A vital power was a thing inextricably linked to the “way” that a cultivator walked.

For a cultivator from the spiritual mountains’ orthodoxy, however useless that person might be, their power would still be honest and aboveboard. When they came to blows, there would be a grand spectacle of real weapons. Those belonging to unorthodox ways were different. With thanks to Yu Chang-xiong, that Discard the False and Keep the True book ought to have been called An All-inclusive Aid to Petty Pilfering instead; nothing could have been more useful in this instance.

Xi Ping handed over the paperman and the shard of Zhaoting to Wei Chengxiang to take away and passed through the shadows of ships and countless people, as collected as if he had just downed several jars of mind calming pills.

Even though his cultivation had jumped a grade, he still had no standing to get mixed up in a battle of shed skin and full moon grade—never mind a middle stage ascended spirit, with the fighting capabilities of those present, even an individually useless shed skin who showed up would have to stand aside.

This time, he had come to be a shadow hidden in the dark.

Xi Ping guessed that Xuanwu, first, didn’t know about the rift between Kunlun and the Sword Slave, and, second, hadn’t expected his shifu to come; otherwise, that White Hair wouldn’t have come so early. There wasn’t a pig-headed idiot in the world who would throw himself head-on at a sword cultivator’s weapon.

Though that old codger was a master, second in Sanyue’s standing only to Xiang Rong, and, objectively, his cultivation was certainly considerably higher than that of a sword cultivator who had just become a shed skin, Sanyue’s superiority lay in talismans, arrays, and inscriptions. Of these, arrays and inscriptions both needed prior arrangement; it was very hard to deploy an array in the heat of battle facing a powerful opponent at an away game. And while talismans came in all kinds of flashy varieties, in front of a cultivator of the same grade, their destructive power would unavoidably be somewhat inferior. A close encounter with a sword cultivator, capable of overcoming the skill of ten with the strength of one, would put Xuanwu in a comparatively weak position; he would only be able to give play to between sixty and seventy percent of his cultivation.

It was only that Xuanwu had the Silver Moon, while Zhi Xiu still had to mind the mortals and low level cultivators who hadn’t yet had time to evacuate.

Luckily, Xuanwu judged others against himself.

Dongheng’s Sanyue had always thought that as long as the lofty immortal mountains were stable and capable of maintaining order, mortals would naturally find a means of subsistence. The orthodoxy of the immortal mountains did indeed care for the people, just as a farm protected the animals in its enclosures with utmost care; but it would have been absolutely preposterous for the farmers to die for their animals.

Xuanwu was using mortals to tie down Zhi Xiu, but from the bottom of his heart he didn’t believe that there was anything very important about mortals, so he wasn’t going to go out of his way to mete out heavy punishment against the merchant ships that were everywhere. He was going to keep within “proper limits,” refrain from thoroughly enraging the sword cultivator in front of him, leave those worthless “hostages” alone and go at him with the Silver Moon.

Therefore, both of these shed skin masters wanted to stall: Zhi Xiu wanted to stall the Silver Moon, let his disciple get people away from the battlefield as much as possible; Xuanwu wanted to stall until Kunlun and Lingyun arrived.

The most ideal course of events would be to dispose of the Lovebird Sword Array before the others showed up, release the Sword Slave, and convince Wanshuang to join hands with Zhaoting to get rid of Xuanwu. This way, when the Kunlun sword cultivators came, Zhi Xiu and the Sword Slave could focus entirely on them.

With such a major commotion in another country, both shed skin sword cultivators from Kunlun were probably coming. Two against two—the Sword Slave and Zhi Xiu’s ages added together didn’t come to a scrap of the others’, and there were many aspects in which they would be unable to best them. Luckily, the Sect Leader was carrying the heart demon seed san-ge planted on him; there was still a chance.

Finally, there were the Lingyun Mountains.

All of their shed skins that might come were beast-taming cultivators, with mediocre fighting skills and their immortal mountains cut down by half. How much impact they had on the battle would hinge on other aspects.

Lingyun’s Sect Leader wasn’t like Xuanwu, who urgently wanted to prove something; he would probably be the least proactive in coming.

