Beneath the Desolate Heavens

Wang Dezhu, forty-five years old, unemployed and divorced, crossed paths with a fortune-teller in hemp robes who left him a poem that revealed a hidden secret. He went up the mountain seeking an opportunity and was drawn into a battle to protect the dragon vein. Using workplace strategy to wage guerrilla warfare, he killed Japanese cultivators, broke formations, and claimed magical artifacts. After accidentally entering a deadly place, he used science to dodge lightning, received a legacy that tempered his body and restored his youth, took a black dragon as a spirit pet, and obtained divine iron to forge a divine weapon. When he returned, his dazzling displays of power brought him into the limelight. Only after entering the world of cultivation did he learn that orthodox disciples were repeatedly having their spiritual energy drained and souls extracted by the demonic sects, yet couldn’t fight back. It was all because spiritual energy on Blue Star was so scarce that the path to ascension had been severed. An orthodox elder proposed that mortals had no spiritual power but did possess divinity, and that rather than let the demonic sects take it, they should hand it over to help orthodox cultivators practice, in exchange for protection. The major sects all agreed. Mortals had to pay their divinity every month as a protection tax. Once their divinity was taken, morality among mortals collapsed completely, and selfishness, deceit, and violence ran rampant. The world became a jungle where the strong preyed on the weak. The orthodox sects called the demonic cultivators cruel, while the demonic cultivators called the orthodox hypocrites. It turned out that good and evil had long been in league, working together to enslave mortals. After paying their tax, mortals even bowed to the cultivators and said, “Thank you for your hard work.” Even worse, no one could make any more progress after the Nascent Soul stage, whether orthodox or demonic. When old age arrived, divinity turned on them, their animal nature ran wild, and the cultivators regressed into monstrous forms: white fur covered their bodies, their eyes turned crimson, and they worshiped the moon under the full moon, wandering mindlessly. Wang Dezhu, however, followed his own path. His fellow disciples couldn’t understand why he frequented pleasure houses, never got angry when they insulted him, and went around getting struck by lightning. They had no idea his cultivation was advancing by leaps and bounds. By day, he carried out sect missions and was seen by everyone as a good-for-nothing. At night, it was time for revenge. Orthodox or demonic, sect disciple or rogue cultivator, if you plundered someone else’s divinity, you would see a figure beneath the moonlight, and never see the sun rise again.