Sacred Scripture

The **Sacred Scripture** or **Holy Scripture** is a supreme cultivation method that cultivates the inner universe ⎯ which was to cultivate one's existence, cultivating one's life, and would lead to true reincarnation of the body and mind.

The Asura Heavenly Dao could be called a comprehensive summary of the Laws of the 33 Heavens, a way of standing on par with the Great Dao of the universe.

On the other hand, this Holy Scripture was the exploration of a martial artist ⎯ the excavation of their complete life potential.

## Description

The Holy Scripture was a thick ancient book that had a black cover. And on its cover there were two incomparably old words ⎯ *Holy Scripture*.

This was created by Immortal Sovereign; the so-called ancestor of the Spiritas, and his unnamed wife.

The Sacred Scripture uses 2 supreme concepts to cultivate the **Grand Reincarnation Technique**.

* The Concept of Life forms a pair with the concept of **Death**; it affects all aspects related to vitality such as stamina (during battles) and time needed to recover from injuries, feeling life and death in the process.
* The Concept of Death deals with all aspects of death such as aging, rotting, decay, and the final death of all living things.

## Summary

The **Sacred Scripture** is a cultivation method that focuses on one's **inner universe** or the **divine phantom** formed from the inner world of a cultivator (see Half-Step Empyrean). It was basically the accumulated experience of a martial artist and using it to comprehend the highest truths of heaven.

The Holy Scripture was not limited to cultivating one’s ‘essence, energy, and divine’. Rather, its final goal was to perfectly fuse ‘essence, energy, and divine’ together into one sublime form.

When a martial artist’s essence, energy, and divine completely integrated together, it would form a perfect cycle.

And if one possessed the Eternal Soul and was able to cultivate the Law of Eternal Life, then they could exist forever in this world as a true immortal.

This was the absolute state of perfection that was written of in the Holy Scripture.

### **Book of Life and Death**

The Holy Scripture is a book that is made up of 20 pages; 10 golden and 10 black pages. What they contained included the universe of the body and the samsara of life and death recorded within the Holy Scripture.

This was a thick and ancient book filled with the victisitudeness of life and death, the weathering of life passing, as well as the different moods and changes of a person. Inside this book are words that starkly contrasted gold and black, simple and plain and yet containing a meaning that was difficult to name. They were simply impossible to understand.

Rather, it should be said that these words had no definite meaning at all. They only contained different kinds of Concepts. It was written in invisible ink and this invisible pen was the unknowable fate of life.

When different people read these words they would each come away with a different understanding.

Even Lin Ming was unable to accurately explain these words.

### **Asura Sutra**

The Asura Sutra that the Asura Road Master left behind could be said to speak about the ultimate Heavenly Dao that stood atop the 33 Heavens; it was the power of the universe.

It is a cultivation method that is on par with the Asura Sutra. On one hand, the Asura Sutra is mainly about the power of the world, the strength of heaven or the external power gained by a martial artist. While the Sacred Scripture is all about the highest levels of life and death, the ever changing aspects of a martial artist. This strength of life and death focuses on one's experiences throughout their martial path, the different moods of existence and understanding the core of one's life or the internal aspect that make up a martial artist.

## **Concept of Life**

The Concept of Life is manifested in the form of 10 golden pages. They are offered as rewards for outstanding youths in the Origin Dream World created by the Immortal Ancestor. However, there are very strict requirements for the prospective genius' soul and perception capabilities.

The golden pages left behind amongst the spiritas spoke about returning to one’s true origins.

#### **Appearance**

The golden pages felt soft, as soft as gauze. It had an airy feel to it, seeming as if it would flutter in the wind. As he grabbed it, he felt just how large it was. After unfolding it, it was almost three feet long, just like a small kasya worn by a monk.

The golden page was extremely soft, as smooth as silk. When it was placed against the sun, it was nearly transparent.

### **Golden Scripture: (Heavenly Stems)**

Each page stands for a different element from the classical 5 elements and represents 1/10 of the Life Concept in the Sacred Scripture.

