After the spiritual veins were restored, the wind of the great turbulence in the Xuanyin Mountains at last blew into the mortal world, and suddenly people were saying all kinds of things: of those focused on the big picture, some said this was the Zhou clan’s conspiracy, some said it was the Li clan’s revenge, and some rather overthought things and said that a new full moon position might have opened up, and perhaps the shed skin sages were scheming against each other. But what worried more people was, now that one of the pillars of Xuanyin’s great palace had fallen, who would come in to fill the vacancy? Would the immortal mountains build up a new clan? With half of Heaven’s Design Pavilion collapsed, what would they do about the missing numbers? In a few years, it would be time for the Grand Selection again—would they expand admissions? 

For each emptied seat, hundreds upon thousands of butts were itching to sit down. Instantly, the thoughts of anyone with a bit of money or a bit of influence were activated; they believed that the spring wind of renewal would blow into their own home and sang the praises of this ever more flourishing golden age. 

But this excitement was all for other people. 

The increasing prosperity and wild uproar outside had nothing to do with the Yongning Marquis Manor at present. 

When Zhou Ying woke up, he first smelled a faint chamomile scent. He turned his head and saw a pot of chamomile tisane being kept warm by a small heater beside his pillow. 

The old lady had been worried about not sleeping well at night, so she wouldn’t drink much tea after noon. Normally she would only drink sun-dried chamomile steeped in water with a bit of crystal sugar added for flavor. 

People long unseen were strange to the eye, and sounds long unheard were confusing to the ear; only smells seemed able to stick a needle into a person’s heart and follow them for the rest of their life. As soon as he smelled this scent, even with his eyes closed, Zhou Ying knew he had come to the Marquis Manor. 

He propped himself up and poured a bowl of chamomile tisane, but he couldn’t taste it. 

With a half-immortal’s paramount spiritual sense attached to his sense of taste, when he put food in his mouth, he could know all the hands the dish had passed through, from making to carrying… How could it be that he couldn’t taste a bowl of sweetened water? So he drank another mouthful and carefully attended to it. His numb sense of taste and his spiritual sense slowly awakened. In the water, the taste of the flower, of the sugar, of the implements, of the people…all gradually appeared to him. All that was missing was the smell of clove cream on her hands. 

Zhou Ying squeezed the glittering and translucent little jade cup and quietly said, “Bai Ling.” 

The room was quiet—receiving the Marquis’s order, Bai Ling had disrespected his superior and knocked him out. Now he didn’t dare to show himself. 

“I know you’re there,” Zhou Ying said. “Come out.” 

The room remained quiet. Only the distant strains of the Soul Calling Melody floated in from the mourning shed. After a moment, a distinctive whistling mixed in with the Soul Calling Melody, drawn out and sparse. Hearing it, Zhou Ying knew that Bai Ling had left. 

“Shiyong.” 

The whistling stopped. 

Xi Ping said, “Has Bai Ling left? I have a few things to say to you, and then I’ll leave, too. I know you want to be alone.” 

“All right.” Zhou Ying’s reactions seemed a little slow today. Out of nowhere, he said, “Did you make it in time? What did she say?” 

Xi Ping didn’t respond. 

Zhou Ying’s pupils contracted slightly. A little flustered, he pulled out the small piece of reincarnation wood hanging around his neck. “…Didn’t you?” 

“I made it in time,” Xi Ping finally said. “First I’m going to talk to you about something else. I’ll tell you in a little while.” 

Zhou Ying stared blankly. It was as if he had been in too much of a hurry and had left his soul back on the road. It hadn’t caught up to him yet, and his mind was empty, not very clear. 

“If there’s any leftover reincarnation wood, give Xi Yue a piece for me. That way, next time information can’t flow freely, there’ll be someone here in Jinping to keep an eye on things for you,” Xi Ping said. “As for the piece of reincarnation wood my parents have, just tell them it’s something I carried around with me. They’ll keep it safe, and I’ll be able to see if anything goes wrong at home. For the rest…for the rest, it’s uncertain what the future holds, and anyway, with the restrictions of the demon seal, it would be hard for you to explain the whole story. How about you just don’t say anything?” 

