Chapter 747 Voices of the past (8)
Lured by the mysteries of the scroll, Yang Qing gulped as his eyes glistened with excitement and anxiousness about what happened next.
"The burial sites were some distance from the frontlines and the locations chosen were those that held little value to either the White Mulberry Kingdom or the Purgatory black tiger cult.
To ensure they had a lot of volunteers along with the forcibly conscripted, the royal family of the White Mulberry Kingdom promised purifiers would be exempt from fighting on the front lines and the locations would be protected from the war.
From the way the Wang patriarch described it, the war back then even at the earlier stages was truly horrific, especially with the torturous arts of the cult. As the war continued, citizens were left to fend for themselves with the kingdom only stepping in when the dead reached a certain number, and even then they only stepped in to take care of the corpses.
Living under such dire straits those who didn't lose their lives, ended up losing their minds under the constant barrage of horrific circumstances they were subjected to. The members of the cult were brutal in the way they dealt with them which prompted some to defect to their sides, and when the kingdom got their hands on the traitors, they dealt with them in the same level of brutality shown by the Cult to deter others from collaborating.
Whichever way it went, it did not end well for the common citizens. Everywhere they turned to, a horrific ending awaited them, that was until the burial sites came into fruition. The kingdom promised them they would be protected as long as they undertook the task, and the more volunteers they had, the faster the war would end. While most could care less about the latter, the former struck a chord with them, with the Wang family Patriarch being one of them.
When the war started, out of a sense of patriotism and the passion of youth, he volunteered to join the war efforts at the borders. He was orphaned from a young age, so he had no mental encumbrances in making the choice and even hoped to use the battle to gain favor with some of the higher-ups and maybe improve his cultivation.
However, whatever sense of loyalty and ambitions he had were quickly eroded in the first three years after the war started, when he saw firsthand of its brutality. The purgatory black tigers were true to their name and reputation. They knew how to break the spirits and minds of any seasoned cultivator. The Wang patriarch had seen his fair share of horrific acts as a cultivator, but the Purgatory black tiger cult had redefined what truly horrifying was. However, what threw him completely over the edge wasn't their means but the treatment of those like him received. Those with no backing or a high enough cultivation base that gave them a voice.
For those three years, he had seen thousands and thousands of his compatriots die, and it wasn't because they had been outclassed but because the 'noble' ones, those belonging to the major families saw them nothing more as meat shields meant to be used and discarded as needed.
When he volunteered, he had already resolved himself that there was a chance he would lose his life in the process, and he was okay with it if it would ensure the protection of someone else. However, the way they were treated, he did not want to die that way, a contemptible death brought by those from his own side than the enemy. That was a death he couldn't abide by, and therefore, when the opportunity presented itself, he fled the frontlines, despite the ruthless consequences that befell deserters.
He spent the next few years living in alleys, and locations that had suffered destruction and desolation, and then when volunteers were sought for the burial sites, it gave him the perfect hiding place and one that was moderately safe. The events of the war opened his eyes to how self-serving those at the top of the White Mulberry Kingdom were, so he felt those grave sites would be protected slightly only to prevent the cult from gaining more ground on them. Those nobles would do anything to save their skins, so he joined up, and either because of desperation, those who were taking in volunteers didn't even question why a foundation establishment cultivator wasn't at the frontlines and was instead volunteering at a grave site.
The years that followed at the grave site were as he had hoped, the grave site suffered few attacks with those attacks happening only in the first few months. There was a complex array placed at the gravesite meant to isolate it from others on the outside and there were also guards assigned outside of the sites. The few attacks that came, the Wang Patriarch only knew they were there because of the tremors that came from the clash, and even then it didn't affect the gravesite much, with the array isolating them.
And after the first few months, after a year, there was never an attack on the place. What had been just a hiding place for him, turned into a boon. He was alone, away from the fire and not being used as a meat shield, and thanks to the effects of the two statues, his strength was improving by leaps and bounds.
To him, being at the grave site was a fortuitous encounter, especially after the effects of the corpse miasma and other malevolent energies stopped affecting his body, and his cultivation started improving. He had vowed to not step a single foot outside of the place. He did not need to leave the area. It was secluded, and he could grow his strength without surrendering himself to unknown dangers. It was like he was in paradise.
Years passed by without incident that at some point he had even forgotten there was a war happening outside, but he was soon reminded of it when four intruders walked into the gravesite.
Three of those intruders were from the cult and the fourth one was someone he would have never guessed he would see walking calmly with three cultivators from the cult, not when the whole thing started because of him. The fourth person turned out to be the very same crown prince whose actions had triggered the war when he supposedly killed the holy son of the Purgatory black tiger cult.
Seeing him came as a shock to the Wang Patriarch, and what shook him even further was the fact that the Crown Prince had always been a member of the cult and was, in fact, their true holy son, and the personal disciple of their cult leader who had been rumored to be a peak palace stage expert.
