It was the fifth month. The days began to shorten after the summer solstice. Pestilential miasma hid beneath lush leaves. 

The heroes who couldn’t see the light of day wouldn’t give up on exploring any avenue of survival. Each harboring their own designs, they hastened towards the South Sea. 

A realistic big whale passed over the sea bed a thousand zhang deep. The inscriptions on its belly flashed faintly—this was an immortal tool for moving stealthily through deep seas. 

This immortal tool was somewhat similar to the “big cuttlefish” White Amaranth had used back when he had been looting Great Wan’s spiritual stone shipment convoy, but its movements were far smoother than that vulgar cuttlefish’s. When it was far from the continent, the huge whale would occasionally emerge from the surface to let the people in its belly see some daylight. Sometimes it would attract pods of real whales. 

It was said that in the past, the common people in the southern coastal area of ancient He had all worshipped whales, believing that after the huge whales died, they would sink to the sea bed, and their corpses would bless all living things; therefore, it was said that whales became gods when they passed away. 

Anyway, Wei Chengxiang hadn’t seen this happen, so she couldn’t say whether it was true or not. At any rate, when the huge whale of Lancang had sunk, all it had supported were things like “the demon host in the East Sea” and “the greedy officials of Western Chu.” 

With her hands behind her back, she passed through the long, narrow passageway in the ship’s hold, inspecting the spiritual stone supplies of the arrays. Everyone she met coming her way stopped respectfully to greet her, calling her Wei-laoban—in the Land of Turmoil, there was no one who didn’t know the story of the established foundation cultivator White Amaranth being stabbed to death in one blow by a little girl who had just opened her spiritual eyes. Especially after the Exonerators had spent years hunting her, wave upon wave coming her way, not only failing to kill her but being run ragged and having their main forces depleted by her, lending an additional aura of mystery to her bloody reputation. 

At the moment, she was on the ship of an ascended spirit master called the Queen Mother of the West, one of the Three Heroes of Turmoil. 

The Three Heroes of Turmoil—these were the three who had nearly founded a country in the Land of Turmoil. Their titles were all as aggressive as their actions. To the west was the Queen Mother of the West, to the east was the Emperor of the East, and to the south was Lord Guang’an. At any rate, hearing these names made one want to shout out loud, “Long live Your Majesties!” 

East and West were both local personages. They had once been married. 

The Queen Mother of the West had formerly belonged to Lancang, while the Emperor of the East had been a feral evil cultivator of Southern He. When Southern He was vanquished, the Emperor of the East had already been an established foundation, the gang leader of the local evil cultivators, while the Queen Mother of the West had been a girl who had entered the way of medicine making not long before. 

With her sect scattered, her home destroyed, and her family dead, the former noble daughter had wed an evil cultivator peasant. It was hard to say how willing the Queen Mother of the West had been; from what came after, it unfortunately seemed that the answer was not very. She didn’t care very much about the Emperor of the East keeping other women. Once the little pretty boy Lord Guang’an had shown up, between the two of them, they had turned the Emperor of the East into the Cuckold of the East. 

While due to discord between their Ways of the Heart, the Emperor of the East’s wife had by then been so in name only, he still couldn’t stand this profound humiliation. He had immediately issued an execution order for these two people in the Land of Turmoil. His network in the Land of Turmoil was large and deep-rooted. The Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an had had a rough several years of it. It was fortunate that Lord Guang’an was a battle-ready sword cultivator. 

These three had spent over a century fighting, until White Amaranth, one of the Emperor of the East’s right-hand men, had overturned his ship in Wei Chengxiang’s gutter. Taking advantage of the Exonerators turning out in full force to hunt down Wei Chengxiang, the Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an had picked up the Exonerators' den, sweeping the accumulated resources of the Land of Turmoil’s largest snow wine merchant into their pockets, becoming ascended spirits one after the other. 

The weightiness of ascended spirits wasn’t something that a “force” composed of rabble could handle. The Emperor of the East was one against two. He knew that there was nothing he could do to this adulterous couple. Yet, after all, he was one of the lords of the Land of Turmoil. The Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an couldn’t budge him, either. So the three of them had strangely shook hands and made up, peacefully coexisting on the same patch of the continent. They had even held their noses and formed an alliance. 

Not long after that, the Queen Mother of the West had sent Wei Chengxiang a letter, asking whether she wanted to come be a “visiting courtier”—in other words, a hatchet girl and errand runner. In exchange for working for her, the Queen Mother of the West supplied her with spiritual stones. 

