Apologize to Foundation Establishment at Deity Transformation? Face the Emperor’s Banner!
Chapter One: Thirty-Five Years of Cultivation, and I Come Home to Be Wronged?
Thirty-five years of cultivation, and I had reached the peak of Spirit Severing, half a step from the legendary Tribulation Transcendence.
Those thirty-five years I spent in the Outer Battlefields, a living hell on earth. I had killed Nascent Soul Demonic Beasts, cut down Spirit Severing demon lords, and inside one ancient ruin I had buried an entire expedition team from another world, until my hands were soaked through with blood and my heart had gone colder than ice ten thousand years old.
But one place in me had stayed soft: Tiannan Sect.
It held the memories of my childhood, and the “root” of this body, down to the last li of mountain road I ran as a boy.
Most of all, it held Sect Master Liu Ruyan. Thirty-five years ago she was my senior sister, her white robes putting snow to shame, and when I fell into qi deviation during the Qi Refining stage she had fed me a Heart-Clearing Elixir.
For that old affection I journeyed home carrying cultivation enough to shake the heavens. I had even packed three Demi-Immortal Artifacts in my storage ring, a homecoming gift meant to lift Tiannan Sect into the ranks of the top sects.
What greeted me was not flowers or applause. It was a clumsy frame-up.
Tiannan Sect. The council hall.
The air in there stifled.
“Kneel!”
A sharp cry rang out from the high platform.
Liu Ruyan sat on the Sect Master’s throne in robes of flowing cloud brocade, and the years had left no mark on her face: still breathtakingly beautiful, and those beautiful eyes holding nothing but disgust and ice.
“Chen Chang’an, the witnesses and the evidence are all here. How much longer do you plan to deny it?”
I stood alone at the heart of the hall in a blue robe washed pale, looking like some rogue cultivator down on his luck.
Across from me knelt a young man in expensive white, my junior brother Lin Feng.
He pressed a hand to his chest, blood at the corner of his mouth, and poured out his accusation through tears:
“Senior Brother, I know you’ve been down the mountain for years and cultivation hasn’t been easy, and that money’s been tight, so if you’re short on spirit stones just tell your junior brother, and I would never begrudge you! But you… How could you steal the Golden Core Magic Treasure my Honored Master gave me, the Flowing Fire Pearl?”
“That pearl holds a core of dan fire, and it’s the key to my Foundation Establishment! You wiped its divine sense out by force, the treasure is damaged, and I’ve suffered the backlash… Senior Brother, you’ve ruined my Dao!”
Lin Feng wept like pear blossoms in the rain, as if he had swallowed the greatest grievance in the world.
The elders shook their heads and sighed, pointing and whispering.
“I always heard Chen Chang’an did badly for himself down the mountain. Never thought he’d sink to stealing from his own sect.”
“You can know a man’s face and never his heart. He was this sect’s pride once, and look how low he has sunk.”
“Sticky fingers and rotten character. Keeping his kind in Tiannan Sect is a disgrace.”
I listened to the filth and felt no anger rise. Instead, I laughed.
“You say I stole your Flowing Fire Pearl?” I turned to Lin Feng and asked it quietly, which was worse than shouting.
Panic crossed Lin Feng’s eyes, then curdled into spite, and he pulled a dull, lightless pearl from his robe and called out, “We found this in your guest room, with your presence still on it! What do you have to say now?”
I glanced at the pearl.
That “Golden Core Magic Treasure” was worth less to me than the marbles I fed my spirit pets. That kind of trash I wouldn’t bend over to pick up off the road. And I’m supposed to have stolen it?
“Sect Master.” I raised my eyes to Liu Ruyan. “You believe him too?”
Her eyes dimmed. “The facts are plain, Chen Chang’an. Lin Feng is your junior brother. Brilliant, kind-hearted. Would he throw away his own Dao to frame you? Your own cultivation, though, is so mixed and impure that no one can see through to your realm. You must have taken up some deviant art out there. Coveting a treasure is the natural next step.”
“For old times’ sake: kneel and apologize to Junior Brother Lin, pay for the damage, and destroy your own cultivation base. Then I’ll let you leave the sect with a whole corpse.”
Kneel?
Cripple my own cultivation?
The words bored into my ears like needles.
I turned my eyes to Liu Ruyan on her high seat, and the last warm thread I had left for “senior sister” burned away to nothing.
In the face of absolute prejudice, the truth is not worth a single coin.
“Good. Good. Good.”
I said it three times, and the corner of my mouth curled into something strange.
“Since you’re all so sure I stole it, since you want my cultivation destroyed…”
I raised my right hand, slow and deliberate. In my palm a mass of deep purple mist began to gather, faster and faster.
“Then let me show you exactly what ‘deviant art’ I’ve practiced these thirty-five years!”
Chapter Two: This Is the Banner of the Human Emperor — You Understand Its True Worth?
“What’s he doing, does he think he can resist?” The Discipline Hall’s Grand Elder, a Late Stage Golden Core cultivator, frowned, and took a step forward with his spiritual pressure bearing down on me. “Wretch, submit!”
I gave him a look of pure contempt.
Just one look.
Boom!
The Discipline Hall’s Grand Elder jerked like a man struck by lightning. He flew backward, slammed into a pillar of the council hall, spat blood, and dropped unconscious.
The whole hall lapsed into silence.
Liu Ruyan shot to her feet, her beautiful eyes wide. “You… You’ve been hiding your Cultivation Base? You’re at the Peak Stage of Golden Core?!”
In her mind, the Peak Stage of Golden Core was already the ceiling. Tiannan Sect was a second-rate sect; even the Grand Elder, their strongest, was only at the Early Stage of Nascent Soul.
I ignored her shock and turned my palm over.
