Chapter 41
Translator: T_Fan
The beginning of that change could be traced back to a martial artist born in Qianyang Kingdom roughly three hundred years ago.
Qianyang Divine Demon.
Though he was a mortal without a spiritual root, he reached the Profound Realm before the age of thirty, then continued advancing into a realm that no one had even been able to name.
In the end, he displayed the terrifying might to kill a Golden Core cultivator of Kun Kingdom!
A grandmaster of the martial path from the mundane world killed a Golden Core cultivator?
The news shook the cultivation worlds of Kun Kingdom and Cang Kingdom.
Even Nascent Soul cultivators from the Biluo Sect and Danxiao Sect, the great sects of Kun Kingdom, stepped forward to punish Qianyang Kingdom.
However, Wangu Sect, a great sect of southern Cang Kingdom with Nascent Soul cultivators and a reputation for spirit insects and gu arts, suddenly intervened.
No one knew what agreement had been reached among the Nascent Soul cultivators. All that was known was that afterward, the Biluo Sect and Danxiao Sect did not attack Qianyang Kingdom, while Wangu Sect likewise made no move northward.
Many speculated that the royal family of Qianyang Kingdom had formed close ties with Wangu Sect. There were even rumors that Qianyang Divine Demon had only been able to grow so powerful because of some secret inheritance or assistance from Wangu Sect.
In any case, Qianyang Kingdom rapidly expanded its territory.
To the south, it conquered two mortal kingdoms belonging to Cang Kingdom. To the north, it swallowed Yunze Kingdom and several nearby minor kingdoms belonging to Kun Kingdom.
Present-day Qianyang Kingdom had become a peculiar nation with vast territory spanning two Tier 4 cultivation nations, Kun Kingdom and Cang Kingdom.
It possessed power that made it difficult to call it a mere mundane kingdom.
Some cultivators even joked that Qianyang Kingdom ought to be regarded as an independent Tier 3 martial nation wedged between two Tier 4 cultivation nations.
Still, the prevailing belief was that no matter how strong Qianyang Divine Demon might be, he was no match for a Nascent Soul cultivator. For that reason, many regarded him as a powerhouse comparable to late Golden Core.
However, Qianyang Divine Demon had last appeared before the public several decades ago. Rumors circulated that he had already died and the royal family was concealing the truth, while others claimed he had entered secluded cultivation in hopes of glimpsing an even higher realm.
“Wait, Yunze Kingdom was annexed?”
Lee Hyun’s gaze lingered on the northern part of the map.
The name Yunze Kingdom was nowhere to be found. In its place lay the vast territory of Qianyang Kingdom.
“So that’s how it turned out….”
Lee Hyun briefly recalled his days in Yunze Kingdom.
“Well, by the time Qianyang Divine Demon was born, everyone I knew would already have been long dead. It doesn’t mean much to me now.”
His meeting with Liu Zhenghui, who had been the king of Yunze Kingdom, and the ambush a few days later by Wei Wendao, Peng Ziliang, and Han Xiaobai of the Azure Cloud Sect had all happened five hundred and forty years ago.
Even so, seeing the kingdom’s very name erased from the map left him with a strange feeling.
…
Lee Hyun was more interested in how Qianyang Divine Demon and his disciples had transcended their limits and grown so powerful than in Qianyang Kingdom’s expansion.
For several days, he visited bookstores, martial arts schools, and inns throughout Nanmen Pass, gathering information on Qianyang Kingdom’s new martial path.
Books published in Qianyang Kingdom praised the New Martial Path, while books brought over from Kun Kingdom denounced it as a heretical path that planted insects inside human bodies.
Lee Hyun read accounts written from opposing perspectives and first extracted only the points on which both sides agreed.
The New Martial Path of present-day Qianyang Kingdom had split into several branches, but the mainstream among them was the Symbiotic Gu Path.
