When the furnace fire went out, it meant that the Unbound Furnace’s protection over Xi Ping was also gone. Never mind one of those two masters dealing him a blow, even a breeze could have crushed him to bits.

But when the lotus stalk crawled out, a weak flame once again kindled in the depths of the Unbound Furnace’s big cauldron.

It wasn’t as flashy as when Xi Ping had jumped in. The flames of the furnace fire that Zhuoming had lit were very subdued, only a thin layer spread over the bottom of the furnace, which was as deep as a person was tall. They didn’t even disturb the inscriptions on top of the Unbound Furnace.

Twining around Xi Ping’s injuries, the lotus stalk hid inside the thin fire as if curling up underwater in a pond. It touched Xi Ping’s blood and paused for a moment. Then the blood disappeared at the sharp tip of the lotus stalk, as if it had been absorbed by this long stalk that was like a parasitic vine.

Then the lotus stalk seemed to succeed in controlling its instincts. It gave up on burrowing into the wound and quickly crawled over to the center of Xi Ping’s brow.

“Hey—”

In chaos, Xi Ping heard a voice, but he truly had no strength to respond.

“…wake up…”

Who?

“Are you waking up…”

“Wake…”

“Tai Sui!”

The name “Tai Sui” provoked a soft sound from the Tai Sui Qin. The music flitted through Xi Ping’s hopelessly shattered consciousness, struggling to pull him together, leading him to follow the sound to its origin. In the midst of this to-and-fro struggle, Xi Ping abruptly trembled—the blood red lotus stalk had relentlessly pierced the center of his brow, even making a hole in his skull. Then the lotus stalk pressed an unknown talisman directly onto Xi Ping’s spirit.

He was like a person who had already stopped breathing shocked back upright by a bolt of lightning. His consciousness abruptly curled up.

“Has he come back to life?” he heard Zhuoming whisper to himself. “Tsk, I don’t think that was enough. Again.”

Xi Ping thought, Da-ge, don’t…

But before he could respond, Zhuoming’s lotus stalk, which had come out of nowhere, gave him another blow, as nimble as when he was cutting off his own flesh.

Xi Ping blurted out a Jinping curse.

Zhuoming only heard him vaguely groan something and said, “I don’t understand. I’ve forgotten all the Wan I learned when I was little. Translate it for me.”

Xi Ping said, “…May your ancestral tombs burn.”

“Did your wits boil away?” Zhuoming retorted. “I don’t even have ancestors, never mind tombs.”

Xi Ping: “…”

“You’re very reckless. If I hadn’t left a portion of my consciousness with you beforehand, those two would have cooked you soon enough.” The insane bald flower was having one of his intermittent normal periods. He sighed. “Right in front of the only true full moon god in the world, you lit a towering fire in the Unbound Furnace, as if you were worried no one would notice. Listen, are you crazy? Fortunately, your life is not yet meant to come to an end. I, Lovesickness, was here to awaken you…”

“Stop it, I was wrong, I, I-I’m crazy.” Xi Ping felt that if he got a reputation for being “awakened by lovesickness,” he really would be better off dying here. He quickly took a breath and weakly forced a change of subject. “You didn’t say before that the sect leader might reach a full moon position!”

“Are you joking?” Zhuoming retorted sternly. “High Elder Xuanwu didn’t even realize it, so how could I have? Am I an eclipse…”

The speed of Zhuoming’s speech didn’t change at all, but the final word “eclipse” seemed to tear his throat. His voice came to an abrupt halt before he could finish. The lotus stalk twined around Xi Ping’s wounds loosened.

Xi Ping quickly used his single remaining left arm to pull the lotus stalk back. “Hey, Lovesickness, what’s going on? Why did you go off key?”

But Zhuoming didn’t speak again.

On the summit, without hesitation, Xuanwu drained away all of the essence his disciple’s survival depended on. The blood-colored Silver Moon lit up strangely, backing his curved blade.

And in the lotus pond on the East Peak, the lotuses congesting the pond suddenly all burst into bloom in unison. Inside every white lotus that lacked a stamen, Zhuoming’s face appeared, turned upwards.

