Xi Ping had no attention to spare for pitying others. 

Right now, he had a marrow-chilling guess in mind—concerning why Tai Sui had possessed him. 

That day in the Blissful Village, apart from him, all the walkers in the mortal world had been open-eyed half-immortals. 

Xi Ping had picked up a considerable amount of common knowledge at the Latent Cultivation Temple. He already knew that Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s Exalteds only seemed awesome to mortals. To a mighty ascended spirit cultivator, they were no different from mortals. That being the case, why hadn’t Tai Sui simply chosen a “half-immortal” whose body he could snatch right away, instead of waiting for him to open his spiritual eyes? 

What if he had been a “lucky stick” of an idiot who couldn’t even link to his spiritual eyes? 

In fact…from the circumstances back then, it hadn’t even looked as though he would be chosen to enter the Latent Cultivation Temple. 

This had been a problem Xi Ping had been unable to resolve no matter what, until now, when he had heard the great demon make A-Xiang swear. 

Everything a follower had must be offered without reservation to the demon, so naturally Chen Baishao’s life and body after death were no exception. Though her body had been created by her parents, she had only retained the rights to use it, being reduced to a “tenant.” 

So, when she had swapped her life for Xi Ping’s with a drop of heart’s blood, didn’t that mean…that the swapped life also belonged to the great evil cultivator? 

Tai Sui had nearly been turned to mincemeat by Zhaoting in the Blissful Village. He had only awakened when A-Xiang had by chance dripped blood on the reincarnation wood. It was likely he hadn’t had any intention of choosing Xi Ping but had automatically “gone back where he belonged.” 

Xi Ping had originally thought that this great evil cultivator wanted to “steal someone else’s nest for himself”; who would have thought that in fact he was only planning on evicting a squatting “tenant!” 

What was all this? Who was he supposed to go to for a solution? 

He couldn’t hide the sudden tension in his body from the “landlord.” The evil cultivator’s snake’s voice sounded in his ear: “What’s the matter with you? What is making you uneasy?” 

The night sky was caught in fog. 

The smokestacks of the southern outskirts swallowed the anxious nightshift laborers to chew on them all night and spit out the residue only in the early morning. The people who lived there had long ago become accustomed to going to sleep to the sound of thunder. 

Chunying covered the wounds on her face with her hair, lit an oil lamp, turned to look at the little girl, and rather kindly said, “The coroner has already been here. He died of a sudden attack of illness. If his family comes looking, I’ll hold them off for you. What the fuck are you afraid of? Come and have some soup.” 

A-Xiang had a scrape on her forehead. Her gaze was vague. It was unclear whether she had heard or not. 

She had charged into Foreman Lü’s house holding a brick, prepared to fight to the death. But even giving it her all, she still didn’t have much strength. Even though Foreman Lü didn’t normally do any physical labor and was half-way hollowed out by alcohol, a little girl fourteen or fifteen years old was still no match for him. 

So she was easily controlled and tied into a zongzi. Lü had just drunk two mouthfuls of wine, and his lust had become overweening from the bamboo whip in his hand. It had gone to his head. Ignoring Chunying shouting curses, he figured that since fresh meat had shown up, he certainly couldn’t turn it down. 

But just as he had reached out his greasy paw towards A-Xiang, an old crow had landed on top of the wall outside and let out a hoarse croak, pronouncing some sentence from the netherworld. With his hand still outstretched, Lü had frozen and hiccuped, and, just as if the Heibai Wuchang had called his name, his eyes had grown wider and wider, and when they had widened to their fullest extent, he had fallen over dead without a sound! 

The dead man’s face had been a hand’s breadth from A-Xiang’s face, branded onto her eyes… How Chunying had thrown herself towards her to untie the ropes, how she had called for help, how the two of them had been taken away, how the coroner had examined the corpse and said he had died of “paralysis of the heart” and they had been released… A-Xiang’s impressions of all of this were blurred. The whole night was one deranged nightmare.

A-Xiang put a hand to her chest—she had hidden the reincarnation wood amulet in her clothes. 

She remembered that there had seemed to be a voice in her ear. Then a line of writing had flashed over the “amulet.” 

Had the Grand Duke…truly worked a miracle? 

Suddenly, there was pounding on the shack’s door. A-Xiang shook with fright. Chunying put her arms around her. “Who’s there?” 

“A-Xiang! A-Xiang, hurry, hurry…open the door! Your grandpa! Your grandpa!” 

A-Xiang’s soul, floating around her head, staggered back into her body. She scrambled outside. 

The old man looked hardly human, feet swollen to the size of boats, features buried in overturned flesh and blood. A few fellow workers had carried him back on a stretcher. The undulation of his chest was rapid and shallow. He didn’t wake when called. Any moment, he might breathe his last. 

