Clack!

A smooth, black stone reversed the tide on the board of go.

A middle-aged man, with long hair and extended goatee, scrutinized the board that was upset by his opponent’s move. While he would certainly attract ladies with his appearance, his mint-green hair had brought an exotic sense of oddity that would require a unique taste.

Wholly concentrated, he leaned forward and contemplated. His hand carried a white stone that scoured around the board, seeking to do the same thing as the black stone had done. But, a sudden jolt of hesitation caused his green robes to retract alongside his hands.

The middle-aged man sighed and slumped back onto his chair like a wilted flower.

He looked up to see his opponent, a tall, black-robed man who wore a mask that only exposed his sinister, red eyes. As if to outdo this eccentric article, the masked man had also worn form-fitting underclothes, with a turtleneck up to the chin, and thin gloves. It was impossible to see the skin of the man, much less his face.

It was as if he was trying to hide something.

From afar, any normal person would exclaim from the bizarre entities that were playing a game of go. However, the two played in an open-air pagoda that was surrounded by an exquisitely decorated water garden; colorful water lilies, vibrant plants, and myriads of flowers decorated the garden while hundreds of koi fish glided through the water. They were anything but ordinary.

The middle-aged man glanced at the board with visible frustration before sighing again in self-deprecation, “Little Ye’s talent is indeed insurmountable. You’ve beaten me, a grandmaster with decades of experience, in a matter of years.”

“My skills are incomparable to Uncle Dor. I merely have beginner’s luck. If we were to play again then Uncle would surely win,” a youthful voice still reeking of pubescent years came from the masked man.

Dor felt better from the regaining of face and looked for a less distasteful topic.

“Little Ye won’t be able to find a wife if you don’t show your face,” Dor teased and examined Ye Tian’s other wear. “Your germaphobic side also doesn’t help woo the girls with jade-like skin.”

“Wife? I don’t plan on getting dirty yet,” Ye Tian coldly replied. “Why do you want me to get married anyway? You should be thinking about yourself. You’re turning 68 and still haven’t found love.”

“Tsk tsk. Getting a wife is best done early. Once you reach my age, the only things that are lying around are old hags that are obsessed with cultivation.”

Ye Tian was speechless, “Old hags? With cultivation, not only are our bodies youthful but also much more beautiful than mortals.”

“Still, they’re so cold and mean. Must be their sexual frustration. Hmph!”

Ye Tian paid no heed to Dor’s rant since Ye Tian knew who Dor was specifically referring to anyways.

As one of the two middle-elemental stages, Dor was a frequent target for the sect master’s errands. Being worked until he panted even harder than a dog didn’t give Dor the best opinion of sect master Bing Yan, a prudent woman.

Once, Dor had to journey to fight and harvest the cores of rank two beasts which weren’t a joke, even for peak elemental stages. It was an exile for an entire year before Dor returned with two cores.

Sect master Bing Yan had also noted the usefulness of Dor’s amiable personality, so he had to run even more errands as the envoy elder. If one were to give out free positions of power then Dor definitely wouldn’t want to be there.

Ye Tian looked at Dor, “Uncle Dor… Did you get any information about my friends when you went out last time?”

“I’m sorry, little Ye. It’s just too hard to find two… nobodies,” Dor sighed.

“I see, thank you.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” consoled Dor as he felt Ye Tian’s mood drop. “On the other hand, I finally found more information on the new, mysterious city lord.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, this guy was really mysterious with those new bestial armaments that he introduced. I also heard rumors that he wasn’t a cultivator which just sounds like complete nonsense. Anyways, you get the idea that my information may not be too credible. So, this new city lord guy is apparently named Lu Yin.”

“What?!”

Dor’s brow raised in amusement. Shock was something he had never seen from Ye Tian.“They say the guy was a neglected dark horse who rose up to power. He has won the admiration of many since he was neutral and an underdog. The people love him for his fairness, and the nobles also love him for his neutrality. You got history with him?”

“...”

“Well, I’ll be going now before I get yelled at.”

