Paying respects to the ancestor.

He hadn't been in the shop for long, but it had started snowing harder and covered the cleared off area in front of the shop. Xavier wanted to quickly get away from the shop, the shopkeeper gave him the creeps. His past self had felt the same way. The shopkeeper was a former high ranking martial artist who had killed a great many people in his career. He opened his shop after being injured, and was rumored to have sold the same items over and over again after their new owners mysteriously disappeared. Most people underestimate him because the way he speaks switches from very posh like to common and his actions seem clumsy and exaggerated. But Xavier always felt that the shopkeeper had glint in his eyes like he was looking at a dead man. 

Leaving the shop the snow had been above his ankles and in the very cold three-hour walk to the cult's forbidden zone it was almost to his knees. It was called the forest of death. Many people can here to challenge this forbidden zone in hopes of either finding treasure, rare herbs, or the fame that would come from solving the mysteries surrounding the forbidden zone. People would enter the forest, then after a few minutes a horrible scream would be heard then silence. Xavier was currently standing in front of this forest.

This forest with its massive trees that would take half a dozen people just to circle one of them, looked just the same as they did in his memories. They also had the same oppressive feeling and the same earthy smell with just a hint of rotten flesh. The moment he stepped under the massive tree's branches the snow stopped falling on him, and by the time he got within arm's reach of the trunk of the first tree, the only snow within two dozen feet was on him. 

Now that he was here, he needed to look for the four things that would allow him to get to the ancestorial tomb alive. The first item was a mushroom that grew on the side of these trees, the second would be tree sap, the third and fourth items were spirit grasses. They were easy to find in abundance, with three of the items found on the first tree he came to, the last item grew at the base of the next tree over. 

After breaking off a mushroom, he mashed into the tree sap till it was good and covered before placing it into a metal bowl had bought at the shop. Then using a fire striker set, he lit the mushroom on fire. Xavier used the flame to try to warm his hands, but after a few minutes the flame died out and the now smoldering mushroom produced more smoke than heat. This was what he needed, taking a handful of the two spirit grasses and roughing them up in between his hands and placed it on top of the smoldering mushroom. Soon foul-smelling grey smoke was released.

Picking up the bowl and holding it slightly ahead of himself, Zavier began to slowly walk towards the interior of the forest. Along the way he passed dozens of corpses in various stages of rot. These fools came to this forest for treasures or to make names for themselves only to walk into a killing array that protected the founding ancestor's tomb. It was a simple ghost controlling array, it was dangerous for low level cultivators but absolutely deadly to mortal martial artists of the cult. As he walked, he could see blurry blobs rise up from the ground and charge at him, only when they got withing range of the smoke did they retreat and disappear underground again. If Xavier didn't have the ability to cultivate, he would be able to even see that much, and if he wasn't protected by the smoke, he would have his soul devoured by these ghosts and his corpse would rot next to the others.

After some time, Xaiver could see a pitch-black object ahead of him, the ancestor's tomb. The tomb was cube shaped and made of shiny pitch-black stone almost as big as the shop he visited earlier. On one of the cubes sides was circle the size of an adult palm, it wasn't shiny and stood out from the surrounding stone. In the center of the circle was an oblong hole a couple inches wide. It was a keyhole, and the key was something that every cult member had from the age of ten. A dagger that was given to every child from the first Heavenly Demon to the present Heavenly Demon to signify that they were now officially members of the cult and its future. 

When Xavier inserted his dagger into the keyhole and turned it, he heard a click, and a door opened next to the circle. Beyond the door was a staircase leading downward, illuminated with a pale blue light coming from small orbs embedded into the walls. Xavier couldn't help himself from looking down the square shaped area between the flights of stairs and wishing he could just jump down the hundred feet or so down to the bottom. Instead, he walked down the ten flights of stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was a large well-lit room with a large coffin made of pure white stone. Walking halfway into the room Xavier saluted the coffin in the traditional manner for the cult to pay respects to the founding ancestor. Then began at look at the walls of the room, they had images carved into them that depicted the founding of the Heavenly Demon Cult. From how the founding ancestor was inspired by the heavens to create the cult's martial arts, to how he wandered the land finding those worthy of being his disciples. And how they fought against who tried to stop them attaining greatness in the name of their false heavens. Till the founding ancestor led his people to these lands and founded the Heavenly Demon Cult.

To any cut member being in this room with the remains of the founding ancestor and seeing the story of how the cult came to be, would be a holy experience that they would remember for the rest of their lives. But to Xavier, it was pure bullshit.

The founding ancestor was born in a cultivator family and couldn't cultivate. Instead of casting him out to be captured by the family's enemies and tortured to death, his parents brought him to a foreign continent and built the Heavenly Demon Cult for him to rule. His heaven inspired martial arts were mid-tier at best because of his limited talent for martial arts. The loyal disciples he had to travel the land to find, slaves his parents bought. Everything carved into these walls was a lie. The only reason the parents of the founding ancestor could do this for their son is because they convinced the sect they belong to that it was a way to find and train cultivators for the sect.

Anyone who stood in this room they would see the coffin, the carving on the wall, and only those who could cultivate would see a bright pink arrow on the back wall pointing at a bright pink dot. The bright pink arrow and dot were painted with an ink only cultivators can see and should have seen when his parents took him to pay respects to previous Heavenly Demons in the ancestorial hall when he was younger. It should have told him about cultivators, about the cultivator inheritance, and how to safely get to the tomb and enter it. But as time goes on things get forgotten or ignored.

One of the previous Heavenly Demons covered the seemingly blank wall with wood to allow the members of the cult to carve the names of their family members who died for the cult into it, so they could be honored. In the thousand-year history of the cult every member of the cult has visited the ancestorial hall at least once, and several hundred had found the message on the wall and followed its instructions. When they grew too strong for the limited resources of this continent, they were forced to return to the mainland and join the sect to continue cultivating. But for the last twenty or so years no one has seen the message. Xavier only noticed it the second time he came back to the cult after its destruction and the wood was burned to ashes.

Xavier still wasn't sure if he wanted to interfere with the destruction of the cult, but if he did, then ripping down the wood planks covering that wall would be the first step in doing it. Because by the time he arrived at the sect he found out they had deemed the recruitment at the cult a failure and in a few more decades they planned to destroy the cult after they took back the inheritance. When told of the cult's destruction, the sect member he talked seemed happy about it. Not only did they not have to put off retrieving the inheritance, since the cult was already destroyed, they didn't need to pay as much to the one doing the mission. They saw it as a win-win.