Chapter 75: The Legend of the Ancient Divine Clan

Within the passage of the cave entrance, blood trickled from the corner of Qiu Han’s mouth, the intense pain etching deep furrows across his brow. Behind him, a horde of jellyfish beasts surged in relentless pursuit. Severely wounded, with his unicorn companion utterly spent and powerless, Qiu Han had no choice but to flee with all his might.

Half an hour passed. Ahead of him, several cave mouths suddenly appeared. With no time to deliberate, Qiu Han chose one at random, having already returned the unicorn to his spirit beast pouch. He fled along the passage for a long while, his speed gradually slowing as his injuries worsened, the drain on his spiritual energy nearly more than he could bear.

Another half-hour of desperate flight brought him to another set of cave mouths. He extended his divine sense, probing each one. Of all these new passages, only one was free of jellyfish beasts; the others seethed with their numbers.

There was no other choice. The path by which he had entered was now cut off; escape was impossible. All he could do was take things step by step, advancing into the only open cave. Behind him, the jellyfish beasts were closing in, and soon they were chasing him down the very same corridor. Qiu Han’s strength waned further; the beasts gained ground. Desperate, he wielded his Ink Feather Blade, hacking a large stone from the passage wall and blocking the tunnel behind him.

This barrier did indeed hinder the beasts, but only briefly; soon, cracks appeared and, with a deafening crash, the stone shattered. The jellyfish beasts pressed on. Qiu Han could only keep chiseling at the stone as he fled, blocking the passage again and again, buying precious seconds.

Another half-hour’s flight, and his divine sense swept ahead—just a hundred yards distant, another vast herd of jellyfish beasts surged toward him. Qiu Han’s brow furrowed deeper. What now? Enemies ahead, pursuers behind; death awaited whether he advanced or retreated. The path before him was a dead end, with no solution in sight.

Once more, he raised the Ink Feather Blade and hacked away at the stone walls to either side. Soon, he managed to carve out a massive stone, leaving a deep recess in the wall. As he examined the hollow’s edge, he was startled to discover a crack about two fingers wide. Surprised, he gripped his sword and began to cut away at the stone surrounding the fissure with renewed vigor.

Before long, a hidden passage appeared where solid rock had once stood. But for Qiu Han’s desperate excavation, it would have remained undiscovered.

By now, the jellyfish beasts were upon him from both directions. Without a moment’s thought, Qiu Han stepped into the new passage. Instantly, a heavy aura of death pressed in around him, growing thicker the deeper he ventured. Strangely, the jellyfish beasts, cowed by this deathly presence, dared not set foot within the passage to pursue him.

Qiu Han followed the corridor for nearly an hour, only to find it led to no exit—a dead end. He approached the stone wall that blocked his way, noting a small emerald-green bottle embedded within it. He stared at the bottle for a long time, then used the Ink Feather Blade to chisel it free. Behind where the bottle had been set, he found a finger-sized hole. Focusing his divine sense, he sent it into the opening.

His divine sense traveled a thousand feet down the tunnel, revealing a vast subterranean world. There, upon the great expanse, lay the colossal corpse of a giant—its size astonishing, easily a thousand feet in length. The suffocating aura of death that filled the passage originated from this very body.

Qiu Han’s heart trembled with awe. Never before had he seen a being so immense. The giant had clearly been dead for an untold span of years, yet its body showed no sign of decay.

“Could it be the corpse of an ancient Giant Spirit clansman?” he wondered. “But that can’t be—the Giant Spirit clan was said to have been wiped out in the ancient wars. Their bodies were indeed far larger than common folk, but I’ve never heard of one so titanic. Even the most gifted of their legendary ancestors, at the very peak of their cultivation, were said to stand only a hundred feet tall. Unless... could it be from that other race? But why would one of their number appear here? And judging by the state of the corpse, this one has been dead for tens of thousands of years... The Divine Clan has not been seen for countless ages…”

As Qiu Han pondered, the calm voice of Nangong Li sounded in his mind once more.

“Senior Nangong, have you made any discoveries?” Qiu Han asked, somewhat perplexed.

“Young man, have you ever heard of the Ancient Divine Clan?” Nangong Li did not answer directly, but posed this sudden question instead.

“The Ancient Divine Clan… I ask Senior to enlighten me,” Qiu Han replied respectfully.

“The Ancient Divine Clan was a people created by one of the Five Sovereigns of the Primordial Era, who, before perishing in the great ancient war, passed down their bloodline and called their descendants the Ancient Gods. Their origins are shrouded in mystery, little understood by outsiders. What I do know is that the bodies of the Divine Clan were unimaginably resilient, impervious to spells and divine arts, and of immense size. They did not cultivate the arts of immortality, but instead refined their physical forms, seeking to break the heavens by strength alone. The Divine Clan pursued absolute power and corporeal perfection, marking their cultivation stages with celestial symbols: each realm was denoted by a star point on the forehead.

“One star was the foundation; for every four stars, a moon mark would appear. Upon attaining four moons, a sun would rise on their brow. Yet their path was perilous and slow—cultivation required staggering spans of time. Legend tells of one who reached the sun realm, whose terrifying might could shatter the heavens and challenge an entire star domain. At their peak, their expanded form rivaled an entire cultivation star in size.

“But the Ancient Divine Clan, once at the height of their power, gradually declined and eventually vanished. Few know the true cause of their extinction. Cultivation circles surmise that theirs was a path defying the heavens, one the Dao itself could not abide, and so they disappeared from the stars above. Still, in the ages that followed, scattered rumors of the Ancient Divine Clan would occasionally surface.”

As Nangong Li finished, a memory flashed through Qiu Han’s mind—a passage he had once read in a jade slip left behind by the late Nascent Soul cultivator Zhan Quan.

“At last, I beheld the treasures left by the ancient immortals: seven fist-sized crystal spheres, fused together, and a timeworn map made of beast hide. The map depicted an ancient immortal, bare-chested, with a sun mark on his forehead, half-kneeling upon the ground, his eyes blurred with blood and tears. His left hand braced against the earth, his right pointed to the sky, mouth wide as though crying out to the heavens. Above him, a giant hand blotted out half the sun. At the top of the map was a line of ancient script. Neither of us could decipher its secrets, so we agreed to divide the treasures. I chose the seven crystal spheres; he took the map. I thought that was the end of it, but on our journey home, he caught me unawares and attacked from behind, leaving me gravely wounded…”