Celestial Master's Ordination

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

According to Zhang Jingzhi, the second patriarch created the Celestial Master’s Ordination and brought the Celestial Master’s Mansion to prominence. The inheritance passes through successive Celestial Masters and is restricted to the mansion’s Dao Head 2 3.

Jiang Jiu describes strict preparations for transmission: prospective inheritors cannot learn cultivation methods or even ordinary techniques, must disperse any cultivation, and are kept under protection away from cultivation-related contact. Their permitted activities include reading, calligraphy, and cultivating their character 2.

After being briefly revived from fatal poisoning, Zhang Jingzhi takes Zhang Xuan into his Inner Landscape and reveals the Ordination. He orders his disciple to keep its nature secret, then appoints him the fourteenth Celestial Master before dying 3 4 5.

Appearance

• Under Zhang Jingzhi: A vast crimson sun occupying almost half the sky. It emits warm, gentle radiance without scorching heat; variations in its flames form Chinese characters 4.
• Under Zhang Xuan: A sinister blood moon above an apparently endless black lake. Answers appear as crimson writing across its surface 8 9.
• During a secrecy violation: The blood moon swells and cracks, exposing surging blood-red magma. Rune-covered chains restrain it, restore its shape, and disappear 9.
• At the spiritual-essence upgrade: The crescent becomes a full moon covered in pulsing, vein-like markings, resembling a gigantic beating heart 36.
• Afterward: Zhang Xuan finds the moon has returned to a new-moon phase. Mountain Suppressor’s black tower appears elsewhere in the Inner Landscape, wrapped in 3,600 inscribed chains 48.

Personality

The Ordination addresses Zhang Xuan with formal titles such as “honored inheritor” and “esteemed inheritor,” but its messages also contain admonitions and dry humor. It warns him against approaching overwhelmingly dangerous enemies and accuses him of greed when he requests the unrevealed remainder of a plan 18 25 38.

Its disclosures can be deliberately incomplete. When challenged over calling Zhang Xuan “greedy,” it visibly substitutes “impatient.” Before the Mountain Suppressor trial, it assures him there is no danger but reveals only after his entry that pain is unavoidable 38 48.

Abilities & Skills

Question Answering and Foresight

Zhang Jingzhi calls the Ordination “all-knowing and all-powerful,” capable of answering present questions and reaching across time and space to reveal future events. Its demonstrated access nevertheless has limits 4 9.

• Present knowledge: Confirms that Zhang Xuan is inwardly cursing his master 4.
• Prediction: Answers whether rain will fall the following day within the mansion’s territory 4.
• Precise tactical instructions: Gives a five-step sequence involving black dog blood, Xu Ming’s protective veil, movement due south, and attacks timed to specific breaths. Following it allows Zhang Xuan to exploit the Corpse Buddha’s brief immobilization and obtain its treasure 30 31.
• Action rather than automatic power: Can explain how to become stronger, but the inheritor must obtain the resources and perform the required steps himself 4.
• Input requirement: Remains silent when addressed as “System,” then responds when Zhang Xuan uses “Celestial Master’s Ordination” 8.
• Written interface: Uses Chinese characters rather than the world’s usual Wei script. Zhang Xuan suspects Zhang Jingzhi relied on yes-or-no questions because he could not read its writing; this remains Zhang Xuan’s inference 7 8.

Diagnosis and Resource Guidance

The Ordination identifies threats to its inheritor’s survival and supplies routes toward remedies or useful resources 8 9.

• Reveals that Zhang Xuan has twenty-eight days to live 8.
• Explains that his lack of a spiritual root makes him receptive to every spiritual-energy attribute, but accumulated energy will eventually burst his mortal body 9.
• Offers two remedies: assistance from a Core Formation cultivator or higher, or a Marrow-Washing Body-Refining Pill. It rules out Zhang Jingzhi’s assistance because he has died 9.
• Directs Zhang Xuan westward to seek the pill opportunity 9.
• Reveals a hidden compartment beneath the patriarch’s statue, opened by tapping a stone six times. It contains the Divine Path—Collected Essentials of Daoist Arts and a damaged jade pendant 9.
• Supplies the first stages of a later pill-acquisition plan: kill Xu Shang in the Beheading Woods within a fifteen-minute window, divide the Two-Faced Buddha Head, and deliver one face to Xuan Feng while impersonating Xu Ming. Further instructions require another allowance 36 38.

