Xi Ping seemed to have broken his tailbone. He sat there blankly, not getting up for ages.

Zhou Ying was gone. As far as the eye could see, Flying Jade Peak was an unbroken field of white, without so much as a single footprint. In a single breath, you could breathe in three thousand freezing flowers; even his lungs were cold.

Truly lonely.

This was what Xi Ping thought as he sat on the threshold.

But at the same time, he could clearly sense the calm of the hidden bones: Human events converge and dissipate. They are only a temporary clamor. Loneliness is the eternal norm of the universe. Mortals cling to life and fear death. Starting at birth, they are controlled and driven by all kinds of desires; wanting without having is bitter, and wanting and having is still bitter. Why be blinded by that uproar?

When he looked again at the boundless snowy mountain through these eyes, he instead felt carefree and happy, forgetting self and the world. Xi Ping knew that if he meditated now, there would be gains to his frame of mind.

But he didn’t move. He only sat there single-mindedly pondering—there was a rather eccentric talisman he was thinking of; how did you draw it now?

First he slapped the ground. A somewhat awkward talisman raised the snow on the ground to the height of a person. It went wrong somewhere. The spiritual energy overflowed and scattered. The snow fell back.

“That doesn’t seem right…” Xi Ping pressed on the center of his brow, scrutinized the talisman carefully, then tried changing a few places.

A breeze flitted by. The thick snow congealed into a snowman, his features and form identical to the living Zhou Ying. His whole body flashed with spiritual light.

Xi Ping gave a laugh. Before the snowman could find his footing, Xi Ping grabbed a clump of snow, jumped up, and threw it at the snowman. “I’ll show you impertinent!”

The snow Zhou Ying stumbled when he was hit. But something else had gone wrong with a certain ascended spirit “master”’s talisman. When the snowman was attacked, not only did the talisman not disperse, it even drove the snowman to retaliate!

A snowball the size of a head flew straight at him. Xi Ping swore and dodged. The snowball hit General Zhi’s little cottage so hard that it shook a few times.

Out of consideration for the fact that he would want to be alone, Zhi Xiu hadn’t meant to disturb him. When he heard some noise, he only took it for Xi Ping venting his emotions. But the noise became more and more off. When he went out to look, he was astonished.

Flying Jade Peak had never been so lively: as if a market were being held on the slope, it was densely covered in moving, running snow people. Chunks of ice and snowballs flew everywhere in a chaotic battle. The snow people were separated into an unknown number of camps, hurling ice and snow at each other and sending each other flying head over heels. Hardly any of them had all their limbs intact. Even after losing their heads, they still battled ferociously.

The snow that had been untouched by signs of human life had been stamped full of potholes by the dismembered snow people. The prime culprit, a certain individual named Xi, had found a cape to block snow and rain somewhere and put it on. He was riding a sword, observing the battle from midair, occasionally jumping up and down to dodge several groups of besiegers. His hair was covered in ice. Seeming to think this still wasn’t lively enough, he pursed his lips to whistle. Another dozen snow people formed from the snow and changed into the courtesans who had once contended with each other for beauty beside the Lingyang River. They began to sing and dance to boost morale.

There were few people on Flying Jade Peak, and there was a new shed skin. Since the mountain seal had been opened, it had drawn quite a few auspicious animals who didn’t mind the cold to hide there for the sake of quiet. Now, the auspicious animals were all in midair, the “quiet” of the war on this mountain rendering them unable to land. When they saw Zhi Xiu, they began to curse and scold in chorus, accusing him of not keeping his evil disciple under control.

At his age, this was Zhi Xiu’s first time being besieged and scolded by a flock of birds. Wishing he could find a hole to crawl into, he cupped his hands towards the auspicious animals in apology. “I am ashamed, I…”

Before he could finish, a tactless snowball came flying straight at him.

Naturally the snowball couldn’t get him. It broke apart before it got close. Zhi Xiu took a deep breath and steadied his expression, then raised his head and “genially” asked, “Shiyong, what are you doing?”

Xi Ping answered, “Don’t you think Flying Jade Peak is too quiet? We’ve just opened the mountain seal. I’m adding some ambience.”

A vein jumped on Zhi Xiu’s temple. “Don’t you think this ambience is a little too grand… Xi Shiyong!”