A small banner, black as ink, its shaft wound with dark red blood-lines, sat in my hand.
The moment it appeared, the bright hall turned icy cold, winds moaning through it. Faint wailing pressed against every ear, and scalps prickled and souls shivered.
Lin Feng, closest to me, screamed in terror: “What is that? The yin energy is suffocating! A demonic artifact! Chen Chang’an, you really did walk the Demonic Path! It’s a Ten Thousand Souls Banner!”
“Shut your mouth.”
I roared, and my voice boomed like a great bell, setting the whole hall humming.
I fixed them with a face of righteous heartbreak. “Shallow! Ignorant! You think this is some lowly demonic artifact like a Ten Thousand Souls Banner?”
I caressed the banner’s face with genuine tenderness. Black mist rolled across it, and inside the mist thousands upon thousands of twisted faces churned.
“This. Is the Banner of the Human Emperor!”
“Banner of the Human Emperor?” The crowd traded blank looks.
Liu Ruyan had gone pale, and she pointed at the black vapor pouring off the banner. “Do you take me for blind? Yin energy shooting to the sky, vengeful spirits without number: this is plainly a venomous thing an evil cultivator brewed by slaughtering living beings!”
“Sect Master, that’s where you’re wrong.”
I said, all solemnity, “Yin energy? This is plainly Hongmeng purple qi, only so concentrated that it looks black.”
“Vengeful spirits? These are the heroic spirits of humanity, loyal souls who followed This Venerable One across the battlefields and shielded the living!”
“I, Chen Chang’an, have lived my life in the open, and I Persuade Others Through Virtue. Every brother inside this banner walked in willingly, moved by my character, to lend me their strength. So how did it become the Demonic Path in your mouths?”
As I spoke, I gave the banner a small shake.
ROAR!
A shriek of pure malice tore out of it, and then half the body of an otherworldly demonic soul three zhang tall, about ten meters, blue-faced and fang-toothed, exuding the terrifying pressure of the Nascent Soul stage, leaned out of the banner.
Its eyes glowed red. It drooled, staring down at Lin Feng on the floor.
“See how warm this brother is?” I introduced it with a smile. “He can’t wait to come out and say hello.”
The elders had gone weak at the knees.
Nascent Soul!
Just one “Core Soul” inside the banner, and it carried the pressure of the Nascent Soul stage! What realm was the man holding this banner, then?
Fear spread like plague.
Lin Feng had pissed himself, really pissed himself, and the stink of it filled the room.
He scrabbled backward, babbling: “No… Not me… Senior Brother… I was wrong… I hid the Flowing Fire Pearl myself… Wuwuwu… Don’t kill me…”
Under absolute terror, the truth spilled cheap.
I watched his ugly performance and sighed.
“Junior Brother, you confessed too late.”
“The Sect Master said it herself: if you can’t prove you didn’t do it, your Cultivation Base gets destroyed. Now that we’ve proved you did, then by the principle of fair and impartial treatment…”
My eyes iced over.
“You can go in and chat with my brothers too!”
“No!! Sect Master, save me!!” Lin Feng’s shriek tore the heart out of the room.
Only then did Liu Ruyan react. Fear had her, but a Sect Master’s pride forced her hand. “Chen Chang’an! You dare commit murder in public?!”
She produced a flying sword that turned into a streak of light and drove at me.
The full-power strike of the Early Stage of Nascent Soul, magnificent in its momentum.
To my eyes it moved like a snail.
I couldn’t even be bothered to dodge. I only shifted my will.
The Nascent Soul otherworldly demon inside the banner shot out a ghostly claw and caught the flying sword.
Crack!
The high-grade spirit artifact was crushed in that bare grip.
“Pfft!” Her Life-Bound Treasure destroyed, Liu Ruyan spat blood and collapsed into her chair, her face full of horror. “This… This is impossible…”
The demon grinned. Its other hand snatched Lin Feng off the floor like a chick and stuffed him straight into its mouth, or rather, into the black mist vortex of the banner.
“Aaaaaa —”
The scream cut off mid-note.
The room fell deathly silent.
Only the banner in my hand stirred, its colors a shade brighter than before.
I swept my eyes across the room. Every elder I met bowed their head, not one daring to look back.
“Anyone else think I stole something?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
No one dared speak.
“Anyone else think this is a Ten Thousand Souls Banner?” I asked again.
One elder lifted his head, trembling, and pasted on a smile uglier than crying. “Senior Brother… No, Senior, you’re too kind. This… This is plainly Hongmeng purple qi, righteous and vast! The genuine Banner of the Human Emperor!”
I nodded, satisfied. “Teachable.”
Chapter Three: Since We’re All Enemies Now, Time to Pull the Weeds Out by the Roots
Lin Feng was gone.
As if he had never existed in this world, except that the banner had gained one new soul, currently undergoing “re-education.”
I didn’t put the banner away. I drove its shaft into the floor instead.
Thud!
The dull bang landed like a sledgehammer on every heart in the hall.
The main peak of Tiannan Sect trembled under the blow. The Sect-Guarding Grand Array sensed the threat on its own, let out a keen, and cracked open in a hundred places.
Liu Ruyan’s hair had come loose and blood stood at the corner of her mouth, and no sign of the Sect Master’s dignity remained. She looked at me with her eyes complicated past all measure, shock and fear and regret and one thread of unwillingness all muddled together.
“Chen Chang’an… are you man or ghost? Has your cultivation base already… reached Spirit Severing?” Her voice shook.
“Spirit Severing?”
I smiled. “Something like that.”
At those two words, everyone present sucked in a cold breath.
Spirit Severing!
In this backwater edge of the cultivation world, where a Nascent Soul old monster could reign supreme, Spirit Severing was an earthly immortal! A legend!