People shortened the name to the Gu Path, and martial artists who followed it were called gu warriors.
At the heart of the Gu Path was a symbiotic spirit insect known as the Life-Bound Gu.
「A suitable Life-Bound Gu larva is implanted into a martial artist’s dantian, after which a special internal cultivation method and medicinal baths are used to link the life force of the human and the Life-Bound Gu into a single cycle.」
Unlike mortals, the Life-Bound Gu, as a spirit insect, could absorb heaven-and-earth spiritual qi!
The host mixed the spiritual qi absorbed and initially refined by the Life-Bound Gu with their own blood qi. The power produced in this way was known as Gu Origin True Qi.
Thanks to this, even mortals without spiritual roots could circulate Gu Origin True Qi, a type of spiritual power, through their meridians and incorporate it into martial arts.
In other words, the Life-Bound Gu functioned as both a living spiritual root and a dantian.
As the Life-Bound Gu grew, the host’s lifespan increased along with it. The extent depended on the species and realm of the spirit insect, but it was hardly unusual for a powerful gu warrior to live for several hundred years. That was also why rumors that Qianyang Divine Demon was still alive never ceased.
The nature of Gu Origin True Qi also differed depending on the type of Life-Bound Gu.
Gu warriors who housed certain spirit insects possessed exceptionally strong body-protecting spirit light, while those bonded with venomous insects wielded poisonous spiritual power. Spirit insects with keen senses could even enhance their hosts’ ability to detect danger.
There were also records of gu warriors whose wounds sprouted fine insect threads instead of bleeding, the threads stitching their flesh back together. How much of that was true and how much was exaggerated remained unclear.
No one knew how many varieties of Life-Bound Gu existed in total, and there were even rumors that their number continued to grow.
Qianyang Divine Demon himself was also known to be a gu warrior who carried a Life-Bound Gu.
However, records disagreed on who had first devised the method. One account claimed Qianyang Divine Demon had learned it from an unnamed eccentric in his youth, while another said a physician of the royal family had discovered the secret method in an ancient tomb.
The most widespread suspicion was that Wangu Sect had created the Gu Path while experimenting with spirit-insect implantation on Qianyang Kingdom’s martial artists. Some even claimed that Qianyang Kingdom itself was a massive bulwark in the mundane world deliberately raised by Wangu Sect to test the possibilities of the Gu Path and expand its influence toward Kun Kingdom.
From what Lee Hyun had read so far, the Life-Bound Gu seemed capable of overturning the order of the cultivation world. After all, it allowed even mortals without spiritual roots to gain the power to fight cultivators.
But the reality was somewhat different.
The Life-Bound Gu merely substituted for the role of a spiritual root. Naturally, it could not produce spiritual qi on its own. For a gu warrior to become stronger, they had to rely on good spirit veins, pills, and spirit stones just like cultivators did.
And in the cultivation world of the present day, a good spirit vein was far rarer than a person with a spiritual root!
Even if Life-Bound Gu were distributed to ten thousand people, without the resources to cultivate, most would spend their entire lives at a realm comparable to early Qi Refining.
Moreover, to receive a Life-Bound Gu implant, one had to be a martial artist who had reached at least the Transformation Realm, with a sufficiently tempered dantian, meridians, and physical body. Otherwise, most died the moment the spirit insect was implanted.
But were Transformation Realm experts common?
Raising a single martial artist to the Transformation Realm was far more difficult than finding a child with an ordinary spiritual root.
Ultimately, the requirements were demanding in both resources and talent, making it impossible to mass-produce enough powerful gu warriors to overturn the order of the cultivation world.
Rather than a new path of cultivation, the Gu Path was closer to an expensive and dangerous detour toward immortal ascension, one open only to a small number of extraordinarily gifted mortals.
However, the mortal nations of this world possessed populations and territories beyond imagination. Among their people were many with terrifying talent who lacked nothing except a spiritual root.
