“Because the curse on my family has at last come to a head,” Emperor Taiming said. “In the war of gods, the victors became sages and the defeated became demons. The corpses of the beheaded masters fell forever into the Impassable Sea, their bodies dead and their cultivation eliminated, but their resentment did not dissipate. This is what gave birth to the countless true demons at the bottom of the Impassable Sea. And the head of the demon host is…” 

The Marquis of Yongning saw His Majesty’s lips move, but after the final words left his mouth, it was as if they had been swallowed by the air. Not even a sound of breath came to his ears. 

Emperor Taiming paused and said, smiling, “As expected. We are both mortals. I cannot say that name.

“This ‘head of the demon host’ feeds on demons. As soon as he emerged, the stars fell into turmoil, the sages working together were unable to snuff him out, and at last it was a forebear of the Zhou family who gave up his body to establish the ten position demon seal, scattered that great demon at the bottom of the Impassable Sea. Since then, the Impassable Sea has been impervious to surveillance by the immortal sects, and no one but a member of the Zhou bloodline can enter. Xuanyin Mountain betrayed us. Emperor Gaozong risked himself, passed through the Resurrection Vortex and went down into the Impassable Sea. At first it was because he wanted to raise a private army there, but instead he found, contrary to his expectations, that the scattered demon seeds at the bottom of the Impassable Sea were still alive. They couldn’t flourish, but…they carried some of the aura of that great demon. Emperor Gaozong, that old lunatic, did something that pulled a hundred generations of the Zhou family into a nightmare—he ordered a cultivator who was his trusted aid to remove his spiritual bones.” 

The old lunatic was calling someone else an old lunatic…

The Marquis of Yongning didn’t know how to react at first. “Gaozong was the son of Princess Duanrui’s full blood brother, so he also had natural spiritual bones?” 

“Yes. Their branch of the bloodline seems to have reverted to type. Gaozong saw his aunt’s fate with his own eyes and was unwilling to enter Xuanyin. He removed his spiritual bones at the prime of his life and from then on was plagued with illness. He died two years later, leaving a bone altar at the bottom of the Impassable Sea,” Emperor Taiming said. “The demon seeds were like waste discarded by the universe. They were the remains of the demon. Unlike other living things, they couldn’t receive the nourishment of spiritual energy, except through marrow made of spiritual energy in the spiritual bones of the family of demon subduers… Don’t you think it’s very mysterious, how the Way of Heaven leaves all living things one last gleam of hope?” 

In the heated room that was as warm as spring year round, the Marquis of Yongning’s old rheumatic legs ached faintly as Emperor Taiming spoke. 

“A cultivator only attains spiritual bones at the consummate open-eyed stage, and Xuanyin would be certain to know if a cultivator’s spiritual bones were removed. Fortunately, my family has innate spiritual bones. These spiritual bones, as soon as they’re born…even before they’re born, are separated from the body and end up at the bottom of the Impassable Sea, to constantly absorb spiritual energy, form spiritual marrow, nourish the demon seeds. The demon host is constantly renewed from the demon seeds, then is swallowed into the void and becomes nourishment for the head of the demon host. With the blessing of the southern mines, since Renzong’s time, the demonic energy at the bottom of the Impassable Sea has been making daily strides.” 

Hearing his diction, The Marquis of Yongning felt a chill surging up from his guts. “Your Majesty, when Southern He invaded the north, was it truly because the sect leader of Lancang Sect lost his mind?” 

“It truly was,” Emperor Taiming said. “Southern He’s greed knew no bounds. They selfishly brought Moon Plated Gold into the mortal world, until they had hollowed out their spiritual mountains and were harming heaven’s order for the common people. Had Lancang’s sect leader not gone mad, rather than being kicked out of the five great established sects, being led into injustice to the point that their Ways of the Heart were crushed, being condemned by the whole world…instead, they could in fact have brought themselves back from the brink of destruction, circulated spiritual stones from other countries for a high price, slowly recuperated. But…a shed skin great master like the Lancang sect leader should have had a Way of the Heart as steadfast as iron—why would he have lost his mind?”

“Why?” 

“Because in that year, Princess Jiade died. Jiade was the offering of Renzong’s generation. She was weak and sickly and had never married. She always lived in seclusion deep within the palace. But there are rumors that say she didn’t die from illness, but died in childbirth—that was when Renzong’s oldest son was born. The child of this illicit relationship between brother and sister was the next generation’s possessor of innate spiritual bones.” 

What was all this… The Marquis of Yongning’s ears were ringing from the wildly throbbing pulse in his own neck. 

