“According to tradition, Hui Xiangjun had three things. One was called Gold Imitation, one was called the Riverward, and one was called the Law Breaker.” Zhou Ying, with his hands behind his back, was slowly pacing along the flagstones at the Xia River ferry crossing, the stealth talisman on his wide sleeve flickering in and out of sight. Mortals looked right through him. “The Gold Imitation Technique has already entered the mortal world. Qiu Sha reached the ascended spirit stage under the eyes of the four great sects without having been noticed before—where was she hiding all that time? My guess is that the Riverward must have played a part. Now it would appear that the Law Breaker, the most incredible of them, is also real. “

At present, all the Xia River steamships had returned to port. The riverside was forbidden territory. A seal had been put up preventing the common people from approaching. Rows of cannon shone under the sun; the gunners switched shifts every two shichen, on guard against the opposite bank. If anything unusual happened, they could open fire at any time. 

This was a more or less fixed procedure in Great Wan every year during the Great Market in Chu’s Wild Fox Country. 

After listening to this, Bai Ling suspected that he had been lax in carrying out his Luwu assignments—the Luwu were hidden in all four nations and ought to have had their ears open to everything, but he hadn’t so much as heard of this “Law Breaker” or “Rule Breaker” or whatever it was; he needed his lord to tell him. That was outrageous. 

So he carefully asked, “Is that recorded in the ancient texts of the Latent Cultivation Temple’s Yanhai Building?” 

Zhou Ying looked at him in amusement. “Of course not. Leaving aside the Gold Imitation Technique, do the other two sound like things an orthodox sect would talk about? Hui Xiangjun was the person those demons in your hometown of the Impassable Sea most loved to discuss.” 

Bai Ling: “… “

Something had gone wrong with the half-demon Bai Ling; he had too much humanity, his seven human emotions more complete than in any human. He had been out of place in the Impassable Sea. He had been rejected by the demon host, and he had rejected the demons in turn. Before meeting His Third Highness, he had never spoken. Not even the heart demon had paid attention to him—there was no agreeable conversation to be had with him, and he couldn’t be eaten. Only His Third Highness, when the wind of the Impassable Sea had dropped and the demon host had disappeared, had made him come out of his seclusion, so he could briefly pass the time with this little child of royalty who had suffered so much from the pain of the demon host sucking his marrow… Now it seemed that His Highness had perhaps thought that talking to him was boring; at first he hadn’t even been able to speak smoothly, and he hadn’t understood anything. 

But…a faint uncertainty rose in Bai Ling’s mind: after the demon seal on the Impassable Sea had been broken and then restored by the three elders of Xuanyin, they had sealed it even more firmly; not even members of the Zhou family could enter anymore. While the words “Impassable Sea” could appear in a text, the “demon seal” couldn’t be mentioned, and neither could any person, creature, or thing under the seal. Only people like the two of them, with their profound connection to the Impassable Sea, could hear each other speaking of it. 

Except that this was after all a sore spot. His Highness usually avoided it in private. Why would he go out of his way to mention the demon host in the Impassable Sea now? 

“My lord, do you mean that the abnormality in Tao County now is caused by an immortal tool?” 

“It isn’t an immortal tool. Let’s call it a ‘demonic tool’,” Zhou Ying said. “Tradition has it that where this Law Breaker is, there is only one axiom; all other cause and effect and fixed constants no longer exist. The road of an ascended spirit evil cultivator leads to death. If she wants to survive, she must rely on disorder. The Law Breaker is truly tailor-made for her.” 

“Does such an immortal…demonic tool really exist?” 

“Why else do you think Hui Xiangjun had her immortal bones removed? Could it really have been because of the Gold Imitation Technique? Then how could Lin Chi have made it out in one piece?” 

Bai Ling hesitated for a moment. “Because Master Lin belongs to the main branch of Xuanyin’s Lin family and has backing?” 

