The end of the sixth month to the beginning of the seventh month spanned the transition between summer and autumn. Wild Fox Country—as well as the rest of Tao County—had had neither wind nor rain, yet out of nowhere, the weather suddenly cooled; even the steam on the Xia River faded. 

For ordinary people, this wasn’t too big of a deal. Most of them thought some clouds had floated over and brought a cold wind. They closed their eyes, opened their eyes, and a day had passed. Whether today was the sixth month or the seventh, it didn’t impact their two meals a day. 

But those who were caught just on the line between life and death were stunned. 

Those who had been on the point of death vanished silently: all the items they used daily were in their original places, their residences remained, and their bedding still bore a human imprint—only the people themselves were gone. 

Those who had been on the point of life were tossed into the human world without warning: women who had been close to the end of their pregnancies woke up and found that their children had somehow come out—they could even open their eyes, just in time to stare back in confusion at their mothers! 

But for cultivators, dates were very important. 

The state of the whole universe influenced the spiritual energy in the human world at every instant. Even a person’s spiritual image had a great deal to do with the time and date of their birth. The times at which elixirs, immortal tools, and other such objects could be taken from the furnace were all strictly limited; they couldn’t be disarranged. Some special inscriptions even had to be altered slightly depending on the date. So the great majority of people carried a calendar block with them. 

Xu Rucheng, a half-immortal who didn’t dare to meditate under the eyes of the Qilin Guard and Sanyue’s inner sect masters, had to lie down and sleep like a mortal—as soon as he opened his eyes, he thought there was something wrong. 

Before he could fully wake up, he heard Tai Sui’s grim voice: “I was just wondering whether I would need to request a bolt of lightning from the high heavens to strike you awake. Not bad, Cheng-da-bao. Not even diamond is as sturdy as your slumber.”

Xu Rucheng’s tongue hadn’t smoothed out yet. He mumbled, “Do you have any orders, senior?” 

“Stupid baby, why don’t you take a look at your calendar block?”

In a daze, Xu Rucheng looked up according to his instructions and saw that the calendar block that ought to have said “the sixteenth of the sixth month” unexpectedly said “the seventh of the seventh month”! 

Xu Rucheng: “…” 

What was wrong with this calendar block?

“Senior…” 

“Shh, shut up!” 

He was just about to speak when Tai Sui shouted at him to stop. One of his Luwu colleagues, almost disheveled, charged into the bedroom. “Your calendar block… Hey, were you saying something just now?” 

Xu Rucheng gave a start and woke up completely: wait, weren’t outsiders unable to hear him talking to Tai Sui? 

Luckily, his colleague quickly redirected his attention towards his calendar block. “…Yours also says the seventh day of the seventh month.” 

“What?” 

“Nearly half of the arrays in the Immortal Palace without supplemental spiritual stones ‘died’ because they had exhausted their spiritual stones, and quite a few inscriptions have been damaged or destroyed for no reason. Several of the spiritual beasts the Snake King kept have simply vanished. The Magpie Bridge flowers¹ nurtured with green ore in the rear court hadn’t grown buds yesterday, and today there are so many flowers it’s flesh-crawling…those things don’t bloom until Qixi! What the hell is going on? Did we just lose twenty days for no reason?” 

Xu Rucheng and his colleague looked at each other in dismay for a moment, then suddenly said “oh no” and ran for it. 

The treasure list! The seventh day of the seventh month was the day Qiu Sha was planning to appear! 

The Luwu, the Qilin Guard…not even the masters of Sanyue’s inner sect had seen this level of combat. They were caught unawares and for a time completely at a loss. 

In fact, Tai Sui was the first to have noticed something odd—and not because he had looked at a calendar block. 

After taking back the piece of his consciousness that had been left behind in the knotted bag Xu Rucheng carried, he had finally remembered that he had once been human. Along with the memories had come a peculiar sense of oppression: his original body was in some extremely secret place, and he was bound by irresistible rules that seemed determined to obliterate all evidence of his existence. Apart from those with karmic ties to him, no one could mention him. 

But just now, the binding sense of oppression had vanished. 

