Destiny in Cinders

As soon as An Jing entered meditation, a sword-shaped mark appeared on his forehead, glowing faintly. Yvelbane observed Void Embrace's spirit qi through An Jing's senses.

Shortly after, An Jing's eyes snapped open in disbelief as his expression shifted drastically. The silver mark on his forehead flickered frantically, betraying Yvelbane's inner turmoil.

"Fiend qi!" An Jing rushed to his feet, staring at his palms in astonishment before sweeping his gaze across the entire world. "It's all fiend qi! How can this be?! Every trace of Void Embrace's spirit qi has been polluted by fiend qi!"

While meditating and focusing on qi cultivation in the foreign world, he found the spirit qi there to be turbid, like a city suffocating under a blanket of ashen smog. Though the air was breathable, it was riddled with impurities, and prolonged exposure would slowly erode his body.

This was the fallout of a fiend calamity. The heavenly fiends had so thoroughly tainted the world that the resulting damage was nearly irreversible and difficult to fix. Barren lands and corrosive rain were just surface-level manifestations. Deeper down, the contamination of spirit qi left cultivators highly susceptible to having their cultivation go haywire. Hence, Yvelbane found it baffling that the world still relied on spirit-root qi cultivation.

With contamination this severe, the people there are still attempting to cultivate qi. It's like bathing in a river of heavy metals!

If Void Embrace had to switch entirely to the lifearc martial path, how much rot was actually hiding behind its pristine, sunny facade?

If the contamination of spirit qi in the foreign world resembled a gray haze, Void Embrace's was a black sandstorm of pollution so thick that one wouldn't see their own outstretched hand within it. The entire world was enveloped in pitch-black spirit qi, as if submerged in a bottomless cesspool!

"My goodness! It's a good thing I held back and didn't actually try qi refining. If I had, my spirit roots would have been completely polluted!" An Jing was acting on caution and had never truly intended to cultivate using his spirit roots in Void Embrace. Had he entertained the thought of absorbing spirit qi, he would have instantly been tainted by the fiend qi.

"How can this be?" Yvelbane exclaimed. "If the spirit qi here was truly this corrupted, the world wouldn't look this green and full of life. It would be a literal hellscape, a desolate wasteland where rivers run murky and the sky rains blood!

"Those heavenly fiends from before would be even more powerful. They wouldn't have any reason to return to the nether realm when this world has essentially become their second home! The environment looks fine, so I assumed the erosion of fiend qi wouldn't be that bad... but this? This makes no sense at all!"

Yvelbane was completely stumped by this anomaly.

It made no sense. Who could imagine that a lush, picturesque forest, with its sweet streams and vibrant life, was actually teeming with deadly poison, so much that a single breath could kill you?

"So, there must be a reason Void Embrace chose the lifearc path..." A sudden thought struck An Jing. With a furrowed brow, he focused on stimulating his lifearc. The crimson halo behind his head began to glow. An Jing entered meditation, and then it dawned on him.

The corrupted, pitch-black spirit qi of the Void Embrace is absorbed and purified by lifearc totems, transformed into the purest and most refined spirit and lethal qi. With lifearcs acting as a medium, pure spirit qi flows into the body, saturating and nourishing it inside out.

Lifearcs were filters for fiend qi! No one could absorb spirit qi without a lifearc to filter the pervasive fiend qi.

"So that's how it is! That explains why only lifearc bearers can cultivate!"

An Jing finally understood the true nature of the lifearc martial path. In Void Embrace, only lifearc bearers could use spirit qi. Even a unique individual like him who had awakened both his lifearc and spirit roots remained shackled to the lifearc martial path. This was because spirit qi bled into every part of the body after being filtered and transformed by the lifearc, nourishing and strengthening a person from the inside out. In essence, this process was akin to a return to fetal breathing.

Spirit roots operated as an entirely different mechanism. Through them, cultivators drew spirit qi into their bodies, storing it within the dantian before circulating it through the meridians, much like the way the mouth and nose inhaled air to be processed by the lungs.

In principle, pulmonary respiration was more intuitive, effortless, and effective. But now, An Jing's skin possessed a protective film capable of purifying fiend qi, whereas his mouth, nose, and lungs remained unprotected. To avoid polluting himself with fiend qi, he had to forgo "normal respiration" and rely solely on fetal breathing.

It finally dawned on An Jing. Despite having an environment that seemed to be in much better shape than the foreign world's, Void Embrace was forced to discard its perfected spirit-root system in favor of an entirely new lifearc martial path.

"It doesn't make sense!" Yvelbane was still conflicted.

"Back then... we won, didn't we? Though I was out halfway, I was still offered up to the heavens and humanity thrived! We must have won! But this level of fiend pollution... is it possible we actually lost? If we had, Void Embrace would have fallen to the heavenly fiends and humans would have long since ceased to exist. As for how that final battle of the fiend calamity ended... my mind is completely blank!"

The broken sword trembled violently within An Jing's sea of consciousness, betraying the storm of confusion that raged within the sword soul.

"Don't worry, Yvelbane." An Jing pondered for a moment before adding, "I'm sure those memories exist. You just lost them somehow. Someone, perhaps a heavenly fiend, or even your former companions, stripped them from you, which is why you don't know anything."

That was certainly a possibility.

"That's true... It's far more plausible that my companions and I made that choice ourselves." Yvelbane fell silent for a heartbeat, then let out a long, weary sigh. "If that's really how it is, should I even try to reclaim those memories? This is far too complicated. I'm just a sword; why am I caught up in all this?"

But soon, the sword soul perked up again. "But it doesn't matter; you hold the sword now! Whether I reclaim my past or not, An Jing, is entirely up to you."

After all, as a sword, Yvelbane could easily shrug off its mental burdens. It was merely a weapon, and a weapon didn't choose how it was used.

It was rather proud of itself. "It's a good thing I anticipated this. Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal doesn't require external spirit qi. All you need is lethal qi from mystic metals."