Nowadays, the Latent Cultivation Temple was divided into two levels. The valley and the lower slopes were left to the provisional disciples who hadn’t yet begun to cultivate. Half-immortals who came from the outer sects to advance their cultivation could fly swords, so all their activities took place in the heights. Near the area of the inner sect was a tall mountain with many cave dwellings carved into its face. In imitation of Sanyue, they were separated by small manmade hidden realms so as not to disturb each other. 

Zhou Ying was residing at the mountain’s summit. When the clouds were thin, he could turn to see the whole valley of the Latent Cultivation Temple, and in front of him, he could overlook all the thirty-six peaks… Only the Qiu courtyard, where he had stayed before, was shielded by the dense forest in the valley. He didn’t know which family’s scion in this class of disciples had been assigned to it.

Duanrui nodded. Time was eternally stagnant for her. She repeated the question she had asked before: “How does all that you see appear to your eyes?” 

This time, Zhou Ying didn’t fob her off. He responded frankly, “Your Highness’s spiritual light is dim. Your form is occluded by dust. If you do not retire to seclusion to cultivate, you do not have long.” 

These words amounted to pointing to someone’s nose and saying “There is darkness between your brows, your lifespan is nearing its end”; it could be described as the extreme of discourtesy. 

But Duanrui was completely indifferent. She calmly said, “You can see my Way of the Heart?” 

Zhou Ying, looking at her, said, “And also how the foot has been cut to fit the shoe.” 

The corners of Duanrui’s mouth twitched, as if she were smiling. With a wave of her sleeve, she raised a cool breeze that landed in the valley and disturbed the bells of Chengjing Hall. 

The glow of the setting sun gilded Chengjing’s Hall’s bamboo forest, submerging the paths many people had walked. 

Xi Ping stared blankly at the Lingyang River for a long moment, avoiding several cars that honked at him. He was a little lost—the pleasure boat ferry crossing he had once run past barefoot had been torn down. 

Cui Ji still occupied the most luxurious location on the west side of the Lingyang River. Its outer wall had already been revamped several times in pursuit of people’s rapidly changing interests. If not for the small brocade carp mark at the gate, Xi Ping would hardly have recognized it. Despite its best efforts, it still showed inevitable signs of decline. It was quiet and cheerless. 

The steam carriages filling the street had no lanterns hanging from them; it was impossible to tell which families they belonged to. Among the faces flashing by ostentatiously, not a single one was familiar to him. There was no knowing how many crops of rich wastrels Jinping had been through. 

Finally, he found his way back to Dangui Lane navigating by the Azure Dragon Towers. 

The flagstone path had changed into a carriage road, and the appearance of Dangui Lane had also greatly altered. San-ge had said that the Marquis Manor had renovated its courtyard, but for some reason, the outer wall, along with the front and side gates, hadn’t been made over along with it. They looked so old that they stuck out. 

Out of nowhere, timidity rose in Xi Ping’s heart. He dithered at the gate for a long time, instinctively looking for people he knew; that was when he found that neither Zhou Ying nor Bai Ling had responded to his letter. 

He was just thinking something was off when he heard the sound of a door. A man walked outside in the Marquis Manor, around thirty, with a big face, dressed in long robes and wearing a short beard; he had quite a dignified manner. This man was assigning work to a group of servants and pages. The porter was nodding and bowing, constantly repeating “Master Zhang,” rather fawning on this person. 

He had heard that the old butler Wu Letai had died last year. Xi Ping guessed that this might be the new butler. 

It was natural for staff to be replaced, and Xi Ping had no objections to a new butler…but he still felt a little unhappy for no reason. 

Perhaps sensing his gaze, the new butler inadvertently glanced in Xi Ping’s direction. Only a glance, and at once it was as if he had been struck by lightning. 

His small eyes instantly turned round. He stared dumbfounded at Xi Ping for a long time, then stammered out, “…Young master?” 

Xi Ping felt that this man’s features, pushed into a lump by flesh, were a little familiar, so he smiled at him and thought, Who’s this now? 

Before he could remember, the round-faced man, casting aside his dignity, took to his heels and scrambled towards him. He tripped over the threshold and nearly fell flat on his face. The porter and the servants quickly came forward to help him up, but the man shook them off as if in a state of unbearable anxiety. Forgetting himself, he stumbled before Xi Ping and said tearfully, “Young master! Have you come back?” 

He felt to his knees with a thud. “I’m Haozhong!” 

Xi Ping nearly took half a step back—Haozhong had grown from his namesake bell into a whole set of bells. He had stubbed his toe against the marks left by time on this childhood companion. 

Before he could recover, someone went to bring the news to the Marquis Manor. Xi Yue was the first to charge out through the crowd. Then it was the Marquis, and Madam Cui, who could no longer walk very nimbly…

The bottomless mundane world swallowed him up in one gulp. 

In the spiritual mountains, Zhou Ying gathered back his consciousness and listened to Princess Duanrui’s voice, still as an ancient well. 