The beautiful women made of snow who were going around boosting morale suddenly turned towards Zhi Xiu in a body. A dozen snowballs came flying towards him from all directions. Zhi Xiu’s figure flashed, and he was elsewhere. The next moment, he landed right behind Xi Ping.

Xi Ping was no longer the little wretch he had once picked up one-handed in the Blissful Village. He had become a big wretch who had torn open the Impassable Sea, blown up the Sea of Stars, and caused havoc in the South Sea—he was unusually rich in experience when it came to being hunted. Without so much as turning his head, he switched places with a reincarnation wood tree that had just sprouted from the snow, sending a snow person flying with a headbutt. “Heh-heh.”

Zhi Xiu snapped his fingers and sent a chestnut shell flying. It easily pierced through the spiritual energy shielding Xi Ping and headed straight towards his forehead. Seeing that he couldn’t dodge it, XI Ping once again disappeared, then burrowed out from another snowdrift.

Zhi Xiu: “…”

He had to give him a seeing to today!

Zhi Xiu rolled up his sleeves. He casually snatched an ice club from the hands of one of the snow people on Flying Jade Peak to use as a sword. “This will give me a chance to see how your cultivation is progressing—”

Lin Chi and Wen Fei had gotten Rosy Cloud Peak and Moon Plated Peak settled down. Supposing that the teacher and disciple on Flying Jade Peak ought to have finished any private discussions they needed to have, they had met up and gone over together.

The two of them didn’t talk much on the way there. They were both somewhat weighed down: concerning what had gone wrong with the strange star stones on the bottom of the Sea of Stars and why they could pollute the spiritual senses of cultivators with Ways of the Heart of common origin, that mystifying way of clarity cultivator had in the end explained nothing. Inside the Unbound Furnace, Lin Chi had been pushed out by Xi Ping before he could see anything clearly. Though he didn’t know the reason, whenever Lin Chi recalled that moment, his heart would palpitate out of nowhere…as if he’d had a narrow escape.

How long could the Xuanyin Mountains’ situation be concealed? The inner sect wasn’t much of a problem, but what would the outer sects scattered throughout the nine provinces think? And what about the other four nations?

In a hundred years, when the spiritual mountains collapsed and their people and gods all vanished, would they receive posthumous calumny or posthumous praise?

The power structure of the Xuanyin Mountains had basically collapsed. The new shed skin had no choice put to become a pillar holding up the heavens on his own, and he was hardly over two centuries old. He didn’t have the backing of a family with hundreds upon thousands of years of history behind him. He was isolated and without help.

Wen Fei waved his fan, saying to Lin Chi, If I were Zhi Jingzhai, I’d pack it in and flee into the night.

Lin Chi had no need to imagine himself in Zhi Xiu’s place. His fellow clan members currently locked up in the Yuntian Palace were already making him want to shut himself up.

The two of them exchanged looks, both fretting on Zhi Xiu’s behalf. Facing the wintry wind, they walked into Flying Jade Peak and were met by a beam of sword energy.

Wen Fei: “…”

Lin Chi: “…”

Was this how Flying Jade Peak treated its guests?

The sword energy was faint, dispersing as soon as it touched someone. All the snow on the mountain and in the valley seemed to be boiling. The sky was clear, but there was a blizzard on the ground. From above, at first you couldn’t clearly see what had happened.

Wen Fei craned his head and tapped on the ribs of his fan. Is there a rat infestation on Flying Jade Peak? I have rat poison…

Before the writing could finish popping up in midair, the northwest wind blew a headless snow person into the sky.

Wen Fei was wondering where this cunning talisman had come from and was just about to go take a closer look when he saw that snow person get out a cannon made of snow and loose a shell towards his chest.

Another beam of sword energy flew over to break up the offending snow person. Zhi Xiu’s weary voice came from the middle of the mountain: “Please wait, gentlemen, my peak is suffering a…  Xi Shiyong, what a disgrace!”

Wen Fei fanned the snow: I think our worries were superfluous.

Lin Chi stayed far away, sorrowfully thinking, Indeed, having an unprecedented and inimitable brilliant disciple like this is equal to having a whole island of spiritual beasts. You won’t be isolated at all. What do those clan members of mine locked up in Yuntian Palace amount to? Put together, they aren’t as vexing as that guy.

Wen Fei said, Why don’t we try again later? Lin-shixiong, why don’t you come over for a visit to my place first?

