Stranger Danger

“I think they’re all gone,” Feng Qingyou said.

Finally relaxing his shoulders after hearing Feng Qingyou’s assurance, Ye Qing recalled what happened earlier and praised, “Tsk tsk, the Chief Libationist was quite domineering, wasn’t he? As expected of him!”

The old man had singlehandedly shouted off a dozen Sages. If he wasn’t powerful, who was?

“The Chief Libationist is one of the strongest Sages of this world. Of course he’s powerful,” Feng Qingyou echoed in agreement. “It’s a shame though.”

“What is?” Ye Qing glanced at her in confusion.

“It’s a shame that there is only so much one person can do. Not even the Chief Libationist could save the world by himself.”

Feng Qingyou sighed. “Chu… will soon plunge into chaos.”

Ye Qing fell into a rare silence before sighing as well. “Yeah.”

It was inevitable that using the Heavens’ Eye would negatively affect Chu to a certain extent. However, as long as everything was executed properly—for example, if they successfully wiped out the Nanjiang Royal Court, Meng Feixue and her people, and retrieved the Heavens’ Eye without much trouble—then the damage would be greatly limited, and they would soon recover.

But it was different now. Not only did Chu fail to wipe out Meng Feixue and her people, the Heavens’ Eye was damaged in the process. It was a classic case of giving away a bride and to lose one's army on top of it. As a result, Chu wasn’t contending with just a severe loss of reputation and dignity anymore, the damage to their national relic was going to cost them a significant amount of Will of the Empire and trigger an untold amount of disasters in the future.

The Heavens’ Eye was the guardian artifact of Chu’s Will of the Empire. It being damaged was of course going to cost Chu their Will of the Empire.

The Will of the Empire might seem like an ephemeral, even superstitious thing, but it was definitely real and important beyond measure. If an empire’s Will of the Empire was strong, then the empire would prosper, the people would be at peace, and fortune would favor them both. On the other hand, a waning Will of the Empire would result in constant natural disasters and endless spawning of evil within the boundaries of the realm. The people’s lives would be miserable as well.

Since Chu had lost a significant amount of Will of the Empire from this effort, it was inevitable that bleak times were ahead of them.

Second, the Heavens’ Eye possessed the ability to watch the realm and suppress evils via its immense power. However, on top of using up most of its energy, it had suffered a not insignificant amount of damage as well. Naturally, it could no longer watch the realm, meaning that Chu’s control over their territories had weakened significantly. They could no longer protect their people as effectively as they had before as well.

In conclusion, Chu was destined for a period of disaster, unrest, and upheaval in the future.

Of course, these problems would not surface immediately. It might not even be obvious in the short term. But it would eventually.

Chu had prospered for a long time, but it looked like that period was finally coming to an end.

One thing for certain, it was the people who would suffer the worst of it.

“A great calamity is upon us. No one under the heavens of Spring and Autumn can avoid it. Chu is just the beginning, not the end.”

Feng Qingyou sighed quietly. “The age of chaos is nigh.”

……

“Hmm? Look, teacher! There’s a star!”

At a grass hut, a young boy was cooking tea when suddenly, a bright star appeared in the sky.

It was daytime right now, so it should be almost impossible to see the stars barring certain exceptions. However, that particular star was extremely bright. Not only that, it wasn’t dazzling like the sun or brilliant like the moon. It was cold, white, and overflowing with inauspiciousness and violence.

“What is that star, teacher? Why does it look so strange?”

There was a man in his thirties sitting at a bamboo table. He was wearing a tall crown and a wide belt and carrying a book. He answered slowly, “That is Ketu.”

“Ketu? What’s a Ketu?” The child asked.

“The Ketu Star is one of the navagraha[1]. It is a star that represents disaster. ‘When Ketu shines, disasters must appear’. That is how it is,” the man answered.

“I still don’t understand,” the young child said.

“It means, that the world is about to fall into chaos.”

When the man looked up, his eyeballs were missing from his eye sockets.

“The age of chaos is nigh. It is time I head out for a walk.”

As he said this, the grass hutt, the bamboo table, the furnace, and even the boy gradually disappeared like mirror reflections. They flew into the man’s eye sockets and transformed into a pair of blood red eyeballs.

The man disappeared right after that.

……

The imperial star has diverted, and the disaster star has appeared! Wonderful, wonderful!”

