The Evergreen world is extremely large. There's hundreds of kingdoms, and a dozen empires, but there's also enough uncharted or unowned lands to match.
Outside of the empires and the free lands there is one church with seven major branches across the world, and four supreme cults that worships different supreme devils . There's also plenty of miniature cults.
Then there is the League of Saints. They have many peak force users, as well as the three venerable ones. The venerable ones have reached a level of mastery with their specific force, techniques and unorthodox methods; that they could match a demigod, or their equals which are the devil lords.
There's also a lot of special individuals who hold enough power to match empires, like the Cursed Knight, who was cursed when he had just entered the luminous step. Instead of allowing the curse to kill him, he used it as the unnatural component for his internal energy and forged something akin to a divine inspiration, the curse mark.
There's also the sword god, the living fortress, and the lonesome emperor.
All figures who's faced devil lords or even supreme devil incarnations. There's also many others worth mentioning that's just not on the level of the former few.
These are all powers that hold enough weight to change the world in ways.
For the past decade the cults have been very active, stirring trouble nonstop. The church has even had inquisitors come up missing when they went to investigate major cult activities. After enough information gathering the church has been able to notice something very important, the four supreme cults has been working together to pull something major off.
This information alerted the entire church, all of the branches. They even informed all of the major players like the Empires, the League, and the wandering power houses. They are worried it could be something world devastating like a Supreme devil incarnation or worse.
Everyone was working hard while on high alert and preparing for the worst.
This led to Horo's training to be ridiculous since birth, but instead of being pressured he reveled in the pain, exhaustion and growth.
His father was one of the best knights and was even nearing the demigod step, the only thing was he used a spear and his son loved the sword.
He taught his son the Knights path, while requesting the sword god himself to take Horo as a pupil. The sword god told him if Horo could reach the peak of the grandmaster level before the age of fourteen he'll take him, but Horo had reached this level at the age of six.
His father first told him about the steps of a night. First is the apprentice level, which holds stages one to seven. Next is the luminous step, which holds the Glow, Bright, and Blinding phases.
After that is the Vast step, this is where one accumulate and condense there life force until it burdens their heart before they solidify the heart using their special element or unnatural component, which leads to entering the Crystal step. The solidification leads to the heart having a vast space inside of it while remaining a completely physical entity, Hence the name of this step "Vast".
Then there's the Crystal step, where one continues the vast process over and over, until the outer shell of their heart becomes crystal like, while it holds extremely potent pure life force inside. This step has ten stages and the process will began the true evolution of your life force.
Next is the translucent step, where one transform all of their life force into life origin through ten steps With a heart full of life origin it will never stop beating even if the entire body is destroyed, as long as the heart isn't your life has not ended. At this level special talents can go through beyond ten steps.
The final step is the Sacred Heart step when one becomes a sacred night. Sacred knights condense lifeforce to their absolute limit and began shatter phases, which means to shatter the sacred heart and uses your life origin force to heal it making it much stronger and able to hold more and stronger life force. Once a sacred knight can no longer do this they can attempt to fuse the bead of faith with their heart to enter the demigod face.
Once one's life origin force fuse with faith power it becomes pseudo divine energy and can forge the bridge of heaven and establish the god kingdom. Thus becoming a god.
The force path goes apprentice, elite, master, grandmaster, Great grandmaster, sage, saint, venerable. The difference with the force path is they are unhindered unlike the knights path eventually becomes due to the world not being able to host gods.
The strongest on the priest path is the pope and it can only be one pope at a time.
Horo's dad guided him when it came to knighthood and internal energy based methods, but when he reached the requirement of the sword god he went under his tutelage for ten years. As they roamed uncharted lands and trained in the sword, Horo witnessed wonders of the world, things he didn't even know existed, things that the church or empires may not know.
Horo also experienced many battles, some with devils, some with force users, and even some cult priests. The strangest battles was with primeval beast, they're the rulers of most of the uncharted lands.
They are either gigantic fiends with indomitable bodies or vicious carnivores looking to devour anything in site.
The sword god even took him to a special tribe that lived in the uncharted lands. They used something called Aether arts. By aligning their souls with the constellations they could strengthen their mind and spirit and use uncanny abilities. It was unlike anything Horo ever saw, he didn't even see anything like it in the world of cultivation. They even taught Horo some things since he was the swords god's pupil. The sword god had saved their tribe from a truly powerful primeval beast that was to powerful.
There were many strange tribes in the uncharted lands and Horo benefited from wonderfully.
He couldn't believe how much of the world was unexplored, the world he knew of prior is like a totally different world.
The sword god told him that these people are the ones who chose to not leave the sacred lands, while the empires and church are descendants of those who migrated away from the primeval beast in the ancient times. Even though the they are much stronger now, they still don't wish to expand their territories and enter the uncharted lands because there are some truly powerful beast who will not relent their lands.
The sword god even incorporated a lot of methods he learned from tribes into his methods since he had long reached the peak in the way of the sword. Horo was even lucky that his father actually knew the sword god because the unspoken truth was that he stood at the peak of this world. The undisputed number one.
What horo couldn't understand is his age lifespan. Pure Force users can't nearly live as long as knights, and others.
Knights could live for thousands of years due to their core of power being their internal energy, which is essentially life force itself.
Priests served the gods and could live for hundreds of years depending on their acts of service. The pope could even live as long as sacred knights.
People from the cult had unexplainable methods.
Even tribe members had longer life spans the those who chased the force.
But the sword god enlightened him as always. He told Horo that once one reaches a certain level in the mastery, true mastery to the point where they disregard the need of force, they obtain "Domain". With "Domain" whether it's the sword, axe, spear or even fist, their body will be provided with resistance from concepts like deterioration, time, poison and more.
Horo gets more and more baffled the more he witness in this world. He noticed that force is not the same as intent from the world of cultivation and they both worked differently, but true mastery over something can provide domain here just like in the world of cultivation. He wondered does it apply in Azure Moon as well.
AUTHOR'S NOTE; Don't misunderstand! Internal energy is life force, it's just life force that's condensed to the point it becomes actual energy. So internal energy can be consider life force as well just the evolved version.