Destiny in Cinders

Divine arcs went all the way back to the Primordial Era when Great Immortal Void Embrace was still in the corporeal realm. Lifearcs already existed even before the fiend calamity, but bearers of lifearcs were far less numerous compared to those of the present day. Back then, odd arcs or mixed arcs didn’t exist. There were only evil arcs, miracle arcs and celestial arcs that represented the will of the Heavenly Dao itself.

It was incredibly difficult to awaken a lifearc in those days, far from the ”saplings” granted by the Heavenly Dao of the present day. Instead, they were akin to celestial dao bodies, a rare manifestation of talent, and the source of many cultivation methods of the present day.

When the Primordial Era came to an end, Great Immortal Void Embrace ascended to the immortal heavens, far out of reach while his disciples ruled the world through the Dao Court from the Central Balance Dao Continent. With the pressure exerted by the great immortal gone, the powerful ancient gods and beasts that arose from the world’s primordial depths wreaked havoc across the known world. That was the first primordial tribulation: the Nebulous Chaos Divine Tribulation.

It was at that time when the first bearer of a divine arc manifested: a child blessed with the talent of swallowing and exhaling winds and lightning, a child who feared neither water nor fire. Once, people thought that this child merely had an incredibly powerful miracle arc. But soon, the child grew at a stunning rate.

He didn’t need instruction or guidance from anyone and was able to understand the most complicated of dao classics. He could naturally master skills that took others a dozen years or more to hone without any practice whatsoever. And unlike any talented miracle-arc bearer, he was extremely proficient in all types of dao relating to winds, storms, lightning and fire. There seemed to be a complete legacy within his soul, waiting for him since the moment of his birth. Through it, he quickly became a domineering genius of a cultivator.

The cultivators of the time, after studying the many writings left that Great Immortal Void Embrace brought to this world, came to the conclusion that the bearer of this lifearc possessed powers really similar to that of the Enlightening Heavenly Lord of Origin Thunder. The legacy within his soul was none other than the Divine Firmament Ultimate Dao Five Lightning Command Classic, which he went on to write down! This was the ultimate dao classic when it came to lightning. Such was how divine arcs came to be known to the world.[1]

As the havoc caused by the great beasts of Nebulous Chaos grew, more and more people awakened other divine arcs. They competed against each other and the primordial beasts for supremacy, eventually reeling in the catastrophic situation, gradually improving the overall situation.

People of those times theorized that divine-arc bearers were just incredibly powerful miracle-arc bearers who managed to awaken legacies left by the divine progenitors within their bloodline. However, that explanation couldn’t account for divine-arc bearers who didn’t hail from special bloodlines. Later precedents eventually demonstrated that those that hailed from special bloodlines had an advantage. If the divine arc one awakened was related to one’s bloodline, it could result in interesting augmentations.

The ghostly figure from the nether was well aware that the imperial blood of the Xuan clan of True Martial Mountain was a classic example of the fusion of a divine arc and a special bloodline. Apart from Ancestral Dragon Hall, the imperial court was the most proficient user of such a power in the world of Void Embrace.

In fact, the imperial court might have long exceeded Ancestral Dragon Hall in that regard. Their imperial blood was related to the divine position of the Emperor of the North, while Ancestral Dragon Hall no longer possessed any True Dragons.[2]

The Nebulous Chaos Divine Tribulation eventually came to an end from the efforts of the Void Embrace Ancestral Dragon, a divinity that was born with a celestial arc. With the help of the many cultivators of Void Embrace, the divinity managed to defeat the many primordial deities and beasts, swallowing them whole and consuming all their primordial qi. As a result, the Ancestral Dragon had a boundless amount of primordial qi, rife with the power of creation, and created the Eight Cardinal Celestial Dragons and three thousand legacies of true spirits, binding them all with the divinity’s own bloodline.

The title of True Dragon represented the peak of all bloodlines and true spirits in this world. But since the fall of the Ancestral Dragon during the fiend calamity of antiquity, no other being bore the celestial arc of Vita Ex Nihilo, consigning the title of True Dragon to oblivion. Without the support of a celestial arc, even pureblood ”dragons” of Ancestral Dragon Hall couldn’t be considered True Dragons and were merely one of the more powerful true spirits.

The ghostly figure was still frozen in deep thought. ”Back then, Great Immortal Void Embrace migrated to this world with 108,000 people. Some of those were people of the Ninedawn... The land of Dustdawn is the place where the Ninedawn eventually settled, as reflected in its name. However, An Jing is clearly a citizen of Grand Chen! He shouldn’t have any ties to the Ninedawn people!”[3]

Then again, it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary. Hundreds of thousands of years had passed since the creation of the world by Great Immortal Void Embrace. No doubt, the 108,000 people that he brought to this world would have descendants who interbred with each other across the countless generations. Who could say for certain that An Jing didn’t have an ancestor of Ninedawn heritage somewhere along his family tree? Either way, it didn’t hurt to keep the divine arc of Ninedawn Armsmaster in mind.

