“Xi Yue,” Xi Ping said in the treasury of the Yu family’s main residence, “after joining Heaven’s Design Pavilion, you may not have another honest reason for going abroad. You can’t have come all this way for nothing. Come on, put on a paperman, bring the spiritual stones for the spirit gathering array.” 

Saying so, Xi Ping picked up a dozen open-eyed grade mustard seeds inside the Yu family treasury and tossed them into the Law Breaker. “Hurry up, it’ll be too late once the Xiang family member gets to Tao County.” 

Xi Yue had a bellyful of questions: the person coming from the Xiang family was a middle period ascended spirit. A middle period ascended spirit’s consciousness could cover half the East Sea. Couldn’t it cover Tao County? Was there a lid over Tao County? 

Even if there was a lid over Tao County, could the hundred or so li from Yu Family Bend to Tao County stop an ascended spirit’s flight? He’d be there in no time. The traces of a spirit-gathering array on the scale of a hundred thousand white spirits couldn’t be dispersed. Even a blind person would know what had happened here. How was this any different from activating the array right in front of Xiang Wenqing’s face? 

What do you actually want? 

But the trouble was that Xi Yue’s mouth didn’t move fast enough. Before he could organize his words, Wei Chengxiang and a bunch of Luwu were swept all together into the Law Breaker. Everyone busily took a mustard seed to collect spiritual stones, moving as fast as thieves. Xi Yue was surrounded and left the Law Breaker carrying spiritual stones against his will. He had no time to speak. 

Then he heard Xi Ping’s order: “The Great Market has passed. This is the off season for Wild Fox Country, but there are still some cultivators there. Take care to conceal yourselves.” 

The spirit-gathering array had forty-nine places in all that needed spiritual stones placed on them. In the night, the half-immortals flitted over the barren earth like shadows, coming face to face with listless and sickly beasts of burden. The sparse inns had just closed up for the night. Lanterns had been lit in the tofu shops, their unsteady light now and then stabbing the abandoned little Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon station—this had originally been meant to connect to Great Wan; it had been built halfway, then abandoned. The workers then had been full of delight, thinking that Tao County would develop afterwards, not expecting that events wouldn’t run smoothly and that the attempt would fall through. To this day, they had been paid less than thirty percent of their wages. 

Segment after segment of rusted track lay discarded along the potholed roads. They had become children’s playgrounds. The children had drawn houses and plants next to them, more lively than even the Snake King’s Immortal Palace. During the day, they played hopscotch among the railroad tracks. At night, they left this happy abode to be watched over by the reincarnation wood trees growing aslant. 

And the waters of the Xia River flowed quietly. 

Xi Ping began to croon a Western Chu ditty that wouldn’t have stood up in an elegant hall. “The Xia's waters are long, so long your heart breaks. The river winds know not the wastes of Chu's hills…” 

He copied out in full the array Yu Chang had used to blow up the rear of the mountain and fake his death, only even larger, embracing the whole of the Yu family treasury within it. 

“…the wastes of Chu’s hills. Mountains high as the clouds cast shadows so heavy, the light doesn't shine in till noon…” 

The lines of his array were decisive and sharp. The spiritual threads seemed to have been carved with a knife. 

After going through the whole array without interruption, Xi Ping stopped. “Immortals in the sky rest on springtime joys, the emperor in Dongheng sits upon his throne. Gentlemen of the past, listen well, Chu's mountains are a good place, a good place…” 

“Tai Sui, the spiritual stones have been put in place in the west half.” 

“Tai Sui, there are extra spiritual stones, enough to make up for wastage.” 

“Tai Sui…” 

The reliable Luwu reported one after another. 

Xi Ping lowered his eyes, sensing the location of each Luwu. In his mind, he could draw the spirit-gathering array that he knew by heart. 

“Senior, the spirit-gathering array is complete,” Wei Chengxiang said at last. “Should I place the spiritual stones?” 

Xi Ping didn’t answer, so Wei Chengxiang didn’t rush him. She steadily used her one real hand to squeeze the mustard seed, ignoring all the anxious or distressed gazes aimed at her.

Zhao Qindan couldn’t resist saying, “Place them, what are you waiting for?” 

Wei Chengxiang raised a finger of her false hand. Zhao Qindan suddenly found that this slippery-tongued liar had unusually calm eyes, like a pair of still lakes that had reflected many eternal partings. 

