Chapter 168 – Sun and Moon Shine Together
The Silver Dragon’s clear voice echoed between heaven and earth. Huai Ningjun lowered his eyes.
“Long time no see.”
His white robes billowed. Huai Ningjun’s voice was drowned out by a surging black qi. A viscous, heavy black qi poured out from the distant Ancient Sea, sweeping across the sky like a great tide. Instantly, two seas appeared simultaneously, one in the sky and one on the ground. The earthly sea’s waters churned, its nether fire boiling. The heavenly sea was dark and lightless, pressing down heavily on the firmament. In a flash, it was as if heaven and earth had been inverted.
The boundary between up and down suddenly blurred. All the long-prepared Desolate Emissaries and demonic monsters, at the very moment the Heavenly Wedge was completely raised, rode the miasma and mist, howling as they charged out. A sinister wind surged, cold and grim. Countless skeletal dead souls shrieked, as if in madness or joy, squeezing their way into the mortal realm through the deficient northwest corner of the sea. Their numbers were in the countless billions.
In that moment, it was as if a gate had been smashed open in the sky that was supposed to be like a covering umbrella. The netherworld ghosts, which had previously only been able to linger outside and enter with the wind and miasma, now passed through the heavenly gate with impunity, returning directly to the world of the living.
And indeed, a Heavenly Gate had been opened! If the “Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization” had been executed without a single flaw, then the sky formed by the “Heavenly Wedge—Heavenly Pillar—Central Fulcrum” structure should have perfectly enveloped the earth, leaving no gaps for the black miasma from the Great Wilderness to enter the Twelve Continents. However, the reality now was that the islands and corners of the Twelve Continents were numerous, fragmented, and crooked. The heaven and earth that should have been seamlessly joined had developed broken gaps through which the miasma could pass, leading to the Twelve Continents being “filled with black mist, the thick earth shrouded in miasma.”
The root of the problem was the West Continent. More precisely, it was the Heavenly Wedge in the northwest corner of the West Continent. Three thousand years ago, the calendrical masters and chroniclers of the Kongsang Hundred Clans had succinctly pointed out, “The heavens are deficient in the northwest, thus the northwest is yin.” As the center of astronomy, meteorology, geography, and calendrical arts in the mortal realm after the Primeval Era, the chroniclers of Kongsang had organized a massive campaign of erecting gnomons to measure shadows and setting sails to measure winds, called “Heaven Surveying.”
Regardless of whether the “Heaven Surveying” campaign was, in essence, a far-reaching military and geographical survey of the Twelve Continents conducted by the then-dominant Hundred Clans to achieve their ambition of “herding the world,” at least at that time, the calendrical masters and chroniclers responsible for erecting gnomons and measuring winds had, over the course of one hundred and seventy-one years, completed their mission:
They had measured the location of the Heavenly Gate.
“The Heavenly Gate is in the northwest. When the Heavenly Wedge rises, the Heavenly Gate appears.”
Bei Ge Zi Jin strode across the trench filled with molten iron and silver paste, his pure white sleeves glowing crimson in the light of the red fire. The snow on Heavenly Lake Mountain had completely melted. Thousands of white waterfalls, like silk ribbons, crashed into the eighty-one water wheels of the high furnaces at the foot of the mountain.
The water wheels, built around the mountain, were thirty meters high, a unique sight in all of history. In front of the wheels stood wooden posts with crescent-shaped timbers, suspended by swings. Water fell from above, striking the wooden paddles of the wheels, thus fanning the flames. At this moment, thousands of waterfalls crashed down simultaneously. The large and small vertical water wheels, with their crescent timbers, were pulled back and forth almost without pause, as if the wood and water together formed a keyboard, flying ceaselessly. The roaring of the water and the whistling of the wind were the music it played. In a generous melody of roaring and howling, red flames shot toward the sky from the half-open furnace mouths.
The waterfalls formed by the melting snow, after completing their mission of fanning the flames, flowed into the trenches dug in advance by the Heavenly Works Mansion. Following the mountain’s contours, they flowed around the rapidly forging high furnaces, maintaining the balance of yin and yang in the grand formation where ten thousand people were forging together. This prevented the sweating artisans from being turned to charcoal by the heavenly fire. After circulating once, the boiling water gathered in four deep pools at the foot of Heavenly Lake Mountain.