Lin Chi, who had put up with Xi Ping for eight years while General Zhi was in seclusion, ran away with him without demur.

Xi Ping scurried like a frightened rat. While the snow people on the ground had been made by him, when the disparity in cultivation level was too great, a talisman’s master could also change. The snow people seemed to know who was in charge on this mountain. They had defected in favor of the shed skin’s aura, stopped their civil war, and set about encircling and intercepting Xi Ping. In no time, he had plowed through all the frost and snow that had accumulated on Flying Jade Peak for over a decade. Finally, there was a rumble…

Xi Ping and the avalanche on the north slope fell off the cliff together.

But times had changed. Fourteen years ago he had still needed his shifu to fish him up. This time, never mind the mere north slope, if Flying Jade Peak itself fell, it couldn’t have crushed him to death.

So Xi Ping relaxed his limbs and tumbled down the cliff along with the boulders and accumulated snow. Amid the chaos and the noise, he laughed—not only was he unwilling to quietly “forget self and the world,” he also had to drag the shed skin sword cultivator who had spent centuries in solitary contemplation down to his own level.

“A handful of damn bones…” He fell straight into the valley, making a big hole. His ascended spirit’s spiritual bones, forged in a heavenly tribulation, were entirely uninjured, only slightly shaken. Xi Ping felt the collision of his joints almost with pleasure. Nothing was left of his earlier feeling of being on the point of “enlightenment.” “You think I need you to teach me how to live? …ow!”

A chestnut at last struck his forehead head-on. Xi Ping had been sitting up halfway. Now he was knocked down and flipped over to face upward.

So he simply lay on the ground, not getting up. “Shifu, you don’t love me anymore.”

“That was for Xi Yue.” Zhi Xiu, tidy as could be, stood firmly beside him. There wasn’t a trace of ice on him. “Scoundrel.”

“It was a stopgap measure. That brat is stubborn as a pig.” Xi Ping reached a hand out of the hole to make Zhi Xiu pull him up. “Shifu, look after the Marquis Manor for me while I pay a visit to Tao County to deal with that red-eyed evil cultivator. When I get back, I’ll send them to the South Sea Hidden Realm… Hey, what’s that you’re wearing?”

He had suddenly discovered that an archery thumb ring had appeared on Zhi Xiu’s thumb. It wasn’t an immortal tool, wasn’t even made of Moon Plated Gold. It was so archaic it seemed to have been dug up out of a tomb. All the patterns engraved on it had rusted away, leaving only indistinct traces… Xi Ping had never seen Zhi Xiu wearing this thing.

“An old thing.” Zhi Xiu pulled him and said nothing else about it, only sighed and said, “Prince Zhuang, Xi Yue…and your parents. You’re really going to sever all your family ties, be alone in the world?”

“Not at all,” Xi Ping said with an almost careless smile. “Affections hinge on their origin, not their focus. They originate with me, so as long as I’m alive, they still exist. Anyway, I’m not all that alone. Don’t I still have you, shifu?”

“Spare me, ancestor,” Zhi Xiu scolded jokingly. “You’re too filial, I can’t take it… Go on.”

Xi Ping agreed, swept the ice and dust off himself with spiritual energy, then turned and put on a mask—while by now his identity was probably known to everyone who ought to know, it was still embarrassing going to see Zhao Qindan, so he was planning a conspicuous cover-up at first—then passed through the reincarnation wood and left.

Xi Ping’s aura disappeared in the blink of an eye from Great Wan territory. The spiritual mountains could no longer trace him. Zhi Xiu stood alone beside the reincarnation wood tree growing there for a while, gently stroking the ring on his thumb—it wasn’t his size; it was plainly a size up, hanging loose.

“What elder would hide in a paradise and leave you out in the open?”

Once again, he glanced south and tucked the thumb wearing the ring into his palm.

The Zhang family…along with the overwhelming majority of Great Wan’s influential families outside the four great families, had all believed that if their family only produced an ascended spirit peak master, the family’s descendants would from then on have a foundation in the spiritual mountains; they could be confident in receiving a selection card, and entering the inner sect would no longer be unattainable for the talented ones. Even someone as reclusive as Lin Chi, while he didn’t have a single direct disciple, still had a whole bunch of disciples “of record” on Moon Plated Peak whose names he had never recorded in his memory.

Only Flying Jade Peak had none of this.