Liu Ruyan laughed, the sound broken. “So that’s how it is… so that’s how it is. Ridiculous of me to have wanted your cultivation destroyed… Chen Chang’an, now that you’ve reached Spirit Severing, why come back to Tiannan Sect at all, just to laugh at us?”
“I meant to send Tiannan Sect a piece of fortune.”
I told it straight. “I prepared three Demi-Immortal Artifacts, ten cultivation techniques of Heaven Rank, and a Spirit-Gathering Formation Diagram enough to double the sect’s spiritual qi. I meant for you, your junior brothers and junior sisters, to rise together, chickens and dogs included.”
As I spoke, I took those things out of my storage ring and let them hang in the air.
Their blazing treasure-light lit the whole hall in a heartbeat.
The crushing spiritual pressure left everyone struggling to breathe.
“That’s… the legendary Heaven-Rank Technique?!” The Transmission Elder’s eyes were about to leave his head.
“A Demi-Immortal Artifact?! Heavens above, one of those could buy ten Tiannan Sects!” The Artifact Refining Elder shook all over.
Liu Ruyan’s face emptied.
She gazed at the treasures, then at me, and the tears began to fall.
It was colossal regret.
If she had not taken Lin Feng’s word over mine. If she had spared one thought for old affection. If she had been even a little fair… Tiannan Sect would already have shot to the sky.
“A pity. You don’t deserve them.”
I waved a hand, and all the treasures slid back into the storage ring.
“Since you chose the other road, you’ll pay the price for it.”
My voice turned cold all at once.
“Sect Master Liu Ruyan: cannot tell right from wrong, abetted her disciple in framing a fellow disciple. Unfit for her seat.”
“The Discipline Hall’s Grand Elder: helped the tyrant do evil, abused his office for private ends.”
“And the rest of you fence-sitters…”
My finger moved across the crowd, one by one.
Each person I touched with it paled a shade further.
“Chen Chang’an! Are you trying to destroy your own sect and ancestors?!” The Discipline Hall’s Grand Elder roared, fear riding him, though he still clutched at one thread of luck. “The Grand Elder is in closed-door cultivation in the back mountain, at the Peak Stage of Nascent Soul, a hair’s breadth from Spirit Severing! If you dare massacre the sect, when he leaves seclusion he will not spare you!”
“Oh? That old bastard is still alive?”
My brow rose.
Tiannan Sect’s Grand Elder, my senior martial uncle, had been a snobbish man who played favorites all his life.
“Excellent.”
I snapped my fingers.
“Rather than clean you up one at a time, I might as well call him out too. A family should be tidied up together.”
Toward the back mountain’s Forbidden Ground, beyond the hall, I opened my mouth and spoke one word:
“Scram.”
Rrrrumble —
With that one word, heaven and earth changed color.
Words Become Law.
A shockwave of sound, visible to the naked eye, hit the back mountain like the blast of a nuclear bomb.
The towering peak that marked Tiannan Sect’s Forbidden Ground lost half its height in that single roar.
“What villain dares trespass on my Tiannan Sect?!”
An aged, furious voice erupted from the ruins.
Then a gray figure, wreathed in crushing pressure, flew toward the council hall at speed.
The old man had left seclusion!
Hope kindled in every eye present.
“Grand Elder! Save us!”
“Chen Chang’an has gone demonic! He means to destroy the sect!”
Liu Ruyan seized the lifeline too and shouted, “Senior Martial Uncle! Chen Chang’an holds a Ten Thousand Souls Banner and has fallen to the Demonic Path. Use the sect’s supreme treasure to suppress him!”
“Demonic Path? Ten Thousand Souls Banner?”
The Grand Elder’s figure froze in midair. His gaze locked onto me… and onto the banner waving in the wind in my hand.
Fury had scrambled his brain. He never bothered to read my cultivation base closely. He saw only the banner.
“Such nerve! To use a vile object like this in my Righteous Path sect!”
The Grand Elder barked and produced a great golden bell.
“Watch this old man’s Haotian Bell bring you down!”
The bell swelled in the wind to the size of a small mountain and descended over my head with the air of something that crushed everything.
I yawned.
“All show, no substance.”
Without spending a whisker of spiritual energy, I took it by the shaft and swatted that so-called “Haotian Bell” aside like a flyswatter.
CLANG—!!!
A crash that shattered the eardrums.
That “Haotian Bell,” supposedly indestructible, a low-grade Dao Artifact, burst like paper the instant it touched the banner!
Golden shards rained down across the sky.
His Life-Bound Treasure destroyed, the Grand Elder sprayed blood in midair like a kite with its string cut, and plunged into the hall, landing right at Liu Ruyan’s feet.
Silence.
Deathly silence.
The crowd, hope just lit a moment ago, despaired completely.
The Grand Elder lay prone, laboring his head up, staring at me in disbelief. “You… what on earth are you…”
I looked down at him, a warm smile on my face:
“Senior Martial Uncle, it’s been a long time.”
“Let me introduce you. This is called the Banner of the Human Emperor.”
“I think your aptitude is excellent. You’d make a fine deputy Core Soul, assisting the junior brother who stepped in just now.”
“What do you say?”
(End of Stage One)
Chapter Four: Ancestor, Come Inside the Banner for a Chat
The Grand Elder’s name was Zhao Wuji. He stood at the Peak Stage of Nascent Soul, one step from Spirit Severing, and that one step he had walked for two hundred years without ever crossing it.
Today, though, he felt close to a “god.” The god of death.
He lay prone, watching the black banner swaying right in front of his nose, and the young man behind it smiling all mild and warm. Fear rose like tide water and drowned every scrap of his dignity.
“Chen… Senior Chen…”
Zhao Wuji swallowed a mouthful of bloody spittle and forced the words out. “A misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding. This old man was in Closed-Door Cultivation too long and muddled his brain, failed to recognize my own martial nephew coming home… No, correction, my own Senior.”
