Chapter 1421: Anointing of the Primordial Lotus!

Phei remained still beneath it all with his spine straight and hands resting loosely on his knees, while World Essence poured from him without the faintest sign of exhaustion. His breathing grew so faint that even Eira had to focus to follow it, and every breath stirred the amber haze ever so slightly, sending thousands of golden motes spiraling slowly around his white hair before they returned to their strange paths.

For several moments he looked nothing like the seventeen-year-old Dragon Eira knew.

But then again, this had nothing to do with age; it was his presence.

Phei seemed ancient the way the stars are ancient, carrying weight without wrinkles and history without years. His youthful body had not changed at all, yet what dwelt within it had grown so deep that the body itself suddenly seemed a passing vessel, as though some far greater existence had chosen this young form only because anything vaster would have crushed the world around it.

The phenomenon went on, and the Primordial Lotus opened wider.

From the edges of its outermost petals, pale sheets of radiance began to descend and unfurled.

Vast curtains of white-gold World Essence poured down from the celestial flower with the slow grandeur of silk let fall from beyond the sky, their translucent surfaces threaded with thousands of delicate golden veins and countless motes burning within them like stars trapped beneath flowing cloth.

One descended before Phei and another behind him.

More followed on either side, curving inward as they fell, until enormous shining curtains surrounded him from every direction. They overlapped without turning opaque, still offering glimpses of the raging golden storm beyond while softening everything within their embrace beneath white light and liquid gold.

The curtains moved without wind. Their colossal folds swelled and settled in rhythm with Phei’s meditation, as though they were breathing with him. Golden threads ran through them like living veins, joining now and then into fleeting patterns before parting again. Shapes seemed to rise within the flowing radiance and fade before Eira could decide what they were; wings, perhaps, or petals, or crowns, or only the mind desperately forcing familiar meaning onto something never meant to be understood so easily.

The curtains curved inward.

Layer after layer folded around Phei until the descending walls of light formed a vast sanctuary enclosing him on every side, their upper edges merging seamlessly with the lotus above while their lower reaches sank into the golden tempest below and spread through it in branching roots of light.

Phei slowly disappeared within the sanctuary, his silhouette still visible through its translucent layers, seated in perfect meditation while gold flowed through every part of him and furious currents of World Essence went on spiraling beyond the curtains.

The first phenomenon had never stopped, and that was what made the sight so overwhelming.

World Essence still burst from Phei like an endless spring. Golden currents still crossed the air in rivers and spirals, great spheres of condensed power still burned around him like small suns, and his whole body still glowed from within, every vein, meridian and hidden pathway alight with the deep gold saturating him.

The celestial sanctuary had not replaced the storm—

—It had crowned it.

At last, one final thread descended from the blinding white heart of the Primordial Lotus.

It moved slowly through every layer of radiance, through the amber haze, past thousands of drifting golden motes and between the immense curtains, until it reached the space just above Phei’s crown.

It touched him, and the entire lotus breathed.

Every golden thread across its petals brightened in the same heartbeat. Every mote around Phei ignited until thousands of tiny suns hung within the mist. The vast curtains swelled outward once before folding gently back around him, and the Primordial Lotus released one immense, silent pulse through every petal and every current of World Essence spread beneath it.

Heaven no longer felt like something far above Hell’s Paradise Island; it had come down here, and gathered around Phei.

Eira’s eyes widened.

Something was wrong, or perhaps wrong was the most foolish word possible for what she was witnessing.

In the first moments she had believed she understood it: Phei had seized command of Marcus’s World Essence, claimed whatever the Angel Progenitor carried and formed an Soul Sea so vast that its first overflow had escaped his body.

That explanation had strained further with every passing breath, yet she could still have forced the pieces to fit if she tried hard enough.

The lotus destroyed that notion.

Eira had read of this phenomenon.

Very few beings in all of existence had ever brought it forth.

World Essence itself was not impossibly rare across the endless realms; mighty cultivators wielded it, ancient existences refined it, and worlds gave birth to it and carried it in many forms.

None of that mattered here.

The Primordial Lotus did not bloom because someone held World Essence, nor because a cultivator had learned to wield it; was recognition!

An anointing!

Something far deeper was taking place between Phei and the Essence from which worlds themselves drew part of their foundation.

Eira’s lips parted. "Oh..."

A second realization struck her with far less reverence.

If she could recognize the Primordial Lotus, so could others.

Her head snapped upward.

The flower was enormous, far too enormous.

Its outer petals ruled the heavens above the Endless Forest, its white-gold radiance spread so far across the night that anyone with sight anywhere could have looked up and beheld a sign that seemed to announce Phei to the whole island.

The thought had barely formed when several people elsewhere on Hell’s Paradise Island reacted!

*

Far from the forest, Sienna looked up while true surprise shone in the Nether Goddess’s violet eyes. She stood motionless beneath the distant night while the impossible lotus filled her senses, and after several breaths the corner of her mouth threatened to rise.

Ashworth saw it too, and a slow smile spread across his face.

Hayashi’s expression was almost the same, the ancient being gazing at the shining heavens like someone whose oldest suspicion had just been answered in the most dramatic way imaginable.

Maya raised her eyes, and her face changed at once.

Her hand moved, and at almost the same instant, somewhere else on the island, the Monster moved her hand as well.

The Primordial Lotus vanished from the sky and the next moment the night above Hell’s Paradise Island looked utterly ordinary. The phenomenon had been visible to the world for less than the blink of an eye; an instant.

The heavens had returned to darkness, but the Primordial Lotus had never moved.

Maya had not destroyed it, and neither had the Monster.

They had hidden it.

The immense white-gold flower went on blooming unseen above the Endless Forest, its curtains still folded around Phei, the amber haze still carrying drifting golden stars and the final thread still resting above his crown, while every outward sign of it vanished from all those Maya and the Monster did not wish to see it.

Eira released a breath she had not known she was holding. "Thank fuck."

Sienna was already thinking further ahead.

Her gaze stayed fixed on the hidden phenomenon even after it vanished from every ordinary sense, and her consciousness reached across the distance until it touched Ashworth:

"Go get the Core."The smile vanished from Ashworth’s face as understanding took its place, and Sienna gave him no chance to ask whether she was certain. "Now."

The Core of a Great Immortal God.

On any ordinary night, letting Phei anywhere near something holding that much condensed power would have demanded preparation to survive his body deciding that cultivation ought to shake the heavens.

Tonight was no ordinary night.

The Primordial Lotus itself was anointing him. World Essence moved through Phei with an obedience none of them had ever witnessed. His body was so saturated that power spilled out into the land, yet instead of tearing him apart, everything that entered the celestial sanctuary settled into perfect harmony around him.

Raging torrents fell calm, the overflow found new channels, and his body, his Soul and the newborn sea within him accepted power that should have taken lifetimes to refine.

Sienna’s violet eyes brightened as understanding sharpened within them. "There will never be a better chance like this."

Ashworth was already moving, and Sienna’s final words followed him into the night. "Bring the Great Immortal God’s Core. If Phei has any better chance to devour it, it would beneath the Primordial Lotus’s anointing."