THE LAND OF COUNTLESS PLANES (2/6)

The following is a collection of excerpts from "Records of the Olden Era" detailing the rise of few notable figures during the Endless Slaughter: "Below Five. Peers far and few. Above countless," curated by Head Scholar Lao Tse.

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< Aura Dragon >

Other moniker/s: "Father of External Aura Manipulation", "Childe of Golden Blood", "The Living Artefact".

In the beginning, 'it' was no more than a pebble. Then, as Heavenly power rained down, this small rock was granted life and intellect.

With time, it taught itself to 'see' the earth around it. It sought for more of its kind underground but found only inert rocks and dirt.

It thus turned to what was above. There, the pebble experienced the shock of a lifetime.

Unlike the barren land and the empty underground, mighty beasts existed in the sky.

The pebble was in awe of the mighty dragons vying for supremacy above it and sought to emulate them.

However, it was but a mere pebble. It could only watch from below in wonder...

Then, as the Slaughter commenced, blood rich in Spiritual Energy rained down endlessly.

The pebble was surrounded by that boundless energy. An unrelenting thirst for the sky rose in it. Through trial and error, it eventually found a way to tap into that power.

It molded that Spiritual Energy in the shape of the dragons' scales. At first, they'd break back down into energy, and the pebble would have to start over again as time passed.

Eventually, that ceased to be the case.

The pure energy of the world had been tamed by the pebble.

Slowly but ceaselessly, the golden scales piled up. As the decades, centuries, and millennia passed, it had come to craft hundreds of thousands of them: at last, the pebble shaped them into majestic draconic armour.

But this left the pebble unsatisfied. It sought to be more than an empty husk.

Piloting its new armour, it looked for fell beasts whose innards had spilt out, and whose bones were exposed. He silently gathered and stockpiled them. Then, one by one, the pebble attempted to copy their inner organs and skeletal structures.

Its creations would often break down, and it would have to start over. No matter. So long as golden blood and corpses rained down, it would never have to fear running out of materials.

It studied the workings of a Primordial's body one by one, and while the pebble might only have imitated them at first, it eventually arrived at designs of its own. It improved and innovated, as a majestic body slowly took shape around it...

The land experienced the passing of time, the Endless Slaughter was millions of years deep.

Alas.

That 'it', a lowly pebble, finally became a 'He'.

Its body lacked a Long-Huo gem, source of Dragonflame, but otherwise transcended most dragons and their dragonkin. With a body of pristine energy, He was resplendent, far and beyond any of the dragons he had once admired. With a wave of his arms, Spiritual Energy congealed into solid masterworks that would best any beast's talons, designing the world's first blades. And not too long later, He created more and more vessels suitable to harbour life.

Over millions of years, immortal blood had soaked the lands. What had once been barren ground, now housed countless others just like him; a land that had gained sentience.

Just as He had clamoured for the sky, those stones and pebbles, too, craved for the heavens.

He offered them one way to fulfil their wishes. He had crafted mighty, massive beings of living energy, and who better than others of His kind to pilot His creations? Their collective wills that had watched Him work on them for the past million years would helm those bodies best.

Thus, a land nourished by war and blood stepped into the conflict as a powerhouse that could tilt the scales.

The radiant artefacts of energy He termed Aura.

With Aura weapons in His talons and twelve Aura Beasts at His side, the Aura Dragon set off to join the sky 'it' had always yearned for. [...]

End of "Aura Dragon", an excerpt from "Records of the Olden Era", and later compiled by Head Scholar Lao Tse in the collection of records, "Below five. Peers far and few. Above countless".

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<The Seven>

Other moniker/s: "Leviathans of the Seven Seas", "The Deepest", "Incarnations of the Most Ancient".

A giant ocean enveloped the gargantuan continents of the True Earth.

The Seven Leviathans were undisputed kings of those depths.

As lords birthed by the seven seas, their gargantuan bodies generated waves that ravished the coasts. The tall tsunamis reached the clouds and would wash away all that happened to be in their path. A big reason that few Primordial Beasts wouldn't settle on the ground was that, if even the sky was at risk of being swept away by the waters, the land of the True Earth was virtually inhabitable.

