Chains Of Eternity: Defiling Heaven

A Name Without a Past

Xiao Meng woke to the creak of wheels.

A wooden ceiling swayed above him. A lantern rocked on its hook, and the air smelled of dried herbs and horses. A carriage. He sat up and found three faces watching him: a lean, grey-eyed man with a trimmed beard, a broad-shouldered guard he vaguely remembered from the hollow, and a girl who was beaming.

"He's awake! Father, he's awake! I told you he wasn't dead. Mu Jian owes me a silver."

"I said he was breathing too evenly to be dead," Mu Jian muttered, with a deep sigh.

" Yeah, whatever, it’s the same as saying he is dead." The girl clasped her hands and bowed with theatrical grace. "Let me introduce myself properly, since you fainted on me last time. Su Qingyue, daughter of caravan master Su Beichen. You may remember my name with gratitude."

"Qingyue," her father said mildly, with a heavy sigh, "Young man, you saved my daughter's life. We found you unconscious and alone among the. Leaving you there was unthinkable."

Xiao Meng stared hard for a while, probably calculating the right response, he had a feeling, a vague that they were displaying gratitude, so he should have a decent response, “It was nothing.” That was his conclusion

They were all momentarily silent, before Su Beichen asked

"And what do we call you?"

"Xiao Meng." He frowned. "I think that’s how I was called, not really sure."

"Then Xiao Meng it is. Anything you recall, I may not look like it but I have influence and can help you find your family, or sect?"

Xiao Meng was silent, he tried to remember but he came out blank, apart from the constant head ache every time he tried to remember.

"Nothing."

Su Beichen watched his face, he cleared his throat. "Well! Where were you headed?"

Silence.

"Ah." The old man pushed a bowl of steaming millet and dried meat into his hands. "Eat. You will have food and shelter with us until your memories return. In exchange, my daughter has somehow gotten a liking to you, just be by her side until we arrive back to the mainland."

Xiao Meng was silent, his body could tell what the old man was scheming but the look on Su Qingyue, were pleading and seemed desperate, so exhaled, and nodded, and Su Qingyue exploded as she grabbed his hand, interlocking with hers,

“From now on I will call you big brother Xiao!”

Xiao Meng somehow felt some  indescribable feeling when she called him that, he felt a sudden sadness crushing through him. Su Qingyue still clingy heard her father clearing her throat and composed herself.

For days the caravan crawled across cracked red earth, and Su Qingyue never ran out of words.

"This is the Ninefold Ruins," she announced, riding beside his wagon seat. "After the War of Fallen Heaven, the world shattered into nine isolated universes. We're in the wastelands, where civilization never recovered, and the mainland is far away under the protection of the Xuanyuan Clan. My uncle lives there, he is a powerful cultivator, he is almost breaking into the nascent soul realm!"

Xiao Meng was halfly listening to her, curious at some of her narration until she mentioned the topic f cultivation and he somehow got interested, he had no idea what she meant, or maybe he did but wasn’t sure, but he felt he wanted to know what she was saying.

“A cultivator, what do you mean?” he asks her

The laughter exploded, the guards all looked at him with disbelief, like was this guy actually serious right now, but Xiao face was dead serious.

"Is this guy for real?" one guard wheezed, slapping his knee.

“What back street village is he from? I mean even my village knows about cultivation!”

They all laughed hard, Qingyue stomped her foot.

 "Stop laughing at him! He hit his head." She turned to him with great seriousness. "Cultivation is the way of heaven, is the spiritual and physical training process that humans do to gain supernatural powers, extend their lifespans, and ultimately become immortals or gods. A cultivator gathers spiritual energy to become stronger. Don't worry, I'll teach you."

"Become immortal? Are there immortals?"

More laughter, “Immortals all transcend to the upper realm why remain in realms that was affected by the war?”

“What war?”

There was silence, “The war that took place five thousand years, the celestial war between heaven and hell, between the gods!

At night, she sat beside his fire and talked about everything: the best dumplings in the Eastern Market, her uncle's pet crane, a boy who had once proposed to her with a dead fish.

"Qingyue," her father's voice cut across the camp. "Sleep."

"Father, I'm not..."

"Now."

She pouted, whispered "Good night, Brother Xiao," and fled to her wagon.

Quiet fell, Xiao Meng tilted his head back.

"We call it the Weeping Soul Sky," she had told him earlier. "Nobody knows why it's red. Only cultivators above the Nascent Soul realm can go beyond it, and they never come back to say what's up there. We only know it turned this way after the celestial battle."

Footsteps approached, two guards, Mu Jian and a wiry, grey-haired man named Lu Heng, sat down across the fire. They seemed polite yet cunning, just staring at Xiao Meng. The Su family was renowned across the Xuanyuan Realm, and a stranger who had cut down six Qi Refining bandits in a heartbeat was no ordinary guest.

Lu Heng, a late-stage Foundation cultivator, quietly sent out a thread of spiritual sense. Xiao Meng felt it. It was a cold, thin touch brushing across his skin, probing for his core. So that is possible. He did not know how he knew, only that he could feel the thread as clearly as a hand.

Lu Heng's brow furrowed, nothing, no trace of spirit core, no spiritual sea, nothing at all, like probing an empty well. And yet this man killed six cultivators without drawing breath. He withdrew his sense, forced a smile, and stood. In a low voice, he said to Mu Jian, "Keep an eye on him."

 Xiao Meng exhaled slowly and stared at the sky, then suddenly the world fell away. Red swallowed him, thick as blood, warm as breath. He floated in an endless crimson void, and at its center he saw a man kneeling in a pool of blood, wrapped in black chains. White hair hung over his face. When the man lifted his head, he wore Xiao Meng's face exactly.

A voice pressed into his skull, heavy as a falling mountain.

Nine chains bind the sleeping sun,

each link a debt, each debt a bone.

Drink the hatred the dying shed,

feed the dark to wake the dead.

When every lock has come undone,

the truth will rise, and you'll be shown.

"Brother Xiao! Brother Xiao, we're here!"