Chapter 526: Mount Yan City God! Former Body! The Mysterious Great Xia Dynasty! The underworld System!

Mount Yan City God!?

Li Yanchu froze for a moment. He hadn’t expected that this middle-aged Daoist was a City God.

However, he had never heard of Mount Yan before. That wasn’t particularly strange, as the Kingdom of Qian had thirteen prefectures, so it was natural not to know every place name.

What struck him as interesting was that this middle-aged Daoist mentioned the underworld.

“Does the realm of the dead really exist?” Li Yanchu asked.

“Of course!” The Daoist looked slightly surprised. “You are also a cultivator. Why do you ask?”

Because I’ve never seen it...

Li Yanchu pressed further, “Then there’s also King Yanluo, the Ox-Head and Horse-Face[1], and the judge ghosts?”

“Certainly.” The Daoist seemed puzzled by Li Yanchu’s question.

It was as if someone asked whether the sun, moon, and stars existed, or whether there were four seasons and day and night.

Li Yanchu fell silent, wondering why the Daoist had such an attitude.

“When exactly are you from, Old Jia?” Regarding this phoenix-eyed middle-aged Daoist, Li Yanchu felt no hostility, just a strange, instinctive curiosity.

“I was born in the third year of Emperor Wuzong of the Great Xia Dynasty, my family hails from Leizhou,” the Daoist replied.

Gasp!

Li Yanchu drew in a sharp breath, and his gaze on the Daoist shifted slightly.

The Kingdom of Qian had endured for five hundred years, and the Great Xia had thrived for nearly a thousand.

Jia Chuanfang being from the Xia Dynasty explained why Li Yanchu had never heard of a place called Mount Yan, as the passage of time had changed many names. Since the founding of the Kingdom of Qian, prefectures had replaced old administrative divisions, not to mention smaller locations.

Li Yanchu decided he would later research Emperor Wuzong, Leizhou, and Mount Yan to find out their exact locations.

“What’s the matter, fellow Daoist?” the middle-aged man asked.

“Nothing. Old Jia, go on, what exactly is this underworld?” Li Yanchu inquired.

Jia Chuanfang glanced at him but didn’t answer directly. Instead, he asked, “Do you know what era it is now?”

This Daoist was clearly very perceptive.

“The Great Xia has already fallen. The last emperor vanished, the realm fragmented, and warlords fought for supremacy. Now, in the Kingdom of Qian, Emperor Jingtai rules, and the kingdom has existed for five hundred years,” Li Yanchu explained.

This time, the Daoist fell silent, though he seemed somewhat unsurprised.

“Emperor Wuzong was a man of talent and vision, second only to the founder. Yet, even so, Great Xia still fell. Truly, it was fate,” Jia Chuanfang said.

“The Great Xia endured for nearly a thousand years, which is impressive,” Li Yanchu replied.

It was a millennium of dynastic fortune, and such longevity was possible only in a world like this, filled with cultivation and martial arts.

“The Imperial Guardian Talisman of Great Xia could suppress the dynasty’s fortune. The millennium-long prosperity of Great Xia was connected to that talisman,” Jia Chuanfang explained calmly.

“Emperor Wuzong and the founder of Great Xia were...?” Li Yanchu asked.

After all, he was just a Daoist, and in this world, there was no historian like Sima Qian[2]. History was somewhat chaotic. His first impression of the Great Xia came from the storybooks his master had collected.

“His Majesty Wuzong was the fourth son of the founder, the second emperor of Great Xia,” Jia Chuanfang said.

Respect was evident in his words when speaking of Emperor Wuzong.

Hearing this, Li Yanchu froze; so this Jia Chuanfang standing before him was someone from over a thousand years ago.

Wow.

At this moment, a strong sense of history hit him.

“From the way you speak, that Emperor Wuzong seems extraordinary,” the underachieving Li Yanchu asked humbly.

“Blessed by fate, a Martial Saint among humans, sweeping across the Eight Desolations[3], founding an era of prosperity. His Majesty Wuzong was not only a sovereign holding the power of life and death but also the greatest cultivator of the Great Xia. Tell me, isn’t a person like that remarkable?” The middle-aged Daoist let out a wry smile.

A Martial Saint among humans!?

Li Yanchu was taken aback.

The second emperor of the Great Xia Dynasty had been a peak-level martial artist!?

This information was completely unexpected.

But he soon frowned. Such an extraordinary figure had been virtually unknown among the common people of the Kingdom of Qian. There was barely any trace of his existence, let alone legends of him sweeping across the Eight Desolations or founding a prosperous era.

However, he didn’t voice this doubt. Excluding the possibility that Jia Chuanfang was exaggerating, it could only mean that, over the long course of history, some truths had been deliberately hidden. And the only entity capable of hiding history on such a grand scale was likely the dynasty itself.

The more Li Yanchu learned about the Great Xia, the more interested he became in this period. If he remembered correctly, Cuihua’s mother had also been a mountain deity during the Great Xia era.

“So, what kind of dynasty was it, exactly?” He felt an undeniable curiosity.

Jia Chuanfang didn’t elaborate much on the Great Xia, but when prompted by Li Yanchu, he began to explain the underworld.

