ATEG Chapter 125

“Please help Marquis Wu…” Yue Niang looked at Chi Zhenzi with pleading eyes.

Chi Zhenzi’s face was still as an ancient well, yet his eyes betrayed a grief he could not entirely suppress. He looked at Yue Niang, whose ghost-qi was already dispersing, and reached out to stabilize her soul-body. She had come to find Chi Zhenzi at the cost of her life.

But Marquis Wu had sent her to find Chi Zhenzi not to beg for rescue. He had wanted to entrust his subordinates to Chi Zhenzi’s care.

Marquis Wu had been devoured by a vengeful ghost — that was a consequence of seeds he himself had planted, and he would never expect others to share in that harvest. Before Yue Niang had even found Chi Zhenzi, Marquis Wu was already gone.

Yet that did not mean the matter was finished. Marquis Wu had indeed planted the seeds of a bitter harvest, but the outcome need not have been so devastating. He had cultivated the precepts and guarded one corner of heaven and earth; he could have absorbed his karmic retribution far more gently — not like this. He had died at the hands of the Xuanqing Sect, and Chi Zhenzi could not even determine whether his true spirit had been preserved.

Chi Zhenzi was waiting — waiting for news from his fellow disciples of Diancang Mountain. A flicker of light passed over the stone mirror tucked within his sleeve. This was the result he had asked a fellow disciple skilled in divination to calculate: Marquis Wu’s true spirit still existed, but it was nothing more than a true spirit now, stripped of everything else, its whereabouts unknown.

“Senior Brother, do you wish to avenge Shouyi?” came a fellow disciple’s voice from within the stone mirror.

“Avenge him? He chose his own path — what vengeance is there for another to seek on his behalf?” Chi Zhenzi said flatly, his expression composed.

“I have already calculated — the one who caused Shouyi’s death has a connection to your current mission,” the voice on the other side of the stone mirror said.

“Understood.” Chi Zhenzi severed the communication.

His current mission had brought him to Mount Tu as a representative of Diancang Mountain, where he had taken on the task of helping the Tushan clan purge traitors from their own ranks. Tushan Yin Daren had helped him divine the locations of the rogue Tushan foxes who had betrayed their clan, and once Chi Zhenzi had obtained that assistance, he had promptly taken his leave. Had he stayed any longer, Tushan Yin Daren would have driven him out herself — his very presence was a constant reminder of why he had come: a handful of domestic affairs she could have settled with a flick of her wrist, yet forced by circumstance to let Diancang Mountain handle them instead.

Since his mission intersected with the one responsible for Shouyi’s death, he would look into it along the way.

****

Within Diancang Mountain.

“Senior Brother Chi Zhenzi is angry,” sighed the crowned cultivator who had just closed the stone mirror. Chi Zhenzi was well known throughout Diancang Mountain for his mild temperament.

“With Shouyi’s nature, it was inevitable,” said another cultivator.

You plant your own cause and receive your own consequence. Yet when you shared the same master and the same school, could you not have let someone pull you back?

“In the midst of a great calamity, he was probably afraid of dragging others down with him,” the crowned cultivator offered in Marquis Wu’s defense.

In the chaos of a calamity, nothing was certain — a small ripple could become the whirlpool that pulled a person under. Everything that had happened to Shouyi after his reincarnation as Marquis Wu had left Diancang Mountain powerless to intervene. The mountain’s strength had long been tied down in the Ji territories and Great Yin. If Liang was the forward outpost that Hundun had established through the Xuanqing Sect, then those two regions were Hundun’s true stronghold — and Great Yin held the legitimate authority of the human realm, making it no easy adversary.

(TL: I think using ‘Hundun’ is better than ‘Chaos’)

“I wonder where his true spirit has wandered to now…” the other cultivator murmured with a sigh.

Marquis Wu’s soul had ceased to exist; every cultivation achievement he had earned was now void. Only a single point of true spirit remained — a true spirit without even memories — and even that they could not find.

****

Summit of Daqing Mountain.

The solar star had sunk to the far edge of the sky, and warm waves of orange and red clouds stretched across the horizon. The silhouettes of the forested mountains caught the golden radiance, as though even the cold winter wind might soften. But the colors of sunset shift most swiftly of all — before the warmed wine could cool, the golden light had already dimmed, yielding the eastern sky to the moon, which spread its clear luminescence.