With that, Dor walked out of the open-air pavilion to run another errand. According to him, it was an important one that concerned the life and death of the sect. As a result, this time, Dor didn’t procrastinate by playing Go for multiple days.

Ye Tian was lost in thought as he stared at the slowly disappearing figure of Dor.

Lu Yin… What the hell happened to you? What is going on?

How long has it been? 5 years?

Right. It had been 5 years since that night. Ye Tian could still vividly remember. He had never forgotten. Even to this day, he still regretted it.

What was regret? It was the realization of what it could’ve been and not what it had been.

After the grand escape, Ye Tian’s group had traveled for months until they reached the province of Yang Mi where the Rising Phoenix sect lay. Dor Windstom accepted the group with open arms, of course, after Ye Tian showed him the letters and medallion. A huge reason may have been Ye Tian’s inferior-elemental stage powers which arose after he consumed the elemental eruption pills.

It was no blessing but rather a curse. Although Ye Tian received power, to this day, Ye Tian could no longer feel his cultivation increasing. It seemed as though there was a black hole inside of him. An all-consuming hole that never ceased to devour and gave back nothing in return.

Ye’s reminiscence was soon interrupted by a bird with a message.

‘Elder Ye must report to the meeting of the elders.’

***

Walking into a silent meeting room, multiple eyes shot onto Ye Tian’s figure. Ye Tian had given them quite the shock when he joined the sect with inferior-elemental stage powers, but it seemed that his progress had slowed down to a crawl compared to his earlier prowess. Still, no one was underestimating Ye Tian yet.

A few cordial greetings by the other elders helped warm up the room, but it could not hide the internal wariness towards each other, especially towards Ye Tian who was a recluse and also hidden behind his clothes. Anyone would be wary of an unknown wild card.

Finding his seat around the meeting table, Ye Tian sat down and rested his eyes.

Soon, 7 of the 8 elders and sect master had assembled.

Dor Windstom’s empty seat did not go unnoticed.

“Elder Windstom is on a diplomatic mission to the other sects,” explained the sect master.

Ye Tian opened his eyes and glanced at an old man in black robes. He was the other mid-elemental stage. Punishment elder Ji Fa was a stern, cranky old man, like all sect punishment elders, thus he wasn’t the friendliest person to form relations with other powers.

Murmurs between elders soon broke out.

“Is it time...”

“Who are we with...”

Ji Fa glanced at Ye Tian, “If we are discussing this then he must leave. Not showing his face. Not even coming out to socialize. We don’t know anything about this guy. What if he’s a spy? He joined right when the empire was sent into turmoil.”

“Elder Ji is right...”

“Now that Elder Ji has mentioned it, Elder Ye does seem suspicious.”

“Enough! I did not arrange this for you all to quarrel. I trust that Elder Windstom has the sect’s best interest in his eyes. Since you are all so worried, Elder Ye and other elders will escort the disciples to the Soaring Heroes competition,” silenced sect master Bing.

The Soaring Heroes competition that occurs every 10 years? She trusts Windstom enough to assign me this important mission, so I can prove my loyalty. If I truly had malicious intentions then I could potentially endanger the talented disciples, so if nothing happened then my credibility could increase in the sect.

However, this also means that she values the disciples less than me, an inferior-elemental stage...

For a moment, Ye Tian could not help but feel pity towards these disciples.

She laid out a map, with many colored dots that represented cities, onto the table. However, this was merely a provincial map that was already terribly large. After all, the world only had 34 provinces which were combined from the main continent and subcontinents. On the map, there were around a hundred cities just like Ashurias.

“As you all know, we are the blue dot over here,” pointed sect master Bing Yan.

Surrounded by steep mountains, the sect was built into both the mountains and forest that lay in the valley below the mountains. There weren’t any magical formations. Instead, the natural terrain acted to block off the outside world.

“The other colored dots each represent a faction. So far, they can be currently separated into three categories: red for rebel, yellow for imperial, and green for independent.”

Elder Ye looked at the map. Surprisingly, around half of the cities were rebel or imperial, but the other half was green. It seems like some people took the chance amidst the chaos to dream big.

