Xi Ping was a prodigy who could spend a whole night wagging his tongue on the strength of two liang of wine, but at the crucial moment, he knew how to come to blows directly without wasting a single droplet of spit.

As soon as he heard Wangge Luobao’s Miah-accented Wan language, Xi Ping smacked a lotus seal copied from Zhuoming at his consciousness through the reincarnation wood.

The Xiuyi-Miah mixed blood man had been prepared. He parried that amateur lotus seal easily. “Not even a hello? Are all young people so short-tempered these days?”

No sooner had he spoken than the reincarnation wood in his hand seemed to turn into a vortex, trying to suck in his consciousness.

But Wangge Luobao was no lightweight established foundation or half-immortal. Trying to wrest away the consciousness of a cultivator of the same grade as you was comparable to trying to haul around a person of about your own build; it would only work if the other party was willing.

A number of flute notes came from the other end of the reincarnation wood, interrupting the consciousness-sucking vortex in the reincarnation wood and crashing against Xi Ping’s ears.

The flute music of the beast-taming way wasn’t jarring to the ear; hearing it only made a person feel longing—not a specific longing, just a sudden surge of emotion.

Xi Ping had had practically no dealings with beast-taming cultivators. As soon as he got distracted, a number of beams of sword energy wildly splashing out from the sea broke his talismans and crashed into the canal.

In his hurry, he only had time to toss out a handful of papermen to block the sword energy. The papermen with his consciousness attached to them were obliterated along with the images of swords. It was as if something had given his brains a forceful stir. His vision darkened. He sent a message nearly a hundred li away: “Senior Wanshuang, what did you promise me?!”

The Sword Slave ignored him. With her sword energy sent rebounding by the Lancang Mountains, she glanced somewhat uncertainly at the corpse of the next life spiritual fish.

The mist that the big fish’s corpse had turned into had already swallowed up everything around it. This thing was more ancient than even the spiritual mountains. After Ancestor Tianbo had left the mundane dust behind, the next life spiritual fish had vanished from the mortal world. Not even Lingyun had records of it; it had seemed to be a myth. With the Sword Slave’s cultivation level, though her inborn spiritual sense was only average, she could still easily distinguish whether something before her eyes was a threat. Not only did she not sense danger from that mist, she dimly had the impression that some fortuitous opportunity was hidden inside it.

But fortuitous opportunity or no, she didn’t care. The way of the sword didn’t take shortcuts, and it wasn’t subject to temptation.

Wanshuang pointed straight at that strange mist. The Sword Slave hacked at the Queen Mother of the West’s hidden realm, which had nearly been buried inside it—it was said that Zhaoting had cut through the clouds of tribulation; was it possible that she couldn’t cleave apart a mist?

But the matchlessly sharp sword wind couldn’t blow the mist apart. When Wanshuang landed in the mist, its blade seemed to melt inside it. The Sword Slave’s consciousness sank; before she could struggle her way free, she and her sword had been sucked in by the strange mist!

The eyesight and consciousness of an ascended spirit could see this scene over a hundred li away. Xi Ping’s pupils contracted abruptly—his powerful weapon was gone!

Though from his point of view, as a weapon, Wanshuang was a double-edged sword. At the same time as he lost a thigh to cling to, the pressure on him was also greatly reduced. Matters were divided by gravity and urgency; Xi Ping had no time to consider the causes. He swiftly tossed a handful of lotus seals at Wangge Luobao to keep him from making trouble; then talismans fell on the canal as though they were free.

It was as if he had turned all the water in the Grand Canal into a factory conveyor belt; it flowed north against the current.

Just then, a whistle came from the South Sea. With Wanshuang’s sword energy gone, the Emperor of the East had dared to come back out of his shell!

The Emperor of the East Halberd forced apart the big net in the water. The evil cultivator’s snow wine ships fled in all directions. With his halberd in hand and new grievances added to old hatreds, the Emperor of the East drew countless bolts of lightning without restraint, striking at Xi Ping and the canal.

At the same time, clear and melodious flute music floated over the South Sea. From the portion of the canal belonging to the Shu mining area, countless red-eyed carnivorous spiritual beasts suddenly emerged.

Xi Ping was besieged by two great evil cultivators…and one of them he had himself insisted on keeping around with his meddling!

The longer this dragged on, the worse it would get for him.

“Luwu—”

On the steamships on the canal, Luwu made up to look like boatmen and merchants emerged. Talismans fell like rain on the maddened spiritual beasts.

Xi Ping held up Zhaoting and shot out the first beam of sword energy that Zhi Xiu had given him.

On Flying Jade Peak, Zhi Xiu, just about to say something to Lin Chi, felt a sudden lurch in his heart.

Hadn’t the information said that the evil cultivators were planning to move on the anniversary of the destruction of Southern He? Why had they started several days in advance? What had gone wrong?

That blow whistled as it knocked apart the lightning drawn by the Emperor of the East, but the sword energy didn’t pause. Before the malicious smile on the Emperor of the East’s face could fully form, the dreadful sword wind had already reached him. The evil cultivator chief who had run rampant throughout the Land of Turmoil for centuries was instantly swallowed by the sword light. Not one of the evil cultivator’s ships that had fled into the distance managed to get away. They were all enveloped by Zhaoting’s light.

