King-Chosen Bai Zhou Petitions for the Celestial Pivot Seal Bestowal!

"Arrange one hundred sheets of spiritually active paper. Use ink mixed with the blood of three kinds of living creatures. Mobilize the Spirit Pivot to write specially made ritual symbols upon the empty air. The ritual symbols are as follows..." "Chant a special prayer. Take eight ancient objects and set them in the eight directions. Mobilize the Spirit Pivot to light the ritual symbols upon them in turn, and open a lesser amber domain. The prayer and the ritual symbols are as follows..." Complex knowledge lingered in Bai Zhou's mind. The Hundred-Paper Corridor Ritual. The Lesser Amber Domain-Sealing Ritual. From construction, to triggering, and on to deconstruction... the entire process of each ritual was contained within, without the slightest omission. In a daze, Bai Zhou saw a ritual master in a plain white robe, seated cross-legged in a sealed secret chamber. Several hundred glowing sheets of rough straw paper drifted and fluttered endlessly about him, though there was no wind. As the pages turned, they cast countless streams of light and phantom images, reflecting the trajectories of lives. Thousands upon thousands of possible futures were swiftly surveyed, one after another, by the ritual master... Before long, Bai Zhou saw another scene: a bleak, rain-swept night. A black-robed ritualist half-knelt upon the ground, an amber cupped in his hands as he murmured under his breath, answering from afar the other seven ambers set in every direction. A moment later, the eight ambers burst forth with a dim yellow light, like thick honey slowly flowing out toward the surroundings. The pouring rain hung suspended in midair. Chips of flying stone froze in an instant. Countless black shadows lunging at the black-robed ritualist were "nailed" in the deathly still air. Only the black-robed ritualist rose slowly from the ground, his momentum climbing without limit... The power of those two ritualists was unfathomable. Their surroundings were exceedingly ancient, and the style of their clothing differed greatly from that of Tinghai. Mere knowledge could not let Bai Zhou see these things. Only the original text of a forbidden tome could let him see the scenes of ritualists of earlier generations laying out these rituals. "One can be used to deduce different possibilities of the future, and from among them find in advance a way to break the deadlock. It is equivalent to divination." "The other can be used to seal a region, imprison one's enemies, and strengthen oneself." Understanding dawned in Bai Zhou's heart. Compared with the micro-rituals he had commonly used before—whether for hypnosis, for concealing himself, or for strengthening his physical condition—these ranked rituals were clearly more "extraordinary." Neither their conditions of construction nor their effects could be spoken of in the same breath. Only... "Spirit Pivot?" Bai Zhou noticed the term, and doubt stirred in him. In the methods of constructing both first-rank rituals, the same thing had been mentioned, as if by common agreement. The Spirit Pivot. In all the time he had previously come into contact with those micro-rituals, this had never once appeared. "Any ritual process, in essence, cannot escape the four steps of construction, triggering, regulation, and deconstruction." As if having seen Bai Zhou's confusion, the artificial intelligence loaded within the Wolf Knight statue slowly spoke. "Of these, construction alone—setting aside the uncommon and obscure methods—commonly has five channels: chanting, movement, communion, marking, and borrowing objects." "As the names imply, chanting means stacking words of special significance, linking the parts of a ritual together, and thereby unfolding the ritual directly." "Movement means calling forth mystical power through the actions of the body. Communion aims at pleasing certain mysterious beings so as to borrow their great power. Marking uses ritual symbols to bear and release ritual power. Borrowing uses an object as a medium through which to construct the ritual." "As ritual studies gradually developed thereafter, these five common channels of construction slowly fused, forming a more efficient and more powerful system of ritual. Often, within the construction of a single ritual, one may see both borrowed objects and ritual symbols. This greatly shortened the cumbersome procedures the earliest rituals required and greatly reduced their extremely high rate of failure, and pushed the development of ritual studies to a new height." "And this was