Chapter 109: PAST AND SEARCH (Patreon)

Jieyuan froze. Already making connections, drawing conclusions, putting together the pieces of the puzzle that Chunying had just presented him. “Your clan was subordinate—”

His words were drowned by the fluttering, flaming burst of a nearby crystal, just a few steps away from Chunying. Second-step Orangesoul, his soulsenses supplied as they caught the spiraling chromal fire. He halted briefly.

With careless disregard, Chunying strode over to the still-coalescing elemental; the moment it finished forming, taking on humanoid shape, she stabbed her sword through its core with barely a glance. Sure enough, Jieyuan thought. She was holding back on me earlier. Even if she’d been Communing with Fire, she shouldn’t have been able to tell the position of the core so easily or quickly. He reckoned it was the work of Spatial Infinity Supremacy’s first form.

Another two strides brought Chunying back to him, and she resumed her little history lesson without missing a beat. They kept on walking.

“Yes, we served the Tianzijun once upon a time,” Chunying confirmed, turning to face him. “Before you ask, I’m not quite sure how that relationship came to be, only that it happened during the Divine Epoch, while the Tianzijun were in exile; the Sacred Epoch was already so long ago that my parents didn’t see much point in telling me of what came before it.”

He’d only just learned of the epochs from Chunying, and she hadn’t told him much about them, but what little he’d already heard was enough to give him an idea of the absurd scale they were measured in.

The Divine Epoch supposedly lasted a million years. They were currently in the Heavenly Epoch, as he understood, with the Sacred Epoch separating them from the Divine Epoch. Assuming that they were roughly the same length, that’d have put the Divine Epoch over a million years ago; a lot more, even, depending on how far along in the Heavenly Epoch they were. That was a lot of time, even for Violetsouls.

“Anyway,” Chunying said, “the Tianzijun and their four follower clans were called the Five Sacred Clans. The Tianzijun were the Sacred Royal Clan. They considered themselves the royalty of the Human Plane supposedly. The royalty of humanity itself, even. The four clans under them were the Sacred Noble Clans. The Human Plane’s—humanity’s—nobility.”

Jieyuan hummed thoughtfully. “That sounds rather… entitled.” Then again, given what he knew of the Tianzijun, that was par for the course.

Chunying shrugged. “They ruled the Human Plane—or at least most of it, the East notwithstanding. If anyone had a right to give themselves such titles, it was them. Also, it’s a matter of custom and traditions; they establish order, structure, and when you live as much as Violetsouls do, those things are very important, a way to stave off the chaos incurred by the inevitable erosion of time.”

The way she said that last sentence had a deliberate, almost rehearsed feel to it. Like she was repeating someone else’s words. Likely her parents’, Jieyuan guessed.

“In fact, our whole current system of nobles and royals that virtually every sect follows?” Chunying went on. “It came from the Five Sacred Clans. From the Tianzijun. Prior to that there were founding clans, of course, and other influential clans inside sects, but it wasn’t the neat, ordered system we have nowadays. It was during the Sacred Era that all the other sects followed suit. Became so widespread it even reached here, the East.”

That was new. “So the Tianzijun were, what, the first royals?”

Chunying chuckled. “That’s actually one of their titles. The First Royalty. Anyway—the Sacred Epoch. For hundreds of thousands of years, the Sacred Clans ruled the Human Plane unchallenged. At first, their rule was welcome, supposedly. The Divine Cults were subordinated to the Empyreans; at least with the Tianzijun, the Human Plane was in the hands of humanity proper. Only, the Tianzijun were many things. Good rulers, unfortunately, weren’t among them.”

“That doesn’t surprise me much,” Jieyuan said. “What I’ve heard about them isn’t particularly appealing.”

“I’d say you heard correctly,” Chunying said. “The Tianzijun were tyrants. They did as they pleased, with no consequences. They were the law. They made the Human Plane their playground. Whatever they desired, they took for themselves. Whatever they disliked, they destroyed without a second thought. And nobody could stand against them; they were too powerful. Out of all their titles, the one they were best known for is one that isn’t actually official. The Soulburner Clan.”

