As soon as he saw Princess Duanrui, Xi Ping’s heart cooled by half—the princess wasn’t the way he had imagined her. 

He had originally thought that since, in one year in the Latent Cultivation Temple, this senior had somehow found enough time to do so much crafting and yet had still managed to get into the inner sect, she must have been one of those lazy geniuses, the kind that could get to be Number One Scholar without trying. The carvings and stuffed toys each showed a different manner, but all the old relics gave off a strong air of wit. Xi Ping had seen them and wanted to bow to her across hundreds of years in a show of admiration. 

But as for this person in front of him, never mind “wit”—she simply didn’t even have “air.” 

To put it nicely, she seemed like an ice and jade carving of a goddess—the kind that oversaw the laws and commandments of heaven and showed no mercy. 

If you were to put it plainly…she was like a mallet that had grown legs. 

In the middle of the night last night, when Xi Ping had taken it into his head to silence the half-puppet, it was hard to say that he had been doing it purely for Tai Sui’s benefit. In fact, there was a faint concern in his mind: in the current circumstances, could the evil cultivator easily be parted from him? 

If he couldn’t, and the immortal sect learned of this matter, would they prioritize expelling evil…or sparing him? 

Xi Ping “watched” as Tai Sui, wearing his skin, went into the courtyard with Chang Jun and Yao Qi and fearfully prepared to bow. Whether anyone else saw a flaw in this performance, Xi Ping couldn’t say, but he, at any rate, thought this dignified appearance was extremely awkward. He thought: You’ve blown enough hot air to fill a whole room, but can you avoid slipping up? 

What to do, what to do…

Just then, the princess looked his way again. Xi Ping’s scalp went numb for a time. He thought that her expression looking at a human being was the same as if she were looking at an inanimate object. 

In a flash, nameless fear spurted up in his heart. An intuition came out of nowhere straight into his mind: as soon as she found out there was a parasitic evil god in him, she would break him to pieces with one slap on the spot. 

“Senior.” Xi Ping quickly came to a decision and said to Tai Sui, “Princess Duanrui is completely different from what I imagined. I would definitely take another look. Why are you keeping your head down? Do you know what you’re doing?!” 

Tai Sui at once realized: yes, this kid had absolutely no common sense. He was bold enough to take on heaven. He didn’t care who the princess was; he had never “minded his own business”!

The next moment, Zhi Xiu’s gaze swept over, and Tai Sui, in a remarkably accurate imitation of Xi Ping’s manner, “thinking he was being circumspect,” dodged behind Chang Jun and “curiously” began to examine the princess. 

Zhi Xiu smiled at him and briefly introduced the princess and her position—a forebear of the Zhou family going back many generations, more than you could count on your fingers. It seemed that she had a longer record than even the coiled dragon towers in Guangyun Palace. In a rare occurrence, Green Pool Peak had opened up to take new disciples, and as the princess had just left seclusion, she had come in person to see the disciples’ potential. 

Xi Ping quickly said to Tai Sui, “I told you the inner sect must have heard the news—senior, you focus on dealing with her, give me back my mouth.” 

Tai Sui lowered his eyelashes, eyes flashing. 

“Hurry up, senior.” Xi Ping was urgent and became a little rude. “You lisp when you speak in Jinping dialect! You may not know it yourself, but how could General Zhi not hear it? If you want to get yourself killed, don’t drag me into it like a fetus dying with its mother, all right?!” 

Tai Sui snorted. Then, he really did “give back” Xi Ping’s power of speech. 

Xi Ping, taken by surprise, opened his mouth and choked on the cold wind. He couldn’t resist coughing a few times. 

Zhi Xiu said, smiling, “Why are you coughing? Nervous?” 

Xi Ping had just taken back his voice, but he had his words ready. He picked up without any gap: “Why would I be nervous? I don’t want to enter the inner sect, anyway. I’m nervous on others’ behalf. Shishu, the Latent Cultivation Temple doesn’t even let us talk to the female disciples, so the inner sect must be even more strict, right?” 

Though there was a gulf of age difference between levels of seniority in the sect, most of these unaging, undying cultivators appeared to be in the prime of life. Supposing men and women were permitted to mingle, even if there was nothing wrong to begin with, something was bound to go wrong. In a place like Xuanyin Mountain, with rules and regulations a zhang long, there had to be an unspoken rule that a man and woman couldn’t be master and disciple. 