“Oh? Muddled your brain?”
I crouched down and looked this once-insufferable senior martial uncle of mine up and down. “If your brain’s muddled, there’s no use keeping it, is there?”
Zhao Wuji quaked all over and kowtowed in a panic. “Useful! Useful! This Untalented One is old and past his prime, but he stands at the Peak Stage of Nascent Soul and could guard the estate for you, Senior. And a Senior just back at the sect must need someone to run errands!”
He had to be given this much: the old creature had lived long because he knew how to bend.
The elders and disciples in the hall watched their usually untouchable Grand Elder wagging his tail and begging like an old dog, and a dozen faiths collapsed at once.
Liu Ruyan turned the color of dead ash. Her last prop was gone.
I rubbed my chin, considering. “Guard the house… Not bad. But I don’t trust you.”
Zhao Wuji panicked. “I can swear an Inner Demon Oath! I can offer up my soul blood!”
“Too much trouble.”
I shook my head and pointed at the banner in my fist. “My brothers tell me that only in there can everyone truly be of one heart, with no barriers between them. So Senior Martial Uncle, if you want to serve me, why won’t you come in?”
“What, do you look down on my banner?”
My face darkened. The air congealed, and the pressure of the Spirit Severing stage bore down on Zhao Wuji like ten thousand mountains.
“Kaka kaka…” Every bone in Zhao Wuji’s body crackled, and he stared at that black face in terror as if he were looking at the gate of hell, knowing that once inside he would be ruined for eternity, enslaved life after life.
“Brat! This old man will take you with him!!”
Zhao Wuji despaired, a thread of madness crossing his eyes. His body swelled in an instant, violent spiritual energy rampaging through him.
Self-Detonation!
The self-detonation of a Peak Stage Nascent Soul cultivator could take everyone within a hundred li down with him!
“No good! Run!”
The elders in the hall screamed and fled for the doors.
Liu Ruyan collapsed to the floor in terror and shut her eyes in despair.
“Taking me with you? You’re not worthy.”
A cold laugh left me. I didn’t even stand.
The banner in my grip curled up once.
Whoosh —
Like a breath snuffing out a candle.
Zhao Wuji, already swollen into a ball and about to burst, deflated on the spot.
In horror he felt the spiritual energy in his body being drawn out against his will, and after it his flesh, his bones, even his soul!
“No. I can’t accept this. !!”
Zhao Wuji let out his last roar in this world.
The next second, he was gone too.
On the banner, a new Core Soul had joined: an old face, venomous and yet forced to submit.
I patted the shaft in satisfaction. “That’s better. From now on, Junior Brother Lin empties the chamber pots, and you watch the gate. Clear division of labor.”
I got up, brushed dust that wasn’t there off my robe’s hem, and turned toward the empty doorway of the hall.
Those who had just fled to the door stood frozen in place, because the whole hall had been sealed by an invisible barrier and no one could get out.
“What’s the hurry, everyone?”
I turned and sat down on the throne that embodied the Sect Master’s power.
Liu Ruyan had been shoved to one side. She had no choice but to kneel on the floor, trembling.
“Since you’re all staying, let’s hold a meeting.”
My fingers tapped the armrest, the sound echoing through the hall.
“First order of business: Tiannan Sect gets a new name.”
“From today, this place is called the Renhuang Sect.”
“Our creed is four words: Persuade Others Through Virtue.”
Chapter Five: Moral Golden Light? No, That’s Just Physics
The sect’s transformation ran smoother than I had imagined.
After all, the loudest objectors (the Grand Elder and the core disciple Lin Feng) had already become part of the “cornerstone” of the Renhuang Sect (meaning: inside the banner).
The rest knew which way the wind blew.
Especially the elders who trimmed their sails to every breeze. One by one they knelt, crying “The Sect Lord is wise!” and “Boundless is the Sect Lord’s Spiritual Power!”
I glanced at Liu Ruyan beside me.
I had sealed her cultivation base. She was an ordinary mortal woman now.
“Chen… Sect Lord.” Liu Ruyan kept her head down, her voice dry. “Kill me or spare me, it’s yours to decide. I only beg you to let the innocent disciples go.”
“Innocent?”
I smiled. “When Lin Feng framed me, they sat below whispering and laughing at me, despising me. Where was their innocence then?”
“Still, I’m no murderer.”
I rose and walked to the doorway, looking down over the whole of Tiannan Sect… Correction, the Renhuang Sect’s mountain gate.
“I want you alive. Alive, spending the rest of your lives contributing to my banner… Correction, to the great cause of the sect.”
From my storage ring I took out an enormous stele. Fingers like a knife, I carved the new sect rules into it:
1. One good deed a day: each of you must supply the banner with enough resentment… No, the power of faith.
2. Honor your master and revere the Dao: the Sect Lord’s word is the Heavenly Dao. Those who disobey go into the banner.
3. Diligence and thrift: all disciples’ spirit stones and magic treasures are to be handed in, held in trust by the Sect Lord (me).
“From today, no one cultivates those flashy old Cultivation Techniques anymore.”
With a sweep of my hand I threw out several thousand jade slips.
“This is the Human Emperor Soul-Refining Art, created by This Venerable One himself. In practice it means raising my banner with you as the feed, though outwardly we will announce it as the supreme righteous path of self-cultivation.”
The elders picked up the jade slips with trembling hands and swept them with their divine sense. Their faces changed.
Self-cultivation? This was plainly refining yourself into a “human battery,” feeding your essence, qi, and spirit to that demon banner! Cultivated long-term it would grow your base frighteningly fast, while your mind was assimilated by the banner step by step, until at last you became a Banner Slave.
