Where Immortals Once Walked

“Really?” He Lingchuan lifted Fleeting Life, flipped it in his hand, and held it out to Fushan Yue. “Then why don’t you take a closer look?”

Fushan Yue did not stand on ceremony. He approached the saber and inspected it thoroughly from pommel to tip. “Hm, ring pommel with a flood-dragon head ornament. Yeah, that part’s very similar. But the grip’s a different length, and the curve of the blade is different too.” It’s clearly not the same saber. “Where’d you get this?”

He Lingchuan shrugged. “It’s a treasured saber passed down in my family. That question’s for my ancestors.”

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. How could it even be possible that the treasured saber the King of Yuān had entrusted away just happened to end up in the hands of some obscure nobody like this? Besides, flood dragon heads were a common decoration. I mean, half the blades in the world have lion heads or Yazi heads on them, does that mean they’d all been forged in the same furnace? It seems like I’m just being paranoid.

Fushan Yue snorted softly at himself.

He Lingchuan, however, pressed on. “What’s an elixir of youth?”

Fushan Yue scratched his head. “The name kind of tells you what it does, doesn’t it? It’s something that only Lingxu City produces, and I never paid attention to the details.”

“You’re about to inherit a throne, and you still don’t know?” He Lingchuan had not missed a single word in that phantom scene. “It sounded like every newly risen monster king has to drink it, but then they’re bound by the gods. So, are you going to drink it?”

For once, Fushan Yue actually looked torn.

“Ugh, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.” In the end, he waved the question away. “Let’s go back. It’ll be dawn any minute now.”

He Lingchuan looked at the sky and estimated that in another quarter hour or so, the sky would indeed begin to pale. Thus, he did not argue.

They had been running around all night, but with cultivation backing them, as well as weirdness to watch, they did not feel tired at all.

Once they got back to camp, daylight really did break.

The caravan packed and moved out. He Lingchuan and Fushan Yue returned to their respective groups and, without needing a word of agreement, kept last night’s discoveries firmly to themselves.

Second Boss Shi asked He Lingchuan, “Any strange phenomena inside the city last night?”

“Nope, it was just peaceful and quiet. Nothing weird happened,” He Lingchuan said with a shake of his head. “We wandered around aimlessly. The people in the phantom city snored louder than you lot.”

“Nothing happening is good, very good.” Second Boss Shi sounded genuinely relieved. This journey had been hair-raising from start to finish. He had faced more accidents in a few days than he had in years. He only wanted the rest of the road to be smooth and uneventful.

And so, the caravan pushed on.

The road grew flatter and flatter, and during this time, He Lingchuan rode on the ram’s back, uncharacteristically silent.

Second Boss Shi glanced at him several times and found him staring into the distance, dazed, as though his mind had drifted far away.

But He Lingchuan’s thoughts were still completely stuck on the scenes in the phantom city of the night before.

It was now clear that the Generous Pot, the divine bone amulet, and Fleeting Life—or at least what it once was—had all belonged to the King of Yuān. The king had even believed that Beijia’s brutal assault on the State of Yuān was driven largely by the Generous Pot.

Unfortunately, the black box had only been opened a narrow crack, and it had even been angled toward Shao Jian. He Lingchuan and Fushan Yue had not seen what the Generous Pot actually looked like.

However, the King of Yuān had been desperate to destroy it and utterly unable to. He could only keep it, and in the end, it drew calamity to his door.

This meant that “not having it” mattered deeply.

He Lingchuan, as someone who came later, knew that even after the Generous Pot reached Zhong Shengguang, it had not been destroyed. It had been put to other uses. Even now, that treasure was still in the Panlong Wasteland, not taken by anyone.

Was it truly indestructible even for Zhong Shengguang? Or did Zhong Shengguang choose not to destroy it once he had it because he had other plans?

Either possibility clashed with what He Lingchuan thought he knew.

From Sun Fuping, the former state preceptor of Yuan, He Lingchuan had heard a different story: that Zhong Shengguang performed the rite of divine recompense only after the Panlong Wasteland became an enclave again and millions of residents were driven to desperation. Only then did the god Mitian grant him the Generous Pot and send an avatar down into the mortal realm.