The way of beast-taming had its own methods. There were plenty of things on land and in the sea that could act as their spies. Xi Ping thought that if he were Lingyun’s Sect Leader, sensing the commotion on the Southern He Peninsula, he certainly wouldn’t rashly show his face. He would cautiously observe the battle from the sidelines and come out to deliver a fatal blow when it was mostly settled, win himself some sense of presence and right to speak…and if things went badly, he would simply run off and pretend he hadn’t come—that would of course be for the best.

But Xi Ping didn’t dare to rely on the cards dealt by fate.

Because the greater likelihood was: the half-immortal Yao Qi would have no way to communicate with the Lancang Sect Leader’s Way of the Heart, the Sword Slave would be locked in a stalemate with the Lovebird Sword Array, Kunlun’s two great sword cultivators would descend from the sky and take a stab at the Sword Slave’s completely undefended back, getting rid of Wanshuang first of all. Once Zhaoting was suppressed by Kunlun’s ninefold sword, Xuanwu and the Silver Moon’s might would be far greater than the dribble it was now; when the time came, the Cauldron of Nine Dragons hiding in the shadows would be delighted to come add some finishing touches.

The shed skin masters of three mountains, the divine tools of three mountains; even the Southern Sage couldn’t have escaped if he had come.

Apart from this, there was also an even more dangerous person here.

Wangge Luobao was hidden inside a clamshell on the seabed. He narrowed his eyes. The remnants of a beam of sword energy came to the seabed and scraped the clamshell. Cold sword aura seeped into the clamshell.

Spirit-conducting gold had emerged, and the three nations had reacted quickly, far surpassing his expectations. For the sake of a crowd of half-immortal bandits, they had dispatched so many divine tools. There must be some inside story here unknown to him.

He could leave that aside for now, quietly observe the changing situation from the sidelines, but…

Wangge Luobao reached out and lightly brushed a fingertip over the sword mark. A cut immediately opened on his finger.

He wiped away the blood. “Zhaoting has actually come.”

This Sword of the South had just become a shed skin. If he hadn’t lost his mind and gone thoroughly insane, he shouldn’t have come in person to tread in the muddy waters here. But he had shown himself on such a grand scale, meeting the Silver Moon in battle upon first appearing. He was clearly drawing fire, and that could only be for the sake of…

Wangge Luobao slowly pressed on his temples, a pained expression finally appearing on his face. “It’s really no easy matter to get rid of you, Tai Sui.”

He was plainly only a “juvenile” ascended spirit, but with this successor, the undying bones were ten thousand times harder to deal with than when they had belonged to Yuan Hui, the original himself.

Where on earth had the ungovernable way dug up this successor?

Of course the undying bones weren’t without weak points. If other parts broke, they could be recreated, but if the hidden bones “died,” then it was all over. Yuan Hui’s hidden bones had been his own skeleton. When they were cut clean in half, he died.

But looking at all of this “Tai Sui”’s miracles in recent years, his hidden bones must be attached to his consciousness. Hidden bones attached his consciousness, added to the reincarnation wood, through which he could travel at will—the style of the undying bones had instantly gone from indomitable to weird and unknowable.

And as Wangge Luobao saw it, this was simply unbelievable.

At the moment of death and without a Way of the Heart, not to be engulfed by the pain and fear of death, to maintain a powerful will to live and remember his own origins—surely that must take a heart like iron and stone?

All right, it was one thing for his consciousness to become increasingly concentrated as his cultivation became higher, but Wangge Luobao couldn’t understand how he had made it past the open-eyed boundary.

A mortal’s consciousness was weaker than floating dust. How could a person reputed to be a young master who had grown up in Jinping have remained lucid under those circumstances?

Unless he was one of those one in a trillion pigheaded people. But those people were all firm and unyielding, their weak points very obvious; they couldn’t very well be as slippery as this Tai Sui.

It had already been so hard to block Tai Sui’s connection to his accompanying plant. If he let him escape from here, he would be his arch nemesis for life.

I can’t let him leave here, Wangge Luobao thought.

Meanwhile, Xi Ping, like Wangge Luobao, was soaking in the South Sea, with the same thought running through his head: Where is that jerk hiding?