Jieyuan narrowed his eyes. Soulburner Clan. That was something Anren had mentioned, back in the Absolute Sword Trials. Only, at the time he hadn’t known what soulburning was, and she hadn’t elaborated on it.

Chunying gave him a slow nod, her expression growing serious. “I think you can guess the significance of that. The bloodgifts of the Tianzijun Bloodline are well-known. One of them, in particular, is infamous. Sovereign Indomitable Will. It’s a first-order bloodgift, meaning all Tianzijun have it; in fact, all Tianzijun bloodgifts are first-order. And that one, in particular? It elevates a Tianzijun’s willpower to such an absurd extent that their minds can withstand the Fourth Pain, no seventh-order Pain affinity required. Allows them to safely soulburn.”

Rotting Heavens. It was even worse than he’d suspected; he’d had his suspicions about Sovereign Indomitable Will, but the fact that it was a first-order bloodgift took him by surprise. A shiver rippled through his body as his mind raced ahead, exploring the many, many implications.

He’d soulburned once before, and it’d allowed him to totally overwhelm a higher-realm cultivator. But if a Violetsoul were to soulburn… There’d be nobody that could stand in their way. Nobody had reached past Violetsoul, as far as he knew. A Violetsoul soulburning would be both an unmovable object and an unstoppable force; only another Violetsoul soulburning could stand in their way.

“Meaning that every Tianzijun is, technically, a soulburner,” he said.

“Exactly,” Chunying said, grimly now. “I told you, before, that soulburners—cultivators with seventh-order heavenly affinity or higher—are terribly rare, even among the most powerful Violetsoul sects. Most sects would be lucky to have a single soulburner among their ranks. Would consider said soulburner a strategic resource. A Violetsoul soulburner is a weapon, one capable of mass destruction. And with the Tianzijun—every single Violetsoul of theirs was a soulburner. Their lower-rank cultivators, too, but it was the Violetsouls that were important.”

Chunying had a look on her face that bordered on wonder. “At any given point during the Sacred Era, supposedly, if you were to add the number of non-Tianzijun soulburners, it wouldn’t be even a thousandth of the number of Tianzijun Violetsouls. The Tianzijun had armies of Violetsoul soulburners. That was what let them rule as tyrants and go unchallenged, because nobody could challenge them. If the entire Human Plane had joined hands against them, the Tianzijun would have still come out on top.”

A pause. “Assuming, that is, the Absolute Sword Sect didn’t get involved,” Chunying amended, sounding more thoughtful now. “Even at the peak of their power and tyranny, there were two things the Tianzijun never went after: the Empyrean Plane, and the East of the Human Plane. With the empyreans, it’s obvious why; the Tianzijun might have been able to take on your average empyrean, but not even their soulburner army would’ve been a match for the Primordials.”

Primordials. Plural. Jieyuan made a note of that. Also the fact that they were supposedly so powerful, to contend with thousands of Violetsoul soulburners, each of whom should’ve been individually unbeatable. But he didn’t interrupt Chunying to dig deeper into that. He was just as, if not even more, interested in the current topic.

“With the East… There’s the Absolute Sword Sect,” Chunying continued. “Nobody knows how strong they really are, but… Ever since the Violet Epoch, the East has been the Absolute Sword Sect’s. Nobody has ever tried taking it from them. Not the Divine Cults. Not the Sacred Clans. And not the Heavenly Order Sect, which rules the plane in the current epoch. And at the end of the Sacred Epoch, when the Tianzijun were almost destroyed—it was the Absolute Sword Sect who took them in, and nobody stopped them.”

Back in the Absolute Sword Trials, Anren had also said as much about the Absolute Sword Sect and their power. But she was an Easterner—and as it came out later, from the Absolute Sword Sect. It made sense for her to be biased. Now that he was getting an outsider’s perspective, though, he was finding that Anren hadn’t exaggerated matters any. If anything, she might have understated things.