“A-Xiang,” Xi Ping suddenly said to Wei Chengxiang, “Pang Wenchang is actually a pretty good person. At the beginning, if you’d gone to Jinghua Village according to his arrangements, by now you’d probably have gotten married and settled down very happily… Back then, you were young and impulsive, insisting on taking this fork in the road. I couldn’t convince you otherwise. You’ve been a vagrant for many years. You must have run out of youthful impulse by now. Are you afraid? Do you ever regret it?” 

Wei Chengxiang unflappably answered, “I’ve done many wrong things in the last twenty-something years, senior. There are some I’ve paid the price for, and some… I’m slow-witted by nature, and perhaps I haven’t yet discovered what wrong I did. I would venture to say that the only thing I didn’t do wrong was going south with the Exonerators to the Land of Turmoil and pushing open the door to cultivation by stepping on White Amaranth’s head.” 

Xi Ping said, “Your face has been weathered by the elements, and you have no permanent place to live. You haven’t gotten rid of your eye-opening scar, and you’ve even lost one hand. Is that very dignified? As soon as the young mistress laid eyes on you, she thought you were a bad guy.” 

Wei Chengxiang raised her head and looked at the reincarnation wood trees by the road, as if meeting the eyes of that mysterious Tai Sui, wherever he was. “On my knees in the mud, I’m willing to crawl. Sitting in a fragrant carriage, I would only be carried along. I wouldn’t feel at ease. In an ant’s whole life, being able to inch forward against the wind is good enough. It beats drifting downstream three thousand li. Don’t you think so?” 

“That’s right.” Xi Ping suddenly laughed. “That’s what I like to hear.” 

His gaze instantly pierced the heavy mountains—Yu Chang had clearly guessed his connection to reincarnation wood. He had been avoiding Xi Ping’s line of sight the whole time. But what he didn’t know was that Tao County was enveloped by the Law Breaker Bracelet. 

The moment a consciousness that had passed through the Law Breaker entered Tao County, the Tai Sui Qin moved faintly. 

A vein twitched at the back of Yu Chang’s head. Out of nowhere, he felt petrified. 

Xi Ping said, “Place them.” 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Wei Chengxiang poured spiritual energy towards her fingertips and opened the mustard seed in her hand. The last bag of spiritual stones fell onto the center of the array. 

As soon as Yu Chang charged into the limits of Tao County, the spirit-gathering array took shape as if keeping step with him. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought he was the crux of the array. 

Yu Chang was stupefied—ignoring for the moment how Tai Sui had gotten ahold of a hundred thousand and more white spirits without his help, he had actually dared to activate the spirit-gathering array right under the nose of the master from Sanyue’s inner sect! 

Did he want to die? Hadn’t he learned anything from Qiu Sha? 

When Sanyue’s inner sect brought the Silver Moon down from the mountain again, they would shine it at him, too, dry him to jerky while draining Tao County dry again. What was he playing at?! 

At the same time, all those who had laid down the array stuck pre-prepared “stealth shuttles” onto themselves and disappeared into the night, scattering in all directions—the stealth shuttles were an immortal tool from Xuanyin’s Moon Plated Peak, their effect about the same as stealth talismans, able to hide people. But a stealth talisman could only fool mortals and was only slightly useful against low-level cultivators, better than nothing. This stealth shuttle could completely avoid a half-immortal, and even those established foundations whose spiritual senses weren’t particularly notable. 

The spirit-gathering array that ran through all of Tao County flashed with an almost imperceptible faint light. Next, the spiritual energy of a hundred thousand white spirits was drained dry in an instant. The spiritual stones turned to powder. 

All of Tao County let out a sigh. It was as if the veins of the earth were being crushed bit by bit. The veins of the earth, which had been dry for a month…no, dry for decades, even over a century, were flooded by the spiritual energy from the spirit-gathering array, rumbling as they were broken and remade. 

Near the Snake King’s Immortal Palace, the withered trees that had died under the Silver Moon once again softened, even sprouting inconspicuous buds! 

Xi Yue, driven away by the Luwu, suddenly sensed something. As they withdrew, they passed by a house. He automatically sent out his consciousness and saw a few small children crowded onto a single mat, sleeping soundly. Their hands and feet were laid together. One child felt an itch and drew back a hand, scratching unconsciously. 

Xi Yue’s pupils contracted slightly. He saw on the back of that child’s hand a scab like snake scales, fading at a speed visible to the naked eye, gradually healing. 

At the same time, all the cultivators in Tao County were disturbed by the spirit-gathering array, coming out to look one after another. 

