Chương 138: The Enlightened

Leo stared at the man pretending to be the Moderator. The white robes were identical. The ceramic mask looked the same. Even the posture matched what Leo remembered from the Grand Formations Summit. If it had been Mateo who had been standing here, he would have been fooled. But somewhere along the way, Leo had picked up a nasty habit.

Ever since Zhao taught him the Scholar's Finger technique, Leo had started memorizing the distinctive pattern of everyone's divine sense whenever he entered Omnidirectional Perception. When he first started practicing, the process was noticeable and invasive. He had traumatized nearly half the flyers of the CFL trying to figure out how to read people's unique pattern of their divine sense. But after multiple involuntary test subjects, he had gotten pretty good at it and could do it passively.

Kind of like how normal people remembered faces. Sometimes he wondered if memorizing people's spiritual signatures was a faux pas in the cultivation world. But nobody had ever noticed or complained, though, so he just kept doing it. This man's spiritual signature bore no resemblance to the real Moderator's. It wasn't even close. Leo had noticed the moment the man walked into the room.

"You're not the Moderator," Leo said in Common. Then he tried to sound impressive.

"And that uniform doesn't belong to you. Take it off before you embarrass the Great Ascension Immortals of the Catacombs." The man laughed. He reached up, pulled the ceramic mask from his face, and dropped it. The mask struck the stone floor and shattered into fragments that scattered across the ancient tiles. The face behind it belonged to a middle-aged cultivator with sharp features and hooded eyes. Deep lines ran from the corners of his mouth to his jaw, and his hair was pulled back in a topknot.

A thin scar traced a diagonal line from his left temple to his chin. He replied in Common. His accent was flawless, native, without a trace of the Gothic inflection Leo had grown used to hearing from the Catacombs.

"The Immortals' hand cannot reach this Follower in these depths. Nor can it reach The Enlightened." The cultivator folded his hands behind his back.

"But this Follower will give them face and remove their vestments." Leo caught the key word. Enlightened. Something tightened in his chest. A mix of fear and relief. Now he finally had a name for 'The Enemy'. The Enlightened must have been the one who had orchestrated events across both worlds. He must have created the Sariya's medallion, and maybe even Hollowfang's Imperial Secret Police identity token.

"The Enlightened." Leo tested the name.

"So that's the guy pulling the strings. What does he want with me?"

"All in due time, Leo Chen." The cultivator gestured toward the corridor behind him.

"Walk with this Follower. Let this Follower show you the true face of the Western War of Unification." Leo considered his options. He could attack. The man wasn't made of ten tons of T4 petrified wood like the puppets. In a straight fight, Leo would win. But the puppets were still here. The temple's defenses were still active. And this man had information that Leo needed. If there was anything Leo had learned from movies and novels, it was to let the villain speak.

He touched down on the stone floor and hung his sword by his side. Even if nothing came from this conversation, he could at least spend the time memorizing the man's spiritual signature.

"Lead the way." The cultivator smiled and turned. Leo followed him through the doorway and into the passage beyond. The corridor was narrower than the temple chamber, its walls covered in the same hexagram formation scripts that pulsed with dim blue light. Their footsteps echoed against the ancient stone.

"Leo Chen," the cultivator said as they walked.

"This Follower has observed many young cultivators across his lifetime. Few possess your combination of youth, weakness, and audacity. A Foundation Establishment junior who walks into the jaws of two armies and emerges with Nascent Soul Lords following behind. Such a thing invites curiosity."

"I have a lot of fans." Leo shrugged.

"They call themselves the Bulldog Army." The cultivator's stride faltered for a fraction of a second. His brow furrowed with genuine confusion before he smoothed his expression. Leo grinned.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? You're doing that thing where you act like you know everything about me, but you're just bluffing." The cultivator gave him a long, hard look. Something shifted behind his eyes. For a moment, Leo felt the air grow heavy with killing intent. Then the cultivator shook his head and continued walking. He chose not to respond. They passed through several more corridors before arriving at a chamber that looked like it had been converted into a command center.

