Wei Chengxiang concealed herself snugly in the stealth armor and kindly provided stealth talismans for the two who would draw the wrong talisman when they got excited. After doing all this, she still hadn’t heard a follow-up from Tai Sui. “Verify what? Why did you stop talking? Are you out of oil?”

“Have you heard of Wanshuang’s Sword Slave from Kunlun?” Xi Ping said unhurriedly then. “I have it on reliable information that she’s currently next door in Northern Li’s mining area. I want to verify whether something can restrain her.”

Hearing this, Wei Chengxiang pondered carefully for a moment, then advised, “Why don’t you go over there and hang yourself at her doorstep, see if you can extort her to death?”

Xi Ping: “…”

He seemed to have learned the meaning of the phrase “the scenery is the same but the people have changed.” Over a decade had passed, and the Land of Turmoil still couldn’t grow a single shoot of wheat, but the cute little girl who’d believe anything you said to her had “changed” into this.

Wei Chengxiang said, “The Sword Slave is the extant pinnacle of the way of the sword. With Wanshuang, even Kunlun’s Sect Leader gives way to her somewhat. Are you planning to invite your esteemed teacher here? Let’s not talk about whether he’d be able to defeat her after having just become a shed skin. Right now, Great Wan is relying entirely on one Zhaoting. It’s no joke. And he isn’t going to cast aside the whole domestic situation and run over to duel Wanshuang just for the sake of a little patch of land like the southern mines, is he?”

“Do you remember the Law Breaker?” Xi Ping said. “Once the Law Breaker’s rule—its axiom—is fixed, it can carry off dozens of ascended spirits all at once, and even Xuanwu had to poke holes in his mask when he came inside. Sometimes, cultivation isn’t all that important. That time in Tao County, when Qiu Sha and that whole crowd of masters were having their earthshaking battle, in the end, it was a ‘half-immortal who would die at a single prod,’ a ‘little pretty boy who only knows one ascended spirit talisman,’ and a temporarily paralyzed wise man who took control of the situation.”

“Please put on some clothes, immortal.” Wei Chengxiang didn’t understand. “Wait…what? Where are you going to get another Law Breaker?”

“Someone once told me that the spiritual mountains are big Law Breakers. That might be true. We’ll see.”

In order to protect themselves, the Lancang Spiritual Mountains had forsaken their native soil and people and lingered on at death’s door until today. What were they thinking now? If the jiangshi-like Ways of the Heart were still buried under the Lancang Mountains, they might very well take this opportunity to choose Yang Wan…without her knowing about it. 

Wanshuang’s Sword Slave didn’t take the southern continent seriously and thought she could cut a swath through all monsters and demons, but could she handle “fate”?

“Someone is cursing me. I figure it must be Yu Chang.” Xi Ping’s spiritual sense was giving him a faint signal. “Ah, I hope that four-hundred-plus-year-old bachelor from Western Chu will learn something from this campaign. Since time immemorial, when caught between a married couple, who can come to a good end apart from their son?”

Yu Chang had wanted to be the hidden hand behind the scenes, not expecting that hand to get stuck full of thorns. He was currently paying his respects to each of Tai Sui’s and the Emperor of the East’s ancestors in succession.

After Western Chu’s Xuanwu had met the crowd of orthodox cultivators advocating for having him branded as a rebel, he courteously fought a battle with them.

Naturally, the “orthodox cultivators” were inspirational in their devotion to righteousness when provoking the enemy into battle with their curses, but when it came to blows, they were scared enough to wet their pants. When it had looked like the spiritual mountains were about to change hands, of Sanyue’s three great Principal Peaks, the Central and West Peaks had simultaneously displayed their prowess in a moment of crisis—with Xiang Ning’s corpse dissolved, his Way of the Heart had returned to the spiritual mountains, joining the ranks of the ghosts. The Silver Moon was pulled over. Its stabbing gaze was full of enmity as it looked upon Xuanwu.

Xuanwu was only a shed skin whose grave injuries had yet to heal. He didn’t dare to act as a tassel on a divine tool of the mountains, and now there was no more Heartless Lotus for him to use. All he could do was stay his hand and temporarily retreat to the East Peak, standing alongside the other two peaks and vying for the right to control over the Silver Moon. According to Yu Chang’s eyes in Dongheng City, the Silver Moon hanging in the sky was currently like the hand of a watch, revolving back and forth among the three mountain tops.