Changyang sat at the mountain’s peak. The sky was growing dark, yet he seemed luminous still. Two measures of wine rested in stone cups, and a single point of true spirit was cradled in his palm.

The indestructibility of the true spirit was a rule of heaven and earth. Though that rule had already been broken, extinguishing a true spirit remained extraordinarily difficult. But when Hundun acted, he never left true spirits behind. If a true spirit were completely annihilated, all the karma and destiny principles woven upon it would be forcibly severed, leaving behind an irreparable void. The more such voids accumulated, the stronger Hundun’s power grew — those strange aberrations whose very nature was to plunder were the swine and sheep he herded, sent out to gnaw new holes through the world one by one.

Moonlight fell like gauze and mist, shimmering in reflection across the wine within the stone cups.

Changyang had already settled himself here at the summit, yet the white-cheeked little monkey from near the Li Manor had still managed to ask Great King Jin Liushan to bring him wine. The monkey’s spiritual intelligence was still dim and unformed — unlike the others, it did not understand the significance of the former High God Li Chi reclaiming the name Changyang. The High God had moved far away; the High God had grown more powerful. But how could a more powerful High God be allowed to go without his spirit wine?

The distance between the summit and the Li Manor spanned nearly the full length of the Daqing Mountain range. The little monkey could not make the journey itself, so it had gone to petition Jin Liushan, the one with the deepest cultivation — who could now rightly be called Jin Qishan, though he had not changed his name as he once would have, keeping Jin Liushan as it was. With Jin Liushan’s level of cultivation, moving freely through the Daqing Mountain range was still beyond him — yet on the day the High God had set the earth’s ridgeline, every cultivator of any ability within the Daqing Mountain range had witnessed him walking in the High God’s footsteps, one step at a time, bearing witness to the resetting of the earth’s spine. By virtue of the High God’s authority, no one in the Daqing Mountain range would obstruct him.

Jin Liushan knew the High God had no need of such spirit wine, yet he brought it all the same. This wine had been made with wild fruits gathered by the mountain’s small demons, washed clean by the little monkeys and placed into the wine pool; Li Feng and Wangyue from the mountain’s foot had contributed spirit medicines; Silver Fish had guided the sweetest spring water in the mountains; Jing Yan and Wen Qianzi had tended to it day after day. And then there was Hou Li…

They all knew this wine might not even reach the High God’s hands. But when the white-cheeked little monkey asked why no wine had been sent to the High God this month, no one had moved to stop it.

Jin Liushan had carried the wine here, though he could climb no further up the summit. Even though on that day he had stood only one step behind the High God, since the Heaven-Reaching Vein had been established, the natural authority that had grown from the summit had grown ever denser — by the time one reached the midpoint of the mountain, that authority already surpassed that of seven great mountains combined.

Jin Liushan had stopped at the highest point he could climb, and reverently set down the gourd of wine.

Now that wine sat at the peak, poured into a stone cup Changyang had carved himself.

“Taiyin, I invite you to drink,” Changyang said.

Moonlight descended upon the summit and coalesced into the form of Heavenly Maiden Wuyou.

Taiyin had also suffered grave wounds during the great calamity twelve thousand years ago. After the Great Celestial Venerable established the Divine Court, she had withdrawn into the Tai Yin star and not emerged — not unwilling, but unable. Heavenly Maiden Wuyou was the only avatar through which she could walk the mortal world.

“It has been a long time,” Heavenly Maiden Wuyou said, sitting across from him with a sigh.

“I have seen the Divine Court. It is well,” Changyang said.

Twelve thousand years ago, he had divided the Underworld in two, entrusting one half to Taiyin. Taiyin had used the framework of that half to establish the Divine Court. Had the Divine Court not maintained its suppression during that time when the gods of the heavens were either dead or wounded, Hundun would long ago have manipulated the great calamity to achieve his goal.

“That only partially atones for my failings,” Taiyin said.

She did not consider what she had done worthy of praise — it was merely the measure of her fault. If she had recognized the problem hidden within the chaos of destiny qi sooner, things would not have come to this.

