"Ancestral Dragon..."
Just as An Jing and the Infinite Dragon locked eyes, a faint yet incomparably clear voice rang out from the depths of his heart.
It was Fuxie.
It appeared in An Jing's hand—a silver-blue broken blade, as though condensed from a moonlit spring and formed from the purest Qi beyond the heavens.
In that instant, An Jing clearly felt it.
Fuxie, which had always seemed to linger behind a veil of mist, half-dreaming and half-awake...
Had awakened.
The moment it saw the Ancestral Dragon, Fuxie finally—only at this very moment—truly and completely awakened.
That was not to say the Fuxie that had communicated with An Jing before had not been awake.
Of course it had been awake, but it had been more like sleep-talking: originating from itself, yet not the will of a clear mind.
Like one hovering between sleep and wakefulness—able to sense the outside world, yet forever separated from it by a hazy veil.
It was merely that Fuxie's essence was too powerful. Even this remnant of awakening was far more lucid and keen than the vast majority of living beings in the world.
But now, the real it had awakened.
In an instant, time flowed across the broken blade.
Just as An Jing had seen before, endless dreamlike phantoms of light—denser and more continuous still—rose from Fuxie's broken blade.
—Fuxie was a sword that slew evil.
—Fuxie was a sword that subdued evil intent.
—Fuxie was a sword that made evil bow its head.
—Fuxie was a sword that slaughtered evil demons.
—Fuxie was an evil sword lurking in the human heart.
Every definition gave rise to infinite possibilities; and every possibility among those infinite possibilities gave rise once more to infinite possibilities.
Fractals.
Endless fractal light rose from Fuxie's true form, the broken blade.