“The way of clarity and unfeeling is an ancient inheritance—‘the wisest is unmoved by sentiment, and unmoved by sentiment sees the greatest good.’ Therefore, it has historically been viewed as the ancestor of the three thousand paths of the Great Way, as well as the basis of cultivation. But this way is unusually arduous. Since time immemorial, it has produced no shed skin. My shizun died in the middle ascended spirit stage. At the time, she was teaching scripture to all her disciples as usual. She was merely reading from the text, not saying a single phrase out of the ordinary. But halfway through, a smile suddenly appeared on her face. She closed her eyes and passed away—before me, she was the person to go farthest in the way of clarity.” 

She paused briefly. “As for me, you must have seen that the end of my life is near.” 

“Yes,” Zhou Ying responded.

Duanrui continued, “Once you enter this way, you will be untouched by emotion, your bonds to the world severed, all love and hate dispelled. Have you thought it through?” 

Zhou Ying didn’t answer at once. He turned his head slightly eastward—that was the direction of Jinping.

To avoid disturbing the Azure Dragon Towers, Xi Ping had hidden his aura when entering Jinping, but the activity in Dangui Lane couldn’t be kept down. 

Pang Jian landed on a streetlamp at the corner and looked at the brightly lit Marquis Manor from afar. He didn’t bother them rashly. After their parting in Demon Country, the tip of years of filth had been uncovered, then once again hastily covered up at the bottom of the Impassable Sea by the Bell of Tribulation. Zhou Ying had towered into view in the mortal world like the projection of a demon. General Zhi had Flying Jade Peak locked up to this day. And the life of the puny half-immortal who had been involved in it all had become an enigma, something no one in the immortal mountains could breathe a word about. 

Walkers in the mortal world were unqualified to rise to heaven or sink into the earth, but he had scented the moisture of an approaching storm. 

Pang Jian glanced towards Prince Zhuang Manor and saw that the half-demon paperman Bai Ling had appeared at some point and was also watching the Marquis Manor from afar. 

Pang Jian’s lips moved. He sent a message: “I heard…” 

Bai Ling raised a finger towards him expressionlessly: Shh, not now, this is a rare happy reunion. 

Xi Ping was rejoicing that he had no Way of the Heart. In a daze, he suddenly understood somewhat why Xuanyin Mountain didn’t especially encourage inner sect disciples to establish foundations and become set in a way before their relatives in the mortal world passed away. At a loss, he couldn’t resist being weak enough to try anything that might help. He once again called a cry for help to Zhou Ying across the distance. 

Zhou Ying didn’t hear it. He averted his gaze and nodded to Princess Duanrui. “Yes.” 

“The tribulation of the Impassable Sea arose because of me and ended with you. I suppose there must be destiny in this.” Watching him, Princess Duanrui’s spiritual light suddenly dimmed considerably. For an instant, a trace of weariness appeared on her unaging, unchanging sculpture of a countenance. 

She was eight hundred years old. 

“In this matter, no predecessors have had the natural gifts you possess. The way of clarity has been waiting for you for a long time.” She extended a hand to tap Zhou Ying’s spirit. “Follow me.” 

There was a roar in Zhou Ying’s ears. The pain of the demon host sucking his marrow in his youth, innumerable sleepless nights in the Guangyun Palace, a ridiculous ballad, the taste of blood, the taste of snow wine, the smell of putrefaction, his grandmother’s warm smell of elderliness… Many sharp emotions that had been concealed over the years surged up. His spirit shook violently. For a moment, he couldn’t catch his breath. 

But he didn’t dodge it. He inspected his past bit by bit, hearing the ancient echoes pour into his consciousness. 

Anger, enmity, happiness, anticipation… One after another, they stagnated, freezing into ice sculptures that no longer clamored, arrayed in his spirit. Zhou Ying abruptly looked around and saw that a mirror seemed to have appeared in his spirit. The mirror showed him raving, crying, and laughing, in many different states. All of them were cut off by the surface of the mirror. All the things that touched his state of mind were inside the mirror. Then, they disappeared. 

His past was clear. He had never been so calm in his life. 

Having removed all interference, the suspicions that each person with the misfortune to be born with a paramount spiritual sense spent a lifetime strenuously pursuing settled clearly before his eyes. 

Zhou Ying’s eyes suddenly opened. 

Not getting an answer from him three times, Xi Ping at last became alarmed. His restrained consciousness swept through the whole of Jinping without warning, immediately catching Pang Jian and Bai Ling. 

Pang Jian sucked in a breath—this was an ascended spirit! 

Bai Ling turned, ready to leave, but he was nailed in place by a beam of spiritual light. 

In the immortal mountains, Princess Duanrui held up an established foundation pill, but she hung back, not giving it to Zhou Ying. “You have seen the way of clarity. What did you see?” 

The false courtesy and ingrained cruelty on Zhou Ying’s brow were gone. He shook his head towards her. “Your Highness, I cannot say.” 

First, Duanrui froze. Then she seemed to understand something. The center of her brow abruptly cracked. Wrinkles appeared all over her face. Her hair turned white. The spiritual energy around her billowed the sleeves of her robes. Lightning flashed outside the window. 

But it was only for an instant. Then she once again suppressed all unusual manifestations, offered the established foundation pill to Zhou Ying, and nodded gently. “As I thought.” 

