Destiny in Cinders

The divine cult didn’t have any fixed rules at all. When Bai Qinghan arrived at Heavenly Will Mountain, she wasn’t in any rush to cultivate. She wasn’t even confused after witnessing the fate of the defeated adept. Instead, she went to the archives and read through any of the chronicles of the cult’s history that she liked, helped by a teacher appointed by the cult.

After one month and seventeen thick, heavy stacks of records, Bai Qinghan finally finished reading through the history of the divine cult and came to understand some things. The Heavenly Divine Cult had never had rules since the very beginning. Anyone powerful enough could kill or plunder as they wished. It didn’t matter if it was just a whim caused by a bad mood. One could casually cull the chaff in the cult to vent.

When one’s mood was better, perhaps one might expound the dao for free and even distribute the cult’s arcana and abilities to others. Another activity to improve one’s mood even more might be to give a farmer a weapon and ask them to jump into the ring with a savage beast for an entertaining show. A cultist could even get involved in a war between two kingdoms and save a group of refugees, offering them protection and using them to expand into the wilderness to build one’s own settlement or manor.

One was free to pursue things that weren’t part of the martial path, such as improving one’s culinary skills. The option to seclude oneself in the mountains for silent cultivation was also available. One didn’t need to engage with affairs outside of one’s own niche and could focus wholeheartedly on a particular area of study.

The Heavenly Will Founder had taken hundreds of martialists and artisans of various crafts from many different sects of the Central Balance Dao Continent with him and established his own grotto during the founding of his sect. Yet, he didn’t burden them with laws or taboos, allowing the group of people to hate and discriminate against each other as they pleased. They were free to compete with one another to establish a pecking order and enjoy all that their environment had to offer.

They had ultimate freedom and thus were not free. Upon reading to that point, this was the insight that Bai Qinghan gained. She had survived in the wilderness for ten years since the Hanhai Fiend Calamity. It was an utterly lawless existence where killing and eating humans were the norm.

But that didn’t mean that the wilderness had no order whatsoever. There were people who would help others without expecting anything in return. There were also primitive tribes of vagabonds that dealt with one another with an informal code. If one side killed someone from the other side, a blood debt would have to be paid to settle the matter, lest the two tribes devolved into all-out war. There was also a black market in the wilderness. Stealing was fine as long as one didn’t get caught. Those who were would be strung up on a block of withered wood infested with sandworms. The sandworms would then wriggle into their bodies and use it as a nest and sustenance for their young.

Fights and robberies were common too, with some bloody conflicts ending with only a single survivor. Yet, even these merciless martialists would chuckle and toss a few dried rations Bai Qinghan’s way on a whim when they passed by the hole she hid within. Heavenly Will Mountain was not that different. There was always a dominance hierarchy wherever there were people.

If no higher power bequeathed them with laws, they would come up with their own makeshift set of rules. Like the grains of sand that formed a dune or the droplets of rain that gathered to form oceans, such rules eventually converged into a system of order. Humans were similar to nature in some ways, yet differed in others. The natural world was predisposed toward chaos and disorder, but humans were inclined to rules and order.

However, humans weren’t eternal, yet the natural world continued to give rise to more new life and chaos. Then, the strongest martialists would rise again and impose their will upon the natural world, pulling order out from chaos once more, giving rise to yet more potential and life. The truths contained in the cycle of yin and yang, life and death, stillness and movement, positive and negative, were reflected in the transition from the end of major yin into the beginning of minor yin.

Once she understood that point, she reevaluated what she had seen. Adept Mountain Dweller, who had defeated his opponent, didn’t end up dwelling in the mountain. Instead, he took over an altar of the cult at a different location. According to him, he could no longer dwell in the mountains with a carefree attitude after rage and arrogance infested his state of mind. Instead, he would use his determination to shape the world according to his will, heavenly will.

He could do as the Lord Inspector of the West did, claiming blood debts and consuming the lives of others to nourish his own. He could also do as the Lord Inspector of the North did, spreading his influence into the heavenly sect empire like a webspinner, building a karmic network of cause and effect. There was also the option of walking the Lord Inspector of the Nether’s path, roaming the gloomy sea of nether and joining hands with fiendgods and dead souls, answering summons and making deals with them in their simulacrum of a civilized society of contracts and contractors. He could also raise oceanic beasts and sprites like the Lord Inspector of the Sea and cut off contact with humans altogether, focusing on creating the ideal lifeform.

Humans were consumed as a result of blood debts while lives were consumed as a result of karmic consequence. The law of death applied equally to all, pulling souls into its realm at the end of their lifespans all the same whether they were good or evil in nature. The laws of life eliminated the weak in favor of the strong. More than ten times the number of humans had died to creatures of the oceans than to the Lord Inspector of the West’s crooked deeds, yet those very same aquatic creatures had also served as nourishment for many coastal humans themselves.

Bai Qinghan came to understand that this was all part of heavenly will, even human will and agency. This pure principle was held firm in the heart, above even the highest of heavens, rivaled only by the stars above. Every single person was unique, unlike any other, giving rise to countless variations of dreams and ambitions, as many as the specks of red dust in the realm of mortals. ℴ

Though there was no natural or heavenly law that stipulated it, law and order arose naturally, advocated freely by humans without coercion. By the same token, Heavenly Will Mountain didn’t force anyone to obey rules nor punish any kind of behavior. Instead, norms naturally arose among the people there. There were enforcers who tried to judge and punish according to their own sensibilities, of course, but if one was stronger than said enforcers, even the so-called rules of the cult were utterly nonbinding.

It went without saying that the strongest members of the cult had the final say in every matter at Heavenly Will Mountain. As such, even though people were free to do anything they wanted, they were also constrained by having to adhere to the will of the strong. That was why cultists who lost their peace chose to leave Heavenly Will Mountain, filled with the impulse to create something new. The Lord Inspector of the North, Lord Inspector of the West and many others who willingly traveled away from Heavenly Will Mountain wanted space to construct and apply their own edicts. They wanted to embody...

”...heaven themselves.” Bai Qinghan said as she began to recite the ode of the cult.

”Great Heaven forged this mortal clay,

Yet the foolish rush to forsake the grace.

Where leads the doom of fate’s decay?

Mine is the path that lights this place.

Divine is that which guides my way,

Celestial are those who tread the path divine,

Sacred are those who know Heaven’s will.

”Members of the divine cult practice different forms of divine will. Those who fail to grasp the true will of heaven and pigeonhole themselves into their own will would only ever amount to being average martialists. They would never get their hands on the core teachings. This applies even to me, the Profound Yin Goddess. But after I got the true meaning of the cult’s teachings, I realized that my progress on the Imperial Sky and Earth Arts skyrocketed. The very next day, an untainted alabaster pill appeared on my desk. It’s a prime medication brewed using celestial moon qi. I also got the Minor Yin Piercing Truth Mantra and Major Yin Tranquility Scripture to go with it.

”Maybe that’s a reward for the progress I’ve made, some kind of acknowledgement of my efforts. It could also be a trial of sorts. I have no idea what they intend with them. All I felt was that it was finally time for me to start cultivating, so I did. That wraps up my experience at Heavenly Will Mountain with the cult. It’s a whole new world, completely different from how I imagined it.”