The body-forging cooks of the Heavenly Works Mansion, stripped to the waist, stood at the edge of the deep pools. With a roar, they vigorously turned the giant water wheels, drawing the snowmelt high into the sky. The water flowed upward, rapidly cooling in the frigid air until it passed over the cliff’s edge and fell again, once more becoming the great power of heaven and earth that fanned the flames.
Throughout this cycle, the movement of the water system also struck the rotating wheels within the mountain, causing the pavilion where the Divine Lord had once lived on the summit to slowly turn. The place where the Divine Lord had lived, the roof of the hall was hemispherical, perfectly round, and the joints of the arched beams were exquisitely crafted. The roof had two layers: the upper one was a clear, greenish-blue, and the lower one was a reddish-gold. The red-gold layer was decorated with brilliant pearls, while the greenish-blue layer had faint, curved engravings. The entire building had nine rooms and twelve halls, with pillars forming wells that housed gears.
Beside the hall was a terrace, and below the terrace was a pool. For the past twelve years, the Divine Lord’s whereabouts had been erratic, and he rarely stayed in one place for more than a month. It wasn’t until he arrived in Plum City this autumn that, seemingly fond of the scenery of Heavenly Lake Mountain, he had stopped his travels and ordered the Mountain Sea Pavilion to find skilled craftsmen to repair the houses and pavilions near the Heavenly Lake.
At the time, the Divine Lord’s actions hadn’t drawn much attention. Even the wary Beast Taming Sect and the Great Wilderness weren’t very concerned—after all, when the Divine Lord was still the Little Martial Ancestor of Taiyi, he was famous for his love of “fine clothes, beautiful houses, and curious and skillful things.” When his identity was unknown, the world saw it as the actions of a profligate. But after the Night of Dusk and Dawn’s Division, when he descended from the clouds in red, this little quirk of his was instantly transformed into a “refined taste” that everyone pursued.
The Beast Taming Sect and the Great Wilderness should regret their negligence. Because the entire Bright Hall pavilion was a celestial instrument for pointing to the stars and guiding the phenomena: the Heaven-Covering Astrolabe.
The roof of the hall was divided into two layers, one real and one virtual. The greenish-blue layer was real, corresponding to the “Azure Sky Chart” in the “Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization.” Its color was transparent, and it was fixed in place, with long, slender pillars giving a sense of height and distance—it was the personification of the sky. The red-gold layer was virtual, corresponding to the “Yellow Chart” in the “Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization,” and the brilliant pearls on it corresponded to the sun, moon, and stars. Once the mechanisms and gears in the ornate wells outside the Bright Hall were activated, this layer of the roof would begin to slowly rotate. The “Yellow Chart” and the “Azure Sky Chart” would overlap, and the movements of the sun, moon, and stars would be laid bare.
This was the guidance the Divine Lord had left for the Heavenly Works Mansion and the Mountain Sea Pavilion to forge the anchor of the star table. It was exquisitely ingenious, beyond imagination. And just as Bei Ge Zi Jin had said, this Heaven-Covering Astrolabe was too exquisite, too complex. To use it, to demonstrate and track the movements of the sun and moon, required someone extremely familiar with celestial phenomena, with the orbits of the sun and moon. Although the Divine Lord had considered this and left behind many notes and indexes, it was still too abstruse for the calendrical masters of the Heavenly Works Mansion and Mountain Sea Pavilion who had accompanied their masters to the West Continent this time.
A group of old calendrical masters, who had studied the classics for many years, argued for a long time in the Bright Hall, but no one could convince the others. It wasn’t until Old Heavenly Craftsman led a sickly young man in white into the Bright Hall that the crowd of white-haired and white-bearded masters surrounding the central platform silently yielded the leading position.
Bei Ge Clan, Zi Jin.
Compared to Zuo Yuesheng and Old Heavenly Craftsman, these old, white-haired calendrical masters understood the weight of these five words far better. If the chroniclers of the Hundred Clans were the astronomical authority after Kongsang’s millennia-long monopoly on calendrical science, then this young man from the Bei Ge family, named “Zi Jin,” was one of the authorities among the Hundred Clans’ chroniclers.
