Two Worlds

Moving our vision aside from our Hero who is currently engaged in a tussle of wills with the sentient sword, Samehada, let us turn to his home land.

Cultivation civilizations, of which our Hero's plane is a prime example, are the birthplace of Gods and Ghosts.

Unlike the Atheistic trend popular in most Scientific civilizations, belief in the Divine is a lot more common in the land of cultivators because their Gods are real… not just abstract concepts.

The Will of the Heavens being what it is: an agglomeration of the thoughts and beliefs of all sentient creatures on the plane, encourages the development of similar, yet smaller and more specialized agglomerations of wills so it can delegate its task of regulating the world.

Thus, we have Gods, who are basically subroutines of the World Will. Speaking of Gods, depending on their origin, they can be divided into Land Gods and Tutelary Gods.

Land Gods, as their name suggests are formed from the collaborative will of the sentient population of an area.

For example, years of worship from villagers praying for bountiful crop, timely rains and healthy children can turn the object of their worship, be it a tree or an interestingly shaped stone, into a God of the Land.

Henceforth, the area surrounding it becomes its domain and it blesses its followers by increasing the concentration of world vitality in that area, regulating the weather patterns in a manner favourable to crops and minimizing occurrence and adverse effects of disasters.

All it seeks in return is the prayers of its followers, ensuring its existence and growth.

As it develops, it gains its own sentience and enters into a symbiotic relationship with its followers, competing against other Gods for their following.

Not only villages, but also kingdoms and sects develop their own patron Land Gods.

These patron Gods can be anything, ranging from weapons and animals to the Rulers themselves.

In case of weapons, they are known as Divine weapons and due their sentient nature, are often a part of inheritance rituals where only the candidate acknowledged by it is allowed to ascend the throne.

God-kings come about when the rulers of the kingdoms decide to further consolidate their power by starting a religion among their subjects with themselves as the focus. While this may be advantageous in terms of centralizing power… it has the disadvantage of converting the king into a puppet of public opinion.

Due to the merger with what is essentially a manifestation of the will of the people, the God-king can only release policies that have the approval of the masses. While this ensures the establishment of a benevolent dictatorship… the inertia inherent to public opinion means that the policy-making will be conservative, causing the development of the kingdom to stagnate.

Thus, most young empires with aggressive expansionist policies implement a dual government based upon the coordination of both the aristocratic and theocratic facets. It is the older and more mature empires that seek the stability offered by deified rule.

As for the Grand Architectural Sect… it is guarded by four divine beasts: the azure dragon, white tiger, rose finch and the black tortoise.

All Gods have special abilities and if they are living beings prior to ascension, they enjoy an extended lifespan.

Case in point, the evolution of a common python into a fearsome beast renown far and wide as the Azure Dragon.

These Divinities are also known as Destiny Emblems or Destiny Suppressing Emblems due to the fact that the more prosperous a kingdom, the stronger its Divinity becomes, thereby providing denser world vitality to the kingdom as well as greater security.

Looking at it from a fundamental perspective, the separation between spiritual and real are much less defined for cultivation civilizations rather than scientific ones, allowing for thoughts, intent and will to directly alter reality… sometimes using the crutch of biological energies like chakra or world vitality.

In return, mechanical energies like chemical reactions are severely weakened… more accurately, they are tied to the biological energies, dispersing most of their yield as harmless world vitality. Thus, gunpowder is not very useful in cultivation worlds.

So, what others think of you becomes very important for cultivators. For example, if you are very famous or hold an important post in a famous organization, you will experience a massive boost in the progressive speed of your soul cultivation.

The reason Lin Feng reached such high levels of soul cultivation at such a young age was largely due to the accelerated growth rate during his tenure as the sect hegemon.

Similarly, infamy or resentment also boosts soul cultivation. As negative emotions are generally stronger, the boost is more significant.

Now you may think that this is quite unfair… and truly, devil cultivators progress much faster in their initial stages of soul cultivation but as they say Heaven has eyes.

There is a popular fable that has been doing the rounds of the bars and watering holes of the world. A cautionary tale about a mythical creature known as 'Chinese Xianxia Protagonist', who walks about slaughtering clans and raping women.

In this fable, the creature is often hit by lightning as he repeatedly tries to defy the Heavens.

The moral of the tale being: 'Sin and lightning shall smite you.'

While not as exaggerated as the eighty-one rounds of successive lightning strikes from the tale, if the resentment towards a person reaches a certain threshold, it will bring them to the attention of the Heavens, initiating a bombardment of lightning known as a heavenly tribulation.

The mortality rates of such tribulations can go as high as ninety percent.