It was hard to describe this feeling. It wasn’t that the force binding him had ceased to exist, it was that his connection to his distant body had been broken. He had become untethered, but within a certain range, he had also become “free.” 

Of his escaped consciousness, one part had been in the Snake King’s divine image, and another part had been in A-Hua’s relic—that knotted bag. Therefore, he had originally only been able to go to those two places. 

Apart from that, Tai Sui’s consciousness had only been able to roam through living people: when people believed in Tai Sui and whispered to him through the amulets, they would draw Tai Sui’s consciousness to their bodies, because worship was a “tie” in itself. Only it was rather weak; the “Tai Sui” these people spoke of was after all only a construct of their own imaginations. With this weak tie, Tai Sui could only unilaterally sense their joy and pain as well as their appeals. He had no way to respond, and he couldn’t act for himself. 

After Xu Rucheng had destroyed all the amulets, while people wouldn’t say anything aloud, when they ran into trouble, they would still repeat “Bless me, Tai Sui” in their minds. This kind of connection was even weaker. It couldn’t even draw his consciousness. It only amounted to noise in his ears. 

But now, Tai Sui suddenly found that, like in his vague memories, his consciousness could move at will through reincarnation wood! 

But even better than in his memories, he could not only move at will, he could also control the reincarnation wood as if it were his own body! 

He could move! 

It had been too long since this lonely divine image had known what it felt like to be his own master. Inside the reincarnation wood, he stretched his “arms” and “legs,” all but running a few laps. For a moment he forgot what form he was in and accidentally pulled up the roots of a reincarnation wood tree, nearly bringing down the house next to him. Then he no longer dared to indulge at random. 

The only inconvenience was that his existence was no longer unmentionable. If he spoke to Xu Rucheng without restraint again, the big idiot would probably be taken for a real idiot. 

Tai Sui had the feeling that if someone picked up one of his amulets and spoke to him now, he might simply be able to answer…though he was worried about scaring them—Tao County’s citizens had already had enough scares today. So he hadn’t had a chance to try it out. 

His consciousness circled the surroundings in a blink and found that Tao County was the limit of his freedom. 

Something had cut Tao County off from the outside world. 

“That Qiu Sha has some object,” Tai Sui thought. 

His logic in telling Xu Rucheng to write the date had been very simple: one person couldn’t defeat the whole Sanyue Sect. If she had dared to come to Wild Fox Country, she must have been prepared to be ganged up on. In a group fight with people whose cultivation level was similar to yours, the simplest strategy was to control the number of your enemies, ensure that you would only be facing opponents you were capable of facing; you couldn’t let them get together. And there were two ways of not letting them gather: separate them in space, or create a time difference. 

It was hard to meddle with space. Even if she had done it, she wouldn’t have been able to keep it out of sight of the “Snake King,” the local tyrant. But evidently she hadn’t. So it had to be time—when she had deliberately sent the listing in ahead of time, making an appointment for the seventh day of the seventh month before the Great Market had even started, that had substantiated his guess. 

Tai Sui had at first thought that the seventh day of the seventh month was a cover-up, and that she had some kind of superior immortal tool that could create an illusion related to time. That was why he had casually brought it up and told Idiot Xu to remember to mark the date when he communicated with the outside world, as a precaution. 

But it seemed that it wasn’t an illusion at all. 

She had really thrown Tao County’s time into disarray! 

If this had been done by an immortal tool, what grade must it be at? Shed skin? Or was it a divine tool at the heart of a mountain, of the grade of the Bell of Tribulation? 

Odd…what exactly was the “Bell of Tribulation”? Why had such a thing suddenly popped into his head? 

As Tai Sui wandered through all the reincarnation wood trees in the county, getting some fresh air and exercise, he considered this “Bell of Tribulation”. Suddenly, his spiritual sense gave a signal. 

A reincarnation wood thicket moved on its own in answer to his thoughts, the trees collectively raising their canopies, “peeping” up at the sky. He saw that the sky, where day had just broken, was changing rapidly. The sun, which had just risen in the east, “ran” restlessly towards the western sky as though there was a steam engine attached to its ass. It leapt below the horizon, leaving a freshly-washed starry sky. 