Formation lanterns hung from the ceiling, casting steady blue-white light across a large table that dominated the center of the room. On the table sat a map. Leo walked closer. The map was a detailed reproduction of the two western provinces, rendered on silk with spiritual ink that made the terrain features shimmer. Mountain ranges rose in miniature relief. Rivers traced blue lines across valleys. Cities appeared as clusters of tiny buildings. Eight red markers dotted the map.

"The great sects and temples of the Central Provinces believe Monarch Cloudpiercer wages a war of unification." The cultivator traced a finger along the border dividing the two provinces.

"They believe he seeks to establish himself as the dominant power and break into the Great God realm through faith power alone." He shook his head.

"Their vision is shallow." He tapped a point on the map. The place where they currently stood. The entrance to the Everlasting Empire's ruins.

"Within this installation lie two hundred and fifty-six Nascent Soul level puppets. Four Deity Transformation level constructs. Untold numbers of lesser automatons stored in the deeper vaults, awaiting activation." He paused to let the numbers sink in.

"This is one of eight major installations in the western provinces alone. Dozens more lie scattered across the continent. Dormant. Patient. Waiting."

"Monarch Cloudpiercer provides The Enlightened with access to Tier 5 spiritual Qi. In exchange, The Enlightened sends followers such as this one to assist in the exploration and activation of the Empire's ruins."

"This Follower's task," the cultivator continued, "is to unlock the puppets. To awaken them and bring them under proper control. When all eight western installations stand ready, Cloudpiercer will command a force sufficient to sweep aside every army that opposes him."

"And then what?" The cultivator's eyes gleamed.

"Then we march east. Against the spiritual beasts." He pointed to the eastern edge of the map, where the terrain grew wild and the formation ink depicted dense forests and towering peaks. The Savage Mountains. The territory of the Beast Kings.

"The Tier 6 spirit veins that the Beast Kings have hoarded for millennia. They belong to humanity. The beasts are a scourge. They prey upon mortal villages. They consume cultivators who wander too near their borders. They breed without restraint while humanity bleeds for every scrap of spiritual resource." The cultivator straightened.

"Coexistence between humans and spiritual beasts is a delusion spoken by those who have never watched a beast tide devour a city. Even the Heavenly Dao recognizes this truth. Have you noticed that slaying beasts generates almost no Slaughter Qi? The heavens themselves acknowledge that the extermination of monsters is righteous." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Leo said nothing.

He didn't know if he could trust what the cultivator was saying.

"A conventional war against the Beast Kings would cost tens of millions of human lives. Even victory would leave humanity crippled for three generations." The cultivator's voice grew passionate.

"But the puppets change the calculation entirely. Stone does not mourn. Stone does not leave widows. Cloudpiercer seeks to lead us all to greater heights." Leo shook his head.

"Yeah, that's a nice pitch. But you're leaving something out." The cultivator's expression cooled.

"These puppets aren't just sitting here because everyone forgot about them." Leo gestured at the chamber around them.

"If they were just undiscovered, the sects would have fought over them centuries ago. The temples would have put them to work." He met the cultivator's eyes.

"They're guarding something. Right?" Leo thought of the Slaughter Qi rising from the depths. The endless columns of dark energy climbing from somewhere below the ruins. He whispered." Jiangshi." The Follower suddenly locked eyes with Leo. Leo must have begun to touch upon the truth.

"The puppets are keeping the jiangshi sealed. There must be zombie cultivators somewhere below us." Leo's voice hardened.

"You're not saving humanity from monsters. You're waking up something worse." The cultivator held his gaze for a long moment. Then smiled.

"This Follower is impressed. Few cultivators possess knowledge of the jiangshi of the Everlasting Empire. Certainly few eighteen-year-old Foundation Establishment juniors." He walked to the edge of the room and looked out at the corridor beyond.

