Destiny in Cinders

Gang members typically weren't good marksmen, so getting hit didn't necessarily result in instant death. Some people would suffer and bleed out after getting shot, but there were definitely those who managed to survive.

That was the case with the gang member that An Jing picked up. He had been shot through the shoulder blade by a spirit-beam gun, which cauterized the wound, while he got hit in the helmet with a normal gunpowder round that knocked him out cold. As such, he didn't lose that much blood and was saved when An Jing arrived.

He dragged the man to a nearby shrub and treated his wounds before feeding him some water and stimulants, which woke him.

"You are... Sir, who might you be?" Being a qi cultivator, the immortal-path equivalent of an Aura martialist, he regained wakefulness after quickly circulating the qi within him.

He looked quite similar to the corpses that An Jing had previously encountered in this foreign world, looking as young as seventeen. The youth looked incredibly dispirited like a corpse. The spot between his brows was dark and sickly, not to mention the heavy eyebags he had. He seemed to live quite a wretched existence. Perhaps he had to work overtime every single night. Even then, his body itself was quite tough, looking lean but firm. The fact that he was able to survive a gunshot meant that he was no naive fool either.

Seeing that An Jing, who was obviously new to putting on a gas mask and bloodied raincoat, coupled with the gun barrel pointed at his head, the youth had a rough idea of why he was still alive. Enduring the pain, he respectfully said, "What do you need me for?"

"I will be asking questions, and I expect only answers from you. Nothing else," An Jing calmly said.

The youth who could barely nod winked with effort to indicate his understanding. The effect of the medicine he took was wearing off, so the fear of death was gradually returning to him. Since he had a chance of surviving, he took it. He dutifully answered An Jing's questions without holding back.

This world was known as Skysource. The patch of wilderness they were on was called Mortality Plains, which was a safe zone around Deepnight City, which was built on one of the four massive spirit veins of Skysource.

The seventeen-year-old youth was called Huo Qing. He was born in one of the seventeen towns in Mortality Plains, Pilljungle Town. The gang he belonged to was one of the four main gangs in Mortality Plains, called the Noontigers, and they had been fighting the Flameclaws.

Huo Qing had decent talent, but his parents had passed away early on. He survived thanks to his gang-member uncle, leading him to eventually join the gang.

He wasn't that adept at combat and was usually relegated to secretarial duties, so he typically wasn't sent on combat operations. But when the Luofu Group's warship, the Grandvoid Skyark, returned a few days ago, tensions rose within and without the city. The Noontigers were on high alert and eventually decided to fight their rival gang, the Flameclaws. Huo Qing had been casually named by their boss to join the fight, which ended with him almost getting shot dead. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Huo Qing had no idea why tensions intensified nor why the fight even took place as he was far too low ranking to be told that. He didn't even know why an accountant like him had to go on the frontlines either. Even so, it was more than enough information for an otherworlder like An Jing.

"I see..." An Jing nodded and looked at Deepnight City. Like my earlier guess, the chaos tonight has something to do with the warship reaching Deepnight City. The elites probably incited conflict among the many factions within these towns. Did they do it to cause chaos as a smokescreen for something else that's going on?

The battles raged across more than just the towns in Mortality Plains. An Jing noticed that the battle was actually centered around Deepnight City. He could see flashes of flames and spirit beams shooting out from the city even from that distance. The many gangs and factions must have engaged in a chaotic melee of some sort, destroying and setting aflame many a building.

Members from the outer towns like Huo Qing, on the other hand, only needed to feign the appearance of fighting, so they didn't fight that hard to the point of destroying their whole town. Like An Jing had witnessed, they moved the fight out of town and avoided using heavy artillery that would have damaged the nearby infrastructure.

In other words, the fight only happened as a result of the elites' initiatives rather than any organic, festering resentment. The towns of Mortality Plains still had a rather loud night ahead of them.