“Suppressed by the ten position demon seal, the demons are unable to leave the Impassable Sea. Only when a new offering sinks down and the demon host rejoices will the demon seal loosen… Ha, perhaps it’s our forebear being enraged by his unworthy descendants. When Renzong sank the spiritual bones of his eldest son into the Impassable Sea, he took advantage of the seal loosening to take away a heart demon seed, which he planted in the Lancang Mountains.” With a sigh, Emperor Taiming said, “It wasn’t the Lancang sect leader who was mad. It was Renzong.” 

The Marquis of Yongning sat there in a daze for a long time, feeling that if you poured out the black filth of the Zhou family, it would stop up the Grand Canal for half a year. In comparison to the others, the one in front of him seemed open-minded and reasonable. “…I hardly recognize the word ‘benevolence’ anymore¹ .” 

Emperor Taiming quietly said, “It was brought about deliberately.” 

“What?” 

“Not long after I was born, my mother passed away. Anyang was only two. Motherless babies in the palace are usually given to the empress or another consort or concubine to look after, but Anyang and I were practically raised by our older brother. When he left the palace to set up his own household, his manor became our home. Or else how could Anyang have had so many opportunities to leave the palace to go strolling around in her youth?” Emperor Taiming said. “In the palace, the children of a single mother will indeed be a degree closer than others, but they wouldn’t rely on each other the way we did. That unusual closeness was something the previous generation deliberately promoted.” 

“Why?” 

“In order to perpetuate the bone altar. The Zhou family hasn’t produced any renegades like you, who would rather let the dead die for nothing and take your whole family into exile if it meant scraping that ulcer off the bone. Each one of us, since learning the secret from the previous generation, were already sinners. We could no longer leave that bone altar… In a thousand years, only Ying, feeling the pain of the demon host absorbing his marrow since birth, has known the whole truth. Though the Impassable Sea has kept his mouth shut, left him unable to speak to an outsider of this secret, he was still determined not to be manipulated in this way. How do you think the Imperial Consort’s later children died?” Emperor Taiming sighed. “Truly a demonic star from the heavens… What a coincidence. With him, the hundredth generation of bones, the great demon has at last taken shape. Nine years ago, the tidal wave in the Resurrection Vortex was caused by the great demon opening his eyes. At that time, half of the demon host was swallowed by him. Xuanyin Mountain must have been very nervous lately, because the Sea of Stars has been predicting calamity for no apparent reason… The demon seal is about to break. Zhengde, don’t you think that is heaven’s will?” 

“Your Majesty, forgive my rudeness, but if there truly was such a thing as heaven’s will…if heaven truly had eyes, it should have brought punishment down upon the Zhou family long ago.” 

Emperor Taiming laughed quietly. “Heaven does have eyes…” 

In the depths of the valley in the Impassable Sea, the altar began to shake. The joints and teeth of the skeletons on it clicked together in time with the tremors. Next, the peculiar laughter turned into a shriek, droning—an astral wind appeared out of nowhere in the valley. 

This wind seemed to be able to pierce a person’s ears. Xi Ping had just put away the spiritual bones when he was blown right into the air. 

Instinctively, he played his bone qin, like the time he had been dangling from the north slope of Flying Jade Peak. But while the urgent sound of the qin echoed in the valley, it didn’t move the inscription-covered cliffs a hair. He couldn’t even resist the wind. 

The tyrannical wind threw him fiercely at the cliff face. At the same time, in the cave facing him, a pair of blood red eyes appeared. The eyeballs were one chi square, maliciously waiting for the wind to blow this snack their way! 

Fortunately a half-immortal’s body was far more resilient than a mortal’s. On the impetus of that wind, Xi Ping abruptly turned around in midair and drew his sword. There was a clank as his sword hit something hard. 

The owner of the blood red eyes was an enormous lizard with the head of a man. Its thick and heavy body was covered in scales; on its neck was a head the size of a table for four. 

Xi Ping’s sword had jabbed that “person”’s face; it was as if he had sliced at a rock. Propelled by the force of the gale, the blade scraped against the demon’s face, sending up sparks. Next, the ordinary iron was defeated, and the sword snapped. Xi Ping was catapulted to the cliff face next to the cave! 

When it moved, the demon was also just as swift as a lizard. In a blink, it threw itself out of the cave and swiped its sharp claws towards Xi Ping’s middle. Xi Ping pulled out the spirit-winding silk and, ignoring everything else, aimed it at the inscriptions on the cliff. The spiritual energy flowing through the inscription character was momentarily blocked by the spirit-winding silk, and the cliff supporting the inscription immediately collapsed. Spiritual energy spurted out like the tide, blocking the demon’s claws and slowing the wind! 

