Zhi Xiu didn’t speak aloud, only said privately to Xi Ping through the shard of Zhaoting in his spirit, “A half-puppet establishing a foundation is different from a teacher conveying a way to a disciple. The earworm half-puppet technique is used to rear tools and slaves. While those worm masters want half-puppets to be useful, they are also afraid that they will break free of their control if their cultivation is too high, so a half-puppet is unable to cultivate independently. When remaking his arrays while establishing a foundation, there must be someone there to temporarily stabilize his spirit. I know that you have no Way of the Heart, but with your cultivation level, a sliver of consciousness will be more than enough for him to use.”

After a pause, Zhi Xiu continued: “My way is ordinary and unremarkable. It is merely unfashionable because the southern continent values literary achievements over martial ones. There are plenty of sword cultivators in the north. It isn’t that I’m jealous of it. It’s only that I think you ought to ask Xi Yue what he wants.”

“It would indeed cost me no effort,” Xi Ping said softly. “But what would happen to him after he established a foundation?”

A human establishing a foundation rebuilt their meridians. A half-puppet would virtually have to rebuild their whole body. During this period, the half-puppet’s spirit would rely entirely on their master, involuntarily accept the master’s “way” and wishes without question to become a handier tool—what would Xi Yue get from him?

Xi Ping had come face-to-face with the hidden bones in the Unbound Furnace. After he had left it, as if the bones had “dropped the act,” they were no longer deliberately hiding themselves. Right now, as he spoke to Zhi Xiu, he could clearly sense the existence of the hidden bones.

They were on his consciousness, taking strength from him, keeping him from dying, constantly nibbling away at his scant remaining warmth.

And all of this, Xi Ping was unable to tell anyone. Even if he found a way to say it, others would never truly understand—apart from those of the “way of death,” which had no Way of the Heart, the day others truly understood would be the day their Ways of the Heart shattered.

The only person left that he could communicate with was Zhou Ying. Fortunately, san-ge could no longer suffer.

He had hoped that Xi Yue could live on like Zhao Qindan, without establishing a foundation. Before learning the secret of Ways of the Heart, he had already made his plans. When the arrays to protect against spiritual beasts had been fully constructed in the South Sea Hidden Realm and the environment became a little safer, he would send Xi Yue there with their parents, keeping the evil cultivators from always aiming at his weak spot in Jinping.

But fortune made fools of people. Just as he had been looking at himself in the Unbound Furnace, Xi Yue had been pushed onto this wrong road…so he would at least find him the most dependable guide. No matter how dark the road ahead, shifu would lead him.

One waking ghost in the world was enough. Why should he drag someone else down? Only the bald Heartless Lotus did that kind of thing.

“My way does not stem from my own heart,” Xi Ping said aloud, letting Xi Yue behind him hear. “I’ve heard that the person who founded it was extremely reclusive and spent all his life wandering, alone, with no burial when he finally died… Elder Lin was right. This way is inauspicious. Even I don’t acknowledge it—how could I pass it on to another?”

Zhi Xiu froze. He had actually forgotten about this detail—when others obtained a Way of the Heart, it would fix their disposition. No matter how bad a fit it had been before, as long as they survived establishing a foundation, they would have accepted and acknowledged it. Only the ungovernable way, which seemed to want to be “ungovernable” up to the hilt, was different, deliberately choosing a person who refused it, imparting nothing but the hidden bones, creating a freak who had reached the ascended spirit stage and was still unwilling to accept the way he cultivated.

“Yue-bao’er, this wouldn’t be giving you a cold or a cough, it would be a fatal…”

Out of nowhere, Zhi Xiu’s heart jumped. He couldn’t resist interrupting him. “Xi Shiyong, how old are you? Mind your mouth!”

Xi Ping lowered his eyes. For once, he didn’t put his usual armor of frivolity on display.

Calmly menacing, he spoke practically, each word distinct: “If my ‘Way of the Heart’ were in front of me, I would shred it to bits without giving it a chance to cry for help.”

As he spoke, he looked far into the sky. Zhou Ying’s figure was faintly visible in the mist—Zhi Xiu had withdrawn the authority of a whole bunch of peak masters, so nearly all of the Xuanyin Mountains’ peaks were wide open. Floating in the air, Zhou Ying could see the whole Xuanyin Mountain Range at a glance, watch the truth emerge as the dust settled. When he met Xi Ping’s eyes, he nodded, then indifferently looked away.

