Previously, Tao County’s yamen had posted notices forbidding people from further distributing images of evil cultivators. Everyone had ignored them—Tao County’s yamen never did anything. The only time it wasn’t just there for decoration was when it was time to collect the exorbitant taxes. Each year during Wild Fox Country’s Great Market, the bailiffs played dead, not daring to approach Seventeen Li Town. 

No one had expected the troops to arrive in the middle of the night and start chopping down trees as soon as they got there. 

The flywheels of the roaring mechanical beast spun, slicing into the big trees by the road, which had grown there for unknown decades or centuries. It was followed by a little cart with shovels attached to it that opened its grinning toothy mouth to dig up the tree roots whole. 

These trees that had just struggled out from under the Moon’s Shadow and sprouted a bit of greenery fell into the street with loud crashes, their branches rustling wildly, scaring all the birds into flight. In the predawn light, they looked like a metaphor. 

The vegetal smell of tree sap splashed everywhere. The thundering machinery threw everyone in the area into turmoil. Like wild fowl woken by an earthquake, the people peered out from cracks in doors and enclosing walls. Many more voices sounded in Xi Ping’s ears—the anxious people were beginning to take out Tai Sui amulets and pray. 

Xi Ping ignored it. There were neither gods nor ghosts, neither immortals nor demons in Tao County now, and Yu Chang, suspected of being “Tai Sui,” had run away with the Law Breaker. He would work no more miracles. He was only a layabout playing the huqin and singing ditties that no one wanted to hear. Protecting homes and expelling evil wasn’t his responsibility. He also didn’t care about the garrisoned troops cutting down trees. While reincarnation wood was a part of him, it was like hair or fingernails. It didn’t hurt to be bald. It was only that his field of vision would be slightly limited afterwards. But grown up as he was, it wasn’t like he didn’t have legs. It wasn’t a big problem—what was more, the Luwu were now scattered all over Tao County, throughout every walk of life, and each of them had a reincarnation wood amulet they had spilled blood on. At need, they could all be his “eyes” as well. 

Xi Ping was only a little at a loss for how to react. 

When he had been trapped in the divine image, he had fooled that idiot Xu Rucheng with a “heart demon oath” and made Da Chengzi cut down trees for him. Idiot Xu had feigned compliance but hadn’t actually done it, preserving the reincarnation wood trees in Tao County to this day. He hadn’t thought they would finally be destroyed at the hands of Western Chu’s soldiers. 

Amid the immense rumblings, Xi Ping gradually withdrew his consciousness, returning to his true body. 

Tao County had been dragged free of the spiritual mountains’ influence by the Law Breaker. The Qilin Guard didn’t dare to enter at will, and the army composed of mortals had become the biggest threat. Now it would be a contest between the Luwu and the North Xia Waterborne Troops for control of Tao County. The Luwu didn’t have a hundred thousand people, but their communications were unhindered, while the Sanyue Sect was working blind when it came to a place where the use of spiritual energy was prohibited. They would have no idea what was happening inside, and the North Xia Waterborne Troops didn’t necessarily have the same goals as the sect—he figured san-ge would already have a solution in mind. 

At present, there was something more pressing weighing on Xi Ping’s mind: his shifu. 

Every night, Zhi Xiu recreated all kinds of dazzling ancient battles inside the Law Breaker, making his little disciple flee in a panic. In fact, it was only Xi Ping cooperating with his education. Xi Ping had total control within the Law Breaker. He knew of every leaf growing on every plant…so how could he fail to notice that shifu’s consciousness was becoming weaker and weaker when he entered the Law Breaker? 