A-Xiang’s mind buzzed, and her knees went weak. She was pulled up by the hair by Chunying. “Go get a doctor!” 

Pang Jian walked out of the depths of the southern outskirts’s fog and fanned away the choking dust and ash. Before he could closely examine his surroundings, a skinny figure suddenly charged out of a dim alley. 

Pang Jian turned and dodged, but this person still stamped on his boot. 

While Commander Pang’s foot wasn’t quite cast in reinforced steel, it was close enough. He was fine, but the person who had stepped on him went sprawling face first and twisted an ankle. 

“Hey, are you…”

…all right? 

This was a girl in her teens. She must have had urgent business. She spared no attention to say anything to him, only got to her feet, limping, and ran. 

Pang Jian only thought she looked familiar. Because he could see she was a child, he didn’t think anything of it. Using a piece of gauze with a karma beast drawn on it, he took out a reincarnation wood amulet. 

The karma beast’s fur was standing on end. On the gauze, it was constantly roaring at the reincarnation wood. Pang Jian took out a stick of charcoal and drew a flower on the brick wall next to him, letting the karma beast on the gauze climb onto the wall where the drawing was. 

“The evil energy points to the southern outskirts. Please lead the way, sacred beast.” 

The karma beast wagged its head, readied its hooves, and dashed off along the wall. Pang Jian followed at once, now and then casually drawing a few strokes on the wall to make a “road” for the sacred beast. 

Meanwhile, blue-clothed walkers in the mortal world split up and landed in different places in the southern outskirts. Dozens of karma beasts ran back and forth over the crude and mottled walls, searching for evil energy with bitter hatred. 

Lantern light and the glow of swords lit up the forces of evil dancing through the southern outskirts. 

In the Qiu courtyard in the Latent Cultivation Temple, under the great evil cultivator’s notice, even Xi Ping’s breath stopped for a moment. 

Suddenly, he charged out the door like an angry horse. “Xi Yue!” 

Xi Yue had just drawn some water. Before he could set it down firmly, he was grabbed by Xi Ping. 

Xi Ping cut open his fingertip and, brooking no argument, smeared blood on the dragon-taming chain. 

The irascible young master said, coldly, “Starting now, without my order, you must not leave this courtyard, must not say one word, write one character, or make one gesture to the stewards in the Latent Cultivation Temple or the immortals from the inner sect.” 

Xi Yue couldn’t speak. He could only open his eyes wide in astonishment, finding to his despair that his naïve master had been bewildered by evil. 

But Tai Sui laughed. “Your half-puppet has that dragon-taming chain around his neck. There’s no need to be so nervous.” 

“I haven’t learned how to use my consciousness to control it. A drop of blood only works for a few days.” Xi Ping looked at Xi Yue and, grim-faced, returned to his room. He said to Tai Sui, “That thing is sneaky and doesn’t make a sound when he walks. I’m always forgetting about him. I have to think ahead. Hey, listen, senior, what’s going on with you?! There’s a master coming from the inner sect tomorrow, how can you still laugh? Even I’m worried for you!” 

Tai Sui said, “If you’re uneasy, when you see the princess tomorrow, you can leave it to me to handle her. There’s no need to be scared.” 

“No, wait.” Xi Ping seemed to truly be anxious on his behalf. He nearly became rude. “Senior, can you take it? That princess is even more powerful than General Zhi! Are you sure she won’t be able to tell anything? If it were really so easy, wouldn’t people be sneaking into Xuanyin Mountain’s inner sect every day?” 

“Little devil.” Tai Sui faintly felt there was a string in his words and coolly interrupted him. “Are you trying to teach me a lesson?” 

Xi Ping choked for a moment, remembering the killing intent that had come through reincarnation wood earlier. He seemed to turn cowardly once more. “That’s not what I meant, senior, I…I’m scared. Heaven’s Design Pavilion grabbed Jiangli’s…Chen-jiejie and the others’ reincarnation wood amulets. We made such a commotion just now, it might have alerted Heaven’s Design Pavilion already, so the inner sect must also know! And today at the Yanhai Building, I openly asked for the princess’s reincarnation wood carving, so…” 

Tai Sui, hearing that he was scared into babbling, softened his voice slightly. “Naturally I am not the same as others. Never mind Duanrui, even if Xuanyin Mountain’s old monster of the Office of Fate Zhang Jue, came, you still wouldn’t need to be scared.” 

Xi Ping’s eyelashes shook faintly—a possession that couldn’t even be seen by those who read the stars had to be caused by swapping a life, didn’t it? 

“As for Heaven’s Design Pavilion…” Tai Sui laughed aloud. “Let them come find me if they can. I’d like to see them find a needle in the ocean.” 

After going through the southern outskirts, white clouds would turn at once to ill omens. Pang Jian felt that his nose had turned grey from the fumes. 

