“Bai Ling.” 

In response, the paperman floated in through the crack in the window. Zhou Ying didn’t look up. Profound gloom flitted over his brow. He instructed, “Ask the Luwu in Western Chu what’s happened in that awful Tao County this time. I’m going to the East Sea.” 

The water dragon pearl he had left with Shiyong had just been touched. Who dared to infiltrate the demon seal? 

Bai Ling saw his expression, which looked as if someone had tugged on his reverse scale, and didn’t dare to ask what had happened. Just as he was about to obey orders and send a letter, he happened to see a letter come in. 

Bai Ling instantly stopped in his tracks. 

Zhou Ying said, “Has anything changed on Xuanyin Mountain? Those two old…” 

Bai Ling said, “My-my lord!” 

Zhou Ying looked back expressionlessly—this was his expression of utmost impatience—and saw Bai Ling slowly raise the communication device in his hand. On it was a line of familiar arrogant writing. It said: “All is well, do not worry.” 

The chiming clock in the study came to the full hour just then, releasing thin steam with a click. The karma beast carved on the clock used its head to push the gold balls on the clock face into the correct time. When the clock struck, the writing on the immortal tool had yet to fade. 

This person who hadn’t even been able to speak if someone else was present had broken through the demon seal’s prohibition. 

Xi Ping took a deep breath and put down the Luwu communication device. “The demon seal’s prohibition on me has vanished.” 

It took all his strength to control himself and not write home. 

He couldn’t even look after himself right now. He truly had no surplus strength for protecting the mortals in the Yongning Marquis Manor. All he could do was stay as quiet as possible to avoid getting his family involved. 

Xi Ping unconsciously stroked his hands, feeling that they were unfamiliar—these hands had long, slender fingers and came from a life of luxury. Never mind the flesh and bones, even the faint calluses that came from plucking instruments seemed to have been carved by a sculptor… There were no hangnails, no scars, no sores. There wasn’t even any dirt under the nails, or any deformed joints. 

Suddenly, Xi Ping realized that back when Liang Chen had “woken up” in his body, the first thing he had done had also been to stroke these hands in wonder…exactly the same way he was doing now. 

What am I doing…? Xi Ping abruptly tucked his thumbs into his palms. 

His consciousness had suddenly returned to his body. It was very unfamiliar—while he hadn’t been there, those three shed skin elders had simply smashed his half-baked established foundation body all the way to a consummate established foundation. 

As far as the open-eyed period went, while “consummate open-eyed” and an ordinary open-eyed cultivator were both called “half-immortals,” there was already a discrepancy of a hundred years of cultivation, a colossal difference. Half-immortals basically still relied on external objects. However proficient they were in talismans and arrays, they were still limited by their cultivation level; they couldn’t fight back against a higher grade cultivator. But “consummate open-eyed” meant a cultivator like Pang Jian, with a Way of the Heart completed and spiritual bones refined, only one established foundation pill and a sum of spiritual stones away from an established foundation, their strength approaching that of a true established foundation—never mind that Lin Zhaoli was an established foundation sword cultivator, if it really came to an all out fight, he still might not be able to defeat Pang Jian. 

And at the established foundation stage, cultivators could personally carve inscriptions, and the world as it appeared in their eyes wasn’t to be mentioned in the same breath as the open-eyed period. 

The distance between “early established foundation” and “consummate established foundation” was even further than at the open-eyed period. There would be hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of years to walk between the two. It was simply the difference between “immortal” and “human.” 

Though Xi Ping had accidentally sat on his own hair, his consciousness was unprecedentedly free. 

Five years ago, he had stamped a hither seal on his newly-established spiritual foundation and nearly irretrievably destroyed himself; but now, he could probe almost at will with his consciousness, using any reincarnation wood tree on earth as a medium. 

He could see all of Tao County at a glance. Seeing the Xia River and the mountains beyond Tao County, he felt trepidation—the big river was like an irrigation ditch, which he could block with one hand, and the mountains all seemed to be made of paper… No wonder shifu’s single sword thrust had sent the whole East Sea boiling. 

All living things were before his eyes, all become so weak. Xi Ping didn’t even dare to exert any strength stepping on the white jade floor of the Snake King’s Immortal Palace. He guiltily shuffled a few steps forward on tiptoe, then heard Zhi Xiu say: “…you’re swinging the wrong arm.” 

The shard of Zhaoting was suspended in Xi Ping’s spirit, on the Tai Sui Qin—the place where another person’s Way of the Heart would have been suspended. Xi Ping had no Way of the Heart, only a feeble sliver of his shizun’s consciousness residing in a sword shard, always watching over his unbounded soul. 

“Shifu.” As Xi Ping spoke, with a thought, he had already left the Snake King’s Immortal Palace and arrived in the middle of Seventeen Li Town’s street. It was already dark. Streetlamps were lit at the Immortal Palace’s gate. Just up ahead was a cookware repairman getting ready to pack up his stall, limping over with his little pole over his shoulder, staring at him the whole way. “Someone is looking at me. Can he…see me?” 

