Tale of the Strongest Fool (2)

Ja Sun viewed the image of the Evil Sage carefully since the Lady of the Lake seemed quite angered just by showing the picture of the woman.

"You have come to know that the Dragon God was born of heaven itself. You may say he was the heaven himself. He produced nine offsprings, each a descendant of heaven.

You even understand that heaven encompasses all the laws that we understand but are you aware that there is more than one heaven? In fact, what is heaven if not a higher realm that governs a collection of lower realms?

... As an otherworldly being, you know it better than others. This world is boundless."

Ja Sun didn't interrupt. Many beings, arguably stronger than him, could understand that he wasn't of this world but how, that is something he couldn't understand.

"What do you mean by a higher realm?" He chose to ask something that genuinely interested him.

"As mortal turns divine, they are too strong to be kept in this world. Consider this for a second. Our world, that is, the one we reside in temporarily, is shaped by laws, yes? Everything has a mark of law be it the elements, exotic concepts, various attributes. In essence, even living beings are a concentration of certain law shards. Now, what if we consider the shape of this world as a bowl that contains us?

The bowl is bound to have certain limits. Above this bowl is the lid that we refer to as clouds of tribulation and beyond them are the fortunate but limited heavens.

What do you think happens when you fully master the spirit energy as a medium to understand the law to a certain level and ascend to become a stronger being?"

"I don't know," Ja Sun replied, "But seeing that all the gods aren't present... I'd say... this world cannot afford our existence."

"Yes! The act of becoming a god by itself has to do with the law that forms us. Heavens is a realm that can afford a god's existence. If not, a God must have enough strength and comprehension to form a new heaven for its residence..."

"Else?" He raised his brow.

"Hehe... the world has several gods. One less wouldn't make a difference."

Now that he understood that heaven was, in fact, a governing force, he could conclude many things that felt blurry before. Meanwhile, Lady of the Lake got back on topic.

"While the Dragon God gave birth to the cultivation for beasts, humans were, no doubt, oppressed. They began to hold enmity against the beasts and dragons alike but what could they do? Their existence was too weak to wield the spirit energy and dragons couldn't be bothered to shape them into something greater.

However, the Evil Sage originated from a different heaven. She wasn't a human despite her humanoid form and claimed herself to be a Warlock."

"A warlock?"

"Yes, beings of strength of the other world, it seems. In fact, her appearance was immediately noticed by the Dragon God. After all, the Dragon God was the ruler of this heaven. That, in itself, is how an otherworldly being is identified. A Supreme Grandmaster that can innovate on Law is capable of sensing the Laws, not of the domestic world."

"Different laws? You mean the fire of this world would be different from fire of another world?"

"I cannot say for sure. What I meant to say is that every Heaven has its unique breath that is carried onto the laws. Should someone else arrive into this world, they would feel suppressed due to the shift and Evil Sage was no different. Even if she had strength similar to Dragon God, in here, she couldn't even compare to his strongest son— the Light Dragon King."

"Hmm... this still doesn't make sense... then why aren't I feeling suppressed? And given your explanation... are you implying that you are a Supreme Grandmaster yourself?" Ja Sun questioned.

"Why you aren't feeling suppressed has something to do with the method of arrival. If you have enough strength to traverse the heavens and move in your real form, you will feel quite suppressed. If your soul is cleansed and reincarnated, you won't. Of course, there are beings who can still hold onto some of the otherworldly qualities that do not garner the attention of the world and thus, not suppressed."

"And what about you?" Ja Sun looked into the lake, "Are you a Supreme Grandmaster?"

"There is nothing Supreme about me," she chuckled, "Anyway, the Evil Sage was confronted by the Dragon God the few moments after she had arrived," Lady of the Lake reverted from the tangent and continued smoothly while the image of a deeply charming man in luxurious but regal robes that flashed with nine colors appeared in front of the Evil Sage. While one personified luxury and lavishness, the other personified sickness and dullness.

"But instead of dealing with the intruder, he chose to satiate his curiosity.

You see, unlike the Dragon God who was born with a powerful bloodline that was the very essence of our heaven, the Evil Sage claimed she came from a world where humans and beasts alike wielded spirit energy in the form of an ability known as magic spells. They are quite similar to spirit techniques, mind you.

