The pre-Qin era refers to the historical period of ancient China before the Qin Dynasty, beginning from the time of the earliest human ancestors and extending to 221 BCE, when the First Emperor of Qin destroyed the Six States.

Bronze Vessel Script is also called Metal Script — inscriptions carved on Shang and Zhou Dynasty bronze vessels. Metal Script was used from the early Shang Dynasty all the way to the Qin unification, reaching its greatest flourishing during the Zhou Dynasty.

Inside the Daoist shrine, the mottled and weathered ancient walls bore row upon row of Bronze Vessel Script — vigorous and powerful, beautifully formed, the characters spaced with natural rhythm, the mood heavy and grave.

Ye Fan’s expression was focused and intent as he carefully identified the characters. In total there were two hundred and fifteen ancient characters on the walls, each stroke executed with force, the forms lean and sinewy, as though alive.

He recognized sixty-nine characters in all. The remaining one hundred and forty-six he did not recognize — no matter how long he pondered, he could not glean their meaning. Such an ancient script truly was from a time too distant.

Even genuine scholar-antiquarians could not fully read Bronze Vessel Script — on the other end of the starry sky, later generations could only identify a portion of these characters.

“A pre-Qin Qi Cultivator…” Ye Fan’s heart shook. This was undeniably an inscription left by someone from the other end of the starry sky.

He read through the record carefully. Though most of the characters were unreadable, he still managed a preliminary understanding — beyond all doubt, this person belonged to pre-Qin ancient China.

But who exactly they were, and whether they had held any distinguished standing in the historical record, he could not determine — after all, nearly a hundred and fifty characters remained completely beyond him.

“A Qi Cultivator…” This was the first time he had heard such a term.

Those three characters set his imagination alight, giving him a glimpse of a mysterious age — hinting at hidden secrets from before the ancient era that the world did not know.

Of the sixty-nine characters he could read, they did not form a continuous sequence, making the overall meaning nearly impossible to piece together. After studying them for a long while, he had only managed a vague understanding of part of the content.

This pre-Qin Qi Cultivator had not crossed the void to reach this end of the starry sky under his own power. The Bronze Vessel Script recorded a reason for how he had come, but Ye Fan could not decipher it.

“Is this some kind of secret technique?” the Black Emperor asked impatiently from beside him.

“It is not!”

“You’re holding back, boy. We discovered this together — hurry up and decode it,” the Black Emperor pressed.

Ye Fan paid it no heed. He turned to Tu Fei and asked, “Have you ever heard any accounts of other worlds existing beyond this one?”

Tu Fei looked puzzled and shook his head. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

“What do you mean…” Beside them, the Black Emperor seemed to receive a jolt of surprise. “Do these bizarre characters record something related to that?”

It suddenly occurred to Ye Fan that this great dog was extraordinarily mysterious — perhaps it knew many secrets unknown to the world. “Have you heard of this?”

“I… have heard something, a little.” The Black Emperor answered, then turned around and asked with barely-contained urgency, “What exactly do these strange characters on the wall record?”

Tu Fei was also staring over, equally eager to know — what sort of origins did this Daoist shrine hold?

“What is recorded here is something beyond imagination — it speaks of another world on the far shore of the starry sky…”

“What?!” Tu Fei cried out in alarm. “Surely that doesn’t mean there truly are immortals?”

The Black Emperor’s eyes flickered as well, pressing for more. “Tell us more. Translate all the characters on the wall — let us understand it clearly.”

“The people of that place called themselves Qi Cultivators. This was a pre-Qin Qi Cultivator who crossed the boundless starry sky, came to this place, and left these stone carvings.”

“This… how can that be? Is it real?” Tu Fei was overwhelmed with shock, nearly wide-eyed and slack-jawed. “Are pre-Qin Qi Cultivators really so powerful? Could they truly be comparable to a Great Emperor?”

“He did not come here under his own power,” Ye Fan said. “He followed a path left behind by someone even older and arrived in this world.”

“Someone even older… what kind of person could traverse multiple star domains?” Tu Fei’s heart swelled with emotion, and countless associations flooded his mind.

Meanwhile, two razor-sharp beams of light shot from the Black Emperor’s eyes. “Where did this fellow go? If we could get our hands on him, the treasures obtained would be priceless.”

“Someone came to this world — yet no one noticed?” Ye Fan was disappointed; he had originally hoped to learn some clue from their reactions.