However, what He Lingchuan had just witnessed was the opposite: the Generous Pot had already been in the mortal realm, passed from the King of Yuān to Zhong Shengguang, then carried onward to Panlong City.

So which account was true?

As the King of Yuān’s words echoed in his mind, a thought suddenly flashed in his mind. He Lingchuan suddenly thought of those ferry-crossing ghostspawn skulking around Panlong City and Wen Daolun’s cold refusal to save his own son.

He even thought of that tribe in Demon Nest Swamp that had been devoured to nothing by a divine child.

When he threaded these events together, the faint, hidden line behind them slowly sharpened into something visible.

If it were anyone else, they could only sigh helplessly. The people involved were gone, scattered to the wind; the truth could not be verified.

However, it was different for He Lingchuan. After all, he had people he could ask.

He could go back and trace the secret that no one spoke of.

And yet, another suffocating fact pressed down on him.

The King of Yuān held the three-piece set of the Generous Pot, the divine bone, and the treasured saber, but in the end, he still lost, and Qianxing City was destroyed.

Zhong Shengguang held the same three-piece set, and in the end, he slit his own throat, and Panlong City was destroyed.

It was practically a curse with a hundred percent lethality rate.

And now the set had fallen into He Lingchuan’s hands.

How long before that curse decided to take effect on him?

After seeing the King of Yuān’s end tonight, his heart felt like it had turned to ice.

It was as if an invisible hand had clamped down on his fate and begun dragging him toward an unknown abyss, or perhaps toward a predetermined destiny. And these three items were the handles it used to pull.

Why had the King of Yuān failed? Why had Zhong Shengguang failed?

There was no mystery there. They had both faced an enemy that could not be defeated, namely Beijia.

He had not yet personally witnessed the final segment of Panlong City’s history, but from the monster state’s ever more frequent and increasingly brazen interference, Panlong City’s eventual destruction was almost certainly tied to Beijia as well.

If even the King of Yuān and Zhong Shengguang were defeated, then if taking up the three-piece set meant he would one day face the same enemy, what was he supposed to do?

What ending awaited him?

And there was another layer of dread, the Generous Pot’s existence was extremely secretive, so how had Beijia discovered it in the King of Yuān’s possession? And then in Zhong Shengguang’s?

What method did they use to track the whereabouts of a divine artifact like that?

Most importantly, the King of Yuān had said Beijia would certainly find the holder of the Generous Pot, no matter the ends of the world.

The pot was not on He Lingchuan’s body.

But in the current situation, he could still, albeit barely, be considered its holder.

His hand went to the amulet on his chest.

He did not want to die a senseless death, but this divine bone amulet... he simply could not get rid of it!

And when he linked that to his strange fate, and to the two dreadful worst lots that he had drawn in a row at the Water Spirit Shrine by Immortal Spirit Lake, and to the secret he had just learned tonight, it all felt tangled together, knotted into one suffocating rope.

So what was he supposed to do next?

He could not just keep drifting through life, wandering from place to place like before. Who knew when the gods or Beijia might turn their gaze toward him?

Disaster always arrived when you were not looking.

If he wanted to understand the enemy, he had to start by understanding himself.

He needed to uncover the secret of the Generous Pot.

What exactly was it? What did it do? Why were even the gods desperate to find it?

Beijia was the state favored by the gods, proudly claiming they stood closest to the divine. If there was anywhere he might find a clue, it was here.

And he was already here. If he truly could not escape the net, then knowing early was better than knowing late, and preparing early was better than preparing late.

Of course, his connection to the Generous Pot was a secret—an absolute secret. It could not be allowed to reach a second person’s ears.

He had to clamp down on it with everything he had!

* * *

Four hours earlier.

Lingxu City, the celestial palace on Mount Xu.

At the very top of the celestial palace stood the Star-Plucking Tower. Inside, sixteen eternal lamps[1] burned without pause through the night. No matter the hour, the light here remained soft and bright.

However, people still needed rest.