The shed skins clashed beneath daylight and sword light, and the two neither quite evil nor quite orthodox ascended spirits each sank into the shadows.

Under the circumstances, neither of them dared to send his consciousness out to sweep at random. Wangge Luobao considered and sliced open his palm, but the blood from the wound didn’t flow down. The blood droplets floated up, sketching a miniature array.

This array was only the size of his palm, but it seemed to have emptied out the better half of his essence. All the color instantly drained from Wangge Luobao’s face. He shook all over. Next, countless eyes appeared in the array, the compound eyes of insects, the vertical pupils of snakes, the cat eyes of big beasts, the lidless eyes of fish… Not one of them belonged to a human, anyway.

After a long moment, when he could hardly remain kneeling, the array fixed on the eyes of a seabird. The seabird’s line of sight quickly slipped over a Luwu merchant ship; on its deck were Wei Chengxiang and two Tai Suis.

Wangge Luobao stopped that image and opened his eyes from behind the array. Staring fixedly at Xi Ping’s mouth, he read the instructions he had given Wei Chengxiang.

“I’ve caught you by the tail… It turns out you’re still here courting death. Then I can relax.”

Wangge Luobao dispersed the array and took out his flute. A sound inaudible to human ears diffused from the seabed.

In the slightly murky water, a line of algae plastered itself unnoticed onto the hull of the steamship Wei Chengxiang was on. A small quantity followed the slashing spray, sticking to the deck and hold of the ship, keeping an eye on the paperman sitting blankly in the hold.

With his connection to the reincarnation wood severed, this paperman was probably Tai Sui’s only channel of communication with his Luwu lackeys.

As expected, shortly, the paperman stood up, movements not very coordinated, and walked over to the flying goose machine to send a message to Tao County.

Tao County’s Zhao Qindan received the note, and within the time it takes to drink a cup of tea had the outlines of a plan.

Not long after, the Tao World Record, just about to go to print, received a notice to insert a news item at the last moment. It couldn’t be added to the printer’s block anymore, so they simply printed it on a single sheet, attaching it to the main paper as a freebie.

What is said was: Sanyue’s Elder Xuanwu appeared in the South Sea along with the Silver Moon and was ambushed in a joint attack by Zhaoting and Wanshuang; signs point to disaster.

Zhaoting and Wanshuang hadn’t joined forces yet, but that was nothing to worry about. Being a little early didn’t count as lying. Though Xuanwu was still hale and hearty, that wouldn’t hinder everyone from laying a curse on him.

Since the Tao World Record had first published the photo of Northern Li seizing the southern mines, then “carelessly” revealed the recording of Yu Chang, if they didn’t have the eyes of the whole world, at least all of Western Chu was watching them.

Because of that recording, there had been infighting among the rebel warlords, and the connections Yu Chang had taken great pains to build up over the course of eight years had been nearly destroyed in an instant. And before Xuanwu had left, because the Silver Moon had recognized him as its master, the great array had been restored and the disordered spiritual energy of the Sanyue Mountains had suddenly stabilized. Dongheng City’s sealed city gates opened. Inner sect cultivators turned out in full force, menacingly bringing down their attacks in all directions.

All the local warlords—including even Yu Chang—had thought despairingly that the game was as good as lost.

Now they were suddenly informed that Xuanwu had left the Sanyue Mountains with the Silver Moon, and there was a good chance that he would die out there!

This was a glimmer of hope appearing at the darkest hour, just like in a novel.

Sanyue had no shed skins apart from Xuanwu now. While the remaining ascended spirits had been forced by Xuanwu to work together, they clearly weren’t of one mind. No wonder they were being so heavy handed about “putting down bandits”; it was all empty bluster.

There was no lack of middle stage established foundations or even near-ascended spirit masters among the chief offerings of the rebel warlords, and they were numerous.

So large a range of spiritual mountains, a source of spiritual stones that would endure throughout the ages, right before their eyes…

Greed and ecstasy brought the infighting among the offerings to a stop. Regardless of what came after, they would snatch now and discuss later. So from each side and all points, as if they had taken a strengthening potion, they swarmed like bees upon Sanyue’s great array!