It had been too long since Xi Ping had been seen. With someone looking at him, he looked back directly, two grown men staring at each other in the middle of the street; the atmosphere was a little peculiar. 

The young man in brocade robes had an extravagantly dazzling face, markedly beautiful and sharp-boned, with arrogance inherent in his features, as far as could be from “gentle and honest.” The cookware repairman was a humble craftsman, belonging to the class that walked through the streets carrying poles over their shoulders. Normally, never mind staring, if he had run into such a fine young master, he would have avoided him. But for some reason, the cookware repairman kept thinking there was something familiar about the person in front of him. Looking at this face that expressed “bad temper” with the tips of its eyebrows, not only did he not feel fear, he felt out of nowhere that he had been wronged. He accidentally bumped into a tree by the road. 

But when he hit it, the reincarnation wood tree became soft and gently held him up. The cookware repairman was extremely surprised. When he looked back, the young man in brocade robes had disappeared into the misty night. 

“I am also looking at you.” Zhi Xiu had to take a long rest each time he spoke, as if conserving his strength as much as possible. His words nearly made Xi Ping burst into tears. 

But then he heard him say weakly, laughing, “I’ll remember all the beatings I owe you—Lin-shixiong, my inferior disciple is rude and has no sense of proportion. You have gone to a great deal of trouble looking after him.” 

Xi Ping held back his tears and finally remembered that he had seized a sliver of Lin Chi’s consciousness and had yet to let him go. 

He was done for. He had called the man “Lin Chi” right to his face and called him “bashful” behind his back. On their first meeting, he had tricked his blood out of him… Would Peak Master Lin have a ten-thousand-word complaint to lodge? 

Lin Chi, trapped in the reincarnation wood by Xi Ping, could hear Zhi Xiu’s voice through Xi Ping’s spirit. Catching up twice as slowly as other people, he finally stammered, “Gen-general Zhi?” 

“There is a shard of Zhaoting in his body. I can just about manage to use Zhaoting to have a look,” Zhi Xiu said. “I think that this place is no longer restrained by the Sanyue Spiritual Mountains… What was that power beyond the laws just now?” 

“It was the Law Breaker that Xiangjun left behind.” Lin Chi had no attention to spare for enumerating complaints. He quickly asked Xi Ping, “Wh-what happened? Where is the Law Breaker? Was she activated? What is her axiom?” 

Xi Ping quickly made a round of Tao County and found no trace of the Law Breaker Bracelet. That mysterious demonic tool seemed to have blended into the earth of Tao County. Even the force of the rule that only an ascended spirit could sense had vanished without a trace. 

But the Moon Shadow was still there, the huge deficit of spiritual energy was still there, and the full moon wounds were also still there. 

Xi Ping hesitated. Zhi Xiu said, “Lin-shixiong stands apart from worldly strife. So long as it does not go against his Way of the Heart, he will not readily involve himself in ordinary affairs.” 

Xi Ping considered it. That was true. At the beginning, when faceless Xuanwu had come, had Lin Chi not protected him, then the Law Breaker Bracelet would at best have been able to steal a corpse for the people to make offerings to. So he respectfully called out “Lin-shishu,” then briefly explained the axiom he had grabbed in the core of the Law Breaker. 

Lin Chi: “…” 

He had wasted eight hundred years. He had never seen such a thing. 

Xi Ping seemed to want to make up for his past rudeness. Stepping on a dry reincarnation wood twig to fly up to the sky over Tao County, he said, “Please instruct me, Lin-shishu. In your view, what is the current situation in Tao County?” 

“Within the area enveloped by the Law Breaker, the axiom is eternal,” Lin Chi said cautiously after thinking for a long moment. “With her there, at least as long as you are in Tao County, no one will be able to perceive what you do…unless the axiom breaks, or the axiom is realized.” 

“How could the axiom break or be realized?” 

“For the axiom to be realized, the inside and the outside of the Law Breaker must be united—the majority of axioms cannot be realized, so we can leave that aside for the time being,” Lin Chi said. “At present, it seems that Tao County has acknowledged you as ‘Tai Sui.’ As long as you are there, so long as you do not abandon the mortals of Tao County who believe in you, the axiom will not break.” 

Xi Ping froze, not knowing what to think. 

In other words, under the protection of the Law Breaker’s axiom, he could escape the demon seal and conceal it from the world; but if he failed to act and broke Tao County’s axiom, the Law Breaker would naturally lose effect…and he would immediately be noticed by the Xuanyin Mountains. 

What was this? 

He was in a “symbiotic relationship” with Tao County now? 