“The underworld is divided into ten courts under Yanluo: the First Court, under King Qin Guang; the Second Court, under King Chu Jiang; the Third Court, under King Song Di; the Fourth Court, under King Wu Guan; the Fifth Court, under King Yanluo; the Sixth Court, under King Bian Cheng; the Seventh Court, under King Mount Tai; the Eighth Court, under King Du Shi; the Ninth Court, under King Ping Deng; and the Tenth Court, under King Zhuan Lun. Beneath them are judges, ghost messengers, and city gods who oversee towns in the mortal realm. They handle affairs there and command civil and military judges and ghostly attendants,” the middle-aged Daoist explained.

“So, the underworld has two leadership structures?” Li Yanchu asked.

The Daoist paused to process his meaning. “Your words carry some subtlety... yes, that’s roughly correct.”

Li Yanchu nodded slightly. “Then who is the highest leader of the underworld?”

The Daoist hesitated again, then smiled. “The Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak commands the entire underworld, also known as the Lord of Mount Tai.”

“Is there also Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva[4]?”

“Indeed. Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva does not handle the underworld’s daily affairs but holds a highly respected position.”

Li Yanchu nodded, realizing that in this world, the realm of the dead truly existed, and its system was remarkably vast.

“Old Jia, what kind of official is a city god?” Li Yanchu asked.

The Daoist blinked. “They oversee a city. Some city gods possess great supernatural power, while others in smaller towns are weaker. In terms of status, they rank below the Ten Kings of the Underworld, and usually don’t report to them directly.”

Li Yanchu frowned. It seemed that the position of city god somewhat conflicted with the king system of the underworld.

He didn’t press the matter; it was probably just a peculiarity of this world.

“What level of cultivation are you roughly at? Intermediate third realm or advanced third realm?” Li Yanchu asked.

“Intermediate third realm? Advanced third realm?” The Daoist looked utterly confused.

“Huh?” Li Yanchu was slightly surprised. “How did you classify cultivation levels back then?”

He had always assumed that the cultivation system consisted of three great realms: Qi Cultivation Realm, Yin Spirit, and Yang Spirit.

But apparently, that wasn’t the case for this Daoist.

“The hierarchy is divided into nine ranks, with ninth rank being the weakest and first rank being the highest. I am a first-rank cultivator,” the Daoist explained.

Li Yanchu pressed further. “And above first rank?”

“Above first rank are the Land Immortals. I, this humble Daoist, failed to survive my tribulation and never became a Land Immortal. That is why I had to find a way to sever my former body and chose Corpse Liberation[5],” the middle-aged Daoist explained.

Hearing this, Li Yanchu nodded.

In the current cultivation system, there were three major realms, each divided into three minor stages, exactly corresponding to the nine ranks. He just didn’t know how the combat power of these two systems compared, or whether they were equivalent.

“You were able to slay my former body, so your cultivation must be quite impressive. But why do you know nothing of immortals and deities? Earth gods, mountains gods, and city gods should be common immortals,” the Daoist asked curiously.

“Nowadays... it seems there are no more immortals or gods in the Kingdom of Qian,” Li Yanchu said in a low voice.

1. Ox-Head and Horse-Face are two guardians or types of guardians of the underworld in Chinese mythology. As indicated by their names, both have the bodies of men, but Ox-Head has the head of an ox while Horse-Face has the face of a horse ☜

2. Sima Qian (c. 145 BC – c. 86 BC) was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for the Shiji (sometimes translated into English as Records of the Grand Historian), a general history of China covering more than two thousand years from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and formation of the first Chinese polity to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, during which Sima wrote. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese, the Shiji served as a model for official histories for subsequent dynasties across the Sinosphere until the 20th century.

Here is a

picture

for your reference. ☜

3. “Eight Desolations” (八荒) is a term from ancient Chinese, originally referring to the desolate lands in the eight directions. It later came to denote all corners of the world or an extremely vast expanse of territory. The term originates from ancient geographical concepts encompassing the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions, east, south, west, north, southeast, northeast, southwest, and northwest. In literature, it is often used to evoke immense scope or grand ambition, as in the phrase “to sweep across the world and annex the Eight Desolations.” ☜

4. Kṣitigarbha is a bodhisattva primarily revered in East Asian Buddhism and usually depicted as a Buddhist monk. His name may be translated as "Earth Treasury", "Earth Store", "Earth Matrix", or "Earth Womb". Kṣitigarbha is known for his vow to take responsibility for the instruction of all beings in the six worlds between the death of Gautama Buddha and the rise of Maitreya, as well as his vow not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied. He is therefore often regarded as the bodhisattva of hell-beings, as well as the guardian of children and patron deity of deceased children and aborted fetuses in Japanese culture.

Usually depicted as a monk with either a halo or a crown bearing images of the Five Tathāgatas around his shaved head, he carries a staff to force open the gates of hell and a wish-fulfilling jewel to light up the darkness.

Here is a

picture

for your reference. ☜

5. Shijie 尸解 is an esoteric Daoist technique for an adept to transform into a xian, typically using some bureaucratic ruse to evade the netherworld administrative system of life and death registration. ☜