Sea Guardian Chapter Fifteen: The First Realm

Chu Xuan mentally cursed under her breath. The place Mafit was talking about was clearly the burial ground of the dragon emperors through the ages—the place her brother, Chu Tian, would one day rob a grave after he came here. What on earth was that old fellow doing there now? Was he trying to test the curse of the god of death? Did he really need to run into a graveyard to do it? What a joke...

Suddenly, Mafit seized her hand hard and hurled her toward the entrance they had come through. Before she could even collect herself, she landed again at the foot of Aguara Mountain. The speed was so astonishing that even the little Mafit could not compare.

She cast a curious glance at the large Mafit’s head, only to hear him say in a low voice, “Go.”

“Go where? We’re already out! So the concealment spell is broken, big deal. Are we not even allowed to stay at the foot of Aguara Mountain? Even if this whole place belongs to him, we still have the right to pass through, don’t we...”

Snorting in irritation, Chu Xuan stood her ground and refused to move. Her willful temper had flared, as it always did.

The large Mafit was just about to drag her away when a deep voice came from behind them.

“Hahaha, well said. One may not enter Aguara Mountain, but anyone may live at its foot.” An old man with a full head of white hair walked over in the direction of the voice. His purple robe was so worn and tattered that it seemed to hang in scraps.

Chu Xuan narrowed her eyes to appraise the newcomer, while the large Mafit said sternly to the other Mafit, “The power that distorts the soul is gone. Get back.”

“Boring...” The mad Mafit grumbled and vanished on the spot.

Then the large Mafit said softly to the little Mafit, “Little brother, go back first.”

Seeing the changes before him, the old man suddenly cupped his hands and said, “So the God of Slaughter from Hell has descended. Why did Your Excellency not simply announce your arrival so the Dragon Emperor could come out to welcome you?”

“Cut the nonsense. State your name.”

This time, the voice was not Mafit’s. It was Chu Xuan, standing beside him.

The old man turned his gaze back to Chu Xuan, whom he had already been studying. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and shook his head. “You carry the scent of the avenging goddess Pandora, yet you are not Pandora.”

“Of course I’m not! If I were that old lady, why would I come to this damned place?”

Had she kept silent, it would have been one thing; but once she spoke, Chu Xuan’s temper surged. If she had not been inexplicably entangled with that Pandora business, would she have bothered climbing Aguara Mountain to rob the place? Did they think she enjoyed this sort of thing?

Her crude words drew a faint smile from Mafit, but the old man did not even grow angry. He merely continued to study her.

“What ability did you use just now? There was no trace of magic or divine power.” Stroking the long beard on his chin, the old man looked at Chu Xuan’s eyes in great confusion, and received only an unceremonious glare in return.

By now Mafit realized he could not simply ignore this old man. Calmly, he asked, “Is that ability the ‘sleight of hand’ you spoke of to my little brother? The one that can even affect the soul? Just now it dragged both the madman’s soul and mine out?”

Mafit was rather bewildered. Chu Xuan, like Chu Tian, was a complete idiot when it came to magic; although she possessed a faint trace of divine power, it had never been developed. What, exactly, was this so-called sleight of hand, to be able to affect the soul directly?

Chu Xuan rolled her eyes inwardly again, then explained rather casually, “This sleight of hand is actually a form of Daoist method. In its origin, Daoist practice directly affects the soul. Whether used on yourself or on others, it works by starting from the soul as the fundamental spiritual body. All beings—human, ghost, beast, demon, fiend, and the rest—have souls. The Daoist art of nurturing life also begins from one’s own original spiritual body...”

She went on at length, but neither of the others understood much of it. In the end, only the large Mafit asked, “So everything can affect the soul, is that it?”

“Yes. In your terms, my power belongs to the soul domain.”

After much thought, Chu Xuan finally found a way they could understand, and the two of them at last nodded. She nearly fainted. Praise the goddess who would become her future sister-in-law—could she please stop encountering such exasperating situations all the time?

The old man fell silent for a long while. Just as Mafit’s gaze grew colder and colder, the elder suddenly shook his head and said, “Praise the avenging goddess. No matter what this ability of yours may be, you undeniably possess a strange aura—the aura and divine power of a fusion of the Phoenix Clan and the Dragon Clan. Like me, you are a descendant of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe?”

“Dragon-Phoenix Tribe?” Chu Xuan blinked, then immediately thought of the bloodline of important figures from the two great clans flowing within her body.

Damn it, there really was such a race?

The old man smiled and continued, “Long ago, our people lived under the protection of the avenging goddess. But after the avenging goddess disappeared from the three realms, our race was wiped out as well. I am the only survivor of our clan, and can now only live by relying on distant dragon relatives.”

After a lengthy inquiry, Chu Xuan finally understood from the old man’s words that the so-called Dragon-Phoenix Tribe did not mean a mixed bloodline of dragon and phoenix, but a special race that had lived in the era when the avenging goddess still existed. Who their ancestors were could no longer be traced, so their history probably reached back to the primordial age, when the Creator God still shook the three realms at will.

They had their own way of life, and could even be called the pets of the avenging goddess Pandora... But Chu Xuan still felt the name should be taken literally. Perhaps their ancestors truly were dragon-phoenix hybrids, and what made them special was...

“Damn it, the people of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe only ever possess one divine power?”

Chu Xuan’s roar nearly deafened the old man. Covering his ears, he shook his head and said, “But our clan can learn the domains of multiple systems. Any domain, from any race, can be learned. And it is not copying, nor is it merely seeing an image enter the brain through water. It is genuine comprehension of all domains!”

