The Unbound Furnace…also has a heart?

“It does.” Zhuoming’s voice was a little dull in the water. “Only the Late-Autumn Red knew…but that madwoman was a hothead who only knew how to fight and kill. She didn’t understand a thing about toolmaking. She couldn’t give me a clear account of where this furnace heart came from.”

As he spoke, the lotus stalks raised Xi Ping’s hand.

Pressing his hand down, Zhuoming reached into his mustard seed and took out the Unbound Furnace, which he had just put away.

“I’ll show you.” Like a child showing off his toys, Zhuoming excitedly swam several circles around Xi Ping. Below the waist, he was wrapped in layer after layer of long stalks. “The fire of this furnace heart can’t be put out with water or sand. If you crush it under ice blocks, it can keep burning inside the ice… While it’s useful, the way it just keeps on doing exactly what it wants is very loathsome to me. All four great spiritual mountains had the wool pulled over their eyes. On the day that Lancang got the Unbound Furnace, it was incomplete.”

A lotus stalk bored into the flames. The calm flames didn’t so much as tremble before they had “melted” the lotus stalk.

Next, the furnace heart’s fire changed color. Before Xi Ping could get a clear look at what was inside the flame, he was pulled by Zhuoming into the big cauldron of the Unbound Furnace. The golden light inside the Unbound Furnace burned brightly—but this time, what was inside the golden light wasn’t an image of a woman, but a view over the thousand peaks of the Sanyue Mountain Range, and then, visible at a glance from this ultimate height, the Slumbering Dragon Sea, which touched the sky; the better part of Western Chu’s territory was right before your eyes.

Xi Ping: “…”

What the hell? A complete view of all the scenic spots in Western Chu, welcoming visitors from all around?

Presently, this newborn ascended spirit at last belatedly realized that the territory within the furnace just happened to be about the range that an ascended spirit’s consciousness could cover—this was Zhuoming’s point of view!

In other words, this baldy could use the furnace heart’s fire to merge his consciousness into the Unbound Furnace without anyone knowing. It was as if Xiang Rong had been “seeking enlightenment” in Zhuoming’s spirit.

That wretched old man had spent every day strenuously seeking, “bowing and scraping” to the cauldron, coming up empty for two hundred years; then, just when he was on the verge of falling apart, he had suddenly “had a flash of inspiration” and found the exit on this path leading to a full moon position…and the upshot was, the “inspiration” was a load of crap made up by his monstrous nominal shizhi!

Spying from the mountaintop next door, Xuanwu had thought that the sect leader was pretty much cooked, and he could at last resurface with the Silver Moon in his grasp.

Inside the pot, Xiang Rong had thought that he was doing great and had deliberately put on a show of nearly expiring for Xuanwu’s benefit, luring him into exposing his ambition, tricking him out of half of his essence, preparing to remove future troubles forever…

After all the work those two great personages had done, grappling with heaven for their destinies and with others for power, it turned out that it had all been a puppet show put on by the East Peak’s bald orphan.

And Xi Ping’s part in this had been to act as the pollinating bee that had brought the Heartless Lotus into the Unbound Furnace!

Zhuoming was completely rotten!

Zhuoming laughed and batted away the Unbound Furnace. “Eight hundred years ago, Xiang Rong turned a blind eye on Xiang Zhao and those other good-for-nothings and let Hui Xiangjun slip away. That ‘potted heart demon’ at Lancang had an even more mystical intellect. He spent centuries holding on to the Unbound Furnace and didn’t even manage to boil eggs, then ended up dying confused and bewildered at the hands of a mortal. Finally, this sect leader of ours got shoved up to the pinnacle of the shed skin stage by the Sanyue Mountains. Once he reached that boundary, he realized that he had lost something. After all that hard work, he had brought back the Unbound Furnace without its furnace heart. He spent every day strenuously immersed in it… Oh, the spiritual mountains, with all their incessant ostentation—have they gone blind? They’ve ended up with a crowd of idiots filling the highest positions. Haha!”

The lotus stalks that had burrowed into all of Xi Ping’s meridians pushed and pulled, shaking him constantly like a puppet on strings in time to Zhuoming’s laughter. He paid it no mind. While Zhuoming expressed his cynicism, Xi Ping’s injured consciousness took the opportunity to quickly retreat to his spirit—he still had Zhaoting.

He really didn’t want to alarm shifu, but…

But as soon as he extended his consciousness towards Zhaoting, he was once again attacked by a pain like being ripped apart. Xi Ping’s vision darkened.

If a consciousness had physical form, his would probably have been rolling around on the floor by now.

“Oh, I guess you can’t find your shifu. What a pity.” A snow-white lotus leaf unfurled above Xi Ping’s head, and Zhuoming’s features emerged on it. “I dare not provoke the Master of Xuanyin’s Flying Jade Peak, who cleaved the East Sea with his sword. Luckily you’ve already cut him off yourself. However worried General Zhi is, I suppose he still couldn’t bear to hack at his own disciple’s consciousness with Zhaoting?”