In principle, the cultivation system of gu warriors was not inherently superior to cultivation.
Yet gu warriors who had first reached the Transformation Realm and then successfully achieved symbiosis with a Life-Bound Gu were actually stronger than ordinary cultivators at the same realm!
That alone meant the title of gu warrior carried considerable weight.
At present, the royal family of Qianyang Kingdom had established Gu-Rearing Institutes throughout the country to breed Life-Bound Gu.
The Gu-Rearing Institutes selected children with exceptional talent for the martial path at an early age, then tempered their bodies through martial arts and medicinal baths. Of those children, only those who reached the Transformation Realm and proved compatible with a Life-Bound Gu were permitted to receive an implant.
The outstanding gu warriors produced in this manner were assigned to the military, government offices, and armed units directly subordinate to the royal family.
Lee Hyun continued examining the materials.
「What are the disadvantages of gu warriors?
If compatibility is poor, the martial artist’s body treats the Life-Bound Gu as a foreign object and rejects it. In mild cases, this results only in fever and damaged meridians, but in severe cases, both host and spirit insect die.
The quality and species of the Life-Bound Gu determine a gu warrior’s future. Some who later attempt to replace an inferior spirit insect with a better Life-Bound Gu lose all their true qi or even their lives.
Cultivation costs are also considerable. Depending on the Life-Bound Gu, it may need to be fed specific medicinal ingredients, poisons, or demon beast blood. If food becomes scarce, it may instead consume its host’s essence blood and life force.
Because the human and spirit insect share their lives, severe injury to one also shocks the other. If the Life-Bound Gu dies, the host’s dantian often collapses, or the host descends into madness.
Above all, the Gu-Rearing Institutes that raise high-quality Life-Bound Gu are controlled by the royal family and major sects. Rare breeds are worth a fortune and cannot easily be obtained even with a cultivator’s spirit stones.」
Lee Hyun closed the book in admiration.
“Live long enough, and you really do see all kinds of things.”
At that moment, he recalled the martial artists he had encountered at the inn several days earlier.
The fuzzbees had grown excited as though they had discovered food the moment those people appeared, while the martial artists had abruptly left without knowing why.
“Wait… Did one of them have a Life-Bound Gu inside their body?”
Fuzzbees were predators specialized in devouring spirit insects and their eggs.
If one of the martial artists that day had possessed a symbiotic spirit insect in their dantian, it would explain the reactions of both the fuzzbees and the martial artists.
“So there was a gu warrior among them!”
…
“I have a rough idea of how the world has changed. Now it’s time to choose a site for Tunnel No. 3.”
Lee Hyun stacked the maps on the table atop one another.
Kun Kingdom, Cang Kingdom, and Qianyang Kingdom, which had grown between them. The shifts in power surrounding the three nations were interesting. But as someone who was still only at Qi Refining Stage 7, Lee Hyun had no reason to deliberately involve himself in the turmoil of great powers.
…
Fifteen days later.
An unnamed mountain valley near Pingling County, Shuoning Circuit, Anling Kingdom, in northwestern Kun Kingdom.
Lee Hyun sat halfway up a cliff, looking down over the surrounding mountains.
Rocky mountains stretched endlessly in every direction, and even the nearest mortal village lay more than three hundred li (about 118 km) away. There was no reason for anyone to go out of their way to come here.
Roughly six thousand li to the north lay Heiya Ridge and Qinghe Valley.
About one thousand and fifty years ago, this was one of the places Lee Hyun had passed through while fleeing Qinghe Valley and heading south past Heiya Ridge.
Over the past fifteen days, Lee Hyun had traveled throughout a radius of roughly a thousand li, marking mortal villages, highways, and minor local powers on his maps. Underground, he descended as far as twenty-five li to inspect the bedrock, water veins, and flow of earth fire, while also checking for traces of demon beasts or cultivators that had remained in the area for long periods.
There were no obvious dangers for the time being.