Zhi Xiu was his parents’ youngest son, born late to them, with two older brothers and one older sister. His eldest brother was sixteen years older than him, practically halfway to a father. He had been a lot like Xi Ping in his youth, also growing up pampered and doted on by his family in myriad ways, thinking everyone should love him…though there were still somewhat more rules in a military family, and he hadn’t dared to overstep the bounds of propriety like that brat.

The third year after he had gone to the Xuanyin Mountains, his parents had died one after the other. The ninth year, his older sister, who had moved far away after marrying, had died of illness. After fourteen years, his second older brother had retired to the country, moving his whole family back to their ancestral residence in Hongyin. A few of his siblings’ children went into the military, though they had no real chances to distinguish themselves; they worked at it smoothly until old age. One had been a rather successful scholar and had become a provincial magistrate in Ning’an. Beyond that, he didn’t know any of them… None of them had vied for Xuanyin’s selection cards under his banner; they wouldn’t even mention being related to Zhi Xiu in front of outsiders. They settled down wherever their official appointments took them, indifferent to their clan and surname.

By the time Zhi Xiu became an ascended spirit and opened Flying Jade Peak, the later generations of his family had scattered all over the place, all with their own lives to live, making him think that he would be disturbing them if he so much as gave them an extra look.

When Zhi Xiu had first entered the immortal mountains, Zhang Jue had placed hardly any restraints on him. He could always leave the mountains and return to Jinping to celebrate the New Year. He had been the one to arrange funerals for his relatives one after another…all except his da-ge, who had raised him.

During the Wan-He War, after the siege of Jinping, Zhi Xiu had been severely injured and remained in the capital, and the one to take his place leading troops south to retake lost territory had been his da-ge, who had rushed back from the northern border.

Da-ge had pursued the remaining stragglers of the Southern He army, fighting all the way into Southern He territory. When he requested instructions from Jinping, Emperor Renzong ordered them to go straight to Southern He’s capital to demand justice from the Yang clan. But on the way, they encountered Lancang’s mad sect leader escaping imprisonment; the mortals were drawn in, and of the Wan army and the He people alike, hardly anyone survived.

To this day, his da-ge had only a cenotaph.

Centuries later, Zhi Xiu had at last returned to the Land of Turmoil. Following his tie of blood, he had found a relic his brother had carried with him.

The strange thing was, this thumb ring, which his brother had never been without while with the army, hadn’t ended up in the place where he was said to have died in battle. Instead, it had been not far from the feet of the Lancang Mountains…at the location of a break in a vein of the earth.

In order to calm Northern Li, he still couldn’t touch the southern mines at the moment. He understood that without needing Zhou Ying to tell him.

But…he had picked up a profound injustice from that thumb ring.

The southern mines—Great Wan’s encampment.

Yao Qi returned hurriedly to his lodgings, keeping his head down. His colleagues saw nothing out of the ordinary. He was always like this. In order to avoid greeting people and making small talk, the emperor’s little brother-in-law used his spiritual sense to the utmost, detouring whenever he sensed an acquaintance in the distance. He would rather walk an extra eight li than exchange some empty pleasantries face-to-face.

He closed the door and locked it. Talismans against being overheard or spied on appeared on the door and window. Then he took a deep breath and took two things from his clothes.

One was a downgraded white jade proximal. His father had grit his teeth and doled out a colossal sum to have someone buy it when he had succeeded in opening his spiritual eyes and received his transfer order to go to the southern mines. He could use it to correspond with his family. After his father passed away, the other proximal had come into his half-sister’s hands. His big sister had a different mother from him and ordinarily had nothing to say to him. Only at the Mid-Autumn Festival and New Year would they exchange brief messages and ask after each other’s wellbeing.

Now, the proximal was covered in writing. Yao Qi knew each word individually, but put together, they were simply about to cook his brain. His big sister’s letter said: There was going to be a comeback. The rebels were going to be wiped out. They needed spiritual stones, so the resources in the southern mines were of utmost importance. Fortunately, the majority of people in the southern mines were noble scions. They wouldn’t just stand by and watch as Zhi Xiu pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes at home. They would be sure to help Yao Qi. She wanted him to calm everyone’s minds as soon as possible, stabilize the southern mines, and wait for someone to come meet him.

The other thing, meanwhile, was a Heavenly Question from the Xuanyin Mountains, with only two words written on it in strange yet familiar handwriting, telling him to run now.