何去何从

　本节只提供一些重要灵域的简概，相比第五纪元，它们在第四纪元更易进入。黄泉（最大的阴域）的进一步信息也出现在第六章。

　想要障壁之上世界的更多信息的叙事人，应先查阅本线核心。然后能扩充到其它各种拓展，如《黑玉王朝》（阴界总概，黄泉详述）、《影界：丝绒幻影》（阳界，虽然是西方视角）和《千狱》（狱界）。

Realms of the Spirit

　Treatise by Xiang Xiwei, Western Mask of the Many Faces Wu

　The Middle Kingdom is a vast place for the Wan Kuei. While many mortals never leave their home village, vampires travel with impunity, provided they can find a safe place to spend the day. And while mortals may speak of the songs of Heaven and the torments of Hell, we Ten Thousand Demons are intimately familiar with the various reaches of the spirit world - at least, with the Yin and Yang Realms and Yomi Wan; most of us no longer speak of Heaven.

摘自丹祥的点评：

　终花之乡的灰烬和尘埃对一些人来说能是宝藏。那些精通此类事物的能用灰烬酿造力量强大的炼丹药水。其他人还告诉我，若在灰烬地面挖得足够深，还能找到黄金和宝玉。我自己只去过一次；它是我见过的最安静的地方，这使其很适合沉思。

The Yin World

　The Yin World lies within and below the realm of the physical. It is a dark place, hollow with the death-energies of Yin, and the final resting place of all things in the void of Oblivion. At the same time, it is quiet and peaceful. The young Wan Kuei should remember that Yin is not evil; it is merely an end to change. Scores of realms populate the tempestuous void of Yin, the greatest of which is the Yellow Springs, controlled by Yu Huang, Jade Emperor of the Dead. There are many other realms of interest, however.


Home of the Final Blossom

　In the dying days of the Third Age, a mortal woman named Tien Lu, who'd walked close to death her entire life, entered the spirit world on a quest to become immortal and escape death's predation for all time. Her travels took her into the Yang Realms and, eventually, to a high mountaintop, to the Everlasting Tree. Only one flower remained on the vast tree's branches. As Tien Lu reached for that blossom, the tree itself spoke to her, saying: "In this flower lives the last of my life, and as the Everlasting Tree dies, so does this kingdom. Are you truly heartless enough to take it from me?"

　Tien Lu, old and suspicious, laughed. "You try to deceive me, old tree, for this kingdom lies in the heart of Yang, and you simply wish to keep your own power." With a smile, she plucked the last blossom from the Everlasting Tree and ate it. As she hiked down the mountain, air rushed past her; green grass turned to gray ash, which scuffed into clouds as she walked upon it. Tien Lu, last of the Wan Xian, left the Home of the Final Blossom as it swung from Yang to Yin.

　Today, the Home of the Final Blossom is airless; any mortal entering it would certainly suffocate, and there is no wind to carry sound to living or dead ears. The realm is waterless, too; spaces that were once rivers and lakes are now inky and black voids; some of the largest "lakes" brim with Yin Chi. Trees, grass and fantastic creatures stand motionless; they are no more than beautiful sculptures of ash now, destroyed by the slightest contact. The Everlasting Tree still stands atop its mountain; it, too, is a pile of ash, but those that taste Chi in the air can sense tantalizing fragments of Yang energies wafting past - - perhaps this is the last touch of the active Celestial Emperor in the universe.



The Shards of the Imperial Libraries

　In the earliest days of the Fourth Age, the Yama King Dou Tingzhang, Mutilator of the Unfaithful, staged an attack on the August Personage's libraries; his intention was to sever the vast library compound from the rest of the Heavenly Palace, twist it into Hell and use it as a base of operations in his campaigns against the former servitors of Heaven and the other Yama Kings.

　But the servants of Heaven - the hsien, the Ferocious People and even a few still-loyal Wan Kuei - built ramparts and barricades to keep the forces of Yomi Wan at bay. The battle lasted for weeks; eventually, Dou Tingzhang himself stepped forward to face Zhao Fenzhan, an aged, powerful weretiger, in single combat. That battle, it is said, took the better part of a day, and it laid waste to much of the libraries' grounds and many of the libraries themselves. Finally, at the point of death, Zhao invoked the Heaven Thunder Hammer and drove Dou back to Hell, where he was later set upon by his peers and torn to shreds.