"Cloudpiercer believes he understands the Enlightened's desires. He thinks that as long as he can provide Tier 5 spiritual qi, he can control him. That the Enlightened will be satisfied with puppets and power, content to serve Cloudpiercer's crusade against the beasts." He turned back to Leo.

"But the true prize is not the puppets. It is not the spiritual Qi. It is an energy source far more powerful, far more potent." He paused.

"Slaughter Qi."

"That's insane," Leo said.

"Slaughter Qi corrupts everything it touches. It replaces you. Demonizes you. Look what happened to the Everlasting Empire!"

"And yet." The cultivator held up a finger.

"Slaughter Qi is still Qi. It follows the same fundamental principles as all spiritual energy. It can be absorbed. It can be refined. It can be directed." He walked closer to Leo, his voice dropping.

"The Enlightened is like you, Leo Chen. He can die and return. He has used those countless deaths to walk paths that would destroy any other cultivator on the first attempt. And through that process, he has arrived at a truth that this world's natives can never discover on their own." The Follower's eyes burned with conviction.

"Slaughter Qi can be controlled. It can be harnessed. It can elevate a cultivator beyond the limits that conventional cultivation imposes." Leo's jaw tightened. He thought of the Slaughter Qi he'd felt during the descent. The way it had pulled at his gaze, calling him downward. The way something deep below had wanted to be seen. The cultivator smiled.

"The Everlasting Empire failed because they each possessed one life. Every experiment was final. Every mistake was a gravestone. Their caution was born from the knowledge that a single error meant annihilation."

"The Enlightened has died ten thousand deaths in pursuit of this method. Ten thousand failures that would have ended any mortal cultivator's path. Each death refined his understanding. Each return allowed him to adjust, to correct, to push one step further than the last attempt." He spread his hands.

"Where the Empire built walls and sealed doors out of fear, the Enlightened walks through those doors and studies what lies beyond. He has earned that right through sacrifice that no native of this world can comprehend." Leo said nothing. But something cold and rational had begun turning over in the back of his mind. The Enlightened had been doing this for centuries. Hundreds of years of respawning, experimenting, dying, and trying again. Leo had only been exploiting the respawn mechanic for four years.

What would he look like after two hundred? If someone with the same advantage had spent centuries systematically testing the boundaries of Slaughter Qi cultivation, dying thousands of times to map the safe paths through a lethal landscape, would they eventually find a way to make it work? Leo had assumed Slaughter Qi was pure poison. But the cultivators of the Azure Profound Continent thought Profundities were death traps, and Leo had a merit stamp to prove them wrong.

The whole point of the respawn was that it let you attempt things that conventional wisdom said were impossible. The cultivator watched Leo's face and seemed to read the shift.

"The Enlightened understands your perspective," he continued.

"He once stood where you stand. He treated this world as a diversion. A source of amusement." The cultivator's voice softened.

"But he grew beyond that limited view. He recognized that the power available here is real. The cultivation is real. The gains carry over to Earth, do they not? Every advancement you achieve in this world strengthens your true body." Leo said nothing. But he was listening.

"Consider your own situation, Leo Chen. You possess a Heart of Flesh. You walk the Dao of all living things. A beautiful path. A righteous path." The cultivator paused.

"And a path with a ceiling."

"The Heart of Flesh connects you to the living. The more deeply you connect, the more power flows through you. This Follower has studied the technique. Its strength scales with the density of cultivators around the practitioner." He paused.

"But what happens when those people die? When the war grinds them down, one by one, and the web that sustains your power grows thinner with each loss?"

"The Heart of Flesh depends on a world full of living things," the cultivator said.

"Slaughter Qi cultivation depends on nothing except the cultivator's own will. One path grows weaker as the world suffers. The other grows stronger." He let the implication settle.

