86 – The Scroll of Great Self

The evening settled into its final hour. In the west the sun sank beneath the horizon as day gave way to night. High on the uppermost peak of Shengyuan Peak, two old men sat across from each other in a garden gazebo. Luochen and Tianjiao occupied opposite ends of the table, both with their feet propped up on the table. The former read a book while the latter idly played with a communication talisman, tossing it, twirling it between his fingers, catching it again.

“Shouldn’t you be working somewhere else?” Luochen finally asked.

“I am working.” Tianjiao yawned. “What are you reading?”

“Porn,” Luochen answered dryly.

Tianjiao snorted. “What’s it about?”

“Some body cultivator get sodomized by a sword cultivator’s sword.”

“With the sword itself?” Tianjiao switched one foot over the other.

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t that just be called stabbing?”

“Yes.”

Then the conversation just died there. These kinds of silly pointless exchanges had repeated themselves for days. Mostly because they both have run out of things to properly discuss about. So now they just hung around doing nothing. Technically both still had responsibilities, but as Nascent Soul elders, who exactly was going to order them back to work?

The communication talisman in Tianjiao’s hand suddenly activated. He listened as Elder Yǐnyuè delivered her report on the events in Liǔ’àn City.

“Anything interesting?” Luochen asked without looking up.

“We will receive three hundred and thirty new disciples,” Tianjiao replied.

“So things are progressing well?”

“So far, yes. We only need to locate the other two.”

The sect’s secret plan was proceeding better than expected. Their relative isolation in the south, combined with a certain adopted Xuan serving as an exceptionally effective distraction, had kept most of Tianhe’s movements under wraps. No one had yet asked pointed questions about the sudden recall of so many disciples from northern missions, leaving only token numbers behind to maintain appearances and the newly established information chains.

The latter only recently started to be established after the last debacle in which the sect had been deliberately isolated from outside intelligence. Of course once the tournament ends, plenty will start to notice unless they are blind. Recruiting these three hundred disciples and more was also crucial as they needed to quickly grow their number and power. The vault and treasury have been audited and will soon be bled dry. Because as soon as any sect knows what they were planning, all relations would be broken and every opportunistic faction would demand a share of the spoils.

Tianjiao suddenly hummed at whatever new detail Elder Yǐnyuè had just relayed.

“What is it?” Luochen closed his book at once. Anything capable of drawing that sound from Tianjiao was worth attention.

“Your son has acquired the Scroll of Tàiwú.”

A blur streaked past. The instant the words left Tianjiao’s mouth, Luochen had already launched himself northward at full speed. Many things could be revealed by that scroll, and he had no intention of missing the chance to understand his adopted son more clearly. Tianjiao smirked and followed in a flash of thunder. If matters went well, even his newest disciple might gain something from this.

—

“Hmmm.”

I sat in the main hall of the City Lord’s mansion and turned the scroll over in my hands. It did not look particularly remarkable. The two rollers were plain wood. The tying ribbon sat in the middle of the scroll rather than on the rollers, marking it as a handscroll rather than a hanging scroll. So it should open horizontally… right? Right!? I sincerely hoped it was not one of those awkward vertical handscrolls.

As for why I am anxious about this sort of thing, apparently it was quickly spread at an unnatural speed that I have acquired this scroll as a reward by the City Lord. I peek up from the scroll, fortunate with the veil covering my face as the hall was completely filled with cultivators. The participants, the representatives of the sects and even the noble families. Even those that were already prepared to depart from the humiliation quickly swallowed their pride and hung around at the edges of the massive hall. All of them stared at me, waiting for me to open the scroll. Was this scroll that big of a deal?

I swallowed once to steady myself. Fuck it. Here goes nothing.

I untied the ribbon and slowly unrolled the scroll horizontally. The air itself seemed to lean forward with the crowd’s collective anticipation. Inside, however, there was… nothing. The surface resembled a resplendent mirror, perfectly blank.

Was it a dud? Had I done something wrong? I poured Qi into the scroll. Still nothing.

“Nothing’s happening,” someone whispered. In the absolute silence the words carried clearly, and every head turned toward the speaker. The man immediately tried to shrink into the floor.

“Shush. Let me think.” I rested my chin on one hand. It had not responded to Qi. Simply opening it produced no effect. The interior looked like a mirror. Then the edge of my veil brushed against my fingers.

Goddammit. Was the veil the problem? Did I need to look at it directly?

I pushed the veil back over my head and opened the scroll a second time.

All six of my eyes locked onto the mirrored surface.

For a heartbeat nothing changed. Then the blank expanse seemed to invite. An invisible current brushed against my divine sense, gentle at first, almost curious. I extended a thread of divine sense toward it.

The scroll seized that thread.

There was no gradual resistance, no warning. One moment the divine sense was mine. The next it was being hauled inward with the relentless pull of a bottomless well. Soul power followed immediately, torn from the core of my consciousness in a continuous, accelerating stream. Pressure built behind my eyes and at the base of my skull until it felt as though the inside of my head were being vacuumed empty. The scroll began to glow. First a soft white, then a harsh, eye-searing radiance that flooded the hall. The air trembled. A high, pure ringing rose from nowhere and climbed in pitch and volume until it became a physical force pressing against every eardrum in the room.

