Chapter 494: – Life 120, Age 437, Martial Spirit 2 |
Despite all the time I had spent traveling across the continent while helping Mei complete her missions, I had never once visited the Jiu Clan’s capital city. To reach it by portal, I had to rely on a detailed landscape drawing rather than personal memory.
Still, even though I had never visited the place myself, I had heard more than enough about it.
The Jiu Clan’s capital was a sprawling city with ancient foundations and immeasurable wealth, but the members of the clan did not live within the city itself. They lived in an enormous floating castle that loomed above the streets like a second sky. A dense network of formations held it aloft, veiled it in lightning clouds, and protected it with layer after layer of defenses.
It was a blatant display of power and superiority. The city existed to serve the Jiu Clan. The mortals, merchants, branch families, and lesser cultivators all lived under the castle’s shadow, their place in the world made clear each time they looked up.
This was what I had expected to find when I stepped through my portal. Instead, I found myself in a nightmare.
The floating castle had fallen from the heavens and crashed into the heart of the city, crushing everything beneath it. Buildings had been flattened beneath its outer walls, while entire streets had vanished beneath heaps of stone, jade, and precious metals. Lightning towers that had once crowned the fortress now jutted from the ground at strange angles, still flickering with unstable arcs of energy. Everywhere I looked, dust hung in the air like fog.
For generations, the people had lived beneath the weight of the Jiu Clan’s castle. Now, that symbol of oppression lay shattered in the streets, and the cultivators who had once enforced the clan’s rule had been crippled.
At the center of the disaster and with no one left to maintain order, the capital had started tearing itself apart.
Mortals filled the streets in frantic masses. Some clawed through the rubble with their bare hands, trying to free those trapped beneath the wreckage, while others fought over the valuable resources strewn across the streets. Former cultivators, meanwhile, those whose cultivation bases had been stripped by the Nine Rivers Saint’s ascension, wandered through this chaos in a daze.
A middle-aged man climbed onto a slab of broken stone and raised his voice above the chaos. “The Heavens have punished the Jiu Clan for their sins! Their castle has fallen! Their cultivators are crippled! The era of cultivation is over!”
How many people truly believed these words? Did it matter?
The crowd roared in response. “Down with the tyrants!”
A stone flew through the air and struck one of the retainers in the face. He staggered back, blood spilling from his nose. A day earlier, he would likely have killed the person responsible without a second thought. Now, he could only cover his face and retreat behind his companions.
The mob surged forward, and the retainers’ fragile line began to collapse, but I didn’t stay to watch. I activated a concealment technique to hide my presence as much as possible, then slipped through a crack in the castle’s outer wall.
The damage inside was even worse.
Hallways had twisted, and floors had buckled. The formations that controlled weight and balance had failed unevenly, leaving chunks of stone hovering a few centimeters above the ground before suddenly slamming back down without warning.
None of the newly mortal cultivators had survived. Their bodies lay everywhere, buried beneath broken stone or pinned under shattered beams. Some had been servants, while others wore the robes of Jiu Clan disciples. I ignored them all and kept moving.
Without a map, I had no way of knowing exactly where the treasury might be, but I could make an educated guess. It wouldn’t be near the outer walls. It would be buried deep within the castle, surrounded by the most powerful formations the Jiu Clan could afford.
The castle’s formations had failed, but they hadn’t vanished. Their materials and inscriptions were still present, pointing me toward places of importance. Using a combination of energy vision, qi, and my soul, I followed those remnants, searching for the paths that led deeper into the castle.
After a full hour of searching, I finally found one of the clan’s smaller treasuries, but by the time I arrived, someone else had already picked it clean. A few scattered materials remained, but only because they were too damaged to be worth stealing. The only items of any real value were a handful of low-grade spirit stones, and even those had been stripped of nearly all their energy.
Leaving that place behind, I continued deeper into the fallen castle, following the traces left by its ruined formations. The farther I went, the denser the remnants became. Eventually, they led me to a point near the center of the fortress where several major formations converged.
There, I found a thick, reinforced door made from some unknown high-Rank metal. Its surface was covered in damaged inscriptions, and the walls around it were packed with the broken remnants of defensive, detection, and alarm formations. Even broken, they still radiated an oppressive weight. If the castle’s formations had still been active, forcing my way through this door would have been nearly impossible.
I was certain I had found the main treasury.
Unfortunately, when I opened the door, I discovered that this place, too, had already been looted. Barren shelves lined the walls, and empty jade cases lay scattered on the floor.
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I stood in the doorway for several breaths, spreading out my qi and soul to see if anything had been left behind. At first, I found nothing. Then, my eyes landed on an empty patch of darkness in the corner of the room.
The shadows rippled beneath my gaze, and a woman stepped out of the darkness. She faced me calmly and cupped her fists in a martial salute.
“Greetings, Supreme Elder Su,” said Mei. “I thought you might come.”
I stared at her for a long moment. She was dressed in rags, and her skin was marked with deep, bloody furrows. The pattern of these wounds was too deliberate to have been caused by the castle’s fall. She had clearly been tortured, yet despite the pain she must have been enduring, she showed no sign of distress. If anything, there was casual lightness in the way she carried herself.
“Sovereign Pei,” I said, motioning toward the empty warehouse, “should I assume this was your work?”
She gave me a faint smile. “Indeed. Did you come here looking for something specific?”
I hesitated briefly, then nodded. “Fire seeds and Heaven-Rank techniques. Preferably those related to lightning, metal, or water.”
