The thing in the Snow Wolf’s palm was called a Linked Heart. Like Xuanyin’s Heavenly Question, the Linked Heart was Kunlun’s most heavily encrypted communication immortal tool. Not even the Blind Wolf King had better think of spying on it—it was for the exclusive use of the inner sect.

The Snow Wolf had obtained it when he had just become an ascended spirit.

Since he was little, people had told him that the way of the sword was impartial.

This way didn’t rely on external objects. Unlike the medicine and toolmaking ways, it didn’t require a large quantity of material resources and at least as much financial wherewithal as luck. And unlike other ways, it wasn’t so dependent on spiritual sense and natural talent; neither a first-class spiritual sense that gave you twice the results for half the effort, nor the innate spiritual bones that would put you half a step from an established foundation as soon as you opened your spiritual eyes would give you an edge over anyone else. It didn’t even rely on a person’s physical condition—Zhi Xiu’s martial skills had been thoroughly mediocre. Opening your spiritual eyes cleansed your vigor and strengthened your marrow. As long as you didn’t get an eye-opening wound bad enough to leave you missing a limb, the slight differences among mortals would all be evened out.

This was a way for those who were best at tolerating loneliness, at hardening their hearts and tempering themselves, at being staunch.

So when Kunlun selected its disciples, it was much more fair than the southern continent, where you could get in on surname alone.

Every year, the immortal mountains would pick a group of children around ten years old and lock them up in the outer sect Disciple Hall to focus on training. They were tested once a month. The standards for elimination were harsh. Between entering the sect and opening their spiritual eyes, ninety percent or more would wash out. Those who succeeded in opening their spiritual eyes would still be faced with a once-in-fifteen-years contest, where one of a hundred would be chosen to enter the inner sect. The rest would go to the outer sect called the Night Revenants.

But spiritual mountains were spiritual mountains. No matter how fair, as long as the Disciple Hall wasn’t so large that it could contain all the young students of the sword on the northern continent, this road to heaven requiring a bitter trek had nothing to do with the common people.

The Snow Wolf was one of the people who had been shut out. He had fallen just one step short.

He had been born into an official’s family and had held sword since the moment he could walk. He was the eldest son, the one destined to enter the crucible cast of iron that was the Disciple Hall and shoulder his family’s great expectations. Any willfulness or pampering would have damaged him. His father had never smiled at him, as if he was never good enough. His mother’s love was all for his younger siblings, as if the warmth of affection would have melted the sword heart he had yet to find.

There were two things that the Snow Wolf hated most in his life. One was a high courtyard wall, and the other was the sword.

Since he was three years old, he would get up in the morning to practice swordsmanship, then study in the afternoon. He hadn’t known a single day of idleness. Apart from making offerings to ancestors at their graves, he couldn’t go out. There were stringent rules for what he could eat and drink. He was nearly ten years old when he ate candy for the first time—it was a mass-produced malt sugar candy that glued your mouth together and had a bitter aftertaste. The very last of his family’s guards to be dismissed had given it to him, just before leaving.

The year he was to formally enter the Disciple Hall, there was a rupture among Northern Li’s military families, caused by Moon Plated Gold. The progressive party was utterly routed. His whole family suffered. His father was stripped of his rank and banished into the wilderness. His mother committed suicide. The Snow Wolf no longer needed to study the sword.

His childhood had been more austere than the harsh winter of the Beijue Mountains. He had become experienced in loneliness.

A large enough forest contains all kinds of birds. There are people in the world whose love turns to hate, and there are also freaks like the Snow Wolf, whose hatred had turned to love. From that day forward, the sword became the Snow Wolf’s first obsession.

In Northern Li, if you couldn’t follow the orthodox way of the sword, all you could do was go to the Beijue Mountains to seek asylum with the Blind Wolf King.

The Blind Wolf King had originally belonged to Kunlun’s orthodoxy. He had already been an ascended spirit when he had rebelled against Kunlun. It was said that he had rather good connections in Kunlun’s inner sect. Kunlun had turned a blind eye and only ordered him never to leave the area of the Beijue Mountains. It amounted to a disguised exile.

The Beijue Mountains guarded the Beijue Pass. They were the extreme boundary, beyond which humans could not live. Past the Beijue Mountains, even a master’s essence could freeze in the unpeopled northern plains. Cultivators all had to rely on external objects to keep warm there. Mortals couldn’t get near.

The Snow Wolf came up with a “masterstroke.” He spent ten years getting a Lingchi Lantern off the black market. This thing had initially been an implement of torture. You couldn’t use it unless you bore an enmity built upon the extermination of your family and the desecration of your ancestral tombs. Using a person’s flesh and blood as kindling, it could burn for a month without dying. Even the evil cultivator who had sold him the Lingchi Lantern had been on the point of speaking, advising him, “Burning another means burning yourself. Think it over. It isn’t worth it.”