Also, sins as well as one's merits affect one's afterlife.

Yes. Afterlife. Unlike scientific civilizations where people die when they are killed, death is a little less permanent for cultivation civilizations.

Spirit world, Dreamland, Ghostdom… these are but a few of the names with which the spiritual plane is referred to.

When someone dies, their soul is reborn in the Ghostdom as a ghost. This is the time when one's merits and sins are reckoned up.

The sins accumulated during one's lifetime and the resentment one is encumbered by, transforms into the Fire of Karma and sears the soul.

This is referred to as the Fire Tribulation.

Even if one can somehow insist through it, their soul is sure to be grievously injured. Memory loss, loss of emotions or any other spiritual ailment are the usual consequences of such tribulations.

That is, if one isn't deducted to ash within the tribulation first.

The merit on the other hand transforms into the Light of Karmic Virtue and strengthens one's soul and helps one resist the slow corrosion of the Ghostdom.

There are a group of ascetics and monks whose entire order revolves around accumulating merit during one's life and trying to generate enough Light of Karmic Virtue to allow them to break out of the mortal coil and reach Nirvana or Moksha, that is, combining with the Will of the World directly.

As mentioned before, the Spirit world is corrosive to the souls of ghosts and the only means of prolonging one's afterlife is through the protection of the Light of Karmic Virtue or through the supplement to their soul via prayers and remembrances of the living.

Thus, ancestor worship is a big thing in all cultivation clans and everyone regularly burns incense to their departed relatives in the hopes that they can persist long enough in the Ghostdom to earn enough merit for reincarnation.

In fact, if the number and intensity of the prayers are enough, the ghost can evolve into a God of the Spirit world, a Tutelary God.

Tutelary Gods can open Pure lands in the Ghostdom where ordinary ghosts can take shelter from the corrosive atmosphere. This not only allows them to shelter the ghosts of those related to them, but also the act is considered a meritorious one and Light of Karmic Virtue can be earned.

This Karmic Virtue, which is required for reincarnation, can be apportioned to the ghosts under the Tutelary God's command in return for their services in culling the population of monsters - eldritch abominations originating from the nightmares of the living and fantastical beasts and humanoid races born of their imagination.

The Spirit World is a very strange plane which is basically a representation of the real world as seen through the perception of sentients.

Thus, an uninhabited area would appear as a dense fog in the Spirit World while the capital of a populous kingdom would be highly detailed due to the large number of confirmatory sentient perspectives.

Destroying a building in the spirit world would result in it returning to its original state as long as the real building still exists.

Similarly, the destruction of something real will not result in the destruction of its spiritual counterpart unless confirmed by enough sentients.

For example, if the fountain in the middle of the town square of a populous town is demolished, it will take several days for its counterpart in the spirit world to dissipate as all people who saw it there once will still subconsciously be thinking that it is still there unless they have visited the town square and seen it for themselves.

Similarly, temporary constructs will appear ethereal in the spirit world due to the shallowness of the impression people have of it being there.

Reincarnation is an iffy business. Attempting it without sufficient Karmic Virtue will result in most of one's memories being lost… basically terminating one's existence.

Even if the reincarnation is successful with the soul intact, the limitations of an infantile mind can result in the deterioration of the soul, resulting in them never awakening the memories of their previous lifetime.

Only when they return to the Ghostdom do they remember it all. This is what happens most of the time.

In rare cases, such as that of High Monks, they are reborn with all their memories intact and self-aware from birth due to their vast accumulation of Karmic Virtue.

Thus, they cycle through life after life to accumulate enough merit to transcend this circle of birth and death and reach Enlightenment, merging with the World Will.

Monsters, through engulfing ghosts with Karmic Virtue can gain a chance to be born into the real world too.

By dint of the differences in their souls, they are born into the bodies of beasts, resulting in intelligent animals capable of cultivation.

They are known as Monstrous Beasts and have claimed the remote mountains and deep seas as their territories. They are in sharp opposition to humans and these territories are marked as restricted areas.

There are some people who have the inborn talent of being able to communicate between the two worlds.

They are known as Dream walkers or in some cultures Taoist priests. They have the ability to peer vaguely into the spirit realm while awake and enter it as an astral projection while asleep.

They are often employed to communicate with the dead or exorcise the monsters or ghosts who often latch onto the dreams of living individuals in order to extract their soul force to sustain themselves.

So, the Cultivation world is a very balanced world where every action has some Karmic retribution. Thus, it is very rare to see someone killing people indiscriminately. Utmost discretion is usually employed to prevent people from tracing the culprit and thereby encumbering him with their resentment.

