Chapter 106 — The Ancient Temple
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 7
The southern borderlands are a cursed region at the far southern edge of the Divine Land. Legend holds that the mountains there are barren and the waters foul, and that the land abounds in venomous insects and savage beasts. The most conspicuous boundary between it and the Central Plains lies in that far southern reach, where towering mountain ranges rise abruptly from level ground, peak upon peak, piercing the clouds and severing north from south.
Since ancient times, few from the fertile lands of the Central Plains have ventured into the southern wilds, and for good reason: the roads are treacherous, the region swarms with savage beasts, venomous insects, and pestilential miasma, and the soil is mostly too poor for farming. Later, no one knew just when it began, but tales started to spread through the world that among those endless southern mountains dwelt all manner of barbarous alien tribes who ate raw flesh and drank blood and delighted in killing, and among them even horrifying beast-men who devoured human flesh alive. From then on none dared go there at all; instead the whole world trembled in dread, fearing day and night that one day those alien tribes might come pouring out of the mountains to invade the Central Plains and bring ruin upon all.
Yet in the thousand years since, there had been no reports of barbarians doing harm. To be sure, word had now and then circulated from the frontier lands of the far south of odd sightings of monstrous alien creatures, but most such tales came to nothing and were gradually forgotten. Nowadays, even those living on the southern frontier—perhaps only a mother lulling her child to sleep at night—might say, "If you don't behave, the barbarian monsters will come and snatch you away." In ordinary times, no one ever wondered whether those alien tribes in the deep mountains truly existed, much less anyone a thousand li away in the Central Plains.
In truth, that vast tract of a hundred thousand desolate mountains, wrapped in layer upon layer of mist, had by now become a place the common people of the world had forgotten.
Yet though the ordinary folk had forgotten these alien tribes, there were some cultivators of the Dao who had not. Whichever the path—orthodox, heterodox, or demonic—anyone of sufficient age and standing knew that for a thousand years the reason the southern tribes had been unable to bring calamity upon the world was in great part the doing of that mighty orthodox sect, the Burning Mist Valley.
The hundred thousand towering mountains shut off all traffic between north and south: the people of the Central Plains could not go down, and the barbarian tribes could scarcely go up. But a thousand years ago, an inconceivable calamity of heavenly thunder had descended from the sky, and within a thousand li all around, countless people died or were maimed. After the catastrophe, someone discovered that amid the towering ranges the colossal force of the thunder had torn one mountain asunder, opening a pitch-black, gloomy little path barely three chi wide.
It was from that time that tales began to circulate through the world that among the hundred thousand desolate mountains lurked barbarous monsters who raided the settlements from time to time, and that the frontier folk lived in unending misery—until the lineage of Burning Mist Valley appeared.
Among the orthodox sects, Burning Mist Valley was the most mysterious and elusive in origin. As early as fifteen hundred years ago, disciples of this lineage were already walking the world. If one counted only lineage and antiquity, only the Canglan Sect and the Demonic Cult surpassed Burning Mist Valley in history; even the Brahma Sound Temple could not match it.