Xi Ping had just given his shifu a performance of being completely in control of the situation. Naturally he wasn’t going to let Zhi Xiu see him scuttling around the mountain pursued by a full moon sage. But he had used his own consciousness to block Zhaoting’s line of sight. Why wouldn’t shifu know that he had been trapped?

But before he could think carefully about it, Xi Ping felt the invisible cage holding his consciousness draw tighter and tighter. All his fine hairs stood on end.

That baldy was jealous of his long hair and was trying to snatch his body!

“Nonsense, I don’t do that kind of thing!” Zhuoming resolutely denied, pulling a long face. “Who wants your smelly skin sack? There’s nothing fun about plucking hair, I got tired of it ages ago. I…”

The sharp pain of his consciousness tearing ran through Xi Ping for the second time that day!

Finally, Xi Ping could take no more. He screamed aloud.

Zhuoming’s eyes curved. “I just want to move you to a nice place…”

Snatching a body meant an external consciousness forcing its way into someone’s spirit to seize their skin sack; the Heartless Lotus, however, could simply steal a person’s consciousness.

While the consciousness could be sent out, its “roots” remained with the true body. Even when it was probing somewhere else, temporarily separating itself from the true body, the inextricable connection was always there. It was like a person’s gaze, which could be sent far away. What Zhuoming was doing amounted to simply gouging out his eyes.

When his body had been destroyed by the heavenly tribulation, the pain had only lasted a moment; there had been a limit. The pain of his consciousness being torn, however, was a hundred times harder to endure.

The moment he was wrested from his spirit, Xi Ping “saw” a small lotus seal appear over each of his features. He understood—

He hadn’t been taken in while inside the Unbound Furnace. The Unbound Furnace was only a sanctuary that had protected him from the impact of the battle of the great masters. His flesh and bones could regrow themselves because of the hidden bones; that had little to do with the Unbound Furnace. Zhuoming had had no chance to tamper with that. Anyway, in order to light the furnace fire, he had activated the reincarnation wood seedlings he had left on the Central Peak. The better part of his consciousness had been dispersed outside. It would have been hard for Zhuoming to trap him.

But just now, he had been trapped by Xiang Rong within the Sanyue Mountains, and all the reincarnation wood in the vicinity had been wiped out. He hadn’t dared to send a sliver of consciousness outward, and he hadn’t dared to let shifu see. The moment Xiang Rong had merged with the Sanyue Mountains, Xi Ping had thought he was about to be swept by the Silver Moon. His mind had been shaken, his senses failing. Zhuoming had taken advantage of that moment to plant the lotus seal over his senses without him noticing. That damn baldy of a Heartless Lotus could simply become a parasite within his consciousness. No wonder Zhaoting hadn’t noticed!

This was just retribution. He had used Xiang Rong to dodge the heavenly tribulation, and now someone else had used Xiang Rong to deal with him.

But his understanding came too late.

The next moment, Xi Ping’s consciousness left his body altogether. His body folded up lifelessly, the spiritual light around it vanishing.

Zhuoming took a deep breath. Joy appeared on his face. Then he unfolded his hands. There was a new white lotus flower bud cupped in them. He cautiously peeled apart the still furled petals slightly and glanced inside. At the empty heart of the flower, a tiny Xi Ping was lying unconscious.

The leaves and flowers in the water drew near one after another, growing eyes to peer inside.

“Shh—” Zhuoming batted aside a lotus root that was hesitantly reaching out. Very gently, he replaced the flower petals. “Don’t disturb him. Be calm.”

“Be calm…”

“Quiet…”

The flowers and leaves passed the word on among themselves.

“Zhou Ying is going to hate me. What should I do?” Though Zhuoming was saying “What should I do?”, he still couldn’t hold back a quiet laugh. “Hahaha, what should I do? He’s mine now.”

The lotus stalks continued to drag Xi Ping’s body downwards, then abandoned him without regret, burying his body at the bottom of the pond. Blood stained half the lotus pond red.

Just then, Zhuoming sensed something. He floated out of the lotus pond, craned his neck, and concentrated on something in the distance. Then his features began to twist chaotically. He whispered “Annoying,” hid the new lotus bud inside his clothes, and retreated into the water.

The stone sides of the lotus pond began to quiver. The uppermost layer turned down, revealing layer upon layer of inscriptions hidden beneath it, then slid into the water. Then the whole lotus pond rolled up like a painted scroll and shrank into the earth, burrowing into the East Peak.

Its original location became deserted.

After about an incense stick of time had passed, the West Peak’s Elder Xiang Ning finally descended on the East Peak along with the Central Peak’s four great ascended spirits, the West Peak’s Xiang Wenqing, and other such people.

