Book 13: Chapter 138
I was in no rush to leave. Instead, I returned to the stone room to a.n.a.lyse all the information once again. I examined the stone carvings again in detail, went back to the room with books and did everything I could to facilitate the search for “Calamity”.
By the time I unlocked the secret path and left, I had learnt enough of Gongsun Chu’s history to understand how Gongsun Chu transformed into Jiang Chen.
To say Gongsun Chu was a scholar was greatly downplaying him as a character. He was born the scion of the world’s brightest swordsmen and studied under respected mentors from childhood in numerous subjects. He was a just and upright man with a promising future. He had already earned the respect of many others as a youth for punis.h.i.+ng evildoers. Once he began his career as a civil servant, his impartial temperament and successes saw him soar up the rankings. People had begun to call him the star of the sword and brush, a catalyst to the imperial court’s success. He never thought that two strongly similar people would appear a decade later, and those two didn’t meet a better end by any stretch of the imagination, but let the afterstory be another topic.
The Emperor pa.s.sed away during a tumultuous time, leaving his barely-seven son to inherit the mantle. At the same time, the country’s va.s.sals pursued their own selfish motives while foreigners were looking to take a piece of the cake.
He was ready to give up when he realised his efforts to save the nation were futile. That was when another reliable individual suddenly called it quits and turned on his former master at a pivotal time. Another violent wave crashed down and swept across the land until a new family name took over the dynasty that had a millennium of history.
Once the new order was established, he risked his neck to raise the former dynasty’s flag with the help of his late wife’s belongings and ran toward the long, thick wall he couldn’t possibly move. He had lost his motivation to live. From the moment his wife sacrificed herself to cut him off from the bronze palace, he was but a soulless sack of flesh striving for but only one goal – to restore the former dynasty. How that turned out needed no elaboration beyond the name “Jiang Chen”.
The two powers a.s.sociated with Gongsun Chu further proved his hopeless efforts as well as his efforts to overthrow the reigning rule. Confucianism went from the ruler of the martial world to a small group in the corner of East China Sea and had to rebrand themselves as Canghai Sect. Gongsun Clan was left with only their past glory to talk about.
I had heard plenty regarding Gongsun Clan. They were held in the same regard as Mount Lu Sword Sanctuary’s Serene Sword Immortal Gra.s.shouse when it came to being “heaven” for swordsmen. However, even the young generation of Mount Lu Sword Sanctuary were now more famous than Gongsun Clan.
Gongsun Clan’s downfall was a natural decline. There was never any witch hunting of Gongsun Clan in the pugilistic world, and the imperial court never once obstructed them. I never understood how the greatest clan of swordsmen vanished into obscurity until I read through the secret manuals and Gongsun Chu’s notebooks.
The secret manuals were Gongsun Clan’s foundation; you could even say it was all of Gongsun Clan.
Gongsun Clan rushed to express friends.h.i.+p when the new dynasty’s Emperor marched into the Central Plain. As the head of the clan, Gongsun Chu sold out his former master for “glory”, effectively creating a rift in the family, and he hid all their manuals in the underground palace. His actions sealed the fate of Gongsun Clan.
Without Gongsun Clan’s pa.s.sed-down swordplay collection, all that remained was the knowledge that Gongsun Clan members had at the time. Even if their knowledge was collated, it would still only be crumbs of the entire system. Moreover, there were some selfish people who refused to share their knowledge, accelerating the clan’s downfall.
As a consequence of his actions, Gongsun Chu was no longer accepted in his own clan and even considered a sinner of Confucianism.
Perhaps Gongsun Chu returned to the underground palace many times following his departure over the course of the next century. Howbeit, he never left another message. Mayhap all he ever added was the spa.r.s.e text on the weapon rack. Despite him never mentioning anything further, I knew what he came back for – equipment and manuals to continue his rebellion efforts. After his first failed attempt, he tried a second time and then a third… He was so h.e.l.l-bent on restoring Daxia that he even searched out the vague existence of “Calamity”. To achieve his goal, he established Fiends’ Genesis and raised Shang Bies.h.i.+, but he only succeeded in failing time and time again. Of course, he also came back for his late wife whom he had been separated from for eternity.
Gongsun Chu might’ve only learnt how to unlock “Autumn Lock” recently considering it was among the most advanced topics in the subject of contraptions. In spite of Mount Daluo’s long history, in addition to Grandmaster and s.h.i.+fu’s vast knowledge, even we didn’t have such a big network of mechanisms set up on Mount Daluo.
I was only able to unlock Heaven and Earth Lock thanks to the conditions for unlocking it on top of the people I had at my disposal. Unlocking “Autumn Lock” was a whole different animal. Unlocking “Autumn Lock” must’ve costed Gongsun Chu a lot of time, or he wouldn’t have needed to reach out to Tang Clan, which led to him becoming acquainted with Elder Lianhua. He didn’t tell Elise the conditions for unlocking the locks so that she could open the doors; he wanted her to be a medium that pa.s.sed on the knowledge. He, obviously, wasn’t trying to pa.s.s the information to me but to Blood Demon – Xue Yanjun. Xue Yanjun had the ability to unlock Heaven and Earth Lock on her own, after all.
As I silently travelled down the dark path, I contemplated everything about Gongsun Chu and the praying skeleton. Grandmaster told me that there was a ruthless purge of the previous dynasty when the Nine Provinces’ dynasty was established. Whether it was objects, culture or buildings of the previous dynasty, everything was ordered to be erased. As a result of the purge, there were no cultural similarities between the current and erstwhile dynasty; even notable figures of the last dynasty were seldom mentioned.
Given the extent of the purge, it wasn’t hard to imagine what happened to the personnel of the former dynasty. Following the eradication of the last dynasty’s va.s.sals, the new guardians of the new order were the Seven Champion White Princes.
The iron-fisted rule lasted until our second Emperor. Instead of eliminating va.s.sals of the former ruler, he treated the former ruler’s va.s.sals with integrity. Only once his stance was clear did people start searching for descendants of the former dynasty. Alas, there were only few survivors by that point.
My fourth brother was one of the protected survivors.