“Shifu, you can’t even talk. You can only make Zhaoting buzz. You’ve nearly turned into a mosquito. Why don’t you take care of yourself? Stop trying to protect me with a shard of your sword.”

In all his years, this was Zhi Xiu’s first time becoming a mosquito. It took him two whole breaths to react. Zhaoting’s quivering became different from usual—Xi Ping guessed that perhaps this was an off-key cry of “rebellious disciple.”

“When I get the Unbound Furnace and have Master Lin repair Zhaoting, you can beat me.” A fierce beam from the Silver Moon swept towards him. Xi Ping reacted extremely quickly, hiding behind a white spirit statue. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to run.”

Zhi Xiu: “…”

Just you try to run when the time comes!

Zhaoting was held back by Xi Ping’s consciousness, but Zhi Xiu didn’t withdraw his line of sight. The vast majority of the time, he was unable to have contact with the outside world. He was tightly bound by the vast will that wanted to swallow him, unable to move. Sometimes whatever Xi Ping was doing wasn’t distracting him, it was helping him recognize over and over who “the sword cultivator Zhi Xiu” was—he had a tie to the human world; because there were young eyes watching him, he had to constantly inspect himself, force out his greatest courage, strive to show his junior where the boundaries lay.

After he was through angering shifu, Xi Ping simply withdrew his spiritual sense from his vision and attached it to the rest of his senses. His hearing, naturally several times more sensitive than normal, at once became acute to the extreme. He heard the faint creaking of the huge spiritual stone statue behind him. Its spiritual energy seemed to be constantly being drained, but not in the direction of the battlefield. Instead, it was pointing towards the immortal palace where the sect leader had been in seclusion.

Xi Ping took a deep breath, forced down his desire to probe outwards with his consciousness, put an eye-sealing pill in his mouth, then used the Replica spiritual image mask to take on the appearance of the young soldier that had taken him out of Tao County at the very beginning.

He became a convincing imitation of a mortal.

A mortal’s spiritual eyes hadn’t opened. Like plants and other still life, their bodies could only absorb a negligible drop of spiritual energy over time. The spiritual energy surging towards the immortal palace brushed past him, having nothing to do with him. Xi Ping had practically become one with the rubble and splintered wood among the ruins, but on the other hand he could now more clearly “see” the direction of the surging spiritual energy.

As Zhuoming had expected, Xuanwu had indeed pushed his disciple forward to act as his scapegoat. So now, where would the vanished Xuanwu have gone?

It seemed that it could only be the immortal palace where the sect leader had been in seclusion.

If Zhuoming knew of the Unbound Furnace’s unusual property, then Xuanwu couldn’t be ignorant of it.

Following the general direction of the surging spiritual energy, Xi Ping climbed up to the collapsed part of the immortal palace. As expected, he caught a trace of a plant scent.

This was a very particular floral fragrance…supposing you could even call it a “fragrance.” It was harsh and deep, mixed with complex moisture and vegetal reek. It was the fragrance of the heartless lotus, which Zhuoming had made him memorize a few days ago.

“The heartless lotus has a very faint smell, easily masked by the smell of water. The average person wouldn’t notice it. You probably can’t smell it either, right?” At the time, the Zhuoming in the lotus pond had been telling him in a very normal tone of voice how to take precautions against Xuanwu. At this point, he suddenly held his fingers together like a knife and cut a piece of flesh off his arm. Had Xi Ping not dodged quickly, the blood would have spurted all over his face.

A “fragrance” dozens of times stronger than that of the lotuses in the pond surged up. Zhuoming, having an attack with no warning, issued a fervent invitation: “Here, this is the smell, do you want to have a taste?”

After being tactically turned down by Xi Ping, who looked as if he had a toothache, Zhuoming rather regretfully ate the piece of flesh raw, and even carefully licked the blood clean.

“Apart from some medicine cultivators and specific beast-taming cultivators, other cultivators—especially ascended spirit masters and above—think that smell is a secondary sense. This is because even with a paramount spiritual sense, the sense of smell is only effective when you can distinguish odors. Without special training, when those who are accustomed to sight and sound smell an unfamiliar scent, it will be very hard for them to judge it. And also it is because while the eyes and ears are connected to the mind, the mouth and nose are connected to the desires. Smell will sometimes disturb a person’s intellect. Most importantly, cultivators are like mortals—if they live somewhere that reeks, over time, they won’t be able to notice the stink anymore. The sense of smell will go numb. They practically can’t smell their own bodies—for example, my shizun, who’s spent hundreds of years soaking in the scent of the lotuses on the East Peak. But you can smell it. Remember this smell. You can use it to avoid him…or follow him.”

In other words, Xuanwu had indeed gone in this direction.

Xi Ping wiped the blood off his face and followed the sad and bitter scent of the lotuses.

There were many incomprehensible things about Xuanwu—it was very easy to comprehend why Xuanyin Mountain’s Dignitary of Fate or Dignitary of Rule would want to respectively cover his eyes or seal his mouth, but why would the holder of true authority in Sanyue wear a shroud over his face? Could it be possible that a high elder in the Sanyue Mountains also had a disfiguring eye-opening wound? Would a man several thousand years old care about his looks?