The whole crowd, grim-faced, released their consciousnesses and patrolled the surroundings.

“Shifu,” Xiang Wenqing spoke first, “the East Peak’s prohibition has been nearly destroyed. There’s no sign of anyone here.”

Another West Peak ascended spirit said, “I remember that Elder Xuanwu…that Xuanwu had a direct disciple who never showed himself. Where has he gone? Is he also dead?”

The chief disciple of the sect leader from the Central Peak scanned Xiang Ning’s expression and tentatively asked, “May I be permitted to ask, elder, what abnormality is there about the Silver Moon?”

Xiang Ning ignored him.

He didn’t respond until Xiang Wenqing put in a word from beside him: “Shifu, what should we do now?”

Then Xiang Ning finally said, “The spiritual mountains have already repaired themselves. The only change is in the Elders’ Hall on the Central Principal Peak. The sect leader’s life tablet is intact, but the writing on it has all disappeared. Xuanwu’s life tablet is still there, but it has cracked and dimmed, indicating that his boundary has dropped. He has fled to escape punishment. His whereabouts are unknown.”

Xiang Wenqing said, “If the sect leader were injured or… His life tablet ought to have cracked or turned to dust. How could the stone remain intact while the writing disappeared?”

Xiang Ning raised his head and looked towards the valley. At present, the moisture in the valley was a great deal more plentiful than usual, and the spiritual energy was nearly overflowing. Xiang Ning already had his guesses, he just didn’t mention them. He said, “That’s right. If his life tablet hasn’t broken, then he is well. As for the writing—the venerable sect leader has become a full moon sage, the only full moon sage among the four great spiritual mountains. Can common reason contemplate his state? Our founder the Black Emperor also left no life tablet in the Elders’ Hall.”

None of the ascended spirits were stupid. They all had their own thoughts. As soon as they heard the elder’s excuse, they knew this boded ill for the sect leader’s condition. But there were threats at all the borders, and Sanyue, protecting such precious territory, had lost two of its great masters at once and was left with only the West Peak’s Xiang Ning, who wasn’t very stable at his boundary. The West Peak’s elder himself felt uncertain. Apart from pretending to feel secure in his backing, what else could he do?

“Issue a notice saying that Xuanwu has lost his mind and become a demon. After being injured in battle with the sect leader, his boundary dropped. He has betrayed the spiritual mountains. In order to consolidate his level, the sect leader has gone into seclusion and will not be seeing visitors from the outside in the near future. We hope that our fellow cultivators coming to make inquiries will understand.” Xiang Ning paused. Gently grinding his teeth, he said, “There is plenty of time ahead. When the sect leader leaves seclusion, he will certainly—return their visits.”

All the ascended spirits went to obey orders. Xiang Ning turned back to glance at the grim and desolate East Peak. His lips were tightly pursed. After a moment, he said “fiend” with a quiet sigh and soared off into the clouds.

On the deserted summit of the East Peak, a cluster of grass slowly turned dark red and moved on its own, beginning to shiver. A juvenile auspicious creature, a spiritual sparrow, must have thought that there were worms in the grass and dove in, hopping around all over in search.

Suddenly, like snakes emerging from their holes, blades of grass whose color had changed wrapped around the spiritual sparrow. Without even having a chance to cry out, the little sparrow was rapidly torn in half by the malicious grass. Blood and feathers were blown far away by the wind.

“Xuanwu didn’t die…” said a whisper in the grass. “Xuanwu actually didn’t die.”

In the lotus pond that had sunk into the mountain, Zhuoming grabbed a lotus stalk extending from his waist and fiercely bit into it. The lotus stalk began to bleed. The flowers and leaves around him began to holler in chorus.

Zhuoming’s features contorted, whether in pain or in anger. He wildly ravaged the flowers, stalks, and leaves in the lotus pond, until he inadvertently came to the white lotus bud holding Xi Ping. The lunatic froze. The hand squeezing the flower bud shook for a moment as though convulsing. Then he screamed, tossed the flower bud aside, and violently smashed his own head against the edge of the lotus pond.

Boom—boom—boom—

Xi Ping awoke to the sound of dull thudding. The acrid reek of blood nearly made him throw up.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he found that he was inside a “palace,” surrounded by dazzling whiteness. When he took a look, he found that the “palace” had no roof beams, and the “ground” and “walls” were covered with indistinct channels.

These seemed to be…flower petals!

He was inside an enormous lotus flower.

Xi Ping at first wanted to sit up, but as soon as he moved, he felt as if he had been wrenched apart. He fell back down.

After Zhuoming had uprooted him from his body, he felt that every last joint was in the wrong place.

Mentally paying his respects to eighteen generations of Zhuoming’s ancestors, Xi Ping crawled a few chi forward, gritting his teeth.

