Chapter 1425: Maya’s Reason: Phei’s First Transformation!

A new radiance appeared upon Phei’s forehead as well.

It began from two opposite points and curled inward in perfect symmetry, each line moving toward the center until they joined in a shape that became more beautiful with every breath. White-gold light gathered around the forming mark, obscuring its full design from those below while allowing brief glimpses whenever the surrounding curtains shifted.

Maya saw everything.

She stood far beyond the visible sanctuary of the Primordial Lotus, separated from the others by a huge distance yet her perception crossed the layers around Phei with a clarity few beings upon Earth could hope to imitate. Her gaze moved slowly over the transformation, lingering upon the luminous markings spreading across his skin, the great shapes unfolding from his back and the Core whose newborn pulse now passed through every part of his body.

Maya smiled.

’Finally.’

Her thought carried far more relief than anyone standing beneath the Lotus would have understood.

She had been restraining herself for a very long time.

Phei did not know the full reason why Maya had not agreed to become his woman completely, and Maya had never considered explanation necessary before the problem actually demanded one. Yes, Phei had already had sex with powerful women like Sienna for one, beings carrying Essence that could have killed ordinary men merely through prolonged contact but—

—Maya was different.

What lived inside her could not be measured simply through her cultivation alone.

Her Yin Essence possessed a depth and nature capable of overwhelming Phei before he was fully inside of her, and Maya had understood that from the beginning; yes she could’ve had sex with if she restrained herself while he was a complete mortal but that would’ve been selfish in her opinion— Phei would’ve missed a chance to take her virgin Essence which was so pure and abundant enough to push him past s many realms!

But after he awakened a few weeks after they’d just met— ion his opinion— that chance was gone too.

So she waited.

She made out with him, she allowed closeness where closeness was safe and enjoyed every moment she could steal without crossing the one distance she knew his body had not yet been prepared to survive.

She also endured the increasingly irritating fact that the man she wanted spent his days surrounded by women who did not need to calculate whether surrendering themselves to him completely might accidentally harm him.

Patience had never been one of Maya’s favorite virtues when it came to him yet she’d endured.

Tonight changed something.

She watched World Essence reshape Phei’s foundations. She felt the Core awakening within him, witnessed the new Angel Bloodline— whatever it was— rise beside the Cosmic Dragon Bloodline and sensed the immense leap in vitality brought by the Great Immortal God’s Essence. The body floating beneath the Primordial Lotus was no longer the same body she had once needed to treat with careful restraint.

Her smile widened.

One more push, perhaps not even a particularly large one, and Phei would be ready.

Soon after that she would no longer need to stop herself.

Maya’s eyes lingered upon the slowly forming wings behind him, and the satisfaction crossing her face became almost indecently pleased.

’Soon.’

The Monster was smiling as well, although for entirely different reasons.

Her expression had become an unusually open mixture of fascination, bewilderment, genuine surprise and that rare discomfort ancient beings experienced when the world reminded them they had never understood nearly as much as they believed:

She normally hid such reactions far better, but tonight had become an assault upon certainty, and the Young Dragon remained at the center of nearly every unanswered question.

Phei had surprised her before.

That was partly why her fascination with him had grown so dangerously personal.

He was the only Cosmic Dragon she knew to exist, a rarity so obscene that merely confirming his bloodline had once been enough to transform curiosity into something far more intimate. She had watched him from when he was much younger, intending to wait until he had grown before ever truly treating him as the little husband she wished him to become.

At one point, that attachment had become bold enough that patience lost the argument and she simply kidnapped him rather than continue observing from some polite distance.

Back then, she thought she understood what Phei was:

A Cosmic Dragon!

Unique. Potentially terrifying.

—Beautifully troublesome.

Apparently that had only been the beginner’s explanation.

Now the same Young Dragon hovered within the Primordial Lotus while a second mighty bloodline awakened beside the first without either attempting to devour the other.

That alone should have been impossible enough.

A bloodline was never meant to share a body with another.

Once a bloodline awakened from that moment, a second bloodline awakening in the same body was no blessing; it was a death sentence.

If one bloodline stood above the other in the rank, the end came swift and without mercy. The higher would fall upon the lower and annihilate it, root and remnant. The weaker bloodline would be torn and ripped out of the Soul and body, and unmade until nothing remained.

The superior bloodline would reign alone over the ashes; that was the merciful outcome.

Damnation began when the two stood equal in Rank.

Then neither could devour the other, and neither would kneel.

From the instant both awakened, they turned the body into a war that would never end and every effort to awaken one deeper only goaded the other into tearing back with equal savagery— simply put; whenever one rose, the other dragged it down, whenever one spread, the other crashed into it from within, and in that endless collision neither could ever awaken.

The body became the battlefield that raged unchecked and the person was wrenched between two powers each trying to remake it in its own image. The Soul suffered worst of all, carved from both sides by two ancient powers, its wounds festering beyond the reach of any pill or healing because what inflicted them never left.

Eventually the person withered starting with their bodies rotting from within, and their Souls frayed thread by thread.

Then they died, and to their final breath, neither bloodline had ever truly been theirs.

That was why two supreme bloodlines in the same body were spoken of with dread, never envy. If one ranked higher, the weaker was erased. If they stood equal, the cultivator became the grave in which both fought until death ended the war if none won before you died.

There was no third fate.

Yet beneath the Primordial Lotus, the Cosmic Dragon Bloodline rested untouched while the Angel Bloodline awakened within Phei.

Neither struck. Neither devoured when they should have turned his body into a slaughterhouse and his Soul into ruin, yet the Cosmic Dragon remained whole, and so did the Angel Bloodline. They simply existed. Together.

And by every law ever known of true bloodlines, that was far more terrifying than if Phei had begun to die.

Even show she didn’t know what was the rank of the new one— the evidence was before her— Phei had accepted another major bloodline without his Cosmic Dragon Bloodline appearing even slightly offended.

Worse, this was hardly some powerful bloodline—

An Angel!