The moment Xi Ping exposed the origin of the flame in front of him, a very mystical thing happened. 

The inextinguishable flame dissipated without warning, and Hui Xiangjun stood before him as though she were a living person. 

She was too close. Even her eyelashes and the fine freckles on her face were complete to the smallest detail. When she bent down, her long braid fell on Xi Ping, who was sitting there…then passed through him. 

Out of nowhere, Xi Ping felt a twinge of regret: still only a shadow. 

“Shh.” She raised a finger. “Don’t ask questions. I can’t answer you, I’m already dead. Just listen to me.” 

Xi Ping looked at her in bewilderment—the legendary Hui Xiangjun had spoken…and he couldn’t understand her! 

Over the last century or two, because of the gradual development of transportation, there had been frequent trade between the nations of Wan and Chu, and their languages had mingled considerably as well. They had borrowed both grammar and lexicon from each other. For a person from Wan, the Chu language had become a foreign language it was relatively easy to learn the basics of…a completely different story from Ancient Chu! 

Moreover, Hui Xiangjun spoke very fast. How fast? For example, if she and Lin Chi split the difference, the two of them would both be normal. 

Out of a whole long speech, Xi Ping only understood the beginning and the end. 

No wonder Qiu Sha hadn’t understood what she was saying for eight years. 

“I don’t know which country you come from or how many years have passed,” Hui Xiangjun said, smiling. “If you can find me, it must mean you’ve already seen the Law Breaker and the Riverward, right? I left the Riverward to Xiao Qiu, but I couldn’t give her the Law Breaker. Once I’m gone, Xiao Qiu will have no restraint. If she and the Law Breaker get together, it’ll mean big trouble. I want to have the Law Breaker find a firm and steady master. Is that you?” 

Xi Ping’s ears were ringing. He could only just pick out a few words like “firm and steady,” which sounded like they didn’t have much to do with him. 

“Lin-shishu, help!” Xi Ping had no more extra reincarnation wood on him, but fortunately he was already an ascended spirit. It was much easier for him to swap places with reincarnation wood. He put his fingers together and cut off a strand of his own hair. When it landed in his palm, it became a reincarnation wood twig. 

At this moment, flying Heavenly Questions filled the sky over the Xuanyin Mountains. There seemed to have been a major disturbance in Western Chu’s Sanyue. The Luwu didn’t dare to approach; news had yet to be verified. Xi Ping had only said a few words before running off every time, and he hadn’t said anything clear. Lin Chi simply couldn’t keep up with General Zhi’s mad dog of a disciple. All he could do was use his consciousness to flip through all the talisman texts on Moon Plated Peak, stuffing everything he saw into his head indiscriminately, afraid that Xi Ping would suddenly appear and ask him for something else. 

Pity the toolmaking genius of the age. When his consciousness arrived in the reincarnation wood, he was still nervously reciting to himself offensive talismans he would never use in his life. 

“What is it now?! I have a few talismans here, but I’ve never used them and I don’t know what the results will be, you must…” When Lin Chi got halfway through saying this, Xi Ping raised the “tree branch translator” in front of the image. The Golden Hand was dumbfounded. For a time, he lost his powers of speech. He mumbled, “You… She…” 

The voice and expressions of the person before his eyes were the same as before, like an unfading dream. 

Lin Chi held his breath involuntarily, scared of waking up—waking, he couldn’t even hold on to a piece of wood. 

But Hui Xiangjun wouldn’t recognize her old friend again. Her eyes, looking out from eight hundred years before, couldn’t see anyone, and they certainly couldn’t see a hastily broken off twig. She continued speaking: “I hope that you won’t use the Law Breaker to do anything cruel and ruthless. Even the spiritual mountains will receive backlash from mortals, never mind me and her. My power is very limited. It can’t withstand the enmity of millions of people united. It might go out if that happens… Ah, but I suppose I’m just scaring myself over nothing. The Law Breaker contains unbound stars. She understands destiny and the trends of affairs. She will choose the most suitable master and the best moment to appear—I don’t know how many of my old friends are still living. I’d like them to have a look at the future in my stead.” 

“What…what is she? How can she be here?” Lin Chi asked Xi Ping in alarm, his mind a blank. “What does she mean?” 