”A divine arc is distinct from miracle or root arcs, whose bearers must constantly fulfill their lifearcs in order to improve them and eventually convert them into divine arcs. The manifestation of divine arcs by birth is a response to events in the world. Much like how the Nebulous Chaos Divine Tribulation triggered the birth of the first divine-arc bearer, An Jing, the Ninedawn Armsmaster, must’ve arisen in response to the snow calamity!”

The ghostly figure looked to the north where the northern frontier and Northmost Snowfields were located. ”During the fiend calamity of yore, the most powerful among the greater heavenly fiends, Bitter Solitude, left behind a fiend armament. Yes, this must be it. The arrival of a divine armament master is a response to this! It’s also the very same armament master who helped the Keensight Bell break through all of a sudden, earning its trust and closeness and prompting it to help him in his time of need!”

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The figure from the nether couldn’t help but look around the empty city of Keensight. ”I can’t even tell whether the fengshui of this area is good or bad. Oh well, at the very least, the Keensight Bell benefited from it.”

He stepped ahead through the nether and emerged at the center of the major terrestrial-vein formation in an instant. He gave the Keensight Bell a few taps, infusing a strand of dragon qi of the utmost purity into it. ”Little bell, come with me for now. It just so happens that my unlucky elder brother lost the celestial armament that ought to have belonged to me. As for the other divine armaments, they’re only so powerful... You, on the other hand, are quite the lucky one...”

The Keensight Bell was still quite dazed, having only recently obtained the technique to develop proper sentience from Yvelbane. Though its intelligence had yet to grow, its instincts told it that the admiration that this figure had shown it would change its destiny forever. Not to mention, the dragon qi that came from that person was far too pure, a sure sign that this person had status so high that the bell wouldn’t have been able to refuse him anyway.

Right as the Keensight Bell recognized this figure as its owner, a chubby shade hurriedly manifested in the nether from the far distance and appeared at the center of Keensight’s major terrestrial-vein formation. This was none other than Zheng Mo, city manager of Keensight!

It was hard to say whether this official was lucky or simply cursed. Right as he made his report to the prefectural bureau and expected a good evaluation for the part he played in the recent incidents, his city ended up being the place where members of the Dustdawn Sects settled their grievances! Not to mention, the Heavenly Demon Cult’s Lord Inspector of the West also made an appearance without warning and almost destroyed the entire city! If not for the evacuation conducted by Constable Wang, who had been given temporary charge of the city’s affairs, who knew how many people would’ve perished in that fiasco?

When Zheng Mo first learned about everything that transpired in his absence, he slumped weakly to the ground and almost fainted. Fortunately, it wasn’t the first time he received news so shocking; the sudden death of Shu Zheng was just as unexpected, albeit on a smaller scale in comparison. Zheng Mo did manage to persist through the True Fiend Cult’s plot to pollute the terrestrial veins of the city.

With nervous sweat drenching his back, he gritted his teeth and lit a precious stick of dragonflame incense. Using the incense’s power, he sent his soul through the nether back to Keensight in hopes that he could still make it in time to take control of the divine armament with his soul and borrow its power to suppress the dastardly Dustdawners and the cultist.

Though Zheng Mo had reacted rather quickly, nobody expected An Jing to kill the three adepts before he arrived. He received word that everything was over while his soul was still on its way through the nether. He had no idea how it came to an end, but it made no sense to turn back after he had come all that way, so he pressed on.

When he saw the other, incredibly crisp figure from the nether, he immediately got down and kneeled. ”Your humble servant greets you, Your Majesty King De!”

”Oh?” The figure from the nether was one of the Eight Sentinel Kings of Grand Chen, specifically, Xuan Guangge of the north. He turned to look at Zheng Mo with interest. ”You seem like quite the responsible sort. Even though you seem rather plain, you’re quite blessed in your own way. The fact that we met must be due to karma. I believe that you barely stand a chance to get promoted to a higher position in the northwest. What do you think about working for me instead?”

1. The Enlightening Heavenly Lord of Origin Thunder is also known by a shortened name: Thunder Ancestor. See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Ancestor A Daoist text much like the one named above is also associated with this deity. See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_Ancestor ☜

2. The Emperor of the North is also known as the Black Emperor (Heidi). See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_(god) ☜

3. This confirms some of the speculation in the previous chapter about Dustdawn’s naming and the Ninedawn (Jiuli) tribe that Chiyou was the leader of. See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiuli_tribe ☜