Zhi Xiu truly had excellent self-restraint. Hearing this grandiose statement, he actually managed to hold back from mocking him. He only calmly and good-naturedly shook his head. “No.” 

Xi Ping began to boast shamelessly: “Shifu, I’m acting for the sake of the nation and the people—why can’t I go? Didn’t you say that an open-eyed cultivator out in the world had to rely on external objects…?” 

Zhi Xiu corrected him evenly: “They rely on first-hand experience.” 

“I won’t pick up any first-hand experience here with you, shifu.” His rebellious disciple was once again climbing onto the roof to pry up the tiles. “I think you’ve forgotten all your experience. Whenever I ask you anything, you always have to consult celestial phenomena before answering.” 

Zhi Xiu: “…” 

“Anyway, I also have spiritual bones…” 

“You have the face to mention your half-baked spiritual bones? How many times have they done you any good?” Zhi Xiu sighed and spread his hands. 

Xi Ping’s vision swam. His shizun had tossed him into a mustard seed. 

Xi Ping instantly felt a thousand jun weight hanging from his feet. He tried to lift a foot. Using all his strength, the height he raised it to wasn’t enough to step on a rat. “Shifu, are you going to drown me in a lake?” 

Zhi Xiu’s voice came from “outer space”: “Look up.”

As soon as Xi Ping looked up, he saw seven candles hanging over his head, from near to far. The nearest was about a zhang away from him. “You’ve even got the mourning hall ready…” 

“Enough nonsense. In this mustard seed, you can’t climb, can’t fly a sword, can’t throw anything, and talismans, arrays, and inscriptions are all prohibited. You can only use your bone qin to put out the candles. When you can control the bone qin and put out seven candles with one note, then I’ll let you off the mountain,” Zhi Xiu said calmly. “Don’t worry, Xi Yue will bring you food. I’m not going to starve you—of course, if you agree not to pester me with your absurd demands and cultivate properly on Flying Jade Peak, I can let you out any time.” 

Xi Ping: “…” 

In Jinping’s southern outskirts, Pang Jian retrieved the damaged immortal tool. Though he was already used to this, he still let out a gloomy sigh. 

“It’s cleaned up. Check if there are any casualties—little girl, you come with me,” Pang Jian called to A-Xiang. Then he said to the blue-clothesers, “Inspect the snow wine on the ship… No, just in case, look into all the snow wine that’s been on the market lately. If it’s no good, retrieve it.” 

Of course Pang Jian wasn’t about to make things difficult for a half-grown child. He was quite polite to A-Xiang. First he took her to eat, then kindly asked her a few questions. A-Xiang answered everything according to what Xi Ping had told her. In fact, as soon as he heard her, Pang Jian knew she was hiding something, but even General Zhi hadn’t said anything; he had only told him to make arrangements for this girl. Presumably Flying Jade Peak was aware of whatever she was hiding. 

There were times to be perceptive, but when vagueness was appropriate there was no need to rush to be clever. So Pang Jian let the anxious A-Xiang off lightly. He only said, “There are evil cultivators after you. In the future, this kind of thing will happen often. Stop messing around in those foul factories. Let’s do this—go pack your things, and tomorrow morning I’ll take you to the country and find you a position.” 

A-Xiang wasn’t qualified to have objections. Carefully, she asked, “Exalted, what work will I be doing?” 

“What can you do?” Pang Jian laughed loudly. “I’ll find someone to adopt you, you’ll be their daughter, change your name, live well, and in a few years find a nice man. Just be alert, and don’t mention the past.” 

A-Xiang was stupefied, not daring to believe this kind of thing could happen. 

She…wouldn’t even have to be a worker? 

A-Xiang wasn’t afraid of doing physical labor for pay, and she could write and do arithmetic. She could learn how to use a new machine at once, she knew some basic carpentry, and she could handle a communal cook pot for dozens of people. Working for your food was pretty good. 

But what kind of reputation did a “female worker” have in Great Wan? Just saying it sounded vulgar. Hanging out with a bunch of men day and night, living an unchaste life—it was hardly any different from being an unlicensed prostitute. 

