Cultivators throughout the world worship the Heavenly Dao and seek eternal life.
I refuse to worship it! Because I’ve seen what the Heavenly Dao really looks like: it isn’t a god, it’s a mouth.
A mouth that has been eating for countless eras.
Every five hundred years, it selects a batch of “vessels.”
It gives us talent, glory, and the empty title of “once in a millennium.” When we’ve cultivated until we’re plump enough, it harvests us.
One name after another is carved into the stone walls of the underground palace. Then there are the rogue cultivators who aren’t even worthy of having their names recorded. They’re all eaten, their bones dissolve into the earth, and their spiritual energy returns to the Heavenly Dao.
A cycle. An endless cycle.
The day I defected from the immortal sect, I met someone like me in the underground palace, with only half his face left. He said his name was Jiao. He’d waited three months just to meet whoever came after him and tell them one thing: “You’re not the first...”
Then he held a door back for me and died in the collapsing underground palace.
Jiao had no full name. Most of the vessels didn’t, either.
The Heavenly Dao doesn’t remember names. It only needs numbers.
People later asked me why I didn’t run. Where could I run to? The whole world is a plate for the Heavenly Dao. The immortal sects are its chopsticks, the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion its eyes. Even the Human King, who leads the resistance, uses forbidden arts left behind by the Heavenly Dao. The harder you fight back, the deeper you sink.
So I won’t run anymore.
I’ll make it choke!
It wants vessels? I’ll give it a vessel: one that will turn on it from the inside.
It wants a cycle? I’ll give it a cycle: one that devours itself.
Cultivators ask the Heavenly Dao for eternal life.
I’ll demand an explanation from the Heavenly Dao.
If it won’t give me one,
I’ll take it myself!