The east of wood, the south of fire, the center of earth, the west of metal, the north of water:

* 1st and 2nd Wood
* 3rd and 4th Fire
* 5th and 6th Earth
* 7th and 8th Metal
* 9th and 10th Water

### **First Page of Wood**

Meditating upon the Golden Pages of the Sacred Scripture will make a martial artist arrive at a pitch black mirage world. The land in the mirage world would seem to come from nothingness, but if anything was touched, one could feel it was incomparably solid. The chilling space was empty and filled with eerie mysteries.

In the far off void, countless people were covered in mystical halos, exuding endless light. They whispered in a low voice, their chants echoing through the air. These verses were obscure; especially to those who have not yet understood the concept of life and death.

#### **Death**

But if a martial artist meditates upon these verses, the fleshy body and the divine soul of a martial artist would feel a clear power emanating from them, resonating with the verses until countless images would be manifested in one's mind.

* He saw a tree of heaven, its towering crown reaching high, piercing into the distance like a mountain and stabbing into the skies. This tree began to crackle and burn. Essence energy shot out and its life force was cut off. It crashed into the ground, reduced to ashes… after the wind and rain, the ashes of the great tree melted into the earth, vanishing without a trace.
* He saw a boundless sea with fish dragons leaping and leviathans stretching out for 90,000 miles. The entire sea was lively and amazing. But in the blink of an eye, the skies filled with a sun-bright fire and the seawater evaporated. The sea became a mulberry field…
* He saw vast planets with countless lives on them. Eagles screeched in the endless skies and tigers roared and wolves howled in the forests. There were bustling cities, adrift in the smoke and smells of a mortal world… but as the years passed, the sky began to break apart and the earth collapsed. Fire and water raged all around and the bustling world became one of terror and disasters, all life fading away in the chaos.

One after another, countless images wove together, manifesting and then being destroyed.

All the images exuded an icy cold death energy, endless bursts of destruction.

#### **Life**

And after comprehending the verses, reaching a conclusion in the myriad changes in the world, one would transcend death and bloom with overflowing vitality.

The thought would become a cloud of smoke rising into the highest heavens, uncontainable. Those figures chanting in the void would glow with intense light like suns. They would begin to emit a dazzlingly bright light that illuminated all directions.

* …From the towering tree of heaven that was burned down by the raging fires and reduced to ashes, those ashes began to nourish the earth. From where it collapsed, small seedlings appeared. Rain fell from the skies and strong winds helped it grow straight and tall. Blades of green grass grew, each one seeming lofty and filled with grandeur…

…From the dried sea, winds rose up. Thousands of rivers began to swell up from all directions, scouring the world left and right, slowly merging together into a boundless sea once more…

…From the center of the shattered planet, a nucleus began to form once more. For billions of years it gathered the spiritual power of the infinite universe, growing once more. The planet gradually expanded, and life began to appear on its surface…

* One would become a seed. Stretching out one's limbs, absorbing nutrition from the ashes of the towering tree. Became a sapling and would slowly start to grow.
* One would become a dry sea bed. From the deathly stillness, infinite water vapors began to gather, wetting the land once more.
* One would become a cold and lonely planet nucleus. Through billions of years of loneliness, one accumulated the thinly spread out spiritual essence of the universe, eventually giving birth to endless life forms…

Each scene was filled with inexhaustible bubbling vitality.

Life would become death and death would become life. From the infinite chanting, one would realize the experiences of life to death, from death to life. One became all things, repeating the cycle endlessly.

* One's heart went from desolate to vigorous, from vigorous to desolate, continually being tempered…

* Once understood, the texts that floated in a martial artist's spiritual sea would begin to resonate with the endless chanting.
* One became a blade of grass, as well as a towering tree.
* One became a drop of water, as well as a vast sea.
* One became a planet nucleus, as well as a giant planet.
* One was everything, and everything was one.

## **Concept of Death**

### **Black Book**

* It appeared to be black book with a blood red pattern upon it. This book was always carried by Immortal Sovereign and manifested the death laws.