Moreover, with everything that had been said so far, there was one thing that just wasn’t adding up in Jieyuan’s head.

“If the Tianzijun were so overwhelmingly powerful,” he said, “how the rot were they overthrown? How in the Heavens did the Sacred Epoch end?”

He had his suspicions; Anren had referred to the Heavenly Order Sect, which currently ruled the plane, as the strongest human sect, stronger even than the Absolute Sword Sect. But that still begged the question of just what made the Heavenly Order Sect so strong. The Tianzijun had their soulburners; the Absolute Sword Sect, he knew, had the Absolute. What did the Heavenly Order Sect have?

Chunying nodded; it was clear she’d been expecting the question. “The Heavenly Order Sect rose. Or rather, the First Vessel did.” She gave him an expectant look; when he stared back at her blankly, she frowned. “You’ve never heard of the Vessels? I know your knowledge of Violetsoul matters is spotty, but to have never heard of the Vessels? Even the East shouldn’t be ignorant of them.”

“I’m afraid not. I’ve heard of the Heavenly Order Sect, but not of this Vessel business.”

That didn’t seem to help his case any; Chunying blinked at him, disbelieving. “That’s even more absurd. The Vessel is the Heavenly Order Sect. They’re one and the same.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The Heavenly Order Sect—it’s made up of a single individual. And that individual is the Heavenly Vessel. The Vessel of Heaven. The ruler of the Human Plane.”

It was Jieyuan’s turn to stare in disbelief. The most powerful human sect had only one member?

“The Heavenly Vessel is a position, a title,” Chunying continued, sounding almost passionate now, “given to the one who bears the Crown of Heaven. There have been six Vessels so far; each one’s reign has lasted a hundred thousand years, on average. The Sixth Vessel took over only three thousand years ago.”

“The Crown of Heaven,” Jieyuan cut in. “What’s that?”

“The artifact that grants the Vessels their powers. Nobody knows where it really came from, only that the First Vessel found it—or created it, or was given it by the Heavens themselves, nobody really knows for sure. Its power is immeasurable. The First Vessel, with the Crown, took on the entire Tianzijun Clan, their thousands of Violetsoul soulburners, and won. He had help—he had the entire plane on his side, and support from three of the Sacred Noble Clans—but he could’ve taken the Tianzijun on his own.”

Well, Jieyuan thought, dully, numbly, that’s something. A crown that granted cultivators immeasurable power. The Crown of Heaven. It sounded fanciful. Ridiculous, even. But he could tell that Chunying was being deadly serious right now. And it fit, in a way; you would need something sufficiently ridiculous to match the absurdity that was the Tianzijun soulburner armies. Still, though.

He took a deep breath, struggling to make sense of it all. Struggling to accept it. In the ensuing silence, a nearby second-step Orangesoul crystal hatched into an elemental; Jieyuan dispatched the newly-formed fire spirit effortlessly, then returned to Chunying, who hadn’t broken her stride. He asked: “This Crown—you said its powers are immeasurable, but what does that mean, exactly?”

“Whoever bears the Crown bears the Heavens,” Chunying recited. “Whoever bears the Heaven wields its powers. That’s what’s said about the Crown and the Vessel. According to my parents, there’s nothing the Vessel cannot do with the Crown. It grants them omnipotence, supposedly, or at least something very close to it.”

“All right,” Jieyuan said, slowly, as he put his thoughts in order. “All right. So. The First Vessel appears with the Crown, overthrows the Tianzijun. The Absolute Sword Sect swoops in, saves the Tianzijun from being totally destroyed. You mentioned that the Vessel had the support of three of the Sacred Noble Clans. Meaning that these Noble Clans turned on the Tianzijun. Were the Wutianxuan one of those?”

