full four power crystals! Power like that had already reached the very peak attainable by us humans — it would be difficult for another to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, let alone surpass him. And the God-Summoning Stone has eight power crystals in all; it isn’t that no one has the ability to light the other four, which respond only to far greater power… No — such a being could no longer be called human… but a god! A true god… The only one able to light all eight power crystals is the Lost Continent’s supreme deity of legend — the Goddess Xiyao!”

Zheng—

As Kong Xiu spoke, a shaft of dazzling white light suddenly blazed up from the very bottom of the great crystal. One of the eight originally transparent power crystals composing the God-Summoning Stone had at last lit.

“Yes, just like that… hold your mind steady, don’t be distracted. This is only the beginning. With your quality of repelling all seven classes, you ought to be able to light three power crystals!” Kong Xiu stepped back slightly, nodding as he offered his reminder. A flicker of bewilderment passed through him — because he faintly felt the light blazing from the power crystal was somewhat stronger than in his memory… It must be because he hadn’t used it in so long that he’d forgotten. That was the explanation he gave himself.

Zheng—

Kong Xiu’s voice had scarcely fallen when another shaft of white light blazed up, lending several degrees more brightness to the sealed stone chamber.

“Good, the second. Those who can light two power crystals are exceedingly few. On this basis alone, you’re destined to be no ordinary man!”

Zheng— Almost hard on the heels of the second white light, a third abruptly blazed.

Kong Xiu nodded again, the smile on his face turning more contented still. “Very good! Just as I expected — the immense potential you possess is indeed enough to light three power crystals! With potential like this, once it’s drawn out, you’re destined to become a powerhouse of your generation. Although…”

Kong Xiu hadn’t finished speaking when a fourth shaft of white light abruptly blazed.

His voice and expression stalled at the same instant. After a brief bewilderment, his earlier pleasure and excitement were replaced by astonishment and an even greater excitement. “Four! It’s actually four… Just like Wuming, another person able to light four power crystals has appeared… Your potential is no less than Wuming’s back then!”

Zheng—

A fifth light flashed past Kong Xiu’s abruptly contracting pupils, leaving the sealed chamber more lustrously white still.

All the light around them, added together, couldn’t match the dazzling, staggering brilliance of this one simple ball of white light.

“F-five! Five!” Kong Xiu’s eyes went wide, and amid his utter shock his voice actually began to tremble. He even raised a hand without meaning to and rubbed his own eyes, confirming whether what he saw might be an illusion… Four was the limit of human power, and to light five power crystals — that was something only the power of a god could do!!

Zheng—

Kong Xiu’s whole body swayed; he nearly pitched headlong to the ground.

The sixth power crystal, hard on the heels of the fifth, had turned lustrous white as well.

“This… this… this is impossible… impossible…” Kong Xiu’s expression was vacant, his gaze fixed dumbly on the God-Summoning Stone, utterly unable to believe what he was seeing.

Zheng—

The seventh power crystal turned white before his vacant eyes… Under such enormous stimulation, whether Kong Xiu had gone numb or had been shocked speechless by the sheer force of it, he was as dazed as a man whose soul had fled, unable to utter another word.

Zheng—

When the eighth power crystal turned white and the whole God-Summoning Stone blazed completely alight, only one thought remained in Kong Xiu’s mind — that he was dreaming.

Besides a dream, what else could explain a scene this unreal, this utterly impossible to accept or believe?

Throughout this brief span, Ye Tianxie hadn’t moved at all, nor had he opened his eyes, and so he hadn’t seen any of what left Kong Xiu slack-jawed and doubting whether he dreamed. When every power crystal was lit, his hand still rested upon it…

And even so, it wasn’t over.

After all the power crystals blazed alight, the entire stone chamber was lit as though under a blazing sun. Yet Kong Xiu, coming faintly back to himself in his daze, suddenly realized the increase in brightness seemed not to have stopped. The light-sensing of his eyes told him the radiance was still deepening — deeper and deeper, more and more intense… until it grew intense to the point of blinding.

The source of the light was still the God-Summoning Stone!

Crack!!!!

Kong Xiu would never forget that shattering sound, which all but burst his eardrums — because in his ever-widening pupils, the God-Summoning Stone, radiating ever more intense light, simply exploded before his eyes… The white light that utterly drowned his vision came surging madly out in the instant it burst, turning the world around him into a blazing white expanse. And within that white glare, an incomparably enormous roar suddenly rang out…

ROAR!!!!

That tremendous roar all but scattered Kong Xiu’s consciousness and his very soul. His eyes stayed fixed wide open the entire time; however blinding the white light, they never closed for even an instant… And he saw it clearly — in the very moment the God-Summoning Stone burst and the white light erupted, the image of a dragon roaring at the heavens flashed past. And that tremendous roar… was unmistakably a dragon’s cry, shaking heaven and earth!

The light dispersed with astonishing speed. From the God-Summoning Stone’s bursting, to the dragon’s cry, to the intense white light swiftly scattering, the whole thing lasted only a few brief seconds. That soul-shaking dragon’s cry and the sound of the God-Summoning Stone shattering startled Ye Tianxie — who had been holding his focus with his eyes closed — into wakefulness. He opened his eyes and looked ahead in puzzlement.

The sensation in his hand was gone; the God-Summoning Stone had vanished, and the ground before him was strewn with colorless crystal. The white light dimmed as it dispersed. Ye Tianxie turned to look at Kong Xiu, who was slumped on the ground, his face vacant, utterly at a loss, and asked with a frown, “What happened?”

He’d kept his eyes closed the whole time, and his mind, through contact with the God-Summoning Stone, had reached a marvelous state that all but sealed his consciousness off from everything around him — so he hadn’t seen any of what Kong Xiu had seen.

At the sound of his voice, some slight response finally stirred in the dazed Kong Xiu’s eyes. His eyeballs bulging almost out of their sockets, his head turned, swiveling toward him at an exceedingly slow pace, and froze upon his face… “Dra… dragon… Dragon Soul…” he mumbled, his words slurred, murmuring absently as if talking in his sleep.

The God-Summoning Stone had shattered… The God-Summoning Stone that not even the Goddess Xiyao, the Lost Continent’s supreme deity, had the power to break had turned into a sky full of fragments in a single man’s hand… That was because the foundation of power and the potential this man possessed were simply too strong — strong enough to make the God-Summoning Stone tremble, and at last to burst from being unable to bear it!

Impossible… this was impossible… Even with it all before him, witnessed with his own eyes at such close range, he still couldn’t believe what he had seen… It was the enormous shock of having the truth and understanding he’d held to be certain utterly scattered and overturned.

The shattered God-Summoning Stone… the image of a dragon… the roar of a dragon…

That was something existing only in the most ancient of legends…

The power of the Dragon Soul!!

(End of Chapter 61)