The west side of the Xia River, Tao County. 

This place was on the border of Western Chu. Southern Wan was just across the river. The two places were close, and people came and went between them. There was frequent commerce and intermarriage. Adding in Southern Wan’s civil unrest some years back, there had also been quite a few people from Wan coming to seek refuge. The longer the people of the two nations mixed together, the more this area took on a “Wan atmosphere.” 

Everyone spoke a mixed language, and they learned each others’s funeral and marriage customs. 

In Tao County’s Seventeen Li Town, a rather well-off household was having a funeral. Perhaps the deceased’s ancestors had come from Wan; the officiant had been asked to sing a Soul Calling Melody from Great Wan, but the instrumentation and the procession were all according to Chu custom. 

“Raise the casket, hang two mats, shelter it fully seven days. The Great Way touches Heaven and sends you back home!” 

The officiant overseeing the funeral claimed to have been born and bred in Southern Wan and to have done this work since he was young; he knew all the ins and outs. The upshot was that he was some kind of eccentric. His voice was hoarse, and he sang off tune. 

His beard was scraggly, his age unclear. His arms were bare, revealing weathered, sinewy flesh. His singing turned the perfectly good Soul Calling Melody into a work song for laborers breaking ground. Listening to it, the steps of the men carrying the casket were unusually uniform, resonant and firm, as if determined to make the person inside the casket roll over and borrow another five hundred years from heaven. 

The casket needed to make three circles around the town, bidding farewell to the deceased’s fellow townspeople, before being taken to the ancestral tomb. 

The torment of the eccentric officiant’s sandpaper voice nearly sent off all the town’s elders as well. As he led the procession, he calmly took in the terrain and scenery of Seventeen Li Town. He saw the “Immortal Palace” that cut across a patch of favorably situated land. There were a number of doors into the Immortal Palace, and he got a clear look at all of their rough orientations and so on. The officiant gave his colleagues carrying the casket a look. 

A casket bearer knocked on the casket a few times in a regular pattern: Each door has a pair of guards, and inside there are sure to be mechanisms and arrays. We’ll need someone to show us the way. 

The officiant nodded almost imperceptibly: Got it. 

This officiant’s goal in coming here was the Immortal Palace. 

This area of Tao County was remote and out of reach of the government, no matter which country you used as reference.

Border areas have always been cherished by the hosts of evil. 

In recent years, the title of Pang Jian of Great Wan’s Heaven’s Design Pavilion had changed from assistant commander to general commander, and he seemed in the process to have gone from a wolf dog to a mad dog. His treatment of evil cultivators was ruthless; he seemed ready to kill the innocent rather than risk the guilty getting away. This had forced quite a few roaming common cultivators to run to other countries. 

Comparatively speaking, Chu’s Sanyue Sect had a much more lenient attitude towards roaming common cultivators. As long as there were no obvious instances of pilfering heaven’s order or black market trade in spiritual stones, they could turn a blind eye; if the people didn’t complain, the officials wouldn’t investigate. 

So Seventeen Li Town, with its well-developed waterways and roadways, had gradually accumulated a black market that traded in magic weapons, spiritual stones, and immortal elixirs. It had been given the nickname Wild Fox Country. 

Wild Fox Country’s local thug was called the Snake King, who took his name from the snakeskin scars that covered his whole body. 

This Snake King had great powers and was highly skilled in making his own way. Some years ago, taking advantage of Great Wan’s civil strife, he had gone around everywhere hoodwinking people and collected a considerable amount of wealth. When Xuanyin Mountain had used thunderous methods to pacify the rebellion, the Snake King had turned around and sought shelter in Chu. 

At their nearest, Chu and Wan were separated only by a river. Chu’s Xiang clan had always cast covetous eyes on their wealthy neighbor and naturally had wanted to take advantage of the commotion to reap some benefit. The Snake King had been Chu’s guide in crossing the river and going south. Then a dozen or more of Xuanyin Mountain’s thirty-six peak masters had come down to the mortal world. An old, long-established sect’s knowledge ran deep; as soon as they acted, they stewed the whole crowd of hyenas. Sanyue didn’t dare to publicly fall out with Xuanyin, so in the end it all came to nothing. 

