"Glory be to you, O supreme heir of the Blood Spirit!"
"May honor be upon you, O legacy bearer of Primordial One!"
"We pray upon you; let the world witness the all-consuming hunger of Divine!"
"Let the vile world be submerged in blood; let it serve as the herald of Divine One's return!"
A sinister chanting echoed all around in an unknown world of pale whiteness.
'The Heir of Divine Spirit? Me?'
He wondered, shivers running down His spine for some reason.
Feeling lightweight, as if in a dream, He dazedly walked to the edge of the high pedestal He had somehow found Himself on.
Having woken up only a moment earlier with no recollection who and where He was, His state of mind was a mess filled with doubts and questions.
Yet when He gazed down, He felt a sense of familiarity and kinship.
The sources of repetitive chanting… those hideous-looking beings, seemingly born out of yellow, pus-like substance, He knew them.
The hideous beings bowing down to Him in reverence and fanaticism, they… they were… who were they?
He obviously knew them yet He could not remember!
He gritted His teeth in desperation, straining His mind for answers.
Yet, to His dismay, He found none.
Just as He was about to jump down in a desperate bid to find an answer Himself, a multitude of whispers echoed in His mind.
'They are Your servants, and You… You are their lord;"
'The sole heir to the sinful Crown of Blood, the successor of Divine Spirit Crimson, that's who You are!'
The whispers seemed to possess a hypnotic effect as He felt His doubts and suspicions wash away.
"Right, I… I am-"
However, before He could complete His sentence, a young, resonant voice rang out from the depths of His foggy memories.
"Child, henceforth your name shall be–
"Tanxue" the moment He uttered this name, He felt an intense sense of loss as He witnessed the world of whiteness shatter and melt away into a deadly silent, foggy expanse.
'Where… where am I?'
He wondered yet again, although the next moment His thoughts stilled as He noticed two purple orbs of light loom above Him through the fog.
'A pair of stars?'
Evidently confused, He looked at them intently only to realise that they were in fact the eyes of a colossal feline silhouette gazing down at Him with rage.
Vaguely, He could make out a voice talking to him in an unfamiliar language. Yet, before he could make a sense of it, he woke up realising it was all just a dream.
'Just a dream and nothing else.'
Di Tanxue whispered, consoling his weary heart with these words.
******
Blood-red clouds raged in the sky, obscuring the blazing golden sun and the serene Star of Eternal Truth from view as it rained crimson.
Swept by the galloping wind, pained groans, resentful roars and pitiful wails; some human, some beastly, others utterly inhuman, echoed all throughout the world.
Was it due to the nightmare he had just had, or simply a force of habit?
Feeling the crimson raindrops slide down his body, Di Tanxue could not stop himself from reciting something he had learnt as a child.
"The Heavens bleed, their hunger released;
The living perish, the perished feast;
Have mercy upon me, O Merciful Nimbus Beast."
Hymn of the Merciful Nimbus.
It was an age-old hymn pleading the long-dead Nimbus Beast of the Merciful Skies to quell her wrath and bring an end to the calamitous blood rain.
Supposedly first sung by an ancient Immortal, it was rumoured to possess magical qualities and was renowned throughout the northern continent.
'How ironic;'
Di Tanxue laughed, mildly amused with the situation. And how could he not be, after all it was Di Tanxue himself who had summoned this crimson rain. And he most certainly held no fear of this rain.
"Haa… I'm hungry;"
With a sigh, he opened his eyes and sat up.
"Let's see.. monster meat, meat and even more meat, great, just great!"
"Even after all that trouble, I'm still stuck with these, just what was the damn point?"
He grumbled with discontent and cursed looking at azure-robed human corpses lying a short distance away.
"Seems like being mocked as the lapdogs of the church has literally turned you all into dogs!.. Why don't you have anything normal in your storages?!"
Shaking his head in resignation, Di Tanxue bit off a large mouthful of bloody meat. His mouth moved on its own in a daze as one slice of meat after another vanished from his hands.
Recalling what had happened just before he lost consciousness from exhaustion, he could not help but let out a sigh.
"So in the end it has still come to this."
Gazing inside his lower dantian, he could see that his damaged anchor had recovered massively, but some traces of the cracks still remained. This however was just a minor detail compared to a monumental change that had taken place.
The previously blank bottom section of his anchor had gained an engraving.
The End of a Thousand Years.
The engraving was that of a world of soul-scorching hellfire, catastrophic rain and apocalyptic tornadoes. Within this world of disasters wandered the busy figures of a myriad of zealots, searching fervently for their site of pilgrimage.
They were on a pilgrimage of thousand years and nothing, not even death, had the qualifications to stop it.
But then, if even death was ineffective against them how can a mere anchor of a second stage Mortal Transcendence cultivator keep them confined?
A distressed look appearing on Di Tanxue's face, his gaze focused deeper upon the images of pilgri… no they weren't images at all, rather they were actual pilgrims confined and trapped within his anchor.
The World, it seemed to have forcefully assimilated Di Tanxue together with the phantoms housed inside the Oceanic Fragment he had swallowed.
First, the thousands upon thousands of phantoms were mashed violently together to become a hundred or so pilgrims, who were then forced to assimilate into Di Tanxue's anchor.
"So, am I an actual pilgrim now or maybe a hybrid of sorts?
Di Tanxue muttered inwardly, pondering about the unique state of being he was currently in.
The clouds up in the sky, the raindrops falling out of them and even the very fabric of reality, all of these felt like an extension of his will and vision at the moment.
For a brief instance, it even got the feeling as if he had become an Immortal… not the quacks he had met before, but a true Immortal, the one capable of obliterating heaven and earth with a single gesture.
It was overwhelming to say the least.
As he munched on the tacky meat, he tried dwelling further into this sensation.
He imagined intangible strings connecting his consciousness to the crimson clouds up in the sky, he pictured himself becoming a part of these clouds, ethereal, corrosive and most importantly, alive.
The haze caused by the falling raindrops had made it difficult for him to see beyond a few meters yet now he could 'see' it all, 'hear' it all and even 'control' it all.
He could see a dead silent wilderness strewn with bloody and gruesome remains of beasts and birds alike.
He could see these gory remains being feasted upon by Phantoms, the familiar grotesque yellow beings from his dreams.
And of course, he could also see himself sitting within a clearing surrounded with a dozen or so mangled azure-robed human corpses, their wide-open eyes staring blankly at him in terror, disbelief and injustice.
'Tsk, my ears hurt;'
Di Tanxue clicked his tongue. The Phantoms, they were still chanting the same incantation from his dreams—the one revering him as the Divine Spirit's heir.
Moments passed as he remained motionless letting the crimson shower; sometimes intense, other times gentle; drench him completely in its cool but bloody embrace.
The inheritance contained within the End of a Thousand Years engraving was overwhelming to say the least. Yet, instead of being over the cloud because of this newly gained ability of his, a deep worry eclipsed his mind.
"Just how long do I have left to live?"
A laughter filled with great helplessness escaped his lips when an answer echoed in his ears unexpectedly.
"Four months, that's all the time you have before your body self-destructs or your mind ends up possessed by an old monster from the ancient past."