An Jing asked a few more things about Skysource and its history, which confused Huo Qing quite a bit. Why would someone capture a random survivor of a gang fight to ask them about history? Eventually, he surmised that An Jing might not be someone from the towns or city. Perhaps he was some kind of badlander from outside the safe zone. Then again, badlanders usually only cared about cultivation and survival. Why would they ask about history?

Since An Jing wanted to know, Huo Qing didn't overthink it and answered with what he knew. Perhaps this was just a test to see if he was lying. Fortunately for An Jing, Huo Qing was one of the rare learned people in the gang who didn't just know the history of Skysource but could also break it down into understandable explanations. An Jing learned that the reason Skysource was a desolate world despite possessing such a magnificent megacity in the distance was the heavenly fiends.

Since ancient times, their world was unified by the Dao Sect, which caused their civilization to advance rapidly to the point that everyone could engage in cultivation. But one day, a world calamity befell them all. The panic that resulted caused inner demons to run wild. Within the century following the calamity, any cultivator, regardless of their prowess, would be disturbed by inner demons the moment they started cultivating. Countless cultivators had died from such interruptions, making the calamity the very worst one in the history of Skysource.

The inner-demon calamity caused many lines of cultivation legacy to cease completely. Then, the heavenly fiends from the netherworld entered the human realm to terrorize them. Just like that, a whole civilization of cultivators collapsed.

Cultivators who were corrupted by fiend qi mutated into terrifying demonoids. Some fiends sneakily possessed people in high places, remaining hidden until opportunities arose when they could cause maximum chaos to do the most damage.

The world's rich, sacred landscapes and grottos were also destroyed and abandoned as a result of many sects falling to ruin. Among the seven great lines of the Dao Sect, three of them ended without being able to pass on their legacies.

Most of the people who survived the calamities lived in safe zones that were situated near the four major spirit veins of Skysource. The rest of the world became territories that swarmed with heavenly fiends, demonoids and other feys, collectively called the badlands. Fortunately, the calamity eventually ended before the art of cultivation was lost for good, giving the people of Skysource a chance to struggle to restore their world to its former glory.

"This world's cultivation follows the most traditional realms of Spirit Awakening, Qi Refinement, Foundation Building, Purple Mansion and Goldcore Formation. It is akin to the Aura, Fortification, Clearing, Treasures and Sanctification Realms of the martial path," Yvelbane said after hearing Huo Qing's explanation. "It's no wonder that they managed to retain their immortal-path legacy. Not to mention..."

It paused for a moment before it said, "Like we theorized earlier, our two worlds are closely related. Both Void Embrace and Skysource have the Dao Court, which has unified the universe under its reign."

It was clear that they had originated from the same group of settlers with the same culture and language. An Jing wasn't that surprised by it. If both worlds had fragments of Yvelbane, they had to be related somehow.

In fact, in the myth that Yvelbane recounted, there were a hundred and eight thousand people on the heavenly craft, who had to have come from somewhere to help the Great Immortal Void Embrace with the expedition. Perhaps there were other great immortals from the original source world who brought their own settlers to other worlds too.

An Jing was quite happy to have learned so much about Skysource. He had planned to give some food, water and medication for Huo Qing before getting him to leave, but seeing his wounded and relatively immobile state, he figured that this would be a good opportunity he could use to enter the town.

If Huo Qing returned to town alone, he could be considered a deserter and killed. Or, he probably wouldn't even make it to town and die on the way there. An Jing had his own moral compass and wouldn't save someone only to leave them for dead, so he didn't mind bringing Huo Qing back.

Not to mention, Huo Qing did mention wanting to thank him a number of times. An Jing would be amazed if Huo Qing could even give him a meal. Then again, if he was going to bring Huo Qing all the way back to town, he might as well make use of Huo Qing's connections to help ease himself into this world and obtain more resources in the meantime.

He helped Huo Qing up and said, "Where do you stay? Point the way and I'll take you back."