Golden Residence, Black Sword, Curse of Heaven

As the young girl stepped into the central residence, only one word could be used to describe the interior of the outwardly majestic building: it was dark, dark to the point that even light from outside couldn't pierce more than a few centimeters into the hall. Straining her eyes to search for a light source, she groped her way to the left for a long while until finally, her hand encountered a cold surface, of which she presumed to be the wall.

With a sigh of relief, she approached the wall until both palms were firmly pressed onto it, resisting the extremely cold sensation piercing into her bones as she attempted to move her way further into the hall. As she began to move in a direction she thought to be towards the center of the chamber, her foot stepped onto something hard, like that of a rod.

Jerking backwards in surprise, she shrieked and fell backwards, and was greeted by a massive shock the moment she turned around.

The originally dark reception hall contained a speck of light in the center, and as she fearfully observed the tiny ember, the light began to expand rapidly until the entire chamber was completely lit up, of which her eyes widened, and mouth opened in astonishment at the spectacle before her eyes.

A massive hallway greeted her; the floors were laid with the highest quality jade she had ever seen, even with her inexperience she could instantly realize that there could be no comparison between the pathway in the courtyard and the floor right before her.

The walls consisted of an unknown, white material with lines of gold and nephrite forming blood-vein like pathways; these patterns shone with a dazzling luster, and an invigorating spirit could be felt from just simply inhaling in the air inside. The girl estimated that the interior was four hundred meters wide and six hundred meters tall, she couldn't tell how long this hallway was; the chamber was too large that even the end could not be observed from her position.

As she carefully proceeded further inwards, bolstered by the presence of the light emitted by the golden veins on the ceiling, she came to observe that each hundred meters or so, there would be a door that led to other rooms; she did not explore them, nor did she dare to. When she thought that she had come about halfway into the room, a massive fountain could be seen, spraying water high into the air, which fell back into the large pool underneath; each droplet was clean as the morning dew, and every drop gave off a similar aura of the herbs in the courtyard.

At first glance, the girl could only say that she absolutely loved this fountain. The designs engraved into the sides seemed to depict a tale of Gods and Demons, for there seemed to be murals of battle etched onto the surface; more than that, she felt extremely thirsty after looking at the gushing water.

As the fountain's base was taller than her, she ran around the base until she came to a small set of stairs that led halfway up the base, just enough for her to reach over and scoop a handful of water, of which she eagerly drank without qualms. Unfortunately, she simply wasn't prepared of the consequences of drinking such purified water in massive quantity, for within was a concentrated amount of Divine essence that one couldn't just easily consume, even if they were immortal.

The first thought she had after drinking this water was that it was simply delicious, the most delicious water she had ever drank. As the water settled in her stomach, the girl could feel an intense energy sweep through her entire body, making her groan in absolute comfort as the energy eased all of the tension accumulated within her body from the successive shocks.

Eventually, however, this energy became a little too intense after a while; within an hour she felt unpleasant, almost if this energy needed a place to go, otherwise her body would explode if she couldn't redirect it somewhere else. Desperately racking her mind searching for a solution to this piercing pain, she suddenly remembered fragments of her brother's ramblings about cultivation.

Each day, he would incessantly talk about directing spirit qi into his meridians and dantian, perhaps she should do the same?

Before she actually tried to follow her brother's actions in her memory, the girl had the impression that it was somewhat worth trying; she had no other ideas, and it seemed to work for her brother as he didn't end up exploding. Immediately after, however, she regretted it the most.

The energy directed towards her meridians instantly rebounded with a harsh force, causing the pain to double each successive second; eventually, she fell unconscious and dropped directly into the fountain pool.

Unknown to her, the water in the fountain immediately stopped gushing the moment she fell in, and the moment she landed on the bottom, the divine essence within the pool rushed towards her body and was quickly absorbed. Rushing into her meridians, the divine essence directly purged the impurities within, then coiled into a glowing sphere inside of her chest, gradually replacing her heart.