Deep silence lay over everything. Even the lamp wicks made no popping sound. Two lamp guardians stood beside the eternal flames, rubbing their eyes again and again.

They both possessed cultivation, yet during their watch, they were forbidden to close their eyes and regulate their breathing. They could only yawn endlessly or use peppermint oil inhaled through the nose to keep themselves sharp.

Tonight felt especially long. One guardian finally lost the battle against drowsiness and leaned against a pillar, drifting off.

Watching someone else sleep always made it worse. The remaining guardian yawned until tears ran down his face, imagining how satisfying it would be to slap his companion awake when he suddenly heard a soft rasping sound.

For the Star-Plucking Tower’s guardians, it was a familiar sound, but why would it happen in the middle of the night?

He snapped his eyes open.

The eternal flames surged violently, and the altar flared with crimson light.

On the white jade dais at the center of the great hall, the Heavenly Tome began to glow, pages turning without wind.

This was not silk or paper.

It was a slab of white jade carved and refined into a book—hard as stone most of the time, but at certain moments it softened like paper.

The guardian rushed forward. Where the tome had been blank, red words now appeared slowly: Ten in Resonance, Tianluo in Turmoil.[2]

The guardian slapped his companion awake. “A divine edict! Go report it! Now!”

The other guardian jolted upright, too startled to curse him. After one glance at the Heavenly Tome, he sprinted out of the Star-Plucking Tower.

* * *

Less than an hour later, armored guards ringed the base of the tower.

The two guardians had been sent far away, and only one person stood inside the great hall.

All sixteen eternal lamps dimmed at once. Their ten-centimeter pure-white flames were crushed down into bean-sized embers, trembling on the verge of extinction.

The phenomenon lasted less than two breaths, then everything returned to normal.

Against a pure white hanging curtain, an enormous silhouette appeared, advancing into the depths of the hall before stopping at the altar.

The person inside immediately dropped to his knees, calling out, “Lord Emperor.”

The tall, elongated shadow rose, rising until it was level with the altar, towering above the white jade dais.

A voice of cold majesty sounded, “Why has Tianluo stirred?”

“Reporting to Lord Emperor, the Tianluo Star suddenly blazed bright four hours ago and remained so for more than an hour. It’s only just entered the eighth month, so by all logic, it shouldn’t be shining now. The last time Tianluo behaved like this...”

“I remember, I don’t need you to remind me.” The Lord Emperor then asked, “I want confirmation. The Divine Majesty believes the disturbance Tianluo sensed this time originates from—”

Two words appeared rapidly on the Heavenly Tome: Generous Pot.

The words were blood-red and steeped in ill omen.

The hall fell silent, the air congealing.

“But hasn’t that thing always been in the northwest of Yuan? You told me it already fused with the entire Panlong Desert and cannot be extracted.”

If it could be taken, Beijia would have done so long ago. They would not have waited until now.

The Heavenly Tome gave no response.

Evidently, even the god could not answer that question, hence the edict descended at all.

The Cloud Envoy said, “Our divination indicates that the divine artifact has appeared within our state. The location is north of the Twilight Plains, east of Mount Xing.”

Only then did the monster emperor sound surprised. “Within our nation? No mistake?”

“There has never been a mistake before.”

The monster emperor’s voice carried a faint, cutting mockery. “So, someone can pull it out after all.”

No one in the hall could respond to that rebuke.

The monster emperor asked again, “North of the Twilight Plains, east of Mount Xing covers southern Chiyan. Can’t the Divine Majesty be more precise?”

1. These are also sometimes called votary lamps and altar lamps, and they are typically ever-burning, symbolic lights found in temples, ancestral halls, and tombs. These usually represent the continuation of life, wisdom, and the presence of divinity or ancestors, signifying the passing of knowledge and the endurance of spirit. Most of them used to be fueled by oil, but they’re now typically just connected to electricity. ☜

2. The “Ten” here could refer to ten directions, ten sides, ten parties, etc. I’m not too sure either, but it could also just refer to the supposed ten stars in this world’s Big Dipper? I recall them mentioning that Tianluo is the tenth star. ☜