ATEG Chapter 130

“With Xuanqing’s destruction, the lantern flames shall grow bright.”

The deity set down his brush, gazing down upon the mortal world from the mountain peak.

This long night had finally come to an end, and the blazing sun rose from the white line of the eastern horizon.

He watched the great bird soaring magnificently through the raging flames, watched as a flame of the heart kindled within the hearts of every cultivator who practiced the Bright Lantern method.

Even as karma fell into chaos and the cycle of reincarnation was severed, the yearning for warmth and light remained an undying fire in the depths of every soul.

When the sun shines upon the world, a single lantern flame is hardly needed. But when the sun is extinguished and darkness swallows the world, it is then that one small guiding light after another becomes most precious. When the sun star is extinguished, I offer my own body as the lantern flame.

This was the founding wish of the Mingdeng Sect after the great calamity one hundred and twenty thousand years ago. This was the vow that every cultivator willing to join the Mingdeng Sect swore, guided by those who came before them.

Though Xuanqing has perished, the lantern flames shall burn on forever.

….

Ten million li away, Yang Cang suddenly raised his head. He heard a long cry that resounded through the very depths of his soul, and the lantern flame within his chest blazed up in a sudden surge of light. That flame illuminated him completely, piercing through the weight of time and the cycle of reincarnation, clarifying the deep and shadowed obsession that had long been blurred within him.

It was as though, across ten million li of distance, he could see that great bird taking flight from the flames — and from shoulder blades far broader than those of an ordinary person, a pair of powerful wings suddenly unfurled. His eyes filled with scalding tears.

The destined Xuanniao descended, and from it was born Tang…

….

When Hundun heard that cry of the phoenix resounding through heaven and earth, he understood at last why he had lost this particular game.

He had thought Changyang wanted Xuanqing Sect — yet it had never occurred to him that Changyang was equally content to receive it as he was indifferent to destroying it.

Destroy the broken and defeated Xuanqing Sect. Cast off the tangled threads of karma. In a raging inferno, burn away the scarred and ruined husk of a body — burn away every chain that had been bound upon it — and then, rise reborn in a new form.

But this was not without cost. Changyang had forcibly moved karma with a single stroke of his brush — yet this world was no longer the unblemished and unobstructed place it had once been. It had long since been riddled with wounds beyond count; karma and destiny had already fallen into disorder, and the great calamity had arisen because of this. Even if Changyang used his divine power to make it whole, such a world could no longer bear the upheaval that forcibly altering karma would bring upon it.

The great calamity was about to stir. How many years had Changyang’s stroke pushed it forward?

He had chosen this rather than trading the Underworld for Xuanqing — and so the likelihood that the other half of the Underworld lay hidden somewhere in the nether realm had now grown considerably higher. Hundun quietly withdrew. Though this game was lost, he had not come away entirely empty-handed. The great calamity had shifted and changed — and that was precisely his opportunity. Next, it was time for him to make his move upon the nether realm as well.

…

From the time the great calamity first stirred to now, the transition from a tribulation falling more upon the mortal masses to one falling more upon cultivators had taken less than a year — and even so, all of it had been nothing more than a prelude to the great calamity. Until this very moment —

On this day: karma moved, Xuanqing was destroyed, the great calamity intensified, and the Five Declines of Heaven and Man descended.

(TL: The “五衰 (Five Declines/Decays)” is a classical Chinese concept that comes from Daoist and prophetic texts. In context, it refers to five major forms of decline affecting both Heaven (the cosmos) and Man (humanity), signaling the onset of catastrophe or the end of an era.)

The cold winter wind swept past, carrying dry, frigid dust that struck Bie Chunian’s body and fouled his robes and hair.

He instinctively raised a sleeve to shield his face — then suddenly bent forward, his body convulsing in tremors, and from his throat came a series of ragged, uneven gasps, as though his lungs had become a decrepit wooden bellows packed full of dust.

The wooden ghost-mask slipped from his spasming fingers and fell to the ground. The startled soul of Feiying, imprisoned within, shuddered violently at this sudden turn of events.

Filth clinging to the body — this was the First Decline among the Five Declines of Heaven and Man.

Cultivators seek to transcend birth and death — yet before they attain the Dao, they are nothing more than travelers walking the long road toward immortality.

