The Unbound Furnace traced the origins of its “material,” quickly burning through Wangge Luobao's entire hasty life.

For a toolmaking furnace, a person’s loves and hates weren’t worth ‘decoding,’ no matter how heartrending they might be. Xi Ping hadn’t even had a chance to take a close look before the body of Southern Shu’s foremost evil cultivator and his centuries of destitute wandering turned to ashes before his eyes.

The only thing that remained of Wangge Luobao was the little bone that had come from Ancestor Tianbo.

The experiment of the greedy Shamans had turned out two incomparable masters, and the only person who knew the full story behind this was Ancestor Tianbo, who had been tormented by the established foundation pill—even Yuan Hui, despite being one of the principal parties, wasn’t fully aware.

Yuan Hui had been force-fed the established foundation pill while unconscious. From his spirit bursting to the “life-swapping” taking effect, he had narrowly escaped with his life in confusion, and he had no idea what had happened.

Afterward, Ancestor Tianbo, with his glib tongue and thunderous tactics, united the Xiuyi and Miah clans, raising the banner high. He led the enraged people of ancient Shu in overthrowing the Shamanic Way, committing to the flames the living corpse army that had occupied the blessed land of Southern Shu.

He hogged the secret arts of the Shamanic Way to himself and resolutely destroyed everything, becoming the very last person in the world who knew the history of the established foundation pill.

The fire of the Unbound Furnace expanded Ancestor Tianbo’s bone hundreds upon thousands of times. Through that bone, Xi Ping impatiently went in pursuit of the traces that spirit-conducting gold had left behind.

The composition of the bodies of the Shamanic Way’s living corpses was very similar to that of cultivators. Their bodies also contained a large quantity of spiritual energy accumulated by a silk dragon heart, analogous to a cultivator’s “essence.” Once a cultivator’s Way of the Heart shattered, their essence would explode; not even a master like Lin Zongyi could survive it. Then wouldn’t it have been even easier for the living corpse warriors to “burst their barrels”?

The Shamanic Way had controlled the living corpse warriors for so many years. They must have had a means of destroying the living corpses, committing them safely to the earth.

If there existed a means to allow people to escape Ways of the Heart, then it had to be part of the Shamanic Way!

As soon as Xi Ping’s consciousness touched that bone, there was a hum in his mind. He nearly fainted amid the excessively jumbled and complex information—

He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue and held out. Countless secret arts flashed before his eyes, all kinds of complex rites of the ancient Shamanic Way, the worship of death, incomprehensible secret spells and scriptures, the silk dragons that could keep the dead in this world, the three-day dream…

Wait, the three-day dream grass!

With a sudden flash of inspiration, Xi Ping recalled Li Queru telling him that three-day dream grass could only be grown by silk dragon hearts.

From a certain intuition, Xi Ping hung his consciousness from the three-day dream grass flashing by, and saw countless corpses hidden among the thicket of wild grass.

The whole life cycle of the three-day dream grass appeared in the Unbound Furnace’s fire. He saw masked Shamans driving living corpse warriors, making the living corpses draw a spell in the altar pool. Large quantities of three-day dream grass grew from the spell. When the spell was complete, the aquatic grass spread over the whole pool and grew hairlike filaments.

The living corpses lay down on their own, and the filaments of the three-day dream grass wrapped them up, like a cocoon, and like a mother’s womb.

Then the fine filaments of the three-day dream grass gently pierced the living corpses’ brows, and one inscription after another broke free of the center of the living corpse warriors’ brows, following the grass filaments, silently dissolving in the thicket of aquatic grass that grew ever more lush. The spiritual energy of the living corpses dissipated, their rigid limbs gradually softened, and they sank with serene looks…

Xi Ping’s heart began to beat wildly: it turned out that the Shamanic Way had used three-day dream grass to eliminate living corpses, and three-day dream grass had been preserved in the South Sea Hidden Realm!

Supposing that three-day dream grass could eliminate the inscriptions in the living corpse warriors, then…

There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Xi Ping thought that he could ask the Southern He brothers in the South Sea Hidden Realm to ship out the three-day dream grass. He would spare no expense.

He could be entirely free of the hidden bones, save many people.

Shifu, Wen Fei, Lin Chi, Pang Jian, Bai Ling…and Xi Yue, who had been forced to establish a foundation. Time could at last be turned back, and the hidden bones and ancient inscriptions would be eliminated, the Law Breaker would be realized, and the spiritual mountains, like those living corpses, would fade from the human world, serene and quiet.