Sanyue’s traditions had always been iron-handed might and lax government, never looking down. The ascended spirit masters were all currently engaged in a tug-of-war over the moon. No one had attention to spare for the mortal world. Their outer sect, the Qilin Guard, had for the most part relied on spending money and taking elixirs to get their positions. They were either the children of some bully somewhere or nobles from Dongheng. The former had already revolted along with their families, and the latter, after losing support from the inner sect, were running around like headless flies in a state of anxiety.

All the bullies were falling over each other to stake a claim. In the whole Sanyue Spiritual Mountain Range, apart from the three great Principal Peaks, which no one dared to approach, practically everything had been snatched up by them. These arrogant local thugs had at their disposal the “offerings” their families had spent over a thousand years accumulating, all masters past the established foundation boundary. Dealing with the imposters in Sanyue’s inner sect took them no more effort than blowing away dust.

But these offerings had suffered from spiritual image brands. They were like evil spirits kept by their masters. If they only had the chance, they were sure to turn on them.

While Yu Chang had been in the Slumbering Dragon Sea, he hadn’t lost contact with the circle of offerings within Western Chu. While he helped these offerings deal with their brands, he had also imperceptibly influenced them with the “grit projections.” It could be said that all the powerful offerings in Western Chu now were under his control. Once he could secretly remove their brands, Yu Chang would be the most powerful and influential person in the whole country, and he would be perfectly concealed in the shadows as he sat and waited for the Xiang family and Xuanwu to destroy each other.

The plan was seamless. But there were always unexpected rotten branches popping up to make trouble.

The spiritual image brands could only be removed every day precisely at noon. In fact, with the concentration of Tai Sui’s consciousness, even if he brought in the whole country’s offerings all at once, he would still be able to control the papermen. But that slick bastard’s excuse was that he had been injured while fighting the Territory Map. If it wasn’t his head that hurt, it was his ass. Every day, he only returned to Tao County briefly, accepted two or three people if he was happy, or even only one person if he was in a bad mood, deliberately extending the battlefront!

Yu Chang had slipped up. He hadn’t specified in the blood contract when the brands were to be removed.

That had been all right to begin with. Tai Sui wouldn’t go back on his word about removing the brands. There was no benefit to him in those local despots who used spiritual image brands to control these masters gaining power. Yu Chang had kept calm about it at first. But he very soon discovered that that Tai Sui brat had given them rope to hang themselves with—once he slowed down, there had to be an order of priority among the offerings. Once there was an order of priority, there was disparity; they immediately split into many different levels.

All the offerings had been tormented by the spiritual image brands for over a century. No one had suffered less than anyone else. Having made it past establishing their foundations, no one was more cowardly than anyone else. Those who first had the opportunity to remove their spiritual brands were naturally a cut above the rest. Cries of discontentment could be heard everywhere about the delay. Before great matters had begun to move, these brothers had shown faint signs of falling out. Every day, they annoyed Yu Chang into a terrible state. And perhaps it was his mistake, but it seemed that the offerings whose consciousnesses had come in contact with Tai Sui, once their brands were gone, had become far less susceptible to the influence of the “grit projections.”

Yu Chang had just been preparing to get out his trump card ahead of time, give Tai Sui his punishment, when the Land of Turmoil escaped his control…because of a cuckold.

The chief offering had his sights set on the Sanyue Mountains. He had no interest in the Southern He Peninsula, a garbage heap that the four nations had spent over two centuries vandalizing. He had been acting purely to muddy the waters and arrange a deathtrap there for foreign powers that could endanger him—primarily a certain individual surnamed “Tai.”

Making contact with Yang Wan hadn’t been hard. That woman might have been the only evil cultivator in the world who still considered herself to be orthodox. After all this time, she had heard of the trouble in Southern Shu’s Lingyun Mountains and had worked things out. She knew that in a momentary slip, she had nearly let herself become a knife for that evil Wangge Luobao to use to harm his country and bring calamity to its people. Naturally she understood the “secret troubles” that had led to Yu Chang’s last-moment defection. She had quite a good opinion of him.