Zhou Ying was amused by him. “You… Whenever there’s something you don’t understand, without exception you explain it as ‘having backing’. Why do you sound so much like that bunch of penniless evil cultivators?” 

Bai Ling rubbed his nose. “My knowledge and experience are insufficient.” 

Since taking control of the Luwu, he had mixed with people from all walks of life, and he had indeed picked up gossip from the mortal world. 

“There’s no rush, you can take your time learning. You’ve only been in the mortal world for fourteen years.” Zhou Ying waved a hand. “Sanyue’s Xiuluo sword, along with Kunlun’s Wanshuang and Xuanyin’s Zhaoting, make up the three famous swords. Wanshuang and Zhaoting were both tempered in the mortal world and rose along with their masters; only Xiuluo was a broken ancient sword. The genius of the Xiang clan was drawn into the remaining way of the sword in that ancient sword. His consciousness was trapped there. He would have perished, unless the ancient sword could be repaired and he could obtain a complete Way of the Heart. Many tool masters looked and said there was nothing to be done. Sanyue was willing to turn to anyone in their desperation, so they turned to Western Chu’s special product—its ‘common cultivators’—to solicit unorthodox methods in exchange for a place in the inner sect. That was the opportunity that allowed Hui Xiangjun to enter Sanyue. She had just established her foundation then, not to speak afterwards, when she reached the ascended spirit stage in the Lancang Mountains and single-handedly repaired Sanyue’s three great ancient relics. Had I been the Lancang sect leader, if she had wanted to dig up my ancestral tomb, I would have cleared the way for her. If she had wanted to go out slaughtering and setting fires, I would have given her my own son for a scapegoat. What does a member of the Lin family’s main branch have on that?” 

Bai Ling: “…” 

And this is why an ambitious man such as yourself shouldn’t marry and have children. 

“Take a close look at her history. She spent over two centuries at Sanyue, yet she didn’t formally join a lineage. She simply vanished into the crowd, ignored, as soon as she entered the inner sect. Later, when she came to Lancang, it took her only fifty years to reach the ascended spirit stage. Evidently, while she was a ‘disciple of record,’ Lancang Mountain in fact treated her well. I believe that the Lancang sect leader wanted to protect her, he just couldn’t manage it.” 

Bai Ling was startled. “Lancang Mountain couldn’t even protect an ascended spirit?” 

Zhou Ying raised his head and gave him a meaningful look. “That’s right. Why would that be?” 

It was said that Hui Xiangjun had come from an unorthodox background and practiced heretical ways, but in flipping through classical texts, you wouldn’t find any arrogant and presumptuous words or deeds from her; there were even reports that said she had been of a kind and gentle disposition, gentle to the point of being somewhat easily bullied. When she had been forced to leave her native soil, it had been because she had rejected Xiang Zhao’s marriage proposal, and he had brought his influential connections to bear to compel her into the marriage. 

All of her outstanding qualities had been in her works: the Law Breaker that the demons in the Impassable Sea had discussed with relish, the Riverward that was supposed to be able to come and go to an unreachable place three times, the Gold Imitation Technique that had allowed mortals to ascend to the skies and burrow into the earth while downgrading immortal tools…

“But I had been wondering, if such a thing as the Law Breaker truly existed, what ‘axiom’ would Qiu Sha use? It was one of your Luwu who pointed me towards the answer.” 

Bai Ling said, “Time?” 

“That’s right, time. She sent separate messages to me, Sanyue…and probably Kunlun and Southern Shu as well, repeatedly mentioning the seventh day of the seventh month. If my guess is correct, the axiom within that Law Breaker must be something like ‘On the seventh day of the seventh month, Qiu Sha will appear at Wild Fox Country’s night feast,’” Zhou Ying said slowly. “This way, as long as she’s there, it will forever be the seventh day of the seventh month in Tao County.” 

Bai Ling’s head swelled when he heard this—what did it mean that it would forever be the seventh day of the seventh month? 

