Chapter 493: – Life 120, Age 323, Martial Spirit 1 |
Mei’s letter served as yet another confirmation that the Saints had no intention of allowing me to continue advancing unchecked. However, after considering the situation from several different angles, I realized that none of their schemes would impact me in any meaningful way.
The Saints didn’t want me to advance to Martial Ancestor because they feared I might usurp their “Authority,” but I hadn’t actually been planning to advance to Ancestor in the first place. This was mainly because, to generate Ancestor-level karmic energy, the Su Clan would need at least four more Martial Spirits. My inner world still couldn’t contain Martial Spirits, though, so I had no intention of allowing anyone else to advance to that level.
Of course, I could always attempt to break through to Martial Ancestor using Spirit-level energy, but doing so would leave me far weaker than a true Martial Ancestor. Would the various Saint-level factions really see such a flawed ascension as a threat?
Perhaps that was the point. If they could force me into an imperfect advancement, I might still be able to research Rank 9 techniques for them, but my path forward would be forever blocked.
If that was their scheme, I would be more than happy to play along with it. An imperfect advancement wouldn’t have any effect on the number of credits I received upon my death. And after my next reset, the damage it caused to my foundation would disappear.
As for seizing my inner world? They were welcome to try.
No one outside my sect had seen anything beyond the Plane of Earth, so none of them would be able to create portals to any of the other planes. Even if they somehow discovered the umbilicals that ran between the planes, those passages were only a centimeter in diameter and over ten thousand kilometers in length. No one could possibly pass through them, and even if they tried to probe the passages with some type of technique, their senses wouldn’t be able to reach far enough to determine what lay beyond.
A foreign army seizing the Plane of Earth might even be a good thing. After all, once I traveled back through time, anything they had brought with them would become mine to control.
Still, I needed to handle the situation carefully. I couldn’t let anyone realize just how flawed their schemes truly were.
The Sect Affairs Bureau, in contrast, at least sent an Elder to make one final attempt at recruiting us. His pitch felt more like forceful coercion than friendly cooperation, but his visit was enough to prove that our sect still retained some of its perceived value.
Even so, I rejected him, just as I had rejected all the others. And this refusal sent our sect into a long period of isolation.
Again, this wasn’t entirely a bad thing. The isolation gave us time to continue growing. By relying on the territory we already occupied and increasing our population base as much as possible, we were able to further divide our lands into several new cities and kingdoms. Then, by establishing competitions that determined how many resources each region would receive, we were able to duplicate the effects that large-scale wars had on karmic energy generation without paying the usual price in population and stability.
This allowed our Sovereigns and Emperors to continue advancing, and it allowed me to continue receiving a steady flow of Spirit-level energy.
With each passing decade, my clan and I grew stronger, but at the same time, our understanding of what was happening in the outside world faded almost completely. News still reached us every now and then, carried by merchants, wandering cultivators, and visitors to the Trial Towers, but reliable information became increasingly scarce. We were no longer part of the continent’s larger political currents. We had become an isolated power, growing in silence while the Saints and their subordinate factions watched from a distance.
This continued until shortly after I turned 437 years old, when I received a rather unexpected invitation. The Nine Rivers Saint was preparing for his ascension to immortality, and as the leader of a powerful faction within his domain, I had been invited to stand witness.
This wasn’t the first time I had received such an invitation, but this time, it didn’t require me to swear a poisonous Oath. Therefore, while attending would almost certainly involve a certain degree of risk, I didn’t see any real reason to decline.
I stepped through the portal and emerged atop one of the many small hills that encircled a broad plateau.
For a moment, I simply stood there, allowing my eyes to adjust to the sudden change in scenery. The air was clear, the sky was bright, and a gentle breeze brushed across the grass beneath my feet. The scene was almost idyllic.
The plateau in front of me was perfectly flat, as if some great hand had sliced the peak from a mountain and polished the surface smooth. Around it, the hills rose in careful tiers, each one positioned at a precise distance from the center, as if everything had been arranged and maintained for a singular purpose.