A consciousness unprotected by a body was extremely fragile. It would break at once if something pressed on it. At the same time, it was also extremely “pliable”—if he could only imagine his own appearance, he could make his consciousness appear human.

Enduring intense pain, he got back his hands, feet, limbs, and neck in the process of crawling. As he moved, his twisted and deformed joints returned to their original positions bit by bit. When he had crawled seven or eight zhang away, Xi Ping had finally “put himself back together” in full.

He had truly exhausted all his energy. He lay where he was to rest. Before he could catch his breath, the flower bud palace suddenly experienced an “earthquake.”

Before, when Zhuoming had an attack of madness, he could be forced into calm by a pill from Xuanwu. But this time there was no one to attend to him. His fit went on and on. He had already smashed his bald head into a bloody pulp. He had no hair left to pull out, so his fingers embedded themselves in his scalp, as if trying to plow something out of the flesh and blood. Flesh and blood flew everywhere, but he had yet to vent his spleen. He grabbed a lotus next to him, opened his mouth, and bit it.

The stalk of the lotus flower snapped at this. He tore the flower petals to pieces, and they sank in the pond. A stream of bloody foam began to spread outwards.

Inside the lotus flower, Xi Ping heard horrifying shrieks coming from all directions. With a splash, blood seeped into the cracks of the “flower bud palace,” pushing a bunch of bubbles roiling through the blood towards him. Each bubble was the same size as him.

Xi Ping, having just put himself back together, was caught off guard. A bubble came crashing right into his arms and broke when it hit. From out of it fell a person with wide open eyes, bleeding from the face, and nearly kissed him!

“Fuck!” said Xi Ping.

He was so startled that all his limbs became nimble. He scrambled to his feet and scuttled back several chi at once. Recovering from his shock, he looked over. The figure of the devil that had tried to take advantage of him flickered, then disappeared in the blood.

Each of the bubbles amid the blood burst, and each one contained a person dripping with blood. There were those with missing limbs whose deaths had been unusually brutal, who disappeared as soon as they saw the light, and there were those who seemed not to have fully died when they left the bloody bubble, and only disappeared after struggling for a while.

Xi Ping stepped in blood and felt unbearable disgust, but he was only a consciousness right now. He had no powers. He couldn’t fly. He could only turn tail and run deeper into the “flower bud temple.”

Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of dark red out of the corner of his eye. Xi Ping turned his head and saw that at the depths of the “ground” inside the “palace” was a blood-colored “tunnel” connecting it to the underground.

That…ought to be where the stalk grew.

The place where the flower bud was connected to the stalk had just enough space to let him pass through. It was pitch-black below, the bottom invisible. He didn’t know what was there.

Xi Ping hesitated for a moment and approached. But it turned out that there was sticky fluid around the stalk. It was so slippery that he couldn’t get any purchase on it. He missed his footing and toppled backwards, slipping down right past the join between the flower and the stalk.

These tied-together lotus stalks were very long. He fell for ages. Xi Ping rolled this way and that through the narrow lotus stalks while outside Zhuoming was wailing and shouting in his fit. Suddenly, he heard a strong heartbeat from one side. Xi Ping immediately kicked in the opposite direction, tossing himself into one side of a fork, rolling towards the source of that heartbeat.

With a bang, Xi Ping bumped into something and nearly got his spine snapped. He flew straight out and fell into gloom.

Everything here was smooth and slippery, with many openings big and small. Xi Ping struggled to his feet and realized that this might be a segment of lotus root.

Each opening contained a “person.” There were men and women. From their attire, the majority of them were from Sanyue’s inner sect.

These people were doing all kinds of things. Some were attacking thin air; some were tracing hand seals, as though drawing talismans; some were deranged, seeking sensuous pleasures, making all kinds of lewd motions… Each was doing their own thing. When Xi Ping made so much noise falling in, no one gave him a glance.

Xi Ping passed through the crowd. He saw that these people had vacant looks in their eyes. Each and every one was like the folk legend about stone tape ghosts, the dead who couldn’t accept their own deaths recorded in stone and played back, repeating the same motions over and over.

“Hey.”

Xi Ping tried holding back a man who was just wielding a sword empty-handed, but the man didn’t react. He maintained his original posture, stabbing forward. As soon as Xi Ping let go, he completed his sword move according to pattern.

Xi Ping thought that this scene was exceedingly strange. “Are they real or fake…?”

“Real,” a somewhat familiar voice responded.

Xi Ping abruptly turned around and saw an unusually tall figure leaning against a nearby opening in the lotus root, with pitch-black hair as long as an ordinary person was tall hanging behind her. This figure that stood out above all the others still seemed to be exquisite and tasteful—

Xi Ping quickly backed up half a step. “…Qiu Sha.”

Qiu Sha, whom he had seen crushed to dust by the Silver Moon with his own eyes.