“Peak Master Wen—”

When Xi Ping reached Rosy Cloud Peak, the miasma was already choking his throat and lungs. He could no longer speak. This cry had come from Xi Yue, who had seen him nearly fall off his sword on Flying Jade Peak and had kindly escorted him here.

Wen Fei took one glance at Xi Ping’s face, utterly bloodless as a fierce ghost’s, and was so scared he even dropped his fan. “Wh…where h-have you been…h-haunting?”

Xi Ping staggered and stuffed his blood along with that of Wei Chengxiang and the others into Wen Fei’s hands. He mouthed, “Find a cure.”

Having said this, he ignored Wen Fei stammering over every word to say, “Don’t die on my doorstep,” closed his eyes, and collapsed.

Next to him, Xi Yue was startled. He held him up and saw that his chest had stopped rising and falling. He looked at Wen Fei in agitation. “Peak Master, he…”

Wen Fei calmly picked up his fan and waved his hand, using the fan to say, An ascended spirit doesn’t give up the ghost this quietly. His consciousness has just departed.

Xi Yue thought that this sounded like a very serious symptom. He quickly asked, “Why would his consciousness depart?”

Wen Fei was perplexed. How else is he supposed to make trouble?

Xi Yue: “…”

He had thought that Xi Ping had been injured by the poisonous miasma, that he was urgently seeking help from Rosy Cloud Peak, so weak that he couldn’t even maintain the presence of mind to speak a single sentence; but it turned out that he had run over, peeled off his damaged skin sack, tossed it to the “tailor,” and gone back out to cause mayhem without even taking the time to give detailed instructions.

He was so busy!

Xi Yue came to his senses, and exasperation welled up in him. This feeling of being dejected and short of breath was inexplicably familiar, making him freeze in spite of himself.

He was nowhere near old enough to be having memory problems. Watching Xi Ping lying there motionless, Xi Yue suddenly remembered that this person seemed to have frightened people with quite a few wretched actions of this nature before. But strangely, these things seemed to be buried deep in the corners of his memory, like long and redundant texts memorized and recited in childhood. Though he remembered them all when he was prompted, he normally wouldn’t remember them.

Frowning, Xi Yue pressed a hand to his chest—even now, he had only recalled the events. No matter what, he couldn’t remember how he had felt at the time. He had evidently experienced them, but it seemed as though he hadn’t been present.

Moreover…he and this nominal older brother had gone through so many things together. Why would he feel like such a stranger?

Xi Ping had no time to attend to anything else right now. He sank his consciousness into the reincarnation wood, rushing to wrap up this chaotic situation, his will firm despite his failing frame.

On the Southern He Peninsula, all the Turmoilers furtively holding reincarnation wood amulets received “Tai Sui”’s signal to “take action.”

The Sword Slave was after all one of the extant ultimate masters. After briefly cycling her energy, she broke through the poisonous miasma twined around her. She was in an incandescent rage. Ignoring all the nations’ borders, her tyrannical consciousness covered the whole of the Southern He Peninsula.

There was no trace of the Queen Mother of the West. There seemed to be some peculiar link between her and Lord Guang’an. As soon as she escaped, Lord Guang’an, who had been pounded into the earth by a beam of Wanshuang’s sword energy, had also disappeared. And these two evil cultivators’ hidden realm, concealed in Great Wan’s mining area, had relocated unnoticed, leaving behind only some corpses and marks of a fight between cultivators.

In Western Chu’s mining area, there was dead silence.

Yang Wan’s hiding place had been located at the heart of the Chu mines. The most important parts of each nation’s spiritual stone mines were heavily guarded, and she had not only been able to enter, but had also been able to comfortably set up housekeeping; obviously she had been invited. That Yang clan survivor had deep ties to the Chu!

On the Chu-Shu border, the blood of the gold-armored zheng had yet to dry. It was that animal that had triggered the poisonous miasma.

