Destiny in Cinders

”You make it sound like it’s an ideal,” An Jing said, ”but it’s merely a description of practical reality. It is nothing but a restatement of the law of nature, the survival of the fittest.”

An Jing had listened intently through Bai Qinghan’s entire diatribe. Only after she said all she wanted to say did he shake his head and start to pick it apart. ”All people want is a sense of peace. That is why they create laws and rules and develop their respective fields of interest, including cultivation, and huddle up to the strong so that they can live their lives unbothered.

”The Heavenly Demon Cult is demonic because they chip away at that sense of peace in the name of freedom. They allow all kinds of behavior, including murder. The strong can do as they please without regard for the weak. This state of natural selection puts people in a state of anxiety, which creates involution that drives them to fight others rather than work together for the common good, driving the urge to improve. It forces people to see one another as enemies that seek to trample upon their respective freedoms in the name of furthering their own. I once wondered how seemingly peaceful techniques like brewing blood pills and Hundred-Lives Transference ended up becoming so twisted, but the answer turned out to be rather simple. It’s all due to this desperate worldview of mutual competition.”

A hint of disdain leaked into his voice. ”I also understand why those people leave Heavenly Will Mountain to become ’heaven’ on their own. They needed to find a place where they could set up their own rule uncontested by others, putting themselves at the top of their little local hierarchy to feel better about themselves. This way, they’ll be able to make the rules without being subjected to the rules of those stronger than them. They might appear free, but they’re merely slaves seeking that sense of peace. They will spend their whole lives fighting for that sense of tranquility.”

”You are correct,” Bai Qinghan said. Even though she didn’t quite understand the word ”involution,” she could guess the meaning from the context. She repeated the word quietly a few times before she sighed. ”The divine cult had never ordered anyone to ’eat’ people, but the nature of freedom is such that there will inevitably be those who try to exploit the weak commonfolk. There’s no such thing as achieving true undying immortality, but as long as these methods bring about any short-term benefit whatsoever, they will always persist. Despite all that, I have a feeling that the true teachings of the divine cult aren’t just about freedom. It’s something far more fundamental than that, but I haven’t been able to figure that out yet.”

An Jing nodded his agreement. Bai Qinghan hadn’t been corrupted by the superficial facade of the demonic cult after all. Instead, she tried to look through the sanctimonious platitudes to identify what the cult was truly about. In that sense, she didn’t fail to live up to her lofty position as the Profound Yin Goddess and was to be taken much more seriously than a minor crook like the Lord Inspector of the West who had only skimmed the surface of the cult’s teachings.

However, An Jing took all that a step further. He was a true traitor of the cult, having long figured out that the cult’s core value was neither freedom nor survival of the fittest. Their goal wasn’t anything nearly as lofty as generating anxiety and involution to promote internal competition. Those were derivatives of the core ideals of the Heavenly Will Founder, branches of thought that arose later in the cult’s history. The initial spark of truth, on the other hand, was something else.

”Is it rebellion? Or skepticism?” An Jing only had some vague guesses as to what it was from the insights he had gained upon mastering Temporal Grasp, only a hazy outline. ”Temporal Grasp is about shattering fixed intervals of time and grasping time on my own terms. Could the true essence of the cult be something like ’redefinition,’ then? No, that doesn’t feel right either.”

He recalled what Jin Yanhua had told him about the beginnings of the Heavenly Demon Cult. The Heavenly Will Founder had once been a Soaring empyrean of the Greater Ebony Cult. He betrayed his former cult and gathered up fellow unstable upstarts from the other sects of the Central Balance Dao Continent before founding the Heavenly Will Divine Cult, crossing the Celestial Ocean to reach the Northblack Sacrifice Continent. Then, the founder made the mountain range near West Ocean his home, calling it Heavenly Will Mountain, and even went against the Hallowed Grand Court which had yet to become a heavenly sect at the time. The Heavenly Demon Cult survived through the golden age of the Hallowed Grand Court after they became a heavenly sect and even through the era of their ultimate demise.