And among these groups of magus are a few potentially terrifying beings who adopt the blood of higher beings and fashion themselves with their skills— Warlocks. Evil Sage revealed she came from the lowest of the low. While her sickly presence made many avoid her, The Dragon God was enchanted by her knowledge and thirst for... anything interesting.

While the Dragon God was amazed by the wealth of information the Evil Sage presented without hiding anything, for at their strength, hiding information simply meant a useless act, the Evil Sage came to appreciate the system of cultivation the Dragon God had invented and decided to optimize it while performing her own experiments that claimed the lives of many spirit beasts.

But neither of the two heavenly beings minded such a situation. After all, The Dragon Kings and their direct descendants were not touched at all.

Yet, she was made clear by the Nine Dragon Kings collectively that the beasts belonged to them and their enhancement in cultivation should come from them respectively. It isolated Evil Sage to only perform these optimizations on the humans... something she didn't mind. In fact, the Dragon God relieved his boredom by helping her.

For the first time, the Dragon God was attracted to someone. And thus, Evil Sage agreed to accompany the Dragon God until she returns.

Their union brought three things into this world.

The Dragon Prince.

The First Spirit Masters.

And the Bringer of Pain.

Not in that order."

She let out an exhausted sigh and whispered, "Evil Sage successfully merged the bloodlines of the beasts into humans but as I said, every heaven is unique. This method didn't create warlocks like her but instead created grotesque beasts now known as Beasttakens. Yet, she only took a few hundred years to develop another path.

She used inanimate objects to seal the essence of beasts and then successfully merge these weapons with the humans. This not only strengthened the humans who survived the process but also made them amazingly strong.

She began to tour the world of the Dragon God, leaving her methods that could be understood by mortals for them to peruse. Even if open, Evil Sage wasn't mindless enough to share the methods of becoming the divine.

The only way humans could grow after this was to continuously form weapons and merge them into their bodies. However, the human body had limits as to how many essence weapons it can keep merged.

Of these... some prodigies finally began to develop far beyond the expectations of the Dragon Kings that ruled the regions.

A being who claimed himself as the God of War amongst many appeared. You have his inheritance so you should know that the God of War had a special physique since birth that allowed him to absorb and refine multiple essence weapons until his very essence was twisted to devour and tame such weapons. He was also the pioneer who paved way for the humanity and managed to grasp the realm of Great Grandmaster in the Law of War and Devouring. Meanwhile, he also became the first human Supreme Grandmaster of Refinement Law.

He was second only to Evil Sage in this regard.

The Dragon Kings finally understood the threat the humans represented after Evil Sage meddled because the humans were obviously disgruntled to have been oppressed for so long. While Humans lacked in everything compared to the beasts, be it strength, expected age, and affinity with spirit energy, humans far surpassed beasts in one thing— Comprehension.

The God of War quickly rose to prominence with heaven-defying talent and godsend opportunity in the form of Evil Sage. It was as if the Heavens itself was tilting in humanity's favor after the beasts ruled for so long.

Following him, many other gods rose to prominence. The God of Destruction. The Goddess of Life. The various elemental gods that although couldn't compare to the Dragon Kings, could hold their own against masses of weaker divine beasts.

Humanity and the spirti beasts fell into a stalemate. It didn't help that otherworldly beasts began to appear in the slowly fractured world of ours. These beasts included the Behemoths that began feasting on dragons.

Because of this, the Dragons and Behemoths went into war and gave humans a convenient respite to grow in strength. War God... however, a battle maniac, was soon killed by the alliance of Behemoths and Dragons. Till then, however, his inheritances were spread far and wide. Of these inheritances emerged another peerless genius who bathed himself in the blood of the warring beasts alone.

A figure made for the blood to worship him itself and the being who would be soon found as the Evil Sage's foremost pieces of interest... the God of Slaughter— Asura.

As the Behemoths and Dragons continued to cause destruction, the hold of the heavens itself loosened and allowed Evil Sage to recover from her previous suppression. Yet, at this point, the Dragon God and the Evil Sage were welcoming their firstborn— The Dragon Prince...

And thus, solidified the position of the Dragon God as the Strongest Fool."

Ja Sun's gaze glimmered. He was beginning to understand the world of cultivation better. If he wasn't wrong, his Vajra Gauntlets should be similar to the weapons Lady of the Lake described. Alone, the Vajra Gauntlets were truly powerful but they were unfortunately overshadowed by even more amazing fortunes Ja Sun had gathered. If he was given the choice to do it all over again, however, Ja Sun would still choose to absorb and refine the Vajra Gauntlets into what they are now.