“What? Don’t want to cultivate?”
I gave the banner a shake. Inside it, Old Ancestor Zhao Wuji poked his head out at the perfect moment and let out a roar that chilled the blood.
“We’ll cultivate! We’ll cultivate!”
Everyone nodded frantically.
Next to dying now, a slower death seemed easier to accept.
…
Over the next half month, the Renhuang Sect changed beyond recognition.
The once-immortal-looking sect was now wrapped in a thin layer of black mist.
The disciples no longer sat cross-legged in meditation, practicing Breath Work as they drew in the spiritual qi of Heaven and Earth. Instead they sat in circles in the plaza, worshipping the ten-zhang-tall giant “Banner of the Human Emperor” raised in the middle, muttering to themselves.
A frenzied light burned in every eye: fanaticism, or control, whichever you preferred.
I sat on the cliff’s edge in the back mountain, sipping tea brewed by Liu Ruyan’s own hands while I checked the system’s “performance.”
Yes, I had a system. But it was a useless one, and only at the Spirit Severing stage did it awaken a single function: the Virtue Persuasion System.
So long as I used “reason” to persuade an enemy, I earned Merit Points.
[Ding! Successfully persuaded the Grand Elder Zhao Wuji. Merit Points +100,000.]
[Ding! Successfully persuaded every last member of Tiannan Sect. Merit Points +500,000.]
[Current Merit Points: 600,000. Redeemable: Netherworld Dark Iron (Immortal-tier material).]
“Not bad.”
I took a sip of tea.
Liu Ruyan stood behind me. The proud woman she had been now wore coarse hemp and waited on me like a maid.
“Sect Lord.” Her voice dropped. “There are rumors in the market below the mountain that our sect reeks of Demonic Qi and that a peerless Demon Lord has emerged from it.”
“Oh?” I set my cup down. “Who’s spreading them?”
“It’s… The people of Qingyun Sect and the Vajra Temple.” Liu Ruyan studied my face with care. “They say they’ll form a Demon-Slaying Alliance and come to… To send a punitive expedition against you.”
“A punitive expedition against me?”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
Perfect.
My “brothers” in the banner had been complaining lately that their quarters were too cramped and the menu too monotonous (only the cracked melons and split dates of Tiannan Sect).
I had been worrying about where to improve their menu.
“Pass my order.”
I got to my feet, an eager light crossing my eyes.
“Open the mountain gate. Lay out the banquet.”
“If our friends from the Righteous Path are coming, how could we of the Renhuang Sect, a land of courtesy, fail to receive them properly?”
“Tell the disciples to prepare to receive our guests!”
Chapter Six: The Light of the Righteous Path Shines Upon the Earth (Physically)
The Qingyun Sect, the foremost power within ten thousand li.
The Vajra Temple, which claimed invincible body cultivators and specialized in suppressing evil.
And the Liuyun Sword Sect, mostly sword cultivators.
These three sects, who normally fought tooth and claw over resources, today stood united for the first time in memory.
The reason was simple: the commotion out of Tiannan Sect had grown too loud.
That pillar of black light piercing the sky could be seen from eight hundred li away, and worse, several spirit stone veins long monopolized by Tiannan Sect had abruptly stopped all outside sales.
That was cutting into everyone’s slice of the cake.
And so the great banner of “exorcising demons and upholding the Dao” was raised, as a matter of course.
Before the Mountain Gate of the Renhuang Sect.
Storm clouds bore down. Warships blotted out sun and sky.
The three sects had gathered nearly five thousand elite disciples, with ten Nascent Soul experts holding the line. They arrived breathing fury.
“Demon of Tiannan Sect, hear me!”
The master of the Qingyun Sect, Old Monster Li, an old man of immortal bearing, stood at the prow of the largest warship and amplified his voice with Spiritual Energy:
“Dismantle your Mountain-Protecting Formation at once, hand over the demonic artifact, bind your own hands and come out to die! Otherwise, today I flatten your Mountain Gate and leave not even a chicken or dog alive!”
His voice rolled like thunder, shaking the mountain forests into a shudder.
There was, however, no Mountain-Protecting Formation.
The Mountain Gate of the Renhuang Sect stood wide open.
The broad white-jade plaza had been laid with tables of food and wine.
And I sat at the foremost table, a chicken leg in hand, grease shining all over my mouth.
Behind me stood rows of Renhuang Sect disciples, faces blank and eyes hollow, and where they should have carried swords, each of them held a small black flag instead.
“So this is what they call… flattening a mountain gate?”
I swallowed the chicken, wiped my mouth, stood up, and waved warmly:
“Fellow Daoists! You’ve come so far, thank you for your trouble! Come, come, eat first. Fight after you’ve had your fill!”
The Righteous Path alliance in the sky was stunned.
What kind of move was this?
The Empty City Stratagem? Or the Hongmen Banquet?
“Hmph! Paranoid theater!” The Vajra Abbot of the Vajra Temple, a hothead with muscles bunched like cast gold, curled his lip. “This Demon Lord’s presence is nothing much — can’t see through him, so he’s probably hidden himself with some Magic Treasure. Don’t let him fool you — kill our way down!”
“Kill!”
At the word, five thousand cultivators poured down like a plague of locusts, riding flying swords and Magic Treasures, blotting out the sky.
Dazzling spells of every color dyed the heavens in five hues.
Facing the annihilating charge, Liu Ruyan behind me closed her eyes, her whole body shaking.
I only smiled.
A very happy smile.
“It seems you guests won’t drink the wine I pour, and would rather have the beating.”
I sighed and drew from my back that Banner of the Human Emperor, already evolved to the point where I could barely suppress it.
“Time to eat, my little ones.”
I shook the banner at my leisure.
Boom —
The clear sky turned to absolute darkness in an instant.