At the center of the plateau stood a young-looking man with raven-black hair and calm, refined features. He wore golden robes embroidered with faintly glowing threads, each strand carrying a trace of power that my energy vision could barely interpret. From a distance, he looked no older than thirty. If I hadn’t known who he was, I might have mistaken him for some gifted Young Master, not the nigh-invincible Nine Rivers Saint.
Around me, portals continued opening on the surrounding hills. One after another, figures stepped through them: sect masters, patriarchs, and envoys from foreign domains. Some stood alone, while others arrived with small entourages. All had come to see what this day would bring.
Time passed slowly.
When the final attendee had taken his place and the last portal closed, a powerful voice rolled across the gathered hills.
“Over the past four and a half centuries, I did my best to serve the Great Spirit in all things. I guarded my domain and did my best to ensure its prosperity. Now, my time in this world has reached its end. I will either ascend beyond this mortal shell or fall beneath the judgment of the Heavens. But whichever fate awaits me, the Nine Rivers Domain will endure.”
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Without another word, the Nine Rivers Saint began drawing power into himself.
The faint breeze that had been ruffling my robes died, and the clouds overhead stilled. Then, the sky began to darken.
Black clouds boiled out from a point far above the plateau, spiraling in every direction. They did not drift like normal storm clouds. They moved with purpose, folding over one another in thick, oppressive layers until the entire sky had been swallowed by darkness.
Even having seen this twice before, I found myself in awe of the raw power on display. More impressive still, when the first bolt of blue lightning fell, the Nine Rivers Saint barely reacted. He merely raised a hand and batted it aside.
Two more bolts of blue lightning descended in quick succession, but the Nine Rivers Saint treated them with the same casual disdain.
Almost as if angered by this display, the Tribulation clouds roiled and shot out the first bolt of black lightning slightly ahead of schedule.
The Saint’s casual demeanor disappeared, and lightning qi surged from within his body, coiling around the bolt and guiding it toward the ground. Several thin streamers did escape his control, but they scattered harmlessly across his skin. Only then did I realize the truth: the Nine Rivers Saint had cultivated a wind body.
As the two remaining bolts of black lightning fell, they tore through the sky with enough force to make the surrounding hills tremble. The Saint’s golden robes were reduced to rags, but his body endured without so much as a scratch.
Finally, the first bolt of red lightning appeared, looking like nothing more than a hair-thin line of blood. Compared to the black and blue bolts, it looked almost insignificant. But the moment I saw it, every instinct I possessed screamed that I needed to run as far away as possible.
The Nine Rivers Saint attempted to control this red lightning with his qi, but it didn’t work, and when the bolt struck his wind body, it was far from harmless.
Blood sprayed across the plateau, scattering in a crimson arc that made the spectators fall silent.
But the Nine Rivers Saint remained standing.
A second bolt fell.
This time, he didn’t even try to guide it away. He just crossed his arms before his chest and endured the strike head-on. Red lightning pierced through his wind body, carving a glowing line from shoulder to hip. More blood splashed across the cracked stone beneath his feet, but the Nine Rivers Saint did not fall.
When the third and final bolt of red lightning descended, it felt as though the very fabric of reality was being torn apart. The moment it struck the Nine Rivers Saint, he spat out a mouthful of blood and dropped to one knee.
A moment of tense anticipation passed. Then, the storm clouds began to part. The wind faded, the dust settled, and at the center of the ruined plateau, the Nine Rivers Saint climbed to his feet.
For the first time in the history of the Extreme Martial Continent, a Martial Saint had survived his Immortal Tribulation.
Then the Heavens opened, and an auspicious rainbow poured down from the sky, bathing the Nine Rivers Saint in radiant light. His flesh knitted back together, his spilled blood evaporated, and his aura steadied. Then, his power began climbing beyond anything I had ever felt. It was a presence that transcended mortality.
For a moment, the spectators burst into cheers. Some wept, while others fell to their knees in worship.
But only for a moment.
As the crowd’s excitement grew, I noticed the grass at the edge of the plateau begin to change. Its verdant green faded. At first, it turned pale. Then yellow. Then ochre. Then brittle brown.