Nether Candle Mystic Eyes

Also presented as Mystic Eyes of Hidden Illumination, this temporary ability is activated through the Ordination to discern hidden things and avoid calamity 18 19.

• Cost and duration: One question opportunity activates the eyes for twelve hours 18.
• Inspection: Displays names, categories, realms, statuses, treasure qualities, descriptions, and threat levels for people and objects 20 25 27.
• Hidden-reality perception: Reveals the Headless Corpse Buddha behind an apparently ordinary idol and the living flesh concealed by the temple’s appearance 19 21.
• Hazard analysis: Identifies ritual death and life gates, contamination, and a ghost domain’s incomplete spatial laws 21 22.
• Initial level: Documented at level 1 with 121/1000 experience. Observation builds experience; later levels are said to unlock status analysis and tracing karmic origins 26.
• Threat interpretation: Colors measure danger to Zhang Xuan, not merely a target’s general strength, and can reflect hostile intent 25.

Mountain Suppressor Trials

After integrating power from Mountain Suppressor, the Ordination enables combat trials within the artifact’s tower 48.

• Entry cost: Zhang Xuan spends his remaining allowance for the current day on integration and all three of the next day’s allowances to begin his first trial 48.
• Duration: The inheritor can choose a trial lasting up to twenty-four hours. His twelve-hour selection corresponds to four hours outside 48 49.
• Opponent: The first trial pits him against the previously slain Headless Corpse Buddha, a Ghost King Realm being 49.
• Reset mechanic: Trial deaths restore Zhang Xuan to his original condition, allowing repeated practice without lasting energy depletion; the deaths and pain feel real 49.
• Recorded result: He experiences 531 deaths in twelve hours, greatly improving his combat precision and command of the Four Divine Path Forms 50.
• Locked function: Borrowing imprisoned beings’ abilities through the Heaven-Stealing Seal remains unavailable for lack of authorization and spiritual resonance 48.

Restrictions & Costs

• Daily quota: Normally permits three uses per day and stops responding once they are exhausted 4.
• Reset time: Zhang Xuan understands the daily allowance to reset at midnight 15.
• Shared resource: Questions, Mystic Eyes activation, artifact integration, and trials all draw on question allowances 18 48.
• Secrecy threshold: Refuses questions whose secrecy value exceeds its current limit. Asking why the disciples hurriedly nominated Zhang Xuan triggers the blood moon’s violent expansion and restraint by chains 9.
• Violation penalty: Warns that another secrecy violation will exhaust the day’s remaining quota; recommends upgrading to raise the threshold 9.
• Incomplete plans: May provide only the immediately actionable stages and charge another allowance for subsequent instructions 38.
• Opportunity cost: Spending the next day’s quota on a trial leaves Zhang Xuan unable to activate Mystic Eyes, prompting him to postpone entering Yandang Mountain 50.

Relationships

• Second patriarch Zhang Xuan — Credited creator of the inheritance; distinct from the current inheritor despite their similarly rendered names 3.
• Zhang Jingzhi — Previous inheritor and transmitter. Demonstrates its question-answering function and insists that its secrets remain confidential 4 5.
• Zhang Xuan — Current inheritor. Uses its guidance to pursue cultivation and survive stronger enemies, while repeatedly disputing its costs and incomplete disclosures 9 31 38 48.
• Mountain Suppressor — Separate incomplete Immortal artifact whose power reinforces the Ordination and enables its trial function 48.

Notable Quotes

“If you wish to know what happens next, that will cost extra.” 38

“The trial poses absolutely no danger...” 48

“However, pain is unavoidable. Wishing the esteemed inheritor an enjoyable trial.” 48