Xi Ping remembered one time a group of kids had been flying a kite beside the Lingyang River. Before the kite could rise, a blind dog had come out of nowhere and blundered into the kite string. The naughty children went after it, chasing and shouting. The dog became even more panicked and got tangled up in the kite string. It lost its footing and fell into the Lingyang River. The water birds all flew up, and the dog still couldn’t get loose, turning the little swallow kite into a white streak on the waves with its thrashing.

Xi Ping felt that right now, he was like that weak and helpless kite.

The bottom of the little lotus pond in the backyard that was only a few chi deep seemed to have been connected to the East Sea. He couldn’t find solid ground to step on.

Xi Ping’s features were lashed by flying spray. He seemed about to reach the earth’s core. The countless images in the water, like mirages, faintly brushed past him, disappearing before he could catch a clear sight of them. Wave after wave of that lunatic’s shouts crashed into his spirit. All his meridians seemed to have been stretched taut, tightly binding his flesh and bones. At the limit of his endurance, Xi Ping let out a mouthful of air in the water. He was about to explode.

“Shiyong.” Through the water dragon pearl, Zhou Ying sensed at once that something wasn’t right with him. “The water dragon pearl recognizes you as its master. Use your essence to smash it and take the opportunity to escape. If you’re exposed, so be it. We’ll think of another way. Don’t tangle with him.”

Xi Ping could already taste blood in his mouth. He thought, Won’t Xu Rucheng be trapped here, then?

“Wait, just wait…” With difficulty, Xi Ping split off his attention to send a message. “I think he’s testing me. He watched me in secret for so long and ran the risk of getting in contact with me among Sanyue’s Principal Peaks. He wouldn’t have done all that just to get rid of a spy—I don’t believe Sanyue is so extravagant that they would have an ascended spirit patrolling the mountains.”

“Don’t make any vain attempts to collaborate with the Heartless Lotus. He may harbor malice towards Sanyue, but he certainly won’t want to win a joint victory for the both of you. This kind of person would slice himself to bits for the sake of a little peace, if only he had a knife in his hand. Don’t play with fire… I do not permit it!”

“Peace”?

Xi Ping paused, seizing on this peculiar wording of Zhou Ying’s.

A rare person of his own kind, in peculiarly similar circumstances—Xi Ping suddenly thought that, while san-ge wasn’t bald and didn’t mutilate himself, while he could be rated as the most “Wan” man in all of Jinping, from a certain point of view, he still understood this lotus spirit.

Xi Ping thrust out the Tai Sui Qin. The notes he was using as a sword changed, the sharp and monotonous sword aura instantly sliding into a melody, blending seamlessly. The melody was improvised, high and rapid, ingeniously backing up the hollering Zhuoming, the tempo so closely matching it was as if he was playing accompaniment for him.

The music pursued Zhuoming’s incessant shrieks. They couldn’t escape no matter how they changed in pitch. The atmosphere suddenly turned peculiar. It didn’t sound like Zhuoming was going mad, but rather like a singer from a niche operatic style was training his voice in this remote location, with some of the beauty of the bizarre—nine out of every ten sentences Mr. Yu Gan spoke were blowing hot air, but occasionally there was still a glimmer of honesty; he really could turn a braying donkey into a famous singer!

Zhuoming had likely never before attained this height of artistry. Halfway through shouting, he couldn’t go on. He turned his head and glared at Xi Ping with a look that said “Are you crazy?”

Xi Ping regretfully pressed down the strings and opened his mouth to let out an air bubble, forcing away the water covering his nose and mouth. “Why have you stopped? You have a pretty resonant voice. Sing some more.”

Zhuoming: “…”

His figure gradually lengthened, the upper half of his body at least growing to the stature of a normal man. His disorderly features also gradually returned to their original positions, the two mouths combining into one, revealing a rather tidy and indifferent face.

“Misty Willow…”

Xi Ping raised a hand to interrupt him. “Stop that, my name isn’t ‘Misty Willow.’”

This name always made him think of the opera actor in the Snake King’s Immortal Palace.