“Yes. By the end of the Sacred Epoch, the Tianzijun had managed to make an enemy out of every one, even the Sacred Noble Clans. Only, nobody could act on it. But the First Vessel appeared. Yujunshen Xuanshi. Vessel Shen. He came out of nowhere, already bearing the Crown. And the first thing he did was storm the Tianzijun Clan’s seat and kill every single Violetsoul he found there.”

Yujunshen Xuanshi. Vessel Shen. Jieyuan would remember that name.

“In a single night, Vessel Shen killed over half of the Tianzijun Clan’s Violetsouls. Just as other sects could put up no resistance against the Tianzijun soulburners, the Tianzijun could put up no resistance against Vessel Shen. The rest escaped, and he hunted them down, one by one. All the human sects sided with him against the Tianzijun once they learned of what happened, helped him find the runaway Tianzijun—except for the Aoshengdan Noble Clan, which stood with the Tianzijun until the end.”

Chunying looked off into the distance, a faraway look in her eyes. “The Absolute Sword Sect intervened before the entire Tianzijun could be exterminated. They reached an agreement with Vessel Shen; they’d write a seal into the Tianzijun Bloodline that would make it impossible for any Tianzijun to advance past Bluesoul. The Tianzijun would also be forbidden from ever leaving the East.”

“And with the Tianzijun gone,” Jieyuan said, “the First Vessel—the Heavenly Order Sect—took over?”

“That’s right,” Chunying said. “The three Sacred Noble Clans that sided with him became the Heavenly Guardian Clans. Mostly, they help the Vessel rule the Human Plane, maintaining the Vessel’s law. The Vessel, for all their power, is only a single individual, after all; they cannot rule the Human Plane alone. Nobody can. Each of the Heavenly Guardian Clans has a different role. The Wutianxuan Clan’s known as the Heavenly Scepter; we’re in charge of diplomacy and the overall management of the Human Plane.”

“And this rule—the Vessel’s law—what is it like?”

Chunying frowned. Pursed her lips. She looked like she wasn’t quite sure how to put her thoughts into words. “For the most part, the Vessel is content to let the human sects do as they please, as long as there’s not too much… well, chaos. More than anything else, the Vessels—this goes for the First Vessel, and all his successors—are interested in stability. Not peace, exactly, but rather order.”

Her nose wrinkled a little; she said order as if it were something bitter. Jieyuan could certainly think of worse things someone with near-omnipotence could get up to. The Tianzijun had certainly abused their powers, from the sound of it. The Vessels were very clearly an undeniable improvement.

“This succession, how does it work?”

“I don’t know the details,” Chunying said. “Only that, at the end of their reign, the reigning Vessel appoints a successor. The Crown prolongs their lifespan, but it seems like a hundred thousand years or so is the limit, as that’s roughly the length of each Vessel’s reign so far. The new Vessel must spend a while in seclusion to acclimate to the Crown. Sometimes it’s a thousand years, sometimes it’s more, though never more than ten thousand. The Sixth Vessel, Vessel Jun, is supposedly still in seclusion.”

Jieyuan mulled that over. There was a lot to go through; from this one conversation with Chunying he’d learned more than he’d learned from all his conversations with Anren back in the Absolute Sword Trials added together. Not just that, the things he was learning from Chunying now were casting all his previous conversations with Anren in a different light, providing context where he’d lacked it, filling in gaps, making all sorts of things a whole lot clearer all of a sudden.

But a lot of it—most of it, really—didn’t matter, not in the short term, in the here and now. He was sure all this knowledge would come in handy when he eventually reached Violetsoul and got tangled with Violetsoul matters in earnest. For the time being, he was stuck in the Divine Star Trials. And after that, he’d have the Immaculate Blood Cult to worry about. The question, then, was how much of this new information could help with these more pressing matters.

“Back to the Divine Cults,” he said. “They’re connected to the Primordial, once ruled the Human Plane, and were overthrown by the Tianzijun. What else do you know about them? Especially about the Divine Star Cult. Anything that might help us here in the Divine Star Trials?”