“Is it an earthquake?” 

“No, I think it’s the veins of the earth…” 

“Where did this spiritual energy come from, how can it be so dense?” 

“This is bad!” 

The one who had said “This is bad” was a worm master. As soon as Xi Yue, hidden in the dark, glimpsed this person, he instinctively bent his back. Only now did he find that there were many worm masters hiding in Tao County! 

In an instant, Xi Yue’s eyes opened wide. He understood the sequence of cause and effect—no wonder that person had ignored His Highness Prince Zhuang’s warning, insisted on igniting the spirit-gathering array at this sensitive moment; no wonder he’d wanted to bring Xi Yue’s consciousness to Western Chu in the middle of the night…no wonder he’d wanted to make him personally set down a portion of the spiritual stones, personally change some people’s fates. 

Xi Yue said, “Ge!” 

Xi Ping didn’t answer, only laughed vaguely. 

He didn’t use spiritual stones to set off his array like Yu Chang had done. Instead, he took out the old Discard the False and Keep the True volume that he had taken from Yu Chang. Then, not touching his own qin, he used the old volume to copy a beam of sword energy from the Tai Sui Qin. 

Twang—

Boom! 

Xi Ping’s Anger Shifu to Death Sword could at most only match up to forty or fifty percent of what his shifu had done before, but that was enough. 

A beam of sword energy swept by like a flash of lightning, piercing right through the protective inscriptions on the spiritual stores inside the treasury. Finally, it fell right at the center of the array. 

Oppressive spiritual energy instantly filled up the array and activated it with its fury, blowing up all of the nearly one hundred spiritual stores remaining here. 

Never mind Xi Ping’s paperman body, even his true body wouldn’t necessarily have been able to survive here—his paperman was instantly destroyed. It was as if his consciousness had been trampled by a hundred thousand gold-armored zhengs. It was quickly pulled back by the Law Breaker. 

At the same time, Yu Family Valley became like a temporary spiritual mountain. 

The spiritual energy that had been tightly sealed by inscriptions for centuries came whistling out of the storehouse, totally smashing many of the arrays, inscriptions, and immortal tools in Yu Family Valley as easily as crushing dry twigs, then flowing out in all directions like a windstorm. 

The spiritual energy rose into the sky, carrying steam, coalescing into mists like auspicious clouds, covering the clear sky for thousands of li. In hardly any time, rain began to fall. In Yu Family Bend, the stagnant water in the gullies began to flow as if by miracle, soaking the dry riverbeds, all the streams augmenting each other. Mountains on the verge of a landslide were stabilized by tree roots on the cliffs suddenly turned robust. Half-dead millet and sunflowers in front and back yards straightened their spines. Faint color came into the nearly dried out faces of the young herb gatherers.

This sky-shaking spiritual energy explosion instantly spread out in all directions. Xiang Wenqing, whose pursuit had taken him to the border of Tao County, and Yu Chang, who had just arrived in Tao County, both heard it! 

Xiang Wenqing took one glance and perceived the remaining sword energy that had flown out of the Discard the False and Keep the True book. 

“Yu—Chang!” 

Yu Chang’s mind buzzed: wrong, there was something wrong! Tai Sui had deliberately led him to Tao County! 

In just this bit of time, Xi Ping had already returned to Tao County. The attack his consciousness had sustained was within the limits of endurance. Like a big cat skilled in bearing pain, he calmly invited “Yu Chang the Third” out using qin music. 

This “Fish Cake” was even more unfortunate than his two big brothers. As soon as he came into the world, his spirit was controlled by Xi Ping. Like a puppet on strings, he once again brandished his vital weapon, the Discard the False and Keep the True book, copied the Tai Sui Qin, and struck the Snake King’s Immortal Palace with a beam of sword energy. 

Blowing up the Snake King’s Immortal Palace didn’t need so many spiritual stones. When the qin music fell, the sumptuous…yet earthy palace was destroyed. The destructive power of a cultivator half a step from an ascended spirit was astonishing. Inside the Immortal Palace, the “Snake King” and the Snake King’s “half-immortal lackeys”—in other words, the group of papermen prepared in advance—didn’t have time to make a sound before they were crushed to dust by the blow. 

All that remained was the lingering music of the qin! 

Yu Chang thought, I’ll fuck your ancestors! 

Go ahead and frame me, but can’t you let me change my attack?! 

Good grief, this is an insult! 