“You may address me as ‘Tai Sui.’”

The sturdiness of Xi Ping’s consciousness far exceeded that of the average ascended spirit. When he concentrated especially hard, he could practically escape the influence of the Replica…but the shortcoming to this was that he’d forgotten he was still wearing the spiritual image mask of a pretty maid, making this display incongruous and a little funny.

But Zhuoming didn’t laugh. After listening gravely, he nodded earnestly. “That’s a good name. My name was chosen for me by Xuanwu. It’s bad. I should also change my name.”

Mr. Yu Gan, the specialist in elopements, casually plucked his qin. Hearing these words, he gave a zealous suggestion: “You can call yourself Lovesickness.”

Zhuoming stretched out his neck in confusion, drawing close to Xi Ping. “Why would I call myself Lovesickness?”

Xi Ping plucked a qin string with a twang. “For example, say you wanted to kill High Elder Xuanwu. At most, others would say that an unfilial disciple had gone berserk and killed his own teacher. Is there anything interesting about that story? It’d put me to sleep, anyway. But if you call yourself Lovesickness, when people tell the story, it’ll turn into ‘Elder Xuanwu died through the machinations of lovesickness,’ and I guarantee that your name and his will live on in the annals of history for ten thousand years. Even when the spiritual mountains are gone, the two of you won’t be forgotten.”

The more Zhuoming heard, the brighter his eyes became, his head drawing closer to Xi Ping bit by bit, nearly pressing against him. “Who told you I wanted to kill Xuanwu?”

Xi Ping returned his gaze unflinchingly. “It was just an example. It wasn’t real. If it mirrors reality, that’s pure coincidence.”

A sharp laugh came from Zhuoming’s throat. His neck contracted back to a normal length. He waved his sleeve, and the water around them became clear.

Xi Ping looked in the direction of his gaze and saw that after the muddy waters calmed, the top of his head was less than a chi away from the surface of the water. With a cultivator’s vision, he could see the surroundings distinctly.

They were in the midst of an enormous pool. Beside it was a competition platform extended with a mustard seed. On the mountain slopes, countless palaces and magnificent buildings were inlaid like jewels in the ground, with a lofty celestial palace atop white clouds, permeated with an immortal aura, faintly discernible. It was much more presentable than the disorderly and extravagant West Peak.

Xi Ping immediately had a guess. He couldn’t resist floating up a little, wanting to see more clearly. “Is this the Central Peak?”

“I advise you not to move around.” Zhuoming had stopped shouting. His voice was actually somewhat deep amid the clarity. “The Central Peak is an important place. Not even a fly could get in.”

Xi Ping attached all his spiritual sense to his eyes and only then discovered that the inscriptions and arrays here were omnipresent. The spiritual threads of arrays even floated through the air—only when the wind raised slight waves was it possible to see a hint of them in reflections in the water.

“Aren’t they afraid of breathing arrays into their lungs?”

“It won’t happen. Every person on the Central Peak is on the roll of names. Once the immortal mountains have recorded these people, the arrays will automatically avoid them—though the East, Central, and West Peaks don’t have dealings with each other. If you stuck your head out, you’d breathe the arrays into your lungs and blow up like a gas bladder,” Zhuoming said indifferently. “Only I can come and go freely among the three Principal Peaks, be an ear pressed to the wall on behalf of my shizun who’s about to die of ‘lovesickness.’”

As expected.

Xi Ping thought: He acknowledges what I said about him wanting to kill Xuanwu.

Just then, Zhuoming said, “I know you’re here for the Unbound Furnace.”

Xi Ping’s heart jumped. Then he saw Zhuoming tilt his head back to look at the palace atop the clouds. “Two hundred years ago, Southern He was destroyed, and Sanyue obtained Hui Xiangjun’s vital weapon, the Unbound Furnace. Since it was brought back, no one has seen it. The sect leader himself has kept it in his care. Then the sect leader went into seclusion… It’s been nearly two hundred years now.”

