“Seas run dry, mountains wear away. How can a country remain eternal? Even the plants rotate across the four seasons. Isn’t Great Wan fed up with being named Zhou?” At this moment, Prince Zhuang’s spirits were rather high. “With turmoil in Great Wan, discounting Southern Shu for the moment, Chu and Northern Li are bound to be unable to restrain themselves. Xuanyin is presumably also eager to see a foreign invasion in order to take back popular sentiment… Before, Zhou Kun only provoked internal strife in Xuanyin by stealing a heart demon. This time, as his son, I will perform my filial duty and give him a free lesson in how to bring about an immortal war empty-handed—oh, right, don’t forget to ask that brat Xi Shiyong where he’s run off to.” 

Bai Ling silently took out the white jade proximal and sighed to himself. 

This was a natural born evil spirit of chaotic times, like the legendary child born of dragon’s saliva, who would only laugh on seeing the sky full of burning war beacons¹. The heart-protecting lotus made by Master Lin’s hand couldn't improve his vitality as much as a bloody conflict. 

But who could criticize him? 

At any rate, Bai Ling’s life was his. If he wanted to become an immortal, Bai Ling would become a step up to the heavens; if he wanted to become a demon, then he would simply become a soul-burning lamp. 

Prince Zhuang looked at him. “Why are you sighing?” 

Bai Ling quietly said, “I was only thinking that when the world falls into chaos, the lives of the people are hard.” 

Prince Zhuang said, smiling, “When the canal connected north and south, when the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon began to ride the mists, did the lives of the people cease to be hard? If they aren’t hard, then where has this turmoil come from?” 

Bai Ling hesitated, then said, “Your Highness, since Xuanyin does not dare to resist the people’s resentment, why don’t you simply step forward and petition on the people’s behalf, personally lead them in demanding justice? It would save them from being used by those evil cultivators.” 

“If I petition on their behalf, what are they going to do? If I lead them to demand justice, do you think I’ll know what ‘justice’ they want?” Prince Zhuang said calmly. “I don’t know of the people’s suffering, and they don’t know of my grievance. You say that the lives of the people are hard—in what ways are they hard? Have you lived the life of an unemployed laborer? Since you haven’t, you’re only an onlooker judging others against yourself. Why should I take someone else’s business into my own hands? Who am I to act as a savior to others? Are they sheep, not men?” 

Bai Ling was at a loss for words. 

“Even if they would rather be sheep, I am no shepherd. I am but a demon from the bottom of the Impassable Sea.” Prince Zhuang massaged the thumb of his right hand. “Instruct Shiyong to return to finish his business and hurry back to the immortal sect. Tell him not to run around outside in this turmoil.” 

Bai Ling accordingly bowed his head to write the letter. 

Fine. In the end, this “demon” had a tether holding him to mortal desires. 

Xi Ping nearly tore the pages of the book as he turned them. 

He compared the skeletons around him to the names of the deceased in the book one by one: Zhou Ye, seventh son of Shizong; Zhou Li, posthumously conferred the title of Princess Changping in the second year of Xianzong… 

In the book, it said that this Princess Changping had been only eight years old when she died, so the spiritual bones set here were also very small. She had her hands propped behind her, sitting on a stone step with her feet dangling; she seemed to still be a mischievous imp. Xi Ping gently touched her skull and heard a little girl’s tearful voice calling out “Mother”… She seemed to be in a great deal of pain. 

He passed among the skeletons, endless lingering spiritual energy sweeping by his ears, hearing the unheard last words of the owners of these spiritual bones that had been trapped at the bottom of the fathomless sea. 

Xi Ping’s scalp prickled. What was all this? What the hell was it? 

It certainly wasn’t an illusion. Illusions arose from the heart; no illusion would use things he didn’t know and had to look up in a book to solve the riddle! 

At last, he clenched his teeth and stood in front of the skeleton named “Zhou Ying.” 

The muscles of Xi Ping’s calves nearly began to twitch faintly. 

Only close up did he find that this skeleton’s right hand thumb and index finger were each missing a joint, but he had no time to consider this minor detail now. All the names of the skeletons around him that he had looked up belonged to members of Great Wan’s imperial family who had died young…and the Zhou family’s members almost never shared names with their ancestors. 

But what if…

What if when san-ge had been named, the Board of Rites had made an oversight? After all, there had been so many generations. Or what if there had once been an amorous emperor who had given birth to an illegitimate child he hadn’t entered in the record of family names? 

Clinging to a last thread of hope, he fiercely squeezed his wrist, held his breath, and reached out a hand towards that skeleton. 

When he tested the spiritual energy, he would know… He would certainly hear more last words that had nothing to do with him, right? 