Five years ago, he had been brought by coincidence to Tao County by the disaster-bringing evil cultivator. Here he had become “Tai Sui,” and then changed from “Tai Sui” back to “Xi Ping.” 

Five years later, his fate had been tied like this by a series of coincidences to a little town by the Wan-Chu border, like some secretly foreordained arrangement. 

“Then…” Xi Ping asked after a long time, “what will Tao County become? I just saw that those hundred thousand white spirits are still missing.” 

“I don’t know,” Lin Chi said very honestly. “Do you still remember, last time the Law Breaker was activated, the axiom was only a simple sentence, but as for how to interpret it, for example where Qiu Sha had to be to count as ‘at the Immortal Palace’s night feast’ and other such vague boundaries, that was all set by Little Brother Wei. Others had no way of knowing. Little Brother Wei voluntarily activated the Law Breaker Bracelet, so she would have intentionally considered some stipulations, but the trouble this time is that the people of Tao County did this unintentionally, and the idea that activated the Law Breaker Bracelet wasn’t a specific person’s idea.” 

Listening to this, Xi Ping was all at sea. “Huh? In other words, what counts as ‘blessing and protecting.’ what it means not to ‘be fish on the chopping block,’ is undefined. There are no clear restrictions for me to follow like Xuanyin’s ‘three studies and three admonitions.’ What…what should I do? Do what I see fit?” 

Zhi Xiu said, “This so-called ‘axiom’ is indestructible, such that Lin-shixiong, the Golden Hand, cannot obstruct it. Yet it is also very fragile, such that Shiyong might inadvertently break it at any time?” 

Lin Chi sighed. “That’s correct.” 

Zhi Xiu’s voice became slightly grave. “But if this ‘axiom’ breaks, the Bell of Tribulation certainly won’t let him go—Lin-shixiong, can you think of anything?” 

Lin Chi considered, then gravely shook his head. “With the Law Breaker’s axiom present, he can perhaps use the Luwu masks to shield his identity and occasionally leave Tao County, but if the Law Breaker’s axiom breaks, there is nothing I can do to hide him from the demon seal. It has been eight hundred years. That even a mediocrity like me could become famous shows that the toolmaking path is destitute. Apart from Xiangjun, no one could escape the surveillance of the spiritual mountains.” 

“That’s too dangerous. The Law Breaker’s protection is like paper over a fire.” After what he had heard, Zhi Xiu couldn’t resist saying, “Shiyong…” 

As Zhi Xiu spoke, he quickly considered several places—for example, the huge ice fields with no one around for thousands of li, beyond the Slumbering Dragon Sea, north of the Beijue Mountains; or perhaps the ancient hidden realms that could hide a person… The demon seal at the bottom of the Impassable Sea was such that once you went in you couldn’t leave, but this place belonged to Western Chu, after all, and Xuanyin was currently in turmoil. Supposing that Xi Ping cast Tao County aside at once, perhaps he could escape to a relatively safe place before the Xuanyin Mountains could react. 

But…if he escaped, then what would happen to the people who had placed their trust in him in a moment of utter despair? 

General Zhi couldn’t speak, because to say this would violate Zhaoting’s sword heart. He couldn’t instruct his disciple to do this. 

But in his eyes, Xi Ping was even younger than he himself had been when he had come to the immortal mountains. He was a child. How could a teacher like him, who had been unable to protect the innocent children at the bottom of the Impassable Sea, have the face to use himself as a standard against which to measure a child? 

“Shifu,” Xi Ping suddenly cut in out of nowhere after staring blankly at Tao County for a long time, perhaps not listening to what his elders were saying, “it’s all right. I know.” 

“What do you know?” 

“I think I know what the boundaries of this axiom are.” Xi Ping extended a hand, and the Tai Sui Qin landed on his knees. As if he had understood something, in a brisk tone, he said, “I think…I’m also within it.” 

Zhi Xiu froze. Xi Ping’s last sentence had been spoken with a Chu accent. 

“Thank you, Lin-shishu, I will escort you back now. I will have to trouble you again in the future.” Saying so, skillfully using the reincarnation wood, Xi Ping sent Lin Chi’s consciousness back. He extended a hand and pushed apart the mist in the sky over Tao County. There was no sign yet of the new moon. There was only a sky full of stars. 

With a twang, the Tai Sui Qin began to sound over all of Tao County. Xi Ping not very skillfully played a Chu song, quiet and tranquil, as if it could calm the souls in a hundred thousand tombs. 

He had said he was “also within it”; he was also mixed in among…the ants of Tao County. 

Zhi Xiu listened to his song. When the melody ended, he suddenly felt a mixture of emotions. “Shiyong, if I had not let you leave the mountain back then…” 

“Hey, shifu, why don’t you hurry up and go back into seclusion? What are you doing getting mixed up in this instead of recuperating properly? You don’t have any money, anyway.” 

Zhi Xiu: “…” 

Rebellious disciple!