“You want to marry me to a mortal,” Zhao Qindan’s sharp voice said abruptly. “What about the rest of the clan? All my shixiongs?”

Clan Leader Zhao unconsciously avoided her gaze and said haltingly, “No one can remain a mortal forever…”

This was true—the trouble with cats and dogs was they didn't live long enough; if they could have lived fifty or sixty years fed daily with white spirits and stuffed with elixirs without regard for the cost, they might also have entered the Way before the poison of the pills killed them.

Zhao Qindan, looking at her unfamiliar father, had a sudden irrelevant thought: Turtles are long-lived. Maybe someone has fed one like that. I wonder how many turtles the cultivation of Dongheng’s Sanyue’s so-called “inner sect” disciples amounts to.

“To enter Heaven’s Design Pavilion, you have to go through three rounds of examinations, but I didn’t, because I was the third person in my class at the Latent Cultivation Temple to open my spiritual eyes. The general commander of Heaven’s Design Pavilion in Jinping personally exempted me from the examinations,” Zhao Qindan said quietly. “The inner sect’s Green Pool Peak doesn’t take people from our family, but when Duanrui-shi…when Princess Duanrui came to teach scripture, she said that if I could find a Way of the Heart, Green Pool Peak could give me a reception order. Aren’t I good enough?”

“Of course our Dandan is…”

“Then why do you all think I can't protect my family with my own skills? You’d rather sell off a ‘cake’ while prices are high and get an entry ticket to Sanyue in exchange!”

“Qindan,” the clan leader shouted, expression becoming stern, “impudence!”

Zhao Qindan straightened her neck and glared at him.

Clan Leader Zhao had many decisions to make. He was beset on all sides. He instantly ran out of patience to debate with his headstrong daughter.

Had their family still been in Great Wan, still like the sun at noontime, she could have done whatever she wanted. No one would have quarreled with her no matter what she ranted and raved about; everyone had coddled her, anyway. But things were different now. If they couldn’t put down roots in Western Chu as soon as possible, the blessings of their forebears and the accumulated resources of a hundred generations would quickly turn them into a target!

A young person’s character could be blown around more easily than a slip of paper. She had only slightly outdone a handful of her peers, received a few words of polite praise, and she’d simply forgotten her own surname. And she wanted to “protect her family”—easier said than done. Never mind her, would even Xuanyin’s Princess Duanrui dare to say such a thing? Among the whole crowd of ascended spirit masters, perhaps only Flying Jade Peak’s Zhi Xiu would dare to say such a thing—all on his own, with no other mouths to feed, he could brag as much as he liked.

The Zhao family had fallen because their shed skin forebear had lost his mind and become a demon. Nothing would suffice but for another shed skin elder to arise. By the time this cicada had shed her skin, there was no saying whether there would be any cicadas left on earth.

“Marriages are the will of the parents. Where does your opinion enter into it? Your spiritual imprint and horoscope card have already been sent to Dongheng via the Yu family. I have already deliberate on this matter with the clan’s Exalteds. For now, don’t go out and fool around. Tomorrow I’ll have your mother come to make arrangements, have someone come to teach you Chu writing and the Xiang family’s history and rules.”

Zhao Qindan’s expression went from fury to resentment. Stressing the words, she said, “If worse comes to worst, I’ll return this body to the two of you.”

Clan Leader Zhao took no notice of her petty threat. With a sneer, he turned and left.

The girl was so spoiled she thought she knew everything. She had grown a little rotten.

A vein pulsed in Zhao Qindan’s head. She raised her sword, ready to charge outside, but two shixiongs formerly of Heaven’s Design Pavilion came toward her and blocked her way.

She called them “shixiong” according to Xuanyin’s rules, but in fact in the family’s generational ranking, they were older than her father, and one of them had even established his foundation while crossing the river westward. There was a major boundary between them; he could stop her with a mere raise of the hand.

“Dandan, don’t let this get to you.” The established foundation cultivator had a hundred years of cultivation behind him; his mind and his tone were both much calmer than a mortal’s. As he remorselessly placed a prohibition in front of the gate to Zhao Qindan’s rooms, he counseled her pleasantly: “It will be like joining Sanyue’s inner sect. You can go on cultivating once you’re there. Won’t it be more comfortable than Heaven’s Design Pavilion? Since there’s a shortcut, why go far afield when what we seek is close at hand? Don’t you agree?”