That was why her grandpa had made her dress in men’s clothes. 

A-Xiang opened her mouth and nearly cried from happiness. 

Suddenly, she remembered something else and apprehensively muttered, “Exalted, can I bring my ‘mom’?”

“What mom?” said Pang Jian. 

A-Xiang became nervous. The Exalted had said he was going to find someone to adopt her, so of course it would be no good if she wasn’t an orphan. But since her grandpa had passed away, she and Chunying had had no one but each other in the whole world. Could she just walk away and leave Chunying by herself in that place? 

So she gritted her teeth and, still not knowing what was good for her, said, “She’s…an auntie who’s always taken care of me, she’s…” 

“As you like.” Commander Pang didn’t even finish listening, just carelessly waved a hand. “Do as you see fit. It’s all right as long as you don’t blab.” 

Just then, a blue-clotheser walked over and whispered something to Pang Jian. 

A-Xiang was young and had sharp ears. She vaguely heard this Exalted saying something about “snow wine…no good…many people…” and remembered that white-faced man telling her to be careful of people drinking snow wine. She thought, Have they been mixing something into the snow wine? 

But she didn’t think much of it. It was nothing to do with her, anyway. Sell her by the jin, and she still wouldn’t pay for a cup of snow wine. If the wealthy got their stomachs upset from drinking it, it wasn’t as if they would end up like her grandfather, with no money for medicine. 

When Commander Pang finished listening, he walked away at a hurried pace. He only left a blue-clotheser to accompany A-Xiang home. 

In the carriage, A-Xiang belatedly thought back over this frightening day, sobbed silently to herself, then put it aside. 

You were already doing all right if you could live safe and sound. Why think so much? Take it one step at a time. 

The blue-clotheser perfunctorily dropped her off at the south gate and took no more notice. “With such a big fuss on the canal today, the evil cultivators probably won’t dare to come for a while. There’s no danger. You can go home on your own.” 

A-Xiang tactfully thanked him and got out of the carriage, running off towards the factory district. Just before the shop closed for the night, she used her saved up food money to buy a Golden Tray lottery ticket. It didn’t matter whether she won. She wouldn’t be here long enough to hear the winner announced. She would save it as a keepsake. 

She was planning to go to Rat Alley to see Chunying first. If she met one of the customers today, she would cheerfully curse at him. They were leaving this damn place anyway! A-Xiang wasn’t very good at using market place curses on people. The grandpa who had raised her had been a scholar, after all. Afraid of getting excited and forgetting her lines when she was on the spot, she started preparing them on the way, hopping and skipping. 

Someone must have had some urgent work—the smoke and dust over the southern outskirts were heavier than usual. A-Xiang involuntarily coughed a few times, thinking, It’s nearly New Year. Why are they still working around the clock…? 

Suddenly, she realized something was wrong. She heard wild yelling and cursing on the breeze. 

A wind swept past, and the stench of burning hit A-Xiang right in the face. 

The sky to the south changed color. 

Someone let out a heartrending cry: “Fire in the factory!” 

“Run! Hurry…” 

Boom—!

An enormous sound. The ground shook so hard it made people stumble. 

A-Xiang was a little stunned. Far away, she saw an enormous black cloud rise from the ground, form into the shape of a mushroom, and soar up towards the sky. 

A person covered in blood ran towards her, staggering. “Don’t stand there watching! There’s an explosion over there!” 

A-Xiang was jostled by people running wildly on all sides. She craned her neck and asked, “Where’s the fire? Where’s the explosion? What’s going on?” 

Someone answered, “Don’t know, it started in the cotton yarn factory…” 

Another explosion covered up the answer. A warm wind raised sand and stones, fiercely slapping A-Xiang’s face. She covered her burning cheeks. Her ears hummed. She felt blood. 

“The gold smelter is gone, too! The Moon Plated Gold gold smelter has exploded!” 

The cotton yarn factory… Wasn’t that very close to Rat Alley? 

A-Xiang raised her foot to charge towards the blaze. 