Zhou Ying knew what he meant. “I’ll let Bai Ling handle it.” 

“Okay, good. Master Lin says he can give you some spiritual image masks that will cover the wearer’s spiritual image. There won’t be much of a problem getting around ascended spirits and below, though it’s hard to say for shed skins, he doesn’t dare to give a guarantee,” Xi Ping said. “The shed skin boundary is one that all ascended spirits can neither touch nor comprehend, apart from Hui Xiangjun… I’m going to Sanyue to search for her relics, not just to get the Unbound Furnace to repair Zhaoting.” 

What was so great about immortals? 

Mortals looked up to the immortal mountains, thinking that they were lofty, omnipotent, that to look too long was to infringe—but couldn’t the immortals also die terrified? Didn’t they also feel love, hate, greed, and anger? Outside the Riverward, inside the Law Breaker, couldn’t the rules of heaven be pulled apart? 

He didn’t believe that the mountains couldn’t fall. 

“If you want the Unbound Furnace, have Lin Chi and Wen Fei take the aboveboard path, submit a request to the principal peak, then contact Bai Ling. Don’t sneak around.” Zhou Ying had drunk half the pot of camomile tisane, and the empty look in his eyes had settled. “Lin Chi shouldn’t think making tools is as easy as lifting a finger. Nearly all ascended spirit immortal tools require rare materials. Once he gets started, Moon Plated Peak’s accounts won’t be so easy to balance. Then there’s the fact that after the business with the Zhao family, the immortal mountains will monitor Heavenly Questions. Don’t get your head turned by how covert you think you are. The demon seal was laid down by those two old fools from Xuanyin Mountain.” 

Xi Ping knew that he had “woken up”. 

Having said this, Zhou Ying was silent for a long moment, seeming to be hunting through his marrow for a bit of courage. Xi Ping was also silent, waiting patiently. 

They weren’t in a rush, anyway. 

After a long time, Zhou Ying at last quietly said, “What did the old lady…say to you?” 

He had heard that when a person died, they could remember all the people they had known and all the events they had experienced in their life. He didn’t know whether she would have remembered him for a moment, and he had never dared to think closely about whether, since he never came, the old lady might have guessed something, whether she would have resented him. 

He was like a candidate for a county imperial examination who, though the rankings had yet to be released, already knew that he had failed.

Xi Ping softly said a few sentences in his ear, then said, “San-ge, I’m going to see my dad.” 

Squeezing the empty cup, Zhou Ying sat alone in the shadow of the guest room’s bed curtain. He waved a hand that seemed to have rusted towards Xi Ping. Then he took off the reincarnation wood and sealed it in his mustard seed, cutting off Xi Ping’s consciousness. 

The green jade cup shattered. 

The Marquis, keeping vigil for the night in the mourning hall, was repeatedly stroking the piece of reincarnation wood only slightly larger than a game piece. 

The old lady had been clutching this in her hand just before her death. It had taken ages to pry it out. According to Xi Yue, his Xiaobao had had a profound connection to this kind of wood, had used this thing as a communication device. His Highness had used an array to send it over along with a cracked piece of colored glass…as if these were old relics. 

What was inside? 

The Marquis considered it, then also smeared a drop of blood from his fingertip on it. He waited quietly. 

Where he couldn’t see, Xi Ping’s consciousness was roaming beside him. Upon seeing this, he softly called out, “Dad.” 

The paper money burning in the brazier crackled, and people came and went outside the mourning shed, so the Marquis didn’t hear anything. 

Great Wan was Great Wan. Apart from a dying person’s fading spirit, where he could briefly shelter, there was no refuge for him here—and it was no wonder that the old lady had taken him for a person come from the underworld. On the point of death, people likely had some unusual sensitivity. 

“San-ge said that back then, you colluded with people from Northern Li and were planning to flee to the Beijue Mountains to raise sheep. Pardon my oversight, father, you really can’t judge a person by appearances. My jaw dropped when I heard that,” Xi Ping said to himself. “Tsk, why didn’t you go? A big bowl of fermented milk and a big chunk of mutton would be plenty. It’s a delightful thought. If the Beijue Mountains had produced a rare wonder like me, all the hundred-year-old or thousand-year-old snow lotuses or magic funguses would have had to move aside. Those mountains could stand up and claim to have sturdier backs than all the rest.” 

