Chapter Index

    “Bullshit!”

    Amidst the grim and heavy silence, someone cursed in a coarse, hoarse voice.

    It was the half-bloodied Lu Jing.

    He was half-kneeling beside the backward-flowing Xianyi River. The aftershocks from the battle between Yue Mu and the white-robed Chronicler Official, combined with the earlier killing intent from heaven and earth, had sent his qi and blood into turmoil. His internal organs felt as if they were being churned to pieces, and his meridians ached as if they were about to snap. Yet, what hurt even more than his shaken organs and torn meridians was his spine.

    His origins, his pride, everything he had ever identified with was crumbling.

    He could barely stand, barely had the face to stand.

    “What kind of demon is willing to sacrifice himself to save people? What kind of karmic fruit is preaching the Dao for all eternity?!” Lu Jing gritted his teeth, slowly and shakily getting to his feet. With every word he spoke, it felt as if another rib was breaking, but he kept speaking, he had to speak. “You tell me he’s a demon, then who in this world is worthy of being called a god or a Buddha!”

    “You tell me!!”

    He was practically screaming, practically roaring, his face twisted and ferocious, tears streaming down his face.

    Tell me.

    Tell me what is right and what is wrong. Tell me why the immortal sects, for ten thousand years, erased the merits of a Divine Lord who died for the world! Tell me what my pride has been worth all these years! Were all those scriptures and doctrines a joke in the end?

    “Amitabha.”

    Maitreya was no longer joyful, merely clasping his hands together.

    “Buddha your grandpa,” Lu Jing roared, his mouth full of blood. “Speak!”

    His qi and blood surged, and he staggered back a step, nearly falling. A familiar hand reached out from the side, pressing on his shoulder. Lu Chenchuan had, at some point, descended from the sky and walked over to his youngest brother’s side. Lu Jing slapped his hand away and fell heavily to the ground, rolling into the mud.

    Lu Chenchuan looked down.

    In the mud, Lu Jing supported himself on his elbows, not making a sound, struggling, falling and getting back up, getting back up and falling again. Lu Chenchuan felt a bit dazed, vaguely remembering when Shiyi was forced to practice martial arts. Because he usually slacked off, he would always get beaten down during sparring, and would cry for his parents the moment he fell, needing someone to pull him up.

    When did this youngest brother, who loved to play the rogue the most, suddenly grow up?

    “What does the beginning of the second volume of The Collection say?”

    Lu Chenchuan withdrew his hand and suddenly asked.

    The riverbed formed by the sunken Yu Mountain was full of jagged rocks. Lu Jing’s elbows were cut by long gashes from the sharp ridges, and as he propped himself up, mud and sand ground into his wounds, making him tremble all over. When Lu Chenchuan asked the question, he instinctively flinched, reflexively trying to dodge the disciplinary ruler that was about to fall.

    “What second volume?”

    The disciplinary ruler that appeared and disappeared like a ghost did not fall, but Lu Jing himself fell face-first into the water again, his ears ringing from the mud and water that filled them.

    He struggled to lift his head from the mud, wiping away a handful of blood and water.

    Lu Chenchuan sighed.

    Beside them, a Ghost Valley disciple stood in the waist-deep water and answered for Lu Jing.

    “The second volume of The Collection begins with… with the Calamity of the Twelve Continents…”

    “Three Thousand Years of Darkness.”

    ***

    One after another, heavy octagonal stone doors rotated open. One after another, heavy locks covered in curse shackles were undone. Layer after layer of chests engraved with dense patterns were opened. Scroll after scroll filled with ancient characters was taken out and unrolled. In the underground vault of the Mountain Sea Pavilion, where numerous secret scrolls were sealed, two rows of bronze cups burned silently.

    Another page of old paper was turned violently.

    Zuo Yuesheng leaped to his feet, knocking over a stack of secret scrolls that had been piled on the bronze table, sending up a cloud of dust.

    “Impossible!” he said decisively. “Something must be wrong! Something must be wrong!”

    Elder Tao Rong bent down, picked up the stack of scrolls that generations of Mountain Sea Pavilion Masters had read countless times, brushed off the dust, and stacked them neatly on the table again.

    “This is how things are,” Elder Tao Rong sighed softly. “The Desolate Calamity of Middle Antiquity…”

    Elder Tao Rong paused for a moment before slowly revealing the tragic truth that the immortal sects had been unwilling to face, unwilling to make public, until now.