A master like the Sword Slave, who looked down upon all creation, had long been accustomed to being the focus of everyone’s attention as soon as she appeared. She frequently considered events from only two angles—“Is this person trying to get on my good side?” or “Is this person trying to counter me?” Therefore, she believed as a matter of course that the Queen Mother of the West had activated the miasma in order to escape from her. It hadn’t entered her mind that this was a muddled internal conflict brought about by mutual wariness among the evil cultivators. The workers in Shu’s mining area’s spiritual beast farm were all Turmoilers. At Xi Ping’s request, the Turmoilers had now deliberately herded all the large spiritual beasts far away from the Chu-Shu border, leaving behind only a crowd of snakes and rats and such, which peered sneakily in the direction of the Chu mines, perfectly “substantiating” the Sword Slave’s conjecture: the Yang clan survivor was also colluding with the Shu.

As for Wan’s mining area, which was teeming with worthless wretches—the miasma that passed from person to person had come from the Wan mining area to begin with, and Yang Wan had hidden her den in it. It went without saying that there was something fishy going on there.

Finally, she turned her gaze upon Northern Li’s mining area. A bloody light emerged in her asymmetrical eyes.

The Sword Slave absolutely refused to believe that a mere early stage ascended spirit medicine cultivator could create a miasma that would poison her. While she didn’t understand these underhanded tricks, at her level, she could sense that what she had been infected with was something different from the miasma spread throughout the surroundings. In other words, the poison that had infected her had been planted ahead of time “in her own home”—even Li’s territory contained Yang Wan’s moles!

And just then, where the Sword Slave’s consciousness was located, a peculiar scene took place.

The Turmoilers that could be seen everywhere, whether doing hard labor in the mines or wandering through the wilderness…suddenly all stood in place, motionless. Though they clearly hadn’t discussed it ahead of time, they raised their heads simultaneously, looked in a certain direction, and recited something while bowing. The kneeling homage looked like it was being performed by puppets on strings, the movements done in perfect unison, as if they had all been possessed by ghosts!

The Turmoilers couldn’t speak clearly. No one understood their “bestial language.” Because their intellects were incomplete, there wasn’t even a way to soul-search them. But there was one term that appeared repeatedly in the mumbling that sounded like a call to draw the soul from one’s body. This term was “Your Highness” in the ancient He language!

Had the Sword Slave not been made of iron and stone, she would have broken out in gooseflesh by now. Her figure flashed as she suddenly flitted in the direction those Turmoilers were bowing. At her cultivation level, it took only the space of a few breaths for her to reach the mountaintop. To her horror, she found that those Turmoilers were bowing in the direction of the Principal Peak of the former Lancang Sword Sect—the place where its long-vanished divine tool, the Lovebird Sword Array, had hung!

After the Lancang Sword Sect had been destroyed, the four nations had deliberately obliterated the traces of those traitors to the cultivation world. Even the juniors in the mines now didn’t know which mountain had been Lancang’s Principal Peak. How did these short-lived Turmoilers know?

The Sword Slave’s heart went cold. Looking at the southern mines again, she thought that the waters here were deep indeed, the situation knotty and deep-rooted. The ascended spirit Yang clan survivor was only the tip of the iceberg. At her back there seemed to be an abyss gazing at her. Even her own people couldn’t be trusted.

On the southern continent, Xuanyin was under threat, and Sanyue and Lingyun couldn't control their rebels. All powers would have their eyes fixed on the resources of the southern mines, so the Sect Leader and the High Priest had sent her to oversee matters. Apart from the new Sword of the South being able to raise her interest slightly, the Sword Slave hadn’t taken any of it seriously to begin with. She had even been planning to take advantage of the chaos to simply swallow the Lancang Spiritual Mountains in one gulp… Now it seemed that the Sword of the South, tied up with domestic trifles, was the least of her problems.

The Sword Slave’s expression became grim. She blew a long whistle into the sky, sending a message back to the Kunlun Mountains.

She wasn’t the only one to see the Turmoilers behaving strangely. Before Yu Chang in Western Chu and Wangge Luobao in the sea could recover from the aftereffects of Wanshuang, they learned that the Queen Mother of the West had escaped safely, as if by miracle.

While the two of them didn’t have the same aims, the same thought appeared in their minds without prearrangement: that woman hadn’t shown her hand during the battle in the South Sea; it turned out that she had been hiding such depths!

All clever people knew to be flexible, and evil cultivators in a turbulent world had waists more pliant than the dancing girls beside the Lingyang River. Wanshuang’s Sword Slave was an enemy who could never be converted into a friend, but the Queen Mother of the West perhaps wouldn’t object to some more allies.

