The Dao meridian is the foundation of cultivation.
This "Dao" is not the Dao of the Daoist sects — it is the Dao of the great Dao itself. Whether a cultivator follows Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, the school of war, the school of Mo, or any other path, manifesting a Dao meridian is always the first step.
In ancient times, the so-called seeds of cultivation were those born with their meridians already revealed. But humanity does not let talent decide a life's ceiling. The Meridian-Opening Pill was one of the answers to the question of aptitude.
Borrowing the pill's power, the human meridian is made manifest. It can also stir the life force of heaven and earth to nourish the flesh; the flesh feeds back, gestating Dao essence — and so one sets foot on the road of cultivation.
Compared to the treasures of Zhuo Lie's that the explosion had destroyed, a Meridian-Opening Pill was hardly precious.
But for a beggar at the end of his road, it was the only key to the treasure vault of the human body.
Through the ages, nothing is harder than choosing to die — yet at the end of all hope, a man may still beg heaven for grace.
Now the beggar held his key in both hands.
He was so reverent.
Cradling the jade bottle in trembling hands, he pressed shaking lips to its mouth and tipped his head back!
Behind him, the silent ruined temple. In the distance, the beggars' corpses. Beside him, shattered bone and flesh.
The setting sun spilled its last light; the clouds at the horizon were breaking. The dead lay across the field, and a sick beggar swallowed a pill.
The pill rolled onto his tongue and melted into a thread of warmth that slid down his throat and spread into every limb.
The beggar closed his eyes. In that moment a thousand images swept through his mind.
Training through winter and summer. Practicing the sword through spring and autumn.
Hunting great bandits. Fighting killers to the death.
Until at last he walked down from West Mountain alone, one man and one sword, soaked through with blood —
— and that was what it cost to earn one Meridian-Opening Pill.
How many years had he spent approaching the world of the extraordinary?
He had spent all his strength. He had struggled without a single day's rest. How exactly had he come this far?
His mother died early. His father's long illness later drained the family's last coin.
He was alone; he was his own support.
From a competition of one in a thousand he had tested into the Dao Academy. In the savage rivalry of the Outer Academy he had fought his way to the very top — and only then touched the key to the extraordinary for the first time.
But that Meridian-Opening Pill was stolen by the person he trusted most.
Poison. An ambush.
He had fought his way out at the edge of death, and to shake off the search, he had buried himself among the beggars.
He had meant to wait for his chance. But his body could no longer hold on.
He grew weaker and weaker, until he could only lie hopeless on a pile of straw, waiting quietly for death.
Dragging his sick body out to comb the battlefield had been nothing but the refusal of one heart to give up — and yet, against everything, he had actually picked up a Meridian-Opening Pill!
Why a being as mighty as Zhuo Lie would carry such a pill was a question that died with his legend. No one would ever know.
But because of it, the beggar's story turned to a new page.
Nothing is harder to read than fate.
The beggar reined in his thoughts and felt the change that defied description inside his body.
Warmth rose from every corner of him and "swam" through his flesh in a way he could not understand, gathering at last toward his spine.
The process was slow, and perfectly clear.
After an unknowable time, a faint strength rose from his tailbone and climbed along the line of his spine — up, up. It felt like an earthworm swimming upstream against the river.
The going was hard, but the warmth from every part of his body kept lifting it... until the "little earthworm" finished its long journey, ran the whole length of his spine, and shot straight into the crown of his skull!
A miracle happened.
It was as if he saw light inside his body.
Warmth burst from his limbs, from every corner of his flesh.
He no longer felt cold. No longer weak. No longer in pain.
The meridian revealed; life force nourishes.
The beggar opened his eyes, and his gaze was bright and piercing.
He felt strength fill his body. He had seized the reins of fate once more!
His Dao meridian had manifested. Though its meridian spirit was only a lowly little earthworm — the very lowest grade — it meant he could now step formally onto the road of the extraordinary.
Flying through the heavens, walking the azure sky — no longer an untouchable dream!
One day, the things that Gong Han, Mo Ya, even Zhuo Lie and Bai Yi — those thunderous names — could do, he could do too!
...
The beggar stood and looked down at the heap of shredded flesh at his feet.
The living gazing at the dead; an opening joined to a final curtain.
He buried Zhuo Lie behind the ruined temple, and the beggars beside him. Even with his newly opened meridian flooding him with energy, the work lasted until the moon stood at midheaven.
It was a small thing, perhaps a useless one. But it was the principle he lived by.
Those beggars had abandoned him when danger came — yet in the long days when he lay dying before that, they had not thrown him out into the wilds. They could not find him medicine or a doctor, but they had at least given him a few mouthfuls of water.
For that alone, they deserved a grave, if a grave was within his power. No need to suffer in this life and drift rootless in the next.
People believe that only in the earth can the dead rest. Only in the vast and merciful embrace of the land can a departed soul find peace.
At last the beggar stood before Zhuo Lie's grave.
"The man burying you is not some nameless wretch. Of Maple City, Clear River County, the State of Zhuang—" In the moonlight the beggar stood before the small mound, filth on his body, mud on his hands, spine perfectly straight as he spoke his own name without a flicker of shame: "Jiang Chen."
A tiger's stripes have not yet grown, but the spirit to devour an ox is already there.