“Shishu,” Xi Ping said, sighing. Whenever he used this form of address when not being supervised by General Zhi, it would be followed by something unreasonable eighty percent of the time. “If I understood her, why would I be asking you?” 

Only then did Lin Chi realize that a young person wouldn’t be able to understand Ancient Chu very well and gave him an incoherent translation of her general meaning. Even talking himself breathless, he still couldn’t keep up with the speed of Hui Xiangjun’s speech. He could only pick out a few key words from every sentence. Fortunately, Xi Ping had spent many years in Chu. If he listened very attentively, he wasn’t completely incapable of understanding. Following Lin Chi’s prompting and making guesses, he could get the gist.  

Perhaps Hui Xiangjun’s mind was too quick. Not only was her speech so fast it exhausted Lin Chi, she also got off topic very easily. After getting halfway into explaining the Law Breaker, she changed the subject and went off to ask after her friends from the past—Xi Ping hadn’t heard of the majority of the people she mentioned. Likely they were from the Lancang Mountains; presumably their bones were already cold. 

During this interval, Xi Ping let her keep playing automatically and quickly refined the story of his theft of the Unbound Furnace to dump on Lin Chi all at once. 

After hearing it, Master Lin Chi didn’t make a sound. He was choked. 

“Though Xiang Rong got tricked into his grave by Zhuoming, he did in fact succeed in reaching a full moon position, so in other words, the principles I saw in the Unbound Furnace at the beginning were true—if it had been pure nonsense, Sanyue’s sect leader wouldn’t have fallen for it,” Xi Ping said at a speed comparable to Hui Xiangjun’s. “Adding in what Qiu Sha told me, that ‘the spiritual mountains are a big Law Breaker,’ I have a guess. All spiritual energy has a master. The spiritual energy released by every spiritual stone that comes within a country’s borders automatically receives the spiritual mountains’ brand.

“Within the scope of the spiritual mountains’ authority, anyone cycling spiritual energy to cultivate, or even anyone breathing in order to live, has to use spiritual energy branded by the spiritual mountains. You end up beholden to whoever feeds you—no matter who it is, they’ll all be controlled by the spiritual mountains’ ‘rules’… Do you remember during the Zhao family treason, when all the spiritual energy within Great Wan was prohibited? With just one order, apart from the shed skin elders who represent them, the spiritual mountains made it so no one else could use spiritual energy. 

“But my san-ge had the Riverward then, and he could still use it, which means that the Law Breaker and the Riverward don’t use ‘spiritual energy that has a master’—especially the Law Breaker. Within the scope of the Law Breaker, not only can it remove the mark of the spiritual mountains from spiritual energy, it can also put its own axioms in place, becoming a small spiritual mountain itself. So the question is, where does the ‘masterless spiritual energy’ the Law Breaker and Riverward use come from?” 

Lin Chi finally caught his breath and mumbled, “Before the spiritual mountains formed, all spiritual energy was masterless… Yes, a long time ago, she told me so, but I didn’t understand it then. I thought she was only speaking metaphorically to mock the spiritual mountains for controlling the human world… What she said was always so bold and unrestrained…” 

“If the principles of the Law Breaker and the Riverward are so simple, why has no one else been able to make them? Why did she only leave behind these two things? Why is there a limit on the Riverward’s number of uses, and a limit on the Law Breaker’s range?” Xi Ping said. “Also, before her death, she used the Riverward to send Qiu Sha away and told Qiu Sha to hide under the Lancang Mountains for eight centuries so she could accumulate enough cultivation to become an ascended spirit, then break the law that ‘evil cultivators can’t be ascended spirits’ as soon as she emerged. But she herself offered no resistance. I haven’t been able to understand that no matter how I thought about it. Until I saw that furnace flame that could burn within water or ice—I think that she couldn’t use the Law Breaker and the Riverward.” 

Lin Chi said, “…What?” 

“When she mentioned the Law Breaker just now, she said ‘my power is limited.’ My guess is that she herself is sustaining the Law Breaker and the Riverward.” Xi Ping softened and slowed his voice slightly. “She had an accompanying plant. She used the Unbound Furnace to refine herself into the furnace flame. The furnace flame is the source of the Law Breaker and the Riverward’s power.” 

