Jiang Qi repeated Su Yan's words twice before the meaning sank in. "The Celestials are counterfeit?"
Su Yan laid the severed hand before him and pointed to the flawed bird-seal script. "The characters are wrong. The Dao they carry is wrong. A true natural god would not bear errors."
Jiang Qi had spent six thousand years on the Other Shore. He knew the divine weapons were fakes — tools of control masquerading as Heavenly mandate. But the gods themselves? Manufactured?
"Ancient immortals gathered fragments of the Heavenly Dao," he said slowly. "They forged the divine weapons and created the Celestials to administer the myriad worlds."
Su Yan laughed, bleak and sharp. "So the illiterates were immortals."
Jiang Qi did not understand the joke, but he understood the implication. The Celestials who judged worlds and controlled tribulations were nothing more than elaborate puppets. Their power was real. Their authority was a lie.
"The divine weapons set tribulation strength based on the last cultivator who ascended," Jiang Qi continued. "Each successor must surpass the previous flyer, or die."
Su Yan's blood ran cold. An endless escalation. An impossible ladder.
"The Supernal Tribulation," he breathed. He remembered Zhou Qiyun's catastrophic attempt. The forty-two ruined tribulation sites in the Gourd Cavern. The two hundred sixty-seven scars in the Minor Mysterious Heaven. "Someone ascended four thousand eight hundred years ago. Someone so powerful that no one since has matched him."
"A radius beyond a thousand li," Jiang Qi confirmed. "Cloud circumference near seven thousand li. After him, the dream ended."
Su Yan pieced together the history. The last ascender's tribulation had reset the standard to an unattainable height. One by one, the greatest cultivators of each generation fell. Their lineages collapsed. The art of qi refinement withered.
"They sought alternatives," Su Yan said. "The Other Shore. The elixirs."
Jiang Qi's face darkened. The Zhou emperor's great exodus — a fleet of immortals sailing toward paradise, only to become prisoners of a sun that burned rather than blessed.
"Your craftsman built a faulty ship," Yuan Qi muttered.
"The ship held," Jiang Qi snapped. "Barely."
Su Yan pressed on. The rise of the nuo masters filled the vacuum left by the fallen refiners. Emperor Zhuanxu discovered the traps hidden in nuo methods. The Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars. The Han dynasty's exclusive elevation of nuo arts, leading to the Great Seal that folded heaven and earth, shrinking the divine land, devouring sacred mountains into the Abyss of Cangwu.
"And then Xu Fu," Su Yan concluded. "Killing in Zhudu. Summoning the Plague God. Diverting the River of Death. Breaking the seal."
Jiang Qi's eyes narrowed. "Gongyang Ce spoke of a man matching that description. A scar by his left eye that flared red when he grew excited."
"Xu Fu has three goals," Su Yan said. "Resurrect the First Emperor. Done. Restore qi refinement — misguided, in my view. And something else he has not yet revealed."
The fish-world shook. The sky tore like wet paper. Longyuan's voice thundered through the wound he had carved in the heavens.
"I can smell you."
Jiang Qi reached for his gourd of Primal Dao Essence. His hand found empty air.
Yuan Qi produced the gourd, sheepish. "Found it lying around."
Jiang Qi snatched it, uncorked it, and drank deep. "I wanted to clear a path for my emperor." He wiped his mouth. "Today, I clear a path for us."
Su Yan took the gourd from his hand and drank in turn. "My turn to fight."