Kapitel 18: The Divine Path's Failures

Using the essence his Decaying Flower gathered as the foundation and the incantation as the medium, Harun overloaded his soul with yin and expelled it from his body. Tailored for espionage tasks, the Yin Soul Incantation enabled Harun to project his soul out of his body and merge with the flow of Yin throughout the atmosphere.

Harun obtained that incantation alongside the Art of the Decaying Flower, but though he succeeded in comprehending both, mortal circumstances didn't enable him to put them to maximum use. In the Extreme Yin Prison, however, the situation became entirely different. Harun's soul form blurred, becoming dark-blue mist before vanishing in the chilling yin waves and sinking into the ground.

From the moment he set foot in the prison, Harun could feel that underground, a barrier isolated an entire floor from both the guards and inmates. The concentration of Yin Essence in that sealed zone put the ground floor to shame. But while for Harun, the sealed zone could lead to massive cultivation gains, his focus remained on the auras shackled there.

Even from the ground floor, Harun could feel their crushing force, and the closer he got to the source, the more suffocating the pressure became. At the zone's gate, the quantity of Extreme Yin Essence could freeze a Celestial Knight within a second—make Ascending Gods beg for their lives and force Heavenly Gods into complete submission. Sheltered by their Internal Heaven, Empyrean Monarchs could barely maintain their bodily functions.

Though his current form should have put him above all emotions and sensations, Harun couldn't help but feel that once he moved past the entrance, he could forfeit his life. But then he recalled that he already had his back against a cliff's edge, that if he didn't strive for a way out, he'd die all the same. If not tomorrow, in a week, a month, a year—if the enemy felt generous. Delaying the inevitable was no long term solution.

Setting all apprehension aside, Harun dove in—crossing the yin world of dark-blue light to land in a prison akin to the one above—almost. Here, the floor was the cell. Thousands of divine beasts, from Flood Dragons to White Tigers, from Great Rocs to World Beasts, representatives of ancient divine species, some extinct, some still dominating the 33 Heavens, now stood before Harun bound in spiked chains like some expendable cattle.

Though all seemed severely suppressed, judging from the quantity of Extreme Yin Essence weighing on them, Harun didn't doubt that the weakest on the scene was at least at the Ascending God Realm.

For Harun, this wasn't difficult to compute. Each Celestial Kin level multiplied battle power by two. Celestial Guard levels by three, Knight levels by four and Ascending God levels by six. In his youth, although Harun never gave up on cultivation, due to his low talent, he learned all he could about mathematics and administrative skills, hoping to be of use to the Erdevan clan.

Granted he ultimately refined half of them into cultivation pills and poisoned the rest with the Dancing Plague, Harun never forgot what he learned, and could gauge the approximate level needed to survive in this place.

Piled up in a sickening pyramid, the fantastical beasts, the smallest of which was at least 15 meters tall, groaned, squealed and wept. The largest beasts stood at the pyramid's bottom, shouldering the weight of the smaller, weaker beasts with their willpower and whatever remained of their strength. The farther down the pyramid, the fewer tears and groans Harun heard.

Those divinely monstrous creatures at the bottom, each over 300 meters tall, kept their eyes shut and their teeth gritted in rage and indignation. For a second, Harun was confused. For the extinct species, he could think of some conspiracy theory. But for those members of Heaven's hegemonic clans, Harun's mind formed no coherent reasoning.

The 33 Heavens' divine clans were split into four tiers: minor clans, branch clans, noble clans and hegemonic clans.

The Green Vipers belonged to the minor clans, the Blood Crows to the branch clans and the Vermillion Birds to the noble clans. There were only four hegemonic clans: True Dragon, Phoenix, Great Roc and Golden Crow. As the current imperial clan, the Empyreans stood above, and as the former rulers, the Devouring Serpents ranked nowhere.

But the majority of those beasts under Harun's gaze belonged to the noble or hegemonic clans. As if they'd been specifically handpicked to live in humiliation. Still one with the yin, Harun closed on the piled up beasts, heading straight toward the unfathomable entities at the bottom.

But even though he possessed no physical shape, even though their cultivation was suppressed by the squalls of Extreme Yin, those beats felt Harun's presence, and their ancient eyes locked him from all sides.

"Golden Crow, false justiciar, sickening barbarian! Eons of siphoning our Life Essence wasn't enough? Now you must play mind games with us?! Son of a cunt, show yourself!" Before the six other bottom monsters could voice their rage, their leader, a World Beast, opened his mouth.