He could go home, take care of his parents in their old age, keep vigil by his grandmother’s coffin, make up for the fourteen years of his absence.

He could continue leading the Luwu in business, and he could travel around seeing the sights, ride the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragons from north to south, brag to people and tell them that he was General Zhi’s disciple, embarrass shifu all over the world, then pick up a beauty to marry and go home.

When the thousand-year-old shackles disappeared and the Law Breaker was realized, would that human world count as “beyond the bounds”?

Then…would the person who had arranged to meet him beyond the bounds still be able to furiously scold him for being “scandalous”?

The rims of Xi Ping’s eyes burned. He lost all interest in ancient secrets.

The Unbound Furnace was connected to the thoughts of the master of the furnace flame. Large swaths of three-day dream grass leapt out of the flames, rapidly “decoding” the secret spell that eliminated living corpses. Xi Ping gobbled it up unthinkingly, carving it onto his consciousness. Meanwhile, through the reincarnation wood he had just regained control of, he contacted Lin Chi.

“Master Lin!” Exhausting the last of his reason, Xi Ping kept himself from telling Lin Chi, who still had a Way of the Heart, the whole story. He only quickly said, “I’ve obtained a secret spell that can eliminate inscriptions using three-day dream grass. Perhaps it can be used to dispose of my hidden bones. Hurry up and take a look for me!”

A beat late, Lin Chi gave an ah and said in confusion, “But three-day dream grass won’t work…”

“It’s gone extinct, I know, but I can get some, don’t bother about that, just…”

Lin Chi didn’t understand the details. He only thought there was something wrong with his manner. “Shiyong, what are you saying? What’s wrong? Calm down.”

Xi Ping wanted to laugh. “Lin-shishu, I’m very calm…”

Then Lin Chi gently said, “Three-day dream grass is ‘netherworld grass.’ It repels the bodies of the living. It can only be plucked to use as a medicinal herb. Even if it really can eliminate inscriptions, we still can’t use it on you.”

“No,” Xi Ping retorted instinctively, “you don’t know…”

“Did you decode something inside the Unbound Furnace?” Lin Chi thought the problem was that he was unfamiliar with toolmaking furnaces, so he said, “There are histories behind the inscriptions and arrays that toolmaking furnaces decode. Look closely, don’t be rash—we’ll discuss this later, come out now. What happened earlier? General Zhi is very worried…”

Xi Ping wasn’t in the mood to listen to him. He cast his gaze back into the fire of the Unbound Furnace and found that the Unbound Furnace was plainly telling him that three-day dream grass repelled living things.

No…

Xi Ping searched desperately for another line of thought: maybe three-day dream grass itself was rather shy, but while this secret spell might not work, something else might. They had the Golden Hand, they had the most powerful medicine making master in the world. The troublesome evil cultivators and pigheaded shed skin puppets had all died off, they had time to do research, there was no rush.

But sadly, he really wasn’t a person to lose his head easily. His reason remained lucid.

Xi Ping recalled that the bone the Unbound Furnace had decoded had been left behind by Ancestor Tianbo. If three-day dream grass really could eliminate a living person’s Way of the Heart, he never would have allowed records of it to remain, or allowed it to go extinct only several hundred years later.

“Shiyong?” Lin Chi called to him. “Can you still hear me? Shiyong?”

For a moment, Xi Ping was alone in the Unbound Furnace, and he realized that if even the Shamanic Way, the source of all this, didn’t have a means for destroying Ways of the Heart, then perhaps…there was no way.

The Unbound Furnace diligently restored all the traces held in the bone—

Because Kunlun had unexpectedly formed, Ancestor Tianbo’s “road to godhood” had nearly died prematurely. He set his thoughts on Yuan Hui’s hidden bones—only by obtaining the complete hidden bones could he be free of the restrictions of his Way of the Heart, find an opportunity to overturn the game board.

So in the name of “expelling demons and upholding righteousness,” he had lured Yuan Hui to the Impassable Sea, and, when he encountered the heart demon, used the hidden bones that connected the two of them to tell Yuan Hui about the “life-swapping.” Yuan Hui’s consciousness was infested by the heart demon seed, and Ancestor Tianbo seized that opportunity, meaning to snuff out his consciousness and take the hidden bones for himself. When the two of them had halfway melded together, Yuan Hui had struggled to win back a thread of lucidity and cleaved the hidden bones apart with his own hands. He died, and his way was destroyed, while Ancestor Tianbo’s consciousness was seriously injured.