Heck, they were at the same level as the Black Dragon Sword due to the absorption of the essence of the Golden Dragon and the Three-eyed Golden Lion.

However, Ja Sun was more excited to hear the scandalous tales that the lady had prepared.

"The Dragon Prince was... strong, yes. But the Dragon God had higher expectations since his first Descendants, the Dragon Kings, were born gods. The Dragon Prince, however, was... not that strong. Mind you, in the current era, he would be as strong as a Titled Douluo in his infancy but that wasn't the level the Dragon God had in mind.

His interest had long shifted from Evil Sage's knowledge to herself. She was the one who had gathered his interest but after the Dragon Prince's disappointing 'results', he took it upon himself to raise the child and banish the Evil Sage.

What was unexpected, however, was how indifferently the Evil Sage took the news. In fact, she was happy to mingle with humanity and form various experients. Thus, came a few years of peace. Dragon God doted on the Dragon Prince as he grew to have attained all the similar attributes of his father but he soon notices his mother's inheritances, too.

Attributes not originally of this world but since he was conceived in this one, he was wholeheartedly accepted by the heavens, leading the suppression on others, too, to be fully lifted.

Ironically, the development of the Dragon Prince caused another war between the Dragons and the Behemoths until the Nine Dragon Kings eradicated the species and finally made the Dragons eye humanity who had grown too strong for their own comfort.

The wars continued. In fact, it began the norm of this world.

War... war... and war...

Strength seeded war. Hatred seeded war... Despair seeded war...

And Wars bred heroes.

In their times, Asura and Rakshasa threatened to surpass the earlier gods and on the Dragon's side, Dragon Prince rose to prominence with the realm of Great Grandmaster in all the elements as his father and an attribute known as evil by the Dragons and Humans alike."

"Evil Attribute? About time," Ja Sun smiled.

However, Lady of the Lake burst Ja Sun's bubble quite easily, "Evil attribute is nothing but a collection of attributes from the otherworldly heavens. Because it never had a name under the heavens, it was titled Evil— not of this world and a tribute to the Evil Sage.

Like Ja Yin has an evil attribute and so do you. But both of you have different abilities. Thus, why it is called the collection of attributes and not a single attribute itself."

"That's it?" Ja Sun truly felt disappointed. Heck, he was chased by Qian Xunji the moment he awakened his martial soul because of this?

But all was not lost. She continued with interesting stuff soon after.

"The Dragon Prince had the ability of his mother's bloodline, to devour the souls of the opponents. This ability was studied by Rakshasa which soon drove her to insanity due to her poor foundation in refinement that was utilized to copy this ability.

While Rakshasa turned against her own, Evil Sage and the Dragon God came to find something much more interesting.

The offsprings of the humans who had fused with essence weapons... came to inherit the abilities of the bloodlines but not in the way the two had imagined.

While Evil Sage imagined the future generations to be natural warlocks like her son, the humans seemed to be able to interact with their bloodlines in the form of martial souls birthed from their soul origins.

Due to essence weapons, the humans may have gained beast spirits or tool spirits."

"What about Body and Enlightened Martial Souls?" Ja Sun retorted.

"Body Martial souls... like the one you have. It's the fruit of a particular human who didn't fuse with essence weapons but the body part of the beast in the form of using them as totems. This path was quite unpopular but the bloodline origin was transferred nonetheless...

And how do you know about Enlightened Martial Souls?"

"I know someone with an enlightened martial soul."

"... Well, they originate because of a few foolish spirit masters devouring the essence of a dying beast while overestimating themselves. This led to the soul origin of the powerful spirit beasts to pass down and so on and so forth. Of course, they aren't Enlightened but slightly smarter pets at this point."

Ja Sun nodded.

"So... that's how the cultivation of our kind began? With the mix from Evil Sage and the Dragon God?"

"There was a learning curve, yes. But soon, the new generation took to the far sager method of cultivation. In the previous method, the risk of death with every absorption was too high but not this time.

Humanity prospered and..."

"Another war?" Ja Sun chuckled.

"Another war." She replied, "But this time, the Dragon God ordered Evil Sage to leave for she had overstayed her welcome. However, he had forgotten...

Evil Sage wasn't under his rule. While she did accompany him, she also left him as easily. She was indifferent to everything but her interest and so, she rejected the words of the Dragon God and enraged him, the war even influenced the two supreme beings.