When the wind paused, the floating “kite” Xi Ping rolled down along with the cliff. On the cliff face, countless demons reached out of the caves. Some had human forms, some were shadows, there were monsters you’d have to fill a whole page to describe… 

Amid the shaking, all the skeletons slowly turned towards him. Opening and closing their jaws, they seemed to be furiously saying: Ignorant boy, how dare you shake the foundation built here by a hundred generations of resentful ghosts! 

Xi Ping took only one look, then averted his gaze, his eyes hard. He thought, “What’s it got to do with me? Save your resentment.” 

He narrowly avoided a series of hands and claws and fixed on a boulder where there seemed to be fewer inscriptions. When he had rolled to that point, he grabbed the boulder to stop his fall. He raised a hand and stamped a hither seal in a crack between the inscriptions. 

Before going to a strange place, Xi Ping would stamp a spiritual seal in the place he set off from out of habit, whether or not he had a use for it later. 

Inside the demon seal, while he couldn’t use spiritual energy himself, it seemed that the spiritual seal still worked! 

The two seals instantly connected. Xi Ping, raising his half-snapped-off sword, threw himself in one-handed. Just then, a twiggy paw grabbed his ankle and pulled him down! 

Xi Ping looked down. Below him were countless bloody maws waiting to split him up and eat him. In the space of only a few breaths, the bottom of the Impassable Sea, where the wind had risen, had become congested with bloody fog. 

The demons’s evil eyes seemed to have floated up from the depths of nightmare. A look could sway your spirit. 

But Xi Ping looked directly into those eyes unwaveringly and thought, All these years, san-ge’s spiritual bones have been here with these things? 

He clenched his teeth fiercely and, backhanded, used his broken sword to cut through his own ankle. “You can have it, motherfucker!” 

The strength of a half-immortal neatly sliced through the bone. His flesh and blood fell along with the demon. The wind swirled the blood spurting from the wound all over Xi Ping. Wrapped in bloody rain, he passed through the hither seal and fell back into the reincarnation wood forest. 

The reincarnation wood forest seemed to be disturbed by his flesh and blood. The ancient trees began to tremble. 

A number of demons gave chase before the spiritual seal vanished. Xi Ping had no more strength left to grip the broken sword. It slipped out of his hand. He was soaked in sweat, as though he had been scooped out of the water. His vision went black again and again. “Help…help me out…” 

The reincarnation wood trees dropped a vine and scooped up this blood-covered person, making the demons throwing themselves at him come up empty. Then, the vine tossed Xi Ping into the dense forest behind them, right into the embrace of another vine. 

The furious roars of the demons echoed throughout the reincarnation wood forest. The towering ancient trees were brought crashing down by the sharp claws. 

Xi Ping felt that he had never concentrated so hard in his life. And it turned out that when you concentrated up to a certain degree, you really could weaken pain. 

Ever since he was little, he had thought there was something strange about san-ge and the Imperial Consort. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t understand it. Once he had secretly asked his mom, and she had looked as though she was going to cry, so he hadn’t dared to ask again. 

Now, it seemed he had finally caught sight of the secret undercurrents his relatives, distant and close, were hiding. He had made some faint guesses, but he didn’t dare to think any more carefully about them. 

Xi Ping remembered that when san-ge had been in his early teens, he had often left the palace, but it wasn’t because he had been very fond of play… He got tired so easily doing anything, he couldn’t have played even if he had wanted to. He had only gone under the name of visiting his grandmother to spend a whole day sitting in old Madam Xi’s rear courtyard, listening to the opera pieces he had heard a hundred times before, drinking tea so weak it had less taste than water, seeming more elderly than his grandmother in her seventies. 

Xi Ping thought, No wonder he would rather spend a whole day weeding the garden with the old lady than return to Guangyun Palace. 

No wonder that at only fifteen, not waiting to come of age, he had left the palace early to set up his own household and taken only a dog with him. 

Xi Ping licked his dry lips, casually pulled an inner robe from his mustard seed, tied it tightly around his wound, and stamped another spiritual seal under cover of the forest in case he needed it later. 

He had to leave this place with san-ge’s spiritual bones today; even if he died, he’d have to find another opportunity to die when he got out, or else san-ge wouldn’t be able to stay with the Xi family afterwards. How could he go drink tea and pull weeds in the old lady’s garden again? 

If he couldn’t even go to the old lady’s garden anymore, where could he go? 

Xi Ping wiped the blood on his hands off against his clothes, reached into the mustard seed, and gripped Prince Zhuang’s spiritual bones. “San-ge, how many of those inscription exits you mentioned are there?” 

“Only one.” At this stage, Prince Zhuang had no more time to scold him. Anything but helping him escape as soon as possible would be pointless. “But the location isn’t fixed. It’s tied to the Resurrection Vortex and related to the circulation of the water in the vortex. It’s a good thing you’ve only been there a little while. The longer you delay, the farther the exit will move.” 