He had studied under Gu Zhuo, and Gu Zhuo was one of the three great calendrical scholars of the Hundred Clans. Gu Zhuo had once said before his death: “The one who will inherit my mantle is none other than Zi Jin.” He later praised him for surpassing his master. “To have such a student, I have no regrets in this life.”
Although it was still debated whether the young Bei Ge Zi Jin had already “surpassed his master,” there was no doubt that his attainments in astronomy and calendrical science far exceeded those of the people from the Heavenly Works Mansion and the Mountain Sea Pavilion.
The “Grand Historian’s Dharma-Image Plate,” the celestial-measuring treasure passed down through generations of the Taiyu Clan, floated in mid-air, projecting a three-dimensional map of the mortal realm. Bei Ge Zi Jin, amidst the roaring sound of water, continuously adjusted the central spiritual platform, referencing the Dharma-Image Plate.
“The Heavenly Gate, also known as the Gate of Yin and Yang.”
Bei Ge Zi Jin spoke extremely quickly.
“Life belongs to yang, death belongs to yin. The mortal realm belongs to yang, the Great Wilderness belongs to yin. When the Heavenly Gate opens, yin and yang connect. There will be two gates in total: one is the Yang Gate, which opens from the mortal realm to the Netherworld, and the other is the Yin Gate, which opens from the Netherworld to the mortal realm. The Treatise on the Seven Traverses believes that if one day, the chaos is separated and the Netherworld is established, then the Yang Gate will open at dawn and the Yin Gate will open at night, allowing all gods and ghosts to come and go.”
After a slight pause, he added an explanation: “This was the common view of the Divine Lord, the gods, the demons, and humans back then. They believed that since ghosts are transformed from the dead gods, demons, and humans, they cannot be denied as a part of the cosmos. By extension, the chaos is also a part of the universe. Therefore, the Divine Lord and his friends believed that once the Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization was completely successful, yin and yang would naturally balance each other in the cosmos, and the Heavenly Gates would form naturally. And the authority over these two Heavenly Gates would be completely different from before—it would no longer be the Great Wilderness recklessly invading the mortal realm, but the mortal realm, in turn, controlling the opening and closing of the Heavenly Gates. The Netherworld of the Great Wilderness would become a part of the mortal realm, just as day and night are born from each other.
“From then on, life and death would cycle, the gods would have a place to return to, and souls would have a place to rest.”
Bei Ge Zi Jin gripped the horizontal axis corresponding to the star sign and pressed down hard. The central spiritual platform used to control the entire Heaven-Covering Astrolabe demanded precision and was cast from fine gold and bronze. With the ultra-high frequency of its operation, sparks flew between the gears and axles, and steam billowed. Bei Ge Zi Jin pressed down on the horizontal axis, and when the star sign was adjusted to the 162nd division, the point where his palm met the axis was almost fused together by the heat.
As he released his hand to adjust another mechanism, a large piece of bloody skin was torn from his palm. A calendrical master from the Heavenly Works Mansion stepped forward with a blank expression, intending to transfer his spiritual energy to him.
At first, Bei Ge Zi Jin could still give orders and have the other calendrical masters operate the central spiritual platform together. But as the forging process at the foot of Heavenly Lake Mountain continued to accelerate, the operating speed of the Heaven-Covering Astrolabe became faster and faster. Between the turning of the gears, countless abstruse calculations occurred simultaneously. Apart from Bei Ge Zi Jin, no one else could handle such a massive amount of calculation. The others could only fall back to a supporting role, infusing spiritual power to maintain the Bright Hall’s operation.
Bei Ge Zi Jin shook his head and explained briefly, “My meridians are completely destroyed. There’s no need.”
As he spoke, he walked around the central spiritual platform, continuing to adjust the mechanisms and directing the Heavenly Works Mansion to pour the molten iron and water into the correct positions. Decisive. Precise. One could faintly glimpse the shadow of the young, white-robed prodigy of Kongsang from long ago.