Only ever able to possess one divine power, yet capable of learning the domains of all races and all systems—such a power was too thrilling. So thrilling that Chu Xuan began silently cursing herself for being so greedy as to have wanted Chu Tian’s blood. But since it had already merged, it was not as if she could now tell Chu Tian to separate it again. As everyone knew, merging blood was easy... separating it? Forget it.

After thinking it over, one divine power was still better than none. At least she still had Daoist arts and hypnosis to protect her life, though neither had been cultivated to mastery. She could always find another way to sneak back into Aguara Mountain and get what she wanted. Even if she were pursued, she probably would not die so quickly. And a higher-ranked god ought to be able to tell she was not the avenging goddess, so they should not kill her either.

Damn that avenging goddess. If that woman was still alive, don’t tell her, or else when she met her she would just hypnotize her and then...

Chu Xuan was busy drifting into her own wild fantasies when she suddenly realized the old man had already advanced toward her. A violent rush of wind spun beside her ear, forcibly yanking her thoughts back. Mafit’s hand collided with the old man’s staff, though it was clear Mafit had used only a third of his strength, not even unleashing his divine power.

The old man smiled slightly and said respectfully, “Your Excellency the God of Slaughter from Hell, I merely wish to pour the most basic domain of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe into her body so that her divine power may be developed. I would never harm a descendant of our own bloodline.”

“Ten thousand years ago...” Mafit’s eyes grew a little distant, yet carried a profound chill as he continued, “the day Princess Pandora of Hell was forced to her death upon Falling Eagle Stone by the assembled beast gods, the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe was annihilated.”

In other words: where did you come from? I cannot sense any Dragon-Phoenix aura on you at all.

The old man merely smiled faintly. A strand of white light drifted out from his right hand. Chu Xuan stared at it and found that its aura resembled the transmission of energy within Daoist practice. In the next instant, she was already drawing that light into herself.

The speed was so great that even Mafit could not react in time, and he could not help but be startled as well.

“All right. I have used the essence of life to transfer divine power into your body.” The old man still smiled. After a moment, he knelt on one knee and said, “This old one has already inscribed the hereditary domain of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe, ‘Wind Dance,’ into your body. From this day forth, you are the chieftain of our clan.”

Chu Xuan was stunned. An indescribable sensation flooded her entire body. If she had to describe it, it was as though boiling water were about to overflow with even greater force. Then her mind began to blur, and she went mad with it, clutching her hair and tearing at it outward.

At that moment, Mafit withdrew the pressure aimed at the old man, placed a hand beneath Chu Xuan’s head, and began to channel his own divine power into her.

The gentle, reassuring feeling suppressed that wild force, and Chu Xuan’s mind gradually steadied. Mafit looked directly at her and asked in a cold voice, “So the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe has the custom of killing the successor to its chieftain?”

“The old one only knew that Your Excellency Mafit would not ignore the chieftain of our clan. After all...”

Before the old man could finish, a fiercely sharp golden light suddenly burst from Chu Xuan’s body, cutting him off and startling him profoundly. This was not the aura of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe, nor that of the dragon race, nor anything of the phoenix race. What sort of divine power was this?

“Fall into hell and taste endless karmic suffering; become a hungry ghost and know desire impossible to fulfill; be colder and more heartless than beasts. To cultivate the flames of a hellish asura and scorch the world, enter the human realm and endure the four sufferings, ascend to the heavens only to end alone in desolation.”

A soft voice echoed beneath Aguara Mountain. Chu Xuan’s ordinarily refined and elegant face suddenly turned eerie and enchanting. Her long black hair was growing at a visible rate, and the moment it touched the ground, it turned fiery red and dazzlingly seductive.

The old man stood frozen, at a complete loss. He reached out as though to stop something, only to discover he could do nothing at all. He had no choice but to look up at Mafit, yet somehow the little Mafit had replaced the God of Slaughter and appeared instead, staring blankly at Chu Xuan’s transformation with his wide, bewildered eyes...

A diamond-shaped, pitch-black mark suddenly flashed on Chu Xuan’s forehead. She slowly raised her head and looked at the bewildered little Mafit, then let out a long sigh. “Why... do you refuse to see me?”

With a crack, a bolt of black lightning struck down from the sky. The old man seemed to understand something in an instant. He hurriedly fell to his knees, wiping away the tears at the corners of his eyes, and cried out, “It is because he feels he has wronged you!”

The little Mafit suddenly came close to Chu Xuan and reached out to tug at her sleeve. The old man remained kneeling, and only the little Mafit’s voice reverberated in the air.

“Sister Xuan, how did you get such powerful divine force?”

Then he shook his head again. “No, it’s gone again. Interesting. How are you doing that? Teach me!”

But the answer he received was only Chu Xuan’s bewildered stare. The black mark on her forehead had already faded; only her fiery red hair seemed to testify that something had truly happened just now. She looked strangely at the little Mafit clinging to her and at the old man still kneeling on the ground, and then she reached a self-righteous conclusion.

This must be the change brought about by accepting a hereditary domain.

“Be good, little Mafit. Sister was just receiving the domain. Now that it’s done, the divine power has naturally settled down.”

This was rather like the Daoist theory of transmitting divine power: impressive while it was being passed on, but stupid once it was over. So Chu Xuan thought. She stood up and helped the old man to his feet as she said, “Old sir, could you tell me why I am the chieftain, and not you?”

Hearing the shift in her tone, the old man raised his head. Seeing that the mark had vanished from Chu Xuan’s forehead, he suddenly sighed before respectfully answering, “Ever since Your Excellency the avenging goddess took charge of our clan, it has been decreed that all future chieftains of the Dragon-Phoenix Tribe must be female.”