Those were not storm clouds but endless black mist, erupting from the banner in my hand and swallowing everything within ten li in a heartbeat.
“What is this?!”
“My Spiritual Energy! My Spiritual Energy is draining away!”
“Ah! Something’s biting me!”
The Righteous Path alliance, so unstoppable a moment before, fell into instant chaos.
Within the murk, countless ferocious ghost-shadows rose.
Leading them was Zhao Wuji, the recently “onboarded” former Grand Elder of Tiannan Sect.
Zhao Wuji now radiated a chilling presence more terrifying than in life, and with a wild laugh he hurled himself at his old rival, Old Monster Li of the Qingyun Sect.
“Old Monster Li! You stole my spirit medicine back in the day. Today you can pay it back with your Nascent Soul! Hahaha!”
Besides Zhao Wuji there was Lin Feng, long since turned vengeful ghost, leading a pack of low-level demons as they ripped and tore at the Foundation Establishment disciples.
“So this… is what the Banner of the Human Emperor can do?”
I stood at the heart of the murk, watching the one-sided slaughter.
This was no battle. This was a buffet.
The banner cheered and reveled. With every cultivator’s flesh and soul it devoured, the blood patterns on its face grew a shade brighter, and the bond I felt with it, linked by blood, grew stronger.
“Stop, Demon Lord! You dare kill the pillars of my Righteous Path?!”
The Vajra Abbot roared, golden light blazing from every inch of him as he tried to burn the murk away and charge at me.
“The Buddhist golden body?”
I looked at him with interest. “Not bad — you’re a tough cut of meat.”
I raised a hand and pointed at him from afar.
“Kneel.”
Words Become Law, at the peak of the Spirit Severing stage.
Crack!
The abbot, who had just closed to ten zhang in front of me, felt both legs snap, and he crashed to his knees, shattering the white-jade floor to pieces.
He looked up in terror. “You… you’re Spirit Severing…”
“Shh.”
I pressed a finger to my lips. “Keep it down, or you’ll scare the other guests.”
I walked up to him and rapped his shiny head with the banner.
“I see the master’s bones are extraordinary, his roots in wisdom deep. My banner happens to be short one Guardian Arhat. What does the master say?”
The Vajra Abbot trembled all over as he looked at his disciples, all but exterminated, and his fellow righteous cultivators being torn apart and devoured by vengeful ghosts. His mind collapsed.
“I… this monk… am willing to take refuge.”
“Amitabha.”
I smiled, and with one roll of the banner the Vajra Abbot vanished on the spot, becoming an angry-eyed Vajra motif on its face.
It had taken no more than the time it takes to burn a stick of incense.
The battle was over.
Of five thousand cultivators, not one survived.
The masters of all three sects had become my “subjects beneath the banner.”
The murk drew back, and sunlight fell across the land again.
Only now, falling on the scattered limbs and severed arms below, that sunlight seemed especially harsh.
I put away the banner and felt the power inside it, surging like an ocean.
“Mm. That threshold… I’m almost ready to make a Breakthrough.”
I turned and looked at the Renhuang Sect disciples behind me, dumbstruck, and at Liu Ruyan, pale as paper.
I spread my arms like a true preacher:
“You see?”
“This is the power of Persuading Others Through Virtue.”
“So long as we carry righteousness (the physical kind) in our hearts, no enemy is unconquerable!”
The disciples raised their little flags mechanically and shouted, trembling:
“Sect Lord… mighty!”
“Persuade Others Through Virtue! Persuade Others Through Virtue!”
Their voices pierced the clouds, and through them ran a current of hair-raising absurdity.
But just as I prepared to celebrate this great victory, a crack suddenly split the sky.
A colossal golden eye, formed of pure condensed Spiritual Energy, cracked open in the highest heavens.
It gazed down at the Renhuang Sect below, and at the banner gripped in my hand.
A pressure beyond the Spirit Severing stage, suffocating and terrible, descended from on high.
That was… the Upper Realm’s might.
“Ants of the lower realm. How dare you refine an evil object Defying Heaven and slaughter the living.”
“Death is the verdict.”
A thunderous voice detonated across heaven and earth.
I looked up at the giant eye. Far from afraid, I licked my lips.
“Here it comes?”
“Beat the young one and the old one comes. Beat the old one and the one in the sky comes.”
“An old routine, but I like it.”
I gripped my banner and raised a middle finger at the sky.
“You want to kill me?”
“Then you’d better come down in person. A mere projection won’t be enough to pick the teeth of my hundred thousand brothers!”
(End of Volume Two)
Chapter Seven: An Inspector from the Upper Realm? Looks Like a Delivery Guy to Me
The giant golden eye hovered in the highest heavens, cold and majestic, as if looking down on a cluster of dead ants.
That was the projection of an Inspector from the Spirit Realm, the Upper Realm. Though it was only a divine sense, the Law it carried could crush any cultivator of the Spirit Severing stage in an instant.
“Chen Chang’an of the lower realm! You refine evil weapons and slaughter your own kind, and your crimes are beyond pardon. I am Zhao Tianzun, Inspector of the Spirit Realm, and today I bring down divine punishment and grant you Soul Scattering!”
The words fell from on high, and right behind them a pillar of golden light scythed down like a sword from heaven.
Within that pillar ran a wisp of the “Annihilation Law.” Every scrap of matter it touched decomposed into atoms.
“What a Zhao Tianzun. What a divine punishment.”
I stood in the Renhuang Sect’s plaza. The wild wind tangled my long hair, and did nothing at all to the grin on my face.
“Little ones, we’ve got work!”
I shook the banner hard.
“Hey, you two. The Vajra Temple’s abbot, and Qingyun Sect’s Old Monster Li. Time to show your loyalty!”