Chu had failed to take advantage, but the minor figures mixed into the plot were like weeds; as soon as a tumultuous wind began to blow, they grew wildly. Through his service, the Snake King had struck up a connection with Chu’s orthodox sect. 

This person had many peculiar methods. He was extremely skilled at turning everything to his advantage. He had perfectly bribed Sanyue’s outer sect, and he had collected a crowd of evil cultivators in Tao County who had nowhere to go. In hardly any time, he had gotten real results. Here in Wild Fox Country, he had become a local tyrant. 

It was said that in Seventeen Li Town, each and every insect and bird was this Snake King’s eyes and ears. He presided over an Immortal Palace that took up a hundred mu of land. Inside the palace, there were third-class inscriptions everywhere. Not even cannons could have brought it down. 

The officiant looked at the magnificent Immortal Palace for a while, then averted his eyes and lowered his thick lashes to hide the murder in his eyes. 

He took a worn out wine pot from his belt, moistened his throat, and, in a voice as jubilant as if he were sending a couple to their bridal chamber, he cried out, “The living make way! The family of the deceased bestows—money!” 

Paper money scattered on the wind. The funeral procession continued west, piping and drumming. 

The old gentleman inside the casket was said to have been over seventy. He had said many years ago that he was going to die, yet in all this time, he hadn’t died. The family’s filial son had gotten fed up long ago. Now that he had finally outlasted the old bastard, he wanted to go through the motions and get everything over with. He had deliberately chosen an officiant that cost half what other officiants did. 

This officiant didn’t seem very dependable, but unexpectedly there were no major problems with the procession. As for the tune of the Soul Calling Melody running off to the Beijue Mountains—if the Beijue Mountains didn’t object, why couldn’t his dad make do? The filial son was very satisfied. Having buried his dad, as custom directed, he gave the officiant a red packet to get rid of bad luck. 

The officiant took the red packet and glanced inside. He saw a meager handful of copper coins and suddenly hit upon an idea. 

Without warning, he gave a cry and began to wail, startling the filial son. “Brother, I’ll tell you, while I was overseeing your family’s funeral procession today, I remembered my old father back in my hometown.” 

The filial son said in astonishment, “What, do you mean your esteemed father also passed recently?” 

Then the officiant, holding the filial son’s hand, expressed at length that he wasn’t a proper officiant to begin with. It was only that his father back home had passed on, and he had been working away from home and hadn’t been able to get back in time to attend the funeral; this was a regret that would gnaw at him for the rest of his life. By coincidence, just as he had been passing through here, he had come across a wealthy family making funeral arrangements, and he had been unable to resist wanting to make up for his eternal regret, sing a round of the Soul Calling Melody for his father. How could he possibly take the family’s red packet? He was already doing well if he wasn’t paying his customer for the privilege. 

As he spoke, he unnoticeably tampered with the money. 

Hearing this, the filial son took the money back in satisfaction. This was wonderful. 

He took another look at the officiant. While he was sloppy, what showed of his features was quite regular, and he was nicely muscled. So the filial son, very pleased, took back the red packet and in the process touched the officiant’s clear-knuckled hand. He thought that even the crescent moon scar on the back of this person’s hand was very manly. Weepingly, he said, “Oh my, then the two of us are fellow sufferers!” 

This eldest filial son had once been an opera actor who played female roles. How good his singing was no one knew, but his looks truly weren’t bad. He had a feminine look, even more feminine than a woman. His nickname was Misty Willow. 

The Snake King was lecherous and enjoyed men and women equally; he especially liked those who were neither one nor the other. He had liked Misty Willow on sight. Hearing his nickname, he had been even more convinced that this was destiny and had decided on the spot to keep him around—“misty willow” was the name Chu’s commoners called reincarnation wood, and for some reason, the Snake King had a particular love towards reincarnation wood. It was said that he privately worshipped a statue of an evil god carved from reincarnation wood and said that this wood had brought him luck. 

