A rattling suddenly came from the half-puppet’s body, like the gears of a marionette’s jamming in the wrong position. Xi Yue began to “twist.” A talisman made sparks fly off his colleague.

That established foundation blue-clotheser gave a groan of pain as he was pushed several zhang away. A corner of his protective armor even broke. The mustard seed he had confiscated from Xi Yue also flew back into its owner’s hand. The blue-clotheser raised his head in mingled surprise and fright. He saw that Xi Yue had yanked the spirit-severing awl from his body. There was a small silver knife clamped in his hand, still dripping blood.

“You’re crazy!”

The spirit-severing awl only temporarily cut off the array that moved spiritual energy through a half-puppet’s body. It had been stuck into the “puppet” part of his body. Apart from being unable to move, Xi Yue wouldn’t be harmed in any other way, and it didn’t hurt. It would only have to be removed afterward for him to recover.

But just now, he had used a downgraded immortal tool that had come out of nowhere to slit open his own core array. The clothes around his torso were shredded by the spiritual energy gushing out. Thread after thread of racing, out-of-control spiritual light flickered over Xi Yue’s face. The delicate features that had been repaired after he had opened his spiritual eyes began to twist.

A half-puppet’s ability to move relied entirely on their core array. This was his second heart. Now that it had been blown up with spiritual energy, there was no way to repair it. When the remaining spiritual energy in his body had been consumed, he would…

“I said we wouldn’t harm mortal lives, what are you doing?!”

Xi Yue was accustomed to being mute. When it came to the crux, he forgot to speak. He responded mentally: He told me to watch the house.

He summoned back his mustard seed and took out a piece of reincarnation wood hidden inside it.

The established foundation blue-clotheser was horrified. He threw himself forward to snatch it. The amulet was thrown far away.

Xi Yue had only had time to send word and hadn’t yet heard a response. His black irises, larger than normal, became clouded by a layer of deathliness, but his eyes were still fixed unwaveringly on that amulet, his blood-covered hand laboriously reaching out.

The blue-clotheser smashed the amulet with a flick of the fingers, but when he turned his head, his eyes were red.

“Xi Yue! Xi Yue!”

Fruitlessly, the blue-clotheser turned up a handful of white spirits and tried shoving them into Xi Yue’s mouth and wound. “Eat these… Hurry up… Then you can get up and repair yourself, I… If it’s no good I’ll take you to the general commander…”

Xi Yue ignored him. Whether spasming or struggling, he slipped from his one-time colleague’s arms.

“Xi Yue! Have you been bewildered by evil, lost your mind?”

In this city, on this path, sorrow and hatred fed each other. Every person, when they beheld another person holding fast, would think that they had lost their mind.

And Xi Ping was still trapped at the bottom of the Sea of Stars.

Zhou Ying saw the misty stars gather around to collide with him and frowned slightly. Xi Ping had taken the return to unity powder. He wouldn’t have felt it even if he had been knocked flat on his back. But his heart skipped out of nowhere. Immediately, he quietly asked Zhou Ying, “What’s wrong?”

Before Zhou Ying could answer, Lin Chi suddenly frowned and brandished the Unbound Furnace.

The special “seventh sense” of the way of toolmaking connected a person’s consciousness to a toolmaking furnace in order to reflect themselves. Lin Chi kindled the Unbound Furnace, and his expression finally eased.

“Master Lin?” said Xi Ping.

“S-sorry.” Lin Chi panted for breath. “The urge to kill just surged up in my mind out of nowhere…”

Both Xi Ping and Wen Fei were astonished—Master Lin, a well-behaved person who had locked himself up on a mountain for eight centuries, who would nothing more violent than a suppression talisman in the direst of circumstances, could actually feel such a thing as an “urge to kill.”

“Even so…” said Wen Fei. “I would like to ask if I might, Lin-shixiong, how were you planning on killing us?”

“Don’t joke,” Lin Chi said feebly. “It was a feeling like the most important thing I had in the world was about to be destroyed. The impulse was almost impossible to restrain…”

Fortunately, at the moment of imminent peril, he had remembered that his “most important thing in the world” was already gone.

“Damn it,” said Xi Ping.

The walking corpse Ways of the Heart at the bottom of the Sea of Stars didn’t care whether they were bringing chaos to Great Wan for the sake of their own survival. One after another, they were sending “heavenly edicts” to juniors bearing Ways of the Heart of common origin. Now that they knew they had been exposed, what would happen?

