Dawn broke.
Zaren stretched lazily and slid down from an ancient tree.
Beneath the tree, the Young Kai-Ming Beast kept growling. Every so often, it smacked its own head with a paw and spewed foul-smelling gray-white vapor.
"Looks like your brain isn't in great shape either."
Zaren laughed. "Mine's the same."
As soon as he finished speaking.
He suddenly heard a sharp sound, like fingernails scraping across glass. With a shrill squeak, it made Zaren clutch his head and scream.
Zaren's body curled into a ball, his forehead pressed against the ground, his face twisted in pain.
After the sharp sound faded, he heard a string of broken, intermittent words, as if someone were saying something to him.
But the voice seemed to come from an extremely distant place, so it sounded blurred and indistinct.
He could only make out one or two words at a time.
"...vessel... offering... revival..."
The words repeated again and again, splitting Zaren's head with pain. He roared and slammed his head into the ancient tree beside him.
Bang!
The ancient tree trembled and hummed from the impact, shaking loose a shower of leaves.
Zaren's head was split and bleeding, and stars swam before his eyes. But the murmurs had vanished as well, leaving his mind blessedly silent.
After resting for a while, he wiped the blood from his head and looked at the Young Kai-Ming Beast with a grin.
"See? I'm just like you. There's something in my head too."
"It drives me crazy. It talks to itself all the time."
It was precisely these murmurs that had driven Zaren insane.
Besides.
Before he stepped into the fourth rank of transcendence, Zaren had been perfectly normal.
He had only begun hearing these voices after becoming God's Emissary.
"Those scholars said that only the lucky