Having written the letter, Bai Ling suddenly frowned—there was no flow of spiritual energy on the proximal. In other words, the connection between the two proximals had been broken. 

What was going on? Had the immortal tool been damaged? Or had the young master used up all his spiritual stones yet again? 

He couldn’t have used them up so quickly, could he? 

“Your Highness, I can’t seem to contact the Viscount.” 

Prince Zhuang clicked his tongue. “That big spender. He’s run out of spiritual stones yet…” 

But before he could finish speaking, it was as if Prince Zhuang had been stabbed. His right hand trembled, and Xi Ping’s horrified, distraught face flashed before his eyes. 

On the nameless altar, Xi Ping gathered his courage and took the right hand laying by the skeleton’s side. But unlike the other skeletons, the spiritual energy didn’t scatter. Instead, it flowed towards the place he had touched. The glow of the dense spiritual energy made the bones seem even more like a statue carved from white spirits… Xi Ping didn’t hear last words from this skeleton. The moment he touched the skeleton, all of his spiritual sense was suddenly concentrated between his brows, in his spirit. There, he met a pair of familiar eyes. 

Through the spiritual bones, the spiritual senses of these two people whose connection through the white jade proximals had been cut off collided without warning. 

Bai Ling saw the languor from earlier vanish entirely from Prince Zhuang’s face. He put a hand to his forehead. An inscription flashed dimly on his brow. This “demon who wouldn’t be a shepherd” instantly reverted to an ordinary mortal and asked one question after another, almost babbling: “Where are you? How did you end up at the bottom of the Impassable Sea, all alone? How did you get in?” 

Xi Ping’s legs went weak, and he went right to his knees at the feet of the seated skeleton. “…san-ge?” 

There was a thin layer of spiritual energy on the bones. They could absorb the spiritual energy hovering around them. Xi Ping was at any rate a half-immortal, and he had learned some general knowledge at the Latent Cultivation Temple. He knew what this was—only spiritual bones could absorb spiritual energy. 

Supposing that these spiritual bones had belonged to a cultivator, even an open-eyed one, his cultivation level would have had to be at the peak of the open-eyed period. For Xi Ping, this would have been someone with a cultivation level similar to his. Through the unseen glasses, the name should have been blurred and incomplete. But on this skeleton, the name “Zhou Ying” had been so clear that he couldn’t avoid seeing it even if he wanted to. That meant they had to be the bones of a mortal…the legendary innate spiritual bones. 

Innate spiritual bones like those of Princess Duanrui, the likes of which had only appeared in Xuanyin once in a thousand years. 

Bai Ling sucked in a breath. “The Viscount is at the bottom of the Impassable Sea? He isn’t a member of the Zhou family. How did he get in?” 

Once the initial shock was past, Prince Zhuang immediately remembered how his right thumb had been touched out of nowhere. “He must have had my thumb bone.” 

Bai Ling said, “But the Viscount grew up with you and has a profound karmic connection to you. If he had touched one of your spiritual bones, you could not have been unaware.” 

“Yes, so someone else must have had that thumb bone before.” Prince Zhuang’s thoughts were extremely quick. He hurriedly connected the sequence of events. “One of my spiritual bones was stolen and I didn’t know about it—that must have happened after I broke my connection to the bones eight years…nine years ago. You took my finger bone then, and the thief must have conjectured that a finger bone could safely bring a person out of there, so they imitated you. Nine years ago…nine years ago… Didn’t that traitorous former general commander of Heaven’s Design Pavilion go into seclusion nine years ago?” 

Bai Ling said in surprise, “There was indeed a whiff of that place about him. Can it be…” 

“Nine years ago, during the big earthquake that provoked a rare tidal wave throughout the Resurrection Vortex, we opened the seal on the Impassable Sea and took advantage of the chaos to escape. It’s likely that Liang Chen fell to the bottom of the Impassable Sea by bizarre coincidence then and borrowed my finger bone to free himself. That bone must later have fallen into the hands of his accomplice, and Shiyong went to investigate the remaining evil cultivators in the southern mines and came across it…” In an instant, the clear sequence of cause and effect was exposed before Zhou Ying’s eyes. For a time, he couldn’t catch his breath, only felt that he was like an ensnared insect; it seemed that no matter what, he couldn’t escape the venomous web of fate. “Damn it!” 

“Your Highness!” Bai Ling grabbed his fist, which he had slammed against the wall. 

Prince Zhuang took a deep breath, quickly restrained himself, and calmed down. “Shiyong, listen to me carefully…” 

“Who…” Xi Ping interrupted him, his voice so strained it nearly tore his throat. “Who did this?” 