Xi Ping, trapped in the mustard seed, was just picking at his fingers in utter boredom while Xi Yue stood by. 

The half-puppet was like a loyal little tail. When Xi Ping was playing, he played with him and always let him win; when Xi Ping was being punished, he joined him in the punishment and did most of the work. After bringing food, he didn’t leave. While Xi Ping was practicing with the bone qin, the half-puppet picked up a tree branch inside the mustard seed and started writing on the ground in big characters.

“How rotten. Only a sword cultivator could think up this kind of sideshow acrobat’s cheap trick.” It was as if there were nails under Xi Ping’s butt. He alternated between puffing out his cheeks and blowing towards the sky, and craning his neck to bother Xi Yue. “Listen, Yue-bao'er, your handwriting…hss…” 

Before he could comment, a heartrending scream suddenly exploded in his ears. In front of his eyes, flames soared up to the sky. 

Xi Ping gave a start. 

Alarm bells rang in Southern Sage Temple. 

Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s blue-clothesers charged out of the city on their swords. The half-immortals transferred water directly out of the canal to throw at the blaze. 

But this seemed to be the eternal fire at the end of the world, withstanding fierce wind and strong rain, dancing wildly, incessant. From the mortal clash of water and fire rose dense smoke that drifted towards Jinping City and created a many-layered canopy in the sky above it. 

On the west side of the Lingyang River, concealed inscriptions gradually lit up everywhere. Prince Zhuang, who had been sleeping lightly to begin with, was startled awake by the faint light. 

A piece of paper floated in through the window. There was a layer of ash even on Bai Ling. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Bai Ling coughed a few times and quickly said, “In the southern outskirts’s cotton yarn factory, the boss’s brother-in-law or someone got drunk on snow wine and set fire to the shacks where the workers live. The fire wasn’t contained at once and spread to the neighboring warehouse. The management of that warehouse is poor. A pile of silver powder¹ had accumulated there with no one to take care of it. It exploded as soon as it met the flames. A nearby Moon Plated Gold gold smelter just happened to be working extra hours. There was a chain reaction, and all the land in the southern outskirts has been shaken.” 

“Help me dress.” Prince Zhuang knew he couldn’t sleep anymore tonight. He pushed away the covers and stood. “Snow wine? Doesn’t that stuff just make you giggle after a couple of cups? How could it drive someone mad?” 

While helping him arrange his outer robe, Bai Ling said, “Today some evil cultivators snuck into Jinping on a snow wine cargo ship. Heaven’s Design Pavilion promptly arrested them, but some goods had already flowed into the market before that. This snow wine uses double the rock snow, making it stronger. The unusual sweetness makes it more tempting to overindulge. The shopkeepers selling the snow wine have inspection techniques no worse than Heaven’s Design Pavilion. They all knew what had happened, in fact, but they went along with it because business was good, even raised the price because it ‘wouldn’t get you drunk’… If a person drinks too much of this especially strong snow wine, his speech and actions will indeed be no different from a sober person’s, but it’ll damage his reason. He’ll often become reckless. This must be the root of there being twice as many carriage accidents in the southern outskirts as usual.” 

Prince Zhuang’s thoughts moved extremely fast—the overflowing factory shacks of the southern outskirts, the warehouse containing “silver powder” in need of disposal that hadn’t been disposed of—there was no way the factories could avoid a charge of mismanagement. Never mind the headache for the capital overseer, those factories probably all had close ties to the water transport department. 

But behind the largest supplier of snow wine in the capital was the Ministry of War… There was something worth tearing at there. 

Just then, the white jade proximal Prince Zhuang had put on a small bedside table lit up. 

Prince Zhuang turned his head and glanced at it. There was a line of writing on it without preamble: How is everyone at home? The smoke is too heavy, san-ge and grandmother absolutely must not go out! 

“He just has to get into everything. Doesn’t he have enough to worry about…?” Prince Zhuang was in the process of considering a thousand people and a thousand things. He didn’t read closely, only smiled among his many concerns. 