Then there was the abnormal relationship between teacher and disciple.

Never mind a teacher and disciple, a person would be upset for a long time if even a potted plant they had painstakingly tended to withered and died. Xuanwu had taken no other disciple. For three hundred years, there had only been this one living creature to keep him company on the forbidden East Peak, day in and day out, to the point that the high elder’s sense of smell had lost the ability to perceive the scent of the heartless lotus. Could he offer him up for the slaughter just like that?

What kind of Way of the Heart did a ruthless person like Xuanwu have?

Suddenly, the scent of the heartless lotus became a little heavier. Xi Ping paused.

Xuanwu was hiding in the darkness. While he probably also didn’t dare to set his consciousness free, Xi Ping didn’t know how acute the hearing of a shed skin would be.

While he was hesitating slightly, a deafening boom of thunder suddenly exploded over the summit. A bolt of lighting practically brushed against the back of Xi Ping’s head as it fell. He didn’t have time to withdraw his spiritual sense from his ears and was nearly deafened. Blood immediately poured from his ear canals.

Well done, Zhuoming!

Xi Ping’s first reaction wasn’t to protect his ears, but to fly under cover of the enormous noise.

Zhuoming must have guessed his plight. The Silver Moon was fighting the sect leader with increasing ferocity, constantly heading in the direction of the immortal palace. The immortal palace was on the point of collapse. Roof beams, pillars, and huge stones fell one after another. The inscriptions all over the ground were in disarray. Xi Ping simply concentrated all his spiritual sense in his nose and took the opportunity to infiltrate all the way to the inner palace—the place where Xiang Rong would have meditated during his seclusion.

Then he saw that the depths of the inner palace were shrouded in a faint gauzelike mist.

This mist was so thin it seemed like it wouldn’t obstruct your line of sight. He saw a very deep pool just up ahead. The railings on both sides of the white marble steps were carved with the phases of the moon. The pool had to be some dozens of zhang deep. As for what was at the bottom of the pool, you could only see it if you came close.

Xi Ping concentrated. He could faintly hear minute sounds of crackling coming from the bottom of the pool, like a furnace burning firewood.

Could it be…the Unbound Furnace?

Ridiculous. Could the Unbound Furnace’s fuel possibly be charcoal?

Could Xu Rucheng really have been right? Had the sect leader brought along a furnace to warm himself by its fire?

Xi Ping’s steps paused slightly. For some reason, he was very frightened of that thin mist. His spiritual sense was frantically holding him back. But the scent of the heartless lotus was at its strongest here, as if Xuanwu had also hesitated here for a while.

Just then, there was a sudden huge sound outside the immortal palace, and another big part of the outer palace collapsed. Someone had struck a fierce blow. Its aftershock swept right into the inner palace. Xi Ping, taken unawares, lost his footing and was pushed into the thin mist by that aftershock.

The fragrance of the heartless lotus instantly disappeared, and the earth-shaking sounds of battle abruptly quieted. Xi Ping’s mind swayed. In that instant, he felt that the thin mist was like an irresistible, overpowering consciousness, swallowing everything around it.

It was as if lead had been poured into Xi Ping’s limbs. His tensed mind seemed to miss a step. Out of nowhere, a feeling of bone-weary exhaustion crowded into his chest. Xi Ping froze blankly where he was, a clear thought floating up in his mind: Cultivators refining their Ways of the Heart, working hard to cultivate, what is it all for?

As soon as this thought appeared, there was no stopping it. The thin mist seemed to pour into his consciousness through the seven apertures of his face.

Fighting was for the sake of spiritual stones and resources. Obtaining spiritual stones and resources was for the sake of higher cultivation, in order to increase your chances of success in a fight.

Those who died along the road of cultivation, though they lived some centuries longer than mortals, spent nearly all those centuries trapped in the spiritual mountains, cultivating day after day, their work becoming futile when they finally died; and for those who walked on, there would come a day when all their companions had turned to dust, and they would be left to walk alone. What was it for? To prove that your Way of the Heart was more correct than everyone else’s? Everyone was dead—who were you going to prove it to?

The lives of ants were ephemeral, with no one to care. What was a life for?

Mortals rushed around and worked hard, each of their destinies like a leaf floating on the ocean, trembling with fear as it drifted with the tide. What was a life for?

The spiritual mountains saw him as a monster, not to be abided by the world. So what was a life of struggle for?

No… Xi Ping pinched his palm hard. There was something strange about this mist.

He tried his hardest to retreat, but when he turned his head, he discovered that he couldn’t find the way he had come anymore!

The voice in his mind that he couldn’t banish wouldn’t let him go. It pounded incessantly on his spirit, which had no Way of the Heart: What is your life for? You want to get the Unbound Furnace to reforge the Zhaoting Sword and save your shifu—and what is your shifu’s life for?

Encounters between people were fleeting. Teachers, friends, even relatives, even soulmates—in the end, they would all leave. What was the point?

What was the point…?