Though the experience he had at the frontlines left him with a jaded outlook on the leadership of the White Mulberry Kingdom, he never expected that one of them would be a bonafide member of the cult whose evil deeds were known far and wide. The whole war had been built on an elaborate scheme spanning countless years between the cult leader of the Purgatory black tiger cult and the crown prince. The cult leader had been looking for a way to reach the domain realm which eventually led him to the White Mulberry Tree. The tree had been the foundation of the growth of the White Mulberry Kingdom. It had gained sentience and possessed the abilities of a palace realm expert. It had wonderful abilities and uses one of which was its ability to improve the quality of the spiritual qi of an area to match that of a mature dragon spirit vein. Using it, the kingdom had nurtured about a dozen palace realm experts. Its leaves and branches also had cleansing features that worked well against poison, miasma, and all sorts of evil energies including even heart and mental demons, which was how they had managed to hold back against the cult despite the cult having more overall strength than them when it came to their experts.
It turned out that the cult leader had discovered a technique that he could use to reach the domain realm. The technique involved using their core art the purgatory flames of damnation to corrupt the entirety of the White Mulberry tree, through the use of an array, the twelve cardinal web of armageddon. Just like its name, the array was fixed in twelve points, and those twelve points would each gather the purgatory flames of damnation whose might would then be combined to corrupt the White Mulberry tree into the Black plague tree of avarice which the cult leader would then refine and use to break through to the domain realm.
The Wang Patriarch was bombarded with shock after shock when the crown prince admitted to having been the one who suggested to the kingdom the creation of the burial sites, which in fact were the nodes of the array and the reason why they came was that they had detected an anomaly with it.
For the array to work, each of the twelve points needed to reach a certain level of miasma and corpse energy, and if one was short, the array would not operate. The gravesite the Wang Patriarch had been on had already reached its quota thirty years prior, so they stopped paying it heed as they focused on the other places that all finally reached the required levels a few days ago.
The crown prince had been put in charge of the operation of the array, while the higher-ups of the cult focused on draining the reserves of the kingdom with the cult leader primarily focusing his efforts on the Mulberry Tree to wear it out so that the corruption would go smoothly. However, just as they thought victory was in sight, the array failed because one node's ratio had been halved. Out of urgency, the crown prince came to investigate the matter personally, with a few cult members who could be spared with all the others locked in a stalemate with the kingdom.
The Wang Patriarch's presence in the area and his diligent efforts over the years came as just as a surprise to the crown prince as his collusion had been to him. The crown prince could have never expected a single person to cleanse half the burial site alone. When he came, he had thought it was some trump card of the White Mulberry tree that had been activated, or his father's the emperor, which was how he mistakenly assumed the Wang Patriarch had been his father's hidden card.
Following that thought, he tried to get the Wang Patriarch on his side with countless treasures and opportunities. Pretty standard move for these sorts of things, however, there was one thing the crown prince offered him that never left the patriarch's mind even after thousands of years had passed by. It was that siding with him would give him a ticket to ascendancy, one that he could never imagine, and it was the reason he had sided with the cult. The surety with which he spoke and the passionate belief he held, was something the Wang Patriarch could never quite forget.
He had always wondered why the crown prince chose to fall in league with the cult. Even though the cult was slightly more powerful than the White Mulberry Kingdom, it wasn't by much, not to the point that it would tempt someone fated to inherit the White Mulberry Kingdom. His allegiance to them never made sense to him.
The Wang Patriarch refused their offer openly. At the time he fancied his chances against them. He was a late-stage core formation expert, while the crown prince was at the peak stage of the core formation realm while the other three cult members were all in the late stages same as him.
Even though he was outnumbered, he felt his chances were better, especially with the transformation the statues had brought to his body, foundations, and comprehension.
He had been dying to find opponents to test his abilities on, and the crown prince and the cult members became them. The Emperor's brother said their patriarch would redden in shame whenever he was asked for details about the fight, with outbursts here and there. His children and grandchildren received a few beatings here and there whenever they asked him about it till it became a taboo question.
What he did reveal was it turned out the two statues had bestowed him with two abilities, one was the ability to ward, cleanse, and purify evil, and the other he discovered thanks to the fight, and was what kept him alive in the end, it was the ability to absorb the essence of evil and convert it to treasure, which I guess meant strength.
Thanks to it, he managed to survive, and in a short five years after that, he even stepped onto the palace realm and it was at that point that he managed to discern some of the mysteries behind the two statues. After his body was continuously transformed by it, when he broke through to the palace realm it was like some hidden knowledge about them was unlocked about them. Despite not knowing what the two statues were with his limited knowledge, after he broke through, he knew what they were based on. One of them was the Tian Lu, symbol of wealth and it was from it that he got the ability to convert evil essence into treasure, while the other statue was the Bi Xie, the ward of all evil and bringer of luck.
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