"Slay a few ancient gods?" Yu Chudu was startled. Only after Shen Mu had walked some distance away did he come back to himself, and he hurried after him, lowering his voice: "Martial Uncle, who exactly are you?" The Dragon Qilin laughed. "Why, the Celestial Worthy Mu, of course. Did you not hear that Jing Baichuan say it just now? Our Cult Leader is the Celestial Worthy Mu, the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping, and the leader of the Heavenly Saint Cult. Have you heard of the Heavenly Saint Cult?" Yu Chudu shook his head blankly. "I was born in the Nine Provinces, and I have never left them in all my life..." The Dragon Qilin, rousing himself, coaxed him along step by step: "The Heavenly Saint Cult is the sect your own master, the great Cult Leader Emperor Yunluo Wei Suifeng, founded in his early years. It has three hundred and sixty-one halls, and it upholds the Way of the Sages in the daily use of the common folk. How does one become a Sage? One must achieve the Three Establishments: establishing a teaching, establishing words, establishing merit. With the three established, one becomes a Sage. Now, at a time when we are putting people to use, Brother Yu, you are a disciple of Emperor Yunluo, and the Heavenly Saint Cult was founded by Emperor Yunluo, so you..." And so Yu Chudu, a great expert of the Jade Capital realm, under the Dragon Qilin's bewitchment, muddled his way into the Heavenly Saint Cult and agreed to serve as a Protector Elder. The ancient gods of the Nine Provinces were not Star Lords. They had no ancestral stars, only ancestral lands. These nine ancient gods had been born of the sacrifices of the Creators who dwelt here in the most ancient age. Their ancestral lands lay at the heart of the Nine Provinces, and each ancient god had the place of its own birth. Around the ancestral land of the White Earth Ancient God of Ji Province, lightning flashed and thunder rolled; thunderclouds shrouded the whole range of mountains, layer upon layer, so deep that none could tell how deep. Drawing near, one heard thunder enough to split the ears, and no living thing stirred anywhere around. Any creature that came near was struck dead by the thunderbolts. Shen Mu looked from afar. Within the thunderclouds were mountains, their peaks scorched white by the lightning, and upon those peaks stood golden-armored divinities, one after another, majestic and imposing. These divinities must be gods who followed the White Earth Ancient God, ceaselessly clashing great cymbals to make the sound of thunder, blasting the souls of any who dared intrude. To preserve their air of mystery and sanctity, the ancient gods of the Nine Provinces had wrapped their ancestral lands in thunderclouds; even a god who had only just succeeded in cultivation would find it hard to pass through the thunderclouds and enter. Hence, after a man of divine powers in the Nine Provinces cultivated to godhood, he still had to pass the trial of the lightning tribulation before he was qualified to enter the nine great ancestral lands, pay homage to the ancient gods of the Nine Provinces, and become a divine general under their command. To the living beings of the Nine Provinces, the ancient gods were unfathomable and mysterious, dragons showing a head but never a tail, steeped in mystery; and so many were those who sacrificed to them. Shen Mu led Yu Chudu, Yan'er, and the Dragon Qilin through the layers of thunder. Yu Chudu was astonished to see that the golden-armored divinities guarding the thunder layers truly seemed not to see them at all; even passing right under their eyes, they looked straight through them. "Martial Uncle is truly remarkable! Such attainment in the divine consciousness is unheard of!" he praised inwardly. They went deep into the layered thunderclouds, and for the first time Yu Chudu saw the whole of the White Earth Ancient God's ancestral land. Amid encircling mountains and beneath shrouding thunderclouds, a giant altar a thousand li across appeared before them. The altar was so vast, vaster by far than the altar of the Spirit Energy Transfer Bridge — who had built it, none could say. Around the altar, amid thunder and mist, stood towering skeletons, one after another, facing the altar in worship. Myriad dry bones ringed the vast altar in circle after circle; the towering corpses were like so many hilltops, comparable to giant gods. Yu Chudu walked up beside the bones and raised his head. On the brow of each skeleton was set a diamond-shaped gem, and those gems still gave off a faint, ghostly light. The light flowed from the brows of the corpses toward the altar, now there, now not. "These are the Creators, the makers of the White Earth Ancient God," the Dragon Qilin said softly. Yu Chudu gazed at the bones with some awe. The Creators who had made the ancient gods were, to be sure, no mightier than he; but that they had created such strange beings as the ancient gods was worthy of respect. The civilization of the most ancient age had a charm all its own. They climbed onto the altar. Upon it were many gods and demons — whether the descendants of the White Earth Ancient God or gods who had passed the lightning tribulation and come here, none could tell. The White Earth Ancient God had built a divine city on the altar, a city of boundless luxury, where the gods of this divine land wallowed in extravagance, in wine pools and meat forests. As Shen Mu led Yu Chudu and the Dragon Qilin through the divine city, they saw "sacrifices" not yet eaten, penned in cages. These were the offerings the various tribes of White Earth had presented to the demigods — slaves from every tribe, and among them not a few humans. The people were caged, frightened and uneasy, but more than that, numb, their eyes vacant, blinking only after a long while. "Martial Nephew Yu, you are a god born and bred in this place; you should know well the history of the Nine Provinces and the Three Pillar Heavens." Shen Mu halted. "Has this place never known the Longhan Revolution, the Chiming Revolution?" Yu Chudu thought for a moment. "I have heard my master speak of the revolutions and reforms of the Longhan and Chiming eras, and he said a little of the Shanghuang era as well. But this is not the Yuan World. This place, like the other heavens, has not changed in a million years. Our forebears, generation upon generation, have lived just so." Shen Mu stood lost in thought. The Longhan Revolution, the Chiming Revolution, the Shanghuang Reforms, the Kaihuang Reforms — how magnificent they had been! And yet they had never spread beyond the Yuan World, never reached the heavens scattered throughout the cosmos. The people outside the Yuan World had never seen their lives change. They were still enslaved by ancient gods and demigods; all was as it had been in the early years of Longhan. They had grown numb; they had accepted the fate of their forebears, and their own fate, and the fate of their children and grandchildren to come. Only in the Yuan World, for a million years, had men of conscience and resolve risen one after another, resisting without cease, struggling without cease, reforming without cease. Shen Mu raised his head and looked far off toward the center of the altar. At the center of the altar, where the power of sacrifice converged, a mighty ancient god came into their view. That ancient god was white of body from head to foot, like a white ape, its sinews and frame hideous, with four arms, lumps of muscle bulging over its body, and a single crimson sharp horn growing from the crown of its head. It was drawing in the power of sacrifice, breathing it in and out. Its fleshly body was vast as a mountain; as it breathed in and out, the body swelled and shrank, and at a stir of its sinews thunder and lightning crossed. Thousands of gods surrounded it, Dao-sounds rising from their mouths, tempering its body with those Dao-sounds. Other gods swung white-bone hammers, and from the hammers flew skull after skull,