Destiny in Cinders

Ming Guangchen remembered the time that Xuan Guangyun first brought him to Endmost Sky. It was a loathsome cloudy day. The gu fiendlands where the drugslaves of the True Fiend Cult resided were located in a basin surrounded by a mountain range. Only the tiniest slivers of sunlight were visible even during high noon.

Incredibly dense and evil lethal qi formed black and gray toxic clouds that blotted out the sky, caging up the entire area. The twisted and odd basin was filled with all sorts of fiendish and terrifying creatures left behind from the great ancient tribulation. The remains of gigantic beasts created an out-of-place but unique ecosystem in the region. Within every single crack, cavern and bone pile that exuded noxious lethal qi were countless toxic critters, their eyes flashing red with greed.

The True Fiend Cult tossed living people, fiends and gu insects all into that same region. They didn’t care what survived; they wanted them all. That was where Ming Guangchen lost his eyes, two arms and some of his innards. When Shrouded Dust saw him, he was being devoured by an exotic centipede that had burrowed into his insides and ate away at his intestines, taking occasional bites at his liver too.

When the insect started consuming him, all Ming Guangchen could feel was hatred and fear. His entire village had been sacrificed by the True Fiend Cult. Even children like him who showed some promise were used as fodder for the gu insects they were raising. But after miring at the brink of death for some time, a newfound curiosity and desire for victory arose within him, overcoming the hate and despair and making him laugh.

It seems like I will never live to see the human world again, he thought. I wonder if the sights of the netherworld are better than the ones here. I sure do hope so.

He didn’t get to see the sights of nether. Instead, he saw a silver lining. Ming Guangchen had been quite lucky. Grand Chen and the five Dustdawn Sects worked together to destroy many locales of the True Fiend Cult in the Taiyuan Mountain Range. Most of the surviving drugslaves were rescued, Ming Guangchen being one of them. That was when he awakened his lifearc.

Shrouded Dust had wanted to treat Ming Guangchen’s injuries back at his sect. However, he was missing limbs and his soul was heavily corrupted by fiend qi. His innards, if he still had any, were also soaked full of poisons. The Brightmirror Sect was famed for their mystical abilities but weren’t good at healing injuries like those.

King Jing of Grand Chen, who had been on the same rescue mission, had a feeling that his encounter with Ming Guangchen was fate. So, he offered to take him back for treatment since his household had the kind of supplies and expertise that could help. Given the good relationship between the Brightmirror Sect and Grand Chen, there was no reason for Shrouded Dust to refuse. Back then, he hadn’t become Ming Guangchen’s master yet.

Ming Guangchen, who was taken away by Xuan Guangyun, arrived at a silver space. At the center of that space was a ball of light that let out countless beams, resembling cocklebur plants and sea urchins. When Xuan Guangyun spoke the word, the odd ball of light emitted a beam to illuminate Ming Guangchen. Apart from the eyes he had lost as a price for awakening his lifearc, the rest of his injuries were healed at that moment.

The mystical force that could heal everything wasn’t the only thing within that mysterious dimension. There were many more things such as countless secret tomes, spirit items of all assortments, powerful experts from all across the ten continents and limitless stories and histories brought there by eccentric peoples of all kinds.

This was Endmost Sky, and that was the day Ming Guangchen became one of its members. As time passed, he learned more and more about this unique grotto-heaven, yet the more he learned, the more he realized the depth of his ignorance.

According to Xuan Guangyun, Endmost Sky didn’t provide any power at all. However, there were people within it that could help others get stronger or provide spirit items or classics that were passed down by Endmost Walkers of the generations before them. Even legacies of the Brightmirror Sect could be found there.

As Ming Guangchen had learned the core teachings of the lord of the Brightmirror Sect’s Dawnlight Peak, he knew for a fact that was true. Even though one couldn’t find core abilities of the Brightmirror Sect like Mirror Me and Bright Cosmic Eyes, they did have the sect’s three special wonders.

He redeemed some of them and noticed that the methods described in Brightmirror Heart were a bit archaic, though they did have an ancient profundity to it. The one he had learned from the Brightmirror Sect was an improved version. Though the newer version functioned just as well, with some aspects being better, it lacked a few nuanced insights that the archaic version possessed. The previous Endmost Walker from the Brightmirror Sect was someone from two thousand years ago, after all.

How could Endmost Sky exist without the world falling into anarchy? If people from every sect were able to learn about each other’s core teachings, wouldn’t they be able to learn precisely what countered them?

When Ming Guangchen asked Xuan Guangyun that, he was told that while Endmost Sky didn’t prohibit the transfer of techniques to others, there was a condition for redeeming them. If one didn’t have relevant karmic ties, one wouldn’t even be able to even see those techniques for redemption. For instance, only Ming Guangchen, someone affiliated with the Brightmirror Sect, could see the sect’s core teachings. This limitation was up to the person who made the technique available for redemption.

Endmost Sky, at the end of the day, was simply a platform for sharing. In fact, it encouraged people to use its resources to compete with each other. The world was inherently anarchic with all the factions vying for their own supremacy, so the world was already messed up enough with or without Endmost Sky in the picture. Unless one was born in the organization, everyone else had their own respective factions and positions before they joined Endmost Sky, so there was bound to be internal strife.

As such, there were many different factions within it that would restrict redemption access of the techniques that they shared to specific groups of people. Those from allied factions were allowed to redeem them and the opposite applied to enemy factions.

Ming Guangchen was aware that Xuan Guangyun hoped that he would become a member of the Brightmirror Sect in the future, considering how he took him to Endmost Sky but also ”returned” him to the Brightmirror Sect later on. He was hoping that Ming Guangchen could become a Pure Yang Realm transcendent in the future too. That way, Ming Guangchen would be able to fight on his side as an ally of Grand Chen, or perhaps King Jing himself.

By borrowing the resources and experience left at Endmost Sky by the unknown Walker of the Brightmirror Sect and asking his master for help, Ming Guangchen eventually fulfilled his potential and became one of the rare talents in the Brightmirror Sect’s history and a promising young hero of the Northblack Sacrifice Continent.

Apart from faction-limited legacies, Endmost Sky had many faction-agnostic legacies that were only limited to people with the required traits. Many of the legacies of the Heavenly Demon Cult were among them.

Ming Guangchen was stunned at first to see that they were redeemable and that they were part of the alliance he was in too. When he learned the non-faction-related conditions of the demonic cult’s legacy, however, he gave up on redeeming them. The various arcana or core teachings of the demonic cult had strict lifearc requirements. There wasn’t a point in practicing them without the corresponding lifearc.

One of those that left the deepest impression on him was an arcanum that set up the foundations for the demonic cult’s ultimate ability. The ability was called Mahesvara and the arcanum was called Temporal Grasp.