Jin Se

Chapter 31

Many years ago, when Shi Wuduan was just a mischievous child living on Jiulu Mountain, he thought that training and cultivation meant learning how to divine the stars and fly on swords. Those were very normal things to him, very normal to the Xuan Sect and the other two great sects.

When his shifu was still alive, Shi Wuduan would often follow him curiously when he visited Dacheng Sect. If he'd ever seen anything useful there, he'd long forgotten about it. The only thing left of the place was the faint memory of their unbelievably bland food. All the carrots and plain water had just about made him sprout a pair of rabbit's ears.

When he was young, all the adults - including his shifu - would always tell him a beautiful story: Dao cultivators must train their minds and bodies, obey the rules of the sect, and do acts of good. Cultivators were rare because it was a difficult path to walk. Once someone set foot on it, they had to have the resolve to endure their lone journey, pity the fate of mankind, and remain true to themselves no matter what trials and hardships they suffered.

To summarize all that righteous tripe, it just meant that cultivators were very impressive and very concerned about the common people, so it was only natural that the common people should worship them and elevate them to the stratum of sages and deities.

Shi Wuduan had once believed in that story - back when he'd just grown out of his diapers and didn't know that "the common people" and "pity the fate of mankind" were not terms used to describe sesame seed cakes.

Later on, once he properly started to study books and accumulate experience, he began to understand the real implications of his shifu's and shishu's words - cultivators, all throughout the land, were incredibly exalted. They had the power to summon winds and beckon rains. They could soar the skies and delve the earth. Whenever others spoke of them, they'd tack on the phrase "legend had it" as an expression of reverence, not because they were powerful, but because they were rare.

Long ago, it was normal for dynasties to rise and fall, for the lands to change hands every two or three centuries. Some dynasties lasted mere decades, or even less, their unfortunate emperors booted off their imperial thrones by a kick to the royal buttocks.

The sun descends at its zenith, the moon wanes once it's full. Once something had experienced birth and growth, revealing its radiance as it slowly matured, conflict and corruption would follow in its wake. There was nothing in the world that was without flaws. When the dazzling glory fell away, the blemishes it concealed would surface one by one until they brought about the cataclysmic ruin from which new things would arise.

That was simply the natural way of things, at least it was, until the rise of cultivators - more specifically, until the day that the three great sects, warring and allying in turns over the long years, formed a stable triumvirate.

The three sects were bound by a secret treaty, not the kind that mortals could simply write down on paper, for it was enforced by some mysterious power. Their disciples were vaguely aware of its existence, but aside from the sect leaders themselves, no one else knew the terms of the treaty or how it was maintained.

The great sects had grown to such an extent that the smaller, scattered sects were forced to hide in their shadows for fear of drawing unwanted attention. Mortals feared the might of cultivators, who were nigh invincible in their eyes, none more so than the emperor; more than half of his high-ranked officials had come from a cultivation sect.

The threshold for entering the Dao was one that perfectly lined up with popular belief; it was called "predetermination".

To explain it in comprehensible terms, it meant one had to be lucky enough to catch the eye of some "high and mighty person" in order to have a chance to cross that perilous, bloodstained, narrow plank walkway.