In the human world controlled by the spiritual mountains, she had lit herself into a flame that would never go out, prying up a rift in the impenetrable spiritual mountains. That was why the Law Breaker and the Riverward could be truly activated, why Qiu Sha could become an ascended spirit, why Tao County could become a place where spiritual energy was prohibited. 

That was why a hole could open in the fine meshes of the net of heaven. 

She was…the wedge stuck in the crack, the person who had opened up an opportunity to live, the person who could never be saved. 

“I heard that when she was captured, she offered absolutely no resistance. Even an ant clings to its lowly life, let alone an ascended spirit elder at Lancang. You heard her read off a whole laundry list of friends. Clearly she was well-liked in Lancang back then. If it really came to blows, those people might very well have been willing to let her slip away. But my guess is that she had already become the furnace flame by then and prompted the Riverward to take Qiu Sha away. All that remained was a drop of her consciousness inside a shell to make arrangements for after her death. She wouldn’t have had any more powers.” 

Lin Chi’s consciousness was shaken. Even the twig he was residing in began to quiver slightly. 

Just then, this woman who was reputed to be capable of talking to herself for a hundred twenty years said, “Oh, right, there’s also that kid Lin Zisheng.” 

There was no need for a translation now. Xi Ping understood, too. 

Hui Xiangjun paused, then began to laugh. “That kid is pretty full of ideas, but the Lin family has kept him too pure. He’s timid and shy. He certainly won’t go out of his way to make trouble. If nothing has gone wrong, I suppose he’s still living? How is he now? Did Xuanyin Mountain let him out in the end?” 

Xi Ping felt that even Lin Chi’s consciousness was trembling and was afraid his Way of the Heart would go amiss. “Lin-shishu?” 

“No…no, that’s not…” Lin Chi said almost incoherently. “The Gold Imitation Technique was a disaster of my own making. If not for me…if not for me…” 

Hui Xiangjun’s voice perfectly interrupted his babbling: “If you get the chance to see him, tell him for me—don’t be afraid.” 

Lin Chi abruptly shut his mouth. 

Through the reincarnation wood, he met Hui Xiangjun’s narrow eyes. The form of her features was the same as Qiu Sha’s, but there wasn’t such a stark contrast between black and white. With a change of color, the difference in temperament was colossal. 

Hui Xiangjun’s eyes were rather light, like two limpid pieces of colored glass. Her brows were pale, and so were her lips. There was a moderate amount of flesh on her bones; her outlines didn’t seem as fierce as the tall and sturdy Late-Autumn Red. It made her seem far gentler. She was a good-looking but not dazzling young woman. 

This was his elder, his dear friend, his guide, a wild fantasy forever out of reach. 

The fifth year after Lin Chi had entered the way of toolmaking, he had received no less than a thousand rebukes from his shizun to “act within the rules, do not indulge in fantasy.” Each day was painful. He suspected that he had chosen the wrong Way of the Heart. Just then, all the great sects were sending specialists from the toolmaking way to visit the great nation of spiritual beasts, Southern Shu, to inspect spiritual beast materials. Xuanyin sent him and another shixiong so they could see something of the world along the way. 

Someone must have been having bad luck that year. A rare accident took place at the spiritual beast market: due to improper safety measures, some giant clam monsters escaped and just happened to destroy the array of the great roc animal spirit. The great roc went out of control, stirring up a revolt in the spiritual beast market. A disaster swept through the South Sea; the whole island was in utter confusion. The cultivators were all temporarily trapped there. 

It was then that they just happened to meet Hui Xiangjun. 

At the time, Hui Xiangjun was already an ascended spirit in Lancang. She had become the way of toolmaking’s hero of the moment. As a senior, she was helping to maintain order and protect the established foundations and half-immortals. 

His shixiong was extremely excited. When the situation calmed slightly, he dragged Lin Chi over so they could pay their respects. 

It cost Lin Chi a great effort to do this. This was an ascended spirit senior, a guest elder at Lancang. All his life, his greatest fear had been this kind of authoritative senior. At home, he feared his father, and once he entered the spiritual mountains, he feared his shizun. On seeing his family’s Dignitary of Rule ancestor, he would turn mute on the spot—and since the Dignitary of Rule also couldn’t readily open his mouth seal, each time the two of them met, their greetings and exchanged good wishes were all silent, like two shadow puppets that had forgotten to bring their accompaniment. 