He couldn’t resist looking towards the opposite bank. There was nothing unusual on the Xia River, but the opposite bank was wrapped in mist; an established foundation half-demon’s gaze couldn’t pierce it. “You mean that…Tao County…all of Tao County, is currently…” 

“Likely no longer in the human world,” said Zhou Ying. “It’s in the seventh day of the seventh month.” 

“Wait, but on the opposite bank…” 

“In the place where Tao County used to be, there ought to be only a passage to the hidden realm contained within the Law Breaker.” 

Bai Ling was all at sea. He thought that the wind off the river was a little chilly. 

What kind of unbelievable weapon was this? That kid Xu Rucheng must have made an unbelievably lucky blind guess—if he’d really had that kind of brain, his parents would have given up anything to send him to take the imperial examinations. How could he have wound up only starting his schooling after joining the Luwu?

“When the people inside realize that something isn’t right, they’ll send word outwards at once, but we out here must wait until it is the seventh and the date here has caught up to them to receive the letters. Prior to this, Qiu Sha used some method to scatter Xiang Zhao’s spiritual bones all over the place, sending a crowd of Sanyue masters scrambling throughout the country. I’m afraid that was so that they would miss their chance to come charging back to Tao County.” 

Bai Ling muttered to himself for a long moment. “Unless each person who enters Tao County does it at exactly the same moment, the ‘road’ to ‘get’ from their own point in time to the seventh day of the seventh month will be a different length. If they aren’t on the same ‘road,’ they won’t be able to communicate with each other. And no matter what they do after they go in, time will push them at a uniform speed towards ‘the seventh’… It’s as if she’s trapped each master hunting her in a different transport array. Neither ascended spirit nor shed skin cultivators can escape.” 

Zhou Ying gave a sigh of profound emotion. “Yes. An unprecedented and unrivaled superior among ascended spirits. She’s truly insane.” 

Bai Ling: “…” 

Though that’s a little irreverent, the two of you seem to think very much along the same lines. 

After pondering it for a long time, suddenly, Bai Ling noticed a terrifying problem. “Wait, my lord. When we’ve passed the seventh day of the seventh month, what will happen to Tao County?” 

“A good question.” Zhou Ying smiled. “There are two possibilities. One is that Qiu Sha can’t hold out until the last and someone kills her. Once its master dies, the Law Breaker will be removed, and Tao County will return to the human world—from our point of view, all of Tao County will return intact on the seventh day of the seventh month, with everything as normal. The people in it will probably think they’ve had a strange dream.” 

Bai Ling was a little appalled. “What does ‘hold out until the last’ mean…?” 

Zhou Ying asked a question in turn: “When Tao County lost contact with the outside world, who was the first person to enter? You have eyes in the vicinity of Tao County, did you see?” 

Bai Ling said, “I believe it was Sanyue’s Xiang Jing, known as ‘the one who reverses Yin and Yang with one stroke.’ This person is Xiang Zhao’s full blood brother. He was lured away to the place where Xiang Zhao’s skull appeared. When he couldn’t capture Qiu Sha, he immediately returned to Tao County. Our eyes in the vicinity of Tao County said that in the small hours of the sixteenth of the sixth month, when the mist had just risen in Tao County, before they could even report it, the Yinyang Reverser went in—he’s an ascended spirit master of inscriptions. Those proficient in inscriptions usually think they can understand the language of land and water. They feel secure facing any hidden landscape.” 

“The ‘Yingyang Reverser.’ What an unusually apt nickname,” Zhou Ying said. “Those inside Tao County will be in the seventh day of the seventh month the whole time, not knowing what time it is outside. But for those who only entered Tao County after the Law Breaker was activated, before they reach the seventh, time will flow the same for them as for us. If this Yinyang Reverser was the first to enter, then he’s the furthest from the seventh and has the longest ‘road’ to travel to get to Tao County. When he reaches Tao County and encounters Qiu Sha, it will be just as we are about to reach the seventh. Qiu Sha only needs to hold out a for a while longer, and time in the outside world will overtake Tao County…and then, ha, Tao County won’t come back again.” 

