Destiny in Cinders

The heavenly fiend’s arcane domain gradually faded from existence like a thin layer of ice that melted and crumbled under direct sunlight. The souls that had been controlled by the Death Tamer lifearc were released as a result, causing them to fizzle out. They had died long ago and only left behind leftover hate and resentment, all of which scattered in the wind and snow.

The bisected deathtame fiend also scattered in the air; its many scales crumbled and flaked off, revealing only a single dark-purple core that resembled a heart. An Jing stepped forward and grasped the fiendcore.

Like before, countless voices pleaded in his ears. Anyone with the slightest bit of pity would be moved by the pleading and hesitate, but not An Jing. He spoke the language of blood and metal, not tears. His destiny was one that forbade him from pitying others. This was all part of the natural course of things.

His grip tightened more and more, causing crimson blood and white metal lethal qi to grind away at the fiendcore. It snapped audibly for quite a while before it popped loudly and crumbled.

The Heaven Profundity True Talisman manifested again and converted the mystical qi that came from the defeated heavenly fiend into a pure force of light, heaven purification radiance. The glowing energy revolved in the palm of his hand.

An Jing had used all the tricks in his arsenal in this fight to ensure that he crushed Honor Pavilion and killed the heavenly fiend as quickly as possible while minimizing the damage. Fortunately for him, he got a lot out of it too. The fight with Lu Jin and the heavenly fiend greatly improved An Jing’s martial skill through deepening his understanding on Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal and the Imperial Sky and Earth Arts, specifically where practical application in combat was concerned.

This was how the path of cultivation worked. One had to cultivate the body, one’s nature, life and technique. By remaining healthy and in good physical and mental shape while having many techniques at one’s disposal, one would be able to solve any kind of problem that came one’s way.

There was also the aspect of refinement. One had to refine the self, the mind, the intent, the will and the dao. This was a process of forging one’s determination along with one’s body, honing one’s courage and decisiveness as if honing a blade, making sure that it was as sharp as one’s tactics and mentality in the heat of combat. This would allow one to pick the correct techniques for the correct situation and execute them well. It was a preparation to ensure the perfect blend of technique and method in the process of rehearsing the refinement of one’s dao.

As the saying went, ”learning without thinking is useless; thinking without learning is dangerous.” The same applied to cultivation and refinement. Actual application of what one learned was also crucial. If An Jing had to redo the entire sequence from earlier, Lu Jin would’ve been cut into pieces in the first three exchanges before he had the chance to escape into the secret chamber.

”When the heavenly fiends descended, this world must’ve produced countless heroes to resist the fiend calamity, right?” He looked at the heaven purification radiance in his hand and consumed it without a shred of doubt.

The reason he was able to achieve so much in such a short time was due to his encounters with various fiends and beasts that gave him a boost when he was bottlenecked. Typically, manifesting an ability was something that should have taken years, so why was An Jing able to achieve minor mastery over some of them seemingly instantly?

The fiend calamity that wrecked Void Embrace all that time ago was no doubt terrifying. It wasn’t just the immortals who descended to the mortal plane to fight the fiends. Many heroes among humanity also rose during that era, slaying fiends and using their essence to pave the road for their dao to grow rapidly, allowing them to resist even more invaders. Even then, they had only edged out a pyrrhic victory. That was simply how powerful heavenly fiends were.

No matter what the source of the heavenly fiends was, An Jing swallowed the heaven purification radiance, intent on using it to advance his cultivation, body and soul. His abilities and lifearc were already powerful enough that the mystical qi generated upon the death of the prematurely born deathtame fiend wasn’t enough to trigger any changes in them.

Part of the reason his cultivation wasn’t as powerful as it was supposed to be was his age. Though he was at the Tide Aura Stage, the reservoirs in his body were still rather shallow and had to gradually be improved before he could manifest any wonders of his own. Fortunately, he managed to overcome the bottleneck long ago. As long as he consumed pills, concoctions and feral-beast flesh regularly, he would be able to reach the Fortification Realm soon. Heaven purification radiance had similar benefits at a much higher purity.