    “He caused it.”

    Zuo Yuesheng stared blankly at the stack of secret scrolls that had once sent Zuo Liangshi on a quest across the Twelve Continents for an answer. In several bronze chests beside them were piled the conjectures left behind by generations of the Zuo family as they painstakingly explored the mists. Those conjectures were constantly updated, and constantly overturned.

    There was never an answer.

    Elder Tao Rong unrolled a scroll and gently pushed it to the center of the long bronze table. The candlelight, fueled by mermaid oil, illuminated a few lines of text:

    “…In Middle Antiquity, the Desolate Calamity ran rampant, miasma bewildered the Twelve Continents, every household was plagued by disease, every city filled with walking corpses. Therefore, the immortal sects made a pact with the cities, a pact of mutual survival, and after a thousand years of hardship, the foggy miasma retreated. This is recorded as the ‘Calamity of the Twelve Continents, Three Thousand Years of Darkness’.”

    Because the Records of Ancient Stone Steles was incomplete, the history of Middle Antiquity was vague. This was a rare clear record of the events of Middle Antiquity, and the “Three Thousand Years of Darkness” mentioned in the record also pointed to another reason for the incompleteness of the history. This record was written in the second volume of The Collection, as the opening of its “Ancient Records” section.

    The exegetical text that all cultivators in the Twelve Continents had to read upon entering their sects was The Collection.

    The first sentence on the title page of The Collection was: “Gods bestowed the Dao upon sages, and sages spread the Dao throughout the world. Therefore, we cultivators should take it as our duty to protect the common people.” It was then divided into thirty-six volumes, covering thirty-six sections such as astronomy, ancient records, geography, ethics, the hundred clans, and sects, encompassing all aspects of a cultivator’s path of seeking.

    Among them, the second volume, the Ancient Records section, recorded some of the important history of the Twelve Continents.

    The opening chapter spoke of the awakening of the Great Wilderness.

    The reason it was called an “awakening” was that the Great Wilderness, which surrounded the mortal realm, was constantly lingering, choosing to expand whenever a major upheaval occurred in the Twelve Continents, giving the impression that it was a living darkness. Under normal circumstances, the Great Wilderness’s expansion would only attack one continent or one land at a time, like a selective encroachment. But in the records, there had been extremely rare and terrifying full-scale explosive expansions, where all Twelve Continents faced the attack of darkness simultaneously, as if a terrifying existence that had been biding its time was no longer satisfied with the appetite of a single city or continent, and intended to devour the entire civilization of the Twelve Continents.

    This level of expansion of the Great Wilderness was called a “Desolate Calamity,” also known as an “Awakening.”

    And in Middle Antiquity, a Desolate Calamity had erupted. At that time, foul black miasma filled with the toxins of plague and pestilence surged out from all directions, drowning the Twelve Continents. Compared to the black miasma of that time, the current “Miasma Moon” could only be considered a light haze or a small fog. The disciples of the immortal sects rushed to various cities, resisting and defending together, enduring hardship for generations. The flying boats of the Heavenly Works Mansion were invented during this period.

    The impact of this awakening of the Great Wilderness lasted for a full three thousand years.

    Cities withered, towns were destroyed, not even one in a hundred remained, and life was devastated. After the Desolate Calamity ended, the cultivators of the immortal sects ventured through the perilous wilderness, assisting in the rebuilding of cities. From then on, the cities and the immortal sects formed a pact, a contract of mutual existence.

    But in all the scriptures and classics, from ancient times to the present, none mentioned the cause of this Desolate Calamity.

    “The Divine Lord, who is also the Little Martial Ancestor of Taiyi that you, Pavilion Master, know. Martial Grand-Ancestor Chou, Chou Bodeng,” Elder Tao Rong began in a low voice. “After the Divine Lord fell, the Witch Clan was constantly trying to resurrect Him. They are not really cultivators; they are like the Oracle Masters and Oracle Maidens of today, shamans who worship the Divine Lord… To be more precise, the relationship between today’s Oracle Masters, Oracle Maidens, and City Gods is derived from the relationship between the Divine Lord and the Witch Clan.

    “Oracle Masters and Oracle Maidens have a special connection with their City God, and the Witch Clan had the same with Him.”

    At this point, Elder Tao Rong paused imperceptibly.