If even Lin Chi could be affected…

In Jinping, the established foundation blue-clotheser who had already picked up Xi Yue and resolved to go find Pang Jian stopped in his tracks.

In all the branches of Heaven’s Design Pavilion, a thought appeared in the minds of all the elite established foundations, as if they had been possessed: If you sever the veins of the earth, won’t the Xuanyin Mountains’ immortal energy be kept from dispersing? Just like Southern He before. The southern mines have yet to be hollowed out after two hundred years. The spiritual energy there is as dense as in the Lancang Mountains of the past.

At the same time, the ascended spirit peak masters entangled in stars in the Sea of Stars stopped struggling simultaneously. As if they had all suddenly made breakthroughs in the way of clarity and no longer cared about anything, their consciousnesses turned with full concentration onto Xi Ping and the others hiding at the bottom of the Sea of Stars.

In that moment, each peak master’s mind was crammed full of one thought: These scoundrels want to destroy my foundations.

Even the Latent Cultivation Temple was in chaos.

Su Zhun and all the stewards were only outer sect half-immortals. None of them had received any edict, whether heavenly or earthly. They only watched in confusion as the established foundations went from restless and uneasy to increasingly obsessed.

“The mountains are sealed—the mountains are sealed—the Xuanyin Mountains have been sealed, everyone please remain calm—” A crowd of straw children walked everywhere with amplifying talismans stuck to them, spreading a steward’s voice all over, but no one listened to him.

“Elder Su, the Talent Cultivation Temple is the boundary between mortal and immortal. Isn’t there any way to contact the outside world?”

“The Xuanyin Mountains have been sealed, and the Latent Cultivation Temple is also within the scope of the great mountain array,” Su Zhun said falteringly. “Don’t you think I’m frantic? Don’t you think I want to contact the outside world…?”

“This is urgent, Elder Su, a matter of life and death. We must leave the mountains at once, return to Heaven’s Design Pavilion, and think of a way to sever all the veins of the earth!”

Su Zhun’s expression was unwavering, but inwardly he gasped, exchanging a look of surprise and bewilderment with his subordinate half-immortal steward Yang Anli. He thought, Have you all gone crazy?

There were still young disciples who hadn’t yet opened their spiritual eyes in the temple. Su Zhun shot Yang Anli a veiled look. Yang Anli took his meaning at once and loudly said, “Mortals sometimes mistakenly wander into the Latent Cultivation Temple at the boundary of the great mountain array. Perhaps there is an exit. Let me take you there to look!”

When he said “come with me,” a crowd of Heaven’s Design Pavilion established foundations who had come to advance their cultivation hurried to follow. He led them far away from the residences of the mortal disciples.

Su Zhun breathed out heavily, then turned straight back to Chengjing Hall. But as soon as he opened the door, he saw that an “uninvited guest” had appeared in Chengjing Hall—Luo Qingshi, holding a teacup with both hands, sat in a chair with his feet dangling.

A pair of narrow, upturned eyes looked at Su Zhun through the enshrouding steam.

Su Zhun’s heart gave a jump. Yes—the Latent Cultivation Temple also had a resident established foundation!

Then came the flash of a talisman. Luo Qingshi had already placed talismans against eavesdropping on all sides. In a drawling voice, he said, “Elder Su, how dishonest.”

Su Zhun forced a smile. “What are you talking about? Luo-shixiong…”

“The Latent Cultivation Temple falls within the purview of the great mountain array, but we aren’t incapable of contacting the outside world when the Xuanyin Mountains are sealed—these quacking ducks from the outer sects weren’t here before. The only ones who used to come here were mortal idiots who hadn’t opened their spiritual eyes. Though the temple has a formal order forbidding disciples from contacting the outside world during the cultivation period, out of fear that these kids who haven’t yet cut their ties to the mortal world, not making it in time to attend a family wedding or funeral, would take it too hard and hang themselves, we leave them a passageway. As a last resort, we can break the rules and allow a mortal to return to the human world by that passage.” Luo Qingshi’s voice was kept very low. “There’s no way? That’s only enough to fool outsiders.”

Su Zhun’s expression didn’t change, but his heart sank. “Ah, I overlooked that in my haste…”

“Don’t be hasty, take a break,” Luo Qingshi interrupted him and extended a hand. “Give me the inscription key to the secret passageway.”