His manner was gentle, giving Zhao Qindan the false impression that she could reason with him. So Young Mistress Zhao pleaded bitterly: “Shixiong, why do we have to climb up this miserable offshoot of the Xiang family? Can’t we just guard our family’s hidden realm? Please, talk to my father. I’ll work hard to cultivate, day and night…”

The established foundation waved a hand. Smiling just as usual, he said, “What are you saying? How could our Dandan bear such hardship?”

Zhao Qindan froze.

When she had just joined Heaven’s Design Pavilion, she had run up against unrest in Great Wan. Evil cultivators and common people hoodwinked by evil cultivators were everywhere. Her shixiongs were using up bag after bag of spiritual stones and medicine to treat wounds; Heaven’s Design Pavilion was short on people.

Everyone was in dire straits, but she was protected by her shixiongs.

Back then, they had said in just this tone, “That place is filthy, don’t make Dandan go,” and, “Disorderly citizens are a thorny problem, don’t take her for such dirty work…”

It turned out that pampering never came out of nowhere. When she had been a cherished delicate flower, the people responsible for her had been keeping accounts. Now the time had come for her to repay them.

With a snap of his fingers, the established foundation sent a mind clearing talisman and a sleep talisman flying into the center of Zhao Qindan’s brow, knocking her down. He collected her spiritual stones and sword. He waved a hand very gently, and a wind swept Zhao Qindan up and took her back to her room in orderly fashion. He attentively swept her room with his consciousness; the incense burner and the cooler automatically lit and opened; even the noise of the chiming clock softened.

Then he added another prohibition outside, to make sure the person inside wouldn’t be able to escape even if she had wings. He made a “quiet” gesture toward the page next to him, who had come to bring something to the young mistress.

“Don’t give her any more spiritual stones. She has no use for them for the moment.” As if afraid of disturbing someone’s pleasant dreams, the established foundation kept his voice very low. “Give the fruit to a maid and have it kept on ice. This damn place is too hot.”

The stupid-looking page—Xu Rucheng—caught up and quickly agreed. He ran off, keeping himself to himself. Inwardly he was sighing incessantly. He felt that this sequence matched the plots of the operas he had seen when he was a child. After all this fuss, not only were the young mistresses in the operas not free, the young mistresses in Heaven’s Design Pavilion weren’t free, either. The words “young mistress” meant nothing good.

Just then, Tai Sui’s voice spoke in his ear without warning: “The Zhaos have pretty good judgment.”

Xu Rucheng’s face was expressionless: the uninvited guest had come again.

Great Wan had issued them mysterious wooden chips, the size of a copper coin. Nothing could be used to transport them; someone had come in person specifically to bring them across the river. If you spilled your blood on them, you could use your spirit to contact an unfathomable “senior” whenever you wanted. Also, when it was inconvenient for you to use spiritual energy, you could go through this senior to contact other colleagues who had the wooden chips—of course, they could only be used abroad.

The wooden chips were limited. In all, they were only given to a few people in charge. When Xu Rucheng had first got hold of one, he had felt extremely honored. He had gone out of his way to bathe and change, recite his memorized self-introduction several times, before finally spilling his blood. Then he’d heard a familiar voice that made his head ache: “I would have fallen asleep if you’d dawdled any longer. Well, Xu-xiangxiang¹, isn’t this a nice surprise?” 

It was not a nice surprise; Xu Rucheng was dumbfounded. He felt as if the top of his skull had been cleaved by a lightning bolt: how could the senior he had been so eager to meet be the rotten tree spirit who’d tricked him into a heart demon oath? And his lord and Mr. Bai had also been deluded by him!

He could only watch as his colleagues were bewitched by this evil god and talked amongst themselves about how reliable this senior code-named “Tai Sui” was, all “While reticent, he is all-knowing, so unfathomable”… Get the fuck out with that “reticent and unfathomable”!

This thoroughly wicked evil god had given him eight hundred nicknames and came over to make sport of him whenever he had free time, deliberately choosing all kinds of awkward moments to appear. Several times, he had spoken while Xu Rucheng was halfway through emptying his bladder, nearly startling him into pissing on his shoes. Xu Rucheng had hammered out the ability to keep his expression calm no matter what he heard.

Xu Rucheng took a deep breath and adjusted his mental state. He asked, “What judgment?”

“They’ve taken a shine to the Yu family,” Xi Ping said. “I don’t mind telling you, I’ve also taken a shine to that family.”

What, Xu Rucheng thought, you also want to marry the third-rate imperial grandson?

With a sigh, Xi Ping said, “One third of the whole country’s Moon Plated Gold, and medicinal herbs on top of that—how much money do you think that family must have?”