But before his smile had faded, Prince Zhuang suddenly froze: how did he know? 

Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s walkers in the mortal world flew here and there, guarding the Dragon Vein, fighting evil cultivators. No one could have guessed that a crowd of half-immortals would be put into such a tight spot by some fireworks let off by a few wastrels. 

There were too many combustible and explosive things in the southern outskirts’s factory district, and the direction of the wind was unfavorable. When a single spark fell, it sent everything around up in flames! 

All the steamships on the grand canal urgently made way. Half of the canal water went to cover the factory district. It took a full shichen for the conflagration to stop. 

The rain brought over by the walkers in the mortal world had yet to cease. 

Xi Ping’s point of view was limited to what A-Xiang saw. He couldn’t see the full state of the south of the city. He looked from A-Xiang’s view of Jinping to the white jade proximal to check for an answer and back. His eyes could hardly keep up. 

The survivors’ faces were all painted, their identities impossible to tell. A-Xiang stumbled around, stopping everyone who looked similar to someone she knew. No one thought she was being rude. Everyone wandering through the ashes had lost someone; their expressions were as desolate as hers. 

Wailing floated over from somewhere, chasing her as she wandered towards Rat Alley. 

Standing at the mouth of Rat Alley, A-Xiang was almost stunned for a while, suspecting she had found the wrong place. 

The dark, damp little alley in her memories was gone. The view had become clear, all the way to the grand canal. 

A few city guard soldiers cleaning up the aftermath rudely pushed her aside, plowing at random through the ruins while holding their noses. 

“Here’s one… Fifty-four.” When they found a body, they would call out the number. “Come give me a hand.” 

“Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven—these are all stuck together, let’s say fifty-seven… Hmph, these unregistered prostitutes really get around.” 

“Fifty-eight…fifty-nine!” 

At first the soldiers had lifted the bodies. Later, there was more work than they could handle, and they lazily dragged the burnt bodies all over the ground. Some official had told them to count the number of casualties, so these curled-up bodies each had a number. 

A female corpse called “sixty” was thrown at A-Xiang’s feet. Her face was burnt. She was facing upwards with her mouth open, catching the rain. 

She must have been thirsty when she was alive. 

She might have been Chunying, or she might not have been. 

The canal water was filthy, so the rain falling from the sky was also filthy. There was a foul reek everywhere. 

A-Xiang went no further. In the rain, she followed the corpse’s gaze, looking up at the sky, squeezing the reincarnation wood amulet. 

Xi Ping called to her a few times, and she didn’t answer. 

Xi Ping turned his head fretfully just in time to see Xi Yue’s anxious face and the ground covered in his messy writing. 

Xi Yue had been writing his name. There were too many strokes in “Xi”; he couldn’t manage to get it right. The ground was littered with characters with their heads separated from their bodies, like the burned corpses at the mouth of Rat Alley. 

There was no response yet on the white jade proximal. 

When the women had struggled to survive in the dim alley, he had looked on indifferently; when the people who had come to the end of the road had bowed to an evil god, he had resented their passivity; when the evil cultivator who claimed a righteous cause had cried out his views, he had been confused and uncomprehending. 

But the ground littered with remains and charred corpses at last gave the young master a sense of fellow feeling. 

A-Xiang looked up, and Xi Ping saw along with her the inscrutable, inexorable fate hanging over the heads of all living things.  

An old beggar covered in dust walked over beating a board, indistinctly singing: “Lingyang guard us, Lingyang guard us. Blessed clouds are flying high, silver moon sinks from the sky. In the mansions they drink snow, poor wretches get drunk and laid low… Everybody, grant me a couple copper coins, I’ll raise a longevity tablet for you… Grant me a couple copper coins…” 

“Move aside.” An overworked officer stepped forward to drive him off, sending him reeling with a kick. “Where’d this old beggar come from? They get everywhere. How come you couldn’t have burned up in that fire last night? What bad luck!” 

The old beggar agreed blindly. The officer spat and hurried away. 

