Chương 398: The Awakening

The ground continued to rumble. It was a deep resonant thrum that vibrated in the very bones of everyone there. It was a terrifyingly familiar sound, reminiscent of the day the Xylarri rifts first tore open the sky. Everyone stared at the sky and a collective cold dread washed over everyone there. Fear spreads like a contagion. What new hell was this? Had their broken world finally attracted another, even greater, predator? As they watched, three figures emerged from the golden light.

They stepped out into the sky, hovering over the armies below. Their power was immense; even at a glance, Li Yu could tell they were all at least Soul Formation but the truth felt far, far deeper. Each one was shrouded in a roiling personal fog. It was a swirling miasma of blinding light and abyssal, all-consuming shadow that danced around their forms. It was obscuring them from sight, from spiritual sense and from any form of perception.

The assembled masters on the ground felt their spiritual senses shredded, their vision blurring as the light-and-dark aura devoured their attempts to see. A choked, strangled sound came from Lord Zaltar. His four arms, usually crossed in serene confidence, were trembling. His eyes were wide with amazement, wonder and terror.

"Could it be… It... it cannot be..." he whispered. Vizier Morn glided to his side, his own unnervingly large eyes fixed on the three beings.

"The legends... the Anti-Duplex?"

"Beings of light and dark…" Zaltar breathed, his voice shaking.

"Beings who walk the line... I... I thought it was a story. A myth to give people hope... By the Demon Kings... they exist." Lady Vyltra was staring up as well in awe.

"They exist," she whispered, her own voice barely audible. One of the three shrouded figures drifted forward, it seemed like their leader. It stopped and then in an act that sent a jolt through Li Yu's very core, two souls emerged from its form. One soul was a miniature sun, a pulsating sphere of pure blinding white light. The other was a vortex of absolute consuming darkness, a perfect sphere of black. Yet, like the figures themselves, even these two souls were foggy, their true forms.

'Are those Nascent Souls? Normal souls? or something else entirely?' Li Yu and the others thought to themselves. They would never know as the souls were shrouded from view. Li Yu felt his own Ocean of Qi convulse. His Koi Soul and his Human Soul pulsed in a sudden, sharp and strange rhythm.

'Two souls...' His mind reeled.

'Just like the legends said they had... just like... me.' He felt a sudden connection with the unknowable entity hanging in the sky. It wasn't the connection of knowing someone, it was something more primal and instinctual. Then, the leader spoke. A voice, both male and female, a perfect overlapping harmony of two distinct tones echoed across the landscape. It did not boom from the sky; it simply was, appearing inside every creature's skull, from the lowest soldier to Theron himself.

"ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP FOREVER?! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR TASKS?! YOUR ROLE FOR BEING HERE?!" The voice was not a question. It was an accusation. A roar of pure and unadulterated fury. And it was not directed at them. As if in answer to the impossible question, a new sound ripped through the air. One by one, a series of ten smaller rifts tore open in the sky, arranged in a perfect, glowing circle around the three shrouded figures. And from them, the group that was yelled at emerged.

From the first rift, a creature of impossible grace and power stepped out. It was a Qilin, its body covered in iridescent, life-green scales that seemed to weep condensed life energy. Its antlers were like ancient, living coral and its hooves trod on motes of green light, never touching the air. Its aura was a wave of overwhelming overflowing life. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. The moment Li Yu felt the aura, he knew. He recognized that aura.

It was the same aura from beneath the pavilion at his sect. The one that gave him life-aspected Qi. The one that had always repelled his spiritual sense and himself when he tried to get to it. A force of ancient slumbering power he had never been able to investigate. From the second rift, a Vermilion Phoenix erupted in a cloud of blinding fire. It was a bird of living flame, its feathers a brilliant crimson and gold. Its long tail-plumes were leaving trails of embers in the air.

It let out a cry that was both a song and a firestorm, washing the land in a wave of scorching, yet somehow rejuvenating heat. From the third, an Azure Dragon uncoiled, its body was immensely long and of azure-blue scales. It rode the air as if it were water, its whiskers trailing like rivers, its eyes crackling with the raw energy of a thunderstorm. It radiated an aura of primal wood, wind and storm. From the fourth, a White Tiger of divine and terrible majesty leaped into the sky.

