“I saw a misty willow…”

Out of nowhere, a mouth opened on a dark red lotus root and grew lips and teeth. When the two lips touched, the voice spread through the water with a dull rumble. The seemingly stagnant pond water vibrated gently with it.

“The people of Wan call it ‘reincarnation wood.’ The people of Wan choose meaningful names.” On another root, a “mouth” also opened and picked up the conversation.

On the lotus roots of varying lengths, many mouths opened, smiling or frowning, each one speaking, holding an underwater conference.

But while they were all speaking at once, they all produced the same voice.

“I like misty willow. There’s no misty willow in the Sanyue Mountains yet.”

“Let’s keep him…keep him, hee-hee.”

“He’s too tender, only an established foundation. His bones are less than a century old. No bite.”

“Not necessarily…”

“True, he managed to crawl out of the Impassable Sea.”

The mouths on the lotus roots held an enthusiastic discussion, their flowers shaking when they laughed. They made bubbles in the water. Weird light floated on the surface of the bubbles, and there were people reflected in them. There were cultivators locked in life and death struggles, there were tremendous natural disasters, there were men and women intimately bedding down on human skeletons, and there was a crowd of people whose flesh and blood were being consumed by a divine image, yet who nonetheless remained kneeling…

Next, a Zhuoming climbed out from the bottom of the lotus pond, like a person made out of a lotus root. His nose and eyes had run off somewhere, leaving only two mouths and a set of ears—one ear faced upward, one faced downward. As if drunk, he groped blindly along the bottom of the pond, now and then clumsily getting tangled in the lotus stalks.

In the deepest recess of the lotus pond was a black hole, about one chi square. The lotus roots densely covering the bottom of the pond seemed to automatically avoid that place. In his blind groping, Zhuoming accidentally stuck his hand into the hole.

His whole body shook, and he immediately pulled back his hand. There were slight marks of scalding on his fingertips.

At the bottom of this ice cold pond was a flame the size of a bean, using it was hard to say what as kindling, just quietly burning.

“How hateful. It burns,” Zhuoming muttered, looking at his scalded fingers after picking up his eyes in an out-of-the-way corner.

The lotus roots growing on him echoed each other one after another: “Why hasn’t she gone out yet?”

“Hasn’t gone out yet…”

“Hateful…so hateful…”

Because of that cold gaze following him like his shadow, Xi Ping, after his change of identity, had no attention to spare to entertain himself at Xu Rucheng’s expense.

As a “servant” waiting to be chosen, Xi Ping had actually entered the Sanyue Mountains a day ahead of Xu Rucheng and had been safe and sound for a day and a night. That gaze seemed to have been brought by Xu Rucheng.

But Xu Rucheng himself was befuddled. Not only did he not have the least sense of being watched, he was always attempting to talk to Xi Ping about his first experience of coming to the spiritual mountains… This might have been because Xu Rucheng’s cultivation was too low, or it might have been because that guy’s spiritual sense was also “third-rate”; he was naturally slow-witted.

What Xi Ping couldn’t work out no matter how hard he thought about it was how this person had used Xu Rucheng to get their eyes on him.

He was certain that apart from talking to him through the reincarnation wood, all Xu Rucheng had done was give him a few extra looks. With his current flowerlike countenance, it would be stranger if someone didn’t give him a second look. And no one could overhear things through the reincarnation wood—unless this person was more powerful than the three Xuanyin high elders put together. In that case, there would be no need for Xi Ping to keep struggling; he ought to hurry up and say goodbye to his family and friends and pick out a good coffin.

This infiltration of the Sanyue Sect could be called Xi Ping’s most dependable action in all these years. He was backed entirely by dependable people: the Golden Hand supplied him with tools and could also give him clues concerning the Unbound Furnace; a group of Luwu could contact each other at any time, and he could overhear their discussions; for anything to do with the Zhao family, he could ask Zhao Qindan any time; most importantly, before he’d come here, Bai Ling had given him brief introductions to all the major figures in Sanyue’s inner sect… What other time had Xi Ping not been working blind, relying on guesswork, trickery, and good luck to get important information?

But somehow, this time, he had the worst feeling about it.

Xi Ping spent three days earnestly engaged in needlework in the imperial grandson’s outbuilding—thanks to Master Lin’s Replica, which could simply take over his hands. These three days were absolutely calm. The Zhao family and Prince Qing Manor probably hadn’t come to an agreement in their negotiations yet. The imperial grandson’s people hadn’t come looking for trouble again.

