The Seven Destinies were Vile, Aberrant, Miscellaneous, Fundamental, Extraordinary, Divine, and Celestial.
As for Celestial Destinies and Divine Destinies, unless one were the reincarnation of an immortal or god, or shielded by the Will of Heaven, they were utterly impossible to possess.
Thus, the most precious Destiny Pattern in the mortal realm was the Extraordinary Destiny.
Among Extraordinary Destinies, there were further distinctions: Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends, Mountains and Seas, Stars and Heavens.
The destiny Bai Qinghan had obtained was precisely the most exalted among the various Star Baleful Extraordinary Destinies—the Mystic Yin Star Destiny!
—The ritual had only just begun, yet a Mystic Yin Star Destiny had already appeared; even if everyone who followed were to die, it would still have been worth it!
Though these words surged violently in Manor Lord Yao's heart, he did not voice them aloud.
He knew full well that the quality of this batch of materials exceeded all imagination. Just because the most precious Celestial Star Destiny had emerged now did not mean there would not be a second!
One must understand that the Grand Ritual of Imperial Heaven's Baleful Stars drew upon the might of otherworldly celestial demons and the righteous gods of Imperial Heaven. It plunged the ritual subjects into the calamity of demonic torment, then shattered it using the power of the righteous gods of the immortal heavens, utilizing this chaotic, nascent primordial qi to link their destinies. It was a secret ritual that sought the Dao through demons, birthed destiny through death, and preserved the spirit through calamity.
This Suspended Fate Valley was precisely where a sword immortal had subdued demons and vanquished evil during the great Huaixu Calamity. It innately harbored the baleful intents of gods, demons, and stars, making it the supreme site to bolster the ritual's efficacy!
With yin and yang thus intermingling and life and death revolving, the subjects had a certain likelihood of entering various states of enlightenment; if they could endure and overcome them, their Destiny Patterns would awaken!
"Bai Qinghan..."
Glancing at the roster to confirm the name of the one whose Destiny Pattern had awakened, Manor Lord Yao nodded in deep satisfaction. "As expected of an orphan fished from the Vast Sea. To survive the demonic calamity from ten years ago to this day, she is indeed extraordinary."
"Continue!" His spirits soaring, he sliced his hand with the jade dagger once more and splashed out a spray of fresh blood. "Pay reverence to Imperial Heaven, to illuminate Heaven's Will!"
The other officiants also maintained the ritual one after another, chanting, "Pay reverence to Imperial Heaven, to illuminate Heaven's Will!"
The formation's light flickered beneath the expanse of white sands, like cloud-patterns of mountains and seas sketched in azure light and ink. Everyone's qi signatures became thoroughly intertwined with the ritual array; those among them who succeeded would help sustain the ritual and reduce the drain on the officiants.
As for the expendable materials who failed and died, their souls, Blood Qi, and everything they possessed would be transformed after the ritual into Blood Pill Great Medicine, returning to the bodies of these officiants to increase their cultivation and extend their lifespans.
This was precisely why they had diligently nurtured these youths without holding anything back—those who succeeded and those fortunate enough to survive would become one of them, while those who failed would become a part of them.
—Heaven's Will draws near to the Dao, taking all things as sacrifice, reducing what is in excess to supplement what is deficient.
The blood they spilled now was the 'sacrifice's reduction,' and the feedback received after the ritual was the 'sacrifice's supplementation'!
And so, the grand ritual continued.
Meanwhile,
Within the ritual formation, An Jing drifted into memories.
He recalled his life.
When An Jing was born, his father was sitting for the imperial examinations for the third time. On the day he failed once more, gave up completely, and prepared to return to his ancestral home to inherit the family property, the Vast Sea Demonic Calamity struck, severing the Northern Direct Road.
His father journeyed and drifted all the way back from the Divine Capital; leaving aside the arduous hardships along the way, his son An Jing was already two years old. Alert and clever, upon seeing an unfamiliar, tall, bearded man appear in the house, the boy immediately called out for the neighbors, who pinned the stranger to the ground.