”Returning to truth by devouring fiends. This is one of the core dao precepts of the Dao Sect,” Yvelbane said. ”The legends speak of Great Immortal Void Embrace, who used his unparalleled arcane power to bring five cities and twelve towers to the primordial wastes. It used to be a soup of raw, unrealized primordial potential. The essence of life without lifeforms. It lacked the precepts of the dao completely. It was the ultimate expression of being in nonbeing, nonexistence in existence. Great Immortal Void Embrace formed the Dao Sect and fashioned countless dao precepts, setting the laws of the universe in place, filling the five immortal heavens with his power and weaving the seven seas and nine continents. The leaders of the Dao Sect that came after could also carve new dao precepts into the universe.”

An Jing noticed something odd. ”Nine continents? Doesn’t Void Embrace have five colored and five directional continents? That makes ten in total, right?”

”The head of the ten continents, the Central Balance Dao Continent, is the central pivot of the world of Void Embrace. It was formed during the time of the Dao Sect using the laws and principles of the universe. Even though it’s considered one of the ten continents, it’s actually a sky pillar that serves as the pathway for the masses of the nine continents to ascend to the immortal heavens. Even after the Dao Sect fell, the continent at the center remains the pivot of the world.”

Considering that Skysource had a similar dao precept, the Dao Sect and Dao Court were probably the same interworld organization whose main goal was to impose the necessary dao precepts on primordial worlds. The fact that different, independent worlds had the same dao precepts on the heavenly fiends’ elimination meant that they were a menace to all worlds.

An Jing absorbed the heaven purification radiance rapidly. He took a deep breath and circulated his Evenstar lethal qi, synchronizing it with Yvelbane as he scanned the ruined debris where Honor Pavilion once stood.

The place once served as the arcane domain of the heavenly fiend. After the domain collapsed, the energy that the heavenly fiend had unleashed rendered the expensive piece of real estate into powder and rock. The financial damages were massive, but An Jing’s eyes were set on a different kind of wealth. The truly precious medicines and herbal ingredients as well as the manuals and artifacts kept within protective boxes had survived the battle and he didn’t even have to waste time digging for them as Yvelbane could easily point out the faint glow of spirit power that the items emitted.

Soon, An Jing gathered them all up. The most important spoils among them were two fist-technique manuals and one scripture. ”True Nature Ego Fist, Pentabeast Divine Fist: My Journey and... Woah, that’s a long title. Nether Capture Soul Domination Divine Curse Mantra by the Sovereign Nether Divinity?”

He didn’t have that much time, so he merely skimmed the texts. Even then, their contents came as quite a surprise. True Nature Ego Fist was the technique Lu Jin had used. It was a good martial manual that surpassed the one that was passed down in An Jing’s clan. Though the founding ancestor of his clan reached the Clearing Realm, it had only been possible through the consumption of spirit items that he had obtained due to fortuitous encounters. The rest of the ancestor’s basic foundations were only comparable to that of Fortification martialists. Even as he used his experience to alter the technique he used for his martial cultivation, that only elevated the technique to barely reach the Clearing Realm’s standards. It was lower intermediate at best.

While An Jing had studied much of his own clan’s technique, he didn’t receive a full transmission of it as he had been too young. No matter how much his father, An Qianshan, loved his son, he wouldn’t pass on the full legacy to him at the young age of eight. Doing so would only be bad for him.

True Nature Ego Fist, however, was different in that it was a rather high-tier bare-handed technique that doubled as a base for cultivation. It was an upper-intermediate technique that also worked well with the Imperial Sky Art, though that probably spoke more for the impressiveness of the latter, especially when paired with the Imperial Earth Art. It still didn’t change the fact that True Nature Ego Fist was good enough to match with such a good technique, a sign of its quality indeed.