“A person not of this world would certainly be careful to conceal themselves. With so many years having passed, if he is still alive, he would long since have become comparable to the various Holy Lords.” Tu Fei speculated. This Daoist shrine was at least two thousand years old.

Ye Fan nodded. A person of the pre-Qin era — at the latest, someone from over two thousand years ago. If that person was still alive, they might well have become the Supreme Elder of some great sect.

“How do you know these bizarre characters, boy?” The Black Emperor’s eyes sparkled with piercing light, fixed on Ye Fan with a deep, meaningful gaze.

Tu Fei had been suspicious long since as well, and looked over with an expression full of incomprehension.

“I once read an ancient tome that contained some of these characters, with rough annotations. I was able to recognize a portion of them.” Ye Fan replied with composure.

“Teach me. This script is arcane and mysterious — I want to learn it,” the Black Emperor said.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Ye Fan replied, “Sure, no problem. Teach me one character, and you teach me one Dao pattern.”

The Black Emperor’s eyes rolled immediately. It wore a distinctly disgruntled expression. Dao patterns were its most closely guarded secret arts — Ye Fan had been angling for them for a long time and had never managed to get any.

“Black Emperor — you still haven’t answered. About there being a world on the other side of the starry sky, have you heard anything about this?” Ye Fan pressed.

“I know far too little. In former days, a certain Great Emperor said just a sentence or two about it. I don’t know the specifics.”

“Could you be more specific?” Ye Fan wanted to beat it.

“How should I be more specific? All I know is that the Great Emperor often gazed up at the starry sky in the depths of the night. Beyond that, I know nothing.” The Black Emperor shook its head.

“Damned dog, are you deliberately hiding things?” Ye Fan demanded.

“Woof!” The Black Emperor bared its teeth and lunged as if to bite.

“You truly don’t know?” Ye Fan was skeptical.

“If I knew, would I be asking you? All I know is that this is the Great Emperor’s secret — outsiders cannot know it.” The Black Emperor replied with irritable bluntness.

Night fell. The blazing desert grew cooler and cooler, until deep in the night the cold was bone-piercing — an ordinary person would certainly have frozen stiff.

Ye Fan gazed up at the starry sky, searching for a path home.

“The ancient ones could cross the void — so can I. One day, I will surely find my way back…” He felt certain that the ancient era of his homeland must hold many secrets.

“Getting a bit ahead of yourself, boy, thinking you’re a Great Emperor?” The Black Emperor, sprawled beside the Daoist shrine, had just woken from a nap and now teased him.

“Did that Great Emperor gaze at the starry sky every single night?” Ye Fan asked with calm composure.

“Not every night. He would occasionally fall into a reverie — sometimes sitting lost in thought for an entire night.” The Black Emperor gave a yawn in reply.

“How do you know this so clearly?” Ye Fan pressed suddenly.

Tu Fei had awoken as well. He leaned back against the shrine wall and opened his eyes. “This damned dog has many secrets and simply refuses to tell them. All it knows how to do all day is greedily snatch things from others — it never willingly shares anything with anyone.”

“Woof!” A bark split the night air.

“Alright, enough biting.”

“This is all things I’ve heard. How easily do you think the Great Emperor’s secrets can be known? Even if people begged me weeping and wailing, I wouldn’t tell them.”

“Which star domains did that Great Emperor like to gaze upon?” Ye Fan asked.

“Many — the Purple Tenuity Enclosure, the Supreme Tenuity Enclosure…” The Black Emperor rattled off a few names casually.

Ye Fan returned to the shrine and studied the rows of Bronze Vessel Script once more. Tracing the inscriptions with his hand, he pondered carefully — and at last managed to guess two more characters. They were: Purple Tenuity!

The pre-Qin Qi Cultivator had mentioned these two characters in the Bronze Vessel Script. Ye Fan’s heart stirred, and he began to trace over the inscriptions on the wall.

Rustle, rustle…

Suddenly, the stone wall crumbled like dust — bits and pieces falling away — and every last character disappeared as a large section of the mottled ancient wall broke away and fell.

Was it due to the extreme age, or some other reason? Ye Fan’s heart stirred. He ran a finger lightly across the surface — stone fragments flew, the entire section of inscription vanished completely, and a thick layer of material fell away.

Ding!

A faint chime rang out. Within the crumbled wall, a dim metal box was revealed — without luster or brilliance, old and plain.

