My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 562 – The Human Seal and Heavenly Seal, The Old World and the New - Part 2
A long while passed.
Then a figure emerged dressed in purple robes, with red lips, perfect teeth, and an ethereal grace.
It was the Junior Heavenly Master.
“The Empress Dowager’s questions today were strange,” he said. “She made it sound casual, but she clearly had a purpose.”
The old man waved a hand. “She cannot be faulted.”
“But she asked about the heavenly seal,” the younger man said. “If she hadn’t brought it up, would you have ever mentioned it again?”
The Grand Heavenly Master replied, “The heavenly seal has long lost its meaning. It’s become nothing more than a prop for wandering daoists, a tool for cheap tricks and street performances. What’s the point of dredging it up again?”
“But...does the heavenly seal truly exist?” the young man asked.
The old man turned to look at him, eyes deep and unreadable. After a long moment, he said, “I’ve seen it.”
Then he added quietly, “30,000 years ago.”
The Junior Heavenly Master froze.
“You often ask me where I come from,” the old man said softly, “and how I know so much. Well, today I’ll tell you. I come from 30,000 years ago. One day, I simply woke up. And I didn’t want to go back to sleep. So I climbed out of my coffin in the Evernight...and walked into the human world.
“Now, my end is drawing near. Even at the pinnacle of third rank, with all five sub-realms attained, a cultivator's lifespan is no more than 4,800 years. Human life is finite. Only the heavens, the stars, and the earth can endure.”
The Junior Heavenly Master remained silent. Raised personally by the Grand Heavenly Master, their bond ran deep. To hear that the man who had once seemed all-powerful was approaching his end, it struck him hard.
After a long pause, he asked, “If the heavenly seal has truly vanished, then why did the Empress Dowager ask about it today?”
The old Grand Heavenly Master replied, “Because... a new heavenly seal might be about to emerge.”
The young master blinked, stunned.
Without further explanation, the Grand Heavenly Master rose, turned toward the wall, and with a flick of his hand, revealed a hidden chamber.
One side of the chamber opened to the sunset. Gentle, rosy light spilled through the window, casting the room in serene hues. But the entrance into the chamber led downward to cold, shadowed stone steps vanishing into darkness.
The Grand Heavenly Master stepped into the gloom and turned back with a beckoning hand. “Come. It’s time I passed on the true legacy of the Dao to you.”
The Junior Heavenly Master’s face was filled with sorrow, but he followed him in.
˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙
Several days later.
The academy’s entire daoist court donned mourning white. The Grand Heavenly Master...was gone.
One afternoon, the Junior Heavenly Master returned to that little study and sat on the same cushion where the Grand Heavenly Master had meditated for years. His eyes carried a weight that didn’t belong to someone so young.
There were always those in this world who refused to die quietly. They gambled on chaos, on one last chance when the world was turning upside down.
Even those sleeping within the Deathless Tomb...in the end, they too were just people.
The Junior Heavenly Master rested his cheek on his palm, lost in thought. After a long time, a single passage echoed in his heart.
If the heavens are about to change, then the moment is now. Possession of another’s body, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime act, sinister and vile. But the path to second rank may not lie in the Eastern Sea. The Grand Dao is before me... I have no choice. Forgive me.
˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙
As for the Empress Dowager, she did not return to the palace. With spring in full bloom, she slipped away to a lakeside royal retreat.
That night, within the gentle folds of gauzy spring curtains, the Empress Dowager, so often stately and austere, was curled in the arms of a man, one long leg draped loosely over him, her tired eyes studying the side of his face.
The man, of course, was Li Yuan.
And the two lost themselves in an initial session of passionate intimacy.
Some time later, as peach blossoms stirred gently in the breeze outside the window, Li Yuan sat up and began leafing through the daoist court’s ancient scriptures, the one the Grand Heavenly Master had handed down.
The theories of the heavenly and human seals had already reached him through the Empress Dowager.
Before he’d crossed into this world, he’d encountered talismans too.
But those talismans had drawn their power from the gods, celestial beings. Their drawings were often simple sketches meant to represent divine figures, accompanied by the seal of a heavenly masters to authorize the command and summon divine force.
In other words, the power of those talismans had come from above, from heavenly gods.
But the talismans in this ancient scripture from the daoist court were completely different.
There were no commands, no sketched deities, no stamped seals.
Instead, they looked more like...oracle bone script.
Take the drought talisman, for instance. Below it was a crooked, sagging shape like withered, drooping trees. Above was a circle with a central dot, clearly the sun.
The lower part symbolized vegetation drained of moisture, scorched and lifeless. The upper part represented the blazing sun.
Sunlight scorching the land, withering all it touches, what better way to depict drought?
Li Yuan lifted his hand and traced the strokes of the drought talisman, following its jagged lines over and over, but he felt nothing.
Next, he turned to the fire talisman.
This one was shaped like leaping flames, curling upward, and within the fire’s arcs were two small dots, like sparks shooting out.
Again, he ran his finger along the lines, mimicking its shape. Still nothing, no sensation, no reaction.
“See anything yet?” The Empress Dowager nudged him with a light laugh. “They’re just chicken-scratch talismans. Useless.
She added, “The daoist court’s arts are nothing more than a bloodline inheritance rooted in shadow blood. As the Grand Heavenly Master put it, it’s all part of the human seal. The heavenly seal? It doesn’t exist.”
Li Yuan turned to look at her, and saw that familiar springlike gleam dancing in her eyes. He set the ancient tome aside, laying it by the pillow, then gave her a gentle push. And soon, his body melted into hers.
