~~~
“Hear me, children of Man! Hear your Emperor, and rejoice! For I declare a new age — the birth of a grand Dynasty for Mortals and Mortals alone!
The Eternal Banquet has begun, and the means of cultivation are now within your hands! Feast upon your Gods! Feast upon your kin! Feast upon your foes! Feast upon the very flesh of your physical shell until nought but bones and skin remain!
Divinity is but a single meal away. Pursue the dregs of immortality to the ends of the world! May our Age of Cultivators never end!
And may our Hunger never cease!”
– First and Only Decree of His Perverse Majesty, the new Imperial Emperor of Ascendant Humanity
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It was the nine hundredth and sixteenth Imperial Year of His Perverse Majesty’s reign, and the Gods were dead.
The Great War in Heaven almost a millennium ago had ended in the complete and utter victory for the forces of Humanity. Mankind has made the ultimate triumph over their Divine masters, shattering the chains of eternal servitude. The myriad Divines of the Celestial Court were slain, and the Jade King himself lies murdered upon the very altar which he once ruled from.
In a grand rebellion led by the one and only Emperor of Humanity, the lowly creatures of the Earth have usurped the Heavens, laid low the Celestial oppressors that ruled from atop their court on Mount Tai, and secured the right to their Fates forevermore through the consumption of their godly flesh.
With his First and Only Decree, the Emperor proclaimed that it was now the sacred mandate of every living creature in Qiangyu to cultivate. Where before one might have the excuse of Immortality being the sole proprietary of Heaven, the world was now a far more prospective and enlightened place.
Cultivation techniques proliferated, and novel schools of thought emerged as humans explored the depths of their newfound autonomy. Temples that once served as shrines to the gods were transformed into Sects, which now stand as beacons of knowledge and empowerment to all aspiring Disciples; a place where cultivators may hone their skills and develop their individual philosophies in a world no longer bound by divine decree.
The world was just, and all of Humanity rose together to eternity.
… For the most part.
Regrettably, the calamitous winds of inequality and ill fortune persist even in this new enlightened age of opportunity. Not everyone was able to flourish under the new Emperor's self-serving Domain, and not all blessings were wholly freed from the burdensome trappings of never-ending hardship and parasitical misery.
As a Young Master was soon to understand.
~~~
On the Northernmost border of the Imperial Empire, in a sector designated as the 103rd Outer Province State of His Most Esteemed Imperial Emperor, where the land was poor and the ebb of Mysteries ran thin, there lie four great, misty-peaked mountains.
Twelve hundred years ago, a great battle took place upon that Province. Such was its intensity that not one, not two, but four Divine Gods fell upon that spot.
Those four sacred peaks once served as tombstones that marked the Divine Dead who fell in the War Against Heaven. Now, however, each of those mountains hosts a Cultivator Sect instead, where the few Mysteries left within the Divine Carrions were damned to be thoroughly gutted by the primitive locals for the rest of their days.
It was rare for a Sect to exist in the Outer Provinces, let alone four within the same area. As such, these four Sects enjoyed a bit of renown within the local region and were hence colloquially known together as the Four Mountain Sects Group.
Unimaginative, perhaps. But when one lived within the Outer Provinces, it was best to keep things simple. Grandiose titles have no place in such barren lands, especially when cultivators from the thriving Inner and Core Provinces were known to easily take offence at such things.
Entire towns and states had been destroyed for less.
The four Sects were home to hundreds of cultivators, the majority being meagre talents plucked from whichever impoverished local villages they were found in to fill the ranks of the Sects. These hungry disciples trained tirelessly day and night, hoping they might one day be worthy of tasting even the barest morsel of ethereal flesh from their Sect’s respective Divine Corpse.
The Divine Corpses themselves reflected the destitute state of the land they now dwelled in. Once noble and transcendent creatures who hailed from Mount Tai, their bodies now languished as lifeless, mostly devoured shells, existing purely to enrich the otherwise barren landscape with qi through the petrification of their corpses.
Their presence presented a surplus of opportunity for the local patrons, however. With four dead Divines, came four possible foundations for a prospective cultivator of the 103rd Outer Province to choose from.
The Path of the Beheaded Phoenix. The Path of the Split-headed Carnivores. The Path of the Decaying Greyroots. And the Path of the Inverted Monk.
These were the four Divine conduits a hopeful mortal within the 103rd Outer Province could take to begin their ascension to immortality.