Awooo!
Black mist churned inside the banner, and the souls of the three sect masters, “onboarded” for less than half a shichen, were forced to burst out.
Though their faces were full of reluctance, under the banner’s absolute control they had no choice but to burn their Nascent Soul soul-force, transforming into three enormous ghost shields that blocked the sky above me.
“Chen Chang’an! May you die a wretched death!!” Old Monster Li let out a desperate howl.
Boom!
The pillar of golden light slammed into the ghost shields.
They held for three breaths.
Three Nascent Soul giants who had dominated their era were utterly annihilated without even a chance to cry out.
But that was enough.
Three breaths was long enough for me to finish charging.
“Courtesy demands reciprocity.”
I stepped on the void, my form swift as lightning, and charged straight up against the stream of that pillar of light!
My banner swelled against the storm, growing in an eye-blink to a ten-thousand-zhang black curtain that blotted out the bright sky entirely.
“You call me an evil weapon?”
I shot to the colossal golden eye, close enough to touch it.
“Mine is clearly eco-friendly recycling and reuse!”
“Devour Heaven!”
The banner gaped open a massive rift, like the maw of an abyss, and bit down on the golden eye in one gulp.
“You dare!!”
The Inspector had clearly not expected the ants of the lower realm to be so mad. Alarm ran through the giant eye as it tried to withdraw the projection.
“Now that you’re here, why the rush to leave?”
I channeled my full Cultivation Base at the peak of the Spirit Severing stage, even burning a portion of the banner’s low-level souls as fuel, and held that projection locked in my grip.
“My banner may have plenty of brothers inside, but it’s all black and white, too dull. You, though, glow gold. Perfect for a voice-activated lightbulb!”
Zzt!
Space itself let out a teeth-gritting tearing sound.
Before the terrified eyes of the entire sect, that colossal golden eye, symbol of the Upper Realm’s supreme majesty, was physically torn down by that tattered old banner!
“Aaargh!! You insolent whelp! When my true body descends, I will tear you to pieces!!”
With one last roar of defiance, the golden eye was swallowed entirely into the banner.
On its pitch-black face there was now a golden eye pattern, radiating a soft (after being refined) golden glow.
The whole banner’s presence surged once more.
If it had been a Peak Grade Dao Artifact before, then now, having devoured a wisp of the Upper Realm’s Law, it had evolved into a Demi-Immortal Artifact.
Heaven and earth grew quiet once more.
I landed and toyed with the banner, then stirred a thought.
The golden eye blinked.
Whoosh!
A shaft of golden light shot out and lit the whole hall.
“Not bad. No more candles needed for night trips.”
Chapter Eight: The Fate of Liu Ruyan
After this battle the entire cultivation world fell utterly silent.
Even an “immortal” from the Upper Realm had been grabbed by Chen Chang’an and turned into a lightbulb. How the hell was anyone supposed to fight that?
Outside the Renhuang Sect’s Mountain Gate, every day the ground was packed with Rogue Cultivators and representatives of small sects, kneeling to Take a Master (and stay alive).
And I was handling the last bit of “household business.”
The back mountain. Reflection Cliff.
Liu Ruyan sat withered on a blue stone, gazing at the distant sea of clouds, her back desolate.
Her Cultivation Base was sealed by me; her face remained, but her essence, qi, and spirit had collapsed. The sect she had been proud of was a demon’s lair, the Upper Realm envoy she had looked up to was a lightbulb, and her worldview had shattered to powder.
“Tea?”
I walked up behind her and handed over a cup of Spirit Tea.
Liu Ruyan did not turn around. Her voice was hoarse. “Chen Chang’an, you’ve won. Are you going to kill me, or humiliate me?”
“Neither interests me.”
I sat down beside her and looked at the familiar mountain view. “Senior Sister, do you remember thirty-five years ago? I sat right here too, and told you I wanted to become the number one sword cultivator under heaven.”
Liu Ruyan’s shoulders jerked. She turned her head, tears gathering in her eyes. “You changed. You fell onto the Demonic Path.”
“No. I haven’t changed.”
I tapped the banner lying across my knees. “And I don’t cultivate demonic arts either. I’ve just seen through this world’s true nature.”
“The Righteous Path? Just a pack of robbers wearing human skin. When they snatch resources and wipe out dissent, they’re no prettier about it than I am. The only difference is that I’m more honest.”
“As for this banner…”
I stroked its shaft. “You call it a demonic artifact because it imprisons souls. As I see it, this is Eternal Life.”
“Inside here there’s no sickness, no aging. Everyone plays chess and chats and cultivates together every day, with Senior Martial Uncle Zhao and Junior Brother Lin putting on talent shows for the crowd — isn’t this exactly the blissful realm you’ve all been chasing?”
Liu Ruyan was stunned. She looked into my sincere (unhinged) eyes and felt a sudden wave of chill.
“You’re a madman.”
“Perhaps.”
I stood and patted off my backside. “I’m leaving.”
“Going where?”
“This place is too boring, and I want to go see the Upper Realm. Didn’t that Zhao Tianzun say he’d tear me to pieces? I don’t like waiting for people, so I plan to deliver the goods to his door myself.”
Liu Ruyan’s eyes flew wide. “You want to Ascend? But the Ascension passage is already sealed…”
“If the door’s locked, just kick it open.”
I turned to look at her. “Liu Ruyan, for old times’ sake, I’ll give you two choices.”
“One: I undo your seal, and you stay in this broken world, guarding an empty Tiannan Sect, growing old alone.”
“Two: you come in too.”
I shook the banner again. “Junior Brother Lin misses you terribly, but I’ll give you a privilege: you don’t have to be the Core Soul. I’ll arrange a private room, and you can keep being a Sect Master and manage the hundred thousand disciples inside.”