“Grant me a couple copper coins…” The old beggar’s face was in the mud and his back to the sky. He knelt on the ground, bowing with his hands in front of him as he mumbled, “In the mansions they drink snow…poor wretches get drunk and laid low…in the mansions they drink snow…” 

A-Xiang heard these familiar lines and slowly turned her head. Through the rain, she met the old beggar’s empty eyes. 

“A-Xiang,” the “uncle”’s voice came from the reincarnation wood. For the first time, he spoke kindly to her. “There’s something wrong with that man. He’s with the evil cultivators. Heaven’s Design Pavilion is nearby cleaning up. Call for help, quick!” 

A-Xiang stared at the old beggar without blinking. After a long time, she quietly said, “Uncle, that Lord Pang said he wants to take me to the country to get a new identity and live a good life.” 

“I know…” 

“But I don’t want to go anymore. What’s the point of changing my identity? The sky above my head will still be the same sky… It’s useless.” 

“Wei Chengxiang, what are you thinking? Didn’t you learn anything from last time?! You’ve seen what these evil cultivators are like. If you mix with them, beware of getting your face disfigured like that ‘Old Mud’! Do you want to be like a rat in the sewer, chased by Heaven’s Design Pavilion until they kill you? Those fuckers might have been the ones who blew up your home!” 

“I have learned something, really,” A-Xiang whispered. “Uncle, even if they were the ones who did it, I can only get revenge by becoming like them.” 

Travelers walking beside the mud always had to worry about being splashed by it…unless they jumped into it themselves. 

Anyway, it wasn’t like she could be a blue-clotheser. Better to jump. 

“Wei Chengxiang!” 

“Uncle, you’re right. Even the Southern Sage doesn’t work miracles. There are no gods on earth.” A-Xiang decisively put the reincarnation wood amulet away in her clothes, no longer chanting the name of her imagined god. For a time, Xi Ping saw nothing. 

He was indignant and anxious. He pounded on the ground. The bones of his fingers let out a brief, sharp cry like tearing silk. 

Twang!

Zhi Xiu, meditating on the cliff, suddenly opened his eyes. A moment later, he landed beside the mustard seed at the door of the cottage. 

There was a furious crack in the mustard seed. It had broken open. 

Xi Ping landed abruptly on the snow and only just kept his footing. “Shifu! I…” 

Zhi Xiu took back the mustard seed and waved a hand at him. He touched the crack on the mustard seed and suddenly became aware of something. Frowning, he looked at the clear and frigid sky over Flying Jade Peak. 

The pre-dawn sky informed him of the hell that was Jinping’s southern outskirts now. A shadow passed over Zhi Xiu’s face. 

A while later, he finally turned his head and said to Xi Ping, “Your family is well. There are fireproofing inscriptions buried under the west side of the Lingyang River.” 

Hearing this didn’t make Xi Ping feel better. 

They were proof against fire, but what about water? What about earthquakes? 

When Lancang had marched north, hadn’t the whole city suffered, without any inscriptions doing any good? 

He couldn’t rid himself of the sight of those burned corpses. Supposing he had been in A-Xiang’s place… Xi Ping didn’t dare to think any further. 

“I know why your bone qin works sometimes and doesn’t work at other times,” Zhi Xiu said. “With your bones as your qin, what you play is the sound of your heart. If your heart is unmoved, the strings are also unmoved.” 

Just so, when a sword cultivator plucked the “strings,” what he played was sword aura. 

Xi Ping himself was heartless most of the time. When he plucked at his bone qin at random, he could only disturb the locals. 

When others completed their spiritual bones, their vital weapon emerged. Xi Ping’s vital weapon was concealed in the bones of his fingers and wouldn’t come out; it was probably waiting for his Way of the Heart. 

Flying Jade Peak was frozen all over. You couldn’t develop your heart out of nothing. 