“You have done more than enough,” Changyang said.

When the situation had collapsed so suddenly in those days, no one had foreseen that Changyang would meet with disaster at the very final moment of establishing the Underworld. That Taiyin had been able to contain the great calamity and persist long enough to build the Divine Court was already no small feat. Hundun was no easy adversary — he was endlessly patient, coiled in shadow like a serpent, and it was only at the last and most critical moment that he had struck at Changyang with a single decisive blow. An enemy capable of such calculation could not have overlooked his schemes against Taiyin either. He had made every preparation — and still Taiyin had held him back.

“If you do not consider this my fault, then you equally have not recognized your own,” Taiyin said.

The heavenly gods were not without flaws. It was precisely those flaws that Hundun had exploited to reach this point. The heavenly gods were born sacred — one could not call them arrogant, for they were born as embodiments of a particular dao, and knowing the loftiness of their own dao, they understood that other daos were equally lofty, holding a reverence for this world whose full face they could never see. Yet neither could one say they were not arrogant, for they were born transcending the cycle of reincarnation; the folly of mortal beings caught within that cycle was plain to them, and they did not think it necessary to concern themselves with the suffering of those who sank — it was like watching moths that must hurl themselves at flames: you drive one away from this candle, and it seeks another. If it cannot relinquish its obsession with fire, it will suffer the burning sooner or later.

Hundun had exploited the heavenly gods’ reverence for heaven and earth — the shifting of karma and destiny principles might simply be another form of heaven and earth’s growth and evolution, so why interfere? And he had exploited their arrogance toward mortal beings — they would not observe what effect these changes wrought upon the reincarnating masses, and so they would never discover what manner of towering wave that effect might eventually become.

And so Taiyin said this was her fault. She who had mastered destiny ought to have made destiny her responsibility.

Changyang’s failing lay in his having drawn too close to mortal beings. Taiyin had warned him of this from the beginning — he had become too deeply invested. Hundun had been able to scheme against him because Changyang had forged a weakness with his own hands. He had once been untouched by karma.

Why such urgency? Why such solitary resolve? As though time were running out…

“What you have said is not wrong,” Changyang raised his cup toward her and smiled faintly. “Hundun has seized my weakness once. He will not seize it a second time.”

Taiyin regarded him for a long moment, and the tension in her features slowly eased. She lifted the stone cup and drank.

They had already formed a tacit understanding in how to face Hundun.

“This is for you,” Changyang said in parting, gesturing toward the wine gourd before him.

Moonlight flowed and rippled, and the form of Heavenly Maiden Wuyou vanished from the summit together with the wine gourd.

Changyang’s gaze turned toward the depths of the Daqing Mountain range, and he cast out a thread of divine consciousness.

****

Deep within the mountain range, Shang Jiwang stared intently at a bat hanging upside down before him, beads of cold sweat dense upon his brow.

Traveling with Xu Kang and several remnant disciples of Xingfeng Temple had been an ordeal every step of the way, and all of them were worn and ragged. The situation within the Daqing Mountain range was far more complex than any of them had anticipated — not only were there cultivators hidden throughout the mountains, but the terrain itself held no small danger. Using a secret technique, they had skirted around nearly every location that radiated the aura of a powerful hidden cultivator, and in doing so had even stumbled into peril several times — yet still they had blundered into this one. The bat was no larger than a palm, yet the aura it emanated made Shang Jiwang’s heart clench with dread.

“Fall back,” he said in a low voice.

The group slowly retreated a distance. The bat hanging upside down from the branch watched them with dim, glowing eyes but made no move to stop them.

Shang Jiwang exhaled in relief and changed direction, continuing forward. Half a quarter-hour later, a jet-black bat hung before them on a branch, wings folded against its body, its pale green eyes staring steadily at them.

“…Change direction again,” Shang Jiwang said.

After changing course nearly in a full circle, they finally found a direction the bat did not block. Anyone could see that the bat demon was trying to herd them toward a particular destination.

We cannot let this bat demon of unknown origin lead us by the nose. Shang Jiwang changed direction once more. They had not gone far when the black bat appeared again, hanging from a tree, watching them with those dim, glowing eyes.

