First Immortal of the Sword

The heart devil leisurely emerged from the Cauldron of Fate and re-entered the hall.

“How was it?” asked Su Yi.

“It was a trap,” said the heart devil. He took a seat on the ground, then rested his head in his hands. “That ‘seal’ was actually an ancient battlefield imbued with a power known as the Laws of Lifelessness. It’s undying and indestructible, neither arising nor non-existent. That’s why everything you encountered there was neither alive nor dead.

“As for all that talk of the Laws of Fate and the seal? It was a trap right from the start.”

The heart devil concisely explained the situation, leaving Su Yi unwittingly stunned. The Cauldron of Fate was a trap? The Malevolent Sword Venerate was being used?

“I suspect that the pitiful worm trapped in that well broke the shackles of Destiny a long time ago,” said the heart devil. “Otherwise, there’s no way a sealed battlefield could have survived all this time.

“The guy’s actually rather bold. He used his life force to create a prison for himself. It’s only by doing so that he managed to survive all this time.”

The heart devil paused, then said, “If you really trace things back to the beginning, it gets complicated. It involves the Source of the River of Destiny.”

“The Source of the River of Destiny?” repeated Su Yi.

“That’s right, the Source of the River of Destiny. That place is quite sinister. Anyone who goes there, no matter who they are and no matter their cultivation, is sure to suffer a grisly fate,” said the heart devil. “But you don’t need to worry about that. It won’t be too late to learn these secrets and taboos after you become a Heavenly Sovereign.

“Also, I’ve already thrown that pitiful worm back into the well. He cannot threaten you any longer. Still, I urge you not to investigate the cauldron any further in the near future. There’s nothing worthwhile there, so don’t waste your mental energy.”

The heart devil rose to return to the rusted sheath.

Su Yi didn’t try to keep him. The secrets the heart devil had shared with him set his thoughts racing. He’d made numerous mental connections.

The Malevolent Sword Venerate acquired the Cauldron of Fate in the Sea of Fate, and the markings on its surface were Primordial Inscriptions, the most ancient writing of the Primordial Era. That perhaps meant that the cauldron was the work of an ancient powerhouse of the Primordial Era.

That person was also likely the “pitiful worm” the heart devil spoke of!

And according to the heart devil, the “pitiful worm” had long since broken the shackles of Eternity. He’d been trapped in that dried-up well because of the Source of the River of Destiny.

The countless bones littering the ground had either died by his hand or perished at the Source of the River of Destiny.

There was no doubt about it. The Malevolent Sword Venerate managed to acquire the jade cauldron, not because he was blessed with good fortune, but because the expert hidden inside was targeting him.

And that expert was most likely looking to borrow the Malevolent Sword Venerate’s hands to seize the opportunity he needed to escape!

When Su Yi realized this, he couldn’t help but celebrate. Fortunately, my first incarnation’s heart devil intervened. If I’d gone on thinking I needed to break the seal to learn the cauldron’s secrets, I wouldn’t have just been dead wrong—I might have wound up dead! After all, the expert in the well is someone who broke through the shackles of destiny a long time ago.

“Right,” said the heart devil. Only then did Su Yi realize that the heart devil hadn’t re-entered the sheath after all.

The heart devil continued, “Since I brought up the Source of the River of Destiny, there’s something you should know. The old-timers of the Far Shore of Destiny are ultimately all after the same thing. They want to find the Source of the River of Destiny, trace everything back to its source, and become Ancestors of the Dao.

“If you run into anything else connected to the Source of the River of Destiny, you’d best stay away. At the very least, don’t get hung up on such things prior to becoming a Heavenly Sovereign,” said the heart devil. Only then did he actually enter the rusted sheath.

Su Yi couldn’t calm down. This was his first time learning that the experts of the Far Shore had come to the River of Destiny to search for its source!

Su Yi pondered for a while longer, then put away the Sword of the Nine Hells, the rusted sword sheath, and the Cauldron of Fate.

Then, he took out the Eternal Key. It looked like it was forged out of bronze, and its surface was heavily patinated. It had a bulbous base with a bleeding eye at its center. The sight was incomparably strange.

When Su Yi looked at the blood-red hilt, he recalled the golden ring inside the Cauldron of Fate. They looked similar, but they emanated starkly different auras.

Su Yi gazed intently at the key. He couldn’t help but feel a bit hesitant. I tried to investigate the mysteries of the Cauldron of Fate, only to narrowly avoid falling into a trap. What if similar dangers are hidden in the Eternal Key?

There might well be! After all, this Eternal Key is far too unusual, and it invited the cataclysm that practically wiped out the Aberrants during the Devastation!

The Sword of the Nine Hells reacted to it, too.

Su Yi’s first impulse was to ask his first incarnation’s heart devil to examine the key, but the thought had only just occurred to him when his heart shook and his expression filled with uncertainty.

He’d suddenly realized that the moment he ran into trouble, his first instinct was to ask the heart devil for help, not to figure out how to resolve it on his own.

And that was bad. No, it was dangerous!

When you depended on another’s help, you were taking a shortcut. Doing so gradually wore away your ability to judge and act on your own.

To cultivators, this was a taboo!

The deeper you sank into dependence, the harder it was to extricate yourself. In the end, you risked losing yourself!

In stark contrast, if he overcame the obstacles in his path himself, the road might be full of obstacles, trouble, and danger, but all of that was a form of tempering!