This led Dragon God to seek a higher strength than his own to push the Evil Sage out.

And as he did so, Evil Sage, too, decided to bring her allies from the different worlds who titled themselves Bringers of Pain.

The Evil attribute was much too condensed at this point and everything was acceptable.

The full-blown war of the Supreme Beings began where the Dragon God easily tackled multiple opponents equal to him. While others were Supreme Grandmasters in one or two elements, the Dragon God was born different.

At this moment, finally not wanting to be disturbed anymore, Evil Sage decided to make use of her trump card.

In the festival to worship the Dragon God as he had discovered the strength of faith energy that can boost oneself, Evil Sage used her innate connection with the Dragon Prince to break the balance between the attribute of Creation and Destruction within the Dragon God, leading him to enter a bout of insanity that slaughtered the Dragon Prince in cold blood...

And thus broke the Dragon God who was too feeble due to its high birth when compared to the cold and calculating Evil Sage who didn't mind the death of her son at all."

Ja Sun hummed and then suddenly smiled, "Pfft, hahahaha! So that's it! Evil Sage took care of the Dragons and the Dragons would eventually disappear... the reason why there aren't any Bringers of Pain is that... the humans took them out! Another war! Holy fuck, those guys didn't have any other form of entertainment!"

Lady of the Lake fell silent. It might be unfathomable how he could conclude this but for Ja Sun, it was easy. Asura seemed to oversee any ability from entering the past to view the war and the gods he had encountered despised the Bringers of Pain to the core. So, it wasn't hard to assume such.

"It is just as you say. With the beasts now declining, these groups of magus began to conduct all sorts of vile experiments on humans who had grown strong.

This caused Asura, God of Destruction, and the Goddess of Life to take them out. Unlike others, Asura's Law of Slaughter was simply too overbearing even compared to the standards of outsiders, and not wanting any further loss... the Evil Sage and her allies left this world.

It is quite ironic that Dragon God, who is far stronger than Asura couldn't achieve the same thing.

Again, the humans and beasts were left but this time, the situation was different.

Just like Rakshasa who had gone insane, Asura sliced the Dragon God in half. He wasn't in his correct mental faculties and couldn't defend against Asura... but...

The Dragon God didn't die.

No, he couldn't die. As long as the heavens exist, he isn't allowed to die.

The two halves of the Dragon God gained sentience itself. One that inherited attributes of destruction and Time and unimaginable Physical strength came to be known as the Golden Dragon King who is... not been seen since the war.

And the other half who inherited other elements, spatial attributes, and creation with high intellect and milder presence escaped in the form of the Silver Dragon King.

This is the tale of the Strongest Fool presented to you.

A fool who is still considered the son of heavens but isn't even capable of being whole..."

Ja Sun looked towards the silver pole sticking out of the lake. A conclusion already formed in his mind as he took out another portion of Life Gold and dropped it into the lake.

"I appreciate it," she remarked in content.

"No worries. With such an interesting tale, I ought to pay in kind... now, you wouldn't happen to know how I can become a god and what are the requirements, right?"

"Become a god... hehe, I just revealed to you the origins of cultivation. In history, there is only the God of War who surpassed the expectations of the Dragons and Evil Sage alike... do you dare believe I have something of the kind present for you?"

Ja Sun smiled slightly, "And what do I need to pay?"

"Why not discuss payment after you actually make some progress? This method defines the detailed way and restrictions to becoming a god... or a divine beast. Alas, Divine Beasts are forbidden by Asura who isn't as naive as the Dragon God.

Anyway, you already know that I'm not interested in most of the resources of this world. And consider this method a payment for my future request."

Asura had once asked Ja Sun to do something but never detailed what he would get for his services. This time, it was different.

If he doesn't enter hell, who will?

With a wicked grin, Ja Sun chuckled, "And you already know as long as the demand is worth the price, you've got yourself a deal."

"Good!"

***

A/N: Anyway, what do you guys think about the lore I came up with? I know it feels a little like an info dump, but if not this, I had planned a more interactive story where Gu Yuena would have delved deeper into the personal history... however, it would have spanned for five chaps which I couldn't promise to be written all well...

Still, if there is any doubt, be sure to comment on them and I will answer.

***

Shoutout to braydon merx, Edwin Carrillo, lxRushimxl, Bladehaste, and PandaMan!!

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