Cultivators can keep their bodies free from filth and impurity, ever maintaining a state of youth and vigor that, in the eyes of ordinary mortals, appears no different from an immortal who neither ages nor dies. Yet cultivators still have lifespans and can still reach their end. Their aging manifests only when their lifespan approaches its limit, appearing as five distinct signs, which are called the Five Declines of Heaven and Man.

The first sign is filth clinging to the body. Once a cultivator has reached a certain level of cultivation, their body naturally repels dust and remains light and immaculate — but in the First Decline, the body once again becomes soiled by grime, just as with ordinary mortals. The second sign is spontaneous generation of impurity: mortal bodies are bound by earthly limitations from birth — requiring food, producing dirt — but cultivators transcend this through practice. In the Second Decline, however, the body sweats and generates impurity once more. The third sign is physical decay of the body, the fourth is diminishment of spiritual power, and the fifth is the instability of the Dao-heart.

When a cultivator begins to experience the Five Declines of Heaven and Man, it signifies that their lifespan is drawing to its close. Unless another method of extending life is found, death will follow.

Among the Five Declines, the first four proceed in order — but the Fifth Decline does not obey this pattern. Cultivators whose cultivation is insufficiently grounded may, even during the First Decline, be seized by fear, which drags their Dao-heart into instability. Others, whose cultivation is solid, maintain a Dao-heart that remains firm and whole all the way through the end of the Fourth Decline. But most cultivators, even if their Dao-heart holds steady through the preceding declines, find it impossible to avoid a tremor in that heart when confronted with the profound terror between life and death in the very instant of dying. Only the rarest few pass through without experiencing the Fifth Decline at all — their Dao-heart so firmly grounded that, even as they are drawn by the Yellow Springs into the nether realm to enter the cycle of reincarnation once more, they remain unaffected, and their memories of their past life are preserved.

Mortals fear death. So too do cultivators. For a cultivator to witness the Five Declines of Heaven and Man is like a mortal discovering they have been struck by a fatal illness — fear and dread are all but inevitable. Feiying was no different in this — though he was, by now, already dead himself.

The path of ghost cultivation is no easy road to walk. First, one must be able to become a ghost before one can cultivate as a ghost. To become a ghost requires the power to resist the pull of the cycle of reincarnation. This does not mean that a cultivator with a sufficiently powerful divine soul can freely choose between entering the cycle of reincarnation or remaining behind as a ghost cultivator — for if one could resist the force of reincarnation, would that not already constitute a kind of transcendence of birth and death in its own right?

And yet even the cycle of birth and death has its moments of flux and change. This opening for change does not lie in the height of a cultivator’s cultivation, nor in the steadiness of their Dao-heart — but precisely in the ordinary mortal’s attachments of the Seven Emotions.

The power of emotional attachment can withstand the pulling force of reincarnation. Yet the power of emotional attachment is, by its very nature, a force that cannot be controlled. When emotional attachment runs deepest, one cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation even if one wishes to. Once emotional attachment has dispersed, one cannot remain as a ghost even if one tries.

Thus, among all the ghosts in the world, there are none whose obsessive attachments are not profound. Among all ghost cultivators in the world, there are none who do not fear the madness of resentful malice that could becloud their minds.

Yang Cang had originally been able to transform into a ghost because of an attachment within his heart — yet he had also been cultivating the Bright Lantern method, and so he was able to maintain his clarity of mind even after becoming a ghost.

If a ghost begins to cultivate, the ghost-body undergoes further transformation. When ghost cultivation on the righteous path has progressed to a sufficient stage, if the cultivator can diminish their attachments and resentments and bring their Dao-heart into balance, they will no longer be compelled by the pull of reincarnation to dissolve their ghost-body and re-enter the cycle. However, if, due to entanglements of karma — as in Marquis Wu’s case, being drawn into a death tribulation — all is scattered and lost, this constitutes a kind of “death” of the ghost-body as well. With the ghost-body’s distinctive nature gone, and without the emotional attachment needed to resist the pull of reincarnation, re-entering the cycle is the natural outcome.

Feiying could not yet be counted a ghost. He was merely a soul trapped within the ghost-mask after death — effectively suspended upon another kind of “body.” Were he to be separated from the ghost-mask, he would likely be drawn by the power of the Yellow Springs into the cycle of reincarnation.