“Anyway, Duanrui-shishu isn’t going to take male disciples while she’s here.” Xi Ping, in a realistic performance, sighed. “I suppose some of my classmates thought they were sure bets for the inner sect, but it turns out that they went wrong in reincarnating… Ah, unjust, how unjust!” 

“So you understand.” Zhi Xiu pointed to him. “Come over here.” 

Xi Ping gave an “oh” and approached, bowing respectfully to Princess Duanrui, his mouth running like the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon: “Hello, Duanrui-shishu. I saw some of your genuine works in the Yanhai Building yesterday, and I was astonished by your talent. That Elder Su is very stingy. I begged for ages, and he only gave me one. Could you put in a word for me? I also want that cat with chicken wings.” 

Princess Duanrui had only nodded her head in response when he had said hello. She didn’t pick up the conversation. 

However reticent a person was, having heard someone talk, she would still have some reaction. Even if her face were paralyzed, at least her eyes would blink. But Xi Ping felt that all his nonsense hit a wall, bouncing back the way it had come. Not one word entered her ears. 

For a time, despite all his wordiness, he actually couldn’t quite come up with what to say. 

Duanrui said, “Your hand.” 

Xi Ping inwardly called to Tai Sui: “Senior?” 

“It’s fine,” said Tai Sui. “Give it to her.”

Xi Ping moved his eyes, rolled up his sleeve, and presented his hand. “Shishu, if my natural endowments are no good, just don’t tell me, I’m a frail…” 

Princess Duanrui didn’t touch him, only glanced at Xi Ping’s palm. A formless chill immediately pricked the Place of Toil acupoint on his palm and, in the blink of an eye, traveled throughout his whole body, then slipped back out through his hand. 

Half a beat late, Xi Ping shuddered. 

As before, Duanrui’s expression didn’t move a hair. Xi Ping’s heart tightened slightly. All his ability to read expressions lost effect in front of her. 

But Princess Duanrui didn’t say anything, only called over Chang Jun and Yao Qi to examine each of them in turn…as if she was rummaging through a crate of mediocre yams. 

After all three of them had been examined, she gave Zhi Xiu an inscrutable look, then walked out. 

Tai Sui said, “It’s all right.” 

Only then did Xi Ping almost imperceptibly let out a breath. For a time, he couldn’t say whether his heart had eased or sunk. 

But when the princess reached the gate of the Qiu courtyard, she suddenly seemed to remember something. 

She stopped in her tracks, looked back, and beckoned. Something broke through the window of Xi Ping’s north rooms and nearly brushed his head as it flew over, landing in that hand that seemed to be carved out of ice. 

The corners of Xi Ping’s eyes tightened—what Duanrui had grabbed was that karma beast carved out of reincarnation wood! 

The gazes of the two great ascended spirit masters fell simultaneously on the little wood carving. 

Duanrui: “…” 

Zhi Xiu: “Pfft…” 

The heavy-browed, big-eyed karma beast, after only one day in Xi Ping’s hands, had changed its appearance—Xi Ping had penciled its eyebrows, applied eyeliner, drawn red lips with cinnabar…and next to the bloody maw, he had even dotted a matchmaker’s mole¹! 

Princess Duanrui briefly met the eyes of the arrestingly glamorous karma beast, then gave it to Zhi Xiu, turned, and left. 

Zhi Xiu put the wooden carving on a small stone table next to him. He pointed at Xi Ping. “Look out in the future when you join Heaven’s Design Pavilion. The sacred beasts will crawl out in the middle of the night and bite your toes.” 

Xi Ping, grinning cheekily, saw them out, savoring General Zhi’s words. 

“In the future when you join Heaven’s Design Pavilion”—it seemed that these two top masters of Xuanyin Mountain had in fact been fooled… The great evil cultivator was the real deal. 

He wasn’t in the mood to chat with Chang Jun and Yao Qi. He picked up the karma beast and went back to his rooms.

“Senior, what way does Princess Duanrui cultivate? Why is she so creepy?” 