　The Shards of the Imperial Libraries float in the Yin Realm. Each library building (there are 11) and its grounds are present, even though some buildings are not intact or even usable; the weeks of fighting combined with the maelstrom of Zhao's final combat with Dou destroyed most of the structures of the compound. Zhao's burial cairn occupies a position of honor near the center of the realm; it was the last thing constructed by the libraries defenders before they left in the aftermath of Dou's defeat. On the whole, the Shards are quiet places of contemplation and study. A handful of buildings remain intact enough that sufficiently driven Wan Kuei can enter and find ancient scrolls or simply sit and meditate in peace.

　Chorales of former librarians parade through the ruins; they can no longer see or read, but the text of scrolls and books from their sections within the library are pressed onto their skin. The chorales have been together for thousands of years now; each of them knows all of the words inscribed on all of the members of their chorale, and as they slowly wander from half-burned building to collapsed husk, they sing or chant those words. Not all of their songs are derived from poetry, mind you; a particularly dreary chant is simply a calendar marking the proper times for a farmer to hoe, plant, weed and harvest. The chorales are not entirely monomaniacal; they will stop if confronted and speak (usually in a droning singsong) if addressed.


The Watery Kingdom of Fu Yi

　Fu Yi was once a thriving kingdom on the ocean's coast, in the mortal world. Its Wan Xian kings and lords built towering stone and wooden buildings, soaring bridges and gracefully spired temples; they were philosopher kings and warrior-poets. Fu Yi had numerous cities and a population in the hundreds of thousands. This, of course, was before chaos and madness struck the Wan Xian.

　When the Wan Xian made war on each other, the very earth of Fu Yi trembled. As months of fighting passed, astute mortals noticed the sea's slow rise, the perpetual flooding of major rivers and great valleys blasted out where mountain ranges once stood. On the fifth day of the fifth month of the last year of the Third Age, the lands of Fu Yi gave a great shuddering heave and submerged beneath the ocean floor and into the Yin Realm. Today, no sign remains of the kingdom in the mortal world; the remains of its beautiful buildings entered the Yin Realm rather than remaining on the sea floor.

　Thousands of mortals drowned, of course, and hundreds remained attached to Fu Yi as ghosts when it slid across the Wall. The kingdom itself remains quite flooded, even in the Yin Realm; seawater rises far above the grandest spire of Fu Yi. The ghosts of the land acclimatized to their new surroundings remarkably quickly and set about their moist afterlives with surprising vigor. Their first step was to restore their nation's former beauty, and they have long since completed that process.

　The subjects of the Undying King of Fu Yi elected themselves a new king in the underworld, and although the king has been replaced more than once, the passage of power has largely been peaceful. The population of Fu Yi no longer increases - perhaps a shipwreck every generation or two contributes to the ranks of the drowned dead here, but no more than that. Yin spirits, malevolent and benign, pass through the realm on occasion and are met with a response appropriate to their nature.

　The ghosts of Fu Yi have watched the rise of the Yellow Springs Realm since the death of Qin Shihuangdi, and they are no friends to the Jade Empire. Fu Yi is far smaller than Yu Huang's realm, of course, and would be crushed in an outright war. However, the ghosts of Fu Yi retain three large advantages over those of the self-styled Jade Emperor: They are truly ancient ghosts who do not, apparently, face the worst dangers of Oblivion and, so, are individually very powerful; their kingdom is a three-dimensional maze of water in which the forces of Yu Huang are at a great tactical disadvantage; and they refuse to take to the field, fighting only when it suits them, in ambush, assassination and harassment, spending the rest of the time submerged where most wraiths cannot follow.