The star stones concealed at the bottom of the Sea of Stars were faced with imminent danger, so they resisted with all they had.

Wen Fei and Lin Chi simultaneously struck in the direction Zhou Ying indicated, but an invisible hard shell seemed to have coated the outsides of these star stones. Leaving Lin Chi aside for the moment, even Wen Fei’s full strength attack bounced off.

At the same time, the largest star stone, like a leech, began burrowing into the ground. The small star stones plastered themselves tightly to it. The star stones that had originally somewhat repelled each other were sticking together.

Zhang Jue sensed that something was wrong. The Dignitary of Fate Elder seemed to be being pulled by three forces at once: he himself understood that these ascended spirit peak masters who had accidentally gotten trapped in the Sea of Stars couldn’t all have fought free so easily, and there had to be some strangeness to this; at the same time, hazily, the part of him that belonged to the spiritual mountains was also split in two; there seemed to be a weak voice in the depths of the mountains that persisted in saying that the spiritual mountains valued the people above all, even if that meant the mountains themselves must wither away. But there was a more intense emotion shaking his mind like the tolling of a bell, ordering him to quell rebellion and punish evildoers.

In that moment, a fierce impulse surged up in his heart. He wanted to tear off his blindfold and look into the depths of the Sea of Stars and the spiritual mountains.

During the Dignitary of Fate’s brief pause, the peak masters had already escaped the shackles of the Sea of Stars and were heading toward Xi Ping and the others.

Xi Ping used the Discard the False and Keep the True book to copy the rain of swords one of the Li peak masters had used earlier and tossed it out blindly—having taken the return to unity powder had now become a disadvantage.

Lin Chi quickly followed suit, tossing out an immortal tool like an oilpaper umbrella. That umbrella flew up into the air and grew in size a hundredfold. Its ribs turned out to be made of the newest spirit-conducting gold. They automatically absorbed the mountains’ spiritual energy to turn into a protective screen, instantly shielding them all.

Lin Chi said, “Your Highness, what can we do?”

Wen Fei was dumbfounded. “My goodness! Another invention from Moon Plated Peak sure to throw the whole world into an uproar!”

Xi Ping decisively turned over his palm. The Eternal Flame flew into the Unbound Furnace like a shooting star.

The Unbound Furnace had refined the swords Xiuluo and Zhaoting; it had cooked Sanyue’s shed skin sect leader—Xiuluo had been incomplete, keeping Xiang Zhao from inheriting the Way of the Heart in the divine sword; Zhaoting had fallen a step behind, unable to keep up with the overlong stride of its master’s Way of the Heart; Sanyue’s sect leader had had a wild notion and wanted to refine his own Way of the Heart into the form of the Black Emperor’s… In sum, during Hui Xiangjun’s life and after her death, her Unbound Furnace seemed always to have had some unspeakable connection to Ways of the Heart. Maybe it would be able to refine these rotten impervious stones.

“If we let them get away, never mind us, they’ll kill all of Great Wan. Dig them up and burn them!”

Lin Chi had yet to develop other varieties of spirit-conducting gold. Currently, it could only conduct spiritual energy; it wasn’t indestructible. The peak masters’ powers, fit to topple mountains and raise seas, were crashing against the umbrella’s canopy. The umbrella’s ribs were about to warp, and the canopy was also hanging on by a thread.

Guided by Zhou Ying’s eyes and ears, the three great ascended spirits pooled their strength to pry up the largest star stone.

Wen Fei couldn’t feel anything else, but he felt that his essence had nearly been drained dry. “How can it be…so heavy!”

“An ascended spirit’s spiritual bones weigh several hundred jin, so how heavy would a shed skin’s Way of the Heart be?” Lin Chi had after all been cultivating the longest. He might not be able to fight, but his essence was more abundant than the other two’s. “As heavy as a mountain?”

“Why is the spiritual energy in the Sea of Stars so sparse?” said Xi Ping. “I can’t catch my breath.”

“The spirit-conducting gold has split off the flow of spiritual energy.” Zhou Ying was directing the three ascended spirits in their manual labor and acting as their eyes and ears from the sidelines, participating only by speaking. No matter how dangerous the situation became, it didn’t affect him. As he spoke, he was methodically drawing an array around the three ascended spirits who couldn’t see. “Wait a moment.”

Wen Fei had known countless people, but he had never met an established foundation with such an “original approach.” Hearing that “wait a moment,” he instantly had a bad feeling. “What are you doing now? Don’t…”

Before he could finish, Zhang Jue landed.