The Snow Wolf had run up to Beijue with the Lingchi Lantern and lit himself on fire. Heaven had been merciful, allowing him to walk clothed in flames yet, on the point of death, come to the Beijue Pass before he burned up and find the legendary Blind Wolf King.

One of the Blind Wolf King’s followers put out his fire, went to marvel at him, and told him, “The Perplexing Sword will not accept anyone without at least a first-class spiritual sense.”

The Snow Wolf couldn’t speak his despair—his throat had been burned useless long ago. He scraped the ground with his head, dropping blackened bits all over the snow and letting the sword he carried fall.

The snakelike Wolf King strolled over then, hands tucked into his sleeves. He had smelled something from afar and thought that someone had burned a roast lamb. He came over, yawning, ready to curse them out and, as soon as he looked down, saw the family emblem on the Snow Wolf’s sword.

It sounded like a joke when you said it. The Snow Wolf had suffered untold hardships and finally been burned to charcoal, and it had been his family background that had allowed him to become an “evil cultivator.”

Because his spiritual sense was inadequate, the Wolf King didn’t accept him as a direct disciple. He was only a disciple of record.

This rule was unheard of: none of the extant masters of the way of the sword had ever been said to have a strong spiritual sense. For one thing, a first-class spiritual sense appeared in less than one in ten thousand people. You could only come upon it by chance. And furthermore, too “spiritual” a person often couldn’t put in the rote work. As far as the way of the sword was concerned, a first-class spiritual sense wasn’t a good thing.

The Wolf King held him in contempt and couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a convincing reason.

The Snow Wolf couldn’t get over it. After continuing to practice swordsmanship, “make the Wolf King acknowledge me” became his next obsession.

He took everything the Wolf King said to heart. He was like his shadow and also like his dog. Apart from waiting on the Wolf King, he spent all the rest of his time cultivating. Others in this awful place would become unbearably cold if they put down their cold-repelling immortal tools for a moment; only he would grit his teeth and go into the depths of the Beijue Mountains, bare his back and use the harsh cold to temper himself. Several times his essence almost froze, and he nearly died out there.

After two hundred years, following close upon Qiu Sha’s heels, he broke the heavenly commandment that “evil cultivators cannot be ascended spirits” and bore the punishment of heavenly lightning. Even the inner sect had begun to look upon him with interest.

Everyone called him “Crown Prince Snow Wolf” and thought he was the Wolf King’s successor. But the Wolf King to this day wouldn’t let him call him “shifu.”

The Snow Wolf had perfectly demonstrated that the way of the sword had nothing to do with spiritual sense. He had wanted to show the Wolf King. But the Wolf King wouldn’t even open his eyes—that old fool had spent decades hung up on some mortal in the south, had casually said “what a pity” to a Southern Wan established foundation with inferior cultivation who had lived a life of ease, as if anyone at all could inherit the Perplexing Sword, it was only he who was unworthy.

Since he held him in such contempt…

No sooner had Zhou Ying left than the Snow Wolf sent a Linked Heart: The Wan were involved in the Sword Slave’s poisoning. Wan’s envoy Zhou Ying means ill. He is looking for an opportunity to pry into the immortal mountains’ Ceaseless Mirror. The Blind Wolf King frequently gives tacit consent for Southern Wan’s Luwu to operate at the feet of the Beijue Mountains. I suspect him of collaborating with the enemy.

Soon after, an answer came to the Linked Heart: Understood. A position remains open in Posuo Palace.

In Kunlun, each ascended spirit master had a small hidden realm in the immortal mountains belonging exclusively to them. These were called sword manors. Inside were precious swords and rarities, all the spiritual stone resources one could need, as well as eighteen lower-level cultivators assigned to act as retainers; you could establish a lineage and accept disciples.

Posuo Palace had been the Blind Wolf King’s sword manor before he had defected from the sect.

The Snow Wolf took a deep breath. The corners of his eyes twisted slightly.

He had finally accepted the situation. When he stood so high, why should he continue to be an “evil cultivator”?

Kunlun—the Kunlun Mountain Range—was to the north of Northern Li’s capital Yanning, like a white-haired giant, blocking the wind out of the utter north like a protective screen. Every year, from the start of spring to the first snowfall, an endless stream of people travelled from far and wide to make obeisance at the feet of the immortal mountains; from the nobles of Yanning to commoners, all kinds of people came in great numbers.

Now, the harsh winter was almost here. The pilgrims had already left. From top to bottom, the Kunlun Mountains had become cold and cheerless. In the Sect Leader’s residence on the Principal Peak, the main hall carved of ice had over a zhang of snow covering it, but inside it was as warm as a late spring day in Jinping. Four sword cultivators dressed for fighting flew in bearing a sedan.

