A deep guilt weeded its way into the 25th White Mother’s heart. But, she grit her teeth and continued.
“This universe… Your universe… is the youngest left of the ten thousand remaining. The day it was born was a celebration for the martial world because it was the first of its kind so trillions of years. It was a sign of hope that maybe, the laws of the cosmos had not forsaken us…
“As you know, it takes time for a universe to be inhabitable, even for us martial artist. So, in the years it took, much debate took place on how to make use of this new universe…
“It was selfish and greedy… But, I’m ashamed to say that no one thought of you natives and how we would be encroaching on your rights. The hope of millions of populations rested on this one remaining universe because one knew how long it would take for the next universe to manifest…
“In the years leading up to the moment your universe would become habitable, many wars took place… Too many to name and much too many to remember… A cycle of endless strife over the right to take something that was never ours to begin with… We were fighting over the right to stifle the growth of yet another universe…
“…
“As grand teacher told you, there are two main paths in the martial world, both of which were spurred on by the destruction of the universes.
“There’s the chaos path. The path that assumes that the destruction of the universes is simply the will of their laws. This path seeks to seep further into anarchy and accept this fate, assuming that a new rise to martial arts will come as a reward.
“This path is filled with power… Although they claim to be in line with the laws of the universe, the very fact they wield the power that they do protests to that facts…
“You yourself had felt the domineering nature of that entity’s body. Even while being so far away and having will power as firm as yours, if it wasn’t for your deep seeded anger, you would have succumb to your fear…
“The only way to reach such a height in the martial way is by transcending the laws of the universe itself. By definition, they never cared about the way of the universe, they only want to seek an easier path to immortality, even if that means everyone else dies!” This was the first time the 25th White Mother truly lost control of her emotions, but she quickly tried to rein them in again.
What Dyon’s master had just said was the truth, but also not as clear cut as it seemed…
The truth was, even those who didn’t co-sign to the chaos path were trying to transcend the laws of the universe as well. It was just that their approach was vastly different…
If Dyon saw the true body of his grand teacher in person, he wouldn’t feel as though his one with heart was ready to crumble at any moment like he had when seeing the body of the entity for the first time…
In the path to cultivation, there were always those two choices… To destroy… Or to lift up…
The decision of the entity was clear. If you ever tried to go against him without a firm martial way, all of your cultivation would simply crumble in his presence… But, even worse, this didn’t just go for living beings…
If the entity wasn’t restricted as he was now… His simple presence would erode the all things as we know it…
“The path of chaos they take makes them vastly superior in the martial way… Through self-harm, debasing practices, and an overall lack of a moral code, they take the sanctity of cultivation and trash it completely.
“The create artificial wills. They experiment on their own people. They kill innocents for the sake of their own improvement… They ransack cultivation treasures, they horde legacies… They even set up fake worlds like the Timeless Library to stoke the hope of those who are selfless, simply to drain the universe of more and more of its resources…
“And they do this all in the name of chaos. They pretend as though they’re following the path the universe set for them, when really all they’re doing is preying on the weak and stacking power in their favor.”
This was the simple truth of the chaos path…
Even when the dark phoenixes rampaged through the universes spreading death, they were simply doing so because it increased their own power… There was no ‘higher purpose’ for anyone other than themselves and their own disgusting values… Even the lives of the people of a completely innocent universe was seen as nothing to them.
Dyon’s master took a deep breath, calming herself. “I won’t try to feed you some lie about my ancestors coming here to protect your people. Nor will I say that it was better for us to have come than someone else… Because the truth of the matter is that we came in order to make use of your universe as well…
“The second path that martial artists take is one of balance… The hope of this path is to treat every avenue of cultivation as sacred and put in place for a reason. To see every path as just as necessary as the one before it…
“As grand teacher told you, the eventual goal of our path is to help the universe… We believe that the reason why universes are dying isn’t simply because we are using the energy at all, but rather because we are using that energy incorrectly…
“We’re taking this sacred energy and using it selfishly, only seeking to increase the length of our lives. But, what if this wasn’t the true martial way?…
“The path we seek is one of perfection… A path that transcends all not by stomping out the rest, but by raising them all up and combining them…
“A path that transcends not by destroying the universes, but by creating them.”
Dyon’s master continued to look over him with grief in her eyes.
“Because your universe was so young, it was a rare opportunity to study the laws of a universe being birthed in its infancy. If we ever wanted to reach a point where we could create universes ourselves, and transcend it laws in such a way, we needed an understanding of what universes were like in their youth… Unfortunately, your universe was the only option…
“By the time my ancestors fought their way here and established our sect, your people were already in their earliest stages of evolution and were quickly approaching a tipping point.
