ATEG Chapter 111

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the karmic threads of the world were severed and broken, and the principles of destiny fell into chaos.

The deity ground his bones into a brush and made a covenant with all living beings, to mend the karmic threads and establish the Underworld.

One hundred and twenty thousand years ago, the Underworld had taken form and was about to connect Heaven and Earth.

Then the Destiny-Recording Brush Spirit suddenly betrayed him — stealing the divine name, recording the god’s own fate.

The karmic threads attached to the brush hairs became instantly entangled, and hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of accumulated resentment and suffering poured along those threads, pressing down upon the deity all at once.

On the very day the Underworld was on the verge of completion, the hatred of all living beings crushed the one and only god in the world who had ever been willing to reach out his hand to them.

The Brush Spirit trembled within the jade pendant. He had been beguiled by Chaos, and at the most critical moment — when the Underworld was about to connect Heaven and Earth — he had betrayed. He was the deity’s finger bone, possessing the ability to examine and judge karmic threads; moreover, he had been fused with the power of the Taiyin Record to alter the principles of destiny. Who could have imagined he would betray? At the moment when the deity was most unguarded, given his abilities, how could he have failed? Yet his eyes had been blinded by desire. He had thought far too highly of himself, and far too little of the deity.

The deity had indeed not been on guard — yet in the final instant, he had effortlessly struck the Brush Spirit a grievous blow and stripped him out of the brush body.

Had the deity not held the Underworld in his heart above all else, the Brush Spirit might not have even had the chance to cling to life by a thread. The Brush Spirit had felt regret the moment he finished the deed; he realized he had been deceived by Chaos. The Dao that the Underworld represented had obscured his mind, leaving behind only blazing, consuming greed.

In the last vision he beheld after being wrenched free from the brush body, the deity slowly bent at the waist — clad in white robes — and inch by inch, his white turned to ink black.

Afterward, the sun star was extinguished, Tianzhu Mountain broke, and a great calamity descended without warning. But the Brush Spirit had no time to concern himself with any of that. He had once been a Brush Spirit formed from the deity’s finger bone — a being who recorded karmic threads and the principles of destiny alike, not inferior even to certain celestial gods. Yet now he had become a solitary wandering soul, not even equal to a ghost who had cultivated for some years. But this was not what tormented the Brush Spirit most. What caused him the most anguish was this: after the Underworld had failed to be completed due to his betrayal, the karmic sins had bound themselves to his body.

He had once believed that the severed karmic threads of all living beings, gathered upon him, and the malice born in the hearts of all living beings during the construction of the Underworld, borne by him — all of this he had endured. So why should he not be the one to preside over the Underworld?

But only now did he understand: the reason he could bear those karmic threads and that malice was not because he was the Destiny-Recording Brush Spirit. It was because the Destiny-Recording Brush was the deity’s finger bone.

It was never he who had borne it all.

How bitter was it to have karmic sins bound to the body? He had tried every method to free himself. He had attempted to imitate the deity in examining and judging karmic threads, dissolving the grudge-born sins that had formed in all living beings due to the severing of karmic threads, hoping those bound sins would likewise dissolve. He had tried to exploit the world’s broken karmic threads, forcibly attaching his own karma to others, making others bear the sins that had bound themselves to him.

But his judgments were never acknowledged by Heaven and Earth. And his reattachments — the Li Clan was not the first substitute he had sought. No matter what kind of figure or power he found as a replacement, it was no more than a drop of water on a burning cart. The karmic sins would never release him. He tore at his own divine soul to shed power; he used every means available to seize power; he endured agonizing pain in his striving; he sank entirely into madness. He had tried every method. He had gone mad, and he had been lucid. He had given up, and he had taken it up again. Now his only wish was death. So long as he could be freed from those karmic sins, he was willing to disperse entirely.

The Brush Spirit emptied out everything he knew, prostrating himself in the most abject posture to beg for a final, complete annihilation — yet the deity who sat before him still filled him with bone-deep, chilling terror. Those abyss-like eyes were utterly still, and his lips even carried a cold, distant smile. It was as though the betrayal of one hundred and twenty thousand years ago could no longer stir any movement in his emotions — as though everything had come to nothing at the final moment; as though hundreds of thousands of years of effort had turned to dust; as though he had suffered grievous wounds and vanished for one hundred and twenty thousand years — as though all of this could no longer make him care.

What was the deity thinking now? The Brush Spirit trembled and shook. Once he had understood the deity — but now? He had endured the karmic sins from the Underworld’s failure for one hundred and twenty thousand years. He knew clearly what that was like, what it had turned him into. And the deity — after having the resentment of all living beings, born from the incompleteness of their karmic threads, descend upon him in full — what had become of him?

“You seek death,” the deity said, lightly and slowly. “And you should know — I hold karmic threads above all else.”

“If you wish to obtain the fruit of annihilation, you must plant the cause of annihilation yourself.”