Just like some notable powerhouses amongst Primordial Beasts, the seven had an innate connection to a powerful Dao of their own. When they worked jointly, or even when they faced off against each other, the aftermath of those ancient powers mixing would bring forth indescribable destruction. Whenever they resurfaced from the depths, the seven brothers would blot out the sky with their massive figures. Soon afterwards, a macabre hail of broken corpses and devastated landmasses would fall like torrential rain.

Waves, control, time, space, macro force, micro force, and gravity; when pooled together, they could stand up to the rest of the Primordial Beasts inhabiting the True Earth all on their own.

Without a doubt, with the Emperors gone, and Yama unmoving from his throne, they remained the undisputed true powerhouses of the land, sky, and sea for the better part of the Slaughter

[...]

End of "The Seven", an excerpt from "Records of the Olden Era", and later compiled by Head Scholar Lao Tsi in the collection of records, "Below five. Peers far and few. Above countless".

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< Heaven Devouring Dragon >

Other moniker/s: "Highest Sky Dragon", "Seething Hunger", "Blindlight", "Golden-Scaled Calamity", "The Bottomless Fauces", "The Gluttony that Slumbers", [...], "Primordial Dragon King", "Heaven Devouring Dragon".

A ravager of worlds, the Golden-Scaled Calamity.

Once a young Sky Dragon, a diluted lineage of subpar existences, his pedigree as a Primordial Beast was rather lackluster. And yet, he alone among the rest of his species, he who had never stood out until then, suddenly rose to prominence!

His capabilities in regards to the Seven Daos were the same as any other Primordial Beast, pitifully mediocre. Similarly, his Will, unfit to finely shape Aura didn't allow him to follow the steps of the Aura Dragon in that aspect. Nor was he chosen by an otherwordly power like Yama.

It was only when the sky dragon first bathed in the blood of an enemy of his, an unnamed avifauna that had dared barge into his territory, that his hunger for heavenly flesh and blood finally awoke. This insatiable urge led him to massacre after massacre, reappearing whenever he'd smell the sweet scent of golden ichor!

Before he knew it, his bloodthirst and hunger for the divine had bent the world around his fangs. A Path that would stain him ichor-gold. As he devoured more and more, he hunted prey each stronger than the last! And the stronger the prey he fed on, the more he could devour!

Thus, he ate…

And he ate.

And ate, without stopping.

Endlessly, he feasted.

He devoured and absorbed countless opponents, his very existence becoming so durable, heavy, and condensed that many Planes would tremble from his weight alone.

As a vengeful fiend capable of swallowing anything, even the True Heavens, if angered and given enough time, he thus came to be known as the Heaven Devouring Dragon. His other, equally as famous title of Dragon King, would be bequeathed later on by the other olden beasts, out of respect, and horror; in hope that submission would spare them from the fauces of the fearsome hunger that dyed his pitch-white scales into the molten gold of Primordial blood.

In the distant future, others would refer to him as Blindlight: his body, so powerful that it would crack through land and the fabrics of the Planes, would glow so brightly as he fought that few could stare at it directly. This was, of course, because of the countless essences his flesh had absorbed during the Endless Slaughter and dyed his scales.

However, he never quite attained the title of Emperor.

Prideful to his bones, gluttonous to no end, and capable of harbouring such wrath that it spelt the demise of uncountable Planes. If his last, defining characteristic hadn't been his unparalleled Slothfulness, but rather greed for status and riches, envy towards the Four and their standing, or a dreadful lust that sought to overtake all, who knows what horror he would have brought to the many Heavens and Earths, as a deranged, terrifying Sixth.

Nonetheless, perhaps very much due to that laziness of his, Blindlight never quite attained the title of Emperor, his craving for ichor coming to an abrupt stop in the later stages of the Slaughter, only reappearing sporadically in the eras that would follow.

Even He remained one amongst many more: above countless, on par with ridiculously few, but forever doomed to remain below the Four and King Yama.

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End of "Heaven Devouring Dragon", an excerpt from "Records of the Olden Era", and later compiled by Head Scholar Lao Tsi in the collection of records, "Below five. Peers far and few. Above countless".

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< The Black Dragon >

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< The Undying Lady of Flame Jin Fenghuang >

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End of "Below five. Peers far and few. Above countless", a collection of excerpts from "Records of the Olden Era" compiled by Head Scholar Lao Tse.