“If that’s the case, shouldn’t the Heavenly Gate only appear after the ‘Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization’ is completely finished?” a calendrical master asked in a deep voice.
“When the Zhoubi is complete, yin and yang are balanced, and the two gates are born. This was originally the natural principle of the Great Dao’s evolution. But yin and yang were not balanced,” Bei Ge Zi Jin gritted his teeth, and with a right hand that was almost down to the bone, he forcefully pushed the universal joint corresponding to Cangzhou to the position designated by the Divine Lord with a crack.
The questioning calendrical master suddenly realized: “The northwest sky is deficient.”
Bei Ge Zi Jin staggered to his feet, shook the blood from his hand, and took another step, nearly falling to the ground. Old Heavenly Craftsman moved quickly and slapped half a bottle of pills into his mouth.
“In the late Primeval Era, when the northwest Heavenly Wedge was established, its position was too far inward, causing the sky, which should have been perfectly round like a canopy, to have a gap in the northwest. The Basic Questions says: ‘The heavens are deficient in the northwest, thus the northwest is yin.’ The yin qi in the northwest was too heavy, and the Great Wilderness also belongs to yin, which led to the premature formation of a Heavenly Gate that was closed but not open.”
There is a Heavenly Gate in the northwest. When the Heavenly Wedge rises, the Heavenly Gate appears. This was the judgment made by Bei Ge Zi Jin’s teacher after participating in the “Heaven Surveying” campaign back then.
“The Divine Lord foresaw this, so before he went north to Incomplete Mountain, he left behind the Jade Armillary Sphere.”
“The Jade Armillary Sphere?” Old Heavenly Craftsman frowned, the term feeling somewhat familiar. After a moment’s thought, he suddenly remembered.
“That silver staff in the Moon Mother’s hand?”
During the calamity of Zhunan, what the Moon Mother held was the Jade Armillary Sphere!
“Actually, its true purpose is to right the heavens,” Bei Ge Zi Jin said. “The western Heavenly Gate belongs to yin. To balance it, the Divine Lord created another Heavenly Gate corresponding to it—the eastern Heavenly Gate. The Moon Mother guards the Vicious Plow Earth-Mound, and what she guards is a Heavenly Gate. The reason the sun and moon meet in the northeast is because that is the land of the Heavenly Gate. The Yuan Bird stops the sun and moon, and the Jade Armillary Sphere rights the heavens. In fact, if the Treatise on the Seven Traverses could be realized, then the ten suns and twelve moons would ultimately have to become one!”
“What?”
The other calendrical masters cried out in shock. The history of the ten suns and twelve moons rotating in their cycles was already too long. So long that everyone had grown accustomed to it, and had even forgotten that the ten suns and twelve moons were originally forged by the hands of heavenly gods, earthly demons, and human heroes.
“Whether it was the Golden Crow carrying the sun or the Black Rabbit holding the moon, they were originally just temporary measures, like Kongsang’s Heaven-Herding Ropes. After the Zhoubi Heaven Stabilization was completed, they were all meant to be abolished,” Bei Ge Zi Jin’s voice seemed to travel through the Primeval Era. “The sun rises in the east, the sun sets in the west. The moon rises in the east, the moon sets in the west. The eastern Heavenly Gate is the gate from which the sun and moon emerge, and the western Heavenly Gate is the gate into which the sun and moon set.”
Only a fellow calendrical official, one who had studied astronomy, could feel what the Divine Lord had done for the mortal realm. What the Divine Lord had truly left for the Twelve Continents was not how powerful his past was, nor how skilled his swordsmanship was, but the grand strokes of his layout that spanned heaven and earth.
Even his own death was a part of this grand game. If the Hundred Clans of Kongsang had not become the running dogs of Heaven Beyond Heavens, and had always maintained the orbits of the sun and moon without error, so that the seasons were in order, then all things would have flourished in an orderly manner. If the Thirty-Six Islands had not been forced to leave the Twelve Continents, and the Immortal Sects and the demon race had joined forces to protect the common people, then there would have been thousands of cities in the mortal realm.