“Northern Li’s Kunlun Sect is famed for the way of the sword. The disciples go up the mountain to begin rigorous cultivation before they’re ten years old. The way of a sword cultivator can be walked without thought or heart.” Zhi Xiu put his hands behind his back and stood. For a moment, this man who hardly ever raised his voice was as sharp and solitary as the marks of the sword on the surrounding stones. “If you entered the way of the sword, your bone qin would probably become a qin sword. A sword is like a beacon. It can isolate you from external things. You have no need to attend to the affairs of others, no need to turn your head. You can spend your whole life in sole pursuit of a sharper, deeper sword aura, until you pierce the dome of heaven, pierce the void—Shiyong, are you determined not to follow my way of the sword?” 

Xi Ping missed the deeper meaning in his words. He asked, very practically, “If I become extremely skilled with the sword, can I protect my family and friends?” 

“Family and friends.” Zhi Xiu smiled. He turned his head to look at his young disciple. The look in his eyes was obscure. There was a bit of tenderness in his voice. “Shiyong, the Great Way leads to heaven. There are no family and friends on that road.” 

“Then why would I walk it?” Xi Ping said decisively. “Shifu, just teach me something useful. I want to leave the mountain and kill that bunch of evil cultivators!” 

Zhi Xiu looked at him. Bizarrely, he felt that he was looking at himself many years ago. 

“Fine.” He sighed. “Come with me.” 

Zhaoting carried its master up Flying Jade Peak. Xi Ping froze, then quickly used his newly learned ability to fly a sword to dodderingly follow. He heard a faint sound. His shifu had opened the mountain seal. 

“An open-eyed period cultivator can only use open-eyed grade immortal tools. You can’t control high level ones. Take a mustard seed, pick out some tools that suit you. Among immortal tools, there are ones that get along and ones that are at odds. Take care when you’re picking them out so they don’t start fighting in your bag in the future. And don’t take more than five.” 

“Only five…” 

A pinecone rolled down and hit Xi Ping on the head. 

Zhi Xiu’s voice came from the top of the mountain. “Do you think just anyone can be like your Pang-shixiong, carrying around all kinds of odds and ends without getting mixed up? He has the accumulated experience of a hundred years of mortal peril. An amateur like you, you’re doing well if you can operate four or five immortal tools. If you take too many things, then when you really run into trouble, you’ll waste time picking an immortal tool. You can come back for more when you’ve picked up some skills.

“You need an established foundation to carve inscriptions, but you have to be able to recognize common inscriptions. Take a book and read it on the way.

“You can treat arrays as low-level inscriptions. They only need spiritual stones, and they’re easy to modify. They also aren’t as powerful as inscriptions. But while the functions and rules are different, the general principles are similar. There are no shortcuts in cultivation. You have to memorize. 

“As for talismans, sword cultivators don’t often draw them. I’m sloppy about inscriptions. You take the Talisman Dictionary and copy from it when you need to use one. If you forget, look it up again. If it fails, then you haven’t succeeded in controlling your spiritual energy. Try a few more times, and you’ll learn. It’s easier to draw on talisman paper. When you’re more proficient, you can simply draw it out of nothing.

“Then there’s this. Catch.” 

Hardly had Zhi Xiu spoken than all the hair stood up on the back of Xi Ping’s neck. 

The next moment, a beam of sword energy came towards the center of his brow. Half of Flying Jade Peak began to tremble. 

But that matchlessly scornful sword energy didn’t harm him at all. It only entered the center of his brow and melted into his bones. 

Xi Ping looked at his hand in surprise. 

“Take this sword energy and join it with your bone qin. When you encounter danger, you can play it to bluff your way out. But a half-immortal doesn’t have an essence, and the scant spiritual energy in the mortal world can’t support ascended spirit sword energy. You need two white spirits every time you play it. Save up, don’t strip all your family’s mines.” 

Xi Ping: “…” 

This made even a cousin of Cui Ji go weak at the knees.

“I haven’t handed back my token to leave the mountain yet. Take it and say I’ve sent you to investigate the remaining evil cultivators,” Zhi Xiu said. “Shiyong…” 

He seemed to have some other instructions, but in the end they dissolved into a sigh. 

Jinping City was still in the dark. On Flying Jade Peak, the rising sun had already dyed the vast fields of snow red.