Bai Ling only understood the last sentence. His expression abruptly changed. “What?!” 

“Within the Law Breaker, all laws are nullified, but outside the Law Breaker, cause and effect and natural law still can’t be violated. Time cannot be turned back. No one can return to their own past. Once we’ve passed the seventh, no one from the outside will be able to enter Tao County again. And once that time has gone by, Tao County will also lose its connection to the human world forever. No one will ever receive letters sent out by those inside again. Even if the Law Breaker is removed, they will still be stuck in that single day. Isn’t that the same as disappearing from the human world?” 

Zhou Ying laughed. “Just that we know of, half of Sanyue’s ascended spirit masters have gone in, as well as three people from Kunlun. Southern Shu…ha, a few little islands that raise beasts—they can’t muster ten ascended spirits all together, and four or five have come. There’s also our Xuanyin’s precious Golden Hand. Single-handed, Qiu Sha has dug Sanyue up entirely by the roots and seriously injured all four great sects. Since the five sages divided up the spiritual mountains, has the cultivation world experienced such a heavy blow? It will be a heady draught.” 

Bai Ling’s mind roared. “But she… Isn’t she also going to be stuck inside?” 

“Not necessarily,” Zhou Ying said. “She also has the Riverward. The Riverward can pass through anything. Can it pass through time? We can wait here to bear witness. Will Hui Xiangjun’s ‘spear’ be more powerful, or will the ‘shield’ be more powerful?” 

Dong—dong—

Bai Ling gave a start and quickly raised his head—the big steam clock in town was tolling the hour. Twilight had begun; it was you hour. 

It was you hour on the sixth day of the seventh month! 

His Highness had known about the Law Breaker from the beginning, had guessed what Qiu Sha was planning from the beginning, but he hadn’t said anything about it until now. 

The Law Breaker could break all heavenly regulations and natural laws; presumably the gazes of the great spiritual mountains would also be cut off. But that wasn’t the case outside the Law Breaker. 

As soon as Zhou Ying spoke, it amounted to bringing the secret of the Law Breaker out into the human world; all the great sects would sense something. Places like the Sea of Stars were undoubtedly showing waves. 

He had deliberately waited until the four great sects had sent all their masters inside and then deliberately exposed the secret of the Law Breaker at this moment. When they realized what was happening, there would be a seismic reaction at Sanyue; even the shed skins would be drawn out of the mountains. This way, if Qiu Sha won her gamble and used the Riverward to return to the human world, as soon as she came out tomorrow, she would run headfirst into the might of Sanyue. It was a perfect situation for someone standing on the opposite bank watching the flames burn to win an advantage. 

And what was more, just now, he had first tied the Law Breaker and the demon host in the Impassable Sea together. The “unmentionable” prohibition on everything under the demon seal had become his protective umbrella. With the interference of the demon seal, the great spiritual mountains could only sense the information; they wouldn’t be able to overhear their conversation! 

“This Senior Qiu Sha has everything planned to the last detail. She used me to lure the Golden Hand here, and if she doesn’t keep her promise when the time comes, an open-eyed nobody like me won’t be able to do anything about it. I’ll have to borrow someone else’s strength and think of a way to get the Riverward.” Bai Ling heard Zhou Ying, sighing, say in a slightly exasperated voice, “This thing can only be used three times. I hope she hasn’t used it up, or else I’ll have to…go part of the way with her.” 

In the sultry late summer evening, Bai Ling was chilled all over. He couldn’t speak. 

But…what about the county full of mortals? 

And the Luwu caught up in this? 

Bai Ling abruptly raised his head to look at Zhou Ying. His eyes were as tranquil as the Xia River at this moment. 