He had also discovered, around eighteen li beneath the valley, a bedrock layer containing several broad, stable caverns. Two narrow water veins flowed into the area from different directions.
“Tunnel No. 3 should work well here.”
‘And… it shouldn’t be difficult to establish a second Qutian Society nearby.’
Lee Hyun intended to create a new Qutian Society here.
To establish a Qutian Society, he needed a nearby spirit vein to leech from.
To the north was Qinghe Valley’s Tier 3 spirit vein, while sects and cultivation clans occupying Tier 2 spirit veins were scattered here and there around it.
Another place that caught Lee Hyun’s attention was Qianyang Kingdom to the south of Anling Kingdom.
Since Qianyang Kingdom had swallowed several mortal kingdoms, it possessed several Tier 2 spirit veins within its territory. The major Gu-Rearing Institutes that cultivated Life-Bound Gu and trained gu warriors were likely built atop those spirit veins.
If Qianyang Divine Demon was a powerhouse comparable to late Golden Core, it would not have been strange for a Tier 3 spirit vein to exist there as well. However, none of the information Lee Hyun had obtained contained any evidence that Qianyang Kingdom possessed a Tier 3 spirit vein.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter. A Tier 2 spirit vein is enough for me anyway…’
Lee Hyun considered Qianyang Kingdom a suitable place for a Qutian Society to establish itself.
The cultivation clans of Nanli Kingdom had already suffered from rogue cultivator organizations like the Qutian Society, and over the years they had developed detection formations and patrol procedures while carefully monitoring the spiritual pressure of their spirit veins.
By contrast, the gu warriors of Qianyang Kingdom had only existed as an organized force for around three hundred years. They might have learned how to fight cultivators, but they likely had not yet felt the need to hunt down rogue cultivators hiding deep underground and secretly drawing off small amounts of spiritual qi.
That meant they would also lack experience operating the relevant detection formations.
Of course, if Wangu Sect truly was behind them, countermeasures might eventually appear. Even so, it was well worth testing.
Lee Hyun did not find gu warriors particularly frightening.
They were beings who used martial arts and spiritual power together.
They were like reflections of himself.
Lee Hyun had begun combining martial arts and spiritual power far earlier than they had, and he also surpassed them in the breadth and depth of the martial learning he had accumulated. Many of the martial arts passed down from earlier generations that Qianyang Kingdom’s gu warriors drew upon belonged to lineages Lee Hyun had either encountered personally or whose inheritors he had fought.
Lee Hyun descended from the cliff.
Ssssss―
His body sank into the earth.
…
After descending eighteen li underground, Lee Hyun drew the Mountain-Suppressing Sword.
Scrrrape―
「Tunnel No. 3」
Lee Hyun first selected a flat cavern and laid out the magic tools he had obtained from the two Foundation Establishment cultivators of the Qingchao Merchant Alliance.
There were six bronze flying swords linked by matching ripple patterns, as well as a black-iron longspear with no seam between its shaft and spearhead.
The six bronze flying swords formed a set whose restrictions became complete only when all six were operated together. The black-iron longspear appeared simple, but intricate restrictions ran continuously through its entire spearhead and shaft, allowing spiritual power to flow through both at once. Both were worthy of being called high-grade magic tools.
Lee Hyun was still not well versed in the artifact-refining art. However, by combining the fundamentals of magic-tool bonding that he had learned through Introductory Guide on Telekinesis and Sword Control at Qinghe Valley with his knowledge of formation inscriptions from Changchun Sect, he had developed enough insight to examine the structure and restrictions of magic tools.
He spent several days inspecting the magic tools inside and out and confirmed that traces of spiritual power left by their deceased owners still clung to various parts of the core restrictions.
‘I won’t be able to do it immediately, but if I pour divine sense and spiritual power into them every day, I think I can gradually push out the previous owners’ traces…’
Of the iron spheres that had emerged from the longspear, only two remained intact. One had been cut apart by the Mountain-Suppressing Sword.