    “The Divine Ru of Ru City can bestow its life soul upon the city’s inhabitants, allowing the people of Ru City to follow the guidance of the phosphorescent fires and return to their homeland after death. Conversely, the people of Ru City can also lend their lives to the Ru fish. Zhou Ziyan used this method back then to support the entire city’s fish by himself.”

    Hearing the name “Zhou Ziyan,” Zuo Yuesheng subconsciously looked at Elder Tao Rong’s expression.

    There was no change on his aged face.

    “The Witch Clan used a similar method, but the Divine Lord had perished, his body and bones gone, and his divine soul was shattered. So they spent nearly a hundred years using a forbidden art to forge a body for the Divine Lord. This is the origin of the Puppetry Art.”

    Zuo Yuesheng was stunned.

    He remembered that on the Heavenly Snow Boat, Chou Bodeng did indeed have a small Ruomu Puppet.

    Elder Tao Rong gave a self-deprecating laugh. “The infamous Puppetry Art, which the orthodox path will not tolerate, was actually invented by a group of shamans to save their god… Later, it caused one disaster after another. It’s almost like a curse that cannot be escaped.”

    Zuo Yuesheng was speechless.

    “Perhaps the Witch Clan back then didn’t consider what kind of bloody disaster would be caused if the Puppetry Art were to spread,” Elder Tao Rong sighed softly. “But what could they do? The Divine Lord they had worshipped for so many years was dead… They just wanted him back.”

    A faint glimmer of hope, the beginning of a great mistake.

    “They failed?” Zuo Yuesheng guessed. “So the Puppetry Art spread out? And caused the Desolate Calamity?”

    “No.” Elder Tao Rong shook his head. “The spread of the Puppetry Art happened later and was unrelated to the Desolate Calamity at that time… They succeeded. The Divine Lord returned.”

    Zuo Yuesheng was astonished.

    If the Divine Lord returned, why did it cause a Desolate Calamity?

    “The returned Divine Lord…” Elder Tao Rong closed his eyes in pain. “He went mad.”

    That was a past the immortal sects were unwilling to speak of.

    The Witch Clan had done their utmost, but who could say the other immortal sects weren’t also eagerly awaiting the Divine Lord’s return? It was a divine body forged by mortal hands after Incomplete Mountain was severed. How could the Witch Clan alone achieve perfection? How many people had helped the Witch Clan travel and collect heavenly materials and earthly treasures? How many had worked with the Witch Clan to deliberate on the plan to summon the god?

    In the fragmented records, the Mountain Sea Pavilion alone had exhausted more than half of its treasury for the Divine Lord’s return. The Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion at that time had entered the Cangming Sea himself, searching for thousands of miles, just to find a suitable Jade Coral to create the bones.

    There had never been such great hope, never such a moment of unity.

    Everyone was busy, working for a single faint belief for a hundred years, everyone sinking deeper into the mire of error.

    No one had expected the result.

    “He went mad.”

    Elder Tao Rong opened his eyes and repeated hoarsely.

    “He…”

    “Fell to a demon.”

    “Impossible…”

    Zuo Yuesheng murmured.

    Elder Tao Rong said nothing.

    This question had trapped so many people, from ancient times to the present.

    “Impossible!”

    Zuo Yuesheng suddenly jumped up.

    “Didn’t you say the Divine Fu Tree in Qing Province was a backup plan he left behind?! If he had truly gone mad, truly become a demon, why would he leave the Divine Fu Tree in Qing Province?”

    Elder Tao Rong shook his head.

    “We only recently discovered the matter of the Divine Fu Tree; no one knew at the time. Besides, back then, he… he wasn’t like how you see him now. His karmic obstructions were not suppressed… No one knew why he returned with a body full of karmic obstructions, and the body reforged by the combined efforts of the immortal sects was too powerful. With the Divine Lord’s mind unclear, no one could seal him. Wherever he went, he attracted the wilderness miasma, and when he passed through a city, the city was engulfed… He became a walking calamity, a walking disaster.”

    Elder Tao Rong slowly sat down.

    The returned Divine Lord was silent, his blood-red robes dripping, as he sped along, his destination and purpose unknown. It was only known that wherever he passed, bones piled up. The past is hard to verify. Some believed the Divine Lord had fallen to a demon, while others insisted on protecting him. The various factions were in chaos, arguing endlessly. This continued until the Divine Lord returned from Qing Province to Kongsang, severed the Heaven-Herding Rope with his sword, causing the Twelve Continents to tremble day and night. The Desolate Calamity erupted, and life was devastated.