The Yang World

　The Yang World floats above the physical plane. It is well-lit and alive with untold thousands of spirits, a bright reflection of the mortal world. However, just as Yin is not synonymous with evil, the reader should not believe that Yang is synonymous with good; there is wickedness in the Yang World. Like its counterpart, the Yang World is home to countless realms. Unlike Yin, there is no truly dominant realm, only countless places of wonder and danger. Some of the most interesting include the following:


Realm of the Celestial Blacksmith

　When the August Personage of Jade dissolved the perfect universe into contested realms of Yin and Yang, the First Celestial Craftmaster, Ru Shou, built his forge in the lands of the south. Ru Shou brought the art of smelting metal to the people of the Middle Kingdom and so became especially venerated; because metal was first used to make weapons, Ru Shou became known as the God of Punishment.

　As the Yin and Yang Realms spiraled further apart, Ru Shou himself became torn; he needed both metal and fire to forge weapons for the greatest of the Celestial Emperor's servants. Ru Shou saw the slow rise of the eaters of cursed Chi among the Wan Xian and equipped the dragons and hsien who served him with his finest weapons before closing off his vast estate to the Ten Thousand Immortals. The servitors of Ru Shou fought corrupt invader Wan Xian for decades and finally repelled the demons early in the Fourth Age.

　Now, thousands of years later, Ru Shou has begun to send his servants out into the Middle Kingdom to see what changes have been wrought. The God of Punishment has long since run out of metal, with his estate now deep in the Yang Realm, and while he has kept busy firing truly beautiful pots - and even more fantastic works, including one chariot worked from the very clouds - he has instructed his servants to bring him fine copper and bronze for smelting and to return with news of the world. More than one truly old bodhisattva recognizes Ru Shou's servants, and those ancient ones know that a sword crafted by Ru Shou could be a powerful tool, if placed in the right hands.


Lands of Freakish Multitudes

　Travelers' tales of ancient China speak of dozens of strange kingdoms, populated by peoples who no longer exist. Stories speak of people with no heads, with their faces on their abdomen, or those with two heads or those with one head and two bodies or dozens of other strange variations. These beings have strange habits and stranger dietary requirements: Some could eat only the inedible parts of animals and relished meals of fur, claws and bones, while others were restricted to consume only spring wheat and so on.

　These beings and their dozens of kingdoms which traded and made war with human kingdoms on a regular basis during the Third Age do still exist; they are collectively known as the Lands of the Freakish Multitudes, in the Yang Realm. These lands, more spirit than material even in the Third Age, are now kept apart from the mortal world by the Celestial Emperor's Wall, through which few can pass.

　A continuous flow of Yang Chi permeates the Freakish Lands; this energy sustains many strange creatures that long ago died out in the physical world. And rumor has it that even more surprising beings inhabit these realms. According to the semi mythical A Drunken Traveler's Journal, the Wan Xian were not only chosen from the ranks of humankind but also from some of these bizarre races. And unreliable reports in the Beast Court of Xinjiang suggest that a handful these immortals remain, hiding out where the Wall and the copious flow of Yang Chi protect them from the fire of the August Personage's curse. These tales might simply serve to hide a darker truth, however; no reliable Wan Kuei witness has returned with such a tale from these lands.


The Kingdom of Fiery Passions

　Yang Chi is, in its most basic sense, life energy. It pushes the tiger to chase down the deer, while it pushes the deer to run from the tiger, It drives away disease and sustains the farmer in his toils. And it exhorts all things that live to reproduce and expand their lineage. The Kingdom of Fiery Passions embodies that last urge; it is a land where the only imperative is to couple, procreate and couple again.

　The term "kingdom" is perhaps an inaccurate name for this place. There is no sovereign, no bureaucracy. The air carries the warm, green scent of early spring; forests and valleys thrive with life. Tens of thousands of spirits fill this place, and the number grows annually. Animal spirits mate without consideration to species, and their offspring show a jumbled hybrid of their parents traits. Some Wan Kuei suspect that this realm is the true homeland of the Ferocious People, but perhaps not surprisingly - few of them are willing to sit down to a discussion on the subject.

　A few Thrashing Dragons have made a permanent home of this place. They can feed on the Yang energies of local spirits and spend their days in sybaritic hedonism. Wan Kuei who are not Yang-unbalanced find the place rather uncomfortable, despite the temptation of a long-term scarlet cycle. The Thrashing Dragons who reside here - the Scarlet Forest wu - have given birth to numerous dhampyr children, who seem inured to the flood of life-energy around them.

