Chapter 1428: Moments Ago... Heavenchilds Estate

Eira could not believe what she had just watched happen, and the fact that Phei had somehow managed to drag genuine disbelief out of her again irritated her more than she wanted to admit—

After everything Eira had witnessed since waking up, and especially after seeing what the Primordial Frozen Zone had forged him into, she had already accepted that the Phei returning from that year of slaughter and tempering would become increasingly difficult to measure against anything sensible.

Even so, there should have been a limit.

There should have been some point where— a seventeen-year-old Dragon entering another man’s Soul Realm, crushing an Original Progenitor inside his own inner world, branding his Soul, stealing an ocean of World Essence vast enough to drown nations, forming an Essence Sea of his own, receiving the blessing of the Primordial Lotus and awakening an entirely new Angelic Bloodline— became too much for one night.

Phei had apparently disagreed.

The Heaven-Stealer unsettled Eira almost as much as the Lotus itself.

Primordial Rank treasures were not something one simply happened to own.

Even among ancient existences treasures of that rank belonged to a darker place in legend, spoken of with restraint by beings who had long since stopped fearing most things beneath the heavens. Some were enough to overturn the fortune of entire races. Others had vanished so completely that even their names survived only in broken scars of time.

Yet Phei had revealed one capable of reaching into an Original Progenitor and stealing something as deeply rooted as a bloodline.

Worse, it had done so cleanly.

Marcus’s Angelic Bloodline was gone completely after the Heaven-Stealer had torn it from him without leaving behind the kind of ruin Eira would have expected from such a theft. There was no shattered soul screaming that something precious had been ripped away and no obvious scar upon the Soul that another ancient being could notice at a glance.

Marcus Heavenchild could still sit beneath the eyes of people who had known him for years and appear untouched.

Eira knew because she was watching exactly that happen.

By the time the Lord’s avatar and Danton reached Marcus’s private quarters, Marcus was already where Phei had commanded him to be— seated beneath warm lamplight with an open book resting in his hands and the air of a man whose night had been irritatingly ordinary.

The room itself almost mocked the truth.

Dark polished furniture rested beneath the soft glow of old golden lamps. Heavenchild emblems adorned the walls without excess, and an untouched cup sat upon the table beside Marcus, placed carefully enough to suggest he had been reading there for some time. His clothing carried no frost, blood and or any trace of the Endless Forest. The Cosmic Dragon Slave Mark slept beyond sight beneath his forehead, while whatever terror Phei had carved into the deepest reaches of his Soul remained hidden behind a faint stiffness in his posture that could easily be mistaken for annoyance—

His chamber changed as golden-white radiance poured through before the Lord’s avatar appeared in a sweep of sacred light, six vast wings unfurling behind him as though part of Heaven itself had entered the room. Danton arrived almost together with him, his presence carrying such urgency that the surrounding Essence remained disturbed long after his feet touched the floor.

Marcus lifted his eyes from the page:

"What?"

The irritation was so perfect Eira almost laughed.

Eira had healed the bastard enough for Marcus to look intact and lie beautifully.

The Lord’s gaze moved over him at once, searching face— breath, some sort of aura maybe and every faint tremor that might betray an awakening of Marcus. Danton’s perception followed more aggressively, sweeping through the room with enough weight to make lesser cultivators collapse beneath the scrutiny.

Neither found what they had come expecting to find.

Marcus was alive, sitting there with a book across his lap as though the heavens above Hell’s Paradise Island had not just convulsed beneath an overwhelming World Essence.

That was exactly why Danton and the Lord had come.

Marcus had always been mortal and he had never awakened and until tonight there had been nothing about him that separated his outward existence from that of an ordinary man beyond what they knew was sleeping inside him— well, apart from some of his memories as a Progenitor. Yet the disturbance they had just felt was so vast and the World Essence was so intimately familiar to the same World Essence Marcus would possess should he awaken— it was different from what other angels like the Lord, Anahita had; that was why it was so easy to conclude it had to be Marcus— and not out of possibility to assume that for one brief, almost ridiculous moment both of them had allowed themselves to believe the miracle they had been waiting for had finally happened.

—that Marcus had awakened.

Perhaps suddenly.

Perhaps the dormant Angel Progenitor had awakened beyond all odds and called so much World Essence toward himself that the entire island had felt it.

That was why the Lord’s gaze had remained fixed upon him with such terrible concentration, searching for the smallest sign that Marcus was no longer what he had been only hours earlier. Danton watched just as closely, looking for anything that should not have belonged to the mortal man seated before them: a change in his eyes, the first trace of Angelic presence, World Essence bending toward him, some alteration in his body, some instinctive reaction from the ancient Soul sleeping within him, anything that would justify the impossible hope that had dragged them both here.

There was nothing.

Marcus remained Marcus.

That left both men confused.

If what they had felt had not been Marcus awakening, then what in the fucking world had caused it?

That’s what made Eira stare in fascination—

The two beings standing only a few steps away knew exactly what Marcus was and yet neither realized there was nothing left inside him of him but his Soul and memories.

Danton’s eyes narrowed. "Did something happen?"

Marcus closed the book partway and frowned at him as though the question itself were strange. "You both entered my room like the estate was burning and you’re asking me?"

The Lord ignored the irritation entirely. His six wings remained spread behind him, pale sacred radiance brushing the walls while his gaze stayed fixed upon Marcus.

"What? Did you feel anything?"

Marcus shut the book properly and rested one hand over its cover. "Everything changed for a moment. Mana? Essence? I don’t know I only felt something pass through everything around me, then it disappeared. I though you’re starting the ritual or something"

Danton and the Lord exchanged a glance.

So Marcus had felt the same thing.

Neither understood how close they stood to the truth.

Across Hell’s Paradise Island, countless cultivators had sensed the disturbance in one form or another. While lesser awakened felt Mana tremble some stronger cultivators noticed the shift more clearly, feeling the island’s itself change and Essences change beneath their feet as something purer and vastly older spread through currents that had existed long before any of them arrived.

World Essence poured into Hell’s Paradise Island for the first time in its existence flooding a land that had never possessed even a single trace of such power before.

Danton had rushed to Marcus because only one possibility made enough sense of it—

The Angel Progenitor!

If Marcus had begun awakening before expected, such a World Essence change was not impossible.

The scale troubled them yes—

—an Angel Progenitor awakening could shake vast stretches of land. It could stir energies, disturb Essence and announce itself to powerful beings across frightening distances— Danton knew that much.

Yet the phenomenon that had swept through Hell’s Paradise Island carried a profundity far beyond anything an awakening should have been capable of producing.

Too vast. Too pure. Too deep.

And how could he forget how for one fleeting period, the very Essence surrounding him had seemed unwilling to obey him, as though another will had passed over the island and every lesser current had instinctively quieted beneath it.

That memory drew another possibility that could cause such a phenomenon, into Danton’s mind but he discarded it almost immediately.

’Impossible.’

The memories carried by Original Progenitors stretched across millions of years, and within those the Primordial Lotus remained a name even beings from those forgotten ages approached with care.

World Essence, monstrous talent, exalted Bloodlines and breakthroughs fierce enough to overturn Heaven and Earth could summon countless phenomena, yet none possessed the right to call forth that sacred flower. Its blessing belonged to an order beyond any awakening and Danton remembered enough to understand that distinction.

That was precisely why he could not bring himself to believe the Primordial Lotus had truly descended upon Hell’s Paradise Island.