    The immortal sects had no choice but to admit that the Witch Clan’s resurrection art had a flaw, and the returned Divine Lord had become a calamity.

    Everyone’s hope had collectively forged a great disaster.

    They could only correct this mistake.

    Elder Tao Rong fumbled for his pipe and took a deep drag.

    “The ambush at Kongsang’s Nine Marshes erupted, and the Divine Lord fell again. To prevent the Witch Clan from using their shamanic arts to resurrect him a second time, most of those who participated in the ambush believed they should…” Elder Tao Rong paused for a moment before continuing, “…destroy the body. But the Witch Clan… the Witch Clan must have gone completely mad by then.”

    They had watched as the Divine Lord they had worked so hard to bring back died a second time.

    They couldn’t save him, couldn’t protect him.

    But how could they watch as even his final remains were not left intact?

    So they went mad, so they fought a bloody battle.

    “The Witch Clan and another branch of the Remnants of the Cloud City who once served the Divine Lord rebelled against Kongsang and fought a bloody battle at Yi Hills. Blood flowed like a river, and the shamanic poison spread for five hundred kilometers. In the end, the Witch Clan retreated from Yi Hills, confined themselves to the Southern Borderlands, drawing a line in the sand, and never came out again. And the Taiyi Sword protected the coffin and fled to the East Continent. The Remnants of the Cloud City journeyed a long way, and finally established a sect in Fufeng…”

    Elder Tao Rong looked up at the bewildered Zuo Yuesheng.

    “You should be able to guess what that sect is.”

    Zuo Yuesheng’s voice was dry.

    “Tai… Taiyi.”

    “Yes.”

    Elder Tao Rong gently set down his pipe.

    “It is the Taiyi Sect.”

    “Taiyi and Taiyi both have the meaning of ‘the first’ and ‘the Lord Emperor.’ If you go to the Taiyi Sect and enter their ancestral hall, you will see a nameless stele that has been worshipped for generations, with a lamp before it that has not been extinguished for thousands of years.”

    The original Taiyi Sect was actually very weak, with no connection to being the “best in the world.”

    The heavily injured were heavily injured, the dying were dying.

    Perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of sorrow, the immortal sects did not pursue them further. After signing the Heaven-Supervising Pact with Kongsang, they each went their own way to fight against the miasma. Everyone thought that the Taiyi Sect, which had fled with the coffin, would be drowned by history within a few centuries. No one expected that a group of old, weak, sick, and disabled people would manage to survive the three thousand years of darkness by scraping and crawling, with their creed of “no abandoned disciples, no traitors.”

    Not only did they survive, but with a madness and ruthlessness that no one had anticipated, they fought their way to the top of the numerous immortal sects.

    “The Taiyi Sect… is another Cloud City…”

    Zuo Yuesheng finally understood why the Taiyi Sect had to firmly hold onto the number one position for so many years.

    Because they were called “Taiyi.”

    Because Taiyi alluded to the former white-robed Divine Lord.

    Therefore, they had to be the number one sect in the world.

    They had to worship the most noble Divine Lord of the past. Even if it could not be spoken, even if it could not be written, they had to use this method to preserve the last shred of glory for the Divine Lord.

    For ten thousand years of immortal sects, Taiyi is first.

    Taiyi first, Divine Lord first.

    “The reason the immortal sects are in such conflict today stems from this. Some regret, some shirk responsibility, some feel guilty, some resent… Three thousand years of darkness, three thousand years of bitter struggle, no one can say what’s right or wrong anymore. Too many things, too many matters have been buried. But if the Divine Lord who imparted the Dao could fall into demonhood, what reason would the immortal sects have to demand that the cultivators of the world face the light and protect the Dao with their lives? So in the end, His name was erased from the Records of Ancient Stone Steles, leaving only a single sentence…”

    Elder Tao Rong picked up a copy of The Collection from the dust and turned to the last page.

    On the last page, Zuo Liangshi, who had returned from traveling the Twelve Continents, had written in small regular script:

    Gods bestowed the Dao upon sages, and sages spread the Dao throughout the world. Therefore, we cultivators should take it as our duty to protect the common people.

    The rest could only be sealed in dust, only be met with silence.

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