Even Yang Wan herself was shaken.

When the Sword Slave’s attack had gone astray, her consciousness and the spiritual sense attached to her physical senses had been seized by a “heavenly edict.” No one could describe what her emotions had been at that moment—after two hundred years, the scar-riddled spiritual mountains of her homeland had protected her. They had spoken to her.

Guang’an’s essence had been pierced by Wanshuang, his meridians shattered. She had only brought him out through the special marriage contract between the two of them. He was now lying unconscious in her carriage. Yang Wan had fled all on her own. Just as she was beginning to suspect that the voice of the spiritual mountains had been her own illusion caused by Wanshuang’s attack, she saw a miracle before her eyes—tens of thousands of Turmoilers prostrating themselves in the direction of Lancang’s Principal Peak. They evidently couldn’t speak, yet they were struggling to recite her name in Southern He’s ancient language.

In that instant, Yang Wan made her decision. She grabbed a handful of barren earth and piously kissed it—she believed that the soul of her native land, which had suffered its fill of devastation, still remained, and she was the chosen one of heaven.

Xi Ping, having cooked up a god so effectively that no one had the slightest doubt, still felt that there was something missing, so he transmitted the Queen Mother of the West’s likeness to the Turmoilers. Skilled hands may have been the natural gift of the people of Southern He. In hardly any time, the Turmoilers’ deformed claws had carved lifelike wooden statues.

“Right, just like that. Stone and clay images are good, too. From now on, make them whenever you can. Try to spread the statues throughout the mining areas. Bow to them when you see them,” Xi Ping said. “By the grace of heaven, we’ll all be Her Ladyship’s people from now on!”

In this way, all living creatures in the Land of Turmoil—including even birds, beasts, insects, and fish—had come “under suspicion” of being the Queen Mother of the West’s people. The Sword Slave couldn’t cleave a hundred million ants to death with one blow. She was alone and unaided. All she could do was abandon her posturing and retreat to the northern border of the Southern He Peninsula and cooperate with the Xuanyin Mountains’ upstart.

They both belonged to the immortal mountains’ orthodoxy and ought to be as close as twins. Wouldn’t it be nice if Zhaoting and Wanshuang could fight the demons hand in hand? Why insist on a fight to the death?

If this Yang clan survivor turned out to be like the last emperor Yang Zou and wanted to “disperse” the Lancang Spiritual Mountains, then that really would be…

Just wonderful.

“The Sword Slave has been poisoned? No… Her!” The Beijue Mountains’ Blind Wolf King was so shocked that he stretched out his two scrawny arms and mimed the shape of a block. “She’s made of iron, carved of stone. Is she even capable of being poisoned?”

“It seems she is,” said Zhou Ying, in accordance with the facts.

The Blind Wolf King, pinching the letter that had just come from the Kunlun Mountains between two fingers, looked at him with the same marveling gaze, feeling that the way of clarity was a wonder. “Not bad there, kid. No wonder the Xuanyin Mountains have changed hands. How did you people do it?”

“I’m no expert in the way of medicine and poison,” Zhou Ying said, lying through his teeth. “The word from the Southern He Peninsula is that the birds and beasts all stop to bow when they see the Queen Mother of the West. Presumably she really has been chosen by fate and has means we know not.”

The Blind Wolf King slowly settled into his heap of fox-fur robe and narrowed his eyes, looking at Zhou Ying. “The High Priest has agreed to see you. The southern continent has a foul atmosphere. I’ve heard that people even shut themselves up in metal cages and ride around in the streets. Kunlun does in fact need a reliable ally, and the Sword of the South is a decent choice, but you had better not get any ideas.”

Zhou Ying looked at him candidly, his gaze as limpid as a mountain spring…except that in the spring was a demon seed.

“If you hadn’t already established a foundation, you could have studied under me. What a pity.” The Blind Wolf King clicked his tongue and waved a hand. “Wu Lingxiao is proud and arrogant. She’s fallen flat on her face this time.”

Having said this, he picked up a small wine pot, executed a “winding” stretch, and noodled away…not noticing that he had accidentally used the Sword Slave’s real name.