Outside, handmaidens and guards kept watch, so they had to keep their voices low.
A long time passed before the Empress Dowager finally lay on her side, spent and resting.
Beneath the spring covers, her pale, bare body gleamed like snow.
Li Yuan leaned against that softness and reached again for the daoist scriptures.
By now, a theory had begun to take root in his mind.
Heaven and Earth followed their own patterns. Those patterns, when manifested, became the heavenly seal.
The heavenly seal held immense power, but could not be seen by ordinary mortals.
Now, however, the world was changing. The natural order had been reversed. That which was once invisible could now fall upon paper.
Mortals could see it...precisely because it had lost its power.
Even a sick Heaven is still Heaven. Then...could the symbols flowing around the Human Emperor be the new heavenly seal?
Those patterns can’t be recorded. I see them one moment, and forget them the next.
Any mortal who sees them dies, each in their own strange way.
Only those with cultivation can resist. A fifth rank can barely hold on, but they can’t harness it. A fourth rank can see it and remain unharmed, but still can’t use it. And someone like me, a third rank...I see it clearly, unaffected, yet I still can’t touch its power.
Li Yuan shook his head. He flipped through the daoist scriptures a few more times, reading it over and over until he had fully committed it to memory.
Then he said, “In a few days, return this to the Grand Heavenly Master’s residence. It was his legacy, after all.”
“Alright,” she replied.
Then, after a pause, she added, “A few days ago, I received word from the Eastern Sea. Apparently, a fisherman out at sea rescued an Immortal. Though...he wasn’t really an Immortal. Just a fifth rank cultivator. But to a fisherman, anyone who can fly might as well be a god.
“That fifth rank cultivator had originally gone from the Central Plain to the Immortal Domain. He said that over there, virtually every major faction from our realm has a follow-up path to third rank. Whether it’s the Five Elements Alliance, Buddhists and Daoists, or the old noble clans, they’ve all planted roots there.
“He claims the Five Elements Alliance and Daoists are both under the umbrella of a transcendent power called the Arcane Supreme Sect. The Lotus Cult and Buddhists fall under another alliance, the Five Spirits Institute.
“As for the noble clans...they belong to the hidden sects. The Arcane Supreme Sect and the Five Spirits Institute are more accessible. But the hidden sects are notoriously difficult to enter. That’s why this fifth rank cultivator was expelled; he never made it into one.”
If a person wasn’t part of a recognized faction, surviving in that land became nearly impossible. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎
That fifth rank cultivator explained that the air in the Immortal Domain was completely different from here in the Central Plains. Over there, they called it spiritual energy. In places where the spiritual energy was rich, cultivation advanced twice as fast, and came without the usual hidden risks.
And in recent years, that spiritual energy had been rising at an alarming rate, allowing the factions of the Immortal Domain to support more and more cultivators.
But the other side of that growth was a surge in demonic beasts, creatures that had awakened their intelligence and power.
With so many powerful cultivators and beasts roaming the land, the Immortal Domain had become a perilous place. Without the protection of a faction, wandering the wilds was almost certain death.
Now, that cultivator could have chosen to remain in one of the Immortal Domain’s mortal kingdoms. But he wanted to come back to the Central Plains, so he crossed the sea and returned.
Li Yuan didn’t ask about these mortal kingdoms in the Immortal Domain. Instead, he asked, “Who was this fifth rank cultivator?”
The Empress Dowager gave a dry laugh. “Funny, really. Turns out he’s a member of the Xie Clan. No idea how he heard the rumor about the Eastern Sea.”
Li Yuan smiled. “Well, now that’s interesting. How exactly did he get into the Immortal Domain? And more importantly, how did he manage to come back alive?”
The Empress Dowager replied, “I suspect the Immortal Domain, flush with spiritual energy, is actively looking to recruit ready-made fourth and fifth rank cultivators to bolster their strength. There are plenty of experts here in the Central Plains. That makes us an attractive hunting ground.
“He made it there because the Immortal Domain allowed it. And he made it back... because they didn’t care. They don’t dare set foot in the Central Plains, not with the Human Emperor here. But they certainly don’t fear anyone coming in from our side.”
Li Yuan couldn’t help but think of the Evernight, spreading faster and faster across the land.
Sword Mountain Pass had already been swallowed by snow and storm.
Even Cloudpeak Province was nearly consumed by darkness.
In the Central Capital, the meat fields were now everywhere. High rank meat from these fields filled the ice cellars to bursting.
The Myriad Lineages Academy was recruiting disciples wave after wave.
The Ministry of War had upgraded nearly its entire army to seventh rank.
Even Xie Feng’s original armored cavalry had swelled into a force of 30,000 sixth rank soldiers. They still lacked proper sixth rank mounts, but their collective combat strength had reached an astonishing 840k.
An era of unmatched prosperity, yet also the shadow of an end-times never before seen.
Still, it wasn’t quite the apocalypse yet. It felt more like a moment of transition, an old world fading and a new one rising.
Li Yuan was still waiting for the Human Emperor.
From what he’d heard from Xie Wei, the Emperor was growing more irritable by the day. Once calm and composed, he now showed flashes of bloodthirst, punishments delivered where none were given before.
But Li Yuan didn’t know what decision the Emperor would ultimately make.
If the Human Emperor turned him away, if he refused the path Li Yuan had hoped for, then he would have to take matters into his own hands.
There were only two options left to him.
One, to seize the legacies of the Immortal Domain.
Two, to unravel and master the heavenly seal flowing through the Human Emperor’s power.
