Divine Ring Gate

Biodata

Background

The Divine Ring Gate was founded after an unnamed cultivator acquired the lost Five Elements Ring. Its original creator, an ancient Mighty Figure, had once swept across the Northern Region using the weapon. The new sect took its name from this treasure and retained it as its supreme weapon 47.

Territory and Headquarters

• Domain: The sect owned an entire small oasis, only a few dozen li across, situated three hundred li from Qingyun Oasis 46.
• Landscape: Mist-covered peaks, flourishing vegetation, clear green waterways, and waterfalls a hundred zhang high distinguished its grounds from the Northern Region’s barren red earth 46.
• Buildings and paths: Halls occupied several peaks, connected by bluestone paths and long stairways winding into the mountains 46.
• Mountain gate: An enormous stone stele engraved with the sect’s name marked the entrance. Lu Chen shattered it when he arrived 46.
• Battle damage: The collision between the Five Elements Ring and Lu Chen’s Divine Phoenix sheared dozens of yards from a mountain peak. Subsequent clashes ravaged the grounds, and the ring’s final vortex swallowed mountain peaks, waterfalls, and earth 47.

Organization and Members

Practices and Resources

• Robbery: Members plundered nearby cultivators. Two elders immediately agreed to intercept Lu Chen after learning about his Source winnings 45 46.
• Forced mining: Whenever the sect discovered a mineral vein, it seized mortals to mine Source. Those who refused were killed; when a vein ran dry, its laborers were buried with it 46.
• Stone gambling: Wang Sheng’s group regularly visited Zhou Ji’s stone gambling house. They borrowed fifteen jin of Source to meet Lu Chen’s seventy-jin wager 43 44.
• Treasury: Lu Chen seized more than two thousand jin of Source after defeating the leadership 47.

Treasures and Defenses

Five Elements Ring

The sect’s supreme treasure was a palm-sized, five-colored ring forged from the essence of the five elements and interwoven with “Dao” and “principle” 47.

• Shone gold, green, black, red, and yellow, with dense Dao patterns covering its body 47.
• Expanded to millstone size in combat and shattered Lu Chen’s manifested Divine Phoenix in one strike 47.
• Repeatedly drove back his Divine Mark Purple Gold Pagoda through its power of laws, although it could not break the immortal-gold weapon 47.
• Created a five-element vortex that absorbed terrain and crushed anything entering it into primordial five-element essence 47.
• Consumed so much divine power that prolonged use exhausted the Four Extremes sect master 47.
• Was taken by Lu Chen after the sect master’s death 47.
• Later expanded to nine meters across when Lu Chen wielded it against an Ancient Creature, striking with the rotating power of the five elements like a miniature world 58.
• Was explicitly described as a treasure on the same level as the Mountain River Diagram, the weapon of the Purple Mansion Holy Land’s previous old holy lord 67.
• Could be empowered by all five of Lu Chen’s Dao Palace deities, whose five-element attributes corresponded to the ring’s power. Their combined activation produced a substantially stronger attack 68.

Sect-Protecting Formation

• Sealed the headquarters on the sect master’s command, trapping Lu Chen inside with the leadership 46.
• Was torn apart by the clash between the Five Elements Ring and Lu Chen’s pagoda after he activated Nine Secrets: Jie 47.

Elders’ Combat Arts

• Artifact attacks: The elders wielded weapons producing flames, freezing cold, and sword intent. They could merge their Dao Palace deities with their weapons to strengthen their attacks 46 47.
• Blood Moon: One elder formed a blood-colored crescent intended to corrode divine power, penetrate flesh, and devour the opponent’s soul. Lu Chen destroyed it with Phoenix Cry Nine Heavens and killed its user 47.

Story Role

Stone-Gambling Dispute

At Zhou Ji, the sect’s disciples mocked Lu Chen as a country bumpkin. He challenged Wang Sheng and deliberately appeared unsuccessful before raising the stakes to seventy jin of Source. His selected stone yielded green leaf Source worth over a hundred jin of Pure Source, costing the disciples their accumulated savings and borrowed funds 43 44.

Failed Ambush

The four disciples followed Lu Chen but waited until he left Qingyun Oasis to attack, recruiting two Dao Palace Fourth Heaven elders. Three days later, the group intercepted him on his way toward the Holy City. Lu Chen killed all six, learned about the sect through interrogation and probing disciples’ seas of consciousness, and headed for its headquarters 45 46.

Before the ambush, one disciple threatened Lu Chen inside Qingyun and was driven back by a rebuke that shook his soul. Suspecting that Lu Chen had reached the Dao Palace Realm, the disciples sought the elders’ assistance. During the interception, one elder demanded the variant Source under the pretext of offering to accept Lu Chen as his disciple 45.

Defeat of the Leadership

Lu Chen destroyed the mountain-gate stele and confronted the sect master and five elders. Although he had learned of the sect’s treatment of mortals, the narrative explicitly states that he did not attack to seek justice for them; he acted because he possessed the strength and wished to exercise his freedom 46.

After the elders failed to subdue him, the sect master deployed the Five Elements Ring. Lu Chen countered with his immortal-gold pagoda and Nine Secrets: Jie, outlasted the sect master’s divine power, and defeated the ring’s final vortex. He killed the sect master and surviving elders, seized the ring and treasury, and left the remaining disciples without the powerful leadership needed to protect their sect 47.

During the battle, the leadership briefly ordered that Lu Chen be captured rather than immediately killed, fearing that his extraordinary strength might identify him as a Holy Land successor. After recognizing the immortal gold of his pagoda, the sect master became covetous and drove the Five Elements Ring at full strength. The elders led the disciples several kilometers away before the strongest clashes, preventing them from being killed by the resulting sound waves 47.

Later Use of the Seized Treasure

The Five Elements Ring remained in Lu Chen’s possession after the Divine Ring Gate lost its leadership. During a later battle against an Ancient Creature, he poured divine power into the ring and enlarged it to nine meters across. The creature blocked its strike with crossed, scale-covered arms, producing a violent metallic collision and showers of sparks 58.

Lu Chen subsequently used the ring against the Purple Mansion Saintess’s Mountain River Diagram. Its cycling five-element power crushed mountains and split the earth within the diagram’s world, nearly injuring the Saintess 67.

In the ensuing confrontation, Lu Chen merged all five Dao Palace deities into the ring and launched it toward the Purple Mansion Holy Son. The attack’s power prompted Purple Mansion Supreme Elder Huang Gu to warn the Holy Son to dodge and intervene with an enormous Shrouding the Heavens Hand 68.

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