Naturally no one would make a clamor around a mourning hall, and the Marquis also didn’t speak, so the scene gave Xi Ping the impression that the Marquis really was quietly listening to him talk. 

So he said a great deal all at once, practically all of it irrelevant nonsense—when Xi Ping came home, he would usually take off his head and hang it up along with his outer clothes, babbling about nothing to the point. 

When a whole pan of paper money had been burned, outside they began to sing the Soul Calling Melody. 

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

Xi Ping stopped talking. He suddenly remembered that when Jiang Li’s bunch of self-aggrandizing little evil cultivators had been making trouble at the Azure Dragon Towers, they’d had the corpses sing precisely this tune to start it off. 

Back then he had thought that the corpses wailing at midnight hadn’t come from the land of the living, and now he himself was no longer part of the “land of the living.” Hearing the song again, he actually felt a trace of affection. 

“If that silly girl Chen Baishao, who was too blind to see what was right in front of her eyes, were still living, she’d have to kneel and burn incense for me. I’m the genuine ‘Tai Sui,’ with a pedigree better than the one she blindly worshipped back then,” Xi Ping said to the Marquis. “If she’s watching from heaven, I suppose she’s happy now… If she could look after our old lady on account of me having taken revenge for her, that would be good. I figure Grandmother would like hearing her sing.”

The Marquis was a little lost in thought, cocking an ear to listen to the Soul Calling Melody, massaging the piece of reincarnation wood, not knowing what use it was. 

“Dad, I’m going far away again.” Xi Ping said to the Marquis, suddenly becoming serious again. “Can you and Mom wait a few more years?” 

Just then, a page walked in and requested instructions from the Marquis about something. The Marquis came back to himself and nodded to the page. 

“Fine, it’s settled. A man keeps his word, anyone who doesn’t pay his debts is a puppy,” Xi Ping said. “I don’t have my knees or my head with me right now, I can’t kowtow, so I’ll have to owe you. One day…” 

Before, he had imagined that san-ge would bring the reincarnation wood with his consciousness in it home and make a few little knickknacks, put one each in his parents’s and his grandmother’s rooms. That way, he could be a lucky charm for them like the karma beasts, guard the house and expel evil, come over when he wasn’t doing anything. Each night before they went to sleep, when they had sent the servants away, he would come to creak a bit, act cute, pay his respects. 

Now he no longer wanted that. 

Why?

Why, when he had been born as a mighty human, did he have to skulk around, a ghost unfit to see the light of day or speak to people? 

He had lost the body he had received from his parents at the bottom of the Impassable Sea. How was he supposed to explain that? 

The bailiffs had determined that A-Xiang’s grandfather was disorderly, the immortal clan had determined that the Chen family’s green ore field should belong to the Zhaos, and Xuanyin’s Bell of Tribulation was high above it all, determining who was a god and who was a demon. 

Wasn’t that ridiculous? 

The bailiffs and the lackeys at the former water transport and canal departments had already been thoroughly dealt with by the previous emperor, and now the Zhao family was a sinking ship that the rats were fleeing, waiting for the slavering vultures to swoop down and gorge themselves. The Bell of Tribulation’s turn had come. 

Xi Ping looked profoundly at old Madam Xi’s memorial tablet standing to one side and engraved her image in his mind. Then he callously withdrew his consciousness. 

Mom, Dad, Grandmother, forgive your child for not having the time to act cute. 

There was a lump in his chest as firm as the four spiritual mountain ranges, an eternal knife that would hum ceaselessly unless it drank blood. 

First he had to go make a scene. 

What kind of self-deceiving lucky charm was he supposed to be, sneaking around like this? 

Lucky my ass. 

There would come a day when he would come to the front gate in one piece, kneel before his grandmother’s memorial tablet and kowtow several times, then let his dad give him a beating with the discipline rod—for how unfilial he had been in going so far away. 

If he couldn’t do that…he wouldn’t come back. 

