A Pawn's Passage

The Heavenly Preceptor began to explain in detail the secrets of the Heavenly Immortal.

In truth, they were not really secrets. Qi Xuansu simply had not reached that level of cultivation or seniority required to grasp such knowledge.

If a Heavenly Immortal bore unresolved ties to the mortal realm, having lingering obsessions or unfinished bonds, they had one way to return after ascension. They could sever an incarnation and descend to the mortal realm once more.

However, this method carried immense constraints, with four critical hurdles.

They would need a strong will and a heart bound by obsession to pierce the barrier of two realms. Otherwise, it required a level of cultivation equivalent to the Primordial Daoist Ancestor. Without such fixation, no incarnation could be severed to return to the mortal realm.

An immense sum of divine power was also needed to tunnel a path between realms because this path was fragile and fleeting.

Besides that, the incarnation needed a host, which was usually an unborn fetus without a formed soul, untainted by karma. However, to fit the Immortal’s thought without shattering required careful selection.

Upon birth, the incarnation would forget all past existence. Without guidance or chance enlightenment, the incarnation would pass through life in ignorance, never recalling who they truly were, making their return to the mortal world futile.

These four difficulties corresponded to the Four Immortals, and their solution lay in orthodoxy. Only disciples left behind on earth could gather incense power, find a vessel, and awaken the incarnation. Hence, the endless strife among Immortals to preserve their lineages was for this reason.

If all four hurdles could be overcome, the Heavenly Immortal’s incarnation could walk the mortal realm anew, either to sever ties or to fulfill lingering bonds. Yet such an incarnation had to begin their cultivation from scratch. Still, with the insight of a Heavenly Immortal, their progress far surpassed mere mortals. The Holy Xuan later classified such innate talent as Banished Immortals.

However, even if such an incarnation attained high cultivation, there was no guarantee the Heavenly Immortal’s mission was complete. The incarnation could have lived in a way that the Heavenly Immortal did not approve of, which might have affected the true body. In such cases, the Heavenly Immortal would sever the incarnation, leaving it to exist independently.

Thus, one could consider the incarnation to be the Heavenly Immortal, but the Heavenly Immortal was not the incarnation.

After accomplishing what it had to, the incarnation could ascend a second time, reuniting with its true body. In that moment, the Heavenly Immortal’s cultivation would rise to another level.

This cultivation path was harsher than that of the other Four Lineages. Daoist canons often described it as completing the inner work, yet having an imperfect outer form.

Qi Xuansu was stunned after hearing the Heavenly Preceptor’s explanation. He asked in disbelief, “Heavenly Preceptor, do you mean to say that Izanami was the incarnation of a Heavenly Immortal?”

This reminded him of what Suzuka Gozen and Tamamo-no-Mae mentioned before, that Yomi-no-Kuni was bequeathed by the first generation of gods, while Izanami and Izanagi were the second generation. How Izanami alone could command Yomi-no-Kuni had always been a mystery. But if she were truly the incarnation of a Heavenly Immortal, it would explain much of the mysteries. In truth, the ruler of Yomi-no-Kuni had never changed, having always been the same Heavenly Immortal.

Transforming from a Heavenly Immortal to a Godly Immortal was difficult, but not impossible. There had been one success in Daoist history, which was the Heavenly Emperor.

More recently, even Tantai Yun had shifted freely between both Earthly Immortal and Manly Immortal lineages. Thus, one must never judge extraordinary talents by mortal standards. What was unattainable for commoners was little more than climbing a mountain for geniuses.

The Heavenly Preceptor nodded. “So it would seem. Countless incarnations of Heavenly Immortals have been severed since ancient times, but most perish in the fetal stage, and the rare few that survive still falter midway. Those who truly ascend a second time are exceedingly rare.

“Izanami’s ascension was unlike that of True Lord Taiyin. True Lord Taiyin abandoned her divine kingdom but took her golden body. Izanami returned to her true body and discarded her golden body, like the cicada leaving behind its shell. Speaking of which, the Corpse Liberation Immortal’s method of ascension was modeled after the Heavenly Immortal’s second ascension.”

With the Heavenly Preceptor’s confirmation, Qi Xuansu realized his earlier suspicions were wrong. Izanagi had not slain Izanami, nor had she died during childbirth. She had ascended a second time, leaving behind only a golden husk.

Qi Xuansu had another conjecture. Izanagi was the first to discover Izanami’s husk, but to conceal the truth, he fabricated her death during childbirth. Relying on his far higher cultivation, he forced entry into Yomi-no-Kuni and devoured Izanami’s remnants. As a living god, he was not resurrected but instead gained an undying body. However, he was tainted by the dense yin energy. This was also when the seed of demonic fire began to take root within his body.