After the villagers released this talent of Gufeng County whom they had long thought dead in the demonic calamity, the disheveled father took no offense. Instead, he laughed heartily. With one arm he held his lawful wife, An Shen-shi, who was furiously pinching his waist, and with the other he held his biological son—conceived before his departure yet unseen until now due to the disaster—proclaiming loudly, "This boy takes after me!"
He was flattering himself, for An Jing was far cleverer than he.
The An Family of Gufeng had originally been a martial lineage. Their ancestors were expeditionary martial artists who had responded to the territorial expansion decree of Great Chen's Ancestral Emperor to open up northern frontiers. The family possessed a hundred mu of fertile fields, orchards of dry farmland, and properties in the town; otherwise, they could never have sustained the expenses of the father's repeated examination attempts.
Having abandoned scholarly pursuits for martial arts and returned to inherit the family estate, An Jing's father was busy, but he still made time to read ancient texts. An Jing would sit beside him, swaying his head as he chanted along with his father.
At first, the father thought the child was merely joining in the fun, but he soon discovered that An Jing seemed to comprehend them—and not only could he comprehend the spoken words, he could read the characters as well.
Greatly astonished, his father casually pulled out a copy of the Honglie Tianwen, opened it, pointed at the page, and asked, "Can you read this?"
An Jing skimmed the characters. A wealth of information surfaced in his mind; it seemed he had read these words before. Though some characters had slightly different glyphs, he recognized them completely, and read aloud according to the text: "Before Heaven and Earth took shape, all was amorphous and boundless, dark and deep; hence it was called the Great Effulgence..."
The more he read, the smoother his cadence became, until An Jing was bobbing his head to the rhythm.
His father instantly fell into a happy dilemma—his child seemed to be an Innate Wisdom Star descended to the mortal world, born knowing, far cleverer than his old man.
Great Chen placed great stock in Heaven's Mandate, and tales of stars descending to earth were not uncommon, so the An clan harbored no suspicions. However, though the father had attained modest success in scholarly pursuits and held imperial examination honors, his proficiency went only so far; how could he be worthy of instructing an Innate Wisdom Star?
As for martial arts, though the father lacked talent—having practiced for two or three decades only to grasp the basics, remaining at the 'Inner Breath Like River' realm—the martial scriptures preserved in the family were profound, said to lead directly to the Martial Veins. He could easily lay a solid foundation for the child and then send An Jing to study at a martial academy.
Great Chen was founded on martial might and governed by law; both civil and martial paths were orthodox in this world. Unable to make a decision, he planned to wait until An Jing's body matured before deciding.
Until then, he would lay all the groundwork for An Jing.
Gufeng County was situated in the far north of Great Chen. It had once been a pioneer village under the jurisdiction of Xuanque Prefecture in Hanbei Circuit, but had now prospered into a full county. Further north lay the frontier lands and Qingyu Pass, which guarded the gateway between Great Chen's northern frontier and the untamed wilds.
The demonic fiends and wild beasts around Gufeng County had already been slaughtered clean two hundred years ago by the ancestors and conscripted martial armies, so An Jing's upbringing was quite peaceful.
In the year An Jing turned six, frontier trade flourished. As a transit hub on the trade route, Gufeng County grew even more prosperous. An Jing's father also took part and grew busy, leaving An Jing in the care and instruction of his mother, An Shen-shi.
An Shen-shi was also the daughter of a martial family. Though she too lacked great talent, she had no trouble handling his early enlightenment.
The An Family of Gufeng gradually thrived, their days growing increasingly prosperous. An Jing built a solid physical foundation and could read classical texts with fluency. All the local scholars exclaimed that he was truly worthy of being a provincial graduate's son, bound to set foot in the Divine Capital in the future, pass high on the golden roll, and receive official investiture for longevity.