“Our sect consists of a few thousand disciples. With our three dao domain ancestors and us, our mid-sized sect is essentially a somewhat decent sized player in this struggle. If we stretch our forces then we should be equivalent to 2 or 3 cities. Of course, our dao domain ancestors are inferior stage thus some big-player cities need to be carefully trod around.”

“In this province, there are only three other mid-sized sects namely Dark Wind sect, Yu Fei sect, and Auskier sect. Meanwhile, there are 6 smaller sects.”

At this moment, an elder spoke up, “Us sects have been oppressed and treated unfairly under the empire. We should take this chance to rise up with the other sects.”

Another elder raised his voice in opposition, “What if we lose? If the empire wins this mass rebellion then we will be executed.”

“Can they even execute all of us?”

“Both of you have a point. The empire can’t easily fall like this. This could be a gigantic cleanse of hostile factions for when the crown empire ascends, but it does seem too far fetched for a mass cleansing.”

“Didn’t the 10th emperor die?”

“Hmph, and if he didn’t?”

“Silence! While elders have the power to make key decisions in peacetime, our ancestors have already passed down the order to join this struggle. Elder Windstom has already departed to discuss conditions of an alliance with the other sects.”

An elder shot up from his seat and slammed the table, “Bing Yan! You do not represent the sect! Do not make decisions without the appearance of-”

“We have indeed decided,” resounded a voice throughout the room.

Upon hearing the voice, every elder stood up to salute this voice. Even the elder, who was disgruntled, had shut up.

“Due to our own preparations to try to break through, we will not be making an appearance. Go on, sect master Bing.”

The big guys had already spoken. There wasn’t much that the little guys could do now, so everyone, now tamed, obediently listened to Bing Yan go on about more information about the cities.

***

Upon returning to his room, Ye Tian opened up a secret corridor behind a bookcase. It was dark in this room until a spirit stone was inserted into one of the lamps.

Before Ye Tian was a few corpses on stone beds, the corpses’ skin was dissected open. A book was open on a wooden lectern that was beside one of the beds.

Ye Tian fumbled around one of the cupboards on the walls to fish out a jade bottle. He poured out the contents to reveal gray powder which was then sprinkled onto each of the corpses.

“It’s going to be hard to get more Corpse Preservation Powder,” he mumbled.

The only people that purchased these types of things were either morgues or evil sects. If Ye Tian purchased too much then even his identity as an elder can’t save him from a thorough inspection.

Taking out a paintbrush, some ink, and paper, Ye Tian began to inspect and take notes from both the dissected corpses and book.

It had not been easy to get this anatomy book since Confucian values deemed dissection as a disgrace. The body came from the parents and was considered sacred, but it was not sacred enough for Ye Tian to not open up a body to inspect the inner-workings of the body.

In these five years, in order to better understand qi, Ye Tian had been doing anatomical research on meridians.

Research was necessary to further improve on the road of cultivation, especially when he is walking a blind path. After the fighting, Ye Tian’s meridians were inflamed and made it all the more necessary to improvise the starseeking scripture.

Taking off his glove, Ye Tian looked at his hands. It looked like his veins were red, except there was more than the normal number of blue veins. It seemed more as if his skin had cracked and the red lines were the crack lines.

It’s time to take my medication.

Ye Tian took out another jade bottle and popped a round pill into his mouth.

I can’t keep continuing like this. My body is slowly developing a resistance to these painkillers.

How many painkillers had he tried? How many had he fused into one compound pill? How many more pill recipes until there was no more? The current compound pill he used already numbs his other senses for a few hours as a side-effect.

He still remembered the terrible pain. The aching of the body when he woke up for the first time with the ailments from the inflammation. For days, Lu Ning and Zhang Qiang had to constantly retie the worn ropes that bound Ye Tian’s hands before knocking him out. If they had not done so then Ye Tian may have already killed himself to end his own misery.

Now, he persevered till today with great assistance from painkillers. But Ye Tian grew closer to insanity every day. The painkillers were not always going to be effective. He needed to find ways to end the inflammation.

He was running out of time.