“Word has it that it’s the ‘way of clarity.’” Tai Sui was very satisfied with him. He said, mildly, “You didn’t panic in the face of danger. It was well done.” 

Xi Ping sighed. “If you hadn’t been controlling my legs, senior, they would have been shaking—what kind of way is the way of clarity?” 

“The way of clarity is also called the way of unfeeling,” Tai Sui said. “When you enter this path, you know no sensation from your five senses, are unmoved by the seven human emotions, see through the fate of humankind and common human relations, extinguish the six desires, and become one with heaven.” 

Xi Ping understood. “In other words, chopping me up would be no different for her than chopping up firewood.” 

Tai Sui laughed. 

Xi Ping scrutinized the karma beast that the princess had made… So keen, as if it were alive, as if it could roll over and run off at any moment. “I didn’t think she would be so…” 

Cruel. 

“I thought she would be one of the seniors practicing the way of toolmaking or something.” 

“The way you enter depends on what Way of the Heart you have,” Tai Sui said. “Do you think all Ways of the Heart are one’s own?” 

Xi Ping: “…” 

What…what else would they be? 

Could you take one of these things out for a short-term loan? 

The Latent Cultivation Temple’s shixiong teaching them the basics had said, “Your heart must not be contrary to your Way of the Heart, and your actions must be steadfast.” 

The Way of the Heart that a cultivator believed in had to match his principles, be able to explain everything in existence. It had to be constantly refined, becoming more integrated day by day. When your Way of the Heart had no delusions, that would be the greatest success. But supposing that you developed doubts about your Way of the Heart in the process of cultivating, then most likely your cultivation would stagnate where it was. 

Xi Ping, however, didn’t understand why as perspicacious a person as Elder Su would say he had no Way of the Heart while Luo Qingshi could establish a foundation—he felt that Gentle Luo most likely cultivated the “way of abuse.”

“Those who can feel out their own Way of the Heart are few and far between,” Tai Sui said with a mocking laugh. “To use your Xuanyin’s inner sect as an example, the vast majority of the established foundation cultivators’ Ways of the Heart are copied from their teachers or left behind by mighty elders. If one of the present masters is taking disciples, you’ll hardly have time to fight over the chance. How could you possibly pick which way to enter? The monster Duanrui was chosen by a peak master of the Zhou family who cultivated the way of clarity. The way of clarity is hard. Up to now, there has yet to be a shed skin cultivator belonging to it. Her shifu stopped in the middle ascended spirit period, but she is half a step from shedding her skin now. How cold and ruthless must her temperament be? Ah, though you understand nothing, you still know what’s good for you.” 

Xi Ping was silent. He found that he was caught between two impossible alternatives. 

In one direction, he might be taken by a ruthless lady immortal for the vessel of an evil cultivator and exterminated along with him. 

In the other direction, he could only hold out until the last gasp, waiting for his body to be snatched. 

He was still young, after all, far from having lived enough. In these desperate straits, Xi Ping only wanted to squat where he was. 

For example…he could just never open his spiritual eyes and hold out until he left the mountain a year from now. 

Working hard to succeed was a struggle for him, but he certainly knew how to slack off and shirk.

That was what he always did. 

If the great evil cultivator stayed with him for the rest of his life, he…he would probably get used to it over time. 

“For now, adjust your breathing and meditate. If you really can’t settle down, go find something else to do. Stop asking about that old monster,” Tai Sui said, for once kind. “With the power of a cultivator half a step from shedding her skin bearing down, even an established foundation cultivator might lose his mind on the spot. The abilities of the way of unfeeling are keen. If you keep thinking about her, take care that your mind isn’t damaged.” 

Xi Ping felt that as soon as he thought of the princess’s cold eyes, he felt a chill coming up from the cracks in his bones, so he listened to this advice. He picked up the reincarnation wood carving and concentrated on the center of his brow. He wanted to have a look at how the grown-up lady and the little lady were doing. The outcome was that his eyes filled with funeral banners. 

He stared blankly for a while, feeling extremely dejected, then went to sleep to the sound of the Soul Calling Melody. 

Due to Princess Duanrui’s arrival, the atmosphere in Chengjing Hall was extremely severe. The stewards going in and out didn’t even dare to breathe loudly. 

