The General's Temple's Past

Tang Changsheng said mildly, "It's not much trouble, really. Just some old grudges. I thought that after all these years, it would be over... But it seems someone still refuses to let it go!"

Then he added, "Be careful tonight. Whatever happens, don't set foot outside the General's Temple. I suspect something will happen!"

"You mean they're luring the tiger away from the mountain?" The girl's eyes sparkled.

Tang Changsheng was slightly surprised. "Exactly. Whoever's behind this sent more than a dozen people to the hospital in one stroke, probably hoping I'd go save them..."

"So you're deliberately not going?" Ling Xiaoyu asked.

Tang Changsheng nodded again. "Which means there's an eighty percent chance they'll come back and attack tonight!"

"What happened, exactly?" Ling Xiaoyu was bursting with curiosity.

There was no reason to hide it, so Tang Changsheng said plainly, "Back when the General's Temple was at its height, it had far more than this one temple in Lower River.

"There was one on Yin-Yang Mountain, another on Gourd Islet, and branch temples throughout the counties of Lower River Prefecture..."

Tang Changsheng spoke at an unhurried pace, though he left one thing unsaid. In fact, at the very beginning, more than two hundred years ago, the General's Temple's main temple had stood on Gourd Islet. It had moved to Yin-Yang Mountain only later!

Then he gave a rueful laugh and said to Ling Xiaoyu, "Of course, you wouldn't know any of this. You're not from Lower River!"

Ling Xiaoyu's eyes curved with delight. "But I want to hear it! It's just like a martial arts story!"

Under other circumstances, Tang Changsheng would gladly have told the girl a story. Right now, though, he wasn't in the mood.

He smiled. "It's a worn-out tale. More than thirty years ago, the Gourd Islet branch broke the founder's rules and was expelled from the sect... If you want to know more, come with me!"

"Where to?" Ling Xiaoyu asked, her eyes practically glittering with stars.

She had already begun imagining Tang Changsheng taking her to some sacred place in the General's Temple, like the Mount Hua Sect's Cliff of Reflection... a place that recorded all the sect's grudges, romances, and betrayals...

Instead, Tang Changsheng led the fanciful girl straight to the study, turned on the computer, and told her, "See for yourself!"

"Huh? Gazetteer of Lower River Prefecture? Collection of Lower River Myths? Local Legends of Lower River?" Ling Xiaoyu stared, dumbfounded.

Tang Changsheng smiled faintly, with an unmistakable hint of pride. "More than half the tales passed down throughout Lower River have something to do with the General's Temple!"

After a pause, he added, "That legend about Dead Man Mountain you mentioned last time? It's recorded in these books, too!"

"Ah," Ling Xiaoyu said, suddenly light-headed. To think she had treated it as some great secret when she brought it up to Tang Changsheng!

Feeling a little embarrassed, she browsed through the document library at random.

"Huh, what's this?" Ling Xiaoyu clicked on an article, her expression turning strange. "'Speculations and Theoretical Analysis Concerning the Cause of the Great Calamity of Heaven and Earth'..."

For a moment, Ling Xiaoyu felt a jarring sense of incongruity. A title like that made her think of a school paper first.

Not something that belonged in an ancient, mysterious sect with extraordinary powers!

Tang Changsheng merely smiled. The General's Temple might stand on a mountain, with no village ahead and no inn behind.

But it had running water, electricity, and internet access. Tang Changsheng did not live like an ancient.

So he didn't have to search through books by hand to find information.

In fact, the General's Temple had established a database years ago, making its records easy to search.

It contained not only enough cultivation materials to make oxen sweat beneath their load, but also analyses by many modern researchers.

At home and abroad alike, there were legions of enthusiasts fascinated by cultivation.

Especially now, in the age of the information explosion, all manner of techniques had spread far and wide—including ones worth fortunes in ancient times, and even secrets that great sects had once refused to pass down...

Thus, although cultivation in this world had become something found only in legends,

many people still pursued it with tremendous passion, pouring countless hours into research... even if most of it amounted to fighting a war on paper!

Old-fashioned as Tang Changsheng might be, changes in everyday life had affected him too. He was hardly cut off from the world altogether.

After all, the times had changed completely!

Ling Xiaoyu read on. The document offered various conjectures and built model after model. It even plotted a graph showing the decline of spiritual energy in heaven and earth after the Great Calamity...

According to the graph, spiritual energy had now fallen to its lowest point in history. If the decline continued, the world would eventually have no spiritual energy at all, and cultivation would become an unreachable dream.

Everything associated with cultivation would then become nothing more than myth, believed by no one...

Ling Xiaoyu clicked her tongue. "So we're already in the Age of Declining Dharma? I thought you were so powerful... Is what it says here true, or is someone talking nonsense?"

Tang Changsheng shrugged. "More than half of it is probably right..."

In truth, even Tang Changsheng—the sole successor and sect leader of the General's Temple, an orthodox cultivation sect—knew little about the Great Calamity nearly two hundred years ago.

He only knew that, sometime a century or two ago, spiritual energy had begun to drain from heaven and earth, making cultivation harder and harder.

Yet when his master had cultivated, fifty or sixty years ago, igniting the Heavenly Heart had at least not been difficult.

By the time Tang Changsheng began cultivating, his master had said his Root Bone was quite good. Even so, igniting the Heavenly Heart had been this difficult...

It seems I managed to ignite the Heavenly Heart not just because everything had fallen into place. It also had to do with the abundance of spiritual energy in that other world... Maybe the obstacle I'm facing now is due to the lack of spiritual energy in this one...

Tang Changsheng was still mulling it over when Ling Xiaoyu suddenly cried out in delight, "'The Last Witchcraft Rebellion'..."

Tang Changsheng had read this document before and found it interesting enough to keep. When he saw Ling Xiaoyu open it, its contents came back to him!

It said that more than two hundred years ago, during the middle years of the Former Dynasty, heaven and earth had abruptly changed, and spiritual energy had begun to vanish at an alarming rate.

Within a few short decades, the cultivation masters who could soar through the skies and burrow beneath the earth had disappeared without a trace.