She disdained to associate with the hardly human evil cultivators of the Land of Turmoil. Her eyes and ears in the Land of Turmoil had never been as keen as the Emperor of the East’s. And Yu Chang had perfectly made up for her shortcoming: Western Chu’s mining area, an outer sect far from the capital, had long ago been secretly taken over by him. The two sides had readily accorded.

At the same time, to guard against the Queen Mother of the West standing alone and getting out of control, Yu Chang had prepared another move: he had colluded with the Emperor of the East.

Before the Queen Mother of the West had released her miasma, he had turned around and notified the Emperor of the East and given him the antidote, hoping that the Emperor of the East could ready the million evil cultivators at his command and make the battle in the southern mines an even more interesting spectacle.

But with such a great opportunity, heaps of spiritual stones and mines right in front of him, the Emperor of the East was actually resisting the temptation, not plotting to take them. Like a fly chasing a fart, the only thing on his mind was his ex-wife!

When Yu Chang learned that the Emperor of the East had somehow found his way to the Queen Mother of the West’s den and immediately attacked, he was simply stupefied: the four nations’ spiritual mountains were still waiting to wipe out the evil cultivators, and the evil cultivators themselves had broken out in internal strife before they could get to it.

There were thousands of poems in the world about abandoned wives, and tens of thousands of verses about resentful wives, all of them unable to match up to the thrill of a single cry from the Emperor of the East as he came out of nowhere. What a great husband!

Yu Chang’s intuition said that the course of events wasn’t right and immediately sent a warning to his people in Western Chu’s mining area, but it was already too late—

The fireworks display Wei Chengxiang had put on when impersonating Yao Qi and Chang Jun had carried no small force. It had blown all the snakes and rats hidden in the southern mines out all at once.

Since the Zhou family’s schemes had been revealed, there had been no one like Zhou Qing at the southern mines, able to oversee the situation openly and in secret. The seniors who’d had brands stamped on them had died or sunk into the sea. Those who came after them were all trembling with fear, wanting not to win merit but to avoid fault and just get by. Seeing the “emergency” flare in the sky, the “brilliant” mine supervisors collectively froze, having no idea what to do. The evil cultivators who had infiltrated the southern mines, however, were as perceptive as could be.

As soon as they saw the flare, the fake Yao Qi and fake Chang Jun knew that it had come from the direction of their lair. They thought to themselves that something drastic must have taken place to let those two little half-immortals escape.

Fortunately, they had already released the miasma. Without needing to consult, the two of them left the southern mines by night in perfect silent accord, heading towards the place they had arranged ahead of time with Her Highness.

And behind them, in a puddle along a street in Southern Wan’s mines, a pair of yellowish brown eyes emerged. A little water snake no thicker than an earthworm watched the direction the two of them went in.

The information the snake saw flew over the sea and landed in the hands of a beast-taming Miah cultivator.

Right now, Wangge Luobao was standing on a waking dragon’s back, playing the flute. The next life spiritual fish, flickering in and out of sight, circled him, and behind him was a great number of spiritual ships. The waking dragon stuck to the surface of the water. This whole area of the sea seemed to be covered in a layer of moonlight, protecting the boats and ships that the Miah were using talismans to propel.

The Miah cultivators were singing softly in chorus to the flute music. Their song was full of grief and anger—the flute player was false, but the singers were true.

Of the Miah who hadn’t escaped from Southern Shu’s main peninsula, over thirty thousand had died, male and female, young and old—the enraged Xiuyi hadn’t let any of them go. The Three Islands were now also held by the aggressive Xiuyi cultivators. Fortunately, Wangge Luobao had appeared. They had fled their native land and were on their way to seek out new resources and take back what was theirs.

The seething Miah cultivators were now hardly more than a hundred li from the Southern He Peninsula. Like starving carrion-eating vultures, they had their eyes on the corpse of Southern He.

“Clan leader, our eyes in Southern Wan’s mining area have confirmed it, the Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an must be hiding in Western Chu’s mining area.”

“Western Chu’s Yu Chang…” Wangge Luobao put down his flute. “What does the Emperor of the East say?”

“The Emperor of the East has some skill. He has already found the Queen Mother of the West’s den. He says that Yu Chang really is worthy of his red-eyed little face—as expected, he’s a wretch trying to score a meal at both ends, and only we are true allies. Western Chu’s mining area, where the Queen Mother of the West and her people are hidden, isn’t far from the Xiuyi’s spiritual beast farm. The Emperor of the East is asking us to help him hold up those two ascended spirits, and afterwards we’ll split the resources in the Queen Mother of the West’s Hidden Realm. The blood covenant signed by one party has already been sent over.” The Miah cultivator suppressed his greedy excitement, presenting the blood covenant sent by the Emperor of the East.

