"That's right, Three Families Market. What you may not know, Celestial Lord, is that the He family, which runs Three Families Market today, had ancestors among this sect's first believers. The market's so-called 'Hundred Rivers,' 'Dustless,' and 'True Splendor' districts originally referred to the names of three deities."
Listening to Zhao Xiangshan recount the old tale, Yu Ci found it quite interesting as well. "How so?"
"The sect was called the Three Venerables Cult and enshrined three holy deities. At first, they did not even have fixed names. It was only gradually, for the convenience of distinguishing them, that the believers formed a convention. Its doctrine was probably also that set of teachings about the great apocalypse: if one wished to pass through it safely, one had to cultivate successively under the seats of the three deities.
"Hundred Rivers meant that the sea embraced a hundred rivers, teaching without discrimination. It represented the initial reception of believers and was where newly initiated cultivators belonged.
"Dustless meant emptiness. It could refer to the void, or to purity. It spoke of founding or purifying a realm and was where veteran believers belonged.
"True Splendor could perhaps be understood as 'ultimate bliss,' and could also mean 'the other shore.' That is even clearer: only core believers were qualified.
"At first hearing, it still sounded coherent, and one could draw a thread through it. But the details could not withstand close scrutiny, nor was there a mature sequence of cultivation. They had not even properly established the foundation of Faith Power. In practice, believers were often crudely divided according to the height of their cultivation. Thus, apart from some core believers, cohesion was very weak, and the sect soon declined.
"The He family's ancestors had always remained in the core circle. They persisted until