“Not much else, like I already said,” Chunying said, shaking her head. “After the Divine Epoch… they disappeared, I think. I’m not sure if the Tianzijun destroyed them, or simply drove them away. But what happened to them after they were overthrown is a mystery to me.”

“What about during the Divine Epoch?”

“I know even less. I actually know more about the Violet Epoch, which preceded it. The Violet Epoch is where it all began, where all the current sects came to be. The Divine Epoch… All I really know is what I told you. My parents weren’t very interested in it, didn’t see much point in telling me about it. The Divine Cults haven’t been relevant for millions of years.”

“And trialworlds in general, then?” Jieyuan pressed. “Do you know if there’s something like a world spirit, or if they’re sentient in any way? Any chance they might not take kindly to your and Daojue’s presences here, considering the roles your ancestors played in the Divine Star Cult’s downfall?”

“I’m… not sure,” Chunying said. “Trialworlds—voidworlds as a whole—aren’t sentient, as far as I know, but that’s admittedly not at all far. But if the world wanted me or Daojue dead, or anything along those lines, I don’t believe it’d have had much trouble doing so. The fact that nothing particularly odd has happened to me so far… That should be a good sign. I think.”

She looked a little uncertain now, though. He had the impression the possibility he’d raised hadn’t previously occurred to her.

“Well, here’s hoping,” Jieyuan said. He cast his gaze across the crimson landscape. Across the red rocky plains littered with fire crystals. Across the forms of elementals, which were now lumbering and looming in the distance wherever he looked.

Killing elementals. Advancing star-artifacts. That was everything Jieyuan had on the Divine Star Trials so far, all he’d managed to figure out about it. He was sure that those were important, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more to it that he was missing.

But it didn’t seem like he’d be finding the answer to that with Chunying, so he turned his mind to other matters. What she’d revealed about the Tianzijun, and her clan’s relationship with them. How they’d originally served the Tianzijun, only to later betray them—even if they’d apparently been justified in doing so. That might have been ancient history, but he wasn’t so sure it was irrelevant.

Did Daojue know about the Wutianxuan clan? If he did, how would Daojue view a Wutianxuan? Those, Jieyuan felt, were important questions. It was only a matter of time before they reunited with Meiyao and Daojue—of that he was certain—and once that happened he’d already have a hard enough time trying to get them to accept Chunying. She’d done plenty to antagonize the two back in the Ardent Light Sect, when she’d been in her Lushan persona—and, in her own words, taking out her frustration on them.

He sure didn’t need ancient family feuds adding more fuel to the fire.

Something in the distance caught his eye. A faint, indistinct rainbow rippling far out; it hadn’t been there before, he was certain of that, so it must’ve just registered in the artificial horizon.

Quickly augmenting his sight, he got a better look at it: a dome-shaped form, huge given how big it seemed despite the distance between them. Even with his sight augmented, it looked indistinct, constantly rippling with colors; only those colors didn’t span the full spectrum, as he’d originally assumed, but were rather only four: red, blue, brown, and white.

The same colors that had swirled inside the sphere that served as the Divine Star Trials’ entrance.

There was also something inside the dome, but the shifting barrier of colors before it made it hard to tell what exactly it was, only that it was nearly as big as the dome it was in, filling it up.

Jieyuan glanced at Chunying, intending to draw her attention to his discovery, only to find that she was already staring fixedly into the horizon. Like him, she had also slowed her pace slightly.

He returned his attention to the thing on the horizon. The apparent form of it—a dome—put him on edge; his experiences in the Viridian Dome had soured him on that particular geometric shape. But whatever it was, it seemed even more promising a lead than the firestorm from earlier. Its four-colored rippling was enough proof that it was connected to the trialworld in some special way.

It seemed like they had their new destination.

***

They made their way over to the barrier in the distance, killing enough elementals—many of them at third-step—while they were at it that they made good progress toward their next star mark. They didn’t meet any other cultivators on the way, and he was glad for that; he still wasn’t quite sure what the best approach for dealing with their enemies here would be.