The essence of these thousands of cities would rise to the heavens, becoming thousands of brilliant stars. When the stars became too numerous to count, the sun and moon would no longer need to patrol separately, no longer need to be pulled by heavenly ropes. The mortal realm would be able to use its own stars to move the sun and moon in the sky, to merge the ten suns into one, the twelve moons into one, to reset the Heavenly Wedge, to open the Heavenly Gate, and to allow the sun and moon to pass through the Great Wilderness.
From then on, the miasma would recede, and the wind would come. The four wilds would be clear. The Divine Lord had not lost to intelligence, nor to strength. He had lost to ambition.
The Thirty-Six Islands and the Twelve Continents cut off all contact, the Hundred Clans of Kongsang ambitiously herded the four directions, the Witch Clan was trapped in the Southern Borderlands, and Taiyi guarded the coffin and fled to the East Continent. Everything, just like the 8.26-million-word Treatise on the Seven Traverses, came to an abrupt end.
Today, what they had to do was to restart. To restart this game. To return the Heavenly Wedge to its place, to return the sun and moon to one, to let the Great Wilderness and the mortal realm, yin and yang, transform into each other, and for life and death to cycle.
“But how can something that couldn’t be completed in the most beautiful of times be expected to succeed in an era when everything is shattered?” Huai Ningjun’s voice was calm and mocking. “Goodness is like accumulated sand, evil is like a carved cliff. Killing each other, fighting endlessly—even if the four poles are established, these things will not disappear.”
Countless Dead Souls and Wild Ghosts howled as they poured into the mortal realm through the smashed-open Heavenly Gate. The blood sacrifice was indeed complete. The Divine Lord’s dead form, replacing the old Heavenly Wedge, became a temporary pillar. But the Great Wilderness’s true goal was also achieved.
They had smashed open the northwest Heavenly Gate. In the past, the northwest Heavenly Gate had remained closed because the cities of the mortal realm were numerous and teeming with life, and with the Divine Lord’s divine fall, his whale fall upon the earth, a delicate balance was formed with the death qi outside the Heavenly Gate. And the reason the West Continent was able to recover its vitality so quickly was because the Beast Taming Sect had abandoned the alliance, promoted the blood contract, and used it to open the way and revive the continent’s cities.
However, it was precisely because of this that the conflict between the Immortal Sects and the demon race grew more and more intense. In the end, it evolved into a rift between immortals and demons, a war of mutual slaughter. War swept across the land, and the Divine Lord reclaimed his old remains. Thus, the Great Wilderness was able to seize the gap when the Divine Lord raised the Heavenly Wedge and smash open the Heavenly Gate from the Netherworld to the mortal realm.
In fact, even if the Divine Lord had not reclaimed his old remains, the Heavenly Gate could still have been opened. No matter how many evil deeds the Beast Taming Sect had committed, as cultivators, the life force they possessed was indeed a crucial part of the West Continent. Their destruction created a huge void in the West Continent’s life force. Then, the upheaval of raising the Heavenly Wedge, the living beings it devoured, the cities destroyed in the immortal-demon slaughter—all of this had already shattered the balance between the West Continent and the Heavenly Gate.
“Have you not had enough of this mire?”
Huai Ningjun’s voice was very soft, but his words were clearly heard throughout heaven and earth. This former White Emperor, who had left Heaven Beyond Heavens in the late Primeval Era and disappeared for many years, finally revealed a trace of his true feelings. He didn’t have much hatred for the mortal realm, nor much love for the Great Wilderness. What he had was a deep, deep weariness.
In the years of his disappearance, he had been an observer for so long. He had coldly watched the Immortal Sects and the demon race guard against each other, coldly watched Heaven Beyond Heavens and Kongsang’s ambitions grow. What was the use of establishing the four poles? What was the use of the sun and moon returning to one? If the four poles were established and the eight directions opened, would there be no more conflict in the world? Could immortals and demons live in harmony forever? If the sun and moon returned to one, could all living beings enjoy eternal peace? If that were the case, whence came the saber and sword, the bow and spear? The grievances between the heavenly gods and the mortal realm had just become a thing of the past, and the curtain had already risen on the slaughter between the earthly demons and the Immortal Sects.