Or, at least that was how it should be. The truth was that almost every cultivator in the Outer Provinces stood little chance of ever achieving immortality.
Though they appeared grand and awe-inspiring to the mortal villagers and townsfolk that resided at the bottom of the mountain, the cultivation afforded by these four Sects was woefully lacking. The Celestial bodies that these practitioners worshipped, the Divine Carrions, were the worst of Divine Corpses.
Not all Divine Corpses were equal, and the majority of the ones found in the Outer Provinces were in a dismal state indeed. The best cuts of meat and organs had been long plundered clean by others in the earlier days of the new Imperial Empire. Now, nought but mere skin and bones were left to be nibbled on by those unfortunate enough to miss the opening days of the Eternal Banquet, right after Heaven’s fall.
Hence, while the Carrions that these cultivators nourished themselves on were by no means weak in their local environment, their abundance and strength could not hope to compare to the other, more bountiful Celestial Dead that lay closer to the core of the Empire.
The Outer Province. The Inner Province. The Core Province. And finally, the Imperial Court, and then the graveyard heights of Mount Tai itself.
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Immortality demands Divine flesh, and one cannot find it in the outskirts of the Empire, so far beyond the decaying shadow of the Star-Eating Mountain.
Consequently, the cultivators that fed on these four Divine Carrions within the Four Mountain Sects Group were also considered vastly inferior to those found further within the Empire. To even think about reaching immortality with such paltry resources and lacklustre ambient qi was laughable. Merely implying such a thing would be just cause for an Inner Province cultivator to execute them, lest their stupidity may spread and pollute the masses into becoming even more ignorant than they already were.
But even so, to be able to cultivate at all was to be blessed. It was to be that single person out of a hundred who was favoured by the fates and graced with a body that could utilise qi. Even a cultivator who merely exists within the Foundation Realm — the first and lowest Realm of cultivation — would enjoy a longer lifespan and a healthier body than a simple villager who could not practice the spiritual arts.
And if merely being a cultivator was to be blessed, then one who was granted the opportunity to join a Sect, even one merely established within the Outer Provinces, must be doubly fortuitous. To be a Disciple of a Sect that housed a Celestial Dead was to have a means of securing Divine viands.
A means of obtaining power. Of obtaining Immortality. Of defying Heaven’s ordained hunger and materialising one’s destined agency, no matter how slim the odds may be.
And so it followed: if being able to cultivate was a blessing, and being part of a Sect with a Divine Corpse doubly so, then being born as the Young Master of such a Sect must be a fortune in triplicate, was it not? Surely such a person would be blessed beyond measure, a clear sign that he or she was a favoured child of the Emperor?
Hei Feng could be considered such a child. He was capable of cultivating. He was a disciple of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect. He was also the Young Master of said Sect.
At the moment, however, Feng did not feel like he was particularly blessed or favoured. To be fair to the young man, it was probably hard to do so when he was on the receiving end of a horribly one-sided duel.
~~~
“Slow!”
The Young Master ducked right as his opponent’s fist brushed past his head. The strike drew a fresh line of blood across his scalp, yet Feng had no time to register the pain as he prepared himself for the inevitable follow-up from his attacker’s assault.
His opponent struck fast with another punch, twisting their hip and delivering the blow in a devastating smash. Their fist, made iron-hard by a layer of calcified black plates moulded over their skin, would have shattered the Young Master’s nose if he hadn’t anticipated the hit and raised both arms in time to block it. Even then, Feng felt his very bones shake from the attack's impact. His feet dug deep into the reinforced earth, struggling to arrest his momentum as he was blown several metres back.
The Young Master of the Hei Clan grunted as he reorientated him, dashing forth in an attempt to seize back the initiative in his favour. Ducking low to avoid another strike, his knees slid against the dirt of the training grounds as his legs swept for his opponent’s unprotected ankle, aiming to trip them.
His attack connected, but it did more harm to him than his target. His opponent barely budged, whereas the bones of his feet cracked under the impact of smashing into the calcified black armour that manifested at the last moment.
That took barely a heartbeat to form, he thought with some despair. She can create them that quickly now?
“Weak!”
His opponent mockingly shouted once more. They raised a leg, and Feng barely managed to avoid the crushing stomp that followed by rolling behind them. The attack blew a carter upon the earth where he once stood.