Next, the lotus flowers, lotus leaves, and Zhuoming’s faces all seemed to be burned by the moonlight. Wounds like full moon scabs were constantly expanding. Zhuoming was entirely unmoved. In the blink of an eye, most of the skin on his faces had been corroded, revealing blackening bones beneath. Still wearing a strange smile, he said to himself, “Shizun…”

He had been born an invalid, his mother a mistress kept by an unworthy son from a collateral branch of the Xiang clan. His bones were soft, able to bend into any shape, but he couldn’t stand upright or walk.

His mother was a plaything meticulously trained from childhood. The only expression she knew was “smiling.” She would smile when beaten, keep the corners of her lips unmoving when humiliated; she had worn a dimpled smile right up to her death. After she died, for the sake of reputation, his father’s official wife had brought him home.

His paramount spiritual sense had sniffed out the heavy scent of death on one of the retainers. From kindness, he had smiled regretfully at this person.

That person died that same night, so a rumor somehow got started that he was a monster. Whoever he smiled at would die. The nobles couldn’t keep far enough away from him. The servants couldn’t avoid him and also didn’t dare to offend him, so they developed all kinds of “methods” for dealing with him.

“Don’t talk to him, don’t meet his eyes. No matter what he does, act like you can’t see.”

Every time someone caused offense and was assigned to look after him, they would receive the well-meaning instructions of their seniors.

After that, indeed, no one else died, so everyone became even more convinced that these methods were effective. Therefore, he became a person who “didn’t exist.” He lay there every day, neither tears, nor laughter, nor anger, nor cursing getting the least reaction. Gradually, he learned without being taught how to use people’s fear; he “cursed” a menial worker into falling seriously ill. At last, he could command them.

He was like his mother, having only one expression. She had only known how to charm, and he only knew how to frighten.

Until the Immortal Xuanwu descended from the skies to the mortal world.

While the whole household didn’t dare to raise their heads, seeking to assert his presence as usual, he raised his soft, deformed legs to rest on his shoulders, and spat out a “heresy,” like a big spider: “Exalted, can you guess whether my head is right-side up or upside-down?”

Immortal Xuanwu looked out from behind his also very peculiar mask, gazed at him for a moment, then calmly responded, “Right-side up. Why don’t you put those down?”

That gaze taught Zhuoming how to wail.

Afterwards, he went up the immortal mountains, learned the whole gamut of human emotions, learned to express his own sensations like an ordinary person—this wasn’t easy; after all, no one knew how the world looked to his eyes; the words and sentences he could construct were limited. So he studied all the formalized languages in the world, for the sake of gathering some appropriate words from among them, to tell shizun what he saw, what he comprehended.

He opened his spiritual eyes and was able to run and jump, but he didn’t care to go out to travel and see something of the world. Because he had to cultivate all kinds of powers night and day, desperately refine his spiritual bones, to win a drop of praise from his taciturn shifu—he had become addicted to that.

Except that…it turned out that what shifu had been praising wasn’t him, and his expectations hadn’t been directed towards him, either. It was because the poisonous lotus seed in the Silver Moon would soon have a new sacrifice.

“Shizun.” Beneath the fatal moonlight, Zhuoming’s tongue couldn’t move nimbly; his voice became slurred. “Can you guess whether my head is right-side up or upside-down?”

Xuanwu had no time to attend to him. These words floated out lightly, like when he was young, getting no reply.

The Silver Moon had nearly seized the brilliance of the white moon in the sky. The divine tool that had been corroded for thousands of years by the demonic god’s seed seemed to have betrayed the spiritual mountains, coating Xuanwu’s curved blade as it slashed at Xiang Rong.

“Your head?” Just then, the Misty Willow’s voice sounded in Zhuoming’s ears. “What’s wrong with your head now? Look at the state of things, can we stop fiddling with your head already?”

“It’s nothing. I’m just dying.” Zhuoming came back to himself. Looking at the pond full of lotuses being turned to ashes along with his true body by the “moonlight,” he smiled slightly. With something of the madness of looking death calmly in the face, he said softly, “Shizun has taken his essence from me. My true body has already rotted in the silver moonlight. All that’s left is a remaining bit of consciousness. Without a bit of consciousness left outside, you can’t light the furnace. There’s nothing for it, you’d better prepare yourself. I’ll count down. Ten…”

Xi Ping: “…”

Don’t be so sudden about it.