Xi Ping smiled at him, then turned and half-knelt. Through the ice pearl, he patted Xi Yue on the head. “I can give you anything else, but not that. Achieve enlightenment through the sword heart, and in the future you’ll have sharper teeth to bite me with.

“Where do I start altering the core array for a half-puppet to establish a foundation? Give me a plan.” Xi Ping poked Bu Zhichou awake in the reincarnation wood. He felt an ice-cold idea as the hidden bones gently brushed his consciousness: Extract the information through a soul-searching.

This was a very mystical sensation. When a human brain was active, thousands upon thousands of odds and ends flashed through it every moment. Apart from a very small portion that would pass through conscious evaluation to be accepted or rejected, the vast majority of the noise only flew by, overlooked before you had a chance to notice it. But now, Xi Ping could see clearly which small ripples in the flood of his thoughts had emerged from the hidden bones.

Xi Ping briefly scrutinized that thought, decided to keep it in reserve, then said to Bu Zhichou, “Will you do it of your own accord, or should I soul-search you?”

Bu Zhichou: “…”

This immortal had a very striking appearance. How come he sounded so much like an evil cultivator?

The worm master cautiously asked, “Immortal, do you know how to alter a half-puppet’s arrays…? This isn’t something I can just talk you through. If you are unfamiliar with the procedures for…”

“Me, unfamiliar with the procedures for creating puppets?” Xi Ping interrupted him. “Do you know how I rooted out your den in Yu Family Bend at the start, when the two of us had never met before?”

Bu Zhichou was petrified. “I have not yet requested guidance on this subject.”

“Worm masters uphold the principle of ‘only do good, do not look out for future prospects.’ They only take 'living ghosts’ and do not harm intact humans. So all you have to do is get others to help you turn ‘intact humans’ into ‘living ghosts’ and pretend you don’t know, and you think that means you haven’t violated the rules of your profession. There are evil cultivators who specialize in selling living ghosts. They deliberately choose places with many newborns to pilfer heaven’s order, not for the sake of their own cultivation, but to create deformed children to sell to you people…”

Bu Zhichou immediately felt the gaze of the shed skin god next to them sweep towards him, cold as ice. Through the reincarnation wood, he still felt chilled to the marrow, as if he had been stabbed. He hurried to give a flat denial: “Th-th-that never happened!”

Xi Ping said, “Once, in exchange for a piece of information from you, a person gave you a group of living ghosts in excellent condition. You were beside yourself with delight and went into seclusion for one month, three days, and four shichen, made twelve half-puppets of exceptional quality in a row, saved up the whole set, and named them after the twelve animals of the zodiac. This was in Yu Family Bend. Do you want me to give you the particulars of all twelve of those people? The first was a little girl around three years old, extremely short, but very loud when she cried. You didn’t like the noise, so you first cut out her tongue and chose ‘Mute Rat’ for her puppet name. When you made her into a puppet, the proportion of earworm wood to Moon Plated Gold you used was one to six. You welded in eight hundred purple lightning rat spiritual beast tendons so the half-puppet would be flexible…”

Bu Zhichou had had no idea that when he had gone into seclusion on his own turf to create half-puppets, there had been a pair of eyes beside him, always watching. In spite of himself, he felt bone-deep dread. He wondered to himself what kind of hobby would cause a mighty ascended spirit immortal to hide in the dark spying on a minor worm master at work—an orthodox immortal who thought spying on this kind of thing was worthwhile had to be crazy.

“Immortal, Exalted, your powers are truly vast, your eyes and ears embrace the universe. It is I who have been blind.”

“Mr. Bu Zhichou, I spent several years watching you create half-puppets. Even an idiot would have picked up the procedures for making puppets, such as they are.”

And he hadn’t just watched. When his scattered consciousness had been trapped in Wild Fox Country, it had often been dragged away by the little “living ghosts” in next door Yu Family Bend, and he had been on the receiving end of the procedures for making puppets along with them countless times; he remembered it even more clearly than the swordsmanship taught by his shifu, who couldn’t stand to beat him. Even an ordinary worm master might not have been as well-versed in the techniques as him.

While Xi Ping was unearthing what had taken place in Wild Fox Country, the hidden bones were “icing” his hot anger: There are too many vile people who deserve death in this world. The weak attracting disaster when they are not free to act is heaven’s law. It is meaningless to wallow in the loves and hates of these nobodies. Why take them out to chew over? When you can look with disdain upon all under heaven, all under heaven naturally becomes well-ordered and equitable.