Troy's contribution." So the Wolf Knight said: "At least, in the civilized age of the Three Hundred City-States in which Troy stood, this was Trojan civilization's unique contribution to ritual studies." "Civilizations of earlier ages, cut off by the historical break, may have achieved all this long before, and civilizations of later ages may have accomplished the same. But in that era, Trojan civilization was the undisputed pioneer and leader in ritual studies." Bai Zhou nodded thoughtfully. "Yet if construction alone is already so complex, how much more so deconstruction?" "If one has mastered the corresponding method of laying out a ritual—for instance, the Hundred-Paper Corridor Ritual and the Lesser Amber Domain-Sealing Ritual—then both construction and deconstruction take half the work and yield twice the result." "But if a ritual the other party has laid down lies outside the scope of one's own understanding, and one cannot break the other's ritual, must one simply surrender?" The Wolf Knight turned the question back, then, without waiting for Bai Zhou to answer, gave the answer: "At that moment, one needs the Spirit Pivot." "The so-called Spirit Pivot is, in fact, a natal ritual constructed within the body. This ritual has no killing power, nor much in the way of special effect, yet it is the foundation of foundations." The Wolf Knight explained, "Just as saber techniques, though they number in the tens of thousands, all begin from nine basic moves—cleave, chop, thrust, lift, and the rest—and even the most basic of moves originate in the earliest cleaving and chopping." "The so-called Spirit Pivot, though basic, encompasses all phenomena, and holds limitless possibility of development." "It can help you directly see the unnatural disturbances of spirituality in the surrounding environment, the flow of a ritual, and its final structure—and thereby analyze, break, or even usurp a ritual that is in the midst of running." "A kind of universal key." Bai Zhou seemed to grasp it. "Yes, and no. Because its function is far from so narrow." The Wolf Knight nodded. "If you compare a completed ritual to a lock, and the Spirit Pivot to a key—then the Spirit Pivot has no need at all to know what specific model the lock is. It need only sense, through the Spirit Pivot, the layout of the lock's structure. Then the Spirit Pivot within the body will, in the course of its deduction, transform and simulate the structure of the other's ritual, and thereby achieve the purpose of analyzing and breaking it." "Even more: certain powerful ritualists, faced with a ritual an enemy has unfolded, can simply merge their own Spirit Pivot into the other's ritual, replace and overwrite the crucial links within it, and become a part of the other's ritual." The Wolf Knight's voice paused briefly here. "Not only that. Once the Spirit Pivot has successfully condensed, it can also greatly increase a ritualist's control over spirituality." "One must understand that ranked rituals and unranked rituals are entirely different. They often require a ritualist to possess extremely fine control over spirituality." "In Troy, an excellent ritualist was often also an excellent painter, sculptor, and master of magic runes. The reason was precisely this." This reasoning, Bai Zhou could more or less understand. Because Crow had once constructed many extremely intricate and complex micro-rituals upon Bai Zhou's fingers, like flowers carved from a radish. That art of minute carving had left him in awe. Even if he drew eggs for a hundred years, he could not reach that level. So Crow had been cheating, by means of the Spirit Pivot... "Even more, some ranked rituals reject spirituality from outside, and can be constructed only with the aid of the Spirit Pivot. Certain damaged rituals of great scale, too, can have their spirituality mobilized to repair them only if the Spirit Pivot merges into them." The Wolf Knight went on, "By the later stages, when the Spirit Pivot has gradually grown, it can itself carry all manner of inconceivable ritual abilities, and requires no ritual preparation at all. Between one thought and the next, the Spirit Pivot can be triggered." "Burning rivers and boiling seas, overturning heaven and earth—none of it is more than a single thought!" Spoken this way, the words made Bai Zhou's heart leap with longing despite himself. "However, though all of them are basic natal rituals, there are still higher and lower among them." The Wolf Knight spoke again. "This principle should not be hard to understand." Bai Zhou nodded. Just as, in training a stable