Inside an abode, a handsome old man wearing a Taoist robe suddenly looked up into the sky and muttered to himself.

“Child!”

“I am here…”

A tall, muscular, imposing-looking man clad in golden armor appeared in front of the Taoist. Strangely, his voice sounded like that of a three-year-old boy.

“Message Heavenly Soul Breaker, Earthly Soul Destroyer, Myriad Shadows and Thousand Faces and tell them that the time has come!” The Taoist ordered.

“As you command,” the strange man responded in a childish voice before turning to leave.

The Taoist gazed long and far into the horizon after the strange man was gone.

“The Azure Sky is already dead; the Way of Taiping will soon rise… and indeed, we will!”

……

“Namo Maitreya Buddha, a great calamity will soon engulf all under the heavens, and the people shall suffer…”

At a beautiful land filled with Buddha light like a Kingdom of Buddha, a fat Buddha as big as a mountain was sitting in the sky with a warm and merciful smile on his face. “To save all living beings from suffering, and to free all living things from the sea of bitterness, is an act of infinite compassion.”

“We, the Maitreya Sect, shall not shirk away from our duty…”

……

“Hahaha! The great calamity is nigh! The age of chaos is here!”

At an imperial court inside a mountain somewhere, a man wearing an emperor’s robe laughed like a madman. “He who emerges victorious in the age of chaos is the king. How can my Court of Chaos possibly abstain from this great race?!”

“All subjects, heed my call! Today is the day we return to the world!”

……

“The world has been corrupted for too long. Extinction is the only way to cleanse it all…”

Inside a sea of blood, a man wearing a mask was slowly walking on its surface. Wherever he went, the blood disintegrated into nothing and revealed the mountains of corpses hidden underneath it.

“The world must be destroyed and forged anew… if no one will come, then I will. If no one will do it, then I will…”

“Unborn Venerable Mother[2], Home of True Void…”

A noble, holy-looking woman stepped out of the void. Every time she took a step, a white lotus would grow beneath her foot and emit a ripple of sacred light.

“Pity the suffering, enlighten the ignorant…”

……

The past few months were easily the most exciting, unbelievable, and eventful months the world had seen since ages ago.

First, the Four Seas Dragon Palace betrayed humanity and tried to bring the Dragon Sovereign back to the human world. Luckily, humanity saw through their ploy, slew the Dragon Sovereign, and annihilated the dragons of the four seas, saving themselves from a calamity.

The incident was still fresh in everyone’s mind when the news that the Chu’s greatest geniuses, Fang Muyun and Chu Wangsun, had both been slain by a mysterious person. Chu suffered a huge loss in reputation as a result.

Just when everyone was waiting for Chu to embarrass themselves further, Chu rode out of their gates and wiped out the Nanjiang Royal Court and Eight Tribes and Nine Fortresses of Nanjiang in one fell swoop, stunning the entire world.

They were still busy being shocked by the strength and domination of Chu when suddenly, the remnants of the Meng Clan resurfaced and stole back the Nanjiang Royal Court. They then summoned the Moon God to wipe out the Barbarian Slayer Army, Wildland Suppression Army and the King Slayer Army, and seriously injure Wei Nanhua, a Sage.

Enraged, Emperor Jing Run did the unthinkable and activated Chu’s national relic. He used the Heavens’ Eye's vast powers to wipe out the Nanjiang Royal Court and turn five hundred kilometers of land into an uninhabitable wasteland.

Was this the end of the story?

Not at all. In fact, the best had yet to come. As Emperor Jing Run was returning with the Heavens’ Eye, he was ambushed by over a dozen Sages, all of them coveting to steal the weakened Heavens’ Eye. At a critical moment, the Chief Libationist finally showed up and scared all of them away, saving the Heavens’ Eye.

In conclusion, the fantastic incidents just kept coming one after another. It was to the point where the people did not even have the time to process them.

For a time, every man and woman under the heavens be it the ordinary people or the jianghu people were talking about it.

Of course, most people didn’t think too much about the incidents. They just thought that it was the most interesting months they had experienced in a long while.

They had no idea that these incidents were just the calm before the storm; the interlude before the climax.

None of this has anything to do with Ye Qing though, at least not right now. It was because Ye Qing was currently practicing in seclusion.

1. The navagraha are nine heavenly bodies and deities that influence human life on Earth according to Hinduism and Hindu mythology. ☜

2. ">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiguandao ☜