Ranking among the most ancient species of the 33 Heavens, World Beasts possessed the body of a white ape and the head of a lynx. Wielding the World-Smiting Divine Power, World Beasts initially stood at the summit of the divine hierarchy. However, the Serpent Emperor's rise shoved them all into hell. So drastic was the change that some believed that Heaven created the Serpent Emperor to balance the World Beasts—then lost control of him. The last of the known members of that clan perished in the Second Emperor's reign. Little did the world know that underneath the Extreme Yin Prison, many still breathed.

"Alright, I can't stomach this. Dude, you really need to review your insult portfolio. Everyone's the son of a cunt. That's literally how you appear in the world. If you want to nail the guy through his mom, say something classic like Son of a Bitch—or Harlot if you wanna sound fancy—or go bang his mom and hang it above his head. But please don't repeat that C U N T thing. Makes me lose all respect for you, and I don't even know you yet," Harun said, and turned into a cloud of dark-blue Yin Essence to hover before the World Beast.

Instantly, the seven bottom hegemons realized that it wasn't the Golden Crow Ancestor standing before them, and their monstrous eyes contorted into frowns.

"Who...are you? And how did you step into this place?" Ignoring Harun's pique, the World Beast asked.

"I'm kind of a yin soul. Just call me Extreme Yin Sir. I can do a lot for you, including merging with your bounds and draining them to the last bit. I just need you to do a simple thing: tell me why you're here," Harun said, and the beasts' eyes narrowed at him.

Unless forced by an extreme battle, celestials typically didn't take their divine beast form. In their minds, they didn't resemble humans. Humans resembled them. There was no shame in maintaining their lithe and elegant humanoid form. But for one reason or another, the beasts before Harun's gaze seemed unable to revert to that form. Perhaps the chains were crafted in a unique material preventing them to? Perhaps they merely didn't want to harm those they held on their backs?

But as Yin-Cloud-Harun pondered the situation, a nine-tailed White Fox sent the World Beast a mental message.

"Can't you feel it, that person exists with the yin. Either those above accidentally imprisoned someone able to cultivate Extreme Yin, or he's a new guard with the ability. In any case, he sensed our presence and attempted to probe what he shouldn't have. This is an opportunity," the White Fox said, and took control of the talks.

"You want us to tell you why we're here, but won't even show your face? How do we know that you're not the fruit of some sick joke played by our captor?"

"You don't, and I won't reveal myself until I feel safe. The cultivation road is a struggle for survival. In that struggle you failed and can only wait for death. If this meeting proves fruitless, I too may not have any good day ahead of me. Let's help one another, shall we?" Harun countered, and the fox made what looked like a nod.

"We are the failures," the White Fox stated, and instantly, Harun was confused. If entities of this power level called themselves failures, were there any successes in this world? But knowing that more was on the way, Harun didn't interrupt him.

"Form a Divine Host to become a God, refine Heaven's Will into a paradise to become a Monarch, and craft your own Mandate to take the Imperial Throne. The Divine Path does sound awe-inspiring, but there is one tiny detail no one ever mentions. What happens if you fail to break through?

From Kin to Guard, from Knight to Ascending God...even from Empyrean Monarch to Dao Emperor, what happens if you fail to break through the peak? This happens. Tribulation clouds will batter you till you either perish, or become a monstrous beast with no rational thinking.

Us seven Demi-Emperors aside, no monstrous beast could ever maintain their consciousness post breakthrough failure. But even us couldn't resist the sentence and have been trapped in our beast forms for eons.

But instead of letting the people plan accordingly, the First Emperor used a Divine Law to erase this knowledge from all cultivators. To avoid a purge, Monarchs willingly forgot about it. But Golden Crow didn't, and with the Emperor's blessing, hunted down and captured all failures across the eons to refine their Life Essence for Heaven knows what!

Underneath this world's soil lies a massive teleportation formation that binds the 33 Heavens together, and automatically rifts surviving failures to this place for that damned crow to siphon!" The White Fox barked, and his jaw trembled with every word.

Unprepared for such words, Harun staggered.

…

Meanwhile, within Harun's cell, the ragged prisoner awoke from his sleep and stretched his arms.

"Man, sleeping on cold prison grounds does have a sweet taste to it, almost makes you feel powerless…" the prisoner yawned and glanced at Jiyan.

"I guess that's why your mom sent you here. What a fucked up woman," the prisoner said and stood up. His unkempt black hair became a lustrous white, his brown eyes turned icy-blue, but unlike the Empyreans, even the sclera took that shade.

"Can't believe the old bastard would give me—of all people��such a lousy assignment. Oh well, time to get this over with. I sure hope the boy can pass the test, so I don't have to start this all over again."

The white-haired man whispered and vanished in a rainbow-colored whirlwind.

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