Xi Ping suspected this baldy had a concussion from being hit on the head by spray. “Isn’t there some ambiguity in what you’ve just said? Why does it sound like your honored sect’s sect leader is using Hui Xiangjun’s relic in his seclusion? A peak shed skin using the weapon of an ascended spirit to reach a full moon position?”

How was that any different from an imperial exam candidate using a basic thousand-character primer as study material before the examination?

Zhuoming nodded calmly. “Your Chu is good.”

“Is your honored sect’s sect leader about to lose his mind?” Xi Ping couldn’t resist asking. “Isn’t there anyone to dissuade him from doing something so preposterous?”

“This matter is between heaven and earth, and Xuanwu and me. And now there’s you, too,” Zhuoming said. “Since you’ve seen the Law Breaker and the Riverward, you ought to know that the Eternal Spring Brocade cannot be limited by the grades set out by the spiritual mountains. She is an unbound person, outside the rules.”

Xi Ping caught up half a beat late: “eternal spring brocade” was Hui Xiangjun’s accompanying plant, which this baldy who liked giving people nicknames was using to indicate Hui Xiangjun.

“But you’ve got one thing right—it’s true that the sect leader may be about to lose it. He’s gone the wrong way.” Zhuoming’s voice softened strangely. “With my cultivation level, I can’t understand where he’s gone wrong, but my spiritual sense can clearly see the spiritual energy about to overflow in the immortal palace above the clouds. A great master is about to fall. If not for that, Xuanwu wouldn’t have insisted on holding out under the impact of the Silver Moon instead of going into seclusion…and now, you’ve shown up. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

Xi Ping gave a start.

When he had mistakenly wound up in the Impassable Sea and encountered Yuan Hui’s hidden bones, he’d had a faint sense of some mystical force arranging things.

And Qiu Sha had said that once a cultivator who hadn’t been acknowledged by the spiritual mountains wished to step over the ascended spirit boundary, the Way of Heaven would certainly not allow it and would soon send down disasters one after another to wipe away the ant who dared to disobey the will of heaven.

Many things appeared to be mere coincidence, but considered closely, it seemed they were all being pushed by an invisible hand.

Hui Xiangjun had died eight centuries ago, and the Unbound Furnace had passed from Lancang to Sanyue without anyone wanting to use it—the way of toolmaking was unskilled in fighting and never went looking for trouble; besides that, not just anyone could use the vital tool of an unusual talent like Hui Xiangjun.

Could it be that him coming to Sanyue to steal the Unbound Furnace…had also been arranged by something?

“Heaven and earth are locked in constant struggle,” Zhuoming said, voice pregnant with meaning. “The ancient demonic gods fell and left their accompanying plants behind to search for successors, in defiance of the Way of Heaven. You inherited the ungovernable way, so you are a member of my generation. Never in your life will you be able to assimilate into the spiritual mountains’ orthodoxy. You will either hide inside the wood dragging out an ignoble existence, waiting for the Way of Heaven to find you and wipe you out, or else you will take all of Heaven’s gods and sages as your enemies, destroy the three thousand paths of the Way of Heaven, change the laws of the universe—there is no third road.”  

Hearing this, Xi Ping for no reason at all felt very unwell. He thought, So what if there isn’t, I’m not going anywhere.

“It seems that I’m only a little piece in this game,” Xi Ping said unflappably. “A mere established foundation who may or may not be able to do anything while shed skins are dying and seizing power. With no one to take me, I couldn’t even leave the little courtyard on the West Peak. I’m truly unworthy of being counted in the same generation as Brother Lovesickness.”

When Zhuoming settled down, he was very proper, without any sign of his previous lunacy. “It’s a long story.”

“No problem,” said Xi Ping, “I can stay in the water for a year and a half without dying.”

“During the Great War of Gods and Demons, Sanyue’s full moon sage the Black Emperor had a lifelong enemy. That ancient demonic god had dozens of names that no one but him remembered, so he was known by the same name as his accompanying plant—the Heartless Lotus. This person was deranged, like a goblet full of poison, constantly grappling with himself, but when he encountered a powerful foe, a part of him could escape each time. No matter what, he wouldn’t die altogether.

