Evidently, they hadn’t succeeded.

Zhi Xiu took off the old thumb ring. The thumb ring flashed with spiritual light in his hand. Then an image appeared above the antiquated metal and came striding towards Xi Ping. This human figure was too lifelike. Xi Ping leaned back automatically, then distinguished that this was an armed and armored man, wearing that archery ring on his thumb.

This person’s features somewhat resembled Zhi Xiu’s, but his temperament was vastly different: there was a stern wrinkle between his brows; his lips, thin as a thread, were turned slightly down at the corners; his gaze was like a knife, so one did not dare to look directly at him.

He seemed to be in the midst of a heavy rain. The rainwater dripped from his armor.

“This is my older brother.” Zhi Xiu sat upright where he was and calmly gave his junior an introduction across a distance of over two centuries.

Out of nowhere, Xi Ping’s heart skipped.

He saw that this armored general’s brow was tightly furrowed as he watched his soldiers push forward a captive.

Xi Ping recognized that captive at a glance and blurted out, “That looks like Southern He’s last emperor, Yang Zou.”

The first time he had gone with Pang Jian to the Land of Turmoil, they had ended up by mistake in an underground palace and seen a statue of Yang Zou kneeling in penitence. The people of He were indeed skilled craftsmen; the stone statue could be matched to the real person at a glance.

General Zhi Yi had captured the enemy nation’s emperor!

Xi Ping made a last-moment effort, quickly scanning through the history book he had on hand. He found no record concerning this. It only said “Zou died in the midst of battle.”

This obsessively ambitious last emperor was around thirty, tall and broad, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He looked like a military officer. Under his thick brows was a pair of imperious eyes. There was a distinctive tempo to his step, graceful and confident, as if he were still the master of Southern He looking down on all under heaven, inspecting his own domain. A soldier escorting him couldn’t stand the sight of this and gave him a shove. He stumbled, then adjusted within three steps. Fallen into these dire straits, he was having no difficulty maintaining his strength of character.

There was no sound in the image. The soldier escorting the prisoner of war quickly said something.

Xi Ping was still struggling to read his lips when two soldiers came forward and tore apart this emperor’s lapels.

Across a distance of two centuries, Xi Ping had an illusion of the smell of blood hitting him in the face—on this last emperor’s chest was a palm-length wound, the flesh around it blackened and necrotic; on it, a talisman had been drawn in blood. Something had been sewn into the wound, pushing the flesh there slightly outward. This must have been discovered when he was searched.

No one knew what kind of evil art this was. A number of soldiers holding immortal tool “spirit scouters” trotted over and surrounded Yang Zou in full battle readiness, scanning him up and down. After working at it for ages, it seemed that they hadn’t made any sense of it.

The last emperor stood with his chest and back exposed in the rain, letting them surround him and inspect his body. After briefly observing with no trace of shame on his face, he said, “General Zhi, this is only an ordinary sealing talisman. An open-eyed cultivator can use it. It seems there are no cultivators among your forces.”

Yang Zou was speaking in the Wan language. Because he was a foreigner, he spoke slowly, and his articulation was so precise it was a little exaggerated. Lip reading his speech took only one look. When he had spoken, he stuck his hand right into his wound and pulled the flesh apart as though it were clothing.

All the soldiers surrounding him looked alarmed and scolded loudly. Scorching light was coming from his wound. A piece of the sun seemed to have been sealed there, bloody and brilliant. The mortals could no longer open their eyes, but Xi Ping saw that what he had pulled out of the wound was a coil of gold wire. Its texture was extremely similar to Lin Chi’s newly made spirit-conducting gold. “So that’s…”

“There are special miniature inscriptions inlaid in the gold wire that can naturally blend into the veins of the earth and conduct spiritual energy from a place where it is dense to a place where it is sparse,” Zhi Xiu explained to Xi Ping as he watched Yang Zou’s lips moving in the image. “Lancang’s situation was somewhat similar to Sanyue’s, with the imperial Yang family having a great deal of power in the Lancang Mountains, but unlike in Sanyue, it did not hold sole power. The Sect Leader and many toolmaking masters in venerated positions weren’t surnamed Yang. Under those circumstances, internal strife was unavoidable. At the time, all the Yang cultivators, guarding He’s Emperor Xiaohuai, broke the siege, hoping that they could later stage a restoration. So His Majesty sewed the spirit-conducting gold wire into his own body, concealing it with his mortal aura, and secretly smuggled it out.”

Xi Ping took note of his shifu’s respectful address. “Why was the emperor being so furtive…? Oh, I get it.”

