[Note on the section title¹]

In order to put on an act for the inexperienced royal personage from Jinping, Ling County’s thundering machinery stopped for several days. The chimneys shut their mouths. When snow fell, it instantly produced a clear blue sky. 

The twenty-ninth year of Taiming, early morning on the second day of the year. The starry expanse had faded, leaving only the morning star. 

The rising sun spilled a bowl of blood over the east. It was as much of a sham as the arrays on the gold smelter. Its light was cold; where it shone on the ice and snow, the ice and snow were completely untouched. 

Ling County was the last stop in Suling. After he left here, Prince Zhuang would go to Guzhou. Before leaving, His Highness, as though fulfilling a social engagement, picked out a few little problems with the water transport office and the trading companies and let them change them or not as they liked, then praised the openness of Ling County’s chamber of commerce, proclaiming: Good and righteous merchants form a reservoir of beneficence for their hometowns.

Ling County’s magistrate and all the major figures in the chamber of commerce were beside themselves with joy. They wanted to have these words put on a decorative plaque that very day. 

Who would have thought that extreme joy would bring tragedy? The decorative plaque was never hung. 

That very night, the bodies of the Ling County magistrate and the president of the chamber of commerce were cut up into mincemeat, all mixed together, loath to part. Their blood was splashed over a whole street in the factory district.

In some sense, the “reservoir of beneficence” had in fact been realized.² 

Reasonably speaking, neither of the two men who died had been average people. Their homes practically had more guards than the county yamen³ had bailiffs, never mind the arrays for preventing incursion and expelling evil all around their houses, which were active day and night—they were far more hardworking than the arrays on the gold smelter, anyway. 

Magistrate Zheng’s manor even had unauthorized inscriptions.  

But both arrays and inscriptions were tidily broken by the unknown assassin with a single slash of the sword; there was no other trace of a bladed weapon. Never mind the servants and guards; Magistrate Zheng had fallen asleep after fooling around with his concubine that night, and even she had no idea what time the person sleeping beside her had gone missing. 

Were these the methods of an ordinary person? 

Though there were always evil cultivators active in the mortal world, the people had never before fought with officials. The Xuanyin Mountains hadn’t fallen, and these evildoers dared to run rampant like this! 

For a time, all the high officials and wealthy merchants of Suling were in a state of anxiety. The Suling Prefecture magistrate was furious and sent his subordinates to ask the local branch of Heaven’s Design Pavilion to perform a thorough investigation. The sacred beasts quickly sniffed out the traces of evil cultivators. But when Heaven’s Design Pavilion went to arrest them, the evil cultivators had been warned ahead of time and fled. 

The “heroic” story quietly passed by word of mouth among the commoners. People who normally would have handed over their own heads for a few copper coins unanimously kept silent. 

The silent people gradually understood the truth: 

Were the grand dwellings protected by immortals really so impregnable? Not at all. It turned out that those magical inscriptions could be broken. 

Were these high officials with their roots so deep that even a prince couldn’t shake their trees really so untouchable? No. It turned out that when heads were rolling everywhere, it didn’t matter how tall your hat was. 

These two people’s deaths were quickly illustrated in pamphlets, which circulated among the not especially literate common people. 

When everyone in the vicinity was willing to be an accomplice to evil cultivators, forget about some mere unauthorized inscriptions around the house; even the great array of Xuanyin would tremble. 

At any rate, Suling’s notables were in a panic. 

On the night of the third day of the year, the bailiffs began going home by home and family by family making raids, searching for supporters of the evil cultivators. If there was a trace of suspicion, they would take people in without regard for the facts. 

When the kings of the underworld lost their heads, of course the little devils would run wild. On the surface, the bailiffs were justly enforcing the law; in secret, they took the opportunity to reap benefits. They released those who could pay them and put those who couldn’t pay in prison; they arrested even seventy-year-old greybeards and ten-year-old children as “murderous evil cultivators.” Mournful wails shook the sky. 

The people’s fury, which had been one spark away from exploding, at last boiled over. 

On the fifth day of the month, a group of workers in rags took up iron rods, shovels, and so forth, and charged into the homes of the county magistrate’s assistant and the patrol commanders. 

No one had expected this—everyone had some protective immortal tool or array around the house. These things were more useful than any guard. Lions and tigers would be cooked, so what about ordinary people, who were no better than beasts of burden? 

But when good advances a chi, evil advances a zhang—those bold evil cultivators mixed in among the workers and helped them break the immortal tools and arrays. 

This time the beasts of burden had turned on their masters. 

By the time the troops from the provincial seat of Suling arrived, not one of Ling County’s three patrol commanders was still alive. The fires in the factories reached the sky, and Great Wan’s first gold smelter had reopened for the New Year. 