Such tempering shielded his true nature and let him overcome everything without relying on others!

Su Yi let out a deep breath of turbid air.

The shifting of the heart was silent and subtle. It first showed itself in subtle, trivial ways.

By the time the problem became obvious, it was already too late.

Going forward, I can discuss the Grand Dao, chat, and debate the Dao with my first incarnation’s heart devil, but no matter what problems I run into, I have to try to solve them myself first, Su Yi silently decided. I cannot rely on any external power unless it’s life or death!

Su Yi’s thoughts suddenly felt clearer, and his heart settled.

Buddhists often said, “There is no bodhi tree of wisdom, and the bright mirror of enlightenment has no stand. How can something that never existed to begin with accumulate dust?”[1]

Su Yi had once believed that this represented true mental clarity and serenity, but he no longer thought that way.

Cultivating was all about forging endlessly ahead. He was his own bodhi tree of wisdom, and the stand of his own bright mirror of enlightenment. He naturally ought to wipe the mirror off whenever it got dusty!

“There is no bodhi tree” represented sudden enlightenment, while “I myself am a bodhi tree” represented gradual enlightenment.

On the path of cultivation, seeing through illusions in a burst of enlightenment was commonplace.

However, after this sudden enlightenment, cultivators needed to keep striving and cultivating. Only then could they have another sudden enlightenment and rise to new heights.

This was gradual enlightenment, a process of accumulation, tempering, and settlement. Every step took you closer to enlightenment into the mysteries of the Grand Dao and a future breakthrough!

Thus, Su Yi now believed that the sudden enlightenment of the non-existent bodhi tree was inferior to the gradual enlightenment of becoming his own bodhi tree.

Becoming a Buddha in an instant? Ascending to immortality? Rising to the heavens in a single bound? All of these merely represented breaking into a higher level of cultivation.

Those cultivators who ascended to immortality still had to cultivate afterward, right? And didn’t Buddhas have to keep working even after achieving Buddhahood?

Su Yi sat alone, sensing the subtle shifting of his mentality. His heart and body relaxed, and he started contemplating the Eternal Key.

A day later, he awakened from meditation looking utterly exhausted.

The Eternal Key was like a tightly shut door. He’d tried countless methods to open it, but all had ended in failure.

His heart, soul, cultivation base... every power at his disposal, and every secret technique had been ineffective.

The part that rendered Su Yi speechless was that when he took out the Sword of the Nine Hells, the Eternal Key seemed terrified. Previously, he felt as if he were staring down a tightly shut door, but when he took out the sword, even the door vanished.

In the end, Su Yi could only give up.

He knew there were ultimately two possible explanations for his failure. Either his cultivation base was lacking, or he needed some sort of special opportunity to succeed.

Su Yi didn’t lose heart. He’d obtained the key back in the God Domain, and he’d yet to unlock its secrets. He’d long since gotten accustomed to the situation.

Time slipped by. Three months passed in a flash.

Su Yi spent the entire time on Candlelight Peak. When he wasn’t cultivating, he occasionally visited the disciples of the Heart-Tempering Sword House. When the impulse struck him, he’d sit in the ritual grounds and expound on the Dao.

Whenever he did so, even Sect Leader Lu Ye and the old monsters rushed over to listen. Every time, all of them had new revelations, and all of them benefited.

The most shocking part was that although Su Yi only did this three times, each time someone attained enlightenment on the spot and experienced a breakthrough in their cultivation!

This became a hot topic of conversation, and the disciples’ respect for their founder reached unprecedented heights. Every day, people wondered when he’d expound on the Dao next. Even the old monsters were hungry for it.

Su Yi also left some of the treasures, legacies, and tomes he’d accumulated to the Heart-Tempering Sword House, with the notable exception of those involving Fangchun Mountain. Su Yi had no intention of revealing those in the near future.

He wasn’t unwilling to bring Fangchun Mountain’s ancestral grounds out into the open, but he wanted to wait until he’d established firm footing in the Eternal Heavens Domain.

And of course, he’d have to discuss the matter with Fangchun Mountain’s third disciple, Ruo Su, first.

During this time, Su Yi also took frequent trips to the Sword-Testing Tower to converse with the Primordial Sword Devil—Heavenly Sovereign Wanjiang’s awareness—and to challenge the imprint of his power on the thirteenth floor.

Over the course of his conversations with the Primordial Sword Devil, Su Yi learned a lot about the Primordial Era, including that the Twelve Aberrant Progenitors were naturally formed beings that arose during the earliest days of the Primordial Era. All of them were born with immense power, unbelievable talent, and divine abilities.

The Twelve Progenitors’ cultivation style was starkly different from others’. During the Primordial Era, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Heavenly Sovereigns, suppressing all other Heavenly Fate Realm experts!

He also learned that during the early days of the Primordial Era, the Eternal Heavens Domain was still in a primitive, half-formed state, as if the chaos had parted but not yet taken shape.

At the time, there existed numerous Eternal Thrones.

However, as time passed, many of them were destroyed over the course of terrifying battles, gradually decreasing their numbers.

Even more were taken away. Their owners simply took them and left, their whereabouts unknown!

1. This is a reference to the famous Platform Sutra. It's come up a few times, so I'm not going to go into it in detail, but you can read more about it

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