Chapter 1119: Vast Heaven and Earth

If one traveled south from the central part of the western planetary system, and went roughly 1.985 billion kilometers, they would eventually reach a mountain named Inkstone.[1]

There was a valley in that mountain, within which was a mysterious pond of emerald-green water. Occasionally, evil spirits would swim in the water. They looked like nothing more than smoke on the water, and if you touched them, they would vanish. The surrounding crags resembled bizarre dog fangs. Ancient trees rose up, creating a leafy canopy that blocked the sun.

Next to the pond was a stone dais, upon which was an inscription carved in very ancient characters. It said:

“Evil has fallen here. The good shall stay away.”

Few people came to this location. Most just passed by as quickly as possible. The only people who did come were those who practiced cultivation that required evil energy. But even they would only come when the aura above was brightest, and they would never stay longer than an hour.

Standing just outside of Mount Inkstone was a young man in a black robe, who was peering at the pitch-black mountain.

According to the rumors, there was a fiendish devil cultivator in ancient times who buried his sword here just before he died. The sword’s name was Inkstone. It eventually became this mountain, which was full of evil energy. And that was how the Pond of Fallen Evil formed.

This young man was Xu Qing, who had left Darkcloud City some time ago.

After escorting Yunmen Qianfan to Darkcloud City, he decided to do some traveling in the west. He focused on areas from the bamboo scroll Yunmen Qianfan had given him, specifically, the ones similar to the Desert of Time that had fantastic names and bizarre stories attached to them.

The Pond of Fallen Evil was his first stop.

After studying the mountain for a while, he waited until the aurora was at its brightest, then started walking up Mount Inkstone. He walked past boulders and thickets until he reached the valley. He saw the pond and he saw the dais with the inscription.

He also saw the so-called evil spirits. He studied them. They approached malevolently, howling viciously. They looked like they wanted to devour Xu Qing. However, as soon as they touched him, they collapsed into smoke.

This place isn’t strong enough to kill a cultivator instantly. But it could infect the soul, slowly devouring one’s flesh and blood. If you stay too long, you’ll eventually die. Some of it has to do with the time of day you enter. When the aurora in the sky is dark, the evil spirits here will be much stronger.

Xu Qing cast his senses about to scan the area before focusing on the pond itself. His eyes glittered mysteriously as his gaze penetrated the water, passing through the ripples on the surface. At the bottom of the pond was a stone coffin.

I definitely don’t want to touch that thing.

Xu Qing’s eyes narrowed. He could tell that the coffin was extraordinary. And what was more, it was giving him a feeling of extreme danger. After studying the place for about an hour, he turned to leave.

This isn’t a place I need to seek enlightenment from.

Just as he was about to step out of the valley, a sinister wind blew from the pond, causing all the vegetation to rustle. The sounds seemed ordinary in nature. Any mortal present would just hear the wind blowing and the leaves stirring. But Xu Qing’s senses picked up more. There was clearly a gruish chanting in the wind.

“Silky grass among scattered trees, an icy rain the wind does chase.

“A frail and lonely soul simply longs for a bit of friendly grace.

“A lonely dais next to a spring; why, sir, did you come to this place?

“Through the haze, the lantern reveals a most beautiful face....”

The icy voice echoed in the silent valley. It was like a lonely spirit calling out into the night from the Yellow Springs.

At the same time, the surface of the pond rippled as the head of a woman rose halfway up from the water. She had an extremely pale face and dark hair that sank down into the water around her. As for her eyes, they were pure white as she stared at Xu Qing.

All of a sudden, everything started freezing over. The land. The plants. The crags. A frigid coldness spread out in all directions, causing everything to pulsate.

Then the woman in the pond vanished, almost as if she had teleported. She was now floating above the pond. Her gown was white, and she was surrounded by rippling distortions. She was about to continue with whatever she was doing when a huge pair of shears suddenly appeared above Xu Qing’s head. They snapped loudly. An invisible thread was severed.

The severing of the thread caused the woman to cease her teleportations. She hovered in place, a few hundred meters away from Xu Qing, looking at him with her white eyes.

𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Xu Qing had remained calm the entire time. “I’m not your enemy,” he said coolly. “But if you keep pestering me, I’ll make sure you aren’t able to stick around here any longer.”

With that, he continued on his way. After he was gone, the temperature in the valley went back to normal.

Without any hesitation, Xu Qing left Mount Inkstone. Once he was a good distance away, he looked back. He could sense that the gruish woman who had appeared was no longer there. But he could still hear her chanted words ringing in his ears.

The stories aren’t true. There’s no sword buried there. There’s a god sealed there. And the fact that the mountain is still infected despite the sealing goes to show that it’s a peak Altar God at the very least.

He turned and left.

Half a month passed.

765 million kilometers to the south of the central part of the western region was a plain called Heavenwind.

In the eastern part of that plain was a vast cave that was essentially a tunnel that stretched for thousands of kilometers. The further you got into the cave, the more cramped it got, until it was extremely narrow. It was a very mysterious place. Within the cave there was a nameless wind. It was a very strong wind that was rumored to be controlled by an immortal that lived inside.

Anyone who walked into the depths of the cave would eventually see strange carvings on the walls.

People say that the carvings are charms carved by the immortal that controls the wind. Supposedly, they contain the secret of how to summon and manipulate the wind. It’s common for mutant beasts to appear in the cave. They can travel within the wind, as they’re partly illusory.

It had taken Xu Qing about half a month to reach Heavenwind Cave. Now he stood outside, looking down at the description from the bamboo scroll Yunmen Qianfan had given him. Then he sent his divine will out to scan the area. His eyes gleamed.

This is a marvelous place. There’s a dao lineament of wind authority here. And it’s publicly open for people to seek enlightenment. There are hundreds of cultivators down there meditating.... The deeper you get into the cave, though, the less people you find. The wind gets stronger, and the more charms are carved into the walls.

Xu Qing had encountered wind authority before. And by using his dao of wood, he had been able to imitate it to an extent.

He strode down into the Heavenwind Cave. As he proceeded into the depths of the cave, he passed many cultivators who were seated cross-legged in meditation. He didn’t pay much attention to them, and they didn’t pay much attention to him.

Ten days later, he left.

A few months later, he appeared a great distance away in the Firevoid Mountains, which were in the western most parts of the western planetary system. The sky there was red, and the mountains stretched for 90 million miles. They had undulating peaks, and were made from volcanic rock that was bright red and constantly emanated burning heat. Occasionally, flame phoenixes would soar in the air, breathing fire and shaking the surroundings. There were lots of hot springs in the mountains, and the steam they let loose formed clouds and fog.

Supposedly, somewhere deep in the Firevoid Mountains was the Firevoid Immortal Palace. It was a palace of operations originally built by one of the Fifth Star Ring’s eleven Immortal Lords, who was called Immortal Lord Firevoid.

People connected to the immortal palace by destiny could search for it and find it. In doing so, they could

reach heaven in a single bound

, and become apprenticed to Lord Firevoid. That said, from ancient times until modern, that story had been nothing more than that: a story. No one had ever acquired the destined opportunity it mentioned.

Xu Qing stayed in the Firevoid Mountains for about half a month. He went to many places, but never found any immortal palace. However, thanks to the fire that was everywhere, his understanding of five elements fire grew more profound. That said, his experience left him with a new question.

Where did all this fire come from...?

No answer came to him. Despite exploring the depths of the mountains, he never found any clues. The fire seemed to be naturally occurring. As if it

grew

there. It didn’t seem like

grew

was the perfectly right word, but it made sense to Xu Qing based on what he had seen. At a certain point, he simply sat down cross-legged to seek enlightenment. After a while, a palace like a sun rose within his mind’s eyes. It seemed to have a bit of a resonance with him.

But then his vision blurred, and an ethereal voice spoke into his mind.

“Your karma is not with me.”

Before Xu Qing knew what was happening, a bizarre force ejected him from the Firevoid Mountains. After a bit of contemplation, he decided not to ask any questions. Turning, he bowed, then proceeded on his way.

This time his destination was the Primary Dao Precipice. It was a cliff that was also located in the west, although it took a bit of searching before Xu Qing found it.