The spirit materials used in the iron spheres were far lower in grade than those used in the longspear, and they were not connected to the spear’s core restrictions. They were little more than auxiliary projectiles that could be enlarged with spiritual power and thrown, so Lee Hyun classified both the iron spheres and their fragments as items to be sold.
***
One year later.
Drip. Drip. Drip…
Drops of water gathered at the end of a bamboo pipe and fell.
The water traveled along the channels of Spirit Field No. 1-1 and seeped into grooves throughout the field. Once the soil became sufficiently moist, nearby formation inscriptions brightened, while the Water-Drawing Inscription that had been drawing in water dimmed instead.
The water flowing through the bamboo pipe stopped.
Lee Hyun headed toward the next spirit field.
Tunnel No. 3’s irrigation system was another step ahead of the one he had built in Tunnel No. 2.
One level above the spirit fields was a large irrigation reservoir. Low stone walls divided the inside of the reservoir into several sections, so even if one side developed a crack, all the stored water would not drain away.
The water produced with the Spirit Rain Art was clean in itself. However, the reservoir had been carved directly from the bedrock, and Lee Hyun sometimes had to leave it unattended for years at a time, so stone dust or fine sand falling from the ceiling and walls could mix into the water. To prevent settled debris from entering the pipes, Lee Hyun positioned the openings of the bamboo pipes a handspan above the bottom of the reservoir.
Each spirit field was connected to its own independent bamboo pipe and formation inscriptions leading from the reservoir. When the water qi in the soil became insufficient, a basic formation inscription activated the Water-Drawing Inscription, allowing a small amount of water to flow through. Once the soil was sufficiently wet, the Water-Drawing Inscription deactivated and stopped water from entering the pipe.
It was a system Lee Hyun would have struggled to create before learning basic formation inscriptions at Changchun Sect.
Rather than relying on separate spirit stones, the formation inscriptions operated using the spiritual qi remaining in the reservoir water that Lee Hyun had produced with the Spirit Rain Art.
The formation inscriptions consumed a small amount of spiritual qi, but because water was now delivered only where and when it was needed, overall consumption actually decreased. The new irrigation system could maintain the spirit fields for three years even if Lee Hyun did not return.
‘I could make it last longer by enlarging the reservoir, but expanding the caverns this far underground would be dangerous.’
Whenever Lee Hyun built tunnels, he made use of natural bedrock and caverns whenever possible.
That was because he had never studied civil engineering or architecture in his past life and could not calculate the loads and pressures the bedrock could withstand deep underground.
‘It might be worth looking for relevant knowledge in this world later….’
Tunnel No. 3 consisted of four main levels. At the top were the cultivation chamber, storeroom, and resting room. Beneath them came the irrigation level and spirit-field level. At the very bottom was a drainage level designed to handle any unexpected influx of water from the underground aquifer into the spirit fields.
He did not create any broad air shafts that might leave visible traces on the surface. Instead, he connected narrow, winding natural fissures to the caves and bedrock caverns, allowing air to circulate, however slowly. In truth, breathing underground was not much of a problem for Lee Hyun, who possessed the Air-Clearing Art.
The spirit-field numbers remained the same as before.
The locations had changed, but the lineages and records of the spirit plants growing within them continued uninterrupted. If he changed their names as well, it would become confusing whenever he consulted cultivation ledgers spanning hundreds of years.
Lee Hyun recreated all twelve fields, from Spirit Field No. 1-1 through Spirit Field No. 1-7 and Spirit Field No. 2-1 through Spirit Field No. 2-5, inside the new bedrock. The test spirit field used for research into bone age manipulation was placed separately outside them.
Spirit Field No. 1-1 contained eighty-one Bone-Rot Flowers with an average medicine age of 349 years, 282 Yin Soul Grass plants, seventy-three Purple Poison Orchid bulbs, and fifty-two Earth Vein Flowers.