His spiritual sense was faintly touched. A strange yet familiar person was holding the reincarnation wood where his consciousness was hidden. Xi Yue came after him, clutching a piece of blood-soaked reincarnation wood. 

The half-puppet he had abandoned along the way was red-eyed, babbling as he cursed him up and down. 

“Hey, the little mute has learned to curse.” Xi Ping laughed, making Xi Yue kneel and cover his eyes, gathering blood or tears. 

Xi Ping didn’t bother him. He withdrew his consciousness. 

“Do not linger—”

Where no one could hear, he began to sing, finishing that Soul Calling Melody. It wasn’t to bid his grandmother farewell. He was sending himself off, full-voiced, the sound of it jubilant: “A lifetime’s joys and sorrows are like illusions. Go to the West…go to the West!” 

To the west—he headed towards Western Chu. 

At the end of the seventh month, the harvest was about to begin along the lower reaches of the Xia River. Wei Chengxiang, with her Silver Tray Lottery traveling bag on her back, walked over a ridge on the border of Tao County. 

Reasonably speaking, the soil on both banks of the river ought to have been fertile, but there were too many cultivators coming and going in the area of the Xia River each year. Though the vast majority of them had their own spiritual stones, it was inevitable that a few impoverished evil cultivators would “pilfer heaven’s order.” As time went on, the land had become more and more barren each year. It could only sparsely grow a few half-dead rice shoots. 

This year, there weren’t even any sparse rise shoots. After the Silver Moon had shone, all of Tao County’s vitality had nearly dried up. 

Wei Chengxiang looked around and saw nothing but devastation. Nearby, a whole family was carefully turning over the earth, hoping to harvest a bit of grain—this year, they hadn’t even been able to earn money at the Wild Fox Country Great Market. They would have to rely on begging to get through the winter… Many people might not make it through. 

As they turned the earth, they prayed to the local forbidden evil god. 

“Bless us, Tai Sui…” 

“Tai Sui…” 

With her spiritual sense gathered in her ears, a half-immortal could hear whispers a hundred meters away. Wei Chengxiang thought, “He doesn’t like it when people call him that. He’ll be mad.” 

Just then, someone knocked on her spirit. She heard the senior say into her ear, “What are you up to?” 

“Measuring the area of Tao County,” Wei Chengxiang answered, not showing alarm. “I want to calculate how many spiritual stones it would take to heal this earth, and I want to see how many people have suffered from the disaster… Senior, have Great Wan’s spiritual veins been restored?” 

“Yes,” Xi Ping said. Across the river, he was much more “free.” No matter where he was, he didn’t need to worry about suddenly turning into a mute while he talked. And after the Wild Fox Country Great Market, practically all the reincarnation wood in Tao County had once held his consciousness. Though Xi Ping couldn’t use spiritual energy the way he had been able to inside the Law Breaker, at least within Tao County, his consciousness could wander all over following the people calling for Tai Sui. 

“Stop measuring. Even if you measure it all, you don’t have that much money. Get ready to come with me. We’re going to Dongheng’s Sanyue to get the money.” 

“But how will they get through this year?” 

“This year, it was the Silver Moon that seized heaven’s order. Sanyue will allocate funds for disaster relief—and we’ve just picked up the Zhaos, so we’ll have them pay out some of their ill-gotten gains, too, cough up enough pocket lint to cook a winter’s worth of porridge. Don’t worry, I’ll look after it.” 

You had to leave behind what you took. Afterwards, if he found someone pilfering heaven’s order, he would keep them to use as fertilizer. 

Wei Chengxiang wasn’t very sure why this senior from Great Wan wanted to look after people in Chu. “Senior, they’re calling you Tai Sui…” 

Xi Ping said, “Then I am Tai Sui.” 

Wei Chengxiang stared blankly, remembering that when she had first started to call him Tai Sui, this person had groused and shrieked as if someone had stepped on his tail. “Senior, why aren’t you angry?” 

Xi Ping indifferently said, “It’s only a name.” 

The fake Tai Sui had died beneath the Bell of Tribulation. Now, he was the real Tai Sui, and he was going to smash the Bell of Tribulation.