Bai Ling’s heart suddenly sank. 

All the ominous premonitions Bai Ling had felt over the last five years were now coming true—His Third Highness’s refined skin covered bones that had been steeped in the poison of the Impassable Sea. 

And the only person in the world who could stop him was gone. 

“That’s…that’s not for sure,” Bai Ling forced his voice out of his dry throat. “Even if it is as you say, Qiu Sha has only been an ascended spirit for two years. As a still unstable early stage ascended spirit taking on a group of Sanyue’s…or even of all four great sects’s masters one after another, while she’ll be in a somewhat better position than if they were all besieging her at once, she still won’t necessarily…” 

“Won’t necessarily live to the end, yes, but who knows?” Zhou Ying said noncommittally, smiling. “Tomorrow we’ll take the lid off the dice cup. Be patient.” 

At the gate of the Immortal Palace in Wild Fox Country, where it was eternally the seventh day of the seventh month, no more mortals dared to linger; it had become altogether an ascended spirit battlefield. 

After leading the Luwu in dispersing the mortals, Xu Rucheng, in accordance with Tai Sui’s instructions, rushed at full speed to the boundary of Tao County. 

Thick fog had risen at the boundary. The Luwu Lao Tian tried tossing out a stone and didn’t hear the sound of it landing. He tossed out miasma dispersing and mist clearing talismans, and they also sank like stones into the deep sea. 

“I’m afraid that outside is… Xiao Xu!” After tossing out the talismans, Lao Tian shook his head with a grave expression and was about to say something else to Xu Rucheng, but when he turned his head, he found that that hothead had already walked into the fog. He was instantly so scared he broke out in cold sweat. 

Xu Rucheng had tried sticking his leg in. When he drew it back and saw that his foot was still in place, he gathered his courage and charged into the fog. 

He walked for a while, squeezing a small length of reincarnation wood inside his clothes—Tai Sui had told him to smear his blood on the reincarnation wood so they could temporarily speak through his spirit, to avoid him drawing suspicion by muttering to himself. 

“Senior, there’s nothing at all outside the boundary.” 

Through the reincarnation wood, Tai Sui said, “Turn back and take a look.” 

Xu Rucheng turned his head, and his eyes opened wide. He knew the length of his own stride; he felt that he had just walked half a li of distance. But when he looked back, Tao County was still not far behind him! 

Xu Rucheng walked backwards. After counting ten steps, he had already left the thick fog and returned to Tao County. 

Lao Tian seized him by the shoulder and gave him a fierce scolding, but he saw that Xu Rucheng seemed not to be listening, staring blankly as he received Lao Tian’s flying spit. “Tian-xiong, outside is gone…” 

Lao Tian said, “What the hell?” 

“Ten steps beyond the boundary of Tao County, there’s total emptiness.” 

Tai Sui’s heart sank slightly. This was about what he had guessed: in the mortal world, the sun and moon were rising and setting; in other places, the days were following their prescribed order. Only Tao County was in a hurry, striding right into the seventh day of the seventh month in one step, leaving other places far behind. 

From what that young woman dressed as a man had said, it seemed that it was the seventh day of the seventh month forever here. Then how would Tao County “return”? 

Tai Sui pulled his consciousness from the Luwu back to the gate of the Immortal Palace. A rain of blood came right towards him. 

This place had just gone through a crushing battle of ascended spirits. The corpse of the sixth ascended spirit master had turned into a rain of blood, sprinkling Qiu Sha’s plain-colored nun’s robe with stains. 

The Sanyue sword cultivator whose single stroke had cut down the reincarnation wood tree was already dead as a doornail. His head had rolled to the base of another tree. If no one came to bury it, it would soon turn into fertilizer for the tree. It rather spoke of the wheel of fortune turning. 

The mustard seed separating the ascended spirit battlefield from Seventeen Li Town was still in place, but the mustard seed’s owner was already cold. 