But before he could start thinking up countermeasures, the fire in the Unbound Furnace was once again extinguished. The astral wind from Xuanwu’s blade mercilessly swept towards him!

Xi Ping howled, “Weren’t you counting down from ten?!”

“One. I said it was a countdown, not that it was a countdown of ten digits.” The lotus spirit who didn’t know how to count gave a rueful sigh, as if giving it up. “Everyone below a shed skin is an ant. In a cultivation sect, might is indeed everything. You and I, the two of us, ha…”

The astral wind crashed against the edge of the Unbound Furnace. The Unbound Furnace was sent flying.

On the bottom of the furnace, Xi Ping, covered in blood and gore and tangled all over with lotus stalks, flew up. Inescapable murderous intent condensed over their heads.

“Who are you calling…part of ‘the two of us’?!”

In a flash, at the foot of the Central Peak surrounded by chaos, in the cracks in the stones, on the cliffs, even in the rivers and streams—countless hidden green ore pellets simultaneously split open. Each green ore pellet contained a reincarnation wood seed. Xi Ping had hidden these on his way up the mountain.

The seeds were activated by the almost untraceable bit of spiritual energy in the green ore slag, putting down roots and sprouting in every nook and cranny!

Xi Ping’s consciousness instantly filled the whole of the Central Peak. When the gust from the blade had nearly reached his hair, the fire in the Unbound Furnace once again began to burn.

Once again, a hidden realm cut off from the outside world formed inside the furnace. The Unbound Furnace rolled away and landed with a bang.

Xi Ping took a big breath and fell onto the bottom of the furnace. “I don’t believe it.”

The end of his sentence was covered up by a loud sound. The curved blade, wrapped in the light of the Silver Moon, came down on Xiang Rong.

Xiang Rong didn’t try to dodge. His gigantic form brought its palms together, catching the curved Silver Moon blade between them.

Two identical countenances faced each other in the moonlight. Next, the full moon sage’s consciousness pressed down with a will like the spiritual mountains, trying to wash away the “blemish” on the Silver Moon.

The moonlight at the tip of Xuanwu’s blade dimmed. The bloody light of the Silver Moon became weaker and weaker—

The Sanyue Mountains resonated with the sect leader’s angry shout, like the tolling of a large bell: “Silver Moon, return to position!”

The Silver Moon under Xuanwu’s control suddenly trembled. As if waking from a dream, it abruptly broke away from Xuanwu’s blade.

The curved blade—Xuanwu’s vital weapon—broke.

Xuanwu’s flesh seemed unable to contain the surging spiritual energy within him. Starting at his hands holding the blade, his flesh began to crack. He flew away like a snow-white kite whose string had snapped.

But the features that were already obscured by blood wore a strange smile.

Inside the Unbound Furnace, Zhuoming’s dying consciousness looked out from the limp lotus stalk at the Misty Willow…with his remaining head and half a shoulder.

Outside the furnace, the sky was falling and the earth was cracking, but Xi Ping turned a deaf ear onto it. Not very skillfully, he controlled the fire of the Unbound Furnace, making the fire burn on his wounds.

Time inside the Unbound Furnace once again disconnected from the outside world. Constellations revolved and stars moved within the furnace. The distant golden light circled above him, wildly surging spiritual energy steadily pouring in, merging his body. New bones grew bit by bit from his wounds.

He held Zhuoming’s lotus stalk in his hand. Zhuoming could feel that this young Misty Willow was as tense as iron all over, but he didn’t make a sound.

Suddenly, he felt the Misty Willow’s “leaves” moving. He seemed to be having another chat with someone.

Zhuoming identified the direction the Misty Willow’s “leaves” were swaying in. “…Zhou Ying?”

“I’m…” Xi Ping’s sweat evaporated in the fire of the Unbound Furnace as soon as it fell. “I’m asking him to help me calculate, how many sp…spiritual…spiritual stones I need to become an ascended spirit. This time…I…can make a big profit…cultivating with public funds.”