Sometimes, all that’s missing is a single hole in the dam, the first knife daring to fall for the whole country. 

With someone to open the way, what follows can’t be held back. 

Prince Zhuang, who ought to have gone to Guzhou, mysteriously disappeared. All the branches of Heaven’s Design Pavilion had too much to worry about. Even Xi Ping only received a brief “all’s well” from Prince Zhuang.

Xi Ping was at this time already aboard ship. 

He shut the white jade proximal and gasped for breath—in order to pick out Tai Sui’s remaining followers, he had long ago removed the mind-clearing spell Zhi Xiu had placed on his spirit. Before, Xi Ping had already been able to control his consciousness, having made his first steps towards “being unmoved by external things.” But in the last few days, for some reason, there had suddenly been many more people calling for “Tai Sui.” 

The noise didn’t stop day or night. Even if he removed distracting thoughts and meditated, wave after wave still battered his spirit, making him distracted and irritable. 

“No good. I’m about to die from being cooped up. I’m going out to get a breath of fresh air,” Xi Ping told Xi Yue, then went out on deck. 

The setting sun had fallen into the west, and the calls of the water dragons were audible on deck. A faint salt scent hit him in the face—they had reached the sea. 

The spiritual stone shipment took a rather different route going north than the one Xi Ping had come by. After leaving Great Wan’s encampment, they had gone a short way north, then turned onto the Chunqiu River, going east directly to the sea. When they reentered Great Wan territory, they would put in at port and return to the canal in the interior by a runoff channel. 

First, this was because the convoy was practically a navy. Adding in the water dragons to lead the way, once they entered the river, no one else could pass. Apart from their own country’s territory, no one would clear the river for them. 

Also, when government ships transported spiritual stones, packaging, counting, stowage…every stage was extremely strict—this wasn’t like Prince Zhuang sending Xi Ping spare change and neither of them caring if ten or twenty percent of it was used up by the array. If the quantity of spiritual stones was a bit off, all the cultivators and crew aboard the convoy ships would be blamed. Going through rivers in the interior was unsafe. Even if no one set up cannons on land and lay in wait for them, while passing through another country’s territory, they wouldn’t even be able to handle someone burying an array under the riverbed. 

“Viscount.” A page boy delivering food solicitously greeted Xi Ping. “The ship has been rocking since we entered the sea. Are you seasick? Should I bring you a cup of southern grape wine?” 

Xi Ping quickly waved a hand and said, “Spare me. If you don’t give me something salty to eat, enough acid will come up from my stomach to support a factory—is that for Lin-shixiong?” 

“Oh, yes!” 

“Then hurry up,” said Xi Ping. “He’ll get mad at you guys again if you’re late.” 

Lin Zhaoli had just passed the established foundation boundary, and his state was unsteady. He also hadn’t attained inedia yet. This gentleman was unusually picky. He only used the tableware he had brought himself; the bowls, chopsticks, trays, and dishes had to be put in fixed places; and the food had to be brought at exactly the time he said, neither a little early nor a little late would do. The only thing he hadn’t stipulated was how many grains of rice should be in his bowl.

Xi Ping suspected he was cultivating the “way of fussiness”—this way had no benefits apart from making it easy for people to poison him. 

When Xi Ping passed by the page boy, he slightly curled his left hand, hidden in his wide sleeve. The page boy’s eyes went blank for a moment, as if his soul had been temporarily removed. 

Using the skills he had learned gambling with dice as a teenager, Xi Ping quickly palmed a talisman and swept it over the food. The talisman disappeared in his hand. Next, thin white steam came up from the tea on the tray and vanished in midair. 

These movements took only a moment. The page boy’s vacant gaze quickly focused. He shook his head and muttered, “What was that sound…?” 

Then he continued walking forward, having no idea what had just happened. 

Xi Ping idly leaned on the railing, looking out over the sea. He “heard” the page boy pray to Tai Sui in his mind: “Bless me, Tai Sui. Let this go smoothly.” 

Xi Ping thought, Nope, I’m not protecting you. I even have to curse you. 

While there was still nothing he could do about the noise, if he met a Tai Sui believer face to face, his once-broken left hand was extremely effective. He could catch each one precisely. On this shipment convoy, apart from Wuchang One Lü Chengyi, all the other Indignant Cicadas were mortals. Xi Ping had tried a few times and found that the music made by his left hand could only affect mortals—once when there had been a musician at a feast, he had taken the opportunity to try plucking a string in Lü Chengyi’s mind, and the outcome was that not only had he been unable to affect his consciousness, he had instead touched Lü Chengyi’s spiritual sense. 

Xi Ping deduced that this was because his own cultivation wasn’t high enough. 