Through the reincarnation wood amulet carried by Lin Chi, he had secretly returned to the Xuanyin Mountains to have a look and seen a layer of ominous fog over the sealed Flying Jade Peak. Peak Master Lin had said that since General Zhi’s beam of sword energy had rung the Bell of Tribulation, the sky over Flying Jade Peak hadn’t been clear… The Dignitary of Fate High Elder had even kept silent on the subject of the Luwu’s increasingly rampant recent activities abroad—the Kaiming and the Luwu had originally been put forward by the Dignitary of Rites Elder Zhao Yin; Zhang Jue had always disapproved. There was no way to remove the Kaiming Department, but Zhang Jue had suppressed the Luwu for several years. Had Qiu Sha, an ascended spirit evil cultivator, not emerged, leading the Dignitary of Rule to change from neutrality to favoring Zhao Yin, Zhou Ying really wouldn’t have been able to plant the evil seed of the Luwu—formerly, when the Luwu had asked for money or immortal tools, the request was certain to be rejected when it reached the Dignitary of Fate. The Luwu’s funds were transferred from the Kaiming Department, and because of this, the Luwu had been unable to stand alone apart from the Kaiming Department. Clearly the Unbound Furnace was a matter of urgency. 

Xi Ping used the Law Breaker to deliver a batch of newly arrived immortal tools to Xu Rucheng, who was on the way north, and gave some instructions. When he returned, it was already dawn. 

Today, Tao-er-nainai got up before he could pick up his huqin to express his grief. As soon as Xi Ping pushed open the window and looked down, he felt that the atmosphere was wrong. Very tactfully, he didn’t touch his wretched huqin. He quietly went downstairs. 

He ran right into the cook Tao Dayu. The stuttering cook was wiping snot with one hand and tears with the other. Seeing Xi Ping, he automatically turned his face away and wiped his eyes against the crook of his elbow. 

“What’s the matter?” asked Xi Ping. 

As soon as he asked, he heard Tao-er-nainai’s resonant voice ringing out in the little courtyard: “Let them chop! They can chop ‘em all down! If they’re up for it, let them chop off all the heads in the whole county, too! May lightning strike their ancestral tombs…” 

What followed was a string of foul language. The guests were all regulars. Seeing her stance, prepared to shout halfway across the county, they quickly went to dissuade her or stop her. 

“Quiet, settle down. They have swords and guns, my good madam, what do you have?” 

“I’ve got a fucking axe, and I’ll use it to hack through eight generations of their family coffins!” Tao-er-nainai rolled her eyes, then gruffly said to Tao Dayu, “What’re you crying about? No one’s taking over Tao County, er-nainai says so!” 

Xi Ping put an arm around Tao Dayu’s shoulders. “You hear that? Even heaven must abide by the empress er-nainai’s decree—I suppose you’re afraid if they cut down the misty willow, that crowd of cultivators will come back?” 

The old charcoal dealer smoking a tobacco pipe next to him put in a word: “He was nearly snatched up to be one of those substitute spiritual image dolls, but luckily the child was neither clever nor a quick study. They couldn’t sell him. Now his calves start twitching whenever he sees that crowd of immortals. Poor thing.” 

Xi Ping froze. He was about to ask “Then what’s he still doing in Wild Fox Country?” when he heard Tao-er-nainai start blaring orders. The young cook was once again sent scrambling to work. Xi Ping looked on for a moment and suddenly swallowed his words: it was because of er-nainai that the young cook, petrified, with his “calves twitching,” insisted on staying in this place where the forces of evil ran wild. A drenched puppy would also bend its back and be inseparable from the only person it had in the world. 

But matters quickly exceeded Xi Ping’s expectations. 

Not long after the garrisoned troops came, they had cut down most of the roadside reincarnation wood trees in Tao County. The people were enraged without daring to speak. Fear and restlessness spread through seemingly-tranquil Tao County, with only “Tai Sui” to know. When the autumn winds were howling, the late-night chatter echoing incessantly through the Law Breaker could no longer be ignored. It interfered with his training. 

Zhi Xiu waved a hand and dispelled the simulated ancient battlefield in the Law Breaker. Teacher and disciple did nothing, only spent the whole night listening. 

There were people repeatedly praying to Tai Sui, asking him not to let Tao County go back to the way it was before. There were people who wished for Tai Sui to work another miracle and send a big bolt of lightning to strike these ground pounders dead. There was a person who was courageous in the deep and silent night, raining curses on the Sanyue Mountains, “heretically” wishing evil on all cultivators… Fortunately, his voice couldn’t get out of the Law Breaker. 

Xi Ping was stupefied. He had spent over five years in Wild Fox Country and floated through the lives of all kinds of people. Everyone who could lure in his consciousness naturally had their own tragedy, but they had all had numb, nervous expressions of meek resignation. He had never heard this much anger. 