The bewildered cultivators at the Immortal Palace hadn’t even finished washing their faces when the lanterns at the gates lit up! 

Tai Sui suddenly caught a familiar female voice. It was saying: “In a place where the Law Breaker Bracelet is operating, there must be one fixed rule. The fixed rule here is that ‘Qiu Sha will appear at Wild Fox Country’s night feast on the seventh day of the seventh month.’ Apart from this rule, everything else here is up to the will of heaven. You’re best off helping yourself.” 

The Law Breaker Bracelet? 

Tai Sui scanned with his consciousness and found the mysterious young woman who had been selling Silver Tray Lottery tickets before. The prohibition preventing him from seeing her had also disappeared in the disorder in Tao County. 

The young woman dressed as a man was standing facing a female “iron pagoda.” Tai Sui was in a tree, but his line of sight was level with hers. When he met those evil eyes, Tai Sui understood at once who had been blocking his vision: this was Qiu Sha! 

Qiu Sha said, “Thanks. Go hide yourself. It doesn’t matter if you die, but don’t get in my way.” 

The young woman dressed as a man called her to a halt and said, “Don’t forget what you promised me. I don’t care whether you want to hunt and kill shed skins or whether you want to hack apart the Golden Hand. If you pierce the sky, pierce the bit above your own head. Don’t involve the innocent.” 

Qiu Sha gave an affected tsk. “Just listen to that. Is that how an ‘evil cultivator’ ought to talk? Are you from that…what the hell does Southern Wan call them? Oh, right, Heaven’s Design Pavilion—are you some kind of irregular salaried worker from Heaven’s Design Pavilion?” 

“‘Evil cultivator’ is a name they’ve forced onto me. I can’t control what other people think, but I don’t think I am an evil cultivator. Why should I talk like one?” the young woman dressed as a man said. “You’re an ascended spirit master. Heaven and earth record what you say. If you have the audacity to renege on your promise, take care that the Law Breaker Bracelet doesn’t strike back against you.” 

“How can a little person like you be so talkative?” With these last words, Qiu Sha turned and left. 

She licked her lips, her long, narrow eyes glinting like a starving wolf’s. She turned into a windstorm, swirling aggressively, tearing off half the canopy of the reincarnation wood tree next to her. 

Good heavens! 

Tai Sui, eavesdropping from the reincarnation wood tree, applauded the excellence of this feat. He had the feeling that she had plucked him bald, his “head” going from verdant green to chilly and bare. 

This person’s speech and mannerisms were precisely the way common folklore described a demon. Tai Sui had heard the young woman dressed as a man mention that Qiu Sha wanted to “hunt and kill shed skins” and “hack apart the Golden Hand”; he didn’t know whether she had just been exaggerating, but when he’d heard it, even the trees had broken into gooseflesh! 

He’d never even seen a living shed skin! 

Without any hesitation, Tai Sui passed through the reincarnation wood thicket next to him, chasing after Qiu Sha. 

But a pair of eyes appeared in the windstorm and turned his way with a false smile, looking at the reincarnation wood trees that were moving on their own. 

The great monster extended a finger that was a joint longer than other people’s and pulled down her eyelid, making a face at him. “Worth—less—wretch.” 

Tai Sui: “…” 

What, I came over to watch the fun, and that’s pissed you off? 

After Qiu Sha finished insulting him, she laughed heartily, her laughter echoing in the sky over Tao County like thunder, scaring a bunch of babies who ought to have been in their mothers’s bellies into crying…along with the babies’s mothers. 

Tai Sui’s troublemaking voice sounded in Xu Rucheng’s ear: “The monster’s coming, call your colleagues, get out of the way.” 

While others were frozen in place by that laugh and had no attention to spare to look his way, Xu Rucheng quickly asked, keeping his voice low, “Senior, what’s going on?” 

Tai Sui didn’t have time to answer. An ascended spirit master could turn distance into nothing. In the time it took them to have this exchange, Qiu Sha had already landed in front of the Immortal Palace’s gate. 