“I can’t explain it properly in a few words. You can’t stay in that place for long. I’ll explain everything to you when you come back, okay? Listen to me. The wind hasn’t risen yet in the Impassable Sea. Right now, take the finger bone that brought you there, return to the place where you came in, and find the inscription there. Remember this.” 

He projected an image of an inscription into Xi Ping’s spirit. “Find this. When you find it, use that finger bone to pass through. Hurry.” 

Xi Ping didn’t move. Half-kneeling, he held the skeleton’s hand, his gaze not leaving the skeleton. His expression was somewhat blank. He asked, “What happens if the wind rises? I think there is a wind.” 

This brat was truly full of curiosity. If he wasn’t satisfied, he definitely wouldn’t drop the subject. All Prince Zhuang could do was say, “Not that kind of breeze—raise your head, look at the cliffs on either side of the valley.” 

Like a puppet on strings, Xi Ping raised his head. He saw that in the ring of towering cliffs around the valley, the countless pitch black caves looked like one malicious eye after another, covetously eyeing his flesh and blood body. When he looked into the caves, the frenzied warning from his spiritual sense pricked his eyes almost painfully. 

“Suppressed there is the demon host.” Prince Zhuang’s speech was somewhat faster than usual. “When the wind rises, the demons in the caves will be shaken awake. There’s no way to determine when the wind will rise or fall in that awful place. The demon host might wake at any moment. There’s a ten position² demon seal there. With your current cultivation level, you won’t be able to control spiritual energy inside it. Don’t delay any longer!” 

“Right, I understand.” Having listened to this, Xi Ping nodded very firmly. “Then you’ll just have to put up with being in my mustard seed for a while.” 

“Wha…” Sparks nearly flew from Prince Zhuang’s spiritual bones. To Xi Ping, his voice actually sounded flustered from agitation. “Don’t fiddle with my…my spiritual bones! Can’t you see that I’m securing the demon seal? Don’t you understand that the people who came before you only dared to take a small finger bone? Aren’t you…” 

Before he could finish, the two of them simultaneously heard the sound of the sobbing wind in the valley change its tune slightly. 

Prince Zhuang’s expression changed abruptly. “Xi Shiyong, get out of there right now!” 

Xi Ping remained motionless. “How powerful are these demons? Are they like the ones in the legendary Great War of Gods and Demons?” 

Prince Zhuang nearly had a heart attack at his question—when he was studying, this brat couldn’t learn a thing even if it was taught eight times. He’d been nicknamed the “teacher’s headache.” But when there was no need for him to be clever, he could always hit right on target. At the moment, all Prince Zhuang could do was vaguely say, “Something like that. Since you know they’re powerful, hurry up and leave.” 

Xi Ping said, “I don’t believe it.” 

Prince Zhuang: “…” 

Was Xi Shiyong the wrath of heaven sent directly to him from the highest clouds? 

The “wrath of heaven” slowly said, “I’ve listened to shizun’s lessons about the Great War of Gods and Demons. Your shed skin forebear only sealed the demon host in the Impassable Sea by exhausting his cultivation and feeding his body to the demons. San-ge, even though you have innate spiritual bones, you’re still a mortal. The demons shut up in here can’t be of the grade of the demonic gods of antiquity…” 

Prince Zhuang’s head was about to split. “Whatever grade they are, they can still crush you…” 

“There’s nothing impressive about crushing me. Even a gold-armored zheng raised by the Shu could crush me just by sitting on me. But the Xuanyin Mountains have four high elders and thirty-six peak masters.” Xi Ping was paying absolutely no attention to the increasingly wrong pitch of the wind. “I don’t believe that taking your mortal skeleton can release the demon host suppressed here and leave all those mighty people at a complete loss. Before you, the most recent spiritual bones belonged to His Highness Prince Rui. Don’t lie to me, I looked it up in a book. You hadn’t been born yet when His Highness Prince Rui passed away. Even if they took your spiritual bones before you were born, there would still have been nearly twenty years in between. The demon seal was all right even with no one to secure it for twenty years?” 

Prince Zhuang: “…” 

He had never expected that at such a time he would hear of Xi Shiyong reading a book. 

There was a wail, and a bone-chilling laugh came on the wind. It was sharp and thin, echoing in the valley. The ground began to tremble faintly. The inscriptions that had been carved into the ground popped up. A rancid smell spread, the sky clouded over, and a bloody mist rose. 

“The seal couldn’t have been missing someone to secure it for twenty years, but it wouldn’t have been a problem for an offering. I suppose these demons wouldn’t starve to death in twenty years.” At the moment, Xi Ping could be described as so furious that he was brave enough to do absolutely anything. He turned a deaf ear to the laughter that could have scared a dozen Zhao Zhenweis into pissing themselves. He took his backup sword out of his mustard seed. “Who’s been raising demons in this damned place? Who took your spiritual bones and left you here as collateral? I’m going to get out of here and kill them.” 