Yet good times did not last. On a summer day when An Jing was nine, the frontier trade fairs abruptly shut down.
With easy business no longer possible, An Jing's father had no choice but to lead a caravan to Qingyu Pass for trade.
Yet not long after his departure, news of war arrived from the north.
The Thirteen Kings of the Northern Barbarians assembled an invading army of three hundred thousand. Banners unfurled, dark clouds gathered like a deluge pressing down upon the frontier.
By imperial decree, Great Chen's General Pacifying the North led troops to suppress them, the hoofbeats of the massive army shaking heaven and earth.
From Qingyu Pass to Bailu River, from Yungu County to Mingshan City, none of the one hundred and twenty cities north of Xuanque Mountain were spared from becoming battlefields.
In less than two years, the two sides battered the entire northern plains into withered exhaustion, and An Jing's father vanished without a trace.
Compounding this, a once-in-a-millennium Frost Calamity descended, plunging the northern frontier's people, who were already barely clinging on, into unspeakable misery.
In truth, there had long been omens of the Frost Calamity.
Even setting aside the Vast Sea Demonic Calamity, the untamed wilderness beyond the northern frontier had already noticed winters growing colder year by year, while their harvests and herds grew fewer and smaller.
The earlier trade had been their final struggle; having emptied all their savings and still struggling to survive, the various Northern Barbarian tribes had no choice but to unite. Left with no retreat, they threw everything into driving south.
The An Family, and indeed the entirety of Gufeng County, swiftly fell into ruin.
Due to exorbitant wartime taxes, military requisitions, and the southward push of the Frost Calamity that froze crops to death.
Prolonged drought without rain, heavens pouring heavy snow... paired with the northern barbarian invasion, everyone was plunged into despair.
Before the grain reserves were completely exhausted, all of Gufeng County was forced to flee en masse.
Fleeing famine was bitter hardship.
Stored grain was quickly depleted. Under the Frost Calamity, there were not even wild herbs to be found; people could only gnaw on tree bark, break ice to dig for roots, and could barely even find guanyin clay to eat.
And after that... came exchanging children to eat, splitting corpses' bones for firewood to cook.
Cannibalism.
It was that simple, that direct. In those times, it was truly 'a year of great famine, where people ate one another.'
The An Family had accumulated considerable wealth over the years, so they had not fallen to quite such depths, but they were hardly better off.
After all, most of their assets were physical property like land and livestock, and An Jing's father had been keen on purchasing ancient books and collections, spending a great deal of the family wealth.
In the past, this had indeed been the way to elevate a clan's social standing and nurture its prestige. Had they been allowed twenty or thirty years of peaceful development, producing an Inner Strengthening martial master or an officially invested civil official would have been enough to turn them into a prominent clan of the Northern Frontier.
Yet when total war and calamity struck at once, family background and standing turned to dust. Livestock was commandeered by the army, crops withered from drought, collections and martial scriptures became as useless as scrap paper, and land was not worth a single copper in times like these.
The family elders could not bear to abandon the fields and foundations carved out through the sweat and lives of generations of ancestors; they chose to die in their homeland.
The remaining clan members were scattered across wave after wave of mounted bandit raids and military conscription.
Ultimately, before reaching the Huai River—the great river of the Northern Frontier—the former An clan had scattered into nothingness.
An Jing and his mother fought side by side to break through encirclement after encirclement. Whether facing displaced refugees, bandits, mounted marauders, or human traffickers, they crushed and breached them all. Through arduous trekking, and at the cost of his mother suffering grievous injuries, they finally reached the outskirts of Mingshan City, the hub of the Northern Frontier.
This was his past life.
A succession of memories lingered in An Jing's heart like flickering shadows of light.
Through the haze, complete darkness opened before his eyes.
Neither light nor shadow, neither star nor god, an empty desolation, nebulous and chaotic.
Utter pitch-black gloom flowed before his eyes.
And then a voice spoke:
[What is your Heaven's Mandate?]
Chapter 34