His face grave, he respectfully sent away the sacred beasts that were so tired theirs tongue were nearly hanging out. Then he irritably turned to look at the “results” those sacred beasts had dug up—they’d caught a gang of grave robbers; picked up a few shops specializing in selling human blood mantou, corpse grease, and prohibited drugs; turned up the already rotting corpses of several prostitutes; and collected a bundle of infant bones in a doghouse…including several femurs, so the bones had to belong to more than one person. 

All the southern outskirts were like a big quagmire that sheltered villainy. When a pebble rolled in, you couldn’t find even a trace of it. 

Pang Jian exhaled wearily and was about to speak when he heard a shrill scream from a nearby shack: “Grandpa!” 

A half-immortal’s hearing could catch the buzzing of an insect a hundred meters away. Pang Jian froze. He heard people sighing and groaning, saying “my condolences” and useless things like that. 

Someone had died before daybreak…

As he thought this, he forgot what he had just been about to say. 

“Clear out,” Pang Jian said after a long moment, waving a hand. “Hand those…those people over to the city guard and let them see what needs to be done. I’ll go report to the immortal mountain.” 

On the comfortable west bank of the Lingyang River, Bai Ling slipped into Prince Zhuang Manor’s south study. The paper figure landed gently on the ground and turned into the pale, skinny man. He turned and reached out to sweep a hand over the inscription by the window. Silver light flashed over the inscription. The south study’s windows were all wide open, but not a trace of what was said inside left the room. 

But despite this, Bai Ling still lowered his voice cautiously. “Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s Assistant Commander Pang just sent a Heavenly Question to the immortal mountains. He must be asking for instructions concerning some great matter—the news I have received is that, for reasons unknown, there was some sudden change to the wooden amulets they discovered on those evil cultivators who coveted the Dragon Vein before.” 

Prince Zhuang asked, “When did this happen?” 

Bai Ling said, “On the night of the meteor shower.” 

Prince Zhuang’s brow furrowed tightly—when Xi Ping had said he’d named the half-puppet Xi Yue, it had been the small hours of the morning on the day after the meteor shower. 

That didn’t seem to be a normal time for him to get out of bed. 

“Do you think that Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s business may have to do with the Viscount?” Bai Ling asked. “Your Highness, as I see it, there was nothing untoward in the Viscount’s response… But you ought to warn him not to mention the name of an established foundation master on a downgraded immortal tool. Aren’t you being…”

Too paranoid. 

“He grew up with the old lady. He must have noticed that the letter was a forgery.” Prince Zhuang shook his head. “It contained my family taboo. If there really was nothing the matter, he would have used the fact that he’d ‘caught on’ to make trouble. Then there’s that Luo Qingshi, who clearly doesn’t like him. When have you ever seen him talk to his family about people he doesn’t get along with?” 

Bai Ling: “…” 

Putting it like that, it really was a little odd, in fact. 

“He deliberately mentioned Luo Qingshi, probably to test whether the white jade proximal was safe or not… Luo already has an established foundation, and he’s a senior steward of the Latent Cultivation Temple. If Shiyong is willing to offend him, it proves that the brat’s stirred up trouble worse than he’d get from an established foundation cultivator.” 

Bai Ling still thought he was making too much of it. Tactfully, he said, “Though the Latent Cultivation Temple only belongs to the outer sect, it’s still a critical location for the immortal mountain. They absolutely wouldn’t let any outsiders infiltrate it, not unless they’d snatched a body. But body snatching can only happen between cultivators. The Viscount had no previous contact with cultivation sects, and it would be very hard for him to open his spiritual eyes right upon entering the sect, wouldn’t it?” 

“It hasn’t come to that,” Prince Zhuang said. “He must have written the letter himself. The average person couldn’t imitate his style of asking for a beating.” 

“But if it’s only a primordial being possessing him, then that person is being too careless. A person whose body has been possessed by a primordial being has a separation between body and soul. Even I would be able to see there was something wrong, never mind the Latent Cultivation Temple, which is connected to the sect and might have established foundation cultivators…or even ascended spirit peak masters coming to lecture in person.” 

“That’s the general rule.” Prince Zhuang’s fingers tapped now and again on his desk. “Before he received the selection card, his only contact with cultivation was that time at the Blissful Village. The reason General Zhi personally came down from the mountain must have been on account of that evil cultivator. An evil cultivator who disturbed Zhaoting itself, nearly provoked an earthquake, and likely even escaped with his life from Zhaoting… The great Way has three thousand paths, and there are too many knacks within those. Your ‘general rule’ may not apply universally.” 

“If it is concerned with the great evil cultivator at the Blissful Village, Heaven’s Design Pavilion must already be investigating. Your Highness, shall I find a way to secretly notify Heaven’s Design Pavilion of this?” 