Spirit Field No. 1-2 through Spirit Field No. 1-5 contained a total of 432 Bone-Rot Flowers with an average medicine age of 315 years, 1,104 Yin Soul Grass plants, 292 Purple Poison Orchid bulbs, and 204 Earth Vein Flowers, divided among the four fields.
The oldest Yin Water Lotus in Spirit Field No. 1-6 and the three Stone Honey Peach trees in Spirit Field No. 1-7 had reached a medicine age of 295 years. The Yin Water Lotus he had divided and replanted after joining Changchun Sect and the three Stone Honey Peach trees grown from cuttings had also surpassed a medicine age of five years and were becoming well established.
Spirit Field No. 2-1 through Spirit Field No. 2-5 remained Spirit-Storing Ginseng fields. Five hundred and fifty-two Spirit-Storing Ginseng roots had reached a medicine age of 180 years, while another 915 roots had reached thirty-eight years.
“In another sixty years, the medicine age of those 552 roots will reach two hundred years. There must be countless Tier 2 pill recipes in the world that use Spirit-Storing Ginseng…”
Spirit-Storing Ginseng was a spirit plant with relatively neutral properties, and its primary function was to store spiritual power, so it was likely used in many different pill recipes.
Lee Hyun scooped up a handful of soil from the edge of the spirit field. Because he had moved the soil slabs intact during the relocation, almost none of the Spirit-Storing Ginseng roots had been damaged.
Bzzzzzz―
A fuzzbee flew over from somewhere and landed on the back of Lee Hyun’s hand. White, sticky larval slime clung to its golden fur.
“You ate something weird again.”
Plop.
As though offended by the accusation, the fuzzbee defecated, then threw itself onto the freshly packed dry soil.
Rrrrroll.
As the fellow rubbed its back against the dirt to wipe away the slime, three nearby fuzzbees followed suit and threw themselves onto the ground one after another.
“Do you like your new home?”
…
Tunnel No. 3’s alchemy chamber lay around twenty-five li underground.
Its design was more advanced than the alchemy chamber in Tunnel No. 2. A separate passage in the ceiling allowed heat and smoke to escape, while one side of the stone wall had been carved thin so that if the pill furnace exploded, the pressure could vent into an empty cavern.
Nine red formation stones were embedded in the floor of the alchemy chamber, forming a wide circle. They were the Nine-Fire Flame-Storing Formation that Lee Hyun had recovered from Tunnel No. 2.
However, the size of the formation and the arrangement of its formation inscriptions were slightly different from before.
At the center stood not the pill furnace he had purchased from the Fengtian Bureau, but the Tier 1 pill furnace of supreme grade he had received from a steward of the Yang Fire Court when leaving Changchun Sect.
Lee Hyun widened the spacing between the formation stones to match the size of the new pill furnace and modified only the portions of the Nine-Fire Flame-Storing Formation’s formation inscriptions that interacted with the restrictions on the furnace’s surface. He had not created an entirely new formation, but after dozens of tests, he successfully expanded a proven formation to fit a different specification.
Fwoosh―
When Lee Hyun released his hand seal, the nine burners died down one after another.
When he opened the lid of the pill furnace, ivory-colored powder lay evenly settled across the bottom. Lee Hyun checked the powder’s medicinal potency and impurities, then divided it evenly into six medicine packets.
It was Tier 1 Bone-Forging Powder.
Lee Hyun carried the packets to the storeroom. On one shelf sat three magic tools used to measure bone age, along with thick ledgers he had compiled over the past dozen or so years.
At present, after taking Bone-Forging Powder, Lee Hyun could adjust the bone age displayed by all three magic tools to anywhere between thirty-five and eighty-five. The discrepancy between the three tools was no more than two years.
He sorted the finished Bone-Forging Powder according to the target bone age and the timing of the examination.