lower body, some plant themselves in a horse stance, and some tread the plum-blossom stakes; just as, in training the fist, some begin with real combat, some pound a sandbag, and some persist, day after day, in throwing ten thousand punches at a waterfall. Different schools have different methods. The Spirit Pivots condensed by different schools of ritual naturally differ as well, and differences in the strength of their abilities follow as a matter of course. If one's start is already a stretch behind the others, one can of course make it up slowly afterward. But one step slow, and every step is slow. That the knowledge of the mystical world is strictly monopolized by the Extraordinary is, of course, not without reason. Compared with those standardized Extraordinary pathways current in the mystical world, the inheritance of ritualists was somewhat better than that of most Destined, whose lineages were broken and lost. But ritualists who had truly entered the ranks... At least to judge by Bai Zhou's own experience, there were not many more of them than there were Destined. Both were equally scarce in Tinghai. Without a suitable teacher to instruct one, and without an inheritance, a self-taught path was almost certainly destined to come to nothing. So the ritualist was an aristocratic profession in the truest sense: they moved unseen through the mystical world and were held in respect. Behind every ritualist there was often a whole crowd of old fossils of the elder generation—perhaps even a school of ritualists nearing extinction, and therefore all the more given to shielding their own. When Bai Zhou had displayed ritual means, even though he was only a ritualist apprentice, he had been able to leave Major and the Fine Arts Society startled and uncertain. Even as they suspected that someone stood behind Bai Zhou, they had always needed a certain amount of time before they could produce countermeasures to the rituals he had used. "The Sun Temple is the highest place of faith in Trojan civilization, ranked alongside the royal palace as the most important place in Troy." "The king of every generation of Troy was certainly Troy's strongest Destined, and was generally of the Adventurer pathway." "But the saintess of every generation of Troy was certainly Troy's strongest ritualist." The Wolf Knight said in a low voice, "Looking across the Three Hundred City-States of that age, including the Rome that later swept the world, the saintess of every generation of Troy was a powerful contender for the strongest ritualist of the era." "...So, if one speaks of the inheritance of the Adventurer pathway, there was perhaps some gap between Troy and Rome at its strongest." "But in the inheritance of ritualists, Troy was certainly the strongest. The Spirit Pivot natal ritual, passed down generation after generation within Troy and never permitted to leak outside, was also absolutely nothing any natal ritual of the outside world could match!" The Wolf Knight's voice paused here. "One must understand: not every process of constructing a natal ritual can be called... Seal Bestowal!" "If, back then, Our King had been able to go one step further in the domain of the ritualist, perhaps Troy would not have fallen to the state it is in today..." The voice cut off abruptly. The cold mechanical tone held no regret. Perhaps, to this artificial intelligence, it was only an objective assessment. Seal Bestowal! Bai Zhou's heart stirred. The contents of the parchment scroll flashed through his mind. Seal Bestowal—A Ritualist's Advancement into the Ranks. What was set out there was perfectly clear. Only when Seal Bestowal succeeded did one count as a ritualist who had formally entered the ranks. A ranked ritualist, even one of only the first rank, in the parchment scroll's rough comparison, was measured against Extraordinary who began at level 5. Once Seal Bestowal was complete, and one could lay out first-rank rituals, a ritualist possessed the ability to aid, threaten, or even kill a level-5 Extraordinary. No wonder that, in Tinghai, only from level 5 onward could one count as a "high-level Extraordinary." Even more, in the Tinghai of the present world, once a ritualist completed entry into the ranks, this disparity, and this "exalted standing," were in fact even more pronounced. Because the "level-5 Extraordinary" of the comparison upon the parchment scroll was clearly not those level-5 Extraordinary of Tinghai. What did a self-taught dabbler on a standardized pathway even amount to? Even an ordinary Extraordinary who possessed a Destined pathway, if