The Sanyue Mountains were covered in so many hidden realms it was as if they were free. Never mind a “mortal servant,” even an inner sect disciple couldn’t walk around freely. First, unless you were proficient in talismans, arrays, and inscriptions, even if you were a reincarnated map, you still wouldn’t be able to find your way around; second, as soon as you moved, you would be like a stone falling into water, raising “ripples” in the spiritual energy, the disturbance spreading outward, touching an unknown number of visible or concealed inscriptions and arrays. It seemed impossible not to leave traces.

Unless he could shuttle through reincarnation wood like in Tao County…but there were no reincarnation wood trees in the Sanyue Mountains. And it seemed that reincarnation wood wasn’t safe, either.

Xi Ping found that each time Xu Rucheng contacted him through the reincarnation wood, the chill on his back became more apparent, as if the person watching him was getting excited. When they spoke normally, this didn’t happen.

At first Xi Ping suspected someone had tampered with Xu Rucheng’s consciousness and ran the risk of stealthily taking his consciousness back to the Law Breaker Bracelet. The music only showed that Xu Rucheng’s mental state had changed considerably of late; there was no extraneous interference.

Since there wasn’t a problem at either end, then the problem could only be with the reincarnation wood. The person watching him really was more powerful than Xuanyin’s three high elders put together.

But for several days, this person only watched, doing nothing.

What did that say?

Xi Ping’s mind began to work involuntarily—before coming here, he had heard from Bai Ling that Sanyue had serious internal strife. This seemed to be the truth.

The richness of Sanyue’s spiritual energy was such that, never mind the country Kaiming Cultivator Xu Rucheng, even Xi Ping, who had spent time at Flying Jade Peak, had been a little dizzy from it when he’d first arrived. This must be due to topography. Great Wan’s terrain was more level than Western Chu’s, so the immortal mountains’ spiritual energy dispersed unimpeded through the veins of the earth into the mortal world, unlike Western Chu, which was filled with towering mountains, making it hard for people within the same country to interact.

These frightening resources were completely dominated by the Xiang family. It was impossible for those masters whose surname wasn’t Xiang not to have some ideas.

When Qiu Sha had killed Xiang Zhao, the West Peak’s ascended spirit masters had turned out nearly in full force, but the Central Peak had been as silent as though they were all dead there.

The upshot was that the West Peak had taken heavy losses, and the lost masters seemed to have “None of the Xiang clan’s unworthy descendants have talent or virtue worthy of their positions” stamped on their heads; it was shameful and frightening, making the West Peak even more wary of those from the Central Peak who came from other families.

The after-effects left behind by Qiu Sha in the mortal world had been forcibly leveled with a hundred thousand white spirits, but those in the immortal mountains had yet to disperse. The animosity between the Central and West Peaks had deepened.

Right now, on the Central Peak, the sect leader was in seclusion, and three of the four great ascended spirits belonged to other families; the West Peak was a gathering place for the Xiang family’s good-for-nothings; and the true power in Sanyue was held by the East Peak’s Xuanwu…

Xi Ping had asked Bai Ling why, when everyone else was surnamed Xiang, Xuanwu was surnamed Xuan. Bai Ling, as if he couldn’t understand a joke, had seriously told him that this “Xuan” character wasn’t one of Western Chu’s surnames. “Xuanwu” was an alias; his real name was unknown. According to the gossip of the demons back in the Impassable Sea, he was actually the sect leader’s brother, with the same mother but different fathers.

Snow-white Elder Xuanwu’s background was actually lush green¹—Xi Ping thought there was a metaphor here for the change of seasons; it was very profound.  

What he didn’t know was this very profound Elder Xuanwu’s position—when the Bell of Tribulation had gone to the East Sea, the three Xuanyin elders who had overseen it had each spent years recuperating, but Sanyue’s Elder Xuanwu had released the Silver Moon alone yet had had to return to the hard work of wielding power; he didn’t even have a stand-in. It was evident that the delicacy of the state of affairs in Sanyue had reached the verge of crisis; the old fellow didn’t dare to loosen his grip.

So who was the person watching him scheme on the West Peak but not saying a word?

Young Master Xi came up with a daring plan.

Zhuoming lay face down on the surface of the water like a water ghoul. The surface of the water reflected the outbuilding at the foot of the West Peak. It was the still of night now. That Misty Willow’s turn to clean the courtyard had come. Unblinking, Zhuoming watched that Misty Willow perfunctorily wave a broom a few times, then start wildly scribbling on the ground.

“Oh?” Zhuoming excitedly stuck out his head. “Who is he sending a message to?”

A lotus next to him also drew near. A mouth opened on its petal. “He’s being so thorough about pretending to be mortal, using such a mundane method to send messages… What bad luck, I’ve forgotten most of my Wan grammar.”