In the end, the Dignitary of Fate hadn’t torn the blindfold off his face. He had chosen to obey the will of the spiritual mountains.

With the arrival of a shed skin, the big umbrella, already full of holes, could hold out no longer. It broke instantly. Zhou Ying chose his time precisely. He set down the final stroke of the array.

This was an unusual spirit-gathering array. Within the array was embedded an inscription that had never been seen in the land of the living—it came from the demon host’s altar in the Impassable Sea.

The whole Xuanyin Mountain Range formed a resonance with the inscription in that array. The spiritual energy formed a tornado, bursting into the Sea of Stars as easily as crushing dry weeds.

This blow was truly too fierce. All the ascended spirits and Zhang Jue were knocked aside.

Xi Ping and the other two couldn’t see anything, but they could feel the coursing spiritual energy trying to flip the tops of their skulls. It smashed right into their meridians.

If any one of them had taken a spirit-protecting pill and had had meridians that were just slightly more fragile, they would have been smashed to death by that blow!

Wen Fei howled. “Zhou whoever-you-are, you asshole, don’t you know that two of us are famously weak medicine and toolmaking cultivators, and the other is an ascended spirit baby who hasn’t even wiped the drool off his face?!”

Zhou Ying was very calm: Lin Chi was an eight-century-old great ascended spirit whose cultivation was much higher than it appeared; Wen Fei had spent a hundred years in Heaven’s Design Pavilion, and later, for the sake of revenge, had gone into countless dangerous hidden realms, surviving on a knife’s edge; Xi Ping went without saying—he had the undying bones. When he had become an ascended spirit, a heavenly tribulation doing its level best to kill him hadn’t managed it. This was nothing.

Xi Ping had the sensation that every bit of his meridians had broken, but torment to his flesh and bones held his grief at bay.

Anger briefly overwhelmed the pain of separation. “Zhou Ying, just you wait!”

“Sure,” said Zhou Ying. “The fire.”

This time, for the Sea of Stars, it was no longer its flesh being gouged; it was an amputation. Each and every star seemed to be screaming in agony. That huge star stone had been “dug” right out.

At Xi Ping’s thought, the Unbound Furnace, which was only the height of a person, suddenly seemed to take on the vastness of the universe. It drew that enormous star stone right in.

The countless little star stones of varying size followed soon after.

Xi Ping, who had put reincarnation wood into the Unbound Furnace ahead of time, and Lin Chi, who was a toolmaking cultivator, simultaneously stuck their consciousnesses in.

As soon as the star stones entered, Xi Ping and Lin Chi were simultaneously shocked: the human faces that Zhou Ying had forced out with the heart demon seed, which could only be perceived by a paramount spiritual sense looking through the demon eyes, now emerged with perfect clarity in the fire.

Without so much as thinking about it, Xi Ping’s first reaction was to push Lin Chi’s consciousness out while he was off his guard—he had remembered Lin Zongyi, whose Way of the Heart had been shattered in the Territory Map.

The Ways of the Heart of all the deceased masters of the Xuanyin Mountains seemed to be here, which naturally included Lin Chi’s shifu. Xi Ping had a peculiar intuition that if he let Lin Chi come face to face with his shifu, the master of Moon Plated Peak would be no more!

As soon as these Ways of the Heart fell into the true fire of the Unbound Furnace, they were like wax that had fallen into an ironworks. It was even hard to catch a glimpse of any of the faces… Then he saw that at the edges of the Eternal Flame that was dissolving the star stones, there was a blurry light, extending boundlessly, seeming to connect to someplace else.

This seemed to be something he wasn’t meant to see. Xi Ping only took one glance, and his consciousness stung as though it had been pricked like a pincushion.

All of a sudden, his point of view became very peculiar—it was as if he were standing in front of a reincarnation wood tree, and the reincarnation wood tree had a sliver of his consciousness in it, through which he was looking out at himself.

As if looking into a mirror, he saw “himself” right in front of him.

Amid the Eternal Flame, that countenance that couldn’t have been more familiar became slightly translucent. Beneath the flesh, the bones were just visible.

Because of Zhou Ying’s rude drawing of spiritual energy just now, Xi Ping’s whole body hurt like hell, and the anger on his face had yet to vanish…but beneath his flesh, his bones were smiling.

How could bones…smile?