Destiny in Cinders

"The Lord Inspector of the West will come here too, huh?" He furrowed his brow at the troubling thought. "Given how much he has it out for me, does he know that I have a divine arc?"

"You have a celestial arc, not a divine arc," Yvelbane reminded.

An Jing shook his head. "No, I have a divine arc."

"Alright, fine. You have a divine arc."

According to Madam Huai, the Lord Inspector of the West's lifearc arcanum was the original method that was eventually developed into the process for making blood-brew pills. He consumed the lifearcs of other geniuses to improve his own. As such, the traitorous An Jing's "divine arc" was all the more tempting to him. Perhaps, some of the junior cultists were intentionally allowed to escape to create a pretext that made them fair game as materials to be hunted down. It would be much more troublesome to get to them once they were properly inducted into the cult, after all.

An Jing wasn't really afraid of being targeted by the Lord Inspector of the West. He should be thanking his lucky stars that nobody stronger than a sage had their eyes on him yet. It also helped that it was impossible for a sage at the peak of the Treasures Realm to casually cross the borders of Grand Chen. He was not an ally of Grand Chen like Ming Guangchen, who had been extended an invitation to visit Grand Chen.

The ones that An Jing really found troubling were Clearing Realm adepts. The Heavenly Demon Cult had a surprising number of adepts hidden across Grand Chen. There were six in Huang Prefecture alone that could make their way to Keensight. They would no doubt send a guardian adept to take over Keensight eventually.

Though An Jing could kill Fortification Realm martialists easily, that was mostly due to his comparable physical strength and arcanum-tier martial techniques. It wasn't surprising that he would easily be able to defeat third-rate martialists with unimpressive wonders.

Clearing Realm adepts, on the other hand, were a different story. The conditions to reach the Clearing Realm required five complete wonder manifestations, known as the Five Vistas of Fortification. Additionally, one needed an arcanum that was capable of regulating the soul and gathering the power of wonders to build a bridge through heaven and earth, preparing one for the ascension to the heavenly tower. It was not that having an arcanum-tier technique guaranteed reaching Hundred Meridians Clearing. Rather, only martial techniques that allowed one to reach the Clearing Realm were considered arcana.

For instance, Lu Jin's True Nature Ego Fist was a martial technique that qualified as an arcanum because it could be used as a basis to reach the Clearing Realm. Even if those kinds of martial techniques paled in comparison to Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal and the Imperial Sky and Earth Arts, they didn't fall that much behind in the Clearing Realm itself.

Any martialist that could become an adept was considered a genius. They had to have polished their skills by experiencing countless deathly battles, so there was no way An Jing would be able to deal with them easily. He already had some trouble against the flaming wine armor, which was a martial technique that incorporated the power of lifearcs to bring out its full potential. An adept of the Clearing Realm would no doubt have perfected such combinations, so there was no way An Jing would have as easy a time against them. If he didn't want to reveal that he had two lifestar abilities and artifacts from Skysource, he would have to take the next step with a martial technique from Void Embrace.

"I have to learn Lu Jin's True Nature Ego Fist. This fist technique doesn't involve any mental cultivation. By mastering it, I will be able to manifest defensive projected qi to patch up what I lack. I also need a proper sword or weapon technique and only use my blood and lethal qi abilities within the weapons I wield. Then, I can develop a similar lifearc martial technique like the flaming wine armor. Let's see if Ming Guangchen can help me with that when he comes back."

An Jing sighed at the thought of that. The martial techniques he had been using so far were those passed down in the An clan. As his ancestors had relied on special items to cross into the Clearing Realm, they didn't leave any set of complete Clearing Realm martial techniques. They didn't even have that good of an understanding of how to reach the Clearing Realm save for a few scattered insights.

"Guess I will have to do my ancestors' work." He only had himself to blame for not being born into a privileged martial clan.

Either way, it wasn't time to contemplate martial techniques. He searched Old Cook's corpse and only found a small piece of yinjade that was used to nurture his ghosts and some spirit silver. This wasn't surprising, since martialists from the cult typically traveled light, especially on infiltration missions. Nobody would bring all their valuables with them.

Yinjade was already a rather spirit item and was worth up to three hundred liang of silver, not that he needed the money. Spirit silver was only worth about two liang of silver, basically nothing. At least it was useful for refining mystic-metal lethal qi.

"Clearing Realm adepts, huh... I have to ask my master how to make the breakthrough." He prepared to return home, choosing to not claim the spoils at the burning building. "I forgot to ask how typical martialists manifest wonders at the Fortification Realm. I'm already filled to the brim with qi essence, so I should attempt to advance to the Fortification Realm."

"Indeed," said a familiar voice. "I was just planning to talk to you about that."

"Master?" An Jing turned around, surprised. Well, he only feigned it since Yvelbane told him long ago that his master had arrived. Otherwise, he wouldn't have monologued out in the open like that. "You're here!"

"Stop pretending. You must have sensed me already." Ming Guangchen's arcane corpus from Mirror Me took form beside him. Xuan Mingjing was still in the city, after all, so he needed to keep his arcane corpus hiding nearby while he personally went to deal with some things. An Jing factored this fact into his decision to go after the demonic cult's martialists at their gathering spot.

"Heh." An Jing chuckled when he was seen through. He turned to the burning building and asked, "You must've seen my performance from start to finish, Master. How would you rate it?"

"Not bad. You borrowed Mingjing's ability to lie in hiding, only striking after you assessed their threat levels and wiping them out accordingly. You had the perfect plan to take out four Fortification martialists without any trouble. Even if you're a divine-arc bearer with a mysterious body refinement technique that makes you as physically tough as Fortification Realm martialists, being able to kill four people who are by no means pushovers and possess excellent teamwork would put your power and skill on par with disciples from major sects."

An Jing raised his brow slightly. Ming Guangchen's evaluation was about what he expected. He had been trained as a promising candidate of the Heavenly Demon Cult at Direlife Manor, so he definitely deserved to be counted among those talented major-sect disciples. But what he wanted wasn't the sage's praise. Instead, he wanted to know about any weaknesses that he could work on. Surely the sage would notice something he couldn't.

"However..." The word An Jing was waiting for finally left Ming Guangchen's mouth. "Even though you have polished the martial techniques you know to their fullest extent and are approaching the level of adepts, you don't seem to know much about true martialist combat."