With the killing of White Amaranth to connect them, the Queen Mother of the West offered very lax terms. She didn’t require her to pledge her allegiance, and she didn’t stamp a spiritual image brand on her. 

Wei Chengxiang had adopted a group of Turmoilers in the Land of Turmoil, including those Liang Chen and the Indignant Cicadas had left behind. She spent every day fretting about not having enough money. Hearing that this kind of assignment was on offer, she had agreed without a second thought. Anyway, there was Tai Sui. Even if they did give her a brand, she still wouldn’t be afraid. 

After that, Tai Sui must have planted an informer beside the Emperor of the East or something—that gentleman truly was so magical that Wei Chengxiang wouldn’t be surprised by anything he got up to—no matter what evil schemes the Emperor of the East came up with, Tai Sui could always provide timely information. After performing several meritorious services, Wei Chengxiang had entirely become the Queen Mother of the West’s trusted aide. On this journey to the South Sea, the Queen Mother of the West had taken her along. 

Wei Chengxiang took her money and did her work; she had never let her bankroller down. She had arranged the arrays in the huge whale into shipshape order and made minor adjustments daily. They hadn’t had a single problem the whole way. After finishing a round of inspection as usual, she went to the huge whale’s head. Before she came close, her olfactory spiritual sense was touched—a warm, luxurious fragrance was filtering out from the prow of the ship. The smell seemed to be summoning her. 

Wei Chengxiang’s steps paused. Then she went down the steps and turned into the prow. 

There stood a resplendently attired woman in the old garb of Southern He. The hems of her skirts dragged on the ground for three chi. The heavy, complex fabric and embroidery made it hard to count up how many layers she was wearing. But an ascended spirit in the high clouds had a sense of distance that made people not dare to look at her up close. This splendid attire, which was enough to bury a person, not only didn’t seem overly solemn on her, it instead served to set off the appearance of an immortal queen. 

In a shadow three paces away from her was a standing figure holding a sword, dressed all in black fighting attire, almost one with the shadow. A glance from him could make anyone’s spirit sting—this was the sword cultivator Lord Guang’an. Guang’an was practically growing out of her shadow. To quote the Emperor of the East’s bitter phrasing, “Not even a dog follows a person as closely as him.” 

“Madam, Lord Guang’an.” Wei Chengxiang avoided Lord Guang’an’s spearhead gaze and reported to her bankroller, “According to our itinerary, we ought to be there soon. I’ve checked one last time. There has been nothing unusual in the ship’s course.” 

Hearing this, the Queen Mother of the West turned and gave her a courteous, old-fashioned salute. “Thank you, A-Xiang.” 

Each and every one of her movements was bonelessly soft, like a perfectly doled out noble lady. Wei Chengxiang immediately felt that even her breathing was coarse. She automatically lowered the sound of her breathing a little. “You’re most welcome.” 

The Queen Mother of the West opened her hand. A richly colored waking dragon scale flew out of her palm and hung automatically at the prow of the ship. 

This was Wangge Luobao’s invitation. 

The dragon scale moved and a faint light flashed. A few words in Southern He writing that looked as though they had been printed flickered. They said: “To be opened personally by the Queen Mother of the West”—Guang’an also had one. 

The method of opening them personally was to put spiritual energy into them; it could only be spiritual energy belonging to the invitee. Then the invitation would pull the big ship along on its own. Wei Chengxiang had been keeping an eye on it the whole time. Not only could this invitation lead the way, it also seemed very familiar with the routes of the various nations' navies and spiritual stone convoys. It automatically avoided them and adjusted the speed of travel. 

In other words, no matter where the invitee was, so long as they poured spiritual energy into the invitation, reasonably speaking, they could even punctually and precisely reach the legendary South Sea Hidden Realm while lying down. 

Even more considerate, the Emperor of the East’s invitation had led him along a different path. They were clearly going the same way, but since setting out, they hadn’t encountered each other again. The inviter seemed to know of the discord between them and had made thorough provision. 

“Under the oppression of the spiritual mountains, each one of us is short on manpower and resources. If we remain a tray of scattered sand, sooner or later, we will be eliminated one by one,” the Queen Mother of the West said slowly and softly. “I have heard that in this instance, all of our…‘kindred spirits’ of the middle established foundation period and above have received invitations. It is inevitable that there would be private grudges among some of them. In his letter, Wangge Luobao says that he will ensure no disputes arise. I do not know how he plans to do this.” 