Wangge Luobao took a glance at it but didn’t accept it.

“Yu Chang certainly won’t want to see the Three Heroes of Turmoil exhaust themselves in an internal struggle before they can provoke a disturbance. He’s sure to think of some way to protect the Queen Mother of the West. If we go ashore now, we’ll be exposing ourselves too early. We’d make ourselves into targets for the Xiuyi and the Chu,” Wangge Luobao said softly. “The Emperor of the East is only using us to exhaust the Queen Mother of the West and Yu Chang. When we’ve pretty much all died off, naturally there will be no one to split resources with… What is it with these easterners always taking other people for idiots?”

The greed on the Miah cultivator’s face was wiped off his face by this bucket of cold water. Ashen-faced, he said, “These sly easterners go too far!”

Wangge Luobao waved a hand, indicating for him to keep calm. He slowly stroked the flute’s fingerholes. “Don’t worry. We’ll leave it up to the immortal mountains’ orthodox cultivators to punish evil.”

As soon as the Emperor of the East touched the hidden realm, Lord Guang’an and the Queen Mother of the West immediately perceived it.

The two of them had scattered poison miasma in Great Wan’s mining area and hidden in Western Chu’s mining area, which was in reality controlled by Yu Chang—Chu’s mining area was to the north of Wan’s mining area, very close, a place they could control the whole situation from; at the same time, if the miasma was discovered by a master when it spread to Northern Li’s encampment, the chaotic Southern Wan mining area could block the first wave of searchers and give them room to escape.

The two of them had even buried another kind of miasma in Western Chu’s mining area that they hadn’t set off, in case Yu Chang betrayed them at the last moment.

Who would have thought that it would be their own backyard, which they had thought was absolutely safe, that caught fire first?

Just as the two of them were planning to withdraw to the Wan mining area and rescue their home, a huge gold-armored zheng somehow came over from the Shu mining area’s spiritual beast pasture to the north.

The Shu were always letting gold-armored zheng graze in the canal, but each country’s mining area’s borders had inscriptions. Spiritual beasts wouldn’t approach the borders. But this gold-armored zheng had somehow gone crazy and simply charged the border between the two countries’ mining areas. It was disemboweled by the triggered border inscriptions. Dragging along all its internal organs, it rammed right into Western Chu’s mining area.

The Chu guards and mine cultivators were startled by the huge falling corpse. Before they could come forward to investigate it, the gold-armored zheng’s corpses exploded into a pile of bits. The bloody mist was scattered everywhere by the Land of Turmoil’s strong wind.

“Careful! There’s…”

The Chu cultivator couldn’t finish getting his warning out. It was as if he had melted. In the blink of an eye, he had rotted into a pool of corpse water—with the border inscriptions as a barrier, even if all the spiritual beasts in Southern Shu’s mining area turned into big bags of poison, at most they could have killed a few border guards. It wouldn’t have created such a big disturbance.

But what that gold-armored zheng carried wasn’t miasma, but a talisman to activate miasma. It had activated the poison that the Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an had buried as insurance against Yu Chang.

The intensity of an ascended spirit medicine cultivator’s miasma could paralyze all of the Chu mines within a few breaths. The Queen Mother of the West had intended to use it to keep herself from being trapped by the Chu.

The dense fog exploded instantly. The Queen Mother of the West was caught off guard, her own miasma getting out of hand in the place where she was hidden.

Curing poison was always slower than doing the poisoning, and the wind just happened to be blowing from the west.

Everyone involved in this was too clever. Each person had prepared a trap, hollowing out the earth.

A firecracker had been cast and was scattering in all directions. It would remain to be seen who would be the first to be buried.

The rolling miasma was taken to the eastern side of the Northern Li mining area in a flash by the evil wind from the sea, touching Northern Li’s border inscriptions.

A terrifying consciousness immediately locked onto them.

Lord Guang’an felt his spine turn cold. He backhandedly clapped a suit of protective armor onto the Queen Mother of the West and pushed her away. “Go!”