「Bone age 35. Examination 10 to 20 days after taking.」
…
「Bone age 85. Examination 8 to 17 days after taking.」
Lee Hyun placed each medicine packet in a small jade casket and sealed it with a Tier 1 Spirit-Sealing Talisman. Jade caskets of identical size were neatly stacked along one side of his storage pouch.
…
After completing Tunnel No. 3, Lee Hyun changed his appearance under several different identities and traveled among cultivator markets in Anling Kingdom and Qianyang Kingdom. His purpose was to dispose of the items from the storage pouches of the two Foundation Establishment cultivators.
He kept the six bronze flying swords, the black-iron longspear, the two storage pouches, some healing pills meant for injuries, and a few general-purpose talismans. The iron spheres and the remaining pills, talismans, and spirit materials were divided up and sold across several cultivator markets.
The proceeds amounted to thirty-eight mid-grade spirit stones. He added those to his existing spirit stones and the spirit stones he had obtained from the two cultivators’ storage pouches, then exchanged most of his low-grade spirit stones for mid-grade spirit stones to reduce their bulk. After settling everything, he had 145 mid-grade spirit stones and 100 low-grade spirit stones remaining.
“That takes care of everything I need to do for now. What’s left is finding an environment with enough spiritual pressure to push the upper limit of my spiritual power even higher in late Qi Refining….”
He looked at the new map pinned to the wall. The spirit veins of Kun Kingdom and Qianyang Kingdom had been marked on it.
“Time to establish the Qutian Society.”
***
Two hundred and eighty years later.
Anling Kingdom, a mortal kingdom in northwestern Kun Kingdom.
In the most remote alley of Huiyan Marketstood a shabby shop called Baiwu Shop
Its worn shelves were piled with low-quality spirit materials, empty jade bottles, and old fragments of magic tools whose purposes were impossible to identify. Most days, not a single customer entered the shop.
Late at night, a closed sign was hung on the door of Baiwu Shop. The rogue cultivator minding the store pushed aside a chest on the floor and pressed his identity token against a hidden formation inscription beneath it.
Grrrrrk―
A staircase leading underground appeared.
The rogue cultivator took a black crow mask from inside his robe, put it over his face, and descended the stairs.
Five cultivators had arrived before him and were waiting in masks inside Baiwu Shop’s underground stone chamber. Their masks depicted a gray mountain goat, a yellow field mouse, a blue snake, a white owl, and a mole.
The rogue cultivator in the black crow mask took the last empty seat.
Just then.
Tap.
A small pebble jumped from the floor on one side of the stone chamber.
The solid floor soon rippled like water, and a cultivator in purple robes rose ghostlike from beneath the earth. A Badger mask covered his face.
Every member who witnessed the sight for the first time had much the same thought.
‘What a terrifying technique! Is there really an Earth Escape Art in this world that can pass straight through granite? Society Head must surely be a Foundation Establishment cultivator, no… perhaps he might even be a Golden Core great cultivator!’
All six people rose at once and cupped their hands.
“Greetings, Society Head.”
“Good. Begin your reports.”
None of the members truly knew the origins of the ‘Two Heavens Society’. They did not even know exactly when the organization had been founded.
If anything, not knowing the origin of the name only made the Two Heavens Society seem more mysterious and profound. Since no one knew what the “two heavens” in its name actually referred to, increasingly elaborate theories continued to emerge.
One member claimed that the name referred to drawing upon the spiritual qi of two “heavens”, Kun Kingdom and Qianyang Kingdom.
Another insisted that the two heavens were the world aboveground and the world underground. Yet another speculated that there were actually two different people acting as the Badger Society Head, and that this was why the organization was called the Two Heavens Society.
It did not matter which interpretation, if any, was correct. Simply belonging to such a mysterious secret organization filled the members with pride, a sense of belonging, and even a certain sense of superiority.
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