At the time, the vast majority of the Lancang Mountains’ cultivators—at least among the cultivators of the Yang family—were being controlled by the will of the mountains. They wanted to retake the spiritual mountains, not “break up the spiritual mountains’ fortune.”

And this Emperor Xiaohuai was an oddity. As a mortal in these circumstances, he had refused to be his family’s obedient puppet. He had used the Yangs’ protection to escape and had even used his own body to transport spirit-conducting gold wire.

“But his luck was poor. After direct encounters with several waves of cultivators, when he was captured by my da-ge, he only had his mortal personal guards beside him. The Yang family wouldn’t search him, but our troops did. They felt it at once,” Zhi Xiu said. “As for whether it was ultimately that his luck was poor or that something unseen was struggling in its death throes, that can no longer be verified.”

Xi Ping saw the last emperor who had died over two centuries ago suddenly raise his head and aim a strange and mocking look at the sky.

“Shifu, I think he actually felt it then—the so-called ‘Will of Heaven.’”

Zhi Xiu nodded. “The final outcome of a state, whether tragic or glad, is written with the flesh and blood of its sovereign.”

In the image, Yang Zou pulled together his lapels, bowed to General Zhi Yi, straightened up, then didn’t move again.

A soldier next to him fearfully touched him. Yang Zou’s tall body came crashing down. Only after the eye-searing spirit-conducting gold wire was removed did everyone see that in order to hide the gold wire, he had simply broken his ribs and dug out a big chunk of his heart and lungs. He had been living off the spiritual energy that the gold wire was carrying through his meridians and veins.

Looking at it, Xi Ping felt his own heart and lungs contract.

Recalling the insane Renzong, and Emperor Taiming, Zhou Kun, whom one didn’t know what judgment to make of, and adding in this Emperor Xiaohuai of Southern He… They were all weak, short-lived mortals, but their actions could scare the “immortals” who moved the wind and rain to tears. It was clear to see that ruthlessness didn’t depend on cultivation!

“He gave that thing to High General Zhi because there were no cultivators among the troops?”

Zhi Yi had been over the age of forty at the time. He wasn’t a wet-behind-the-ears hothead. Of course he understood that in attacking Southern He, the four nations were blowing the Wan-He war out of proportion in a plot to seize the Lancang Spiritual Mountains. At the time, the Lancang Spiritual Mountains had already “pilfered heaven’s order” from the mortal world. During their pursuit, they had seen barren earth all around, marshes running wild, worm masters come to take advantage of the trouble as plentiful as carrion-eating vultures, the cawing of crows falling incessantly on the ears.

The least complicated choice that General Zhi Yi could have made would have been to report this thing to the court and the immortal mountains, stay where he was and await orders… He was only a mortal who worked for a salary. In the eyes of the sect, he was no different from the Latent Cultivation Temple’s straw children. These were the people of an enemy nation, anyway; whether the Way of the Heaven or the imperial edict was virtuous or sinful was nothing to do with a person like him, who was there to obey orders. The most adroit method, meanwhile, would have been to temporarily conceal it and delay his report. Yang Zou couldn’t be the only person in Southern He secretly transporting spirit-conducting gold wire. If others succeeded, he could be said to have saved the common people here at very little cost in effort to himself; his conscience could rest easy. If they failed entirely, it wouldn’t be too late for him to make good his delay—a mortal wouldn’t have seen this kind of unbelievable immortal tool before; it was understandable that he would be slow to react; at most he could be said to have been careless in his work, not a major fault.

But Xi Ping had already guessed it—after hesitating for a long time, this man who had brought up his shifu had chosen the stupidest path. When he had received the spirit-conducting gold wire and the torn flesh of the enemy nation’s last emperor, he had been not far from one of Southern He’s veins of the earth that had been temporarily sealed. He determined to take some trusted subordinates to travel there through the night and quietly disperse the spirit-conducting gold wire into the vein of the earth.

Before General Zhi Yi set out, he said something to one of his personal guards. Surprisingly, Xi Ping understood it.

What he had said was: “I don’t know what condition Jingzhai’s wounds are in. There hasn’t been a letter from home today. I’ll treat it as collecting good karma for him.”

The general left and didn’t come back again.

Xi Ping’s heart jumped. He automatically snapped his fingers and produced a qin note, wanting to interrupt the image from the thumb ring. There was a twang, but Zhi Xiu pinched the qin note. The remaining sound fell from high to low, then was eliminated at his fingertips along with the spiritual energy it carried.

“Watch,” Zhi Xiu said to him. “It is already a matter of history. Whether you watch it or not, it still happened. Do not deceive yourself.”