Just then, Lord Guang’an, who had thus far kept silent, suddenly raised his head and said, “We’re here.” 

Hardly had he spoken than Wei Chengxiang also sensed something. The next moment, the invitation hanging at the prow of the ship began to turn rapidly. The huge whale suddenly let out a long sigh and floated towards the surface on its own. 

The surrounding seawater was immediately pushed apart by the spiritual energy of the huge whale. Spiritual light blazed brightly. Next, the huge whale vanished into thin air. 

On the whale, Wei Chengxiang’s consciousness immediately enveloped all the arrays and inscriptions on the ship, in case there was a problem. Then came a subtle sense of space and time warping. Her extended consciousness temporarily lost focus. After a moment, there was a light before everyone’s eyes. The huge whale had completely emerged onto the surface and stopped beside a small island. 

The island was deserted. There was a tidy house prepared with all the usual daily utensils of every kind, and oppressive spiritual energy—there couldn’t be spiritual stones on a reef island only a few mu large like this; evidently attendants had placed them in advance. 

Lord Guang’an and the Queen Mother of the West immediately sent out their consciousnesses to inspect the surroundings, but they found all of a sudden that their consciousnesses were constrained within a radius of fifty li around the little island. Small writing appeared on the waking dragon invitation. It said: My guests have come from all four corners of the seas. All of you have entered the hidden realm through different entrances and will not disturb each other. If you are uncomfortable, you may exit the hidden realm by crushing the invitation and leave freely.

The Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an exchanged a look: indeed, this Wangge Luobao really could keep people from meeting each other. 

Almost at the same time, a shadow landed on another desert island. Yu Chang, his irises slightly reddened, walked out of the shadow, examined the surroundings, and frowned. 

The Land of Turmoil’s Emperor of the East, a mysterious sword cultivator from Northern Li, and various major and minor evil cultivators from Western Chu disembarked one after another on their islands. 

There was only one little island, planted full of reincarnation wood, that remained silent. 

In the depths of the South Sea, lotus stalks like the limbs of an octopus climbed wildly. A pair of odd-colored eyes opened. 

Over and over, Zhuoming asked, “Well? Well?” 

“Nearly all of them have arrived.” Wangge Luobao frowned and discerned for a moment. “That individual…hasn’t appeared yet. I can’t even sense his invitation.” 

Meanwhile, Xi Ping, who was in the mouths and hearts of a crowd of evil cultivators, didn’t feel like sneezing at all. 

At the end of the fourth month, he had swaggered into Southern Shu’s capital city, Zhaoye, with a team of horses and carriages and put up at what was known as Southern Shu’s premier money squandering establishment: the Mirage Building. 

He spent every day eating well and drinking heartily and still found time to settle two business deals. 

On the whole continent, the further west you went, the more enthusiastic and less restrained the culture became. If you said that Jinping took toiling in silence to excess, always striving for “composure,” and Dongheng was already considerably more demonstrative, then once you reached Zhaoye, they were simply afraid that they couldn’t dazzle visitors’ eyes. 

The Mirage Building was actually eight floors high, with gold powder murals on the four walls and the rooftop. It couldn’t support steam power, so all the lighting came from precious pearls. 

The building formed a big ring with an open garden in the center. In the garden, many rare types of medicinal herbs grew in manmade green ore soil. If the guests opened their back windows and breathed in, they could expel the weariness of their journeys. 

Colored glass viewing platforms of various lengths hung in midair above the garden. Propelled by complicated gears and bearings, they slowly revolved like the sun, moon, and stars. Every evening, a stage would rise above the garden, full of beauties. Guests would buy gold leaves to throw down. In the Mirage Building, music and singing were endless, and gold fell endlessly like rain. 

As for how much it cost to stay there for a single day, Zhao Qindan, who had spent eight years working as an “instructor” in Tao County, didn’t ask to keep it from troubling her. 

“Thank you, no need, I’m not hot…” She waved a hand to politely refuse a Miah girl who was running after her to fan her. Then, seeing that the young woman was about to step forward to lift her hems for her, she quickly said, “That’s…that’s not necessary, either!” 

The young woman sheepishly drew back her hands. Zhao Qindan smiled at her and said in somewhat unpracticed Shu official language, “Go about your business, I do not need service.” 

Having said so, as if fleeing, she opened a door and went into lodgings on the top floor. 