Compared to her, the subdued and dignified great gate of the Immortal Palace seemed a little poky in height. If she were to cross the threshold, she would even have to bend her head a little! 

Unfortunately, she didn’t know what it meant to bend her head. She examined the glazed lantern at the gate and waved her sleeve. There was a huge sound, and the stone gate of the Immortal Palace went to pieces. The third-class inscriptions were no match for her slap. They all disintegrated. 

“That’s much lighter and more spacious,” Qiu Sha said, smiling. She turned her head and beckoned to a dumbstruck peddler nearby. “There’s no limit on guests for tonight’s feast. Why not come watch the fun?” 

The peddler had gone out first thing in the morning and hadn’t noticed that there was anything out of the ordinary about the date. He was peddling his three-wheeled little cart, going to sell breakfast as usual. But before he could open up shop, the sky got dark. He thought he was dreaming. Now that he had been unexpectedly pointed out by the great monster, the peddler knocked the roller chain off his cart, so scared he put both feet on the ground and ran off with the cart using brute force. 

Qiu Sha cleared her throat. Imitating the tone of a peddler crying his wares, she called, “Spareribs! Cheap spareribs! Five hundred liang of white spirits per jin—”

Before she could finish her patter, a voice gave a loud shout: “You dare, evildoer!” 

One of the Sanyue ascended spirits who had been left to look after the Immortal Palace was also a sword cultivator. Hardly had he spoken than his sword flashed like moonlight on snow, aiming a blow right towards Qiu Sha. 

The blow seemed to split all of Seventeen Li Town in half. Never mind the place where the tip of the sword pointed; in the aftershocks of that sword energy alone, Xu Rucheng and the other half-immortals were forced to take out protective instruments. 

And the unfortunate peddler from before hadn’t gotten far!

A gnarled and twisted reincarnation wood tree shot out a vine towards him at lightning speed, rolled up the petrified peddler, and tossed him aside, narrowly throwing him out of range of the wind from the sword. 

The tree that was the width of a person’s arm span and the three-wheeled cart were broken up by the aftershock of the sword energy. Flatbreads and dipping sauce rolled all over the ground. 

The peddler fell several zhang away and heard a faint disdainful grumble in his ear: “Listen, brother, you’ve been having some excessive internal heat lately.” 

The confused peddler blankly held onto a length of reincarnation wood, rolling on the ground with his face covered in blood. He muttered, “Tai…Tai Sui?” 

Almost at the same time, another one of the Sanyue ascended spirits left behind at the Immortal Palace came onto the scene. An enormous ascended spirit grade mustard seed opened up in a flash. Before the earth-shattering blow of the sword could fall, the mustard seed wrapped up the sword energy and the ascended spirits to keep them from razing all of Tao County to the ground. 

As the blow from the sword fell, Qiu Sha turned into a sandstorm, dispersing throughout the inside of the mustard seed. “You’re even worse than Xiang Zhao. Watch me.” 

Next, the sandstorm coiled up into a vortex, and a beam of cruel and forceful sword energy exploded, heading straight for the Sanyue sword cultivator. Astonishment appeared on the sword cultivator’s face. He hastily raised his sword. There was a long groan, and a chip actually broke off that vital sword! 

The Sanyue sword cultivator instantly retreated several steps. “Xiang-shixiong’s Xiuluo sword!” 

This sword was Xiang Zhao’s vital weapon. The technique was Xiuluo’s authentic technique… For a moment, he had practically believed it was Xiang Zhao facing him! 

The sandstorm congealed into the tall form of a woman. She beckoned, and a lacquer black sword fell into her hand. 

“That’s right,” said Qiu Sha, smiling. “I ate him, so now the Xiuluo sword is mine.” 

Tai Sui had already moved from the reincarnation wood tree that had been struck down into another tree a little further away—fortunately, during the years the Snake King had been here, it had been popular among the locals to plant reincarnation wood trees. That was the reason he had room to maneuver now. That ogre had done some good after all. 

But what way was this great monster cultivating? 