Being reincarnated and beginning one’s cultivation anew is no easy path. No one can be certain what form they will take — human or non-human, with an awakened spirit or a clouded one. Perhaps there would still be the chance to walk the path of cultivation once more. Perhaps the chance to touch anything beyond the ordinary would never come again.

Feiying was neither the kind of cultivator whose Dao-heart was so firmly grounded that he could preserve his memories, nor the kind — like Shang Jiwang — who had a sect watching over and making arrangements for him, waiting for the right moment to have someone awaken the memories of his past life and bring him back into the fold.

Even if he became a ghost — though he lacked the deep emotional attachment needed to do so — he had no secret technique to keep his mind clear. Shituo knew the Bright Lantern method, but given the current state of things… could Shituo’s faint, weak heart flame actually help? This method of cultivation, with the heart as its core, couldn’t even resolve the problem of his currently fractured divine soul. If he were simply to enter the cycle of reincarnation like this, it would be, in a certain sense, an annihilation for Feiying.

The ghost-mask had fallen to the ground. In that single breath of time, Feiying thought of many things. He had died violently without ever having the chance to experience the Five Declines of Heaven and Man — but he had witnessed other cultivators going through the Five Declines before, and what he saw now in Bie Chunian bore a strong resemblance to those moments. The difference was that the Five Declines cultivators ordinarily experienced did not tend to be as violent as what Bie Chunian was going through now.

What Bie Chunian was experiencing right now looked almost like a severe old wound suddenly erupting all at once. But Feiying did not believe that Bie Chunian was the kind of person who would expose his own weaknesses — not even to a ghost-mask that was entirely under his control. If it were something like an old injury, Bie Chunian ought to have been prepared for it long ago. Feiying was more inclined to believe that what had just happened was the sudden onset of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man.

He could not help but think of the strange sensation he himself had felt at nearly the same moment — he did not fully understand what had just occurred, but he had felt the destruction of Xuanqing Sect, that bizarre and terrible sensation of finality. Though he was currently trapped within the ghost-mask, he had a faint, inexplicable feeling that even if he were to go now to the strongholds of Xuanqing Sect that had once been familiar to him, he would find no one from Xuanqing Sect there. Even if his mind still held the sect’s contact methods, he would be unable to use them to reach any other members of Xuanqing Sect — unless they shared some other connection besides the sect itself.

He had never imagined there could exist such a power in this world. What a terrifying method it was — one that left Feiying on the verge of trembling.

He could feel that something about himself had changed because of it as well, though he was uncertain exactly what had happened to him — for he had already lost his physical body, and his divine soul was in this weakened and fractured state, leaving his perceptions exceedingly dull. Yet since this change had been enough to bring the Five Declines of Heaven and Man crashing down upon Bie Chunian without warning, what effect might it have on him?

Feiying felt a growing sense of anxious unease. At that very moment, Bie Chunian reached down and picked up the ghost-mask that had rolled to the ground.

His hand still trembled slightly. As it touched the dirt on the ground, it gathered dust. Feiying could feel that the sudden and violent pain of a moment ago had drawn some sweat from Bie Chunian, and that sweat was now smeared onto the ghost-mask by his fingers.

Bie Chunian had originally appeared to be a man in his prime — his features young, his skin smooth and taut. Were it not for the two strands of white hair at his temples that lent him an air of greater age, he might have been taken for someone even younger.

But now he truly looked something like a man of that age. His skin had taken on the natural dullness and roughness that came to ordinary people with the passage of years — though the change was still subtle, it was already the beginning sign of the Third Decline, the physical decay of the body. What had just happened had, in the span of a few short breaths, caused a cultivator of unfathomable depth to skip past the first two Declines entirely and plunge directly into the Third. If the Fourth Decline were to conclude as well, his lifespan would be at its end.

Bie Chunian lowered the sleeve he had raised to shield himself from the blowing dust. His voice, slightly low and hoarse, sounded. “Xuanqing Sect is destroyed.”

Feiying’s gaze suddenly fixed upon his face.

The face that had just endured the agony of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man — the face of one who had just learned that his lifespan was ending and death was drawing near — was smiling.