Disputes are more often solved via open challenges and duels. The loser usually follows the terms set in the agreement, otherwise, the infamy from their shamelessness will make their afterlife worrying.

The misconception that Cultivation Civilizations are anarchical law-of-the-jungle societies where people exterminate each other's clans over the slightest of grievances is pretty absurd.

In fact, scientific civilizations are more into the Kill, Burn and Plunder philosophy. Nepotism and corruption are rife in their societies due to their absence of tangible moral guidelines and their unquenchable greed for resources.

Our Hero, as a talent that only appeared every thousand years, was a little more kill happy than his peers as he knew he would be able to ascend and wouldn't have to deal with any Karmic retribution.

Unlike Devil cultivators, who believed that one should live one's life as if it was their last and enjoy every pleasure it had to offer, and thus, stopped at no evil in their pursuit of a greater power and a greater pleasure, Lin Feng only killed people who deserved to die.

Devil cultivators, drug peddlers, human traffickers… these were the sort who had died at his hands, in his capacity as the sect hegemon, after they had tried to cheat the sect out of its payment.

Yet, he was a decent guy used to a society where murder was not only frowned upon but also invited retribution from the motive forces of the very world.

He came from a position of power where he had to be responsible for all his subordinates.

The ultimate taboo in his society was the desecration of graves… not even devil cultivators did something like that as it involved blaspheming Tutelary Gods and all under their shelter.

The resulting sin was extremely grave.

Thus, when Pakura had brought up his destruction of the graveyard, he had felt a strong surge of guilt that had washed away his cavalier attitude towards the Suna ninja.

He had just committed the most heinous crime in his cognition against his subordinates, people he had promised to protect in return for their submission.

He had felt sick. It was like experiencing the feeling of taking a life for the first time all over again.

It had shaken him to his very core and he felt grateful towards the courage of the woman who had pointed it out to him in time to prevent his further degeneration.

The depth of his emotion. The common origin of the fragments of the World Will present in them both. The tenuous grasp on Void Force that he had developed at that time. It all came together, culminating in the strange bond that they shared.

The only effect, as far as they had determined, was that within ten metres of each other, they could sense the other's emotions.

With a proper level of soul cultivation, even that could be blocked.

Yet, it was useful in gaining her trust during the long conversation they had the next morning.

He had told her about his circumstances and she had listened deluded as her horizons expanded.

He had requested her to follow him on his path to immortality. Having nowhere else to go and enticed by his proposition she had agreed.

He didn't love her. He had just met her after all.

He wasn't that desperate for female company either in a village whose women were conditioned by their training to believe that it was their duty to bear as many of his children as possible after the display of his strength.

She was twenty and he over sixty years her senior… although age was less of a restriction and more of a guideline on the path to immortality… he was no cradle robber.

Admiration and gratitude were the driving emotions behind his proposal and over the month they had spent together, they had grown more comfortable in each other's company.

She had been invaluable with her local perspective on the possible changes the intruder's terraforming might have caused.

As a competent kunoichi, ranked much higher than the Suna scout and much less cloistered than the two jinchuuriki whose memories he had been basing his conduct upon, she was a font of classified knowledge on jutsu mechanics, sealing and information on the political climate.

She had even drawn up a schedule and political agenda for him to logically succeed Rasa as the Fourth Kazekage without upsetting the Daimyo of the Land of Wind and his subordinate samurai.

What he liked the best about her was that her civilian background before her sudden awakening meant that she had escaped the conditioning the others had been subjected to.

As such, she was able to meet him as an equal during their conversations without devolving into the blatant displays of seduction the other women were prone to.

Well, as we speak, the confrontation between Pakura and the wielder of the Executioner's Blade is iminent.

Let us turn our gazes towards there.

…

Pakura flit from branch to branch as she took a diagonal path, from where she had been teleported, in an interception course with the harried swordsman.

Her thoughts drifted to Lin Feng.

She had developed a new opinion of him after knowing his origin and being exposed to his charisma as he slowly wove his spiderweb within the high levels of Suna, his connections spreading like branches on a tree or the ripples on a still pond until it encompassed the entire council, building Rasa's rule on stilts, both politically and from the perspective of relative strength.

He had done in a month what she had tried and failed to do for the last year.

For now, he was her friend and confidant. The only one.

She'd had subordinates. She'd had superiors. Ambitious suitors after her bloodline were dime a dozen. Yet, for the first time in her life, her reputation or status hadn't made conversational intimacy impossible.

Honestly speaking, she quite enjoyed it.

Shaking her head, she cleared it of extraneous thoughts.

Now, it was time to focus. Her target drew near.