“He lingered on, getting weaker and weaker, until the spiritual mountains were established and Western Chu’s Black Emperor reached the full moon position. The other demonic gods on earth had all been blown away—he became the one and only ancient demonic god to live to see the spiritual mountains. At last, he was surrounded by the Black Emperor and some masters under his command. With the might of a full moon sage bearing down on him, the Heartless Lotus had nowhere to hide. He was cut down and fell at the feet of the Sanyue Mountains. To prevent any ‘lotus seeds’ from slipping the net once again, the Black Emperor sealed the Heartless Lotus’s lotus pods inside the Silver Moon.

“For thousands of years after that, the Black Emperor’s descendants—Dongheng’s Xiang family—controlled Sanyue, but they became more and more disappointing by the generation. The sect leader reached the pinnacle of the shed skin stage, always doing whatever he could to make a breakthrough. He was too busy to manage trifling affairs, but there was no one he could use for the purpose, so he had to settle for second best and use Xuanwu, who was ‘half a Xiang family member.’ But he couldn’t trust Xuanwu, so he placed the Silver Moon above the East Peak. On the surface, he was putting Sanyue’s authority into Xuanwu’s hands, but in reality it was another way to monitor him. If the high elder put one toe out of line, the mountains’ great weapon wouldn’t spare him.

“For hundreds of years, the high elder assiduously guarded the Xiang family’s mountains on the sect leader’s behalf, until by coincidence, he obtained a possessor of a paramount spiritual sense with an embarrassing background and brought him back to the spiritual mountains as his disciple. He tended to him with all his heart and soul, nursed him for a hundred years, letting this paralytic open his spiritual eyes and complete his spiritual bones, until he could walk, sit, and lie down no different from an ordinary person and was only awaiting his shizun’s test before he could inherit his Way of the Heart. Then he received a great present from his shizun… Using his own shed skin cultivation, the high elder stood guard as he sent his disciple into the Silver Moon to obtain the Way of the Heart of the ancient demonic god, the Heartless Lotus. But his own hair turned white overnight. He only recently left seclusion after nursing his injuries for a century. This teacher’s favor can be called as weighty as Sanyue’s three Principal Peaks, as deep as the South Sea.”

At first, listening to these ancient secrets, Xi Ping had been relating them to Zhou Ying through the reincarnation wood. But in the end, he was dumbfounded, with no attention left to spare to repeat Zhuoming’s words.

“So the lotus seeds inside the Silver Moon grew mold…er…sprouted?” Xi Ping remembered Qiu Sha, turned to dust by the moonlight in Tao County, and in spite of himself felt deep veneration for Zhuoming for appearing reasonably intact before him. “How did you survive that?”

“All thanks to my shed skin shizun,” Zhuoming said softly. “Shizun used half of his essence to sustain me. If he ever takes it back, I’ll be snuffed out by the Silver Moon. But at the same time, I have become the new Heartless Lotus, with my life tied to the Silver Moon. Among the Sanyue Mountains, I am like half of the great divine tool. Through me, he controls the Silver Moon, which the sect leader hung around his neck like a noose. The Silver Moon, me, and shizun—none of us can leave the others. Isn’t that a superb story?”

“Amazing!” Xi Ping praised.

“I don’t believe that the sect leader wouldn’t have made preparations for the aftermath of his death. When the time comes, the two of them will have a test of strength,” Zhuoming said. “Rumor has it that the Unbound Furnace can hold a shed skin’s essence. The unbound object that produced the Law Breaker and the Riverward can block a great divine tool. I can help you take the Unbound Furnace, but I want to have first use of it. I want to escape the Silver Moon.”

Xi Ping considered and said, “The Unbound Furnace is actually under your honored sect leader’s ass. We wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years, or else we wouldn’t have wasted time coming—apart from agreeing, I see no other choice.”

“You can also abandon the Unbound Furnace and get away now,” Zhuoming said, smiling. “I suppose you’re still capable of that.”