Su Zhun rubbed the tip of his nose. He kept thinking that his breath was freezing into frost as he exhaled. 

“Don’t bring tea, she only drinks plain water,” Zhi Xiu alerted him quietly. “Have everyone disperse. There’s no need for them to be so nervous.” 

“We’re afraid of snubbing…” said Su Zhun. 

“At her level of the way of clarity, she is no longer moved by external things. Whether you rain down curses or shower her with flattery, it’s all the same to her. She won’t care if she’s snubbed or not. You’d be better off acting a little more natural.” Zhi Xiu waved a hand and walked into Chengjing Hall. “Go about your business, stop running around her.” 

Princess Duanrui seemed to be ready to enter meditation with her eyes open at any moment. When someone said something next to her, her eyelids didn’t even flicker. Only when Zhi Xiu had dispatched Su Zhun and the rest of the stewards did she speak without preamble: “There’s no problem with that disciple who had contact with the evil cultivators. His body and mind are one.” 

Zhi Xiu said, “The carving he took yesterday was of reincarnation wood. Anything wrong with the wood?” 

Duanrui said, “There are no inscriptions, and no air of blood.” 

Reincarnation wood was third rate timber. It was indeed rarely seen among the wealthy, but it wasn’t an uncommon material in the south. The common people used whatever wood was available; they used reincarnation wood to build door frames, furniture, coffins, anything. There was nothing wrong with the wood itself. 

For the evil cultivators to use it to communicate amongst themselves, they would either have to carve inscriptions into the wood to turn it into an immortal tool, or use some evil art to first establish a connection and then to send messages back and forth using fresh blood as a medium. 

What the princess meant was that nothing had been done to the reincarnation wood carving in Xi Ping’s possession. 

“Very well.” Zhi Xiu’s brow didn’t unknit. “My handling of this business was unsuccessful…” 

Halfway through his sentence, he looked up and met the princess’s eyes, which were like ancient wells, and felt that he was apologizing to a tree hollow. He couldn’t finish what he was saying. So Zhi Xiu paused, dropped his bureaucratic tone, and got down to business. “There are many suspicious points here. I wish to ask you for instruction, shijie. Even if this evil cultivator had created a primordial being, it would also have been destroyed by Zhaoting. How could he still be stirring up trouble? Shijie, do you think there’s someone else behind it now, or that it’s really as Su Zhun says—this is an evil god who can use the bodies of his followers to come back to life?” 

Duanrui answered cautiously: “Stories of ghosts and gods are fabrications, but in my eight hundred futile years in the world, I have not heard of this one.” 

The mortal world would indeed call cultivators from immortal sects “deities” and “celestial beings” and things of that nature. Some very powerful shed skin cultivators had even been made into gods by the commoners and received offerings of incense during holidays—but actually that was just superstition. 

Never mind mere incense ash, even if you lit Guangyun Palace on fire, the smoke still wouldn’t reach Xuanyin Mountain. However strong a cultivator’s spiritual sense, they would still only be able to perceive people and things with a karmic connection to them. They couldn’t just “hear” any random person setting off fireworks and calling on their spirit. 

Even the Southern Sage who was said in legend to have ascended to heaven was more symbol and ritual than anything else; at any rate, at her age, Princess Duanrui had never heard of him working a miracle. 

Zhi Xiu asked, “But, shijie, didn’t my shizun say that the location in the Sea of Stars that was disturbed this time is identical to last time?” 

Duanrui said, “Yes.” 

Zhi Xiu’s brow furrowed tighter. “Shijie, I can’t understand that.” 

“The Dignitary of Fate High Elder asked me to pass on that the mortal world has been tranquil for thousands of years, and many historical matters cannot be examined, but the traces of the Great War of Gods and Demons may not have been cleared away,” Duanrui said, mildly. “But if this truly is an ancient god or demon who has arisen, the Sea of Stars would long ago have been in an uproar. It’s absolutely impossible for it to show only some small waves.” 

Zhi Xiu considered these words carefully. “What shizun means is that this person doing evil under the name of Grand Duke Tai Sui may only be some mad devotee who has found some ancient relic?” 

Duanrui nodded and took out a small token. “The sect’s order—until this matter is resolved, you may leave at any time without need to report.” 