Zhou Ying looked thoughtfully at his retreating figure. When he raised his head, he met the gaze of the Crown Prince Snow Wolf, then nodded courteously to the Crown Prince Snow Wolf.

The Snow Wolf pretended not to see. He coldly lowered his gaze and went chasing after the Blind Wolf King like his shadow.

Zhi Xiu had been at the border to begin with. On receiving Wen Fei’s message, he had passed through a snow shuffler on Flying Jade Peak in a blink. He was just about to go to Rosy Cloud Peak to see his encumbrance of a disciple, reported to be “so badly poisoned he had turned into a withered eggplant,” when all of a sudden his consciousness noticed a drop of blood.

Xi Ping had been cut by Wanshuang’s sword energy when it had leaked from the reincarnation wood. He had been busy looking for a place to get a closer view, so he had casually wiped the blood off, not noticing that it had stained the small table.

Zhi Xiu frowned. His spiritual sense moved faintly. He reached out to touch the bloodstain. After a moment, he turned and ran. “Little whelp!”

Before Xi Ping could give Lin Chi a full description of that special spirit-conducting gold that could reconnect veins of the earth, the tail end of his words changed key into a scream.

The corner of Lin Chi’s eye twitched, his delicate features twisting into a peculiar expression that lay between “Revenge at last” and “I can’t bear to watch.”

Wen Fei said, “Deal—with—it.”

Using the poisoned blood, Wen Fei had first created an antidote for the three half-immortals who hadn’t been heavily poisoned, then gone to concentrate on dispatching the miasma Xi Ping had contracted.

According to this wicked stutterer, Xi Ping had picked up a dozen different kinds of poison. Taking antidotes for them all might have been enough to burst his guts, and refining the medicine would have been too time-consuming. It was better to “go to the source.”

It was only then that Xi Ping learned that “the strength of one can defeat the skill of ten” also applied to the way of medicine making. Wen Fei didn’t even look at what kind of poisons the Queen Mother of the West had used. He simply dismantled the miasma she had made with brute force, scattered the poisons, and left Xi Ping to digest them himself.

Wen Fei shot a beam of essence into his meridians. It was as if a crash of rhinoceroses with cannons strapped to their backs were charging madly through Xi Ping’s bones, exploding when they hit an acupoint. Xi Ping seemed to become the sky over the Sea of Stars the other night, several hundred fireworks exploding simultaneously in his body, making him want to get up and turn cartwheels.

The Queen Mother of the West hadn’t managed to poison him to death, but he was going to be nearly beaten to death by Wen Fei.

“Ah… Do all you medicine cultivators smash rocks against your chests…? Hss, Wen Fei! How many patients have you killed with your cures…ah! Fuck!”

In the end, the Master of Moon Plated Peak found his conscience and feebly put in from the sidelines, “Wen-shixiong, can…can you just tear open a miasma in a living person’s body like this?”

Of course you can’t. Wen Fei’s fan, hanging in midair, fanned a breeze towards him, writing in small, stylish running-standard script¹. Otherwise, would I have needed to stay at the Latent Cultivation Temple for three years back then? It would break a person’s meridians.

Lin Chi said, “Huh?”

Wen Fei wrote, But he’s unbreakable, isn’t he? And we haven’t got three years.

Xi Ping: “…”

This stutterer was abusing the power of his office for personal revenge!

Before the rictus of pain could recede from his face, a sly smile appeared at the corners of his twitching eyes. He was just about to make a scene when a loud shout came from outside Rosy Cloud Peak: “Xi Shiyong!”

“Shifu!” Seeing that his solid mountain of support was on the way, Xi Ping’s spine stiffened. He got ready to lodge his complaint. “Peak Master Wen is…”

Then he saw Zhi Xiu stride in with his face as grim as deep water. “Explain this to me. Cheng Yu is an ascended spirit. Where would he get shed skin sword energy?”

Xi Ping: “…”

His mountain of support had collapsed and was about to crush him!

While Rosy Cloud Peak was in utter disarray, Zhou Ying left the Beijue Mountains, heading towards the Kunlun Mountains. The Snow Wolf had been ordered to see him out. As he watched that frail established foundation’s figure vanish amid the heavy snow, the look in the Snow Wolf’s eyes grew grim. A concealed communication immortal tool emerged in the palm of his hand.