* This portion also comes as 10 black pages offered as rewards by various trials set in the Akashic Dream World.
* The Soul Emperor cultivates only the Death portion and seems to believe that an Eternal Soul can be used in conjunction with the Sacred Scripture to attain eternal life. This was never confirmed, but forced Lin Ming into a dead end. An Eternal Soul seems to be the soul of a user of the magic cube, provided he/she has used it long enough for the cube to transform their soul.

## **Grand Reincarnation Technique**

### **Preface**

As one experiences death, they become withered and disheveled, like a dried up old tree. To die was the same as turning into rotten wood, having lost all life.

But, even dead wood could bring forth new growth.

However, even though dead wood could summon new growth, an old tree was still an old tree. A lush new branch and leaf could bring a bit of green to dead wood, but it could never restore that tree to the true vibrant vitality of a small newborn sapling. And, it was even more impossible for that dead wood to grow up as a towering new tree. The concept of rebirth was something that violated the Heavenly Dao rules, just like an old man on the verge of death becoming rejuvenated and being restored to his youth. This was simply impossible.

But, there was one possible situation and that was if the new shoot that grew from a piece of dead wood could absorb all the nutrition from that old tree and then take root in the ground, then it could truly grow into a towering tree that reached into the skies.

Break everything down to nothing and then stand back up tall – this was an eternal truth.

If one could simultaneously comprehend the Holy Scripture’s pages of life and pages of death to the extreme, then the truth was that this was equal to comprehending the most core cultivation method within the Holy Scripture – the **Grand Reincarnation Art**.

### **Overview**

Reincarnation, that was the process of returning from death to life. Contained within this technique were the secrets of life and death.

In the Holy Scripture, there were nin revolutions similar to that of the nine nirvanas of a phoenix. This represented the extremes of reincarnation; '*Nine divided by nine was one and to pass nine was to return to one; this was a symbol of a phoenix being reborn through nirvana*.'

However, the difference with phoenix rebirth was that every revolution was to live a new life, starting from zero. After reincarnating, one's cultivation would drop by several boundaries. They would need to cultivate again.

But it was in a sense as dangerous as nirvanic rebirth.

If one couldn’t comprehend them then not only would their reincarnation fail but anyone that tried cultivating the Grand Reincarnation Art would perish into dust, forever disappearing from the world. This was a reckless technique that needed one to comprehend the state of death, to struggle in the face of death, all in order to experience life and death to the extreme. This was what one meant when they say to experience the hundred tastes of mortal life, then ascend into a mighty supreme elder of the world.

This was a cultivation method that only a peerless genius could practice. This was because unless someone possessed a cultivation speed ten times that of a genius, the more they cultivated the lower their boundary would be. But, if one could successfully train in this cultivation method then they could forcefully enhance their bodily talent and cultivation talent.

Through every revolution of the Grand Reincarnation Art, one’s cultivation would fall and their skeletal age would fall with it. The more thorough one’s reincarnation was, the larger the change would be.

This was the heaven-defying advantage of the Grand Reincarnation Art. By inheriting the experience and essence of the previous body, one could recast their everything into a young and new body and then restart their cultivation from scratch.

Like this, the more times one reincarnated then the higher one’s talent would become, finally reaching an unimaginable height.

To restart from zero nine times, every life was a whole new accumulation of learning.

### -*To revise*-

By practicing the Grand Reincarnation Technique, one would ideally bloom the nine flower petals of reincarnation; nine by nine returning to one.

Between the eyebrows of a martial artist that practices the Reincarnation technique to large success, flower petals of light would appear. These petals were like dots of cinnabar. As they formed they gathered around a center, forming a strange flower.

There were nine flower petals in total. Each one seemed to condense the most beautiful sights in the world, causing one’s mind to fall into reverie.