Lightly trembling, the girl struggled to wake up during this process, but ended falling into a deep slumber as a small barrier enveloped her body to prevent the water from crushing her due to the pressure.

When she woke up, the girl found herself laying on a lily pad, floating on the water of the fountain pool. Feeling herself thirsty once more, she reached towards the water, only to stiffen and stare dumbly at the reflected appearance.

Who was staring back at her? The reflection revealed a young girl wearing slightly ragged clothes, but the body possessed no impurities. The skin was fair and white like snow, the lips were slightly pink and the cheeks soft as warm jade, the girl could not find any faults with her appearance. Her hair cascaded down to her ankles when she stood up in surprise, causing her to frown.

When did her hair become this long? Where did those scars, those bruises, and marks on her skin go? And how did she become this beautiful?

Previously, she could only be regarded as average in her city, but isn't this simply a goddess? Broken out of her reverie by the tightening of her throat, she was reminded of her present thirst, and quickly scooped up water and drank it.

This time, however, she did not feel any pain from the energy within the water, only nourishment. Feeling her spirits rise once more, she slowly paddled the lily pad to the edge of the walls of the fountain, then shakily climbed out before attempting to explore the residence once more.

Given that there was no track of time in this building, the young girl could only walk forwards for what she felt was days. What surprised her massively, however, was that she didn't get hungry or thirsty during this period, nor did she feel drowsy or sleepy from the constant walking.

Was this because of the water in the fountain? What a pity. Since she had no method of storing the water, she could only drink to her heart's content then a little more before leaving; now the fountain was so far that it couldn't be seen. Eventually, she came to a halt; the other end of the residence appeared before her eyes, and the golden veins on the ceiling seemed to converge to the black line on the wall.

Observing from close, the girl could make out engraved inscriptions on the wall, but could not comprehend its meaning. The inscriptions seemed to form words in an ancient language, with these symbols emitting the same divine aura that of the plants and fountain; she suspected that this was probably the language used in the Divine Realm.

With a silent grumble that she should have asked the old tree for an ability to comprehend all languages, she traced the engravings with her finger, and to her surprise, the black line on the wall suddenly fell towards the ground, impacting the jade floor without much noise as the black object simply sank into the jade as if slicing into butter.

When the black line was directly in front of the girl, she could make out that this was a sword, made of some unknown substance. It had a slender, thin blade with a small, circular handle guard, and along the blade's length were similar characters to that of the wall, which prompted her into curiously approaching the sword, and traced its engravings as well.

Tracing her finger along the length brought no spectacular phenomenon as she had expected; only, once she had traced the last symbol, she accidentally cut her finger on the blade's edge, spilling a drop of blood onto the surface.

Once the blood touched the blade, the entire sword shuddered and gave off a tremendous imposing aura, shaking the girl and throwing her back several meters. Numerous thin strands of dark energy suddenly burst from the sword, reaching for the ceiling, the walls, everything around it, the girl included.

The blade rose from the ground, and the girl stared with surprise as she discovered that there was no marking on the ground; the floor had no indication of any sword piercing it, almost as if the blade was an illusion. Engrossed and lost in the recent turnout of events, the girl didn't notice that the sword had turned its edge towards her, not until it had already pierced her chest and disappeared alongside of the dark energy that rushed towards where the sword had gone. As she fell unconscious for the second time, the girl heard an old, imposing voice full of pride, valor, and wrath:

"Since you have taken to uphold the curse of heaven, thou must commit to thy duty. Thy shall destroy the creation, the cycle of destruction, and decimate the disruptors of Heaven!"

-

In some far region of the Divine Realm, a male coldly surveyed the raging battlefield, his unfeeling eyes sweeping over both allied and enemy forces, calculating the strategies he should take to obtain victory in the shortest time possible.

The battlefield was riddled with massive craters reaching over hundreds of meters in depth, with some bursting with magma that set the air ablaze, while others erupted with a massive structure of ice; oddly enough, this ice structure also set nearby people on fire before freezing them in large chunks of ice, yet the trapped within were still ablaze.