Before he could finish, his connection to Xi Ping was broken off again. Unnoticed, a demon like a shadow had appeared, the demonic energy extending from it like hair wrapping around Xi Ping, growing tighter the more he struggled. Xi Ping tossed out the spirit-winding silk and began to rummage around with brute force, making a hole in the “hair.” When he fell to the ground, he stamped another hither seal. 

As he passed through the spiritual seal, it was as if the reincarnation wood trees behind him were of one mind with him. The moment he vanished, they toppled over, holding down the demon that wanted to give chase. 

Xi Ping threw off the demon chasing him, squeezed out of the spiritual seal he had left before…and ran right into a “person.” 

This “person” was tall and graceful, with a smile at the corners of his lips, sitting on the trunk of a chopped down reincarnation wood tree, a pair of eyes as warm as jade looking his way, as familiar as could be. 

San-ge? 

Xi Ping came to an instant halt. The obedient reincarnation wood vines immediately wrapped him up and pulled him back in a cautious retreat of over a zhang. 

“Oh?” This “Prince Zhuang” was slightly astonished. “You’re a perceptive little brat. Have you also got a first-class spiritual sense or better? You actually saw through me at a glance.” 

Xi Ping thought that if his ge had been here in person, he would have boxed his ears by now. Would he be smiling at him? As if. 

At the same time, he looked and listened in all directions and found that all the demons that had just been chasing after him like an avalanche, snapping their jaws, were roaring nearby; it seemed that they didn’t dare to chase after him rashly. He instantly became even more wary. “How kind of you to say so.” 

This “Prince Zhuang”’s face slowly changed. The muscles of the cheeks became slightly plumper, the traces of the bones became fainter, the distance between the brows widened… With a faint change to the features, he no longer looked like Prince Zhuang. There was a feminine look to him. Xi Ping was distracted and instantly saw the traits of many people he knew in that face where masculine and feminine mixed together. 

“I am called a heart demon,” the “person” said candidly. He curved his eyes in a smile at Xi Ping—those smiling eye were identical to his mother’s. “Don’t be afraid, you’re too young. You’ve yet to know the hardships of life or taste its flavors, and your spiritual sense is sharp. I’m the one who’s afraid of people like you.” 

“Really?” Xi Ping didn’t hesitate for a bit. “Then I won’t bother you. Maybe we’ll meet again.” 

Hardly had he spoken than the reincarnation wood tree tossed him several zhang away. Another vine reached over and caught him. His second time leaping through the trees, the previously obedient reincarnation wood tree got something into its head. The vine abruptly twisted around Xi Ping’s neck, trying to wring him. Xi Ping all but heard the sound of his bones dislocating—

The next moment, there was a scream in his ear, and a black shadow was pulled out of the reincarnation wood tree by the heart demon and swallowed right up. 

The reincarnation wood tree’s vine gently brought Xi Ping with his missing foot down to the ground and stopped moving. 

“That was a ‘parasite.’” The heart demon had his hands behind his back, looking at him calmly. “At the bottom of the Impassable Sea, these things are everywhere. Are you sure you can get out on your own?” 

For a moment, Xi Ping couldn’t speak. He only probed his dislocated shoulder with difficulty and pushed it back in place. 

“I’m an old acquaintance of Zhou Ying’s. If you don’t believe me, ask him. I’m the one who taught him about inscriptions.” 

Xi Ping froze—this heart demon knew that he could contact san-ge.

The heart demon laughed. “Nine years ago, when the Impassable Sea was unstable, it was I who helped him escape with his little friend… He was the one who let me down. It’s truly heartbreaking.” 

Without waiting for his prompting, Xi Ping had already reached into the mustard seed to ask Prince Zhuang. 

Prince Zhuang said, “The heart demon speaks nothing but lies. Don’t trust it.” 

But the heart demon put in a timely word: “A-Ying, you’re speaking ill of me right now.” 

Prince Zhuang, hearing this, frowned. 

The heart demon said, smiling, “Don’t be so nervous. I only want to discuss a transaction with the two of you… A-Ying, this little brother of yours, he can’t use spiritual energy, he can’t even walk. His condition couldn’t be more tragic, and he doesn’t even have a loyal and devoted paper friend beside him to help. Do you want him to escape from the mouth of the demon seal on his own?” 

Prince Zhuang’s spiritual bones were inside the mustard seed. Only when Xi Ping was touching him could he hear the voices in the Impassable Sea through the intermediary of Xi Ping. He couldn’t see anything. Hearing this, he was startled. “What happened to you?” 

Xi Ping said, “I’m fine. Cutting down any number of prattling little pretty boys is no problem.”