The lodgings had just received a wave of guests. The guests had bid farewell, and seven or eight attendants were just clearing away the feast. These people were extremely nimble. They didn’t make a sound. Seeing her walk in, an attendant immediately got out some silk and knelt to wipe the already very clean floor in front of her. 

Zhao Qindan: “…” 

The young mistress wasn’t inexperienced in the ways of the world, but in all honesty, she thought that Southern Shu’s customs were a little over the top. 

She nodded in thanks and quickly went in, then heard a middle-aged man saying, “I’d been thinking, the railroad between Chu and Shu has gone through, so freight fees will be cheaper now, and we ought to lower our prices, too…” 

Across from him sat a rather refined man who seemed to be in his forties or fifties. His bearing seemed to belong to an aged dandy. Interrupting, he said, “The railroad’s gone through, so the stuff will be even more novel. Why should we lower our prices? When the spring tea comes out next year, we’ll say it was just processed within the last three days in Tao County, and the spiritual energy hasn’t dispersed yet. Oh…if you want it to sound nice, we’ll say that every year when we sell five hundred jin, we’ll double the price.” 

“Double…Tai…no, I mean, Cui-laoban, wouldn’t that be drinking gold?” 

This Chu merchant going by the name of “Cui Buqiong¹” was the Luwu’s Tai Sui—Xi Ping.  

“What do you think they want to drink? They only use tea as a symbol because gold doesn’t taste good. Just make up a story that’ll justify the expense to them. The story only has to be good enough, not too sloppy. The buyers have a tacit understanding with us, they won’t ask serious questions.” Xi Ping carelessly picked up a cup of plain water and drank a mouthful. “Otherwise you’d have to be sick in the head to pay ten liang of silver to drink leaf bathwater.” 

Zhao Qindan remembered her family’s past expenditures and had a sense that she was being mocked. 

Seeing her come in, Tai Sui nodded to her. The middle-aged man with the look of a shopkeeper across from him quickly stood up. “Sir…Miss Zhao.” 

This middle-aged man was also a Luwu who regularly worked in Tao County. He was acquainted with her, a “temporary staff member” of the Luwu. 

While Zhao Qindan didn’t meddle with the Luwu’s internal assignments, she still generally knew that they had been divided into two groups over these last years. One group focused on carrying out assignments, and the other group earnestly did business. People in the two groups could swap identities any time. 

But what she hadn’t expected was that Tai Sui, a master who ought to have left the hubbub of the mundane behind long ago, was also involved to manage affairs. To hear the Luwu talk, the scope of his management seemed to be pretty wide, too. 

It was already shocking for an ascended spirit master who could easily go into seclusion for several decades to be so good at converting between the currencies of each nation. This unconventional senior not only knew the commodity prices in every nation like the back of his hand; when it came to doing business, he kept perfect accounts—like an old shopkeeper who had steeped in an abacus for decades. 

What could he possibly be cultivating…if not the way of money? 

She sat down and hadn’t yet had time to speak when someone cautiously knocked on the door. The Luwu responded, and a rather dignified Xiuyi steward came in, holding a flower freshly cut from a medicinal herb in his hand. 

The steward wrapped the flower in silk and offered it to Zhao Qindan. Smiling brightly, he said in the Chu language, “This is the first ‘phoenix flame’ to open this morning. The bud grew the day you arrived, young mistress. I suppose it must have bloomed for you. I hope that a divine person like the young mistress will not take offense at the actions of servants. If you truly despise the Miah clansmen, we can have the supervisor reassign only Xiuyi to wait upon you.” 

Zhao Qindan was bewildered. “Huh?” 

“No need,” Xi Ping put in. “My niece enjoys quiet and doesn’t like having people coming and going around her. Just leave her be.” 

The Xiuyi attendant quickly agreed, put down the flower, closed the door, and withdrew. The disappointment on his face was hard to disguise. 

Xi Ping said, “There was always a clear distinction between the two clans here, but I recall…that it wasn’t so tense before?” 

“This has come up in recent years,” the Luwu across from him said. “Especially after the toilet bulletins spread here. Before, there was a tacit understanding, but in recent years, everything has been announced in the bulletins. An article by Zhaoye’s Senior Scholar Duyu Ju spread very far. It said that the cranial circumference of Miah is on average half a cun shorter than that of Xiuyi, and a small head means a small brain. Their dispositions are impulsive, so careful work and anything that requires using one’s brain is unsuited to them. There was also research saying that the Miah language is harmful to orderliness. Recently there was an anonymous article mentioning that the spiritual images of Miah were inferior to those of Xiuyi. Lingyun Mountain’s Miah won’t be able to keep still much longer.” 