Roars of rage rang out throughout the battlefield, and magic spells and weapons frantically rushed everywhere; when compared to the mortal cultivator's attacks, a difference in quality and destructive strength were simply on different planes of existence, yet neither side received much damage in the short term, almost as if these attacks were merely a brawl of iron weaponry.

As the man observed the status of the battlefield, his calm expression suddenly sank; his forces had lost significant numbers compared to the enemy. While nearly half of his forces had collapsed, they had only managed to decimate a tenth of the enemy's numbers. He frowned once more and gave the signal to rapidly retreat with an expression of disgust.

They had come completely unprepared as no weaponry could ever fire consistently in this harsh environment until now, as even if the battlefield seemed merely a hellzone of fire, it was also a region inhibiting the presence of agitated divine essence, and the essence present was much more static than compared to other regions: spatial attacks couldn't achieve the usual awestruck effects, nor could weaponry reliant on the agitation and compression of divine qi properly fire as they required the qi to be rapidly agitated to utilize the inscribed runic properties to their maximum.

The man scowled once more as he focused on the enemy's weaponry; to be firing constantly for hours on end, they needed to have brought portable arrays capable of adequate power to agitate the divine qi here, but the materials needed for such an array was astronomical for just one, and yet they were operating hundreds at the same time.

How were they capable of such a feat? When the Blaze Mountain provoked the World Tree, had they been preparing for this battle all along?

Calculating the total losses once more, the man felt a sinking feeling in his heart. There was simply no way for them to launch any more attacks for a long time; his forces had a significant portion sent to a long slumber for recovery, and the quickest member would probably not return for at least a few decades.

With a coppery taste of disappointment in his mouth, the man prepared to command his forces to depart, until he felt a jade in his spatial ring vibrate, of which his countenance paled immediately. Someone had activated the core foundation of his Golden Residence, and even bonded with the Heaven Devouring Blade!

Not only was the Golden Residence hard to find even for peak divine entities, even the World Tree couldn't forcefully break in without his permission; and for the Heaven Devouring Blade, whoever possessed and contracted with such a sword would immediately gain the strength to last dozens of exchanges between a Pavilion Deputy Head. Such persons held massive influence in the Divine Realm, renowned as Destroyers; second in strength only to the Progenitor's domains, the presence of a Destroyer could topple the power balance between the secondary factions. Even the World Tree domain only possessed three Destroyers, another one could either spell glory or loss, depending on their decision of who to affiliate with.

Wait. He must return quickly to his residence, and determine whether who had managed to contract with such a blade. If they were of weak strength, he could possibly subdue and obtain their allegiance to the World Tree; if not, then he must suppress and attempt to remove the binding as soon as possible.

The earlier the better, before that person gained any substantial power from the blade. With a fierce howl, the man ripped a tear in the surrounding space, then rushed off, quickly departing from the battlefield followed by his troops.

-

In a mortal world, a young boy finished his morning meditation, absorbing as much raw qi into his body as possible.

After siphoning as much qi from the sun as his body could take, the boy smiled, then jumped off the roof to the ground, heading back into his home to wash, then go to school to learn. Li Mo Shang observed his growing power with a happy smile; thanks to an unknown cultivation manual he had obtained from the ground months ago, he felt confident in reaching the peak in cultivation, a peak never reached by former mortal cultivators.

All he had to do was to reference the manual for insights to carve his own path into the mystical Dao; otherwise, he would never progress beyond the manual's creator and his level of cultivation, for he wasn't satisfied with the Divine Dao as the ended.

Li Mo Shang deeply felt that something existed far beyond that, and he would find it himself, at any cost. As for his foolish sister who he "accidentally" convinced her to fall into hell for his sake, he didn't put much thought into it; after five million years, he would have long since transcended the heavens, and by then, when he rescued his sister, all should be fine, right?

After all, he was a genius in cultivation like none other; he would offend much more than anyone else, one old tree wouldn't matter in the long run.