Liu Ruyan was silent.
She looked at that banner, then at this world she knew and yet did not know.
Stay? The sect destroyed, her name rotten. A weak woman alone would only be devoured by the other sects.
And besides…
She looked at Chen Chang’an’s straight, tall back, and something nameless welled up in her chest. This man was mad, he was ruthless, and yet he truly stood at the peak of all living things.
“I…”
Liu Ruyan closed her eyes, and two lines of clear tears slid down.
“I choose two.”
“A wise choice.”
The banner stirred.
A fragrant breeze swept past. Reflection Cliff was empty of anyone.
In one corner of that banner, there was now a slender figure in white, looking especially holy just then.
And so, in this world, I had nothing left to hold me.
Volume Four: Physical Ascension, and Wreaking Havoc in the Upper Realm
Chapter Nine: This Isn’t Smuggling — It’s Mass Migration
The Renhuang Sect’s plaza.
One hundred thousand living disciples and one hundred thousand dead souls, mustered and ready.
I stood on the high platform and delivered a pep talk before our departure.
“Brothers! Family!”
“What is the creed of our Renhuang Sect?”
From below the platform swelled a thunderous roar: “Persuade Others Through Virtue! Persuade Others Through Virtue!”
“Very good!” I nodded in satisfaction. “This world is too barren, its spiritual qi thin and its resources scarce, and it can no longer hold a ‘moral organization’ as large as ours.”
“I hear that in the Upper Realm, spiritual qi flows like water, treasures litter the ground, and even the dogs eat immortal pills.”
“If the Upper Realm won’t issue us visas, then we’ll just go ourselves!”
“Raise the formation!”
At my command, the super formation laid across the entire Tiannan mountain range activated.
This formation was not for defense, nor for attack. It was for one thing: moving house.
Rrrrumble —
The earth shuddered violently.
Countless cultivators for a thousand li in every direction watched in horror as the entire Renhuang Sect, together with the nine main peaks beneath its feet, tore itself loose from the earth and climbed!
I’m going to achieve Ascension with the land itself!
“Open up!”
Holding the Banner of the Human Emperor, I became a ten-thousand-zhang giant and drove a savage stab into the heavens.
Riiip!
The once-indestructible World Barrier, under the full-power strike of a Demi-Immortal Artifact-grade Banner of the Human Emperor channeling the peak of Spirit Severing, was punched clean through into a massive hole.
Beyond the hole lay a corner of the Spirit Realm, immortal mist swirling.
“How dare you! Who dares force entry into the Spirit Realm?”
Across the World Barrier plunged several tens of fierce presences: the Spirit Realm’s heavenly soldiers guarding the ascension passage, every one with a Cultivation Base at the late stage of Spirit Severing, and at their head, a Void Refining Expert.
“Stop him! This is smuggling!” The Void Refining Expert roared, and a precious mirror appeared in his hand, casting ten thousand rays of radiant light.
I stood on the floating mountain and looked over those so-called elites of the Upper Realm. My grin stretched from ear to ear.
“Smuggling?”
“No, no, no. You’ve got it wrong.”
I whipped the banner hard.
In an instant, the sky blackened.
A hundred thousand living disciples shouted as one; a hundred thousand dead spirit legions roared and charged.
The refined “giant golden eye” shot a beam of annihilation from within the banner and blasted that precious mirror to pieces.
“This is… armed invasion!”
“Charge, brothers! Even the air of the Upper Realm is sweet!”
Boom—!
The colossal floating mountain, like an invincible warship, rammed its way into the Spirit Realm under the cover of that pitch-black banner.
The heavenly soldiers who tried to stop it were like eggs thrown at a rock: crushed in an instant, then drawn inside by the greedy banner.
“Ah! My soul!” “What the hell is this thing!” “Go fetch the Immortal Venerable!!”
Chapter Ten: The Legend of the Human Emperor (Grand Finale)
The Spirit Realm. The Southern Heaven Domain.
This day was destined to be recorded in history.
Because a ruthless bastard from the lower realm had risen. Not only had he skipped the tempering of the Lightning Tribulation, he had brought a mountain, a hundred thousand people, and a banner named “Human Emperor” but in truth “Demon Ancestor” with him, and forcibly settled in.
…
One month later.
Before the gates of the Haotian Sect, the greatest sect of the Southern Heaven Domain.
I wore a brand-new brocade robe. Behind me trailed Lin Feng and Zhao Wuji, each of them rebuilt with a new Physical Body using Spirit Realm materials, and Liu Ruyan, newly promoted to Chief Steward within the banner.
And the most eye-catching of all was the banner planted behind me, already leaking the presence of immortal Dao Laws.
The Haotian Sect Master, a mighty one at the Body Integration stage, was looking at me now with cold sweat drenching his head.
“Chen… Fellow Daoist Chen. Your gracious visit, what brings you here?”
I put on my signature warm smile and rubbed my hands:
“It’s like this, Sect Lord.”
“I’ve only just arrived and I’m a little short on funds. And the few hundred thousand brothers in my banner have been developing bigger appetites lately.”
“I see your honorable sect sits on blessed land with thick spiritual qi, and…”
I pointed at the Haotian Sect’s magnificent Mountain-Protecting Formation.
“I think your sect seems to lack a little ‘moral construction.’”
“How about this: dissolve your sect and join my Renhuang Sect. I guarantee everyone a private room, and anyone who’d rather not take one can move into my banner and share a communal bunk.”
“What do you say?”
The Haotian Sect Master looked at that black banner, radiating endless fearsome might as if it could devour heaven and earth, then at the green-eyed “believers” behind me.
He swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
“Chen… Chen the Human Emperor speaks truly.”
“I… I would like to hear the doctrine of ‘Persuade Others Through Virtue.’”
…