“You know it’s an offering and you still want to pull the tooth from the tiger’s mouth? Xi Shiyong, you…” Before Prince Zhuang could finish, the spiritual sense linking him to his spiritual bones abruptly cut off—he had done what he could to escape the connection between himself and his spiritual bones nine years ago. It was only because Xi Ping, a person with a profound karmic connection to him, had touched them that the link had been reestablished. Now that it had broken off again, it meant that that bastard Xi Ping, not listening to a single word he said, had simply stuffed his spiritual bones into his mustard seed! 

The moment that Xi Ping “seized the spiritual bones by force” from the altar, the weather in the valley changed. Ear-splitting roars sounded. The starving demon host at the bottom of the fathomless sea was enraged. 

Xi Ping’s expression didn’t so much as flicker—even if the sky fell today, he still had to get these spiritual bones out of here. 

The sky in Jinping was so heavy it seemed ready to come crashing down on people’s heads. Dense clouds rose above Guangyun Palace. Suddenly, an unseasonal bolt of winter lightning fell, the light giving all the auspicious animals on the palace walls and eaves a malevolent look. 

“We can’t stop.” Emperor Taiming slowly shook his head. “The Zhou family can’t stop now.” 

The Marquis of Yongning said derisively, “The Zhou family’s forebear gave up his body to feed the demons and used himself to build the Impassable Sea—a meritorious deed persisting for generations. Are you saying that you not only couldn’t shield your children and grandchildren, you also had to turn ‘feeding demons with your own body’ into a family calling? If you hadn’t been willing, I don’t believe that Xuanyin would have publicly demanded that you place your own children into the Impassable Sea—Your Majesty, are you all so attached to that throne that gives you no freedom?” 

Emperor Taiming was stunned. Then he stroked his chin and said, smiling, “Zhengde… Zhengde, you really are…just as upright as your name³.” 

The Marquis of Yongning stared. 

“The war of gods ended long ago, and the structure of the five great immortal mountains…oh, there are only four great ones left now…the structure is already established. The world is clearly divided. All the ancient demonic gods have fallen. What kind of evil creatures can there be that my Xuanyin’s thirty-six peak masters couldn’t get rid of and would need ordinary mortals to stand guard over? After being held at the bottom of the Impassable Abyss for thousands of years, the demonic gods, too, ought to have starved to death.” 

The Marquis of Yongning faintly realized something, and chills suddenly went up his spine. 

“This throne that gives us no freedom—you’re right,” Emperor Taiming said quietly. “Since ancient times, my family has been a family of demon subduers. For thousands of years, a hundreds generations of my ancestors have taxed their ingenuity for the sake of this country, working night and day. Back then, it was my family that gave up the Xuanyin Immortal Mountains to the Southern Sage, gave up our bodies to fill the Impassable Sea. It is fitting and proper for us to rule this country, but now we must hold ourselves back on point after point for the sake of those so-called ‘great families’ of Xuanyin.

“Eight hundred years ago, Princess Duanrui with her innate spiritual bones was born into this world, and the whole family was wild with delight. They thought that the Zhou family would at last have its proper place in the immortal mountains. But what was the outcome? What has the Zhou family amounted to? A dog that Xuanyin uses to control the mortal world?

“The immortals have forgotten that demon subduers must have a means to control demons. All antidotes grow beside the poisons they treat.” At this point, the old emperor’s face took on a somewhat deranged expression. “The Impassable Sea is the only place that Xuanyin’s Sea of Stars cannot penetrate. It is the foundation of my family’s rebellion against the Way of Heaven… Since Anyang has already made her arrangements, it shows that Xuanyin has already learned of the deficit of spiritual stones in the southern mines… Where would you guess those spiritual stones have gone?” 

The Marquis of Yongning was dumbfounded. After a long time, he met Emperor Taiming’s bloodshot eyes. “Have you all gone mad?” 

“The ‘innate spiritual bones’ offerings of previous generations only learned of their fates on the point of death—that was for their own good. At any rate they could be happy in the mortal world for a brief time. Even if they had known that they had the deep Impassable Sea pressing down on them, they would still have been unable to breathe a word about it to outsiders. Wouldn’t that have been too painful? That pain has been borne by us…us despicable wretches who hold the throne on the basis of our nearest and dearest’s flesh and blood. We can only carry on bearing the sin of murdering our own family members, or else their flesh and blood would have gone to waste.” 

Like a sigh, Emperor Taiming said, “Ying has no full blood brothers. Can you guess why that is?”