“No.” Zhuoming gently pinched the lotus petal. “He’s using Chu writing.”

The broom wrote in flourishing cursive on the ground: Spying on a young woman, shameless! You’ll get styes in your eyes.

Zhuoming’s head stopped mid-turn. He opened his eyes wide in amazement.

That Misty Willow brandished the broom like a sword: Enough sneaking around, come out and see me if you can.

After Xi Ping finished writing this all at once, he calmly took a deep breath and set the broom aside. The feeling of prickles running down his back was still there. But after waiting a long moment, there was no other activity.

Xi Ping put away the broom. He couldn’t work out what the person watching him was thinking. He thought to himself: If there’s really nothing else for it, I’ll have to abandon the maid identity, then sneak in again during the “grand wedding” with the Zhaos or Prince Qing Manor’s people… It seemed that as long as he didn’t use reincarnation wood to send messages, it wouldn’t be so easy for this person to see through the Replica to find him.

Only that would take more time.

Xi Ping concentrated on the shard of Zhaoting on his spirit. Its light was so dim it was hardly visible.

He couldn’t panic.

He closed his eyes and stood still for a moment, plucking out a tune in his spirit to calm himself down. Zhaoting seemed to sense his anxiety. Though Zhi Xiu didn’t have the energy to split off his attention to come over, he still made an effort to make the sword shard let out a slight buzz, telling him that shifu was still well.

Just as he finished the song and was planning to send his consciousness back to the reincarnation wood to rest for a while, Xi Ping suddenly felt a sting at the center of his brow. He pulled one hand into his sleeve and abruptly opened his eyes to look in the direction the touch to his spiritual sense had come from.

What he saw was a decorative bowl lotus in his room. Perhaps its colors had run in the water. When it had been brought, the flower had been yellow, but now both the flower and the leaves had faded to snow-white, reminiscent of Xuanwu’s hair.

Then the unfolded lotus nodded its head, and the stamen in its center, like an ill-fitting hat, fell down. When the space where the stamen had been was empty, a bean-sized…human head emerged.

Xi Ping: “…”

The “barren head” that had grown out of the flower had a mouth on its forehead and another on its chin. One ear faced up, the other down. The nose seemed to have been put on wrong; it was a little crooked. The eyes and both mouths were smiling. They said: “Beauty, can you guess whether my head is right-side up or upside-down?”

“Right-side up,” Xi Ping blurted out without blinking. “If it isn’t right-side up, please quietly straighten it out. I can give you a chance to pretend I don’t know.”

The two eyes turned in a circle.

Xi Ping openly walked over and, right in front of the monster, looked at the reflection of his spiritual image mask in the bowl lotus’s water. “If you don’t look directly at a countenance of this grade, you must be an idiot. I’m busy, I don’t have time to pay attention to idiots—those with accompanying plants also have no need to speak.”

As soon as he’d seen the human head in the lotus bowl, Xi Ping had suddenly seen the light: yes, Xuanyin’s three elders certainly couldn’t sense his connection to reincarnation wood, but there was one person who had previously exposed his hiding place—Qiu Sha.

There seemed to be some fellow feeling between accompanying plants, especially on the side with the stronger cultivation.

The gaze that had passed through countless inscriptions and arrays of Sanyue came from the flowers in a lotus pond.

In the depths of the Sanyue Mountains was one of the successors to an ancient demonic god that the immortal sects couldn’t destroy fast enough…and with at least an ascended spirit cultivation level.

Goodness, this wasn’t even “harboring evil” anymore, it was comparable to the Zhou family raising demons in the Impassable Sea.

The head in the white lotus laughed aloud. “I like you. Go to the lotus pond in the rear courtyard.”

Having said this, the head disappeared. The flower in the lotus bowl shriveled rapidly. In the blink of an eye, only a bare stalk remained.

Xi Ping followed without hesitation. At the same time, he sent a message to Bai Ling through the reincarnation wood: “Bai Ling-da-ge, ask san-ge for me, has he heard of an ancient demonic god whose accompanying plant was a white lotus?”

After a momentary odd silence, Bai Ling said, “I am away on official business, not beside my lord. My lord has a new piece of reincarnation wood. You can ask him yourself.”

Xi Ping was immediately distracted. His heart tightened. “Why didn’t you use a paperman? Why did you have to go yourself? What happened?”

“Recently, you used a little paperman to sneak into my lord’s boot and built a bird’s nest inside it with straw,” Bai Ling said, attacking Xi Ping’s conscience in his usual calm and serious tone. “To be sure, Viscount, your ideas are marvelous and awe-inspiring. But my lord has forbidden me to use papermen for two months.”