Changing the Heavens

The first thing I did in that deserted ruin was gather the spirit medicines and the books.

Having reached the realm I named Five Qi Gathering at the Origin, I could unfurl my divine sense across a radius of forty zhang—nearly four hundred feet—without the least strain, so the work did not take long. Void Seizure, the art of spatial manipulation, deserved no small share of the credit.

The spirit medicines... hardly worth a glance.

Haul them all together and absorb every drop, and they would still amount to less than devouring a single lord of the Jin Clan Domain who had reached the Origin Spirit stage. And truly, what could surpass swallowing an Origin Spirit cultivator whole?

Even Mount Tai is only grains of earth, gathered one upon another. Inferior as the medicines were to grinding cultivators ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠down and drinking them, I absorbed the lot.

With an Origin Spirit thrown into the mix, my internal energy has grown some twentyfold. No... ought I to be calling it dharma power now?

I had read every text kept in the Jin Clan Domain, and the difference between internal energy and dharma power came down to this: whether turbid qi was present or not.

My internal energy had never held a trace of turbid qi. It was fair to call it dharma power.

Or perhaps I ought to name it yao-qi.

So I am a yao-beast.

Not that I had failed to expect it. The moment I accumulated qi, a yao-core took shape, and I developed a power of regeneration no human body could possess. I had ceased to be an ordinary human from the very start. Humans are beasts at root; becoming a yao-beast need not be impossible.

Though this world seems a little different.

Here, too, human beings had been beasts. Then a single human awakened to spiritual nature, and everything changed. By some means he discovered how to draw in the qi of heaven and earth, and through cultivation he raised his own caliber. After he ascended as an immortal and worked his miracles, every human came to awaken that same spiritual nature. Those born with it already open practiced immortal cultivation in imitation of the first immortal, while the yao races—among whom only a rare few ever awakened—were driven to the margins.

More than thirty volumes told that tale. It was too coherent to dismiss as a children's story, and beings like immortals did, in fact, exist in this world. The telling itself might be embroidered, but some measure of ancient history had to lie beneath it. Humans can think by extending what they already know. They cannot, from nothing, imagine what they have never seen.

Not that any of it mattered much. How the humans of this world became the ruling kind upon the earth was no concern of mine. All I needed was the power their species had amassed until now. Purpose alone can never fulfill a purpose. It is not only matter that must hold both force and direction before it can move.

Immortal cultivation.

A discipline of tempering oneself, for the sake of becoming an immortal. At its heart it seeks to raise the caliber of the soul. Cultivators turn it to the filling of their own greed, but that is only incidental. If I meant to lead this world to the Other Shore, I would need the soul's caliber as well. It was a method I had no choice but to learn.

Immortal cultivation had existed from the beginning—not in its present shape, but as the way of the yao, devouring one another so that the self might be exalted. Only when the first immortal appeared did the form known now take its place as the path. Later generations then divided its realms according to the road that first immortal had walked.

And those who pass through that course and attain the realm of immortals receive, from the mortals who honor their greatness, the title of True Immortal.

Yet one who has reached that realm no longer touches the lower world, and so a true ascension cannot be told apart from an ordinary death. When the funeral rites of a great figure are held, people say they have shed the mortal coil and ascended to immortality—and that custom, too, arose from there.

It doesn't seem a lie.

Some guess that from Soul Refining onward the realms exist only in imagination. I, however, had already met a divinity of this world, one I took for a being of True Immortal height.

That overflowing caliber, and that uncanny manner of speech, writing his will directly into the mind. Look at it however I might, he was no ordinary being.

A being of such stature that a mortal who beheld him would have had their mind crumble beneath the weight of it; a being who, out of nothing but curiosity, made yet another human life into a pastime. If that was not a True Immortal, then what was it?

Well. Even if my life was no more than an amusement to him, I was grateful. Because of him, I had been able to meet Seol-a. However much the parting hurt, her existence had been a blessing, and a salvation.

Remembering her, my chest ached again. The sun that had shone on me most brightly would rise no more.

And so I decided to become the sun myself.

To give salvation to everyone. To sever the circling yoke of samsara as it grinds on like a caged wheel, and to bestow an ideal from which emotion and desire have been cut clean away...

I had wandered for a moment. Whatever the case, there was only one thing I had to do now.

Gain power enough.

My direction was already set. What I needed, if I was to change the world, was power in the truest sense—power beyond even the might that shakes heaven and overturns earth.

I have to become an immortal cultivator.

Immortal cultivation is a discipline whose end is the immortal: a deathless being, eternal and imperishable. Naturally, it lengthens one's life and makes that vitality stubbornly hard to kill. I had been learning martial arts for little more than a year and had already pioneered two new realms, and even so I would never reach the Martial Apex within the span allotted me. I needed the years that immortal cultivation grants.

It ought to help my martial strength as well.

And since guiding this world to the Other Shore required the soul's caliber too, learning the path would answer some of that need. I already had another method in mind... but more is always better. There was no harm in taking up immortal cultivation besides.

What was more, I had at last met the conditions for it.

To cultivate immortality, one needs spiritual roots corresponding to the Five Elements, and I had possessed none. That, and nothing else, was why I had been unable to realize the path and walk it alone. But when I attained Five Qi Gathering at the Origin and housed the qi of the Five Elements in my middle dantian, my essence came to bear five spiritual roots.

The more spiritual roots one has, the greater the total that must be filled, and so cultivation grows harder...

It would not be a problem. By the same principle that a master of the Peak Realm, even wearing sandbag weights, still defeats an ordinary man, I had the talent to ignore such things.

No. More precisely, I ought to call it caliber.

The caliber I had heaped up in the days when I was not yet I was not so lightly dismissed. By its grace, were I to follow the existing order of immortal cultivation, I could rise at once as far as Foundation Establishment. That, I would not do.

Because I have to tear the system down and build it anew.

The path as it stands lies in Mara's hand. If I am not to have it confiscated by him, I must cultivate with nothing but power that has come out of me.

I crossed my legs in a lotus seat and let my eyelids fall.

Darkness covered the windows that looked outward, and I contemplated what lay within.

Who am I?

I answered the question I had put to myself.

I am a reincarnator, repeating life after life. I am also a walker of samsara, who of my own will takes on the afflictions and karma of others and repeats birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Then what do I mean to become?

I mean to become the sun. The sun that illuminates the Other Shore—the Other Shore I will complete by saving all people.

Then I turn that will into power, and twist providence.

Light tore open. In the Realm of Primordial Chaos, where the essences of all creation gather, my soul poured forth light.

Omnipotence and liberation flooded the length of my body. I severed a single strand of Indra's Net, where providence is woven like thread, and replaced it with light—with my will.

Do that, and I am a world in myself. A microcosm, in the truest sense.

"Haa..."

I lifted my eyelids ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by degrees and let out a long breath.

Any further, and it will be too much.

Lay a hand on Indra's Net beyond this, and even the miracle I had just wrought would return to nothing.

Little by little... little by little. I will amend your heaven, Mara Papiyan.

And in the end I would sit upon the celestial ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠throne at the summit of Mount Sumeru, and lead this trichiliocosm—the Three Thousand Great Thousand Worlds—to the Other Shore.

I carved that destination deep into my heart, and murmured.

"Right. If I'm to do that, I'll need still more power."

And so the next destination was the Makri Clan.

I fixed in my mind once more the lay of a map, one of the spoils taken from the Jin Clan Domain, and rode the black lotus toward the Makri Clan.