The Brush Spirit dared not even allow despair to arise in him, and lay prostrate, listening for the command to follow.

“Now — return the name you once stole in your recording.”

****

The Daqing Mountain Range.

The deity set his feet upon the earth vein, stepping from the tail of the mountain range toward its head. The earth vein was like a rigid spine, and beneath his feet, one vertebra after another loosened and eased, surging back to life with astonishing vitality. At the same time, a power that had long slumbered within the earth vein slowly awakened — heavy and solid, vast and immense!

As this power awakened, it was as though the earth vein itself was awakening, as though the earth vein itself were alive. And beneath this surge of life, all the living beings throughout the entire Daqing Mountain Range were startled into motion. Lone wanderers who had come here to train, cultivators lying in concealment, the lords of their own territories — they gathered of their own accord toward the source of the upheaval, yet fell into silence and stopped in their tracks when they saw the deity stringing the spine of the earth vein.

Not a single one dared to step forward. Not even the most minute of probing gestures. They all felt the earthen power that was reviving — it had already exceeded any level achievable by a local earth god. That was — that was the very spine of the entire earth itself!

The deity walked through half of the Daqing Mountain Range, and all the dormant earth-spine force within the range had been fully awakened. At this precise juncture, another earth-spine force of the same origin flowed in from the remnant vein of Li Manor and entered the mountain range — and with the deity’s next step, it was revived within the next vertebra of the earth spine.

“What is this?” Jin Liushan could not help but ask in awe.

He had followed in the deity’s wake the entire way, witnessing everything with his own eyes. Among the cultivators who had been startled and gathered to either side of the earth vein throughout the Daqing Mountain Range, there was no shortage of those whose cultivation depths even Jin Liushan looked up to in reverence. Yet these beings stood only to either side of the earth vein, forming a path for the deity the likes of which had never existed before.

Jin Liushan was submerged in the gazes of many beings whose cultivation far surpassed his own — something that ought to have shaken and unsettled him — yet at this moment it could not touch his mind in the slightest. For he had already been completely seized by something else.

“What is this?” he murmured, not really expecting an answer. He was simply too overwhelmed with awe to keep from blurting the words out.

But the deity answered him, “This is the force of the earth vein — and the power of Shetu.”

The deity in white robes and black hair was stringing the spine of the earth with his very footsteps, yet seemed to have leisure to spare.

“The god of the great earth is named Shetu. Tianzhu Mountain is the earth’s heaven-connecting vein, linked to the earth spine. One hundred and twenty thousand years ago, Tianzhu Mountain broke and a third of the earth was severed. Shetu gathered her last remaining power to condense for Heaven and Earth the earth spine that would suppress the great earth.

“But she had already been gravely wounded by the breaking of Tianzhu Mountain and the severing of the earth, and even spending her final power, she was unable to complete it. Half of the earth-spine qi condensed within the Daqing Mountain Range, and the other half within Diancang Mountain.”

In the unhurried telling of the deity, they stepped to the head of the Daqing Mountain Range — only one step away from sealing the earth spine into place.

It was a towering peak, strikingly noble and magnificent. In the glow of twilight that dyed the mountain forests, the hem of the deity’s robes and his black hair drifted gently in the breeze.

The autumn wind rises and the white clouds fly; the grass and trees turn yellow and fall, and the wild geese return south.

“Shetu need not have perished,” the deity said. “But this was her Dao.”

He stood with his back to the mountain range. No one could see the expression on his face.

And Jin Liushan could no longer hold back the tears streaming down his face. He too was an earth god, and he could feel with perfect clarity the quiet, profound virtue in the power of Shetu. Never before had he understood so deeply as in this moment what it meant to be a god of Heaven and Earth.

Gods of Heaven and Earth bear the station of Heaven and Earth’s virtue, and shoulder the responsibilities of Heaven and Earth.

Shetu need not have spent her last power. But it was her choice — and it was her Dao.

****

In Shezhou City, the prostrate Brush Spirit exhaled a name:

“Changyang.”

****

At the summit peak of the Daqing Mountain Range, the deity took his final step.

The spine of the earth was fully connected. A deep, resonant, prolonged cry suddenly pierced through from within the Daqing Mountain Range. The cry of the earth spine rang through Heaven and Earth, and the connection between Heaven and Earth grew more solid and sure.

Countless startled gazes turned toward this place — from the depths of the Huai River, from within Diancang Mountain, from Qingqiu and Mount Tu, from the sacred ground of the Flame Lord in the Min lands, from the Divine Court upon the Ninth Heaven… Within the royal palace of Great Yin, a figure wearing a crown and diadem suddenly raised his head, his form stirring as he was about to set out — yet before him, a divine maiden of self-possessed perfection suddenly appeared and blocked his way.

“In my name,” Changyang stood upon the summit of the earth spine, the vast and brilliant light of the great sun spreading before him in all directions, “wherever I stand shall be the heaven-connecting vein.”