The Young Master paled. Even the cultivator training grounds, made to endure the punishing duels between Sect disciples, could no longer handle his opponent’s strength.
In a single fluid motion, Feng leapt up from his crouch and spun, attempting a flying double kick at his opponent’s head from her blind spot. His qi flared, and his legs erupted into vicious flames, ready to devour any it touched.
At this distance, Feng was confident enough to say that he would have landed both strikes against almost any other disciples within the Four Mountain Sects group and knocked them out instantly. Victory should have been a foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately for him, this was no ordinary opponent he was fighting.
The Young Master was currently facing the famed prodigy of the Split-headed Carnivores Sect, a cultivator whose prowess eclipsed that of all the other disciples on the mountains. As such, both of his kicks missed as the cultivator ducked with inhuman agility. Before he could react, a palm smashed against his torso.
His ribs burst into shrapnel, and the blow sent him flying. The poor Young Master barely managed to find his footing in time before the attack almost threw him out of the ring.
“And utterly predictable!” His opponent taunted. Barely five seconds had passed between her first insult and her last. Though both duellists were clearly of preternatural speed and strength, the superior cultivator was evident for all to see.
Hei Feng couldn’t respond as he coughed out a hissing mist of blood, falling to one knee as he hunched over. That last strike had knocked the air out of him and utterly demolished two of his ribs. He doubled over, trying to steady his breathing while he rapidly cycled his qi. By the second cycle, his regenerative abilities kicked in, and the Young Master could feel a supernatural heat emerging from his core.
His shattered ribs began to burn, cannibalised into spiritual energy while new bones rapidly materialised over the cracks and stumps of his ribcage.
“Pathetic!” His opponent did not bother capitalising on his open vulnerability, choosing instead to mock him some more. “Truly, the Hei Clan has fallen far if this is the best their Young Master can manage!”
The moment his ribs healed adequately, Hei Feng sucked in a breath.
[Arts of the Beheaded Phoenix — Fiery Comet Step]
The Young Master shot forth like a shooting star, leaving behind a cloud of blazing flames that surged forth from his feet. He drew his arm back, his fist wreathed in fire and his speed beyond the perception of any mortal man. Brilliant and radiant, he swung with all his might—
— and hit nothing but air as his opponent simply stepped aside with one raised eyebrow.
A familiar feeling of resigned annoyance enveloped him before a kick landed mockingly against his back and propelled him forth.
The blow sent him spiralling even further forward. Combined with the speed of his earlier technique, his momentum was such that he could not stop himself in time before he landed several metres outside the training ring.
The Young Master let out a groan. Yet another loss, he thought, more amused than bitter. A feminine chuckle came from behind him, back from within the ring. “Come on now, you couldn’t have expected that to work. Honestly, Feng. Try to be a little less predictable.”
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Qi
Qi, or spiritual energy, originates from the life-giving cosmic rays that emerge from the stars above the world. The celestial luminance of the Astral Heavens gave rise to the first Divine Deities atop Mount Tai, whose peaks were the closest to the constellations and thus were the most heavily saturated in their miraculous radiation.
The first and greatest of the Divine Deities was the Jade King. Possessive of the powers given freely by the Astral Heavens, he created the Jade Clouds which blanketed most of the world that exists beneath the shadows of Mount Tai, forever denying the gentle touch of the Stars from ever reaching the rest of the ecosphere. The selfish Deity then established the Celestial Court atop the upper regions of Mount Tai — his personal kingdom above the Jade Clouds — from which he and his Divine ilk would spend their days lavishing in the invigorating glow of the cosmos while ruling the impoverished mortals below.
It was only many centuries later during the War Against Heaven that a new source of qi was discovered, one that did not require the light of the Astral Heavens and could be used to revitalise the barren lands beneath the Jade Clouds: the decaying bodies of dead Divine Deities. Once slain, the body of a Divine Corpse slowly releases the vast reserve of spiritual energies that it had accumulated over its long life, enriching the nearby lands with qi. It is this phenomenon that gave rise to the many Cultivator Sects within the new Imperial Empire after the collapse of the old Celestial Kingdom. The monasteries built their sacred grounds around the Divine Corpses so that their disciples may better bathe themselves within their glorifying decay and ascend.
– Excerpt from To Those Worthy of the Eternal Banquet. The manual is commonly distributed across Sects within the Imperial Empire to new Disciples as basic learning material and cultivation textual resource.