Xiang Wenqing had yet to set foot within the scope of the Law Breaker Bracelet and therefore couldn’t feel the spirit-gathering array under the Law Breaker’s protection, but he wasn’t deaf. With an ascended spirit’s hearing, how could he not hear as loud a sound as the one made by the Snake King’s Immortal Palace being blown sky high? 

Without a second thought, Xiang Wenqing went chasing after the sound. As soon as he entered Tao County, he sensed that something was wrong. 

Xiang Wenqing was half a step behind. By now, the spirit-gathering array had already channeled the spiritual energy in the large quantity of spiritual stones throughout the veins of the earth, leaving only the plentiful echoes of the spiritual energy. Xiang Wenqing, coming a moment late, had no way to determine where the origin and crux of the array had been. And Tao County was a harbor for evildoers. There were many evil cultivators of all kinds. The Luwu who had set down the spiritual stones had silently dispersed. He didn’t know who had done this. Everything tacitly pointed to it being Yu Chang’s doing. 

So this ascended spirit master headed straight for the ruins of the Snake King’s Immortal Palace—the aura of the Discard the False and Keep the True book also appeared there. 

Yu Chang, overlooked by Xiang Wenqing, hid inside a shadow, all the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. 

He knew that it was Tai Sui who had blown up the Snake King’s Immortal Palace. At such a close distance, an ascended spirit’s consciousness would have made it there already. Even if Tai Sui had a shadow transforming pearl, he wouldn’t be able to escape Xiang Wenqing’s search. 

A cultivator at the peak of the open-eyed period might be able to surmount a single established foundation pill and go beyond their grade to kill an early established foundation, but from established foundation to ascended spirit, you had to pass through a heavenly tribulation. Facing a middle period ascended spirit, an established foundation cultivator who had just found their way to the threshold of an ascended spirit wouldn’t be able to fight back. Even if he used a paperman substitute, Xiang Wenqing would still be able to crush his consciousness. 

Now, Yu Chang couldn’t see any way for Tai Sui to get out alive, but he knew that colluding with the Luwu, detonating Yu Family Bend’s treasury, and the spirit-gathering array in Tao County had all been set under his name. Whether or not Tai Sui could come out on top, Yu Chang definitely couldn’t come out on top! 

What kind of suicidal way to frame a person was this! 

Xi Ping didn’t even think of dodging. 

He stayed where he was. At the same time, every waking or sleeping commoner in Tao County heard a voice in their ear: Do you want this place to become a human world? 

A true human world, without immortals or demons, without cultivators, without immortal tools whether downgraded or not, without the lackluster favor of the immortals, cut off from the immortal mountains, cut off from the nation, henceforth standing alone. 

The Law Breaker Bracelet was a parasite inside the Tai Sui Qin. It had only given the master of the qin the rights to “open the door” and “decorate,” permitting him to manage the space inside the Law Breaker Bracelet. 

But Xi Ping wasn’t the master of the Law Breaker Bracelet. He couldn’t change any of the rules within Tao County as enveloped by the Law Breaker. If he was hunted and killed in Tao County, the Law Breaker also wouldn’t care about his life… At most, when the “house collapsed,” it would move out. 

If he wanted the Law Breaker hanging high above Tao County to be on his side, Xi Ping needed the “masters of the Law Breaker” who had created the Law Breaker’s axiom to give him a rule. 

The spirit-gathering array was only the beginning. Casually sticking Yu Chang with the blame was only a side dish. Whether this opera would go wrong in the end, whether Tao County could escape its predetermined fate, would depend on the true masters of the Law Breaker…and what road they chose. 

There were still a few days before Mid-Autumn. Xi Ping had originally left enough breathing room. But that bastard Yu Chang was truly unlucky. Xi Ping had run headfirst into a master from Sanyue, forcing him to run a risk and offer up the fate of “Tai Sui” as well. 

Anyway, he was a ghost from the Impassable Sea that Tao County had summoned back. So what if he placed another bet? 

And Xiang Wenqing was already before his eyes. Wearing Yu Chang’s skin and holding Yu Chang’s vital weapon, Xi Ping struck first, tossing out all the established foundation attack talismans he could remember all at once. Xiang Wenqing didn’t even blink. Not one of those talismans could come within three zhang of him! 

It was as if Xi Ping were cultivating the “way of shit-stirring.” Apart from occasionally bullying those whose cultivation was lower than his, he had never directly fought anyone. He was given to feeling good about himself, Zhi Xiu couldn’t stand to discipline him too sternly, and he had been spending so much time hanging out with Lin Chi. Over time, he had developed the mistaken impression that an ascended spirit was nothing remarkable. 