Meanwhile, Jinping’s seven Azure Dragon Towers seemed to have been scared out of their wits. Their bells shook wildly. Pang Jian said in horror, “Xi Shiyong, you…” 

Before he could finish, a figure crossed the skies like a white rainbow, its arc flying towards the Xuanyin Mountains. 

Torrential rain was falling in Jingzhou. The dense clouds were unexpectedly ripped apart by that figure. The people busy dredging the gutters looked up blankly. 

The arrays of the Latent Cultivation Temple, one of the sect’s important locations, were torn apart barehanded. The young disciples attending evening class in the Qiankun Tower watched in alarm as Luo-shixiong fell on his rear amid the shaking. 

Xi Ping disregarded Xuanyin’s brutal great mountain array and charged right in, narrowly stopping in his tracks before bumping into the protective screen Princess Duanrui had created. 

Spiritual light glimmered at the summit of the mountain, a rosy glow like satin—an immortal was establishing a foundation.

Being born with spiritual bones was connected to bloodline. After generation upon generation of selection by the Zhou family, innate spiritual bones had nearly become a family speciality. 

But not the paramount spiritual sense. 

It seemed to have nothing to do with bloodline. It fell at random among the multitude. It could be an imperial kinsman, or it could be a member of the common people—of the latter, even fewer survived. 

A first-class spiritual sense was a gift; a mortal who had it was sure to win when gambling, and with it, cultivation brought twice the results for half the work. But a paramount spiritual sense seemed to be a curse, each person who possessed it having a rougher lot in life than the next; therefore, each had their own insanity…as if there was an obscure power silencing those who would divulge the designs of heaven. 

When it came down to it, every survivor who bore this curse wanted this world to answer for it.

This was what Wangge Luobao thought to himself as he watched Zhuoming from afar. 

Zhuoming was using a small knife to carve a portrait onto his own body. His handiwork was poor. No one could tell whom he was carving. 

When he was finished, he grew a mouth on the bloody portrait and began to hurl insults at himself. 

This time the mouth was calling him a “rebellious disciple”; presumably the face he had carved was Xuanwu’s. He spoke nothing but obscenities. 

Wangge Luobao looked on, feeling that, no matter what, this didn’t seem like a shed skin sage… It seemed like Zhuoming’s own hatred. 

At first, Zhuoming listened to this abuse without responding. He shook all over amid torn skin and gaping flesh. As the portrait of Xuanwu cursed him more and more heatedly, Zhuoming trembled like a fallen leaf in the autumn wind. At last, he suddenly gave a shout and brought down the knife to gouge out the portrait’s eyes, as if taking the portrait carved into his own skin for the real Xuanwu. He smeared the portrait until it was a gory mess. Then he lay down in the seawater as if he had exhausted his strength, letting the blood spread. 

They were currently on a nameless island in the South Sea. 

The South Sea had many small islets like this. They vanished at high tide, then appeared all over when the tide receded. 

After failing to open the South Sea Hidden Realm, Wangge Luobao had escaped with a small bunch of surviving Miah cultivators to one such little island… In the depths of the islet was a large stash of spiritual stones and immortal tools. 

The Miah cultivators were nursing their wounds. Wangge Luobao slowly walked up beside Zhuoming. Anxiously, he bent down and gently asked, “Do you want an elixir, or do you want me to stay with you for a while? I think you seem very lonely.” 

Zhuoming lay on the surface of the water, eyes glaring up at the sky. He muttered, “…Save it. Scram.” 

Wangge Luobao didn’t scram. Not at all disdaining him, he sat down and dangled his legs in the bloody seawater. 

Zhuoming blinked. “You’d be better off thinking up how to rope in your stray dogs. Your Miah clan leader hid so many of the Zhao family’s things. It’s not like the Luwu can’t count. By this point, they may already have joined forces with the Lingyun Immortal Mountains to put out an arrest warrant for you.” 

Wangge Luobao sighed. “Fate is against me.” 

“Why aren’t you out looking for your stupid clansmen?” 

“There’s no rush.” Wangge Luobao glanced at the wretched Miah cultivators in the distance. His voice was as low as the sea wind. “The Miah clan elders colluded with outsiders, committed an open betrayal, kept evil cultivators in their pay, damaged the Lingyun Mountains’ veins of the earth, and left countless people destitute and homeless. As one of the evil cultivators in their pay, will I be able to convince the general public among my clan? They’ll also hate me.” 

Zhuoming moved one of his eyeballs to the side of his face and looked at Wangge Luobao. “What do you mean?” 

“The immortal mountains have suffered such a heavy loss. They won’t let it rest at that. If the Luwu come to see them over the matter of the Zhao family, the immortal mountains will have even more reason to launch an attack against the Miah. If I return when they’ve vented most of their wrath, my clansmen will naturally know who they need to follow to survive.” 

Zhuoming gave a sharp laugh. “Ha, you truly are number one in wicked designs among the southern barbarians.” 

Wangge Luobao was unmoved. He spread his hand. “As for the Luwu, they’re certain to come to the Lingyun Mountains, because among the items the clan elders hid, I found this.”