Afterward, Izanagi sealed Yomi-no-Kuni entirely. He fabricated a tale of going to Yomi to fetch his wife, only for them to quarrel, forcing him to trap her within that realm forever. This way, he claimed a righteous cause to bar all others from entry.

Izanagi meticulously concealed the truth that others would at most guess he had murdered his wife. No one would actually think that Izanami had ascended a second time, leaving behind a husk that was the key to resurrection and longevity.

But how had the Three Noble Children learned of this secret?

Izanagi was no ordinary man. Surely, he would not let such a secret slip in a drunken stupor.

At that thought, Qi Xuansu recalled an ancient legend of Fenglin.

This legend was about Izanagi seeking his wife, chasing her to Yomi-no-Kuni, only to see Izanami’s body crawling with maggots. Shocked and terrified, Izanagi fled, which infuriated Izanami. She chased after him, but he blocked the exit to Yomi-no-Kuni with an enormous boulder. The husband and wife stood on either side of the barrier, swearing eternal separation.

After leaving Yomi-no-Kuni, Izanagi believed himself tainted, so he sought purification. When he washed his left eye, Himiko was born; from the right eye came Tsukuyomi; and from the nose, Susanoo. Strictly speaking, the Three Noble Children were not Izanami’s offspring at all.

This legend had long hinted at the truth.

Yomi-no-Kuni was indeed a land of corruption. Even Izanagi could not escape its corrosion. His “purification” was not bathing, but an attempt to expel the yin energy that had invaded his body.

Qi Xuansu remembered two similar tales.

The first story was of the Holy Xuan dueling the last leader of the Confucian School. Their struggle determined the fate of the Daoist-Confucian war. In their first battle, the Holy Xuan was defeated, causing his Three Corpses to separate from his body with a portion of his cultivation. They used the Holy Xuan’s immortal objects to become independent beings and fled. This story was well-known to older Daoists.

The second tale was of Lin Lingsu, the Imperial Preceptor of the Jin Dynasty. Once a Three Corpse Incarnation of True Lord Qingxu Yuanmiao, Lin Lingsu was severed from his original body and became fully independent. He curried favor with emperors and became an advisor. He even birthed his own Three Corpses. In the end, he perished to both external enemies and the betrayal of his Three Corpses.

Linking these stories, Qi Xuansu had a bold speculation.

Perhaps Izanagi sought to imitate Izanami’s cicada molting by casting off burdens. Or perhaps the yin energy’s corruption forced Izanagi’s Three Corpses to separate from him. Either way, the result was the same. The Three Noble Children were born, mirroring the Three Corpses. They were not his and Izanami’s offspring, but the Three Corpse Incarnations of Izanagi himself.

This explained why the Three Noble Children knew so many of Izanagi’s secrets, and why they sought to overthrow Izanagi. After all, it was the instinct of the Three Corpses to betray and destroy their host.

From this perspective, all of Fenglin’s upheaval traced back to Izanagi himself. His greed sowed the seeds of the demonic fire and birthed the Three Noble Children. This drew the Buddhist Sect into play, and in the end, he could not escape his fate of being utterly defeated.

If Qi Xuansu’s speculation was true, then every mystery was finally resolved.

Izanami was the first-generation god, the original ruler of Yomi-no-Kuni. As a severed incarnation of a Heavenly Immortal, Izanami rose as Yomi’s second-generation ruler. In the end, she succeeded in a second ascension, leaving behind a golden husk. Second ascensions were as rare as Second-Tribulation Immortals, and her golden husk, which held the power of granting longevity and resurrection, was rarer even than the mythical Elixir of Immortality.

Izanagi forcibly broke into Yomi-no-Kuni to gnaw on the husk, gaining an undying body because of it. However, the yin energy corroded him, birthing demonic fire. Since demonic fire was born of yin energy, Izanagi’s time spent sealed beneath Mount Fuyo—where yin energy flowed endlessly from the netherworld—only nourished the demonic fire, magnifying their reach. Likewise, repeated wars and countless deaths in Ise Province flooded the land with yin energy, triggering another eruption of demonic fire.

Izanagi’s Three Corpse Incarnations became the Three Noble Children. He treated them as his offspring, but they became his downfall.

The Three Noble Children secretly allied with the Buddhist Sect. With Vairocana’s support, they struck down and sealed the undying Izanagi. Then, they entered Yomi-no-Kuni with the protection of Vairocana so that they could gnaw on Izanami’s golden husk. They even carried fragments away to resurrect Tamamo-no-Mae, Yamata-no-Orochi, and Shuten-Doji.

However, these resurrections were flawed. All three Great Yokai’s cultivation dropped, and they could never leave Fenglin. More precisely, they could not depart from the domain of Yomi-no-Kuni’s influence.

This made the old belief that moving the Killing Stone—Tamamo-no-Mae’s true body—to Jade Capital would allow her to enter the Central Plains could be flawed, or at least incomplete. The truth still required deeper inquiry.