Zhao Qindan: “…” 

She hadn’t researched brains and didn’t know how to refute this, but according to this reasoning, the smartest person in all the Xuanyin Mountains would undoubtedly have to be the Latent Cultivation Temple’s Luo-shixiong. 

Only now did she at last realize that because she had refused to let the Miah girl fan her and carry her hems, these Xiuyi had thought she was dissatisfied and had wanted to seize the opportunity to elbow out the other clan… Even the attendants in an inn wanted to oust dissidents! 

“You’re looking at it the wrong way. The tips the attendants in the Mirage Building receive in a month come to eight or nine liang of silver per month. It’s a cushy job. Many big machinery plants are recruiting workers and apprentices now, and they’ve made it clear that they don’t want Miah. They’re being elbowed out everywhere on the main peninsula.” 

Having heard about the matter of the toilet bulletins, Xi Ping frowned thoughtfully. 

Zhao Qindan asked, “Why don’t the Miah dispute it?” 

The Luwu said, “Southern Shu’s official language and its grammar developed out of the Xiuyi language. The Miah believe in nature. Not many of them study or learn to read. Only the scholars among the Xiuyi would bother to write articles and research these things. If you go and buy a few toilet bulletins in Zhaoye, you’ll know that it’s practically all people from a few places debating back and forth. There are practically no Miah voices.” 

Xi Ping glanced around himself. Formless spiritual energy abruptly spread out, placing a talisman to prevent eavesdropping all around. 

The Luwu and Zhao Qindan instantly went silent. 

Because he was wearing a spiritual image mask, Tai Sui’s actions and mannerisms resembled a mortal’s exceedingly. The Luwu and Zhao Qindan, who had both spent a long time in Tao County with its prohibition on spiritual energy, were always forgetting that this individual was an ascended spirit. 

In front of an open-eyed cultivator, an ascended spirit was like a living spiritual mountain. If he let off a bit of his aura, he could sweep right through the meridians of low level cultivators. 

It was only for a moment. Then Xi Ping once again withdrew his aura and quietly said, “I suspect that it isn’t necessarily Wangge Luobao himself assembling evil cultivators from all sides.” 

In fact, he had always wanted to have a look at all the heroes in the world who rose in contravention of the spiritual mountains, but it had only been wanting. He hadn’t actually assembled them—he didn’t have the power. 

And leaving aside people like Yu Chang and Zhuoming, whom he'd made trouble for, the others each had their own forces and powers. Other people hadn’t been “raised” up to being ascended spirits by a series of shed skin elders. Every one of those people who had struggled to live for centuries until they’d become ascended spirits was a remarkable personage. 

So how could this Wangge Luobao be so self-confident? 

If he didn’t already have a tacit agreement with those great evil cultivators he had invited, then he was a blindly overconfident idiot—but judging from the reactions of the three individuals in the Land of Turmoil, it wasn’t the former, and Wangge Luobao had previously been a nobody without any apparent powerful lineage, acting secretly at the feet of the spiritual mountains; he really didn’t seem like a hothead who didn’t know his own strength. 

There was only one possibility—behind Wangge Luobao was the support of the Miah in the Lingyun Mountains. 

This time, while on the surface it seemed to be great evil cultivators colluding with each other while individuals in Lingyun’s inner sect violated the rules and divulged secrets, in reality it was likely that because of the internal strife between the Xiuyi and the Miah, the Miah wanted to use some means to assemble and use these great evil cultivators. 

The toilet bulletins, the new version of Moon Plated Gold—these disturbing winds had evidently already blown all the way to the western continent. The steam monsters didn’t suit the Miah traditions. The Miah would sooner or later be thrown off by the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon. The wise people in the immortal mountains' inner sect had evidently already noticed that if things went on like this, the Miah wouldn’t have enough land to stick an axe into on their native soil.

Xi Ping took out a small colored glass bottle. Inside the bottle, the invitation made of a waking dragon scale was “imprisoned.” The scale gently bumped against the colored glass bottle, as if trying to lead him in a certain direction. When it bumped into the bottle, the inscriptions bounced it back. 

You didn’t even give me a map, and you expect me to go wherever you tell me to? 

Xi Ping gently tapped the bottle. “We’ll go straight to the Lingyun Mountains.”