How is the Heavenly Demon Cult able to constantly thrive? How is it able to attract those so-called unstable upstarts? Something clicked in place in An Jing’s mind. ”The best way to learn about something is to learn about its natural enemy. The natural enemies of the Heavenly Demon Cult aren’t other sects, they’re the Greater Ebony Cult and the North Chen Empire. These two factions stand for the ideal of rebuilding the Heavenly Court and bringing back order. Then again, this doesn’t feel right either. The Heavenly Demon Cult has never cared about resisting order. Instead, they want to build their own order. Do they want to rebuild the Heavenly Court too? Wait, no.”

An Jing suddenly realized another similarity between the Greater Ebony Cult and Grand Chen. ”The Heavenly Court is none other than the Dao Court. Building it is the same as restoring the order from the Dao Court of antiquity. That’s a goal that the Greater Ebony Cult and the North Chen Empire both share. These factions, just like the Hallowed Grand Court of yore, are also rivals to the Heavenly Demon Cult. Both of them are heavenly sects that want to restore the ancient order of the Dao Court! But the Heavenly Demon Cult is different. Little Bai, you said that they’ve given up on the dao precepts of Great Immortal Void Embrace and started from the ground up. They go beyond worlds, beyond common sense, superseding it.”

Memories of the worldwide war in his past life surfaced in An Jing’s mind. It was such a turbulent war that it shattered everyone’s preconceived notions and values, down to the lines they would never cross. The concept of nation states was completely eradicated. Instead, what rose from that was the united body of humanity that carried the burden of everyone’s fate, something that people of the past could only dream of. It wasn’t just the construction of a brand-new nation state to replace the old. Instead, it was a never-before-seen construct that nobody had even conceived until that point. A brand-new world. A brand-new heaven.

An Jing snapped with realization. ”Don’t tell me that the Heavenly Demon Cult’s true objective is to discover a completely new ’heaven’ that can replace the ancient order of the Dao Court?!”

At that instant, the thick stack of tomes and pamphlets on the desk between the two of them flashed with blinding light.

Far away at West Ocean of the Northblack Sacrifice Continent, a celestial body deep within the azure Star Lake glowed brightly. The figure who had been observing the movement of the celestial bodies started with a look of surprise. ”Huh? Old thing... The founder’s dao intent is reacting to something. Did someone comprehend the true objective of our divine cult? I see... It’s a candidate for our Four Cardinal Archons, maybe a future manifestation of the Imperial Sky or Imperial Earth, perhaps even a successor to my position as the leader of the cult. Let’s see who it is...”

The figure raised his hand in anticipation. Star Lake began to revolve, causing celestial rivers to start flowing in a manner of profound, interlinked complication. The massive net moved and folded, entangled with itself in ever esoteric ways to form a firm major formation depicting the world of the mundane. Within it, one could see a spot that glowed crimson and gold.

The figure widened his eyes with interest. ”I see... It’s our very own divine general. Very good! Hahahaha! As expected of a divine-arc bearer. He’s able to comprehend our cult’s true objective even when left to his own devices unlike those in our cult! It appears that I’ve underestimated him too much. I should have expected as much from someone who takes the initiative to unshackle himself and exceed the world’s boundaries!”

The figure had completely given up on the notion of bringing An Jing back to Heavenly Will Mountain. People like that would have long been disqualified as dao progenies as far as other sects were concerned, but the Heavenly Divine Cult was different. The more important someone was to their aims, the fewer shackles the cult placed on them. They would simply let them roam the world, doing as they pleased. Whether they pledged their allegiance to the divine cult didn’t matter as long as they comprehended the cult’s true objective. It was their freedom to decide where to go and what to do. These people were the very embodiment of the divine cult, whether they liked it or not!

”I can’t afford to let others find out about this.” The figure tapped on Star Lake, severing the network of threads that had been observing the glowing star of crimson and gold, including the threads formed by members of the divine cult itself.

Back at Riverside, An Jing furrowed his brow at the sight of the booklet in his hands. The old title, ”Human Immortal Body Refinement Mantra,” gradually faded away, replaced by new glowing words that read, ”Supreme Truths of Heaven Man.”