Shang Jiwang: …

“What do we do…” the remnant disciples of Xingfeng Temple said uneasily.

Shang Jiwang gritted his teeth. “We can’t go on like this.” Who knew where this bat demon intended to lead them? Bracing himself beneath the bat’s pale green gaze, he stepped forward again.

The bat opened its mouth.

Eek!

Shang Jiwang stepped back again.

They couldn’t fight it.

“Perhaps… we should just go in the direction it allows?” Xu Kang said.

Shang Jiwang nodded. They had no other choice.

The further they walked, the more certain it became: this bat demon was driving them toward a specific destination. Whenever they needed to turn, it would appear before them, fixing the group with its glowing stare until they turned in the correct direction. The route it chose was safe — they never stumbled into any powerful hidden cultivator’s territory, never fell into any natural hazard. In the darkness of night it appeared and vanished without a sound, like a shadow, with no way of detecting how it moved. Eventually they stopped trying. The group had grown almost numb to it: see the bat demon, turn, see it again, turn again.

The bat demon’s silhouette appeared before them once more. Xu Kang, exhausted and deadened to it all, was about to lift his foot and change direction when Shang Jiwang suddenly stopped him.

“Don’t move,” he said in a sharp, low whisper.

The deep forest was black on all sides. What Shang Jiwang had noticed was that this time the bat, who had always faced them as it blocked their path, had its back to them — something was ahead.

Shang Jiwang could see nothing — only a tangle of withered vines and twisted trees. He had not even detected any unusual aura. But the bat demon had already grown alert.

The tangle of dead vines suddenly erupted with sound, and from the darkness lumbered an enormous figure: a bear demon standing the height of two men, its eyes blazing crimson. That was — an Aberration.

Shang Jiwang went rigid. He knew what Aberrations were, knew what kind of monsters they had become — they walked a path entirely unlike every cultivator in the world. You could not predict their abilities, could not know where their weaknesses lay. Though they still wore the outward form of living creatures, they were no longer the same kind of being as anything that belonged to this world. This fearsome bear demon… in his perception, was like a void of darkness poised to swallow everything. It had clearly already marked this group as prey.

Can’t fight it. Shang Jiwang waved his hand, signaling the others to slowly retreat, while he himself did not move. The pressure it bore down on him was even heavier than the bat demon’s.

Could the bat demon defeat it?

The bat demon had its back to them. Its wings, which had been folded against its body, slowly spread open. A dense and weighty aura of a great demon spread outward — it was tense too.

Eek!

An invisible sound wave burst from the bat demon’s mouth.

The Aberration — what? Why had the Aberration suddenly crumbled apart?

A fine grey ash drifted on the wind. Shang Jiwang pinched a bit of it between his fingers — it was indeed the remains of the bear demon’s body. He looked sharply toward the great bat nearby. This bat demon was that powerful?!

The bat demon blinked in the darkness with a bewildered expression. I’m not that powerful — I was only guiding the way. It must have been… he glanced discreetly in the direction of Daqing Mountain’s summit. It must have been the High God who intervened — and it was the High God who had asked him to guide these people.

Feeling Shang Jiwang’s gaze, the bat demon folded its wings around itself like a cloak, its eyes deepening with an unfathomable look.

That’s right! I am that powerful!

So follow me obediently, and stop causing trouble.

Shang Jiwang set aside any thought of probing further. Before this, he had still been watching for an opportunity — if the bat demon had ill intentions, he might not be able to do much, but at least he could ensure a few disciples got away even if he himself had to stay behind. But with the bat demon this formidable, any resistance he could muster was utterly insignificant. They had no choice but to follow.

And so they walked on, until the Daqing Mountain range lay behind them and the Kingdom of Lu stretched ahead.

The light of dawn blossomed through thin mist, and in the distance open farmland spread wide, morning cookfire smoke curling gently upward.

Shang Jiwang stared ahead in bewilderment. This bat demon… had truly only been guiding their way?

****

At the very peak of Daqing Mountain’s summit, the High God withdrew his gaze. In the light of early dawn, he raised a hand and pressed it lightly to the space beneath his left eye. Beneath his half-lowered lids, his eyes were deep and desolate.

In the end, none of them had changed.