The thumb ring had recorded intact the final period of its owner’s life: the mortals thought themselves to be acting undetected, but they were under the gaze of the “Way of Heaven,” and those frightened spiritual mountains were like a bloodsucking jiangshi, preferring to be split up rather than be destroyed like this.

In the image, spiritual energy and sword energy flew wildly. Xi Ping’s eyes were dazzled. He saw talismans that were clearly of Chu make, wintry cold sword light, and amid the sword light, the flitting figures of enormous beasts… There were even Wan maneuvers mixed in.

The image abruptly vanished. The spiritual light dispersed from the thumb ring, and it fell totteringly back into Zhi Xiu’s palm. “They did not deliberately kill mortals. It was only that when they learned of it, they didn’t know how many ‘lunatics’ had smuggled out this gold wire. After a negotiation among the masters from the four nations, they determined to join hands to sever Lancang’s veins of the earth, keep the spiritual energy within the spiritual mountains forever. Because of his presumptuous actions, my da-ge just happened to be there—it isn’t false that he accidentally got involved.”

Xi Ping’s heart slowly sank. “Shifu…”

“I am weak and vile. Only now have I dared to look directly at the Land of Turmoil, seek out my older brother’s relic, and learn the truth. Even when you asked me just now, my first thought was still to avoid it and not speak of it.” Zhi Xiu very candidly waved a hand towards him. “Timidity is sometimes even more dangerous than arrogance. You have the heart of a newborn babe, open and forthright. That’s good. Don’t be like your shifu.

“But to shift some of the blame, when the Ways of the Heart of common origin hadn’t yet revealed themselves on a large scale, the Sea of Stars would have automatically obscured my vision. Even if I had obtained this thumb ring, I still wouldn’t have been able to see so clearly.” Zhi Xiu glanced at Xi Ping. “I suppose that while my older brother was unable to save the Southern He Peninsula, due to his sacrifice, the karmic reward still came to me…and allowed me not to bungle matters due to timidity, and by a series of coincidences, to reach this day.”

Had it not been for Xi Ping, perhaps he would have ignorantly cultivated on Flying Jade Peak, cultivated for centuries or millennia according to the prescribed routine, become a shed skin as was only to be rationally expected and taken his place as a sage, in the future also become a stone complicit in the spiritual mountains’ villainy… Wouldn’t that have been a sad waste?

From the Xuanyin Mountains, a shed skin’s consciousness could just cover the whole territory of Great Wan. Zhi Xiu inspected the border inscriptions. He scooped a handful of chestnuts out of the fire and gave them to Xi Ping. “If you have nothing else to ask, Cui Jui’s cousin, come and take up your old profession. Help me do some accounts—none of the cultivators above an established foundation can be trusted, Great Wan’s internal defenses have been emptied out. I’ve asked Lin-shixiong to alter the spirit-conducting gold as soon as possible. But that thing’s destructive force is too strong, and it automatically pilfers heaven’s order. If we are to give it to low-level cultivators or mortals to use as ‘downgraded immortal tools,’ we must add all kinds of restrictions. Come and count up for me, how many spiritual stones will it take…”

As Zhi Xiu spoke, he recalled something else. “With turbulence in the southern mines, Northern Li ought to be sending an inner sect master to oversee things. Since His Highness Prince Zhuang is in contact with Kunlun, does he know who their representative is?”

From the identity of the representative Northern Li had sent, Li’s plans for the southern mines would be evident.

“Yes,” said his “open and forthright” disciple who had the “heart of a newborn babe,” not missing a beat. “An ascended spirit sword cultivator, called…Cheng something?”

There weren’t many famous sword cultivation masters in the world. One hand might not be enough to count them, but you wouldn’t need more than two. Moreover, this “Cheng” wasn’t a common surname. As soon as Zhi Xiu heard, he knew who this was. “Kunlun’s Cheng Yu.”

Xi Ping’s expression didn’t waver. “Right, him.”

Northern Li was always locked up. He’d had little contact with Kunlun’s people. The only one he remembered was the sword cultivator who had exchanged greetings with Lin Chi during the siege on Qiu Sha in Wild Fox Country, so he had casually taken him out to use as a shield.

“That’s all right. I’ve heard he is very talented, and of steady temperament and good character. He isn’t unreasonable.” Zhi Xiu nodded. “When I’ve handled matters within Great Wan, I’ll go pay a visit.”

“Sure, then I’ll have a chat with him first.” When he lied, Xi Ping was never afraid of being seen through. After his answer, he turned around and said to Zhou Ying through the reincarnation wood, “San-ge, stay in the Beijue Mountains for a few days, wait for Kunlun to invite you.”