Destiny in Cinders

An Jing lowered his gaze. Running was always an option for him, whether he used the void altar or Yvelbane’s Grandvoid Pathway to safely escape to the northern frontier or Skysource. This was also Ming Guangchen’s plan, which An Jing had initially agreed with. Yet, the youth didn’t expect that he would end up wanting to help his master escape this predicament. Was running his only option?

Running at this point is only natural. He was well aware that most people would choose escape rather than upheaval in dangerous situations. All they had to do was hide in their little world and convince themselves that there was nothing they could’ve done to justify their choice and feel better about it. Choosing to stay for change was nothing but empty rhetoric, the peak of arrogance, pride and disgusting self-satisfaction. In a truly dangerous situation, fleeing was commendable, especially when the situation was beyond one’s power to change.

However, An Jing really didn’t want to run. He quietly watched the massive mirror in the distant sky shatter from the flash of the void sword with a loud, explosive bang. Streams of falling light and rain scattered all over. Some of those glowing mirror shards even landed around Keensight. An Jing picked up a piece and saw Jing Xuan’s face reflected in it, a handsome face that was drained of all qi. The reflection was one of himself.

At that moment, an epiphany occurred to him. ”I am... An Jing. Bearer of a celestial arc.”

It was in the nature of the Seven Ruinous Luminaries to instigate an explosion of karmic sin, contradictions and conflicts, triggering a chain of rot that heralded the destruction of all. If the bearer of the celestial arc wasn’t able to bear the brunt of this power and allowed the karmic effects to spread out, they would embody the quintessential unlucky star that dragged their friends, family and even their benefactors into ruin with them, sacrificed to the celestial arc’s workings.

If An Jing wasn’t strong enough to grasp his lifearc, he wouldn’t have survived the snow calamity or obtained Yvelbane’s recognition. He wouldn’t have been able to defeat the manor lord and chosen his own fate, let alone change the fates of You Ruhui and Madam Huai.

However, he was powerful enough. He bore the arc’s burden and saved his mother, the disaster children of Direlife Manor, You Ruhui and Madam Huai. He wasn’t just the harbinger of doom. The capacity to help many people had always been in him. Naturally, he would be able to help Ming Guangchen as well, but how? At the very least, Jing Xuan wouldn’t be able to. Only An Jing was suited for this task.

”Hahaha! Hahahaha! I finally understand! That’s how it is!” An Jing finally figured out how he could win. ”I know what I need to do now. All this time, I’ve been subconsciously choosing the easy way that leaves me a path for escape. I was too concerned with my own safety and convenience and hadn’t been giving it my all! I hid my true identity and even convinced myself that I was weak enough to need to run and hide if I found myself in a dangerous situation when what I should really have done was to use everything I have to face my tribulations. It’s no wonder I couldn’t overcome it.”

Other people were allowed to run, but not him. ”That’s because I’m An Jing, bearer of the celestial arc of the Seven Ruinous Luminaries. An Jing, not anyone else.”

”Hahahahaha... Ming Guangchen, to think that someone like you would end up in such a state... Huh?” He Wuchang laughed when he witnessed the massive mirror shatter. In all the time he fought the sage, not once had he forced the sage to use this final trick. Being able to see a genius far more talented than him fall made him all the more excited. Yet, he suddenly realized that he wasn’t the only one laughing. The other voice sounded familiar to him, but the person it belonged to couldn’t possibly be here with him.

He Wuchang snapped around when he sensed an odd feeling of danger behind him, only to see that the dying Jing Xuan had more or less recovered and was rising from the rubble, laughing as he clutched a mirror shard in hand. He Wuchang swung his arm to draw a blade of blood immediately, not speaking or hesitating in the slightest despite his shock. It didn’t matter how Jing Xuan had recovered; as long as he slashed him by the waist, he would be helpless to resist!

Then, the Keensight Bell’s toll rang out once more, blocking the blood lethal qi. He Wuchang’s expression immediately shifted. But when he noticed the golden light around Jing Xuan fade away, he breathed a sigh of relief. It had been nothing more but a temporary protective blessing from the divine armament, which would fade away even without him doing anything.

Even so, the oddly sharp sensation he felt from the youth greatly unnerved him. In fact, the sensation got stronger and sharper. It was as if he was looking at a sword.

An Jing was honing himself with a cultivation technique of the immortal path: Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal, Calamitous Tribulation Annihilation. One who bore the Evenstar bore the quintessence of the metal aspect. One who bore a soul as bright as ivory bore a soul of perfect, all-encompassing illumination. Calamities arrived only to be eliminated. Tribulation arrived only to be annihilated. A mortal body was akin to basic metals, needing to be reforged in the flames of true adversity from the inside and out, forming divine seals that gave rise to a new unyielding corpus.

Thanks to He Wuchang’s actions, An Jing was able to borrow the power of Madam Huai’s Qi Soul Lending lifearc through the imperial blood droplet and the heaven purification radiance of the True Talisman to manifest his eighth seal of the flesh. As for his ninth seal of the soul, he had already unconsciously done most of the work when he manifested Temporal Grasp through Heaven’s Child Art. At this moment, it all clicked into place and allowed the ninth seal to form as well.

”What in the world is going on?!”

As the golden glow faded from An Jing, it turned into little gold sparkles that entered his body. He had even used the Keensight Bell’s protective power to close the gap between his body and the Lord Inspector of the West’s. Even though the blood arcane corpus didn’t contain wonders or an internal bodily formation and only had a base-level constitution and abilities, The Keensight Bell had sealed off the latter. In other words, as long as their bodily strength was equalized, An Jing would be fighting on even ground. In fact, he didn’t even need to catch up fully. He was confident he could defeat He Wuchang with half of the power he had access to.

”Unbelievable...” He Wuchang couldn’t comprehend what was going on, so he chose the easiest solution: killing him! This is never ending! How many trump cards does the kid have? Bringing him back alive would’ve been ideal, but it seems like I’m forced to return with nothing but his soul.

He Wuchang raised his blade, glowing blood red with power. Then, he sent a slash flying toward An Jing when the golden glow faded away completely! The flash of blood seemed large and unblockable, yet somewhat ethereal without any proper mass. In fact, it was formed from many tiny blood-lethal-qi blades. There were so many of these fine threads that they could easily reduce a living person into a bloody mist, wrapping their souls within the threads and assimilating the lifearc totem into the blood. The thousand tiny blades packed a terrifying soul-stealing technique!

My arcanum’s effectiveness would fall to only sixty percent if I only have his soul. If I treat it carefully and store it in soulwater, I’d only get up to seventy percent. Oh well... It should be enough when coupled with the rest that I’ve been accumulating over time.

Right as He Wuchang thought of how he would process his spoils, An Jing made his move and neutralized the strike. The method he used was easy: he sent his own blood lethal qi seeping into the blade flash from He Wuchang before he triggered an explosion, distorting and scattering them from within.

By the time He Wuchang realized something, An Jing’s blood-lethal-qi-filled eyes turned to look at him before he could react. There was a loud thud, followed by flashes of the crushed stone path, an impossible view of rain ”rising” to the ”ground above,” and blurry hurricanes that resulted from his body being sent flying like a cannonball. Even the crumbled wall that He Wuchang found himself in front of was pushed significantly backward from the sheer momentum of the crash, beating up a dust cloud. Before the dust even rose that high, An Jing delivered another lightning-fast punch to He Wuchang’s head.