In his youth the Old Madman Nietzsche had been a miner of Duke Town, just like Amon—and that was a hundred and some odd years ago. In those days Barron, Assyria and Hatti were all caught up in chaotic war, the rulers of the city-state of Xuya had changed hands several times, and life in Duke Town was far harsher than it is now, with daily necessities often in short supply.
The barren land here could grow only a little barley and beans, barely enough to fill a belly, and the flocks grazed at the edge of Black Fire Thicket were few. One spring the sheep had all been eaten, and Nietzsche was so sick of bland food that he went into the deep mountain forest east of town to hunt. A strong miner who learned the tricks could make a good hunter; the depths of the thicket were dangerous, but the Old Madman had hunted game around its fringes plenty of times since he was a boy.
This time Nietzsche went far. He hunted as he went, drying the game into strips and floss to carry on his back, and before he knew it he had crossed the stretch of deep mountains where the cave-dwelling dwarves lived and entered the steep gorge of the Yudi River.
While chasing a horned deer he slipped from a cliff edge; luckily vines caught him in midair, and after snapping a good many of them he steadied himself and climbed to a very hidden spot. There, in a rain-sheltered recess under the rock, he found a corpse that had died not long before, and took the dead man's belongings.
The dead man had been a mid-rank divine artist who, amid the chaos of battle, had flown on a divine-art implement to escape his pursuers; gravely wounded, he crashed into this remote place and finally died of his injuries. The divine artist came from the Marduk Temple of Barron—Barron and Hatti were at war then, so he should have been an enemy of Hatti. He had left last words, written on the cave wall in blade script.
What set Nietzsche apart from the ordinary miners of Duke Town was that he could read. His grandfather had once been Duke Town's scribe; in those war-torn years he had somehow broken the law of some dynasty or other, and was punished by being stripped of his lowest grade of nobility. He spent the last years of his life teaching his grandson the blade script on clay tablets.
Where Nietzsche had fallen was far from any human habitation, with the rushing Yudi River on one side and a sheer cliff at his back. Lacking food and medicine, the gravely wounded divine artist struggled for seven days and seven nights, praying and pleading to the god Marduk in his agony, hoping for mercy and salvation, until despair took him at the very end.
In his last words the despairing divine artist said that he no longer wished to return to his temple; should anyone find him, he begged to be buried on the spot in the manner of his family, and that his belongings be carried to his wife and son.
In return, the divine artist left behind the secret methods of divine-art cultivation that he knew—not only every stage from low rank to mid rank, but also the material on advancing from mid rank to high rank that he himself had never studied. Among his belongings were a staff carved with a mark and several precious divine-art implements.
Nietzsche's life turned from that day on: he studied divine arts in secret. Luckily he had not been badly hurt, and luckily his pack held food enough; he stayed there several days, copying down all the divine-art content and burying the divine artist. Trusting to his strong body, a few days later he climbed back up the cliff by the vines with the dead man's belongings.
Everyone in Duke Town assumed Nietzsche had vanished, lost in the treacherous depths of the thicket—but ten years later Nietzsche returned to Duke Town, claiming that while hunting he had been captured by cave-dwelling savages and had spent ten years a slave in their village, and only now had he found a chance to escape the mountains.
No one knew that by then Nietzsche was already a mage, just returned from a long journey to Barron City, capital of the Barron Kingdom.
He went to Barron City to return the divine artist's belongings. Nietzsche was by then a third-rank mage, and with care he could handle most of what the road threw at him. Out in the wider world he came to realize how strange the miners' craft he had learned since childhood really was. When he found the divine artist's belongings he had already possessed the skill and reflexes of a second-rank warrior; that he had survived his fall from the cliff was not entirely luck.
But when, after obtaining the divine artist's texts, he performed the ritual of Awakening the Power, what he gained was a communion with the energy of the outer world—the so-called power bestowed by the gods—and so of course he chose to cultivate divine arts.
In Barron City Nietzsche finally found the divine artist's widow, only to discover that the family had declined and was in difficulties. Temple priesthoods were mostly hereditary, passing to whichever son was best suited to divine arts, or else to the eldest; the divine artist had been a priest of Barron City's Marduk Temple, and his only son was not yet of age and could not inherit the priest's standing.
With her husband's fate unknown, the divine artist's widow had run up a great pile of debt over the years. Her creditor was a noble of the city who demanded that she marry him—his aim was plainly to seize the estate and inherit her husband's priestly standing. Such things were common in wartime.
Nietzsche's arrival got the widow out of her fix, for the divine artist's belongings were valuable—nearly half of all he had owned; otherwise his disappearance would not have plunged the family into such hardship.
The widow was deeply grateful to Nietzsche, and out of kindness told him privately, "If you have followed my husband's last words and secretly studied divine arts and made something of yourself—if you have become a divine artist—then never reveal who you are. Endure in hiding until you become a grand mage; then everything may change dramatically, if you have the luck for it!"