“From the history that we’d come to understand, this tipping point is usually where intelligent beings began to diverge onto paths of cultivation. By all rights, if your people were left to their own devices, they would soon being to tease apart the mysteries of the martial world and eventually reach a point of standing on equal footing with the rest of the cosmos…
“However… They never got their chance…
“Your universe was more special than we had once assumed… Because it was the first of its kind in such a long time, we believe that it accumulated much more of heaven’s blessings..
“The sheer amount of abyssal cores and cultivation resources far outweighed that of any other universe. As such, even after we celestial deer, and our kitsune allies, staked our claim to this universe, greed never ceased.
“Even worse, a series of events seemed to perfectly align against our wishes, causing a cascade of events that only seemed to multiply our enemies…
“By all rights, as the only Emperor God Clans willing to share a single universe as one, the celestial deer sect and kitsune alliance, later to add the Elves from their adjacent universe, we should have been nearly impossible to take down.
“However, we were naïve…
“The waterfall of terrible events started with my marriage to your martial father. The Drago-Qilin clans place strength above all and the truth was that your martial father never truly won based on his own merit. Although I once told you that he was shunned by his clan because he risked his life to help a human clan, that was only part of the reason. Those events only served to solidify his moniker as a coward and shameless individual…
“As you’ve learned now, it was actually the dragon king that technically earned the right to be my husband. But, by the time the events unfolded, the marriage was already completed, and my virginity was already taken. There was simply no reversing events, so my husband forever carried the label of shame his entire life and the dragon king’s weapon became even more of a taboo…
“After that, the Daiyu took a stance of enmity against us, unwilling to forgive the slight on their dignity… Dragons have always been proud creatures, and these events pushed them to their edge… Maybe… Maybe had I not been so selfish in my love things wouldn’t have evolved like this…”
The martial world was a cruel place. The most horrid of things from one’s mortal realm were amplified by tens of times when strength became more important than anything else…
Dyon’s master was one of the few cases where the girl got to love and live a long life with the weak man she chose… But, even that came with its own consequences…
Maybe this was why the Kitsune, having been allies with the celestial deer sect, were so set on their traditions. If these events had never happened, maybe Dyon’s father in law wouldn’t have had to go so far… Maybe he wouldn’t have to go so far in the future…
Dyon’s master shook her head. “The second event that shook us to our core was the destruction of the Elvin Kingdom… To this day, I have not a single clue what happened, or why only the Acacia family survived of the three ancient families, but, what I do know is that with the destruction of their kingdom, the flanks of our universe were exposed…
“As you know, currently, this universe is only connected to one other – the Uidah clan’s universe. In the past, during these events, that universe was owned by us. However, during that time, there was another universe connected to this very universe – the current Chaos Universe. In fact, that connection is still there, although it is completely unused since it is now uninhabited – not to mention the fact the location is something we buried before our destruction.
“Because our ally in the Elves was now gone, there was suddenly an avenue to attack us at the heart of our alliance. Even more suspiciously, whoever it was that caused the swift destruction of the elves forced them to flee in the direction opposite to our universe. This meant the Elves had to go a roundabout way, eventually having to enlist the aid of the Ragnors before finally making it back here…
“You may be thinking that it’s obvious who destroyed the Elvin Kingdom, right? I too once thought that it had to be the entity… He had the most to gain. However, what you don’t know is that the entity had long since transcended before these events. As you’ve seen by the measures it takes for the dragon king to remain in this world, and the strain it puts on grand teacher to help you from afar, transcended beings cannot easily come back to our plane of existence, let alone wipe out an entire Kingdom of people.
“All I know is that whoever destroyed the Elvin Kingdom is the same group of people who found a way to shatter the plane boundary and summon the entity back to this universe. Without them, the catastrophe would have never happened… and our second betrayal of your people wouldn’t have come to fruition…”
Dyon’s master sighed. “The third event that broke the fragile landscape and cast a shadow over our alliance was the war of the phoenixes…
“Amethyst wanted nothing more than to wipe out the ice and fire phoenixes as revenge for her parents. But, the threat of the dark phoenixes couldn’t be ignored either…
“She was truly the most powerful being to ever exist under transcendence. Her ability to fight was unparalleled and her recovery abilities were nothing short of godly… Many speculate on the kind of power the combined dao of life and reincarnation could have… Theories ranged from true immortality to having more than nine nirvanas.
“However, because Amethyst was so overwhelmingly powerful, no one ever saw her nirvana. Nor was she ever truly close to death. Whether she truly had more than nine rebirths available to her was something maybe only she, herself, knew.
“With her rage fueling her, Amethyst battled the already depleting phoenix population alone, through the universes. Because the number of universes was continually shrinking, the number of life and reincarnation phoenixes had likewise decreased.
“That said, dark phoenixes were obviously different. However, because their reproductive rate was far inferior even compared to other supreme level beasts, they could only grow more powerful while their population remained stagnant.