On the sedan sat an old man, his hair and beard white, collapsed into a heap, the sort of old man it seemed a matter of urgency to get measured for his burial robes.

He wore a special cape with extravagant first-class inscriptions sparkling on it, keeping him warm in the wintry wind. Spiritual energy hardly paused within his body. Any cultivator would have seen that this old man was only a half-immortal whose lifespan was nearing its end.

This puny half-immortal was trespassing in the Sect Leader’s immortal palace, not even descending from his sedan when he came in.

But one of the three shed skin sword cultivators in the world—Zhi Xiu had become the fourth upon becoming a shed skin—the Kunlun Sect Leader, who was foremost under heaven, trotted forward to welcome him, personally helping that old half-immortal who already couldn’t move very well off his sedan. Respectfully, he said, “High Priest.”

Eighty percent of Kunlun’s cultivators were sword cultivators. They didn’t have as many useless twists and turns as Xuanyin; normally, whoever had the strongest fist was entitled to speak, and if it really came to a dispute, they would hold to their traditions. Routine business was handled through discussions among the Sect Leader and the two other shed skin sword cultivators; the Sword Slave’s ideas were to be taken into account if she disagreed…but luckily that sword lunatic didn’t have all that many ideas.

But above the Sect Leader was a special individual.

Kunlun’s High Priest only spoke when major events transpired. As soon as the venerable old fellow made a pronouncement, the three men and one puppet who, working together, could have cut down the five great spiritual mountains, had to shut their mouths and obey.

No one would have thought that this supreme High Priest was no master of the way of the sword, that he was so aged that he practically couldn’t walk anymore.

Kunlun’s Sect Leader was the direct disciple of the Wanshuang Sword Ancestor. Like the other spiritual mountains’ shed skins, he was over a thousand years old. Yet he held himself to be a junior before a half-immortal whose lifespan wouldn’t exceed two centuries, his bearing almost obsequious. He helped the High Priest sit down on a small couch. “These are all trifles. Wan’s envoy is only an established foundation junior. How could he disturb the High Priest?”

The High Priest slowly said, “The master of the Luwu, with a gang of half-immortal peasants under him, in less than twenty years has stirred up trouble that has brought turmoil to the southern continent. This junior is more than he appears.”

The Sect Leader was rather disapproving of this. He thought that a wretched place like the southern continent wouldn’t be calm even if there was no one to stir up trouble. But since the High Priest had said so, he couldn’t very well refute it, so he didn’t respond.

The High Priest continued: “I hear that the Sword Slave was the target of a conspiracy. That she was poisoned.”

“Yes,” Kunlun’s Sect Leader said, “this is also incomprehensible to me. Even disregarding her cultivation level, the Sword Slave bears Wanshuang and ought to be impervious to all evils, and aside from that, she is a half-puppet. How could she be poisoned?”

The High Priest narrowed his clouded eyes and glanced at one of the sword cultivators who had been carrying his sedan. That sword cultivator immediately stepped forward and handed a Linked Heart to the Sect Leader. This was the Snow Wolf’s secret letter.

“The Beijue Mountains’ Xie Chu?” The Sect Leader frowned. “All these years, it has only been on account of his shifu’s reputation, as well as the Sword Slave… How could he be so heedless of right and wrong?”

“I do not believe Xie Chu would deliberately injure the Sword Slave.” The High Priest waved a hand, and a map of the northern and southern continents flew out of his sleeve. “At the outset, in the siege upon the Late-Autumn Red in Western Chu, we lost quite a few juniors. Cheng Yu and the others who returned gave a detailed report and mentioned that inside the Law Breaker at the time, a large quantity of reincarnation wood was growing wild. The local ignorant masses called it ‘Tai Sui.’ This ‘Tai Sui’ didn’t show his face at the time, but there was something fishy in the breaking of the Law Breaker. Not long after, spiritual energy was suddenly prohibited in Tao County, turning it into a place where cultivators dared not tread. Then Sanyue’s Xiang Rong passed away, Xuanwu fled, and Western Chu thus sank into chaos.”

As he spoke, he pointed to Southern Shu. “At the time of the Dragon Boat Festival, there was trouble in the Lingyun Mountains. We all know the inside story. The Miah evil cultivators wanted to seize the immortal mountains’ spiritual energy. They failed to obtain the South Sea Hidden Realm when it was just within reach, but the Lingyun Mountains still lost half of their spiritual energy then. Spiritual energy wouldn’t vanish into thin air. Where did it go?”

The Sect Leader said, “It is said that this Tai Sui is a disciple of the Xuanyin Mountains who has just become an ascended spirit. He was born in Jinping and studied under Zhi Xiu… Not long after he returned to Southern Wan, on top of everything else, there was a change of power in Xuanyin.”