Having said that much she urged Nietzsche to leave as soon as he could, or there might be trouble. Her worry proved well founded: no sooner had Nietzsche left Barron City than hunters came after him—perhaps the thwarted noble venting his spite. Nietzsche used divine arts to kill his pursuers, and fearing his identity as a mage would come out, he slipped back to Duke Town.
Nietzsche lived in Duke Town another ten years, like any other miner, with nothing unusual about him. Ten years on he left Duke Town again to travel the continent, apparently careless of that decree, "No registered miner of Duke Town may leave without permission." By then he was already a seventh-rank grand mage.
Nietzsche traveled all over the Celestial Pivot Continent another ten years and had many bizarre adventures; when he returned to Duke Town once more he was an eighth-rank grand mage. It was said that the town chief of the day wanted to hold him to account for leaving without permission, though for some reason the matter was quietly dropped. After that Nietzsche simply stayed in town, and no one troubled him, taking him for nothing more than a rambling old madman.
Divine arts and combat arts could never be cultivated to the same rank—that was a divine decree since ancient times, and a law. After obtaining the divine artist's belongings, Nietzsche awakened the power the gods bestow and devoted himself solely to divine arts, attaining an achievement close to the summit. But in later years one question troubled him: before he ever studied divine arts, he had in fact begun learning a craft much like combat arts, and had reached the level of a second-rank warrior.
When the men of Duke Town came of age, the blessing ritual held at the Muyun Temple by its priests was in fact much like a ritual for awakening a certain power.
Nietzsche had known nothing of this at the time, which was why he gave up combat arts and devoted himself wholly to divine arts, becoming a grand mage of all things. So he began to suspect that some secret unknown to men lay hidden in this. But when he tried to take up combat arts again, he found it extraordinarily hard—he had even lost the strength he'd had as a second-rank warrior in his youth, and his body could barely match a first-rank warrior.
He was old, after all, and had not trained his body for years. His eighth-rank divine arts made him formidable, but keeping his flesh healthy and stronger than an ordinary man's was already good enough. The failed attempt left Nietzsche dejected and all the more puzzled, and as though dogged by it, his magic never could break through to ninth rank.
So Nietzsche again often vanished from Duke Town and came back after a while—no one bothered about the Old Madman anymore, of course. All over the continent he sought out the tales that interested him: stories of famous grand divine artists and grand warriors, their lives and how they had trained, and the legends the great temples told about the gods.
The Old Madman began to suspect that some of the so-called gods, as the stories described them, sounded very much like demigods—no different from a ninth-rank grand divine artist or a ninth-rank grand warrior. Were they merely demigods, then, who only later became true gods? And if so, could a mortal become an immortal god? And if he could, how?
He further suspected that divine arts and combat arts could be cultivated to the same rank—or had originally been a single whole, deliberately split into two parts so that reaching the same rank in both was all but impossible. Some undiscovered subtlety might lie in this, holding the secret of becoming a god.
The Old Madman found no answer. Once he was past a hundred he realized he could never verify any of it in his own person, and so he set his hopes on a successor. He searched far and wide for a long time, until at last, in a small village belonging to Cape State, he found a boy of outstanding natural gifts named Bel, a shepherd's son.
The Old Madman taught Bel everything he knew, hoping only that the boy would, as far as he could, unravel the puzzle he had mulled over for most of his life.
What came after hardly needs telling. The place Bel finally fled to was also the gorge forest where the Yudi River cuts through the deep mountains; he may have been trying to reach Duke Town and the Old Madman, but he could not shake the horde of pursuers. Somehow Bel worked some marvelous magic on a cat, and that cat actually got through the encircling troops and across the perilous mountains to Duke Town, bringing the Old Madman a message.
It was not that the cat could speak. One of Bel's strongest divine arts was the divine art of messages, and he had sealed a message inside the cat. Once the Old Madman read it out with his own divine arts, the message vanished of itself.
The message Bel sent was as follows:
Revered teacher—
Your guess is very likely right: it is not that mortals cannot become gods. The secret lies in the cultivation of divine arts and of combat arts—in either one, breaking through beyond ninth rank is the achievement of a god. But cultivating divine arts or combat arts alone is unbearably hard, and there is almost no chance of advancing further. That is the conclusion I reached after reading through the records of countless grand warriors and grand divine artists in history.
And in fact, cultivating divine arts and combat arts to the same rank is impossible too—at least, that is all we have ever seen. With one exception: the most basic, almost laughably weak miners' craft of Duke Town, the first thing you ever taught me. But you are a Duke Town miner too; you later devoted yourself to divine arts and rose very high, yet could not break through in combat arts. Age and body aside, that is truly a puzzle.
Over these years I may have found one secret: that cultivating combat arts, like cultivating divine arts, requires passing through various trials. These trials are never named as such; the warriors who advanced may have met the requirements without knowing it, and no one ever set them down clearly. If this is the method the gods left behind, then some of it may have been deliberately left out from the very beginning.