* A Top-tier supplementary cultivation technique, the user reincarnates up to 9 times (indicated by the number of lotus petals on their forehead). With each reincarnation, the user's cultivation base drops along with their body's age (sometimes regressing to a baby), while the memories and insights are retained. A martial artist's potential/talent is determined by their level of insights, cultivation, and physical (body) age (older bodies can no longer change cultivation techniques).
* Through every revolution of the Grand Reincarnation Art, one’s cultivation would fall and their skeletal age would fall with it. The more thorough one’s reincarnation was, the larger the change would be.
* This technique effectively lets you completely ignore the physical age requirement and even resets your body, increasing your innate 'talent' and curing all physical damage. Since all the user's achievements from the moment of reincarnation (excluding their physical body) are retained, cultivation speed increases massively.

* This technique is a subset of the Sacred Scripture; it is impossible to cultivate this technique without first mastering the Sacred Scripture's Life and Death Concepts to the point of fusing them.

## Art of Eternal Life

The Law of Reincarnation was the Grand Reincarnation Art that Sheng Mei cultivated; it was one of the most essential parts of the Holy Scripture. However, besides the Law of Reincarnation, there was an even more terrifying arcane technique within the Holy Scripture, something that could truly be described as defying the will of the heavens.

Its name was – the Art of Eternal Life.

The Art of Eternal Life complemented the Law of Reincarnation. But, in order to cultivate the Art of Eternal Life, one needed an Eternal Soul. And this sort of mythical soul had already vanished for billions and billions of years.

As for the Art of Eternal Life, it became nothing but a story…

According to the records of the Holy Scripture, it was nearly impossible to cultivate the Art of Eternal Life. In fact, it wasn’t a perfect cultivation method. Even the creator of this cultivation method, the author of the Holy Scripture, had only completed a part of this Art of Eternal Life in the past.

Even the one who wrote the Holy Scripture hadn’t been able to eventually obtain eternal life.

Eternal life – it was a curse upon the Heavenly Dao, something that the Heavenly Dao would never allow.

Even universes would eventually perish, much less life.

## Trivia

* The creators of the **Sacred Scripture** are both the Immortal Sovereign and his wife. They perfected both Death and Life Concepts, respectively.
* The truth was that the creator of the Holy Scripture wasn’t the ancestor of the spiritas. And, the inheritance he left behind belonged to all life, to those who possessed the ability to take it. It had nothing to do with any race!
* The Soul Emperor wanted Lin Ming's Eternal Soul to attain eternal life, which was necessary in order to reach the peak of the Grand Reincarnation Art.
* The Sheng Mei we meet in the novel is actually the 10th reincarnation. In the past, something went wrong and caused her to lose her memories of the previous 9 lives.
* Can't prolong lifespan(ch1962)
* The majority of the Asura Sutra’s focus was on the Laws and the mysterious Asura runes. As for this golden page, most of its writings were descriptive texts. These texts connected together to create all-encompassing and esoteric passages. In these ancient passages, each word, each stroke, was filled with infinite Concepts.

### **Grand Reincarnation Technique**

* The Holy Scripture’s two major sections consisted of the Law of Eternal Life and the Grand Reincarnation Art. The Law of Eternal Life was incomplete to begin with and not even the creators of the Holy Scripture were able to finish it. In other words, the Grand Reincarnation Art was in truth the most important part of the Holy Scripture.
* The Grand Reincarnation Art was a cultivation method that became exponentially more difficult the further one went into it.
* With the Grand Reincarnation Art, the growth of a martial artist’s skeletal age slowed down to a snail’s pace.
* Although the Grand Reincarnation Art could allow a person to live nine new lives, it didn’t have the heaven-defying ability to lengthen a person’s life by nine times.
* It could reforge a person and give them the light of a new life. But, it couldn’t extend the total lifespan of a martial artist. Ultimately speaking, it wasn’t the Law of Eternal Life, but only a cultivation method created by the Holy Scripture creator after he comprehended the Concept of Life and the Concept of Death to their limits, created in order to draw out one’s potential to its maximum.
* Lin Ming recreated his own, different version of this art(c2115)

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 1963 – Entering the Gate of Laws
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 1956 – The End of the First Life