Fortunately, Lü Chengyi had a foot on two boats now and was ready to flee or die. He wasn’t planning on letting a single person in the convoy return alive, so he hadn’t been willing to bring along the other cultivators among the Indignant Cicadas. 

Lin Zhaoli opened the door for the page boy bringing his food and glanced at Xi Ping, who was being buffeted by the wind not far away. Presumably he had heard Xi Ping mocking him just now; Lin Zhaoli didn’t grace him with a smile. 

This old brother was indifferent towards everyone. At any rate, in this shipment convoy, no one, not even Commander Zhao Zhenwei, was worthy of him so much as rolling his pupils down from checking the weather—he only cared about Princess Anyang. Before leaving, he had repeatedly consoled Zhou Qing, ardently guaranteeing that he would certainly come back as soon as possible. He wouldn’t leave Her Highness all alone in the southern mines. 

Xi Ping had looked on from the sidelines at this moving parting. He simply wanted to sigh: Within just three days of setting off, this weak and helpless good princess of yours arranged for you to be drugged twice. She’s terrified that you’ll come back. 

Clearly there was a reason that Lin-shixiong, an established foundation cultivator and direct descendant of the Lin family, couldn’t even look after the southern mines. As Xi Ping saw it, it was a pity to leave this kind of talent in the mortal world; he would be better off going back to the inner sect to cultivate in peace as soon as possible. 

The detoxifying talisman he had used was a special kind of miasma clearing spell—the name alone told you that Pang Jian had taught it to him. 

Pang-shixiong had said that toxicology was a broad and deep area of knowledge; you could forget about becoming an expert to save yourself at the last minute. If you wanted to guard against the plots of others, you only had to remember one thing—a mortal couldn’t poison a cultivator. Ignoring whether the poison would work or not, as soon as the stuff was brought in, it would immediately touch the cultivator’s spiritual sense. 

If you wanted to poison a cultivator, you needed another cultivator to use spiritual energy to fabricate a toxin. 

He didn’t need to worry about what kind of poison it was. He only needed to use the miasma clearing spell to break up the spiritual energy in the poison. With a cultivator’s constitution, swallowing arsenic or heartbreak powder would be no problem. 

At first, Xi Ping had been pondering what kind of lie he could make up to reveal the information he had overheard to Lao Pang. But on the night of the one-day tour of the Missing North Building, Pang-shixiong had walked through the wall to see him, stared at him as he practiced the miasma clearing spell until he was good at it, then instructed: “Remember to use this on anything from Anyang.” 

Xi Ping: “…” 

Fine. This Commander Pang had nearly cultivated to spiritual enlightenment in Jinping City; any problem obvious enough for Xi Ping to see, the old fox would have sniffed out long ago. 

Though the two of them were always goading each other, they had quite a good tacit understanding when it came to presenting a united front towards the outside world; they could communicate with a single look. 

Pang Jian said seriously, “I suppose your shifu gave you something to protect yourself with?” 

“Yes,” Xi Ping answered, also solemnly, “a technique for wasting lots of money.” 

“Piss off.” Pang Jian kicked him, then said, “Lin Zhaoli is an idiot, and that Zhao Zhenwei only thinks about having a good time. Neither of them is reliable. You were the one who turned my attention onto Lü. I don’t know how you figured it out, but I think your idea is right.” 

Xi Ping sat up straight and heard Pang Jian say, “I looked into his background. He grew up in the mines, like me, then became a miner himself when he came of age. He must have a naturally good spiritual sense. Spending all his time in the spiritual mines, he opened his spiritual eyes by chance. Though quite a few mine supervisors became cultivators like this, it isn’t a good thing when a miner opens his spiritual eyes—the superiors will first suspect that he’s been embezzling. They’ll hold him and subject him to strict investigation several times. Only when he’s proven that he’s done nothing wrong can he remain in the Mining Office as a disciple of record… As for whether you get soul-searched and turn into an imbecile or go on to be a half-immortal, it mostly depends on whether there’s anyone with influence in the mines to protect you. The person who protected Lü Chengyi was Liang Chen. Generally speaking, that kind of gratitude is heavier than a mountain. It’s within the realm of possibility to regard such a person as an adopted father. But the strange thing is, these two didn’t mix afterwards.” 

They had both spent most of two centuries in the southern mines, and their relationship had been as distant as ordinary colleagues. The spiritual mines’s logbook even showed that of the ten senior mine supervisors, Lü Chengyi and Liang Chen had the smallest number of interactions. It was as if the two of them had been deliberately avoiding suspicion. 

“If Anyang really is involved in this, this trip may be dangerous,” Pang Jian said. “Look, find an excuse to stay at the mines with me…” 

As soon as he heard this, Xi Ping wasn’t having any of it. He thought, Then wouldn’t I have come for nothing?