This was the first time in his life that Xi Ping was facing a true ascended spirit master alone. 

He had thought that since Yu Chang could keep up in a fight with Xiang Wenqing for half an incense stick and even make his getaway under his nose, he could at least hold out for a little while. 

Only when they began to fight did he find that it wasn’t that the ascended spirit was weak, it was that Yu Chang’s four centuries hadn’t been lived for nothing. His true strength was far greater than Xi Ping’s shoddy skills! 

If his teacher was too soft-hearted to beat it out of him, an outsider would come along to teach this ignorant junior how to behave. 

Faced with an enraged middle period ascended spirit, never mind holding out, Xi Ping even thought he couldn’t catch his breath. His essence stagnated as though it had frozen. Xiang Wenqing tossed out a talisman he didn’t recognize at all. As soon as that talisman took shape, all the wind around him seemed to turn into knives. He could hardly maintain the paperman body! 

In an instant, Xi Ping drew in a breath, pulled open the Discard the False and Keep the True book, and took out a copied Tai Sui Qin. He threw out three beams of sword energy from different angles, each beam stronger than the next. In a moment of life and death, the “Anger Shifu to Death Sword” nearly had something of his shizun’s true sword aura in it. 

At the last stroke, the qin strings snapped, cutting his hand open. The three strokes had nearly emptied out his essence. 

But the sword energy he had thought astonishing still couldn’t reach Xiang Wenqing! 

Xiang Wenqing’s flowing wide sleeves bulged. He had no need to draw talismans to precisely control the direction of spiritual energy. The sword aura carried by spiritual energy fell into his hand and obediently coiled up in his palm, turning right into a gentle breeze. 

Xi Ping’s brow went cold. He turned and ran. But it was already too late. The next moment, he heard the sound of tearing silk. The paperman body broke. The spiritual energy around him had become a big swamp with his consciousness stuck inside it. He could neither withdraw into the Law Breaker nor jump into the reincarnation wood. 

If this had been his true body, the water dragon pearl might have been able to take a hit for him, and the shard of Zhaoting at the center of his brow might have been able to help him out, but it had to be “Yu Chang” standing here right now, and if he died, he still had to die as Yu Chang, or else all his arrangements before would be in vain. 

Xiang Wenqing said with a cold smile, “Don’t use a paperman substitute in front of someone with higher cultivation than you. The consciousness dies faster than the body. Didn’t your Luwu friends teach you?” 

Xi Ping even began to feel like he was “melting”…

Just then, a figure whose face was covered by a Luwu mask suddenly appeared holding a talisman gun, shooting at Xiang Wenqing like a mantis trying to stop a chariot. 

Xi Yue! 

Xi Ping’s scalp bristled. 

How could a little half-immortal dare to trespass into a battle with an ascended spirit? Are you crazy? Do you want to die?! 

Without so much as looking, Xiang Wenqing aimed a blow. Xi Ping’s eyes nearly burst from their sockets. He struggled fiercely. But he couldn’t escape the talismans around him, which were like the net of heaven. 

But before the blow could fall on Xi Yue, strings suddenly played in Xi Ping’s ears. It was the real Tai Sui Qin! 

He froze. The Law Breaker was moving. 

The Law Breaker’s masters, woken and interrogated in the middle of the night, had at last come to a difficult decision, like the teenage girl in Jinping’s southern outskirts who had firmly put her traveling bag on her back and gone south—countless ants inched forward against the wind. 

“We want to escape the control of the spiritual mountains, escape the patriarchal clan system, escape the sect, escape the rules and regulations that have been fixed in this world for thousands of years…henceforth to stand alone.” 

They said: “Tai Sui, we want a human world.” 

Within the scope of the Law Breaker, a new rule silently took shape in Tao County: there were only humans here, no immortals or demons, no cultivators, no use of spiritual energy. 

The blow coming straight towards Xi Yue turned into wind…true wind. 

The wind sent the person made of paper up like a kite. The paperman’s magic disappeared, and the consciousnesses that didn’t belong here each went back where they had come from. Xi Ping returned to his true body, and Xi Yue was deported, thrown back to Jinping. 

The spiritual energy in Xiang Wenqing’s hands vanished. This middle period ascended spirit fell to the ground and stumbled, shocked and horrified—he couldn’t control a sliver of spiritual energy. 

He had become mortal.