Mei looked down at the storage bag hanging from her waist. “I have them.”
I waited for her to say more, but she only stood there, watching me.
“And what would you like in exchange?” I asked.
Her smile widened. “Supreme Elder Su, have you given any further thought to my offer of an alliance?”
I had, in fact, but I hadn’t yet come to any conclusion. Mei’s blessing made her dangerous, but having witnessed the aftermath of an Immortal Ascension, I found myself less troubled by it than I had once been.
I paused for several seconds, then I reached into my inner world and found the memory orb Mei had left behind following her first life leading the Grain Jar Sect on the Nine Rivers Continent. That might not have been the most important life she had ever lived, but memories of it would give her a better understanding of what her “normal” life was like and what it would mean to join me. It would let her know what it would mean to retain her memories permanently.
Unlike me, Mei didn’t hesitate. The moment the orb touched her hand, she injected it with qi to see what information it contained.
“I see. That’s why Elder Li warned me never to offend you.” Her gaze dropped to the storage bag at her waist, and she gave a quiet, wry laugh. “I suppose there isn’t much point in holding on to this, is there?”
Before I could respond, she unfastened the bag and tossed it to me. “There are metal and lightning seeds inside, along with the corresponding techniques. Be careful with them, though. The formations on the boxes were damaged. If you don’t replace them, they might explode.”
The bag contained far more than a handful of fire seeds. There were rare stones, precious herbs, and a mountain of spirit stones. Unfortunately, nearly all of it had been drained by the auspicious rainbow.
After transferring the contents to my inner world, I returned my attention to Mei and took a deep breath to steady myself. “Do you still want that alliance, now that you understand what it would involve?”
Mei gave me a single, decisive nod. “Yes.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, then made my choice. “Very well. I agree.”
A heartbeat later, Mei let out a small laugh. “Mission complete. Alright, what now?”
I wasn’t entirely sure. I had come here to steal the Jiu Clan’s treasury, but it was already gone. What was the next step?
“If I could make a suggestion?” said Mei, a faint smile touching her lips. “You have a Small World, right? Why not take this opportunity to gather a few Dragon Veins? Small Worlds always need more energy.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.
Before leaving, I turned around, removed the treasury’s doors from their hinges, and sent them into my inner world. Then, I punched the air and opened a portal to a nearby sect.
In the end, we were only able to collect six Dragon Veins, though several of them were quite large. When we attempted to raid the Violet Light Sect and seize a seventh, we were intercepted by a rather angry-looking Ancestor Zhu.
“Do you think the Nine Rivers Domain has no one left?” he asked. “The Nine Rivers Saint has ascended and left this world behind, but I will not allow this domain to descend into anarchy.”
Just looking at the man, I could tell he was putting on a bit of a show. He might have retained his Ancestor-level cultivation base, but he hadn’t escaped the auspicious rainbow unscathed. Vast swaths of his energy body showed severe damage, and his core was on the verge of collapse.
Still, I wasn’t exactly in peak condition, either. I had fallen from Spirit 8 to Spirit 2. If it came to a fight, I would almost certainly lose. My abnormally powerful soul might give me a chance to turn things around, but using it would come with unknown risks.
In the end, I chose to compromise and leave. Six Dragon Veins were enough—for now. Once I had a better understanding of how they worked, I could always find a way to collect more.
After returning to Black Eagle City, I had to make a decision.
Should I bring my clan back out and use them to reclaim our territories? With so many of the world’s cultivators crippled, we might even be able to expand across several more Sovereign Realms. The Saint’s Immortal Ascension had caused unprecedented devastation, so restoring order should have allowed us to gather an unprecedented surge of karmic energy.
It did not.
When I brought out a few of our Lords and Kings, they discovered that the flow of karmic energy from our existing territories had stopped completely. Our cities, kingdoms, and empires had all gone silent. I was still able to gather energy from the Su Clan’s Bloodline, but compared to what I had received before, it was a bare trickle. Ruler Tier energy, however, was nonexistent.
The Saint’s Ascension hadn’t just crippled existing cultivators. It had destroyed the path of cultivation entirely. Perhaps the world would recover one day, but I saw no reason to waste time on such an uncertain proposition.
Closing my eyes, I focused my mind on my dantian.
Even after being drained by the auspicious rainbow, I still had enough Spirit-level karmic energy to raise myself back up to Martial Spirit 3. If I used it now, I could gain additional credits, but if I saved it, I would have a direct path back to Martial Spirit.
The correct choice was obvious. I focused my mind and guided every trace of remaining energy into the forests of the Plane of Woody Earth, storing it away for the future.
After gathering a few odds and ends scattered throughout our territory, including two additional Dragon Veins, I paid one last visit to Mei.
“I’m heading back. Don’t be too surprised if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of the Blue Wind Pavilion.”
Mei raised an eyebrow, her lips curving into a faint, playful smile. “That sounds inconvenient.”
“It should still be better than this.”
Mei looked around the silent streets of Black Eagle City, then let out a soft chuckle. “Fair enough.”
I gave her one last glance, sat down, swallowed a poison pill, and traveled back through time.
You have died. Calculating…
You died as a Martial Spirit 2 – 20,000 credits awarded.
You died as a Demon Sovereign – 1,000 credits awarded.
Total Credits: 33,145
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Rank 6 Small World – 100,000/1,000,000 km3 (Earth, Wood, Fire, Dark, Light, Wind)