Fate Principle and pathway could not accord, was not worth a glance. For the inheritance of the Sun Temple, there was one kind, and only one kind, that they would bring out for comparison. A Destined of the Adventurer pathway! A level-5 Destined Adventurer! This was the existence a ranked ritualist was measured against! At this thought, Bai Zhou blinked twice. "A lower-grade Spirit Pivot: a rote copying of the form. One simply mobilizes spirituality and constructs, within the body, the lowest grade of natal ritual." "A middling Spirit Pivot: a transplant from those who came before. A natal ritual nurtured by a genius of an earlier generation is moved into one's own body. Some schools can, by various means, reduce the side effects to a minimum." "A superior Spirit Pivot: one draws upon the treasures of heaven and earth, and upon rare secret medicines, to concoct an ownerless ritual seed. Like a talisman seal, it is planted within the ritualist's body and left to sprout, growing a natal ritual that belongs to one's personal style alone." "And the ritualist inheritance within the Sun Temple is naturally the superior among the superior." "Of these, the secret medicines required to concoct that batch of seeds of the highest grade have long since been impossible to produce again." "After all, the ages have changed. Even Troy has lain fallen for who knows how long. Most of the raw materials in the secret medicines were probably lost many years ago." "Only..." The green light flickering in the Wolf Knight's emerald eyes fell upon the youth before it. "Executor of civilization, Bai Zhou who inherits the sun—you, of course, need not take this to heart." "You have long since proven your courage and your resolve. Trojan civilization ought, naturally, to show its own sincerity as well." "Of the ritual seeds from back then, four remain." "Three of them are temple seeds of ordinary grade. The other is the seed left after Our King fused a natal ritual and succeeded in a single attempt." "That is, the ritual seed of the highest grade. Civilization generally calls this kind of Spirit Pivot—" "the Celestial Pivot!" "Even though civilization has improved it across countless generations, and the procedure of Seal Bestowal has been followed with strictness... the success rate of Celestial Pivot Seal Bestowal is still less than one-fifth. And it usually requires fusing many times over, making the attempt with multiple sacred seeds." "Moreover, once Seal Bestowal fails, a body that has fused with the Celestial Pivot can never again accommodate any other seed, and is shut out forever from the domain of ritualists." "Candidates for saintess, across many generations, have foundered at this stage, and vanished bleakly into the dust of history." "So..." The Wolf Knight met Bai Zhou's eyes. "I know this is a rather difficult choice," it said. No more words were needed. "What do I need to do?" "I mean, the Celestial Pivot Seal Bestowal." Bai Zhou gave his answer without a second thought. "If we can begin now, I think I'm already ready." Once more. The matter was desperately urgent. Bai Zhou needed power. He had to become a ranked ritualist at once, and then return to Tinghai and go on a killing spree! Celestial Pivot or no Celestial Pivot... try it, and then see! At worst, he simply would not be a ritualist. He would shoulder a cavalry saber, take to the mountains and the woods, and go on being a brainless Adventurer. If he was going to do it, he would do the best there was. Without this kind of drive, and this spirit of adventure— Bai Zhou could not be an Adventurer. "One Celestial Pivot. One chance. I, too, hope you succeed—because that would mean you possess the talent Our King had back then." The statue of the Wolf Knight slowly nodded. "In that case..." "Then, now, do as I do." Then, with a booming crash, it turned. Its enormous stone body half-knelt upon the ground and offered a knight's salute. The mechanical voice echoed through the empty hall. The pitch-black statue called aloud toward the High Priest in the sky, the Scarlet Queen, and the saintesses of former generations— "Troy! Troy! Former embers yet unquenched; the sun that follows carries on!" The tone of the mechanical voice was sacred, as if a ballad were being sung. Behind it, Bai Zhou followed the example. He half-knelt upon the ground as well, and softly recited... "Troy! Troy! Radiant sun of heaven; bones to serve as kindling!" He said: "Our King above! Myriad millions of forebears bear witness!" "King-Chosen Bai Zhou prostrates and petitions for the Celestial Pivot Seal Bestowal!"