At the same time, Xu Rucheng and the other Luwu concealed on Sanyue’s West Peak also received word from colleagues in Tao County. They quietly opened a door from the inside and led the way, helping things along.

The great mountain array was tightly linked to the divine tool of the mountains. As soon as there was turbulence in the Sanyue Mountain Range, the Silver Moon immediately became unstable.

Xuanwu instantly sensed the tumult back home and cursed silently—in fact, before coming here, he hadn’t expected Zhi Xiu to appear in the South Sea.

Moreover, while other shed skins reached their positions by obeying the will of heaven, this Sword of the South had cut through the clouds of tribulation on the snow-capped mountain, tearing down a barrier. Like Qiu Sha before him, the first person to tear apart a “heavenly commandment” was far more doughty than the average early stage shed skin.

Xuanwu, who hadn’t anticipated any of this, was actually finding himself flustered by this puny junior. Zhaoting suppressed the Silver Moon’s light, and Xuanwu was pushed by the sky-blotting sword energy against the Lancang Mountains, smashing into the newly activated great mountain array.

The Lovebird Sword Array also trembled at this. The Sword Slave seized the opportunity to chop off three of the sword array’s auxiliary swords. The irresistible Wanshuang aimed at the main sword.

The Lovebird Sword Array’s main sword let out what was nearly a wail. Twenty percent of the inscriptions on the sword, which were impossible to look at directly, broke. Its sword light suddenly dimmed. The Sword Slave froze. There was a cloudy and dim “stone” embedded in the main sword, totally at odds with the aura of the whole sword array… Just as she had seen in the “illusion,” it was the Lancang Sect Leader’s Way of the Heart.

It was true. Before his death, her shifu really had reached the Lancang Mountains ahead of everyone else and with his own eyes witnessed Lancang’s Sect Leader seal the divine tool of the mountains.

The Sect Leader and High Priest holding their tongues, her shixiong’s unusual certainty and stubbornness, herself gouging out her flesh and picking out her bones, the unusual expression that had flickered over the Sect Leader’s face the moment she had taken up Wanshuang, the veiled hints of Xie Chu and the ascended spirit little devil from Xuanyin…

The intense counterattack of the Lovebird Sword Array’s main sword nearly scraped off the very last of her flesh and blood. The Sword Slave abruptly raised her head and fixed her eyes on the main sword, which was repairing itself. Wanshuang hit the whole Lancang Mountain Range like a thunderbolt.

Cuts several zhang deep fell one after another on the mountains.

How much filth were these millennia-old spiritual mountains sitting on top of?!

The full moon grade divine weapon was struck by the foremost sword in the world and retreated over and over in defeat. The auxiliary swords surrounding the sword array fell one by one.

This commotion made Zhi Xiu and Xuanwu both involuntarily divide their attention. Wangge Luobao’s vision went dark—the spiritual beasts near the Lancang Mountains had been wiped out by the aftereffects of the sword wind. His “spies” were gone.

Tai Sui had used Western Chu’s domestic turbulence to curb the Silver Moon, and here, as if it were part of a pattern, had taken advantage of the stalemate between the Lovebird Sword Array and the Sword Slave to damage Lancang’s great mountain array!

Chief Offering Yu really was a big magical brick. In this chaos, he was being picked up and hurled by each side, back and forth, leaving a hole wherever he fell.

There had to be some hidden story behind the Sword Slave’s wild attacks on the Lovebird Sword Array. Wangge Luobao’s heart sank slightly. He had already guessed by now that there must be discord between Kunlun and the Sword Slave…and it wasn’t what he had guessed—not at the level of an internal power struggle within the sect.

Looking at it now, it didn’t seem impossible that Wanshuang and Zhaoting would join forces.

With a little thought, Wangge Luobao understood Xi Ping’s line of thinking—Xuanwu was eager to prove to Sanyue that he was orthodox; he had advanced prematurely, creating a fatal time difference. Tai Sui wanted to clean up the scene as much as possible before the great swords of Northern Li’s shed skins came. Once Wanshuang and Zhaoting joined forces, adding in an arrow shot from behind by the undying bones’ successor, victory and defeat would be up in the air.