“An ascended spirit less than fifty years old.” The High Priest looked up at the Sect Leader. “You have wielded power in Kunlun for so many years—have you ever heard the like? As far as I know, the evil god ‘Tai Sui’ has been spoken of among the common people much longer than that little devil has been alive. Then there is the Land of Turmoil. The abandoned people of the Land of Turmoil have no intellects, yet they like only reincarnation wood. Could it really only be because that tree is both common and not poisonous?”

The Sect Leader frowned. “Do you mean, High Priest, that the evil cultivator called the Queen Mother of the West in the Land of Turmoil and this so-called ‘Tai Sui’ are both only cover-ups? Behind them, there must be…”

“An abyss that can draw in all five great spiritual mountains,” the High Priest said gravely. “Since the Wan envoy is coming, we will not let him leave. Search his soul yourself.”

Kunlun’s Sect Leader hesitated briefly. “If I soul-search an established foundation, he is certain to die. Even in a war between two nations, they won’t kill each other’s envoys, and we are currently engaged in peace talks with Southern Wan on the surface… High Priest, the situation in the southern mines is currently unclear. If we rashly kill Wan’s envoy, will we be alerting the enemy in advance?”

The High Priest said, “The Wan won’t know.”

The Sect Leader froze.

The abyss that could “draw in all five great spiritual mountains” was running around being hacked at by Zhaoting.

Xi Ping fled like a frightened rat. His ability to run was hampered by his injuries from the poison, which had yet to heal. He couldn’t dodge, so he simply tossed his “corpse” away; he closed his eyes and absconded into the Law Breaker—at any rate, no matter what, the mighty Sword of the South wouldn’t descend to whipping a corpse.

The upshot was, as soon as he stepped into the Law Breaker, he regretted it. What the hell, why was the young mistress still here?

Chang Jun was gesticulating and hopping with Yao Qi next to him woodenly agreeing from time to time. Zhao Qindan was sitting across from the two of them. They must have finished recognizing each other and had now moved on to reminiscing about former times!

Xi Ping was just in time to hear Chang Jun say, “Ziming-xiong only found out when he received a letter from the inner sect…”

He turned and was about to run for it.

Wei Chengxiang had deep ties to the reincarnation wood. As soon as he came in, she noticed it. Eager to make trouble, she called to him, “Are you back, Tai Sui?”

In a flash, Xi Ping quickly plastered a spiritual image mask over his face and narrowly managed to put up his elevated senior act in time.

Zhao Qindan, hearing this, stood up, called “Senior Tai Sui,” then made introductions: “This is the master of this place that I was just telling you two about, the Luwu’s Tai Sui.”

Xi Ping hadn’t seen Yao Qi and Chang Jun for over a decade. Though a cultivator’s outward appearance wouldn’t change, seeing them again, they seemed as unfamiliar as though he had last seen them in a past life. So, judging others by his own standards, he presumed that the two of them wouldn’t necessarily recognize his voice. He immediately calmed down. On the one hand, he silently implored Wei Chengxiang: “Grandma, spare me.”

On the other hand, he “calmly” waved a hand to Zhao Qindan. Treasuring words like gold, he said, “Well done.”

He had no sooner spoken than he saw Yao Qi, who had had his head down, abruptly raise his eyes and stare at him in shock.

What…was he looking at?

Xi Ping met his eyes and suddenly had an ominous premonition.

Then he heard Zhao Qindan ask, “Yao-shixiong, what did the letter from the inner sect say?”

“The letter told Ziming-xiong to run away,” said Chang Jun. “You know the letter writer, too, it’s the guy who lived in the Qiu courtyard with us back then. Ziming recognized his handwriting at a glance. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gone so quickly…”

Xi Ping’s mind roared. He stared at Yao Qi in disbelief—his letter had been anonymous and had comprised two words in all, hasty and illegible. After fourteen years, how had Yao Ziming been able to recognize his handwriting “at a glance”?

That kid didn’t have presumptuous designs on him, did he?

Wait, if he could even recognize his handwriting at a glance, then his figure and voice…

Wei Chengxiang grabbed a handful of melon seeds and, calm amid the chaos, crossed one leg over the other as she sat by and watched the atmosphere inside the Law Breaker’s space suddenly congeal. Tai Sui and Yao Qi were staring at each other as if they had turned into two statues.

A moment later, without a word, Xi Ping put down the antidote and vanished right where he stood, resolutely going back to the Xuanyin Mountains to take his beating.

But Zhi Xiu didn’t hit him. He was holding a Heavenly Question and frowning.

Xi Ping silently climbed to his feet. He had meant to pretend that he wasn’t there, but he heard Zhi Xiu all of a sudden ask seriously, “Didn’t His Highness Prince Zhuang say he would use reincarnation wood to stay in contact? Why would he suddenly send a Heavenly Question?”