The way of the tiangou²? 

She could eat anything, then take the place of whatever she ate? 

Before Tai Sui could work it out, a very familiar hothead ran out of the Immortal Palace. 

That idiot Xu Rucheng had stripped off the Snake King’s skin and shoddily disguised himself at random, dressing in the clothes of one of the Immortal Palace’s servants. 

Just as that unfortunate wretch came to the gate, the Sanyue ascended spirit who was supporting the mustard seed took a hit from Qiu Sha, and the mustard seed slackened. Only a sliver of the horrifying spiritual energy leaked out, but for a half-immortal like Xu Rucheng, it was like a mountain flying right at his face. 

His breath caught. He only had time to raise his chopper and cover his head. 

Just then, a talisman full of the distinguishing characteristics of Western Chu appeared out of nowhere and shielded him, dispersing and dissolving the line of ascended spirit spiritual energy. 

Tai Sui’s voice sounded in Xu Rucheng’s ear: “If you’re tired of living, can’t you go find a rafter to hang yourself from? Do you have to come here and let them cut you up?!” 

“This is wrong.” Xu Rucheng miserably rolled out of the bounds of the ascended spirit battlefield. “Wild Fox Country’s night market only starts when the sun sets, so the minor merchants in the area come out early to set up shop and leave when it gets dark. But on this damn day, it got dark so fast that they didn’t have time to get out of the way!” 

As he spoke, he took to his heels and ran. He took out a signal flare and tossed it into the sky. With a sharp whistle, it exploded into a big red firework—this was the Immortal Palace’s signal for an emergency evacuation, telling all unrelated people to get away at once. 

Then Xu Rucheng stepped onto his chopper and flew on it to disperse the nearby crowds. When he had flown a full hundred zhang, he belatedly recalled something and said in shock, “Wait, senior, was that you just now? You…you can use talismans?” 

Tai Sui said, “…Is this the time to study me?” 

He was also very shocked. 

He had seen this talisman inadvertently. Dongheng’s Sanyue was unparalleled in talismans, arrays, and inscriptions; none of the three other great sects could match them. Here, both righteous and evil cultivators all knew some peculiar talismans and arrays. While hanging around Wild Fox Country, Tai Sui had seen many of them and had inadvertently remembered quite a few. Though he had forgotten many things, he seemed to know instinctively how to control spiritual energy. Just now, he had gotten worked up and had actually managed to send out a talisman. 

These reincarnation wood trees, apart from not letting him pick up and run, otherwise really were like a real body—they let him operate spiritual energy! 

“I can disperse the leftovers of ascended spirit spiritual energy with a single talisman…but my original body is still sealed in some unmentionable place?” Tai Sui thought. “I’m not also some great evildoer who can shake the mountains by stamping my foot, am I?” 

He raised his sightline and looked at the ascended spirit battlefield in front of him and indignantly came up with a “Xu-ism”: “What in blue blazes! That Qiu woman is so impressive, how have I ended up like this?” 

Tai Sui was worried that Idiot Xu would get himself killed here—this person was a rarity; it wouldn’t be easy for him to find another one so dimwitted. He followed him closely with his consciousness, watching him shouting and herding, even using talismans, gambling with his life to shoo off all the merchants and peddlers who hadn’t had time to get away. 

Soon, the other Luwu took his example and went out after him. 

But Tai Sui suddenly frowned. A beam of spiritual energy flew out of the reincarnation wood and broke up one of Xu Rucheng’s talismans. 

That talisman had been carrying established foundation level power. If it had actually fallen onto a mortal, it wouldn’t have pushed them away; it would have flattened them. 

Xu Rucheng and the rest of this batch of Luwu, whether they kept their brains in their skulls or not, were all fairly reliable when it came to talismans. They must have trained remorselessly before coming here. But now, some of their talismans worked and others didn’t, and sometimes they would incredibly surpass their cultivation levels. 

Xu Rucheng had noticed it himself. He quickly drew back his hand. 

“Be careful,” Tai Sui said. “Time isn’t the only thing that’s in disarray in Tao County.”