And in the more distant future, the horns of war on the battlefield between mortals and cultivators would eventually sound. The conflict between good and evil would never end. Compared to continuing to be entangled in such suffering for thousands of years, he would rather put an end to it all from the very beginning. Since evil cannot be stopped, since sin cannot be forgiven, then let us all fall into darkness together. Return to that original, eternal chaos. If nothing had ever been born, there would be nothing to fight over.
The Divine Lord said nothing, landing on the Silver Dragon’s head. Huai Ningjun sighed softly and waved his sleeve. The thousands of Dead Souls and Wild Ghosts pouring in from the Heavenly Gate, as if receiving a command, let out ear-piercing shrieks and, like a flock of birds, swooped out, scraping across the surging sea. A long trail of blood was instantly left on the sea’s surface.
The West Sea Sea Demons, who had been thrown back when the Heavenly Wedge rose, had a bloody path plowed right through them. Scales scattered, flesh and bone shattered.
“The Great Wilderness!” Nu Mie activated her Bing Yi Bell to resist the swarm of ghosts that had arrived with a bloody vengeance. After a brief moment of shock, she vaguely understood something. “He controls the Great Wilderness!”
In the black clouds, Huai Ningjun was still dressed in snow-white robes, his face as handsome and noble as it was in the Primeval Era. But the aura sweeping out from his body was now distinctly obscure and gloomy. Amidst Nu Mie’s slightly flustered cry of astonishment, he lowered his eyes to look at the Divine Lord, who was kneeling on the Silver Dragon’s head.
“Yes, I am the Great Wilderness now,” after a slight pause, Huai Ningjun’s gaze swept over Shi Wuluo, then fell back on the Divine Lord. “Or rather,”
“The Netherworld.”
In the depths of the Great Wilderness, a golden mask disintegrated into countless points of light. The miasma flowing across the Twelve Continents rose up at the same time, like a rising tide. In the mist, countless Dead Souls and Wild Ghosts simultaneously stretched out their ashen arms.
And at the very moment the miasma of the Twelve Continents surged and millions of souls crossed the Heavenly Gate, Shi Wuluo abruptly threw the Fish Breath Cauldron high into the air. The next moment, Shi Wuluo spread his arms. The fierce wind billowed his clothes. A dark red blood qi and a deep black demonic qi spread out, surging, and in an instant, covered the other half of the sky.
He was like one riding a blood cloud, like one commanding a black sky. The miniature forms of mountains and rivers twisted and wound on his clothes. His robes billowed, his sleeves full of silver light. The terrifying momentum was in no way inferior to that of Huai Ningjun, who had devoured the Netherworld and now controlled the Great Wilderness.
But amidst this terrifying momentum, it was a lonely, cold language that sounded in the sky above. Like the winds since the Primeval Era, gathered together, sweeping across the land at the same time. In the wind were hidden the whispers of a thousand, ten thousand years, the sound of every snowflake falling, the sound of every lava flow traveling through the earth. Four characters a phrase, two characters a beat, obscure and profound. In the blood clouds and black mist, in the foul wind and fierce rain, a blessing song more ancient than the Primeval Era echoed between heaven and earth.
Humans communicate with gods through shamans, and gods communicate with heaven through shamans. With what does heaven communicate through shamans?
Heaven communicates with all things through shamans!
The silver-gray eyes clearly reflected one figure from beginning to end, regardless of whether that figure was in white or red, with black hair or white hair. Just like the glacial lake on the Primeval Era plateau always reflected the swirling winter snow, regardless of whether that snow was rising or falling.
Never changing.
The miracle that had once occurred in Ru City was happening again. Ten thousand meters up, the dark clouds rushed by, and the all-encompassing black mist was scattered and torn apart by the wind. In Kongsang, all the heavenly ropes snapped. The ten suns and twelve moons rose at the same time.
Sun and moon shone together!
The white-haired, red-robed Divine Lord, amidst the ancient blessing song, bent down, placed his palm on the Silver Dragon’s head, and said softly, “A Rong,”
“Go!”
Go, through this ten-thousand-year absurdity, undying and unceasing.
Go, through this thousand-autumn great dream, not dreaming, not returning.
Ten thousand mountains shook, a thousand rivers hung inverted.
A dragon rose in the West Continent.