Yomi Wan

　The Thousand Hells are the repository for much of the evil of the mortal world. Yomi Wan does not cause the wickedness of the world; instead, much as the Yang Realm reflects the mortal world's life energies, Yomi Wan reflects and focuses the mortal world's corruption. Few souls would choose to enter one of the Thousand Hells; those that do are either mad, driven to power-lust or intend to flee as quickly as possible.


The Lands of Hell

　If The Black Scrolls of Xia are to be believed, the Yama Kings seized lands from Heaven and Earth and both the Yin and Yang Realms to create Yomi Wan. Certainly, the Wan Kuei speak of "lost vistas" that now can only be visited in Hell.

　Each Yama King has seized his own territory; either he ripped it away from another realm in the Second or Third Age or has since destroyed a hell's founder and claimed that land as his own. By now, most Yama Kings, are firmly ensconced in their respective hells, with spies everywhere; when rumblings of insurrection begin, the Yama Kings know who to execute.

　Few of even the most powerful demons give thought to conquering a hell for themselves. That is not to say that, for instance, Yargra the Many-Mouthed gives no thought to creating a hell of her own. Yargra's servants explore the mortal, Yin and Yang Realms in search of lands that could serve as the foundation for new hells. In the ancient days, the Wan Xian might have noticed these machinations and struck against the demon dukes and barons. But the Wan Xian are long gone. Perhaps the gods' old servants the hsien or the Ferocious People might stand against these not-yet Yama Kings.


Yama Kings and the Hells

　We assume, perhaps wrongly, that the best known Yama Kings are also among the most powerful. Today, the most powerful Yama Kings would be Bao Zhong, ruler of the Hell of Undying Sorrow; Mikaboshi, lord of the Wicked City (of which Harappa may well provide the foundation: See below); Danoru Ka, King of the Never-lit Cavern; Ravana, the lord of Lanka; Emma-o, lord of a Nihonjin Hell; Rangda, Queen of Plagues; and Tou Mu, the Iron Empress. Of these, no all use akuma; Bao Zhong and Tou Mu never do, and Rangda uses them sparingly.


Harappa

　During the Age of Legend, while the land flourished under the protection of the Wan Xian, a great innovation sprung up in the furthest reaches of the Middle Kingdom. Under the guiding hand of the immortals, the great city of Harappa arose on the plains of the Indus River. The city boasted a population of 50,000 craftsmen, merchants, soldiers and officials. This was no village of ox carts, no rustic fortification for some brutish tribal king - it was a beacon of refinement and contentment built toward the sky with bricks and mortar, gold and ivory. It was only a matter of time before Harappa caught the baleful eye of the Yama Kings.

　This creation of the Wan Xian and mortals was an irresistible target for the Yama Kings. After ages of defeat after resounding defeat at the hands of the Ten Thousand Immortals, an army of demons ripped through the fabric of the spirit world to set foot in the Middle Kingdom for the first time in centuries and to sack the city of Harappa.

　The people of Harappa put up a valiant fight, taking to the field in chariots, armed and armored with glinting iron. But for all their military regalia, they were not warriors - they were artists, traders and scholars. The forces of Hell cut through them like a scythe through a field, until their immortal champions joined the fray. The resulting battle was cataclysmic - the seas boiled, rivers leapt from their beds, the earth itself bucked and heaved. The Wan Xian were victorious in the end, destroying hordes of demons and forcing the rest to retreat. When the surviving defenders finally put down their swords to look around, the river valley was devastated for hundreds of miles in every direction. Their beautiful city was gone, entire sections of it pulled to Yomi Wan by the greedy talons of the Yama Kings.

　It was not long after this crushing loss that the corruption of the Wan Xian began. Some later Wan Kuei scholars claim that Mahanaga Visparakni was among the benefactors of Harappa and a survivor of the battle with the Yama Kings. Crushed by the loss of his beloved city, he began a search for power - power enough to have made a difference, enough to have saved the mortals under his protection. If this is true, then un-doubtedly power is what the Yama Queen Tou Mu offered him and the first akuma found out the price too late.