“Riches come in the midst of danger. Maybe I’ll be able to get to the bottom of their scheme,” Xi Ping said. “Shixiong, this is a serious matter. Practically all your subordinate walkers in the mortal world come from noble families. Their backgrounds are all deep-rooted and complex. If even Princess Anyang is involved, who can you trust now?” 

Pang Jian: “…” 

In fact, there was no one he could use. 

“I think you’ll have to rely on me.” Xi Ping licked his lips. “Don’t worry, shixiong. No one knows about my natural spiritual bones. Even if they’ve heard that I joined Flying Jade Peak, it’s been hardly any time at all. None of them will take me seriously. If I’m really hard up, I can always peddle my charms. I think you’ll acknowledge that I’m better off in that respect than you, right?” 

Pang Jian said, “What are you showing off for, pretty boy?” 

He frowned and thought about it over and over. There really was nothing else to do. 

“If Anyang really is involved in this, I don’t know what she could want. Great Wan is her and her family’s own home. Why would she go crazy and collude with others to steal her own things…?” Pang Jian frowned again. “We already know that these ‘thieves inside the house’ are colluding with Southern Shu.” 

Xi Ping caught up quickly: “If they needed foreign aid for something, they would certainly want to use Southern Shu’s power.” 

“Southern Shu isn’t a problem. You’ve already caused one calamity for them. It gets easier the second time.” Pang Jian waved a hand. “I’m going to warn you to look out for Chu and Northern Li—especially the Chu. They were involved that day by the spiritual beast pool.” 

Xi Ping knew absolutely nothing about international politics. He gave a confused “oh.” “Why?” 

“Because Southern Shu doesn’t have a border with us, you total ignoramus!” Pang Jian slapped him on the back of the head, resenting him for being unable to improve at once. “While that bunch of beast tamers at Lingyun aren’t necessarily good people, they certainly don’t want to see domestic upheaval in Great Wan. Southern He has become the Land of Turmoil, and Southern Shu has no strength with any hope of winning against Chu’s Xiang family—you can study on the way, young master! You must at least know some history within the last two-hundred years?” 

“Well…” 

When Xi Ping thought of the word “study,” it was as if some spell had been worked on him. All his lazy muscles ached again and again. He leaned against the railing for ages like a dead dog. Today the sea was all water, with nothing worth looking at. The evil cultivators on board the ships had also calmed down. All he could do was idly loiter back to his cabin and take out the Notes from a Progress to the West that Pang Jian had given him. 

While he was going through his mustard seed, he paused—there was a pile of stuff in there. 

Snacks, specially made rouge, little trinkets… These were things Princess Anyang had given him to take back to Madam Cui. 

Very distrustingly, he had already inspected the items. There was nothing wrong with them. At Xi Ping’s brief glance, the colors of the rouge were the ones his mother generally preferred. Because he had casually mentioned lotus wine, Zhou Qing had ordered several big cases of it packed up for him at the Missing North Building. 

Before leaving, this princess had even gone out of her way to stop him and instruct, “Your Lin-shixiong needs to consolidate his cultivation. He isn’t likely to show his face unless something major happens. Just listen to your Lü-shixiong on the way. He’s spent his whole life traveling with the spiritual stone convoys. He knows everything.” 

Xi Ping sighed. Zhou Qing hadn’t been making it up. She really must have been friends with Madam Cui when she was young. She had told him to “listen to Lü-shixiong” because she thought Lü Chengyi was one of her people. 

She even thought she was pointing him towards safety on that ship of murder. 

“Auntie Qing.” Xi Ping had been unable to resist then. He had tested Anyang, saying, “You aren’t happy here at the mines. You’re all oppressed. Just go back to the Latent Cultivation Temple. Be a steward for a few years, then go into the inner sect. This place in the middle of nowhere is unworthy of you.” 

Zhou Qing’s smile had faded. Age had suddenly appeared on that girl’s face. She was silent a moment, then finally said, “This empire bears the name of Zhou. His Majesty is still working hard, so how could I abandon him and flee into the deep mountains myself? It’s only that my abilities are limited, and there isn’t much I can do to help him… You’re a child. You don’t understand.” 

So you’re “helping” him by colluding with a foreign nation, robbing your own spiritual stone mines?

In fact, Xi Ping didn’t understand. When he thought about it, he was at a complete loss. 

He casually flipped through the book without really looking, then once again “heard” one of the people on the ship that he had marked out as a Tai Sui believer praying for divine protection. He used his spirit to “look” that way. 

He heard the believer say to Lü Chengyi, “Lin has already taken the second dose of Mirage Powder. The final dose will be the day after tomorrow. It will take effect immediately. We’ll have just reached the Resurrection Vortex. Our brothers are ready.”