Still the scroll pulled.

My divine sense stretched taut to the point of tearing. Every remaining drop of soul power poured into the glowing surface without pause. The pressure inside my skull peaked…

And something snapped.

A single, violent tug yanked at the very center of my being.

OH SHIEEET!

—

It was something no one had anticipated. Not the watching cultivators, not the City Lord and Golden Core elders, and least of all the Xuan himself.

The Scroll of Taiwu continued to drain his divine sense and soul power without pause. Yet there existed one factor none of them had accounted for. Faint though it was, the Xuan’s connection to the Noosphere, that deeper layer beneath even the local Heavenly Dao, was drawn into the current as well. In that instant he became a living medium between heaven and the scroll.

The radiance and the ringing expanded together.

What began as a point of unbearable light within the hall became a sphere that swallowed the City Lord’s mansion. Then it engulfed the whole of Liu’an City. Then it claimed the entire surrounding region. Every mortal, every cultivator, every spirit beast was pulled into the blinding white without resistance or exception.

The light gradually softened until vision returned. The ringing faded into the distance and was replaced by singing, of thousands of voices raised in a foreign tongue. At first the words were only a distant harmony, but moment by moment they grew clearer, and somehow every listener understood their meaning.

NEBESKÉ TO DVORSTVO KRASNÉ (That heavenly court was beautiful)

BLAZE TOMU, KTOŽ TAM POJDE (Blessed is he who will go there)

ŽIVOT VĚČNÝ (Eternal Life)

OHEŇ JASNÝ (Bright fire)

SVATÉHO DUCHA (of the Holy Spirit)

Far ahead, neither close enough to touch nor distant enough to dismiss. The Kingdom of God revealed itself in full glory.

It rose upon foundations of living light, vast beyond any mortal measure. Towers of translucent gold and crystal climbed endlessly upward, their spires piercing layers of radiant cloud that themselves seemed woven from pure praise. Walls of pearl and jasper gleamed with an inner fire that never dimmed, inscribed with countless names written in a script older than any language still spoken beneath the heavens. Between the towers stretched broad avenues of polished gold so pure they reflected the sky above like still water. Gardens of unfading trees lined those avenues, their leaves whispering with soft music, their fruit glowing with gentle light. At the very heart of the city a great throne stood empty yet not vacant, its presence alone sufficient to make the soul kneel. Rivers of living water flowed outward from the base of that throne, clear as crystal, and wherever they passed the ground itself blossomed with flowers that had never known decay.

The entire kingdom shone with a light that was not of sun or moon or any star. It was the light of glory itself. Warm, terrible, and infinitely inviting. No shadow existed there. No distance felt empty. Every stone, every leaf, every current of air seemed to sing the same endless hymn that now filled the ears of every living being across the region.

And still the singing continued, drawing every heart toward that distant, unreachable court.

Then, as swiftly and overwhelmingly as the vision had claimed them, every mortal, cultivator, and spirit beast was returned to the mortal realm.

For a long moment no one moved. The mortals did not prostrate in practiced devotion as they had before the Abbot’s Dharma form. Instead many simply remained on their knees or collapsed entirely, faces wet with tears they could not explain, staring upward as though the sky itself had become unbearable to look upon. Some clutched their chests. Others whispered broken fragments of the foreign hymn without understanding the words. A few laughed and wept at the same time, overwhelmed by a beauty so complete it left ordinary faith feeling suddenly small.

Among the cultivators the reaction was quieter and more fractured. Foundation Establishment and Golden Core elders alike sat frozen, divine senses still trembling from the touch of something that stood beyond the local Heavenly Dao. Several had involuntarily formed seals or raised protective barriers that now hung useless in the air. Spirit beasts across the city and surrounding wilds let out low, mournful cries. Not of fear, but of longing. As though they had briefly remembered a home none of them had ever known and Within the hall, a single speck of that divine light remained. It crowned the Xuan’s head like a tongue of fire resting between his antlers. His form had changed as well. The deer skull remained, yet the long mane that had been black as night now shone pure gold, and the scales visible along his hands had turned a resplendent white. The light lingered only a short while before slowly sinking into him. Color and darkness returned; his appearance settled once more into its familiar darker hues.

He drew a deep breath.

“Well. That’s certainly something.”

Yet everyone present could feel the difference. The Xuan had advanced from the second level of Foundation Establishment to the third.

Afterward the hall emptied in near silence. Cultivators and participants alike returned to their rooms to digest the enlightenment the Xuan had somehow shared with the entire region. Many found their Dao Hearts reinforced and steadier than before. A smaller number failed to internalize what they had witnessed and were left visibly shaken.

As for the sects and the noble families, the vision only deepened the opinions they already held. Those who regarded the Xuan with respect now looked upon him with something closer to awe. Those who already harbored hostility, however, found that hostility sharpened into something colder and more personal. To them the vision was not a shared blessing but a declaration. Their hatred settled deeper, quieter, and far more determined than before.

After all, it was now clear that the Xuan carried a heavenly ambition.

~ Valarion