“But, even then, they were nothing in the face of Amethyst.”
Dyon had heard much of this story before. However, when Elwing had told it, he distinctly remember Little Lyla tugging on his arm, letting him know that Elwing was lying about something.
When he had later asked Little Lyla about it, she had simply said that the details of the story were murkier than Elwing was letting on. Which simply meant that he had embellished the details he had no clue about…
“There was a problem with Amethyst’s revenge, though…
“Beasts are different from humanoids. We have a connection to the universe that’s deeper than any humanoid can match. And, although we lack comprehension abilities, we make up for that in leaps and bounds by the legacies engrained into us.
“However, the true purpose for the existence of beasts was as a counter-balancing act by the universe. Because humanoids were constantly sapping more and more energy away, it became necessary to establish representations of laws to keep them firmly rooted in reality… This was how we beasts evolved from our savage natures to become intelligent creatures as well…
“So… With the representations for life… reincarnation… and death gone from the world, one can imagine the sheer chaos caused…
“Amethyst is a bad person. But, she wasn’t stupid either. She knew fully well the consequences of her actions, but she did it anyway… And no one could stop her… In the end, power is all that matters in the martial world, and she had almost too much of it – even to the point where she could forcefully resist the universe’s will to push her to transcendence until she was satisfied with the end of the phoenix clans…
“That said, the phoenixes were mere representations – fail safes, if you will. Just because they were gone, didn’t mean life collapsed as we know it… But, that didn’t meant there was no effect either…
“With the barriers between life, death and reincarnation blurred by their extinction, the plane between this world and transcendence suddenly became fragile. And it was because of that very thing that the entity you saw chained in our Earth was able to come here!”
The 25th White Mother released a long breath.
Three seemingly unrelated events, and yet they resulted in endless pain… She couldn’t help but think this was all orchestrated…
“Because the entity isn’t meant to be hear, he was constantly met with heavenly tribulations he had to forcefully fight against, which severely weakened his power. Because of that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to execute things as he pleased alone. And clearly, he didn’t want to reveal the group he used to wipe out the Elves so soon, so he began to enlist others… Namely the Daiyu…
“Do not be fooled by the current appearance of the Daiyu… At the time of this war, they were nearly unmatched through the universes. They had countless dao formation experts and a staggering amount of half-transcendents. That was not even including their ancestors, waiting in the wing. Couple that with the entity and his pet… And we were backed into a corner that was nearly impossible to get out of…
“In our moment of absolute despair, we turned to our celestial deer sect’s holy treasure. A treasure among the 33 most powerful not just in this plane, but also the transcendent plane. You may not understand the full meaning of a 33heavens weapon – especially since you’ve inexplicably stumbled upon 3 – but these are weapons that even your grand teacher would salivate over. The requirements for their use are harsh, but their utility is unmatched…
“It was because The Seal that we were able to survive… We used it to shatter the daos of the Daiyu and many of their beast forms… We used it to seal the pet of the entity within the gate’s spatial realm… However, when it came to the entity, we were simply not powerful to do anything to him alone… If it wasn’t for the constant heavenly tribulations he was enduring, we would have been wiped out long before we could do anything…
“The war continued for decades. Each day was another filled with despair…
“However, what we didn’t know was the purpose tis entity came for. Why would a transcendent come back? What was there in this plane that he could possibly want?…
“The answer was something horrifying…
“Using the universes as a sacrifice, the entity wanted to artificially boost his talent to unprecedented levels… The reason he chose to start with your universe was obvious… It had the most potential and would return the most for his investment…
“As I said before, the souls of the people birthed in a universe are forever tied to it. This is why when a universe is destroyed, reincarnation is no longer an option for those who were birthed there. However, this logic works in other ways too…
“Because your universe had the highest accumulation of energy ever seen in one, by logic it would also birth the most powerful cultivators ever seen… You would be blessed with talent never before seen through the cosmos… All you needed was time to grow… Time you were never given due to the selfishness of others…
“However, with your talent came an opportunity…” Dyon’s master grit her teeth, trying to make it through the toughest part of the story for her… because she knew that what they had done was despicable and unfair… But it was a choice they had to make…
“In the martial world, the concept of give and take has always been prevalent. When you reach a new height in cultivation, there’s a punishment given for it. When you are birthed with extraordinary talent, your punishment is adjusted for it. And the more you sacrifice… The more you gain…
“By sacrificing your talent and sealing it all away… We were able to accumulate enough power to chain the entity in this prison…
“However, the entity was too much for us, and his comprehension of array alchemy and seals far surpassed our own… In fact, I would dare to say that he is the number one expert in all of existence… He knew what we wanted to do before we even put it into action… and he inexplicably… Let it happen…
“In all likelihood, he’s only waiting for the right time to break free of his prison on his own… Taking your talent with him…”
“This was our second betrayal…”