“San-ge, say something to me!” Xi Ping automatically sought for another’s voice. “Shifu…”

He found that his voice couldn’t get out.

Even Zhaoting, always hanging on his spirit looking after him, didn’t respond.

Xi Ping suddenly realized that the voices constantly pulling him down like a marsh were his own thoughts.

These insuppressible thoughts were constantly draining his essence and his strength. Xi Ping practically felt that even drawing breath was wearying. He put a mind calming pill into his mouth.

The pill dissolved as soon as it entered his mouth. His eyes and ears, injured by the shaking, cleared at once, but the voices circling in his mind didn’t weaken one bit.

The uncontrollable thoughts said self-mockingly, What’s the point of taking a mind-clearing pill? Mind-clearing pills dispel illusions. Is life itself a hallucination you deceive yourself with?

Raising his foot like raising a thousand jin weight, Xi Ping struggled to take a step forward.

“I’m like a donkey,” he thought. “The poor farmers’ skinny donkeys in Yuzhou that pull millstones to grind soybeans also don’t know what they’re doing, but they work as hard as they can, when in fact they’re just turning circles in place. Since all efforts are futile, what am I doing looking for hardships to bring onto myself? Why don’t I just lie down and let it all come to an end?”

Xi Ping’s knees suddenly weakened. He nearly knelt.

“I should go ahead and kneel. The full moon sages are no longer in the human world. Isn’t not being in the human world the same as dying? Why am I still fighting?”

Xi Ping was carrying no burden, yet even so all his veins stood out. With difficulty, he steadied himself, stamped a foot on the ground, and actually crushed the white marble tile on the floor of the immortal palace. The flying shards of tile had inscriptions on them, which scraped the exposed back of his hand. The sharp pain made the deadly voices in his mind lighten.

Xi Ping instinctively grabbed a shard of tile with an inscription on it and fiercely cut into his own palm.

Like a drain, the cut skin and flesh seemed to be able to release the deadly voices. The pain immediately gave him a sense of himself, and his sense organs also regained their sharpness. He even smelled the vanished fragrance of the heartless lotus. Xi Ping gave a start and wrapped the wound with his sleeve, suddenly understanding why Zhuoming plucked his own hair and ate his own flesh.

But the sharp pain faded quickly. The body of a cultivator half a step from an ascended spirit needed only the blink of an eye to heal a little wound like this. Xi Ping’s senses were once again benumbed, and the irresistible thoughts surged back.

Xi Ping held the sharpest string on the Tai Sui Qin in his palm, the back of his hand tensing abruptly; but he didn’t press down.

The next moment, he suddenly raised his head and looked at the path ahead. He opened his hand and released the string. He took a step forward.

He wasn’t Zhuoming.

Within two steps, the thoughts drowning him made him forget why he was walking forward. The questioning voices became louder and louder, his limbs heavier and heavier.

But as his legs moved, in his mind, almost emptied by the mist, a thread of life force kept struggling from beginning to end.

Xi Ping simply concentrated his remaining strength in his legs.

“Where are you going?”

“Forward.”

“Where are you going forward to? What is the point?”

“I’m not going anywhere. My legs are long!”

After about ten zhang, Xi Ping seemed to have been walking for a lifetime.

At last, all of a sudden, amid the noise, the faintly discernible fragrance of the lotus once again touched his sense of smell. Xi Ping blinked away the sweat on his eyelashes and found that without noticing it he had come to the edge of the deep pool.

At a glance, he saw at the bottom of the pool a big, blazing cauldron, and beside the cauldron, a person—Xuanwu.

The moment he saw Xuanwu, the mist congesting his mind seemed to vanish all at once. The burden abruptly lifted from Xi Ping. He immediately remembered who he was and what he had come for.

No good, what was he doing? Wasn’t getting this close to a shed skin asking for death?

Xi Ping broke out in cold sweat that soaked his back. He grabbed hold of the Tai Sui Qin and prepared to take a beating.

But Xuanwu, standing beside the fire, still had his head down, muttering something to himself. At such a close distance, he actually hadn’t noticed that there was someone on the platform.

After a moment of anxiety, Xi Ping saw that Xuanwu seemed to have gone deaf and blind, and his all-encompassing guts returned to his belly. He crouched down and carefully approached the edge of the pool, peering down. He saw the mist that had just nearly killed him flowing steadily out of the big cauldron. Xuanwu was endlessly reciting something to himself.

“What is my life for? What is life for…?”

As he spoke, Xuanwu suddenly raised his head and gave a laugh. He pulled the white paper mask off his face.

Xi Ping craned his neck, clinging to the tiles of the platform, pretending to be a broken tile himself.

Then he saw Elder Xuanwu’s true face.

It turned out to be…a typical Chu face, neither handsome nor ugly, without any scars.

It was only that, apart from the snow-white skin and colorless brows, he and Sect Leader Xiang Rong seemed to have been made in the same mold!

Xi Ping held his breath. Suddenly, doubt appeared in his mind: was that the Unbound Furnace?

Why wouldn’t the sect leader have taken the furnace with him instead of leaving it here, waiting to be stolen?