Gold smelters that refined Moon Plated Gold used spiritual stones, which were allocated by the public treasury; there was a lot of shady business involved there. And if you sold medicinal herbs to the immortal mountains, it went without saying that there could be false reports, jacked up prices, and shoddy goods palmed off as quality goods. On medicinal materials that went to the black market outside the immortal mountains, you could make even more of a killing.

And the money was only one aspect. If they could keep a hold over Moon Plated Gold and medicinal herbs, their connections in Dongheng’s Sanyue must far exceed the average person’s imagination.

Zhao Qindan’s father was right. Had the Yu family not had a sense of inferiority over their lack of family history and been obsessed with finding a “pure bloodline” with which to adorn themselves, the Zhao family really would have been setting their sights a little too high with these "backwater" upstarts.

Xu Rucheng couldn’t follow Xi Ping's crooked thoughts as they darted all over the place. He only said, “No matter how much money they have, it’s still a disgrace. This is a mighty walker in the mortal world from Heaven’s Design Pavilion… Listen, senior, when she wakes up, will she really try to commit suicide?”

“I doubt it,” Xi Ping carelessly said. “Didn’t you hear her say she still wants to ‘focus on cultivation and protect her family’?”

However ruthless her words, as long as she hadn’t reached the point of breaking off all ties, anger was just a fitting response to not being pampered, only a tantrum.

Could a tantrum draw blood?

Xi Ping went off in another direction: “But it really is ugly of the Zhao family to sell the young lady like this.”

Xu Rucheng felt that while this Tai Sui basically had no moral character to speak of, he could still sometimes speak justly. “I heard she was exempted from the examinations to join Heaven’s Design Pavilion. With one Latent Cultivation Temple class every ten years, you could count on one hand how many exemptions for joining Heaven’s Design Pavilion there have been. What a pity. I see that her mortal parents are just in the prime of life, so she must be quite young herself. The Zhao clan’s sins can’t be blamed on her, but the little girl will have to bear the bitter consequences in their place.”

“That’s right. It’s unsightly, is what it is,” Xi Ping pompously agreed with him. Then his voice softened with malice. “Hero, I have an idea to save the damsel from her despondency. Do you want to give it a try?”

Xu Rucheng: “…” 

He had a bad feeling about this. 

When Zhao Qindan woke up, it was already completely dark. 

Autumn was warm in Chu. Approaching the eighth month, the crying cicadas were still screaming clamorously. But not a drop of heat could intrude upon her little courtyard. Here it was warm in winter and cool in summer, extremely comfortable, like a gilded cage.

She a caged bird, a potted flower; they had even taken her sword and spiritual stones.

Without spiritual stones, a half-immortal could only drain spiritual energy from the surroundings to draw talismans. Leaving aside the question of efficacy, this was the Zhao family’s hidden realm, so if she moved the spiritual energy here, the hidden realm would immediately notify everyone.

She couldn’t advance a step.

Just then, there was a creak. Her personal maid quietly came in and put the fruit tray that had been kept on ice by her hand—for some reason, this “maid” was slouching and keeping her head down today, and walking stiffly. Unusually clumsy, she put the fruit tray down with a bang.

Fortunately, the young mistress was preoccupied and didn’t notice.

“They told you to come water and feed me?” Zhao Qindan said without expression.

The “maid,” usually extremely clever, was startled when she spoke. She hemmed and hawed and didn’t respond.

Zhao Qindan wasn’t in the mood to pick faults with servants. She gave a cold laugh. “Leave.”

The “maid” didn’t move.

Zhao Qindan turned her head impatiently. “I told you to leave…”

Then the “maid” suddenly took a step forward and pulled a bag of spiritual stones from her sleeve. “Young mistress, run away!”

Zhao Qindan was stunned.

The “maid” said, “I stored up the spiritual stones in secret. There’s enough for you to use. Young mistress, I know of your ambitions. Why should you condescend to take what is offered for their sakes? Hurry, run!”

Her voice was forced high and thin, and she spoke so quickly that it went off key. Zhao Qindan simply didn’t understand her. “Slow…slow down, Xiuyu. What’s wrong with your throat?”

At the same time, Xi Ping was quietly saying in the ear of Xu Rucheng, who was disguised as the maid: “If you speak in a falsetto again, I’ll curse you so you get stuck like that.”

Xu Rucheng: “…”

Life was truly hard.

Zhao Qindan opened the bag of spiritual stones and saw that it contained everything from white spirits to green ore, suitable for all occasions. It was quite thoughtful.