The looming cliff was so dramatic that it looked like it had been sliced out by a massive blade. It towered so high that it entered the clouds. There were ancient characters carved into the cliff that read:

“The path of the primary dao is all-encompassing.”

Another point of interest was that there was a unique type of flower that grew on the cliff which was known as ‘primary dao flower.’ The flower was pure white, with petals of shining gold. It was as if the flower could bear witness to the most paramount of daos. And of course, it had medicinal properties to match.... You couldn’t eat it. You could only smell it. Doing so could help you to learn about the dao.[2]

Every hundred years, the flowers would bloom, and the fragrant aroma would assail all people within millions of kilometers. Because of that, cultivators would come to the precipice at that time to break through cultivation bottlenecks.

Unfortunately, Xu Qing didn’t come at a good time, as the next bloom wasn’t to come for another forty or more years. Because of that, there weren’t many cultivators on the Primary Dao Precipice. However, upon arriving, Xu Qing felt like his thinking ability had been bolstered, as he suddenly came up with a few new trains of thought. After about half a year of constant traveling, he finally decided to stop for an extended time.

For one thing, he wanted to consolidate everything he had learned on his travels. What was more, he wanted to settle his heart and mind and look into the spatial clay he had acquired. He also wanted to try his hand at making that special kind of glue.

During the process, he took out the divination jade slip that Yunmen Qianfan had given to him. The jade slip didn’t just contain her power of divination. It also had... a secret key. It was a magical symbol the likes of which Xu Qing had never seen before. It was ancient and mysterious, almost as if it had its own life force. However, it was dim, almost illusory, as if it hadn’t reached the point at which it could shine brightly.

Xu Qing looked thoughtfully at the secret key. The original mission he had accepted had been to escort a conclave member of the Yunmen Clan to a specific destination. He had known all along that some of the people had secret keys. As he had learned from various members of the Diling Dynasty, the entire thing had been a game of chance.

Xu Qing wasn’t sure of the real story behind the event. But there was one thing he was certain of.

When Yunmen Qianfan gave me this jade slip, I looked at it briefly, and... there was no secret key inside. The secret key seems to have formed naturally inside the jade slip.

He put the jade slip away. It didn’t matter what the secret key was, or what location it was supposed to open. Right now, it wasn’t his focus.

He planned to stay at the Primary Dao Precipice for a time, then move on to the Geotale Cisterns, the Cloudmire Basin, and finally, the Fallen Immortal Moors, which was supposedly the source of the aurora.

Unfortunately, plans don’t always go as intended. The second round of the Immortal Capital’s Trial of the Hunt had reached a critical point! It was a part of the competition that countless cultivators had been longing for.

On that day, the aurora above disappeared. On that day, four stars became the brightest sources of starlight in the sky of the Fifth Star Ring.

1. As most of you know, I convert the ancient/traditional Chinese units of measurement into modern units of measurement to make it easy to conceptualize what they indicate. In this case, I convert “li” into kilometers. The non-converted number is 3.97 billion li, or 3,970,000,000 if you write out all the digits. As far as I can tell, the number is not significant in any way other than it being a really, really, really (insert really several more times) big number. If you take the narrative at face value, and assume that the star rings are roughly equivalent to galaxies, then the Fifth Star Ring seems to be a “flat earth” type landmass the size a galaxy. When you consider that the Milky Way is something like 950,000 trillion km across, a distance of roughly 2 billion km is not much. That said, I really don’t think the author’s intention is for us to make calculations and compare to real-life sizes. It’s just supposed to be BIG. For those of you who watched my YouTube video on this subject or read my

FAQ book

, you will know that I actually asked the author personally about distances and sizes. And his response was basically “it’s not real life.” ☜

2. There’s some wordplay here that, if translated directly, sounds kind of silly in English. Basically, the verb “to smell” is applied to the dao. So literally the text says that you can’t eat the flower, you can only smell it. And it's like “smelling the dao.” The thing is that the verb has multiple meanings. For instance, it can also mean “to hear,” or more metaphorically “to be informed about something.” I’m just rendering it as “learn about” because that’s the meaning. And to say that it’s like “smelling the dao" is just... too silly for me. ☜