“You can’t be allowed to have it your way.”

Wangge Luobao turned and looked at the mustard seed he carried with him—inside the mustard seed were the Miah cultivators he had scooped up when the next life spiritual fish had died.

Shut up inside the mustard seed, the Miah cultivators only remembered that when that suffocating sword slash had come their way, their clan leader had protected them without hesitation, and there had been no news of him since.

They didn’t know what had happened outside. They were restless with anxiety when a person covered in blood suddenly fell into the mustard seed.

“Clan leader!”

The Miah cultivators turned pale with fright and threw themselves at him. Wangge Luobao opened his mouth to speak, but his lungs were pierced. He choked on his own blood and went to his knees. On his chest was a deep cut that went down to the bone.

The Miah cultivators knelt, their eyes brimming with tears.

“My essence has been used up, the Queen Mother of the West…cough…the Queen Mother of the West and Lord Guang’an are dead…” Wangge Luobao spoke in a low voice, as if “on his last gasp,” explaining the situation outside. He seemed to be dying. He clutched a Miah clansman’s sleeve tightly, “on the point of death,” and gave him his vital weapon—a beast-taming flute. “Take, take it… I…I’m sorry… Our kinsmen on the Three Islands are still hoping, our brothers dead in battle are still watching us…”

He “laboriously” held out until he had passed along everything that ought to be passed along—certainly nothing like a story in a novel, where a person would whimper for ages without spitting out the name of their killer—then finally “fainted dead away” in peace.

The stupid Miah clan members burst into tragic and moving tears, as if prematurely wailing over their clan leader’s death.

Because the mustard seed’s owner was “gravely injured,” the originally sealed mustard seed space could be entered and exited at will now. The Miah cultivators, whose feelings were collectively aroused, decided on the spot to leave a few people to take care of their clan leader while the rest would risk death to race to the Lancang Mountains and fetch spiritual stones.

An ascended spirit whose essence had been exhausted needed a large quantity of spiritual stones to be able to heal. Paying such a high price, they certainly couldn’t return empty-handed.

Enormous spiritual beasts moved in single file along the seabed. The Miah cultivators dashing on without regard for their safety took their clan leader’s vital weapon, charging toward the feet of the Lancang Spiritual Mountains.

In fact, the Cauldron of Nine Dragons could have controlled the situation at present, but Wangge Luobao understood Lingyun’s Xiuyi coward; until Kunlun’s sword cultivators had settled the big picture, he wouldn’t show his face.

The Miah surging onto the shore would head for the place where the great mountain array was damaged and run right into Tai Sui, who was up to his little tricks. And among the skilled Miah that Wangge Luobao had brought with him, a very large portion came from Lingyun’s Dragon Subduing Knights. The conflict and clash between the two clans had escalated at lightning speed. Many people’s disciple name plates in Lingyun’s outer sect had yet to be removed. Normally, with national borders in the way, it would be one thing, but if a Lingyun master was already nearby, if any of the people those name plates belonged to died, he would notice immediately.

Wangge Luobao was the god of the Miah, the root of Southern Shu’s civil strife. Once the Cauldron of Nine Dragons caught a trace of him, it certainly couldn’t bear to hole up. It would immediately be drawn to the feet of the Lancang Mountains.

That teacher and disciple pair from Flying Jade Peak really were devoted to each other, so…while being attacked from both sides by the Silver Moon and the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, could Zhaoting protect his frighteningly destructive disciple?

The Miah cultivators whose blood had gone to their heads reached the peninsula in an instant. They switched to amphibious spiritual beasts and continued their dash. No one noticed when one of the waking dragons that had carried them to shore gave an unnatural shake, then sank into the water in pursuit of a curled up shadow.

There was a distant voice inside the shadow. The waking dragon couldn’t understand it, but for some reason, it worked out what it meant.

“You must return to your master,” that voice urged. “Protect your master.”

The bewildered spiritual beast wagged its tail, left its team, and dove toward the depths of the sea.

The grit projection couldn’t overcome an ascended spirit beast-taming cultivator and give a spiritual beast reared by another direct orders to do something.

Fortunately, “return to your master” was itself an order that spiritual beasts frequently received.