Its fur was an alabaster-white, marked with black stripes that seemed to be scars of unrefined metal. It didn't roar; it snarled and the very sound was an aura of slaughter, conquest and unyielding might. From the fifth, a living mountain. The Black Tortoise, its shell so vast it looked like a floating island. The shell's surface was carved with deep runes. Coiled around its mountainous body was a great black watery serpent.

The serpent's head resting near the tortoise's, their twin gazes radiating an aura of absolute defense and the unplumbed depths of the ocean. From the sixth rift came an Abyssal Leviathan, a true serpent of the deep. Its scales were a deep crystalline black-ice. As it breathed, a cloud of extremely cold frost, a mist of law-infused cold was emanating from it. From the seventh, a colossal Thunderbird.

It was a divine eagle and its feathers were a brilliant white-gold with arcs of uncontrolled lightning crackled between them. Its cry was the sound of a thunderclap that shook the very defensive line. From the eighth, a creature of breathtaking and terrible beauty: a Twelved-Tailed Fox. Its fur was not a single color but a shimmering prismatic illusion that hurt the mind to look at. Its twelve tails swayed, each one seeming to bend light and reality.

Its gaze seems to unravel the very thoughts of those who looked upon it. From the ninth, a Shadow-Stalker Panther. It was a great beast made of living shadow, a hole in the sky. Its form was sleek and powerful but it had no features save for two cold, violet eyes that glowed with a terrifying intelligence. It radiated an aura of absolute darkness, a cold that devoured light. From the tenth and final rift stepped a simple, yet divine, Crab.

Its carapace was not of simple chitin but of a flawless burnished golden-bronze that seemed to hum. Its great claws weren't jagged but perfectly smooth. It was thrumming with a low bone-shaking kinetic energy. For a single, imperceptible instant, Khaos's form went rigid but quickly he quickly went back to normal. No one noticed this sharp reaction from him. Ten rifts. Ten beasts. Li Yu's mind was spinning faster than it ever had.

'Ten... I counted ten.' His heart hammered against his ribs.

'The Qilin... it's the one from my home. The one under my sect. It's real.'

'Ten beasts. But Theron... the records... there are only seven known continents. Even the seventh is a forgotten legend. If there are 10 beasts… are there... are there ten continents? Or more than one beast per continent? Maybe all of them besides the Qilin are on the seventh one?'

"What are those beasts!? They are incredibly powerful. There's a massive crab as well! Is that the Crab God?!" Jian Xuan spoke to himself loudly.

"There is indeed a crab, one of massive power… is what this fanatic has been saying true?" Grand Elder Corvus spoke as well but mostly to himself. Throughout the group of leaders everyone was just speaking to themselves. Trying to process what they were seeing and predicting what would come next.

"I know now! That must be it! The Crab God has sent these things and beasts to save us! He even sent one of his followers to lead them. What do you non-believers have to say now?!." Jian Xuan spoke and then he went quietly into his chants for the Crab God. Several of the leaders reactively took a few steps away from him but their minds couldn't help but be moved by what he said. Could it really be divine intervention to save them?

Finally the shrouded leader, its dual souls of light and dark still pulsing, spoke again. Its overlapping, male-female voice was now a bellow of absolute command, shaking the very souls of all of those around.

"FULFILL YOUR DUTY! SEAL AND PUSH BACK THESE INVADERS AND PROTECT THE LANDS! THAT IS YOUR ETERNAL TASK! WHY HAVE YOU NOT ACTED YET?!" The beasts, these ten living embodiments of primal power, did not cower. They did not bow. In a single, unified and defiant act, they roared loudly. It was a cacophony of divine, primal power that shook the world.

The Qilin's life-giving cry, the Phoenix's fire-song, the Dragon's thunderous bellow, the Tiger's metallic snarl, the Tortoise's earth-shaking groan, the Leviathan's glacial hiss, the Thunderbird's crackling shriek, the Fox's psychic wail, the Panther's dark-howl, and the Crab's hum. All ten merged into a single wave of sound and power that physically swept outward. Then, their auras, which had been vast but dormant, flared into life.

It was not a cultivation level anyone present had ever seen, felt or even dreamt of. It was a pressure. A divine weight that crushed the air, buckled the ground and sent cracks spiderwebbing through the First Defensive Line's newly-built walls. Theron, Zaltar, Lady Vyltra and everyone present were forced to their knees. Not by an attack but by the simple presence of the ten awakened beasts.