Therefore, Misty Willow had become the Snake King’s favorite, and everyone called him “Lady Willow.” 

Lady Willow had been in favor for several years, and he had plenty of money. He was also a miser. The officiant who had overseen his father’s funeral had returned his red packet, and he, not minding the bad luck, casually put the money into his own purse. The next day, as usual, he went to the Immortal Palace to serve. 

Before going into the palace, he first took a deep breath—with the Snake King’s countenance, it would scare your soul out of your body to wake up and see him in the middle of the night. Misty Willow had spent a lot of time with the Snake King, and he had seen that each of the “immortals” who came from afar had their own magic power, and also their own unsightliness.  Appearances were secondary, anyway; there was no ugliness in the world that wealth and rank couldn’t overcome. But the “ugliness” of the immortals was different; all of them had an inhuman air. Misty Willow often thought he was waiting upon a talking lizard. 

From habit, he adjusted his own mental state, smoothed the hair at his temples, put on a smile, and slowly walked inside. 

A faint breeze brushed the hems of his clothes and branded invisible marks where his footsteps fell. 

It was night, starless and moonless. 

The patrols in the immortal palace had just finished swapping shifts. The mortal guards at the door heard a bell ringing and at once seemed to turn into human puppets whose souls had been removed. They didn’t move a muscle. A few figures landed silently. These were the officiant who had overseen Misty Willow’s father’s funeral procession and his colleagues. 

The assassins went right around the dumbstruck guards and slipped into the Immortal Palace. The “officiant” in the lead took out a talisman and crushed it in midair. A faint set of footprints appeared on the ground. He gestured to his colleagues and flew in following the footsteps. In less than an incense stick of time, they found the main hall of the Immortal Palace. 

Incense smoke curled through the main hall; it was congested with song and music. The “officiant” thrust his hand into his clothes and grasped a half-finished lilac knotted bag. He closed his eyes. 

A colleague, as if in consolation, gently bumped his shoulder. 

The “officiant” clenched his teeth and focused. He placed all his spiritual sense in his ears and listened intently. 

A drunken male voice was delivering a harangue inside the main hall: “…the south has been no-go these past couple years. Better slow down. Xuanyin is all wound up. Old Taiming ended up on the path of evil in his old age. Never mind making life unlivable for the people, he also cooked up something big in the East Sea. That battle back then! Ha, none of you guys saw it! Of course, it takes a nation in turmoil to make a hero’s qualities shine. It was back then that I made my little fortune…” 

When the Snake King put together a feast in his own domain, he didn’t cover up at all, exposing all of his snakeskin. Amid the voices of his guests, joining in his story to humor him, he hiccuped, unsatisfied, and squinted towards the dance floor. Pointing to the most attractive dancing girl, he said, “You, come here.” 

The music stopped at once. The young dancing girl was alarmed. 

From behind the Snake King, Misty Willow gave her a look, telling her to smile. The young dancing girl understood his expression and falteringly put on a stiff smile, stepping forward to curtsey. Before she could speak, she was dragged over by an ice cold hand. 

She felt herself pressed to the big python’s body and had a clear look at the Snake King’s frightening face up close. She trembled uncontrollably. 

“Why are you shaking?” The Snake King gently pinched her chin. Grimly, he said right into her ear, “While you were dancing just now, you didn’t raise your head once. What, do you think I’m ugly?” 

The young dancing girl shook even more violently, instinctively closing her eyes. 

A rough hand like a reptile’s covered her eyelids. “Do you know what happens to stupid women who close their eyes after seeing my true face…?” 

Before he could finish, just that moment, a beam of snow white light from a knife pried open the door to the main hall. The scream caught in the young dancing girl’s throat at last broke through the soft music. 

“Bold criminals!” 

