The roar had not caused as much panic in the city as one might think. The roar had come during the night, so most were asleep.
The beasts had all felt it, and a few humans had been woken up, but it was quickly forgotten by the normal people. Only the Diviners and the beasts knew about it.
Lu Yuping, who had sensed the roar, had been trembling with excitement. He had arrived at the deserted square at the same time as the Diviners, but he had hidden from them and stealthily examined the scene from afar.
While he had seen the corpses on the ground and instantly recognized them as the two remaining Tiger Triplet brothers, he did not stay for long. The Diviners were not a joke. If they noticed him and saw through his disguise, he might not have lived to tell the tale, whether alive or as a free man.
He knew that the Diviners had guessed that there was an elite beast in Cloudsoar City, but he was busy feeling proud of Xue Wei. Knowing that the Sovereign Beast he had found could jump ranks in a fight, his reverence of Xue Wei – and the excitement of what the boy would one day accomplish – grew substantially.
A few days went by. Hei Gou did not leave Xue Wei's side. Uncharacteristically, he remained seated on a chair by the bed with complete focus, watching over him.
Bai Tianyi was not any less worried, but he was aware that the actions of that night had caused the Diviners to show interest in them. He was curious as to whether or not other experts had also noticed that there was an elite beast in Cloudsoar City.
Unfortunately, no matter how much he searched for information, he could find nothing. There was no one who was willing to talk about what had happened that night.
Eventually, Bai Tianyi grit his teeth and returned to their suite, unaware that his investigation had caused the two Diviners to be alert.
A few more days passed by, but Xue Wei showed no sign of waking up. Bai Tianyi and Hei Gou were both worried sick as to why he was unconscious for so long, neither of them leaving his side. Then one day a knocking sound came from the door.
Both frowned and looked at one another. Who could it possibly be? Still, Bai Tianyi stood up and opened the door. The moment he opened it, his eyes widened in shock and his jaw dropped.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in shock and disbelief. Hei Gou could hear that it was someone that Bai Tianyi knew, but when he looked, it was someone he had never seen before.
"I heard that my cute disciple ran into some issues." The melodious voice from outside came in with a hint of mischief.
Hei Gou looked at the person. It was a tall man who seemed around twenty-five years old. He had long blue hair and blue eyes, and his clothes had embroideries of a snake with four wings - a mingshe.
"Come in, you phony prophet," Bai Tianyi grumbled and moved aside to let Lan enter the room.
"Who would have thought that you were Wei's teacher," he muttered to himself. Lan just snickered in response.
"Oh, it seems that his bloodline is what is causing the problems," he said as soon as he laid eyes on Xue Wei. "Well, what can you expect, he has tainted blood after all."
"Tainted blood?" Bai Tianyi had heard what Lan had said, but he did not understand what exactly the prophet meant.
"Anyhow – how did you know that Xue Wei was here and that he was unconscious?" Bai Tianyi shook his head. He knew that Lan was not one who would tell Bai Tianyi about the tainted blood issue, so instead he asked questions that Lan would definitely answer.
"My subordinate told me that she heard a frightening roar that made her blood run cold and every beast submit. Later, they found Wei's enemies dead without intact corpses. It is only obvious that the roar and the murders were linked together."
"But that roar is an innate ability called the Dragon Roar. It is not something he should have access to already, and thus I was worried about him."
"You hurried all the way from the center of the continent to Cloudsoar City just because you were worried about him?" Bai Tianyi snorted. "He must be very valuable."
"Oh he is," Lan snickered and nodded his head. "He is the only one of his kind in the entire world."
Hearing this, Bai Tianyi's eyes widened. This was not a question about being the only one in the continent, but the entire world. One has to know that there were many continents in this world, so to be alone meant he was very special.
Even if he was a Sovereign Beast, he should not be the only one in the entire world, so what exactly was he? Did it have something to do with what Lan mentioned earlier? The tainted blood?
Bai Tianyi sunk into contemplation, but this was something that Lan had expected. He knew that his words were giving away a lot of clues, but he did not mind. He just wanted Xue Wei to grow stronger and to join his collection.
Lan went next to Xue Wei. Hei Gou observed him with scepticism, but because of the conversation between Bai Tianyi and Lan, he could sense that this man had no malice towards Xue Wei, so he took a step back.
Reaching into his robes, Lan pulled out a small jade vial, a kind of jade that Hei Gou had never seen before. He could even sense the energy emanating from this vial, and the heaven-and-earth essence in the room became so dense that every breath felt as if he was breathing in pure Qi.