"The Enlightened does not ask you to abandon your Dao. He asks you to consider whether your Dao, in its current form, is sufficient to accomplish what you wish to accomplish. You did not come to this ruin to end the war. You came here looking for something interesting. Something you've never seen before. The Enlightened can offer you exactly that." Leo turned the offer over.

"The Enlightened was originally disappointed in your trajectory. A talented young cultivator wasting his potential on trivial adventures and odd jobs. But after the events of the Grand Formations Summit, his opinion changed." Leo's chest tightened. The Follower had a point about the Heart of Flesh. It had been completely useless after Leo was isolated during the Grand Formations Summit. The only reason it worked for Mateo was the connections he had through blood and devotion. Leo didn't have those things.

He just had himself. When he'd fought the puppets in a place like this, isolated from the outside world, his primary Dao was useless. He couldn't protect Arthur or Mike. He had watched them both die. What if this had been the real world? Would he have been able to protect his friends? For a long, uncomfortable moment, Leo genuinely considered it. Here, deep in the ruins of an ancient empire, his Heart of Flesh felt cold and useless. All it did was help him resist divine pressure.

It did not help him close the gap between realms, nor could it make up differences in raw power. Then the cultivator kept talking.

"Sariya taught you about the Dimming of Stars. When you killed her, the connections she had accumulated, the fate she had woven, they became yours. The karma threads she gathered over years of careful cultivation transferred to you in the moment of her death." He smiled.

"Sariya was meant to be the Enlightened's next disciple. She trained under his guidance. She learned his techniques. She was groomed to carry his legacy forward." The cultivator's voice grew soft with something that sounded almost like affection.

"She failed. But her failure was cause for celebration, not grief." Leo's hands clenched at his sides.

"Sariya gifted you her fate. Her destiny. Her accumulated karma and all the potential it represented." The cultivator spread his arms.

"It is now your fate to carry forward what she began. The Enlightened has walked his path alone for too long. He seeks companions who understand the weight of endless death and return. You, Leo Chen, have proven yourself worthy of that invitation." Leo saw her face in his mind. The wonder in her eyes as she died in his arms. He remembered her last words. He would never forget. You have the brightest star I have ever seen. The Follower opened his mouth to continue, but Leo was no longer listening.

The rational argument was good. The logic was sound. But Sariya's name had cracked something open. Sariya studied fate and karma her entire life. She had observed the stars of countless cultivators. She must have seen the stars of Deity Transformation Monarchs, of the Void Refining Eternals. And if the Enlightened had been her master, she would have seen his star too. She would have seen the culmination of centuries of Slaughter Qi cultivation.

The accumulated power of someone who had died and respawned countless times, who had pushed the boundaries of what cultivation could achieve. And in her final moment, she had told Leo that his star burned brightest. Not the Enlightened's. His. The Follower was still talking. Something about what the Enlightened would offer Leo if he joined him. Something about techniques no other master would teach. Leo barely heard him. If Slaughter Qi cultivation was truly the superior path, Sariya would have known.

She could read fate itself. She would have seen the Enlightened's star blazing above all others, proof that his methods led to the greatest heights. Instead, she had looked at an eighteen-year-old Qi Refining cultivator and seen something brighter. The Heart of Flesh. The Dao of all living things. The connection to the eternal, living flow. It didn't make sense to Leo. After all, what the Follower said was true. The Heart of Flesh had limits. Leo knew he was choosing the harder path.

He didn't know exactly why he was trying so hard to reject the path of Slaughter Qi the Follower was offering. He didn't know if he could become the person the Dao required him to be. But for some reason he knew, he couldn't cut himself off from everyone else around him. That even though he had only spent four years post-transmigration, he had formed bonds that would last a lifetime. He thought of Ambassador Perdue's words on the streets of Ashviel. You are transitioning from absorption to selection.

Everything you learned, everything you experienced, now you sort it. Keep what fits. Discard what doesn't. Build something that is yours. The Enlightened's path was not his to take. It had never been.