The next moment, there was a rumble. A bolt out of the blue fell on the Unbound Furnace—but no one cared, because lightning was striking everywhere on the crest of the Central Peak.

After thoroughly stripping itself of the Heartless Lotus and returning to position on the summit of the Central Peak, the Silver Moon was blazing brightly. The Unbound Furnace was struck by the “moonlight” with a bang.

But the flames lit inside the furnace by Xi Ping held out without extinguishing. In this brief moment, he had grown a right arm. The circulation of spiritual energy linked up in his upper body.

Next came his thorax, abdomen…

Outside the Unbound Furnace, the light of the Silver Moon had mercilessly turned on Xiang Rong!

Xuanwu’s off-key laughter echoed among the mountains. “Sect leader shixiong, did you think that the Silver Moon was hostile towards you because of the Heartless Lotus? One set of spiritual mountains can only have one true full moon god. In your futile attempt to wipe away the traces of His Majesty the Black Emperor and become the master of Sanyue, what did you think the Silver Moon would take you for?”

The rest of his words were drowned in the sound of thunder as dense as rain.

But Zhuoming still heard him clearly—he could always hear the voices others couldn’t hear.

“Starting from the day a set of spiritual mountains forms, they carry a curse. Xuanyin will sink into ceaseless internal strife, while in Sanyue, this single-plank bridge leading to heaven, there will ultimately be a falling out between teacher and disciple, between brother and brother. The spiritual mountains left behind by the Black Emperor want to eliminate Xiang Rong, Xiang Rong plots to make Xuanwu expose his ambitions, while Xuanwu has spent three hundred years looking after me and has finally found a use for me… They really are boring, aren’t they?” The successor of the Heartless Lotus used his remaining consciousness to keep an unwavering watch on Xi Ping, almost greedily listening to the creaks of his new and old joints grinding against each other. He softly said, “Allow me to give you a hint. While the fire in the Unbound Furnace can indeed block the moonlight, jade must be cut and polished before it can have worth. Without a heavenly tribulation, an established foundation cannot ascend his spirit. That is a fixed rule.”

To go from an established foundation to an ascended spirit, you had to make all kinds of preparations. Even disciples in the spiritual mountains with elders watching over them had to make ready to face near-certain death. Was there really a person who could simultaneously endure reconstructing his bones and flesh and a heavenly tribulation?

Zhuoming’s voice became a little more serious. “For the sake of safety, you had better not be in such a hurry to become an ascended spirit now. Let’s…”

Before he could finish, the lotus stalk was abruptly pulled up by Xi Ping and tossed into the fire on one side of the furnace.

Then the furnace fire protecting them suddenly opened a crack, and a bolt of lightning struck perfectly through that crack, directly hitting Xi Ping.

He had by now grown an upper body. His legs were still bone. The new flesh was instantly charred. The fragile leg bones broke with a snap and burned to charcoal and ashes.

It seemed he had spent his whole life snatching chestnuts out of the fire. He didn’t know how to write the word “safety.”

An ascended spirit would at least have a chance of survival. If he remained safe and held on to his life now, when these two were finished fighting, where could he run to?

Moreover, he had to bring the Unbound Furnace back with him today, or else what would remain of all these gods?!

The furnace fire had opened a crack to allow the heavenly lightning to pass through, yet it burned all the more lavishly.

A thin qin string appeared at Xi Ping’s fingertips and skillfully sliced away at the charred, rotting flesh. Spiritual energy flowed into the Unbound Furnace like a river. New bones and flesh were growing rapidly from his wounds, but the second bolt of heavenly lightning was coming!  

Zhuoming laughed quietly. “The ungovernable way.”

At the same time, the sound of the Silver Moon wrestling with the new full moon sage even overwhelmed the sound of thunder. An angry shout came from Sanyue’s veins of the earth: “I said, Silver Moon, return to position—”

The Silver Moon in full bloom was suppressed.

The flashing lightning lit Xiang Rong’s face snow-white. Drained of color, he looked even more like Xuanwu.

The spiritual mountains were thousands of years old. Amid the cries of distress of generation upon generation of the people, the mountains had rotted and become decrepit. Western Chu, this patch of earth where winner took all, seemed about to become the possession of a newly born divinity.