"You are going this far? Just how valuable is he?!" Bai Tianyi was shocked when he saw the vial that Lan withdrew. He recognized it right away; it contained the heart essence blood of an Azure Dragon. It was one of the most absolute treasures on the entire continent.
Lan just smiled and looked at Xue Wei. "This is an investment," he said seriously. "Make sure to tell him that I have invested a lot in him. And if he wants to know more, he has to come find me at the center of the continent. I reside in the capital of the Tiansong Empire. If he makes it there, finding my mansion will be a breeze, so just hurry up."
After stating this, Lan placed the vial next to Xue Wei's lips and let drop after drop of the heart essence blood of an Azure Dragon drop into his mouth.
"He will be unconscious for two weeks," Lan said before he vanished from sight. That's right, he simply vanished. He had not opened the door or the window, he had not taken a step or twisted the space – he had just faded away.
"Who was that?" Hei Gou asked with a quivering voice. It was like experiencing a hurricane that had just swept in and vanished right away.
"That was Lan. He is the strongest man in the world," Bai Tianyi did not conceal anything. "He is a complete mystery. No one knows where he comes from or what his aim is. He arrived many millennia ago, way before I was at my peak, but he never participated in a power struggle. The only time he actually did something was when there was a group of people who tried to destroy his house."
"He is known as the prophet because he, somehow, knows everything – literally. And I don’t mean just our continent, I mean everything in the entire world."
"He is likely the mastermind behind the Intelligencer in every city. Li Chen is probably his direct subordinate."
"Even when I was at my peak, I don't think that I would have been able to beat him, but he never wanted to fight. He ran from every challenge with a grin on his face."
"The only thing that can move him is treasure. He is a complete treasure hoarder. Anything of value takes his interest, no matter how little, and he is also the richest man in the entire world."
"Other than that? I don't know. But for him to have become Wei's teacher, clearly something must have happened behind the scenes. Also, why is Wei a one of a kind in the entire world?"
Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi both lapsed into silence. Both were in deep thought.
The tainted blood reference kept rotating within Bai Tianyi's mind. What did tainted blood mean?
Everyone knew that it was impossible to be of mixed breed. If a beast became pregnant with a human or the other way around, the child would die. There had never been any instance where the child had survived, and thus he could not be of mixed breed, but what else could tainted blood refer to?
"Do you think he is mixed?" Bai Tianyi finally voiced out his concerns. No matter how he thought about it, that seemed to be the only fitting explanation for the term ‘tainted blood’.
"He could also have some sort of disease," Hei Gou said doubtfully. "I don't really know what he meant by tainted blood, but when I got some of his blood, it made me mutate. If he was not a Sovereign Beast, I do not think that would be possible."
"Did you ever experience any side effects from the mutation?" Bai Tianyi asked curiously. Perhaps they could get some information this way around since Hei Gou had this tainted blood running through his veins, but Hei Gou shook his head.
"I have never felt better than I did after getting his blood, and I constantly grow in levels much faster than ever before."
Eventually, the two spent the following two weeks discussing about the tainted blood problem. They looked at it from every single angle and discussed all the facts they had, yet nothing made any sense. None of the options sounded plausible, and eventually they had to put an end to their discussion.
"We will know when we reach Tiansong Empire," he said with a sigh. "That prophet Lan said that he would tell us what it meant then, so we better get ready to go there."
Bai Tianyi, who could not think of anything better, nodded his head. "I guess that is our only option," he agreed. His head hurt from trying to interpret what Lan had said that day.
In fact, this was Lan's aim. Lan's most interesting pastime was to tease and trouble others. Bai Tianyi and he went back a long way, and Bai Tianyi had chased him time and time again demanding a battle. Now he could finally bring Bai Tianyi trouble by making him think about the tainted blood all day long. Although it had been an unfathomable amount of time since then, Lan was the type to hold a grudge.
During these two weeks, Bai Tianyi and Hei Gou were not the only ones who felt like pulling out all their hair. The two Diviners were in a similar situation. They had gone to the underground cage battles as planned, but their targets never showed up.
Both times they waited the entire night to no avail. Eventually, both of them received a reminder from their headquarters about their original mission and they were forced to leave Cloudsoar City in pursuit of the genius who had escaped their temple.
It had been exactly two weeks after Lan's visit when Xue Wei opened his eyes. His eyes, which had previously been black, were now azure. They were like the vast expanse of the cloudless sky, so beautiful that it was hard to pull your eyes away from his.