The South Sea was clear.

Zhaoting had killed the Emperor of the East with the swiftness of a falcon swooping after a bolting hare, but Xi Ping was hardly any better off—with his cultivation level, using Zhaoting was too much of a strain.

When he fell out of the sky, the better part of his tendons, bones, and meridians had snapped.

“Ouch,” Wangge Luobao lamented in his stead, knowing that he couldn’t speak now, “that hurts.”

Xi Ping blacked out briefly. Nothing remained in his mind but profanity.

“While the undying bones are admittedly mystical, you still have to be able to bear it,” Wangge Luobao said, sighing. “There aren’t many who could maintain their reason when crushed to dust. I couldn’t. I acknowledge my inferiority. But you’re being overhasty. The highlight still lies ahead.”

The whole of the Southern He Peninsula seemed to applaud him. A bolt of lightning struck Lancang’s Principal Peak. The enormous sword array seemed to have nearly taken shape.

Xi Ping reached the only hand he could still move into his mustard seed and groped around at random, not caring whether he came up with whites spirits or blue jade. His shattered bones repaired themselves almost violently, slashing his flesh. Xi Ping had no attention to spare for it—what the hell was so special about that dead fish? He had already driven away the troublemaking Yu Chang, why was the Queen Mother of the West…

“The next life spiritual fish is the messenger between life and death,” Wangge Luobao said softly. “Cut it apart, and you can open the Gate of Life and Death. Through that mist, the consciousnesses of the living can temporarily be projected onto their predecessors who have died in this area, attach themselves to predecessors who have some relationship to them, or some inheritance in common, some karmic connection, or some chance similarity… How many living people in the world have a chance to truly ‘learn a lesson from the mistakes of one’s predecessor’ like this? No need to worry about your people. This is an incredibly rare opportunity. If a person of great understanding goes through it, they might even find their Way of the Heart.”

Xi Ping: “…”

As he’d thought, Yao Qi and Chang Jun had long ago been discovered by this bastard. Here he’d been wondering how Ziming-xiong could have gotten “lucky” enough to be chosen by the grit projection!

“As for Her Highness the Princess, I’m afraid she has seen the Two Sages now.”

Xi Ping knew Lancang’s history. It had once had the Gold Sage and the Jade Sage, the Two Sages. These were the founders of the Lancang Mountains, a divine couple. The Gold Sage had also been a sword cultivator, and the Jade Sage had also been a Yang.

His meridians were struggling to absorb shifu’s sword aura. It hurt so much that he gave way to wild thoughts in spite of himself: Could it be that you only had to get hold of a sword cultivator husband to attain the personal instruction of the Gold and Jade Sages through that dead fish? Were the single unworthy of inheriting the Lancang Mountains? If he’d known that, he wouldn’t have killed the Emperor of the East. He’d have left the three of them to fight it out in the sages’ grave…

“At the soaring heights of the cultivation world, a person is no longer themselves. Of what significance are husbands and wives?” Biting his words off strangely, Wangge Luobao laughed. “The Sanyue Mountains’ fallen Xiang Rong was of the same lineage as his shifu the Black Emperor, and he had used the Unbound Furnace to refine himself until he resembled him so closely, yet their two Ways of the Heart are still tearing the Silver Moon in two. Never mind a sword cultivator and a toolmaker.

“One range of spiritual mountains can have only one full moon sage. The Ways of the Heart of this loving husband and wife gradually grew apart. The Gold Sage was a sword cultivator, and a husband. From either perspective, he thought himself superior and believed as a matter of course that he ought to be the master of the Lancang Mountains. He wanted to kill his wife.”

Xi Ping: “…”

Couldn’t they have just broken up? Why go so far?

“A husband and wife who fall out due to incompatible Ways of the Heart can never rest until one or the other is dead,” Wangge Luobao said. “After all, that’s the bedfellow who knows all your weaknesses. Besides which, that Gold Sage…well. I’ve heard that there are sword cultivators for whom the man makes the sword, like the Sword Ancestor, like your honored teacher. Wanshuang and Zhaoting were both mundane iron to begin with and became renowned as their masters did. There are others, however, for whom the sword makes the man, like the famous sword Xiuluo, which let Western Chu’s Xiang Zhao squat on the title of Sword of the South for so many years. Unfortunately, the Gold Sage was the latter. He had attained divinity relying solely on the famous sword forged by the hand of that toolmaking master, the Jade Sage. How could a mighty full moon sage have such a shortcoming?

“But the women of Southern He…”

Wangge Luobao spoke the Wan language with a particular clinging quality at the ends of his syllables, as though he were about to break into song. All of a sudden, Xi Ping remembered how long, long ago, when he had still been a clueless brat, he had played dumb and made Jiangli so angry that she had shooed him out of the House of Overflowing Splendor.

Back then, she had played a Southern He tune upstairs.

The women of He were as passionate as summer flowers, but if their love was unrequited, or they were betrayed, they would kill.