The assassins descending from the heavens made the drunken ghosts and goblins attending the feast collectively sober up. Misty Willow saw that the situation was going badly and dove under a table without another word. 

It turned out that these assassins weren’t mortals. For a time, the immortal tools and talismans shone on each other inside the room, and curses and screams both flew. 

Misty Willow carefully stuck his head out from under the table and saw the Snake King puffing out a mouthful of white mist at the head assassin. He remembered this white mist. Once, a girl who had dared to cry in front of the Snake King had had half her face dissolved by this white mist; her features had all melted! 

But the assassin was fearless. He took out a chopper without a handle, drew his palm over the edge of the blade, and instantly activated the talisman on the blade. With a hum, wind from the knife cleaved through the man-eating white mist and went straight towards the Snake King. 

There was a crescent moon scar on the back of the person’s hand—he had touched it just the day before! 

Wasn’t this that unreliable officiant? 

Misty Willow was startled and retreated in terror back under the table. 

The Snake King whistled. Seven or eight open-eyed evil cultivators leapt into the room and held up the assassins. He himself turned and went through the wall. 

The “wall” was actually an invisible door. 

Some of the assassins assembled an array and stopped the Snake King’s reinforcements, calling to the head assassin: “Go after him, Xu-xiong!” 

The “officiant” said “thank you” and leapt to follow the Snake King through the invisible door. 

He went into the wall and out of it, and before he could stand firm, he heard a rumbling from all around. A huge spiritual beast that had escaped its chains threw itself towards him. 

The chopper in the “officiant”’s hand met it unwaveringly and stabbed right into the huge beast’s bloody maw. The huge beast gave an earthshaking roar. Then he gave a low shout and tossed out a talisman that went right into the huge beast’s mouth. Spiritual energy exploded and opened up the huge beast’s chest. 

Following inertia, he kept going forward. He took out a very impure jade stamp stone and dissolved it into his palm. When he had pushed away the body of the huge beast, the Snake King was nowhere to be seen. 

This was a secret room with a vulgar-looking reincarnation wood divine image in the center. On the spirit tablet was written the name “Tai Sui.” 

Dangerous inscriptions and arrays flashed all around. 

The “officiant” gripped the chopper tightly. He rubbed a talisman between his fingers. The talisman quietly caught fire. Blue light swept the floor and ceiling beams, turning up countless hidden arrays and inscriptions…as well as a line of hurried footsteps. 

Blood went to the “officiant”’s head. He was just about to follow the footsteps when, suddenly, he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye. He quickly turned his head—he kept thinking that the reincarnation wood divine image seemed to be moving, even slightly shaking its head. 

The “officiant” broke out in gooseflesh. He raised his talisman and lit up the face of the Tai Sui image with the blue light. There was a peculiar, mysterious smile on the statue’s face. It was looking at him quietly. 

The “officiant” quietly cursed to himself. “Playing tricks.” 

Then he averted his gaze and chased after the footsteps without hesitation, chopping towards the wall where the footsteps vanished. 

Before the point of the knife could fall, he had already felt that something was wrong. There was an array to reflect spiritual energy on that wall that shot back his knife blow in its entirety. 

The officiant twisted backwards and dodged the knife light. The knife light hit the wall but touched another array. 

In the blink of an eye, the whole secret room filled with knife light and sword images. In a moment of desperation, the “officiant” grabbed the reincarnation wood statue to shield himself. As he rolled, a half-finished lilac knotted bag fell from his waist and got caught on the statue’s wrist. 

Just then, a languid voice sounded in his ear: “I told you it wasn’t there. Look out up above.” 

The “officiant” looked up and saw a huge image of a fierce beast on the ceiling. The drawn beast escaped the picture and snapped its jaws towards him. The man didn’t have time to think carefully. He rolled desperately, holding onto the statue. He heard that voice say with a smile, “The entrance to the secret passage is in that thing’s mouth, believe it or not.” 

“What the hell are you?” 

The voice answered, “You’re rude, aren’t you? Whatever the hell you are, that’s whatever the hell I am.”