This had taken place precisely at an important stage in the formation of the spiritual mountains. The Southern Sage glimpsed the truth of Ways of the Heart in the Impassable Sea and gave birth to a heart demon, and Xuanyin’s Territory Map came into the world. Ancestor Tianbo, meanwhile, suffered backlash from the hidden bones. The spiritual mountains that had been born around his Way of the Heart split in two under the influence of the hidden bones and formed a South Sea Hidden Realm that he himself could not enter.

So much commotion couldn’t be concealed from the people around him. Ancestor Tianbo had no choice but to obscure it under the guise of “concern over a future split between the Xiuyi and Miah clans.”

So the South Sea Hidden realm prohibited Ways of the Heart, had no silk dragons, only had pools full of fake three-day dream grass—

Yes, Queru had also said that the three-day dream grass in the South Sea Hidden Realm did not match the historical record. Like ordinary spiritual plants, it could be activated with green ore powder.

Because that wasn’t really three-day dream grass, only Yuan Hui’s secret and unrealizable wish on the point of death.

The Unbound Furnace’s flames rose slightly, cleanly digesting Ancestor Tianbo’s Way of the Heart.

Wangge Luobao had only been an ascended spirit, but the origin of his Way of the Heart was too great. The spiritual energy prohibition line had originally been locked in a stalemate with the hidden bones at the Lingyun Mountain Range, which was the extreme end of the western continent, but when that Way of the Heart melted away, the spiritual energy prohibition line suddenly took a great stride forward.

Southern Shu’s Three Islands and the South Sea Hidden Realm all entered in the spiritual energy prohibition.

At this point, there was nowhere left for the hidden bones to rest on the whole southern continent.

It wasn’t only cultivators—even mortals felt a certain unspeakable sense of wonder. The birds and beasts that had been restless because the ancient inscriptions had entered the world became peculiarly calm. The ant colonies returned to their nests. The strange-looking dense clouds dispersed, revealing clear sky. On Shu’s Three Islands, a green-eyed Miah child cried while working up his nerve to whistle. A shaking shepherd’s song swept out. A sturdy sable sheep appeared in answer and chased away the flesh-eating spiritual beasts.

In the courtyard of Jinping’s Yongning Marquis Manor, in the interests of safety, Zhi Xiu had gotten rid of the reincarnation wood using his own accompanying plant. Now fresh buds once again grew on the dead tree. The Marquis and the little cat stood side by side under the tree, listening to distant steam whistles coming from the Grand Canal.

The dust of the whole world was settling, and some people had come to the end of the road.

Finally, leaving aside Kunlun, all the spiritual mountains on the southern continent had fallen within the scope of the spiritual energy prohibition. The border of the Law Breaker surged over the Hong River and swept across the Tianze River, narrowly stopping at the line of Beijue and Kunlun—the place where the ancient inscriptions had once formed.

At the utterly cold Beijue Mountain Pass, the spiritual energy prohibition line finally ran out of momentum, unable to take another step forward. The world’s most ancient spiritual mountains had been entirely occupied by the hidden bones.

The Kunlun Mountains collapsed, rumbling. The spiritual stones within the mountains had been carried away by the hidden bones, and the sword cultivators had turned into one ice sculpture after another. The Wanshuang Sword suddenly cracked and began to tremble as if lamenting.

There was no more barrier against the freezing wind of the utter north. It blew right into the human world. The Law Breaker could stop spiritual energy, but it couldn’t stop the freezing wind. The great natural disaster of a thousand years earlier was being repeated. This time, there was no Sword Ancestor to execute the wishes of the people.

Xi Ping’s consciousness left the Unbound Furnace.

Everyone saw him emerge from a half-dead reincarnation wood tree as if he had lost his soul, with menacing bloodstains still at the center of his brow. Wangge Luobao had stuck him full of holes earlier, and he still couldn’t move very nimbly. He stumbled and went to his knees. A familiar light grey robe appeared in his field of vision… Shifu had been swapping between just a few robes for centuries.

“Shifu…” Xi Ping had narrowly escaped with his life from the clutches of the great evil cultivator. He was completely disheartened, with thousands of words in his mind, but all he said was, “I’m fine, just wishing you an early happy new year.”