“It turned out that the Jade Sage had been prepared. Before he could strike, she turned the attack on him. Let me tell you a secret, Tai Sui. The Lovebird Sword Array was made by the Jade Sage herself, and one of the materials she used was a rarity, the only one of its kind…” Wangge Luobao laughed. “The Gold Sage.”

Yang Wan could no longer tell who she was, couldn’t distinguish Lord Guang’an and the Gold Sage. The next life spiritual fish had joined the souls of the living and the dead. The sage’s love, no shallower than her own, mingled with her longing for the mundane world. After love came nothingness, only a sky filled with ridiculous ashes.

She felt herself dropped into a boundless frozen wasteland. The Gold Sage and Guang’an both became muddled.

When a person came to the extreme limit of heaven, all their close kin left them; all they had for company was their Way of the Heart.

In that moment, it was as if the Lancang Mountains had come back to life. On the whole Southern He Peninsula, everyone temporarily lost their senses.

Spiritual energy intolerable to the body of an ascended spirit poured directly into the top of the Queen Mother of the West’s skull. The marriage contract between the two of them broke apart.

Lord Guang’an suddenly found the strength to throw himself at her.

Everyone was on the border between life and death, their gazes drawn by the far shore of the Wangchuan. Only he still had only one person in his eyes; he had even defied the influence of the next life spiritual fish.

Vast spiritual energy pierced ruthlessly through his chest. With the body of this sword cultivator as sacrifice, the flood of spiritual energy crashing against the Queen Mother of the West slowed until she could manage to channel it into herself.

The Queen Mother of the West’s essence increased dramatically, and her cultivation jumped a small level up. A beam of sword light lit the Southern He Peninsula. The Lovebird Sword Array reappeared in the human world. Lancang had a master!

She suddenly opened her eyes. The medicine cultivator’s grief-laden eyes with their faint trace of fragility were icy and serene, like the “heavenly edict” repeatedly sounding in her mind. Lord Guang’an’s body fell with a crash. At the last, his fingers moved slightly toward the hem of her skirt.

He hadn’t found A-Wan’s eyes.

This was the Lovebird Sword Array; one person had to become material for it.

A thousand years ago it had been a man who had broken faith; a thousand years later, it was an infatuated sap… In fact, it was all the same.

Love was more terrible than a poisonous miasma, more cruel than a sword. Its mortality rate was one hundred percent.

The instant the Lovebird Sword Array appeared, Xi Ping’s spine, which had just repaired itself, seemed to snap under pressure—he became the first objective of that divine tool of the mountains.

Xi Ping had seen the Bell of Tribulation, had seen the Silver Moon, and had seen the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, but those divine tools had either not been aimed at him, or they had been used up. This was his first time being the target of a divine tool of the mountains.

He finally knew why Xuanwu had brought the Silver Moon to kill Qiu Sha.

The moment the sword light pointed at him, Xi Ping’s connection to the reincarnation wood was severed.

The divine tools could cut off the accompanying plants of evildoers like him, leaving their consciousnesses with nowhere to run.

And he also finally knew why, when the mysterious next life spiritual fish had such an ingenious use, Wangge Luobao had insisted on the superfluous gesture of making Yu Chang fool around with his grit projection.

Because in these desperate straits, only Yu Chang could have turned traitor and saved him—he was the only person in the world who could remove spiritual image brands, and his deal with Yu Chang wasn’t yet concluded.

But in order to keep Yu Chang from manipulating the Queen Mother of the West, he had single-handedly triggered internal strife among Western Chu’s warlords, sent away Last Straw Yu!

Wangge Luobao sighed, looking at the reincarnation wood in his hands, which no longer glowed. His expression was regretful.

Zhi Xiu’s older brother was buried on the Southern He Peninsula.

Yu Chang and Kunlun alike had hoped that Zhaoting and Wanshuang would fight each other to a standstill. If only Zhi Xiu fell into the trap in the southern mines, the precious territory of Southern Wan would be up for grabs.

Having built a temporary peace with the Sword Slave after great struggle, that preternaturally clever Grand Duke Tai Sui certainly wouldn’t let his shifu come south.

After receiving word, Tai Sui was certain to come himself, because he would think that the Sword Slave had no reason to make trouble for a junior like him, and had no reason not to let him leave with the mortals under his protection.

And as soon as the merchant ships to pick up those people moved, even without spies, Wangge Luobao could tell that Tai Sui had reached the Southern He Peninsula.

From beginning to end, none of this had been played out for Zhi Xiu’s benefit. What was so scary about the Sword of the South? It wasn’t like he was the only sword cultivator in the world.

The Lovebird Sword Array had been waiting to bury the successor to the ungovernable way.

“A pity we couldn’t chat.” Wangge Luobao stroked the reincarnation wood. “Tai Sui, it’s very lonely. All the paramount spiritual senses have passed away. Once you’re dead, I’ll have no one in the world to talk to—ancestor, when you schemed to kill Yuan Hui back then, I suppose you were also quite sad?

“Raise the casket, hang two mats,” he began to croon softly in a slightly foreign accent. A waking dragon emerged from the bottom of the sea to carry him. “Shelter it fully seven days…”