They were about halfway to the translucent four-colored dome when, with his augmented sight, he finally managed to get an idea of just what it held. He’d had an idea, previously, but it was only now that he grew certain of what it was.

A building. A palace, or maybe a temple. Massive and sprawling. He still couldn’t tell much about it because of the dome barrier partially obscuring it, not what sort of material it was made of or even its color, but the overall shape of it was clear enough: the solid, static outline of a building, with a rectangular-looking bulk.

It wasn’t the only thing to have caught his attention, either. At this distance, the horizon had also revealed new things: to the far left, to the west, the red rock of the fire region gave way to water: he could only see a thin slice of it before the horizon cut off, but it extended across the entire left side of the plain. Blue, pure waters. An ocean. It connected to the palace.

And on the opposite side of it, also leading up to the palace and occupying a slice of the east right before the cutoff of the horizon, was a forest. Tall, verdant trees rose off the soil at the edge of the rocky red plains.

It was clear what he was looking at. The water region to the left, the earth region to the right. And in the middle of it, where all three regions met—a palace covered by a four-colored dome barrier.

Unless Jieyuan was off his mark, on the opposite side of them, behind the palace and its dome, should be the air region. If so, then right now he was most likely looking at the very center of the trialworld.

***

The barrier was impenetrable, or at least it might as well be. He and Chunying were now standing at the very edge of it. From up close, the barrier didn’t look any different from what it had looked like from afar: a translucent, luminous screen molded in the shape of a dome around the building within. He couldn’t sense the barrier with his soulsenses; Chunying had already tried, to no effect, using Aspect Incursion Impartation, which should’ve been able to pierce through any chromal or elemental defense.

The only explanation was that the barrier wasn’t Orangesoul. And that meant that the building within was out of reach as long as it was in place. Jieyuan crossed his arms, frowning, considering the obstacle in front of him. From this close, he could see the building beyond much more clearly.

It looked more like a temple than a palace; it was blocky but tiered, tapering slightly toward the top, standing several hundred feet tall. It seemed to be made of stone, but what sort he couldn’t tell; its color, from up close, was as impossible to tell as it’d been from far away; the four-colored barrier was opaque enough that he could only tell its shape, regardless of distance.

“Any more ideas?” Chunying glanced his way. At his suggestion, she’d just tried using Incursion Impartation on the ground under the barrier, but it had turned out that the barrier wasn’t a dome but rather a sphere, extending out of sight underground.

“None yet,” Jieyuan said. It was obvious that the temple was important, but it was just as obvious that with the barrier in place, they couldn’t get inside. Now more than ever he wished he had some sort of guidance on how the Divine Star Trials was supposed to work.

How he wished this place had its own version of Anren to fill him in; Chunying, unfortunately, didn’t quite fit the bill. She knew plenty about higher-realm matters, to be sure, but about the trialworld specifically she clearly wasn’t any better off than he was.

He gave it some more thought, but no new ideas came to him; he eventually sighed. “Guess we’ll just have to leave it alone for now and hope the barrier disappears on its own eventually. Or maybe we figure out the condition for entering it.”

“Getting a star-artifact to tenth-step, maybe?” Chunying offered.

That gave Jieyuan pause. “That… sounds promising, actually. Might be it.”

She nodded, before shooting a look toward the east. From where they were, at the edge of the barrier, they couldn’t see the other regions anymore, but he hadn’t forgotten about them and clearly neither had she.

“What now, then?” she said. “Move on to the earth region? That was your original idea, wasn’t it?”

“Right, yes,” Jieyuan said. He sent one last, lingering look at the barrier and the half-obscured temple within, frustrated. “Let’s go.”

They set off, circling the palace toward the east, headed for the forest that should be the trialworld’s earth region—and where, if he was right about the logic that decided where you were transported to when entering the trialworld, they’d find Meiyao and Daojue.