My smile vanished before it could fully form. The energy bestowed by the auspicious rainbow was not coming from the Heavens. It was being drawn from the world around us.
When the circle of dying grass reached the first row of cultivators—young Lords hoping to become the next Saint—the auspicious rainbow began draining them even faster than it had the vegetation. Within seconds, they collapsed to their knees, their energy gone, their cultivation bases crippled.
Even that influx of energy failed to satiate the rainbow. If anything, it only seemed to make the drain more aggressive. The circle of death and destruction expanded outward, quickly encompassing the rows of Kings. Then the rows of Emperors.
As the last of the Rulers fell, the Bloodline cultivators did not remain idle. They didn’t attempt to save the Rulers, though. Instead, they—we—ran.
I immediately opened a portal to Black Eagle City and dove through it, escaping as quickly as possible.
When I emerged on the other side, I found that the auspicious rainbow hadn’t limited itself to the area directly surrounding the Nine Rivers Saint. The weaker cultivators in Black Eagle City had already been crippled, and the vast fields of medicinal Rank 1 herbs outside the city had been drained, leaving behind dead, brittle husks.
I could feel a pull on my own cultivation base, but thankfully, as a Martial Spirit, it wasn’t beyond my ability to endure. More importantly, none of the cultivators hidden away inside my inner world seemed to have noticed anything wrong. Whatever force the rainbow was exerting on the outside world, it couldn’t reach through the barriers of my Small World.
Without hesitation, I began teleporting between the various cities under our sect’s control, pulling as many people as possible into my inner world before they were completely drained. I wasn’t able to save everyone. The drain was too widespread, and I simply couldn’t move fast enough, but I reached all of our core members before their cultivation bases could be destroyed.
They had all been weakened. Even the Martial Sovereigns had lost a significant amount of energy. However, their foundations remained intact. With enough time and pills, they would eventually be able to recover.
At some point during this chaos, several foreign forces opened portals to the Plane of Earth and began sending in large groups of refugees.
Not all of those who entered were entirely human. Some were beasts, and some were beastkin. Some were urgamal, while others were urgan half-breeds. Every domain was represented, from the Domain of Liberation to the Abyssal Depths.
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had discovered that Small Worlds were safe from that “auspicious” rainbow. My Plane of Earth had become a lifeboat, a place where cultivators could escape the calamity long enough to survive.
By the time it was all over, the outside world had been almost completely emptied of cultivators. The only ones left were Saints, Bloodline cultivators, and mortals. But while the chaos outside had begun to subside, the chaos within the Plane of Earth was only just beginning.
The various factions began tearing into one another with whatever power they could muster. Most couldn’t properly activate their qi, since my plane lacked the necessary Laws, but body cultivators were still able to fight with their full physical strength, and the demon beasts moved as if they weren’t restricted at all.
I could have tried to stop this, but I was already weakened, and forcing so many Sovereigns and Emperors into submission would have consumed a great deal of my remaining strength. More importantly, I didn’t trust the surviving Spirits and Ancestors to sit idle. I needed to be ready in case one of them chose to take advantage of this opportunity.
In any case, the members of my sect and clan were safely tucked away on other planes, so none of the fighting would affect them.
Standing alone in the middle of a deserted city, I realized that there was indeed an opportunity available to me. The Extreme Martial Continent had been devastated, and that devastation was centered around the Nine Rivers Domain.
To advance my inner world to Rank 7, I would need to infuse it with the Laws of Water or the Laws of Lightning. The best place to find water-based seeds and techniques was the Abyssal Depths, but the best place to find lightning-based resources was undoubtedly the Jiu Clan, whose Martial Saint had just caused an unprecedented calamity.
Even with the Saint gone, the Jiu Clan still had a Martial Ancestor, and attacking an Ancestor-level force would be extremely dangerous. However, after the devastation their clan had just caused, I doubted they would have the time or attention to spare for a weak Martial Spirit like me.
Not wasting any time, I punched open a portal to the Jiu Clan’s capital city and stepped through.