"And you did not die in a nameless place. This place is called Huanzhen Temple. Its broken plaque may be illegible, and no one may know it — but it will be known throughout the world because of you!"
When he finished, Jiang Chen bent at the waist and bowed with utter sincerity. "If your spirit watches from heaven, may you find rest."
That bow was not only for the pill Zhuo Lie had left behind. It was for the mercy, the candor, and the courage the man had shown.
A figure like Zhuo Lie deserved every measure of respect.
Tonight the moon happened to be full, its clean light shining on the fresh grave.
In the stillness, it was as if a thread of breeze stirred.
Jiang Chen saw points of silver light drift up out of Zhuo Lie's grave. Rising slowly in the moonlight, they gathered into a small silver crescent moon. It floated above the new grave, within his reach, mysterious and noble.
"This is..."
Understanding came to Jiang Chen like a gift from the spirit.
He reached out and closed his hand around the silver crescent.
Darkness.
In the nearly boundless dark, a gentle voice sounded — a voice that seemed to carry the highest truths of heaven and earth, the deepest mysteries of the Dao. To hear it was to feel the mind washed clear.
"Welcome, Master of the Blessed Land of the Dongzhen Ruins!"
In the next instant, one point of light appeared. Then countless points of light.
The flood of radiance swallowed his vision. When Jiang Chen could see again, he found himself gazing into a vast darkness where a brilliant river of stars surged!
And before the river of stars stood a youth.
His eyes were clear and bright, his nose high and straight, his expression so mild it seemed incapable of aggression — only the faint press of his lips betrayed a streak of stubbornness. He wore nothing but a Daoist robe of unknowable material, without a single ornament.
Jiang Chen froze.
Because this youth was himself. Differently dressed, and far cleaner than the real him — but how could he fail to know his own face?
And he was, from some angle he could not yet comprehend, "looking" at himself in a way that went beyond sight.
"Dao essence feedback insufficient. Deduction Platform: nineteen floors sealed."
The gentle voice rang out again across the vast starfield.
"Deduction Platform: eighteen floors sealed."
...
"Deduction Platform: two floors sealed."
Each time the voice spoke, the river of stars dimmed a little.
Jiang Chen struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Then he heard:
"Third-grade Sword Dueling Platform: sealed."
"Fourth-grade Sword Dueling Platform: sealed."
On and on it went, until it stopped at "Eighth-grade Sword Dueling Platform: sealed."
What it meant, Jiang Chen could not tell — though it no doubt had to do with his pitiful strength. The so-called "Master of the Blessed Land of the Dongzhen Ruins" should have been Zhuo Lie, not him.
At the same time, he noticed a line of characters floating within his field of vision, written in a script he had never seen.
It was entirely unlike the writing of Zhuang that he had learned, utterly foreign — yet he understood its meaning with perfect clarity.
"Merit: 1,850 points."
While Jiang Chen pondered, the self he was "watching" suddenly stepped forward and merged with him into one.
The process was too brief to matter. Jiang Chen flexed his hands and feet; everything answered. In this mysterious world, he finally had a body of sorts.
And in the very next instant, the stars of that vast void churned — and the whole brilliant river of stars came flooding toward him!
He drowned in the river of stars.
Time seemed to lose all meaning. When Jiang Chen came back to himself, he stood in a space wreathed in immortal mist, while streams of knowledge poured through his mind.
This was the world of the Ethereal Realm. The Blessed Land of the Dongzhen Ruins, where he now stood, was wrapped within it.
The silver crescent he had seized was called the Void Key — the key to entering this place. Drawing on the power of the Lunar Star, it pulled its host's spirit sense into the Ethereal Realm.
Here, everything was real. Apart from the fact that no harm could come to his true body, nothing differed from reality.
The Deduction Platform was a place to derive and evolve cultivation arts and Dao techniques; the fuel it consumed was "Merit."
The Sword Dueling Platform existed for one purpose: to travel the Ethereal Realm and cross swords with other cultivators.
Merit mostly came from battle. Defeat an equal, and Merit grew; lose, and it was docked. Challenging above your rank brought matching bonuses.
There were other sources as well. The blessed lands and grotto-heavens that corresponded to this world produced Merit on a regular cycle.
Among the Seventy-Two Blessed Lands, the lowest-ranked — East Sea Mountain — yielded one hundred Merit a month. Among the lower thirty-six, each step up in rank added ten. Among the upper thirty-six, each step added a hundred.
The Blessed Land of the Dongzhen Ruins that Zhuo Lie had held was ranked twenty-third. Every month, it produced 1,850 Merit.
That was Jiang Chen's inheritance.
He did not yet understand its uses, but he could already hear his own heart hammering.
This place... this place!
This world of blazing stars hid a tremendous secret.
Just the Deduction Platform and the Sword Dueling Platform it had shown him opened onto a vast and stirring world.
To evolve the Dao in a blessed land; to duel with swords among the stars — what grandeur!
And before today, Jiang Chen had never even heard its name.
His heart surged and would not settle — until his eyes fell upon the phantom of a sundial, and he read the words upon it:
*The master of this Blessed Land shall, in fifteen days, face a challenge from the master of the twenty-fourth ranked Jade Altar.*
*Defeat means demotion.*
Five words, black as ink.
Every one of them heavy as a mountain.