Far more people cultivate combat arts than divine arts. Most of them never know what trial they happened to pass; they simply believe they owe it all to hard training, stubborn will, and a bit of inexplicable luck. They are right—but I mean to uncover the secret behind that luck. No one is lucky out of thin air.
I have studied the lives of countless warriors, low rank and high, and drawn certain patterns from them—patterns that may be exactly what the texts deliberately pass over.
If divine arts and combat arts were originally one, and are to be joined back into a single method of cultivation, then there is also a particular order within it, one that cannot be scrambled any more than the notes of a melody. Otherwise there is no cultivating them to the same rank; you can only give up one achievement to gain the other.
And once you have started out on the wrong road, to give up the power you have gained and begin again is very, very hard. I dare not be sure of any of this; it is still only guesswork. The secret of becoming a god may lie somewhere in it. Even if it truly is that secret, most people can only look on and sigh, for a ninth-rank divine artist or a ninth-rank grand warrior is already exceedingly rare in this world.
I am still thinking it through and piecing it together, with no firm conclusion yet. I have taken away the holy maiden of the Isis Temple and the Tears of the Gods; they may help me unlock this secret. That is also why a host of divine artists and warriors are hunting me and I cannot get free. I can only send you this much for now.
—Your student, Bel
The Old Madman finally finished his tale and sat down to drink in silence. Amon said nothing for a long while either; even with a belly full of questions he had no idea where to begin, for these matters seemed far too profound to him—profound beyond imagining.
They had talked away a whole afternoon without noticing, and the sky was gradually darkening; it was time for Amon to go home for supper. By now the Old Madman had emptied a whole jar of wine, yet there was not the least drunkenness in his eyes—only a trace of inexplicable weariness. He set down his cup and said, "Amon, I watched you grow up, and I have been training you since you were small. Your potential and your gifts are even better than Bel's—far better."
Amon said "Ah," but did not take it up; he sensed a second meaning in the Old Madman's words, as though the old man had some design on him.
Sure enough, the Old Madman went on of his own accord, "I meant to raise you into a brilliant grand mage, but whenever I think of the message Bel sent, I always feel I should be more careful. The first step must not go wrong."
"I...?" Amon got out only half a sentence.
The Old Madman looked at him and smiled, a rather uncanny smile. "Of course you. Why else would I have taught you so much all these years? You can write the two scripts common on this continent, and I taught you in another way how to mine godstone, giving body and spirit the finest training—all without your ever truly studying divine arts or combat arts. I was waiting for this day."
"What about this day?"
The Old Madman did not answer, but turned the subject. "Amon, if you become a mage, you should understand from what happened to Bel and to me that to keep yourself safe, you must wait until the day you become a grand mage. Of course, a warrior's identity might make excellent cover, if you study combat arts and divine arts at the same time… Child, don't tell me you're unwilling? If only to repay this old man, you shouldn't refuse."
Amon reached up and rubbed his head. "Willing? Why wouldn't I be willing? I'm just the son of an ordinary miner in this town—why would I refuse any of it? I'd be willing even if it weren't to repay you. It's not as if you'd do me harm."
The Old Madman smiled bitterly. "Harm you? I don't know myself whether I'm harming you. But I often think of Bel—if that counts as harming him, then he was probably more than willing to be harmed that way by me, if it bought him a life so splendid… I have only one wish for you: to uncover the secret of the gods."
Amon said, "You're speaking of something far too distant. How could I compare with what Bel achieved? For now I can only imagine it."
The Old Madman shook his head. "Whether it's done depends on the person. If you really try, you very likely won't succeed—but if the puzzle is never unraveled, then we will live forever in a world of chaos. So at the least, we can try with all our strength."
Amon asked, "So how will you teach me?"
The Old Madman nodded, apparently well satisfied. "You really are a remarkable child. Shocked and bewildered as you must be after hearing so many incredible things from me, you still keep your calm and your clarity… I'll tell you this: I don't know exactly what secret Bel finally unlocked, but I have settled one thing for myself."
Amon asked, "What is it?"
The Old Madman said, "The first step in gaining power."
Amon asked, "Awakening two powers at once? You already have a way?"
The Old Madman smiled again. "Clever boy. Hearing what I've described, you went straight to that. But you're a little off: it isn't awakening two powers at once, it's awakening one power—a power of one body with two faces. I looked back over my whole life, traced it all the way down to the source, and took my inspiration from the miners' craft of Duke Town."
The Old Madman went on, "When Gabriel asked whether you had studied combat arts, the truth is you hadn't—you only have a strong physique, plus a few divine-art tricks that haven't even crossed the threshold. Now I mean to test you, to see whether you can begin to awaken that power. But mind this: awakening a power of one body and two faces also awakens desires of one body and two faces. In that lies the first trial a combat-arts cultivator must face—the one that gets overlooked."
Amon asked, "How will you test me?"
The Old Madman's eyes narrowed to slits. "Tonight go to the Cold Spring and do one thing. When you've succeeded, come find me."