Without giving it any thought, Prince Zhuang declined at once: “No.” 

Bai Ling froze. 

“If you were the immortal sect and one of your young disciples had been possessed by this kind of dangerous individual, what would you do?” Prince Zhuang massaged the joints of his fingers, which could never seem to warm up. Frost seemed to form on his brow. “I don’t trust them.” 

“Pardon me, Your Highness,” Bai Ling said quietly, lowering his head, “but if you want me to infiltrate the Latent Cultivation Temple without anyone knowing, I’m afraid that I…” 

“I have no intention of making you infiltrate the Latent Cultivation Temple. Even if you made it in, it would be no use.” Prince Zhuang sat down. The more dangerous the situation was, the calmer his expression seemed. “The evil cultivator possessing him would certainly notice you before he did and kill him in an instant.” 

Bai Ling gave up. “Please instruct me, Your Highness.” 

“Wait. First let’s see what his next letter says.” Prince Zhuang tapped on the white jade proximal. “Before that, I want you to find out the full story behind that evil cultivator at the Blissful Village.” 

Bai Ling had never questioned his orders. No matter how absurd, he would always carry them out meticulously. 

But while he obeyed orders, he still thought this whole thing was rather ridiculous. 

Perhaps even the most powerful people couldn’t resist measuring others against themselves. Prince Zhuang himself was full of watchfulness, so he thought that the spheres on other people’s shoulders all contained brains. Anyway, based on Bai Ling’s few encounters with that wastrel, he felt that the young master didn’t seem to be all that canny… If something had truly gone wrong, instead of relying on him to cooperate in saving himself, it would be better to send him a curse to ease his suffering. 

Bai Ling thought that perhaps the Viscount had been careless and not read the letter closely. Wasn’t it very normal for a young and vigorous fellow not to have the patience to finish reading an old lady’s ramblings? He might not even have noticed that the letter had their prince’s family taboo in it. 

As for the name he had given the half-puppet… Who knew what had gotten into his head? When the big black cat chased its own tail while yowling, there was also no reason for it. 

“A false alarm,” Bai Ling thought. “I hope that’s… No, it must be a false alarm.” 

Before leaving by the courtyard gate, he turned back to look at the south study. Lantern light cast Prince Zhuang’s shadow on the window, like thick, stagnant black clouds. 

There was no friendship between Bai Ling and Xi Ping. 

It was only that…there was no affection from his father the emperor, he was at odds with his brothers, and after that business, Prince Zhuang had been estranged from the Imperial Consort and had only gotten along with his maternal uncle’s family on the surface. In all these years, apart from some transient cats and dogs, the only living creature at his side had been Xi Ping, who had grown up following him around like a lackey. 

Bai Ling sometimes thought that if that arrogant and disrespectful Viscount were gone, then perhaps His Highness’s last emotional tie to the world would vanish. 

But on this day, Prince Zhuang waited without receiving Xi Ping’s letter. 

Princess Duanrui, having said she was going to come lecture, for some reason put it off. The disciples once again ended up in Luo Qingshi’s hands. 

Perhaps because Xi Ping’s portrait hadn’t been to his liking, Luo Qingshi was even more vicious than usual, glaring at Xi Ping and biting as if he had gone crazy. 

Xi Ping was tossed into a training mustard seed and trapped there for a whole day. When the other stewards came to intercede, they had no success. 

If not for the great evil cultivator thinking he still had some use and occasionally giving him a pointer, Xi Ping would nearly have had his face disfigured by the monsters and goblins inside. 

When he finally made it to evening, Xi Ping, more dead than alive, was dragged back to the Qiu courtyard…and ran into Yao Qi at the courtyard gate. 

“Why haven’t you gone in, Ziming-xiong?” As a prime example of “broken in health but mean in spirit¹,” Xi Ping had to tease Yao Qi even with his last breath. “Were you so concerned about me that you waited…” 

At this point, Xi Ping suddenly shut his mouth—past Yao Qi’s shoulder, he saw that there were two people in a little pavilion inside the Qiu courtyard, playing weiqi. 

One man and one woman. The man was an acquaintance—General Zhi. 

The woman was dressed all in undyed, unbleached clothing and looked young, but each of her gestures had a particular kind of prudence. Hearing movement, she raised her eyes and looked over. Her eyes were like black frost, able to piece a mortal’s soul at a glance. 

Xi Ping gave a start, making a faint guess as to her identity. 

“You’re all back?” Zhi Xiu pretended not to know that Yao Qi had just nearly worn the steps of the Qiu courtyard flat with his pacing. He stood and beckoned to them. “Come over here and meet your Duanrui-shishu.” 

The familiar sensation of shackles came from every joint. Without so much as a warning, Tai Sui had taken over Xi Ping’s body.