The Ninefold Ascent

Where things stand

The Ninefold Ascent is played by real people and keeps moving between their sessions. This is the state of it as of the last update — not a fixed setting, and not where it began.

Places

Skyblade Sect Gategate

The arched stone gate at the head of the nine-hundred-step path up to the Skyblade Sect's mountain terraces. Two pale-blue paper lanterns hang from the cross-beam; both have burned all night. The gate-stones are carved with the founding oath of the sect: 'The blade is the cultivator's own discipline; the discipline is the blade.' Two junior disciples in pale-blue robes stand watch — barefoot on the cold flagstones, hands folded in the proper Skyblade rest-posture.

Mortal Town Squareruins

The neutral heart of the Ninefold Vault — a stone-paved square at the foot of the nine mountains, ringed by the Cloud Tavern to the south, the Spirit Stone Market to the east, the Pill Apothecary to the west, and the path north toward the sect terraces. A nine-sided fountain stands at the center; its bed of spirit-stones has fed water and qi to the town for nine hundred years. The terraces of Skyblade, Blackfire, and Inquiry are visible above the rooflines, each lit by its own colored lantern at the gate-arch — pale blue, deep red, silver-grey.

Blackfire Hallsect

A low square hall built into the southern flank of the seventh mountain, faced in obsidian and roofed in dark fired tile. Two enforcers in deep-red robes flank the iron-banded door at all hours. The hall has stood for four hundred years and has been condemned by every orthodox sect for three hundred and ninety; the disagreement is theological — Blackfire holds that the soul is a renewable resource and the realms a contract.

Sword Forge Smithyworkshop

A stone-walled smithy at the southern edge of Mortal Town, where Smith Sheng Tieshou forges swords for Skyblade juniors and pruning-knives for the Beast Pact's lower-realm members. The forge has not gone cold in forty years. The smith's anvil bears a single deep mark from a sword-shape strike made by Sect Master Yan Weizhi nine years ago, when Sheng forged Yan's second blade.

Beast Pact Soulbond Grovegrove

A clearing in the high pine forest north of the Beast Pact Camp, ringed by twelve cinnabar offering-posts. The Pact's soulbond ritual is performed here — a cultivator and a beast meet at the center and choose each other or do not. The cinnabar posts hold the names of every successful bond in the Pact's history; the names are carved with bone-needles and a kind of patience.

Cinnabar Pondshrine

A once serene Cinnabar Pond, now tainted by a blighted spire, its crimson waters swirl with distorted spiritual energy, offering a sinister allure to those seeking quick power.

Cloud Taverntavern

The largest inn on Mortal Town Square — three stories of weathered timber, lantern-lit, with private second-floor rooms reserved for cultivators of Foundation and above. Innkeeper Old Lu has poured tea for every faction's elder at one time or another and has never repeated a word said over his counter.

Heavenly Envoy's Pavilionpavilion

A jade pavilion on the topmost ridge of the ninth mountain — the only structure in the Ninefold Vault that the cultivators did not build. It appears once every century when the Heavenly Court has an Edict to deliver. It has not appeared in two hundred and forty years. It is here now. Inside, a single figure sits on a pale jade dais — the Heavenly Envoy — in white nine-fold robes (pale chalk-white silk, nine vertical folds, no embroidery, no other colour), face hidden behind a featureless mask of pale jade. The Envoy has not moved in the days the pavilion has stood. The Envoy gives off no qi-signature.

Sect War Battlefieldwasteland

The once-verdant fields are now scorched and cratered, littered with broken weapons and the lingering echoes of desperate cries. The very earth trembles with the unending clashes.

Frost Craterwasteland

A circular depression in the rock five miles east of Mortal Town, walled in pale-blue mineral that emits a steady cold the surrounding land cannot warm. The first Spirit Vein deliberately killed by the Heavenly Court died here, a thousand years ago. The Spirit-Eater — that vein's remnant consciousness — sits at the crater's center on a stone the cultivators leave alone.

Spirit Vein Outcropshrine

A bare ridge of grey-veined stone two miles east of Mortal Town, where one of the surviving Spirit Veins surfaces. The vein is visible as a pale-green thread of qi running through the stone, two paces wide, alive enough that a cultivator at Qi-Gathering can sit beside it and refine for a half-day before the vein's warmth fades.

Blackfire Lord's Thronethrone

The high chamber at the back of Blackfire Hall — black-lacquer floor, obsidian throne, a single line of red lanterns along the wall behind it. Lord Ling Mohua sits in this room and does not leave it. No outsider has been admitted in the eleven years of his tenure as Blackfire Lord.

Pilgrimage Pavilionpavilion

An open-walled wooden pavilion on the path between the temple and the Misty Bamboo Sea, where pilgrims from the Mortal Vale once rested before climbing into the higher reaches. The benches are smooth from a thousand years of waiting. The pavilion has had no pilgrims this season.

Withered Veinwasteland

A subtle, almost imperceptible tremor passes through the Withered Vein, its uncontrolled qi momentarily less potent.