And what was more, Elder Hui was a woman. Lin Chi had a timid disposition, and his upbringing had been strict. The tendons of his legs would twist themselves into knots if he spoke to any woman apart from his own mother. 

She clearly filled the requirements of both types of people Lin Chi feared most, yet she was also completely different. 

There was nothing in her manner of a senior or a master. Her behavior and bearing seemed to belong to a teenager who would never grow up. It wasn’t crude, thoughtless childishness—it was as if she always had inexhaustible patience and curiosity. 

The unchanging clear breezes and bright moon, the Southern Shu fruits that all tasted about the same, the useless common objects of others…all of them could give her pause. No matter how stupid the nonsense a junior asking instruction of her said, she could always find a point of interest in it, then use plain layman’s language to “ask for instruction” concerning the junior’s thoughts; often, within a few words, she could “ask” them back onto the right track, and make them feel as if she hadn’t taught them the answer, they had worked it out for themselves. 

For some reason, she liked Lin Chi on sight. During the days they were trapped on the island, she was always coming over to tease him. 

In the space of only a few days, without realizing it, Lin Chi had said everything he hadn’t dared to say in front of his shifu to her. The ideas his shizun had denounced as “sheer nonsense” were all proper and reasonable to her. The way of toolmaking, which had made him so sick at heart, drew him in like a kaleidoscope. 

For the first time, Lin Chi gathered up his courage and exchanged communication devices with another person. After that, every time he had an insight, he would write a letter to the Lancang Mountains right away, and at latest he would receive a response the next day. Sometimes it would hit the nail on the head and pierce through his perplexities, and sometimes it would come back with many even more bizarre ideas that were far off topic. 

Though cultivators were unaging, time would still leave its invisible traces. Those seniors who had spent hundreds of years jolting around between heaven and earth, even if they had baby faces, still made you bow when you saw them. Only Hui Xiangjun, who had roamed over the earth and turned her back on her home, still behaved the same as ever, untouched by the elements. Lin Chi often forgot that she was an ascended spirit senior. Without realizing it, he began to address her by her given name, then realized with a start that he had already been rudely calling her that for a long time… Unavoidably, in the Xuanyin Mountains, where spring breezes were forbidden, there was still soil where beautiful notions could sprout. 

Lin Chi was in an utter panic, not daring to utter a single word to betray his feelings. Because they were in the immortal mountains, a marriage alliance would be legitimate, but pining was disgraceful. Marriage was open and aboveboard under the justice of heaven and men, while sentiment was unsightly baseness and depravity. 

There were no marriage alliances between different immortal mountains, and even if there had been, there would have been no chance for a minor disciple like him. 

So he madly buried himself in cultivation, boiling up all his brains asking Hui Xiangjun all kinds of tricky and abstruse questions, deliberately measuring the distance between a genius and a mere craftsman from her light and casual responses, over and over, using this to flog his own wishful thinking. Unexpectedly, it made him stand out among the toolmakers of his generation. 

In Xuanyin’s inner sect, established foundation disciples were often sent out to run errands. His shizun knew that he was scared of people and wanted to train him whenever a chance came up. Wherever Great Wan had immortal tools that required servicing, he would order him to go. Anywhere that required the inner sect to service immortal tools or arrays, there had to be a major natural disaster that walkers in the mortal world couldn’t handle. Within a few short decades, Lin Chi witnessed all the misery of the mortal world. This gave the pampered young master the greatest shock. Because of this, he conceived an idea: it would be a good thing if everyone in the world could use spiritual energy like the people of the cultivation sects. 

Amid the towering floods of the Xia River, he casually jotted this thought down, as usual sending it to Hui Xiangjun squashed in among some other disjointed notions. But for once she waited a long time before responding with a letter he didn’t really understand at the time. 

“All my life it has perplexed me, why heaven should be heaven, and if the roof were to collapse under the weight of the plants pressing down on it, which way it would fall. With this idea from my young friend, it is as though I have been filled with sudden wisdom. I send this item as a gift. Be sure to use it well.” 

In the package that accompanied the letter was an item that brought about disaster.