“We’ve dug up a treasure!” the Black Emperor shouted, pouncing forward with bared teeth, ready to fight Ye Fan for it.

Tu Fei caught it from behind with a firm grip on its scraggly tail, preventing it from getting any closer.

“Woof!”

Just as a tiger’s rear end was not to be touched, the Black Emperor’s scraggly tail was absolutely a forbidden zone. It spun around and began chomping wildly.

Ye Fan split open the wall and retrieved the metal box. It was oblong in shape, cast from bronze, over three chi in length and a hand’s width across, sealed shut without a gap — tightly and solidly sealed.

The bronze metal box was heavy and cold, emanating faint tendrils of chill, with a weak ripple of divine power on its surface.

Ye Fan understood immediately. The wall had originally served as a seal, but due to the great age, the divine power had been leaking out, causing the stone to crumble and shed its layers.

“Woof!”

After biting Tu Fei a few times, the Black Emperor finally stood down and quickly sidled up close to examine the oblong bronze box.

“Sit tight and behave — don’t try to snatch it!” Ye Fan warned it.

“Don’t worry — I only want to look. How could I possibly snatch something from one of my own?” The Black Emperor replied, its scraggly tail standing straight up.

“Good grief — damn dog!” Tu Fei cursed, two rows of bite marks appearing on his calf as he limped forward.

The two men and one dog were all filled with anticipation. After all, this was something left behind by a Qi Cultivator from the other end of the starry sky — Ye Fan especially felt a measure of nervous tension.

He produced the bronze cauldron and suspended it above his head, letting cascading streams of mysterious yellow energy fall and shield his body. Then he slowly opened the oblong metal box.

The bronze lid was lifted — no radiant light burst forth, no auspicious colored mist swirled, not even the faintest ripple of divine power.

Within the metal box lay a wooden whip, ancient and unadorned, carved with numerous Dao patterns — profoundly arcane, growing more captivating the longer one studied them.

It was just over three chi long, composed of more than twenty segments. Each segment bore several intricate markings, clearly and naturally imprinted — mysterious and primal.

“A wooden whip, from the other end of the starry sky — what sort of treasure is this?” Ye Fan said in astonishment.

Among the known figures of the pre-Qin era, who had wielded a wooden whip? He thought and thought, trying to recall.

The Black Emperor was a connoisseur. At the sight of this wooden whip — comparable to an iron sword — its mouth nearly watered, for between each segment lay arcane Dao patterns.

“Can this actually be a supreme treasure? Yet why can I feel no ripple of divine power from it?” Tu Fei asked.

Hum!

The wooden whip trembled faintly and floated up out of the metal box on its own, flying toward the Black Emperor.

“Damned dog — you’re actually trying to snatch it?!” Ye Fan said, furious.

“I just laid eyes on this treasure and it is clearly fated for me. The source stones I snatched from that old Daoist — I don’t even want them anymore. They’re all yours. I only want this wooden whip!” The Black Emperor gripped the wooden whip tightly with both great paws.

“This greedy big dog — true to form, the moment it sees a treasure it goes for the grab!” Tu Fei ground his teeth.

“Owww…” Suddenly the Black Emperor let out a cry of agony, hurled the wooden whip to the ground, balanced on its hind legs, and leapt about wildly, clutching its skull with both front paws, its mouth wide open in a howl of pain.

“What’s wrong with you, damned dog?” Ye Fan asked.

“Blast it — my divine sense was attacked!” the Black Emperor howled in pain.

“Serves you right — who told you to be so greedy!” Ye Fan felt not a shred of sympathy. Last time it had gone into convulsions trying to snatch the fruit sliced from the stone grinding disk, and today it had relapsed into its old habits.

“Is this some extraordinary treasure?” Tu Fei was uncertain and did not dare touch the wooden whip, but circled around it studying it carefully. No abnormality was apparent.

“Ahh…” Suddenly, he too let out a cry of pain and covered his forehead.

“Tu Fei, are you alright?” Ye Fan was alarmed.

“Don’t probe it with your divine sense — this wooden whip attacks spiritual consciousness,” Tu Fei said.

Ye Fan’s heart stirred. He picked up the wooden whip, held it in his hand, and murmured to himself, “Can it be that this is a wooden whip specifically designed to strike divine sense?”

A divine whip left behind by a pre-Qin Qi Cultivator, from the other end of the starry sky — a treasure of such rarity was very likely to be something left by one of the more notable Qi Cultivators.