It was as if, now that spiritual energy was prohibited in Tao County and had been expelled from the immortals, the demons had also been expelled. The people, quietly observing those cultivators and finding that they were also flesh and blood, seemed to have finally noticed that many natural disasters were in fact man-made. 

“The internal strife in Great Wan some years ago began with an assassination in Suling. Who was killed and who killed them didn’t matter. As soon as you remove the word ‘don’t’ from ‘don’t dare to be angry,’ the whole dam will burst.” Zhi Xiu sighed quietly. “There is a storm coming.” 

Hardly had he spoken this final sentence than, all of a sudden, as if he had sensed something, the sliver of his consciousness in the Law Breaker abruptly disappeared, returning to the Xuanyin Mountains. There was a thunderclap in the grim sky over Flying Jade Peak. On neighboring Rosy Cloud Peak, a disciple watching over a medicine furnace shook, ruining a whole furnace full of elixirs. 

Xi Ping’s instincts told him this was bad. He thought that something was about to go wrong. 

As he was distracted by anxiety, the next day—the third day of the ninth month—the Zhao family, carrying their portable hidden realm on their backs, reached Western Chu’s capital Dongheng. 

Xi Ping had been to Dongheng with his maternal grandfather’s people when he was little. Now, retreading old haunts with Xu Rucheng, he practically didn’t recognize it. 

In Tao County, the most advanced thing the common people got to see in their daily lives was a steam boiler. The vast majority of people still drew drinking water from wells. Forget about steam carriages and Cloud Soaring Flood Dragons—even horses would sprain their ankles on the uneven, pitted dirt roads.

But Dongheng was like a fantasyland. 

The city of Dongheng was situated on one side of Dongheng’s Sanyue Mountain Range, built against the mountains. At a glance, it was impossible to count how many layers it had. 

Horses and oxen could only travel along special paths. There were tracks laid everywhere, with small steam-powered carriages like miniature Cloud Soaring Flood Dragons shuttling back and forth over them. Beside them, cultivators flew on their swords in broad daylight without restraint. Looking up from below, your gaze could only reach the middle of the mountain. Everything above that was wreathed in mist from the steam. Only multicolored lights shone down, making night indistinguishable from day. 

The imperial palace gazed down upon Dongheng City from above, brightly lit at night, like an immense magic beast concealed amid the landscape. 

Princess Qing—the mother of the imperial grandson who came from Yu Family Bend—sent people to meet them outside the city and lead the Zhaos in. Right now, there was a snow-white veil over the face of Xu Rucheng, who was impersonating Zhao Qindan. Two rows of maids, each rivaling the next for beauty, waited deferentially to help the young mistress out of the carriage. 

Without the Luwu mask to help him keep up appearances, Xu Rucheng would have been astonished into exposing himself by this ostentation. He dismounted the carriage in a daze. When he set foot on the earth of Dongheng, invisible spiritual energy spread out from underfoot. 

Xu Rucheng gave a start: Dongheng’s streets were covered with arrays! 

“Calm down,” Xi Ping reminded him, “your shoes have the Golden Hand’s shielding seal on them.” 

Xu Rucheng swallowed a mouthful of saliva. “Tai Sui, what kind of arrays are these?” 

“Surveillance.” Xi Ping glanced at the imperial palace from a distance. “If you set foot on the streets of Dongheng, the Sanyue Sect will be able to track you. If they so wish, they can find out what you’re doing and where you are at any time. Be careful. Dongheng’s Sanyue are the world’s masters in talismans, arrays, and inscriptions. You can’t relax just because you have Moon Plated Peak backing you up.” 

Even Xu Rucheng’s organs were trembling. “Hell, the whole city? How many spiritual stones does that burn? It’s…” 

Before he could finish delivering the enlightening views of a pauper, he heard a whizz. Prince Qing Manor had set off fireworks to welcome the guests. 

These weren’t ordinary fireworks. They were set off with spiritual stones. When they scattered in midair, spiritual energy surged into the spectators’ lungs. Meanwhile, the moment the fireworks exploded, Wei Chengxiang and the Luwu in Tao County simultaneously contacted Xi Ping through the reincarnation wood: “Tai Sui, there’s a problem!” 