Vault of the Sourcechamber

The chamber of the Vault of the Source, dimly lit by its ancient pillars, now reveals a deeper layer of mystery. The qi, while low, pulses with a nascent awareness, hinting at a forgotten mechanism or ritual essential for its true restoration.

Tribulation Lakelake

A still mountain lake on the eighth peak, used by cultivators above Foundation realm as a breakthrough site for the Nascent Soul realm. The lake's surface reflects the sky perfectly; the breakthrough requires the cultivator to walk to the center on the reflection without breaking it. Few have succeeded since the Frost began.

Ascension Platformplatform

Blackfire harvesting rigs hum ominously, but their operation is frequently interrupted by the roars of beasts and the fierce charges of the Beast Pact. Defense lines are constantly shifting, and the ground is stained with qi and blood.

Mountain Templetemple

The Mountain Temple, once a quiet sanctuary, now hums with the subtle energy of a newly discovered Old Way scroll, its cryptic message of 'return' stirring ancient hopes and fears.

Demon-Beast Dencave

A cave on the south face of the seventh mountain, where Blackfire keeps the beasts it captures for vein-graft preparation. The orthodox sects do not speak of this place. The Beast Pact has tried twice in fifty years to liberate it; both times Blackfire enforcers killed every raider they caught and let one go to carry the story home.

Ten Thousand Petal Cliffcliff

The air at Ten Thousand Petal Cliff is thick with conflicting spiritual energies; the disorienting haze of the Spirit-Eater's illusions now occasionally parts, revealing glimpses of the true path beneath.

Old Way Pillarshrine

The Old Way Pillar pulses with an ominous, amplified energy, echoing the corrupted power now flowing from the Frost Crater. Whispers of the Spirit-Eater are clearer, more insistent, and the sky above shows signs of cosmic disturbance, affecting the Pillar's resonance.

Mortal Vale Passmountain

The narrow stone pass at the southern end of the Ninefold Vault, descending to the Mortal Vale below. The pass is the only road down that does not cross the bamboo sea. In summer it is a three-day walk to the first mortal village; in late autumn — which is now — it is twice that if it can be done at all. The Return to Mortal Vale ending requires this pass.

Talisman Workshopworkshop

A workshop once dedicated to the intricate art of talismans, now overshadowed by a blighted spire, its air thick with the scent of strange inks and the hum of corrupted qi.

Heavenly Tortoise Ridgeridge

A high spine of layered stone on the fifth mountain, said to be the petrified back of one of the first Heavenly Tortoises that the founding cultivators rode down from the Celestial Realms. The Beast Pact considers the ridge sacred and the Skyblade Sect considers it folklore.

Figures

• Elder Cao YulanSenior elder of the Inquiry Academy, Foundation realm, distant descendant of Cao Linshu
• Disciple Lin JingyuJunior disciple of the Skyblade Sect, Qi-Gathering realm
• Mayor Han JishengMortal Mayor of Mortal Town, mortal, three terms
• The Spirit-EaterRemnant consciousness of the first Spirit Vein the Heavenly Court deliberately killed
• Talisman Maker Zhao MojinTalisman painter, mortal, two decades at the desk
• Elder Wen SuoxiaSenior elder of the Skyblade Sect, Foundation realm peak
• Smith Sheng TieshouSword Forge smith, mortal, forty years at the anvil
• Matriarch Xun YaoweiMatriarch of the Beast Pact, bonded to a great tiger named Sheng-Yi, Nascent Soul realm
• Apprentice Bai WushuangApprentice of the Inquiry Academy, Halfborn
• Pill Master Granny TaoPill Apothecary, mortal, fifty-three years brewing
• Wandering Sword Mu JinyuNo-Gate hermit, formerly Skyblade, Spirit-Severing realm
• The Old Way KeeperHermit of the Forbidden Cavern, Inquiry Academy elder long thought dead
• Walks-the-Withered-VeinHermit of the Forbidden Cavern, Inquiry Academy elder long
• Sect Master Yan WeizhiSect Master of the Skyblade Sect, Nascent Soul realm
• Disciple Mei YunheActing Elder Cao Yulan's scout and scholar
• Healer Granny LinMortal healer, runs the Elder Hut
• Pilgrim Mute Brother ShiCemetery caretaker, mortal, takes no spoken word
• Stone Trader Wei YuanmingSpirit Stone Market head trader, mortal, the only honest broker
• Enforcer Hua TielongSecond-rank enforcer of Blackfire Hall
• The Heavenly EnvoyEmissary of the Heavenly Court, Tribulation realm
• Master Cao LinshuInquiry Academy elder, poisoned a hundred and fifty years ago by the Heavenly Envoy's servants
• The Echo at the PillarSolitary witness at the Old Way Pillar, neither dead nor fully alive
• Innkeeper Old LuCloud Tavern innkeeper, mortal, listens to everyone
• Beast-Sworn Kao MangguBeast-Sworn warrior of the Beast Pact, bonded to a great bear

These are the figures the world was seeded with, and who are still alive in it. Others have appeared since, and some of these are no longer who they were — the world keeps moving whether or not anyone is watching.