Xi Ping couldn’t help wanting to laugh. He discovered that the reason he had been able to focus entirely on seizing all kinds of opportunities for study over the years was perhaps not because his will was firm, but through the aid of this stabilizing force in his consciousness. He himself was a rich kid who loved leisure and hated work and had such a short temper that he would even hold a grudge over being scratched by a cat.

“I curse when I’m in pain and complain when I’m angry,” he thought, withstanding the calm of the hidden bones. “I’ll even go publicize it in the toilet bulletins so the whole world knows about it.”

Why should it be heaven’s law that the weak attract disaster?

Because everyone is busy standing up under the weight of the Great Way to heaven and has no time to attend to other things?

Zhi Xiu immediately noticed something and looked at Xi Ping—this was the first time Xi Ping had ever uncovered a sliver of the years he had been missing, which seemed to be under a dense fog, once again revealing willful and capricious flesh and blood.

Xi Ping reached out a hand to cover Xi Yue’s eyes. “I can’t give you a Way of the Heart, but I can rebuild your array. I’m not abandoning you, don’t worry. I know.”

Xi Yue thought, What do you know…?

But a half-immortal half-puppet had no latitude to struggle when faced with an ascended spirit. Xi Ping took him out of the ice pearl and easily sealed all his meridians. “Shifu!”

Zhi Xiu sighed silently. His sword aura landed on the spirit between Xi Yue’s brows like gentle snow.

“No, I don’t want…”

Xi Yue suddenly began to struggle. Out of nowhere, he found the strength to clutch at Xi Ping’s sleeve. If Xi Ping had been like other people, cultivating an orthodox “Great Way” that could be traced, and had abandoned him because he thought his natural endowments were poor, he could have let it go. The peak master and Commander Pang were both reliable people. It was all the same if he walked another path; all roads would ultimately reach the same end.

But perhaps because at the very start of this path through the cultivation world, the two of them had been joined by a dragon-taming chain, while Xi Yue had never understood what way Xi Ping cultivated, he had always had a powerful intuition—Xi Ping would part ways with everyone. If he missed his chance today, no one would ever have another chance to stay with him to the very end.

Today, he had to catch up even if he died.

The half-puppet body with its destroyed core array actually gathered a weak spiritual wind. Xi Yue frenziedly resisted the sword aura trying to sweep into his consciousness. All his features were tearing—

Zhi Xiu couldn’t resist saying, “Shiyong, you can’t force…”

Xi Ping formed a hand seal that no orthodox immortal would ever have seen and placed a talisman on Xi Yue’s brow.

Bu Zhichou couldn’t resist sucking in a breath. “Eliminate the past!”

This was an evil art particular to worm masters, used specifically to handle half-puppets who changed hands and masters. Without impacting a half-puppet’s memories, it could erase all the attachments and sentiments contained in those memories that were connected to the original owner.

How could he know even this?!

Xi Yue felt every single trifle that had had happened since he had met Xi Ping well up in his heart: the unexpected encounter in the Blissful Village, the confused fear; the mutual dependance in the Latent Cultivation Temple and the first time he had had a name; the brief happy days on Flying Jade Peak, traveling together to Demon Country…the reunion after their long separation, his wild joy when he had heard that person’s voice again.

All those things were still there, but the emotions that accompanied the memories were being erased.

Xi Yue stared into Xi Ping’s eyes. The hand clutching his sleeve began to tremble. It became weaker and weaker, looser and looser…

Finally, the half-puppet’s consciousness was swept up by the sword heart of a shed skin.

Zhi Xiu hadn’t handed everything over like Duanrui. This sword cultivator’s sword heart was one he had refined for himself bit by bit out of nothing, so he could restrain himself and give Xi Yue a few insights from his early years, let him slowly digest them. All the same, this was still a Way of the Heart that came from a shed skin. Xi Yue was immediately submerged in that vast sword aura, sinking in and falling unconscious to the outside world.

Dimly, he could still feel that the hands wielding the knife were skillful and steady, even knowing what places to avoid, not letting him suffer. The rudiments of a new core array quickly took shape.

Xi Ping had cut off the last little tail trailing after him.

Meanwhile, the four nations of the southern continent at last came back to their senses after the Xuanyin Mountains’ earthshaking fireworks display—