The other four ascended spirits who had died at Qiu Sha’s hand hadn’t been at the Immortal Palace to begin with. Apart from Xuanyin, the remaining three great sects were all represented. 

As for the established foundations and so on, Tai Sui didn’t have a chance to count—generally speaking, before he could get a clear look at their faces, they would have already been taken care of by Qiu Sha. 

Tai Sui found that these people all seemed to appear out of nowhere inside the Immortal Palace, and if the first words out of their mouth weren’t “It’s moving again,” they were “I can touch things now,” as if these were some prearranged code words. 

In other words, previously, they had been unable to touch anything here, and everything around them had been static to their eyes. 

They could see it but not touch it. 

Tai Sui considered it for a while and roughly understood what the situation was for these people who had come from outside: on the sixteenth of the sixth month, Tao County had vanished from the human world and gone to the seventh day of the seventh month. During the twenty days in between, people had arrived every day and decided to run the risk of entering Tao County to investigate. What they saw after entering must have been a static Tao County at the moment that the Law Breaker Bracelet had activated. Because they weren’t at the same point in time, for these outsiders, Tao County would be like a mirage; they couldn’t touch anything. 

At this point, an ordinary person’s thinking would definitely be that Qiu Sha was playing tricks. After discovering that they were trapped, they would rush to Wild Fox Country’s Immortal Palace, thinking that the mechanism for breaking free of the trap would be there. It was easy for an ascended spirit master to go into seclusion for a century; they had plenty of patience—and this place didn’t require so much patience. Soon, their own time would reach the seventh day of the seventh month, and they would reach the real Tao County. 

In the eyes of these outsiders, Tao County would suddenly “come to life.” Before they could catch up, they would have fallen into Qiu Sha’s hands. 

For the people inside Tao County, the closer to the seventh day of the seventh month that the outsiders had entered, the earlier they would appear; the people who had come in at the beginning on the sixteenth of the sixth month, on the other hand, would be the latest to arrive. When everyone had come, it would mean that in the human world to which Tao County had previously belonged, time had also reached the seventh day of the seventh month. 

And then what? What would happen? 

Tai Sui was appalled—he suddenly realized that when Qiu Sha had been talking about wanting to kill this person and that other one, that probably hadn’t been empty boasting. 

At first, the people arriving in Tao County had been the ones who had come in during the last few days; by that point, the people outside must have realized that there was a big problem in Tao County, and there would have been increasingly few people who would dare to run the risk of going in. From the point of view of the people inside Tao County, the later it got, the more outsiders would drop into the Immortal Palace. When that happened, Qiu Sha wouldn’t have such an easy time dealing with them. 

But she didn’t need to defeat these people. If she only did her best and held out until the last person came in, Tao County wouldn’t return anymore—it would be as if she had cooked all these masters at once! 

Just then, as if Qiu Sha had noticed something, she raised a sword and looked up, meeting Tai Sui’s gaze coming out of a reincarnation wood tree. She smiled meaningfully. 

That crazy woman! 

Tai Sui cursed and quickly used his consciousness to search for the young woman dressed as a man who had the Law Breaker. He quickly fixed on her: Hey, are you the one controlling that bracelet? Can you stop it? What did that great evildoer promise you? You seem pretty clever. She must have tricked you! 

But just as he was about to speak to that young woman, Tai Sui suddenly paused. 

Wait. If Tao County disappeared from the world…how would that harm him? 

He had been locked up in some unknown place to begin with, so constricted that his consciousness could hardly move. 

But now that Tao County had broken away from the human world, he could at least be a free “tree spirit” inside the county. 

Tai Sui’s consciousness stopped quietly inside a reincarnation wood tree. He was only a few chi away from that young woman dressed as a man, but she didn’t notice him at all. 

He suddenly saw the light: no wonder Qiu Sha had known of his existence but hadn’t taken any care to avoid him. 

That great evildoer had been certain that he would be on her side.