In spite of herself, the young mistress felt sorrowful: in the Latent Cultivation Temple, even the ninth princess had had to do her own hair. She’d gotten used to it. Since returning home she hadn't had much need for a personal maid and got annoyed when there were too many people around. On top of that, she was a proud and arrogant half-immortal of Heaven’s Design Pavilion with nothing to say to these young maids who had never left the grand compounds. She had always been an undemanding but unapproachable mistress.

She hadn’t thought that a young girl she hadn’t ever so much as looked directly in the face would be willing to run such a big risk for her sake.

Zhao Qindan was silent for a moment, then stowed the bag of spiritual stones in her robes. She looked up at the little courtyard she was trapped in and said with a bitter smile, “You’re a good girl. Thank you. But even if you stole me a whole roomful of spiritual stones, I still wouldn’t be able to break the prohibition put on the gate by my established foundation shixiong, never mind that you can’t get in or out of the hidden realm without alerting others.”

“I’ve heard that if you mess around with the immortals’ inscriptions, they might blow up. There are quite a few inscriptions on the inside and outside of our courtyard, young mistress, look.” The young maid—Xu Rucheng—spread his hand in accordance with Xi Ping's lousy plan. In his palm was a third-class inscription carved out of the wall. “While the courtyard is burning, you can run away in the confusion. We servants have special tokens for going in and out. With one of those, you can sneak out of the hidden realm.”

Zhao Qindan was so startled she jumped. “Put it down, inscriptions aren’t toys! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Heh-heh,” Xu Rucheng said like a stupid girl, “I had no problem carving it out. I’ve always been lucky.”

Zhao Qindan said seriously, “I’ve only learned a little bit about inscriptions. If used wrongly, you can hurt yourself and others—back in the Latent Cultivation Temple, one of my classmates was a shixiong who was such a genius he was going to be the first in our class to open his spiritual eyes, but he had a setback precisely because he fooled around with inscriptions. If there hadn’t just happened to be some seniors from the inner sect there, he would have flattened half the Latent Cultivation Temple’s valley with his inscription—where did you carve out that character from?”

Xi Ping was briefly stupefied by this unexpected blame flying his way. That’s bullshit, he thought, it was only an ordinary fireproofing inscription. Su Zhun isn’t human! He stuck me with the blame for Liang Chen's misdeeds!

When Xu Rucheng heard the story, he said feelingly to Xi Ping, “Tsk, how can there be so many brats who didn’t get beaten enough out there?”

Xi Ping: “…”

Idiot Xu, you’re done for.

“So much nonsense,” the suddenly capricious evil god said coldly into Xu Rucheng’s ear. “Move!”

So Xu Rucheng pretended to panic, shifting the inscription from hand to hand as if he were holding a hot potato. “Then…then what should I do… Young mistress, I…”

In a moment of “desperation,” he flung away the inscription, covered his ears, and squatted in place.

After hearing that this thing could blow up half a valley, his first reaction wasn’t to gently put it down but to raise his hand and hurl it away. Zhao Qindan couldn't have guessed that such a preternatural idiot could exist. She was caught off guard. “Don’t!”

But it was already too late.

Though neither Xu Rucheng nor Xi Ping knew much about inscriptions, behind the reincarnation wood was His Highness Prince Zhuang. This personage even dared to disassemble the shed skin elders’ demon seal; what obstacle were the third-class inscriptions in the Zhao family’s little courtyard?

Following his instructions, Xi Ping had ordered Xu Rucheng to swap the positions of the inscriptions in the courtyard. Hurling the inscription like this was like the burning of the successive camps². A fiery dragon suddenly arose in Zhao Qindan’s courtyard, but it didn’t even sound the wind chimes hanging inside. Roaring, it charged towards the established foundation’s prohibition at the gate. 

Xu Rucheng said, “Hey, look, young mistress, it exploded outward. I knew my luck was good!”

Zhao Qindan: “…”

Xu Rucheng quickly gave her a preprepared set of guard’s clothes and a token with entrance and exit inscriptions carved on it. “Hurry, stop dawdling!”

At this point, no matter how slow Zhao Qindan might be to catch on, she had to know there was something wrong with this maid. But there were voices outside. Her spiritual sense told her that her shixiongs were already here.

In this moment of peril, she had no time for suspicions. She bowed to her own instincts.

Xu Rucheng felt that he had done a good deed. Amid the confusion, he kept a stealthy watch over Young Mistress Zhao as she snuck out and asked Xi Ping, “Senior, what now?”

“Change your disguise,” Xi Ping told him evenly.

Xu Rucheng said, “Into who?”

“The bride-to-be.”