“Thank you.” Zhi Xiu accepted the token and cupped his hand politely towards the princess. He stood up, then suddenly remembered something and asked, “Shijie, earlier, if you really had found that that young disciple had been possessed by a primordial being, what would you have done?” 

Without hesitation, Duanrui said, “Expelled the evil.” 

“But what if…the human and the demon couldn’t be easily separated?” 

The prattling Xi Ping shut his mouth, meditating or sleeping, and Tai Sui’s ears were finally at peace. 

The half-puppet Xi Yue, his steps lighter than a feather as usual, came in and picked up the boots his master had kicked away, then went out to clean them. 

Suddenly, Xi Ping’s legs twitched. Tai Sui felt his heart rate speed up without cause. He must have been having a nightmare. 

The great evil cultivator was unsurprised—it would have been unusual if the brat hadn’t had nightmares. 

Human nature was utterly weak, especially that of a good-for-nothing like Xi Ping. Even if he had been moved for a time by righteousness, less than three days later, wasn’t he beating a retreat, unwilling to put in hard work? Tai Sui knew that he had temporarily scared him into behaving, but relying on this type of person to act alongside him in Xuanyin Mountain, where danger lurked on every side, would be naïve. 

Tai Sui would have dared to bet that if this rich kid found out that he was weaker than the immortals of Xuanyin, he would sell him out in terror. 

It wasn’t that he couldn’t control him. It was just that being constantly on guard against him was annoying, so the Grand Duke had had to…use some tricks. 

All of Xi Ping’s functions—including heart rate and breathing, which he couldn’t control himself—were under Tai Sui’s control. His eyes were naturally no exception. 

When they had walked into the Qiu courtyard in the evening, he had played a trick on Xi Ping’s eyes. 

A cultivator half a step from shedding her skin was already hard to look at directly. All he needed to do was add an embellishment of killing intent over the brat’s eyes, then make his heart rate speed up, the hairs on his neck rise, and his feet and hands sweat, and he would feel like a frog being stared down by a snake.  

Tai Sui had given Xi Ping the power of speech at the time because he hadn’t been at all afraid of Xi Ping ruining things—he had known that Xi Ping wouldn’t dare. 

A mortal’s body and heart were always one. Even though he hadn’t yet succeeded in snatching this body, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t control this useless young master’s thoughts. 

Xi Yue brought back the boots he had knocked all the dust off of and pulled the quilt over his master. 

When he bent his head, he saw that Xi Ping’s brow was tightly knitted, but there was a peculiar smile on his lips. The half-puppet paused in spite of himself. After a moment, he closed the window and put out the lights, then silently withdrew once more. He curled up on a little couch in the outer room…and raised a hand to press down on the dragon-taming chain. 

Light flashed over the dragon-taming chain, and he heard his master’s roar coming from inside it. 

“And he just used my face to smile! Did you see that?! Even Grand Mountain Luo didn’t touch my face, and now that fucking son of a bitch goes and disfigures it with that smile!” 

Xi Yue had never spoken in his life. Though he didn’t need to use his mouth now, his reactions when it came to language were still slow. He didn’t have time to chime in. He could only quietly listen to Xi Ping cursing, struggling to remember some words in the hopes that next time he could echo him.

When Xi Ping had started to quake with fear out of nowhere on first seeing Princess Duanrui, he had at once faintly thought that something was off. 

Though he in fact didn’t have any idea how frightening a cultivator half a step from shedding her skin, who could “make even an established foundation cultivator lose his mind on the spot,” was, Duanrui-shishu must have been holding back at the time—even Yao Ziming hadn’t lost control of his bowels on the spot, so how scary could she be? 

Fortunately, Xi Ping had smeared blood on the half-puppet’s dragon-taming chain the day before, and there was still a connection. 

So Xi Ping had quietly borrowed Xi Yue’s eyes and “looked” from another point of view: the princess was only not as amiable as General Zhi; she wasn’t covered all over in fiendish energy! 

The evil cultivator could not only make him speak with a lisp, he was also trying to manipulate his emotions! Wasn’t he trying to make it so he would have to do whatever he wanted?! 

“Xi Yue.” Xi Ping took a breath and quietly asked through the dragon-taming chain, “Do you dare to do something for me?”