Xi Ping split off half his consciousness to return from Dongheng to Tao County. Before the reflection of the fireworks had vanished from his eyes, he saw a corpse fallen in the muddy earth mixed with autumn rain. 

The seeds of this disaster had been planted when the garrisoned troops had first entered Tao County. 

At first it had been a relatively well-off family pleading with the troops not to chop down the reincarnation wood trees growing on the hill of their ancestral graves. They said that the old trees had been there for ages, to guard the graves and preserve the fengshui. They requested that the soldiers “make an exception,” accepting a financial loss in order to forestall disaster. Unexpectedly, it inadvertently showed the jackals and wolves a means of earning money. 

After most of the reincarnation wood trees along Tao County’s roads were removed, they started getting their eyes on the trees on people’s roofs and within their courtyard walls—and not just the reincarnation wood trees. 

It didn’t take long before a semi-public price list began to circulate among the people—how much money it would take to avoid having the army ruffians break down your door, how much money to make them leave the roots after cutting down the tree, not harm the household goods… The prices weren’t fixed; they didn’t fall, they only rose. 

Still later, the garrisoned troops publicly requested all residents to hand in their implements made of misty willow to the authorities. If you couldn’t fix it up through connections, you just had to sit and wait to have your home searched and your possessions confiscated, and you would end up charged with the crime of “privately worshipping an evil god.” 

Today, just past noon, a group of hungover ruffians from the army had barged into a residence that had refused to “request that an exception be made.” First they dug up a fruit tree that had been growing in the yard by the roots, then made a search for “objects of worship” made from misty willow. Among the “objects of worship” they turned up were tables, chairs, wardrobes…even a memorial tablet! 

Seeing the memorial tablet about to be thrown onto the bonfire as well, the son of the head of the household had been unable to take any more. He had flared up and pulled out a hammer, without warning bashing the soldier about to burn the memorial tablet over the head, sending his brains splattering everywhere. 

Everyone had sobered up at once. After a moment’s stunned staring, with mixed anger and astonishment, the troops had wanted to take down the “murderer” at once. The people’s resentment, which had accumulated over several days, exploded at a touch. 

First the neighbors around them began to speak. From patient argument to unguarded swearing, and then once again to all the men and women, young and old, who lived in the street running outside, less than an incense stick of time passed in all. 

The people closely surrounded the gang of army ruffians. When Xi Ping arrived, the two sides had already come to blows. 

In the harsh autumn wind, Dongheng’s Prince Qing Manor had used spiritual energy to force a whole garden of unseasonal flowers to grow, laying down a floral carpet bursting with exotic scents to welcome the honored guests. 

Tao County was bleeding for the sake of a few pieces of rotten wood. 

This had taken place not far from where Wei Chengxiang and Zhao Qindan were living. 

Zhao Qindan pulled a sword out of the Silver Tray Lottery machinery, weighed it in her hand and found that it was still handy enough, then turned to go. 

Wei Chengxiang pulled her back. “What are you doing?” 

The young mistress had always been proud and arrogant, as well as a little unsociable. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been raised properly and was rude to people. Mainly it manifested in her unwillingness to owe anyone a favor. If a neighbor brought over a few wild bird eggs they had picked up, she would want to get something to give them in return that very day. With Wei Chengxiang perfunctorily half-listening, she could ask about it eight times within one shichen—as if those wild bird eggs were chafing her. 

During the registration of residents, the neighbors she had practically no contact with had protected her. This was like a thorn pricking her flesh. Now that she had seized an opportunity, she wanted to go out immediately to return the favor. 

“Don’t be hasty,” Wei Chengxiang said seriously. “Do you think it’s not bad enough yet? Wait.” 

Zhao Qindan said, “It was those scoundrels causing trouble in the first place. In my opinion, they ought to have been beaten to death long before…” 

“Do you think the law won’t punish the majority?” Wei Chengxiang interrupted her. “It will.” 

Zhao Qindan froze. She thought that for a moment, an unspeakable gloom had passed over that person’s face. 

Before she could say anything, their dilapidated house began to tremble faintly. Next, there came the sounds of shouting mixed with footsteps, followed by the firing of a hand cannon—