The chances are mostly of an incompatible maven-plugin version in your module. You could try to update the plugin configuration in the parent module to the following and test:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.7.0</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.9</source>
<target>1.9</target>
<jdkToolchain>
<version>9</version>
</jdkToolchain>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.0.2</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
For the list of compatible versions of all the plugins, do refer to Maven#Java9+Jigsaw
I had the latest maven version 3.6.3. But I realized there is a mismatch in the java version set in my environment path config to the one installed in my IDE (IntelliJ).
I configured to the latest JDK version (for 1.8) in my IDE to 1.8.0_265

I set my environment path to the same version

You can configure JAVA_HOME, JRE_HOME, JDK_HOME here. Also, make sure the path is added.

Reference on how to set environment variables: https://stackoverflow.com/a/26640589/2889297
Maven homepage gives you a high-level idea on what should be the compatible java version https://maven.apache.org/install.html
Note: After updating the environment path and before running mvn clean install, make sure the version is correctly reflected in the IDE terminal. You will have to close and reopen your IDE for the changes to be reflected.
I had the same error, but for the maven-failsafe-plugin.
With the help of a colleague, we got rid of the problem adding the version line to the plugin declaration in the project pom.xml. We added the <version>2.20.1</version> line resulting in the following plugin declaration.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.20.1</version>
<configuration>
<skipTests>false</skipTests>
<argLine>-Djava.library.path=${project.parent.basedir}/lib/${arquitecturaMaquina}</argLine>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
It is a long working project (over a year) and never had this error. I do not know what triggered it, but all the other answers about resetting the local repository, checking the proxy, etc did not work.
Then we added that version line to the pom.xml and the project built correctly again. Now I removed the line and it is still working. My guess is that it indeed had something to do with some messed up cache of some kind, and that requiring the specific version got rid of the mess and now it is working as before the problem appeared.
Add this to your pom.xml and it should work
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>maven2</id>
<url>https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2/</url>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>