On the third day of the year, according to precedent, the various nations’ ambassadors to Wan finished their rounds of social engagements in Jinping and went together to the Xuanyin Mountains to pay their respects for the new year.

On this day, the Latent Cultivation Temple opened to the public, and all the toilet bulletins came to gather and observe, sending their people who were best at weighing others’ words and expressions, hoping that they could discern something from various interactions during the New Year’s greetings and make a judgment about the coming year’s disposition.

But when it came to General Zhi, all thousand-li eyes and ears to the wind had to lay down arms. In his rebellious disciple’s words, all the Xuanyin Mountains’ auspicious animals tied together couldn’t match up to shifu when it came to presiding over a situation.

He stood beneath a moonlight frost tree, smooth and easy, neither familiar nor distant, even-handed and impartial, treating everyone with the same regulation cordiality, guaranteed not to give any of the toilet bulletins the slightest opening to embellish.

Even with spiritual energy prohibited, Zhi Xiu still satisfied all of people’s fancies about celestial beings…

On the surface.

“That’s the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan, Li Zhen, courtesy name Gucheng, from Zhaoye, a member of a collateral branch of the Xiuyi’s Li family… Shifu, didn’t he come just last year? And he publicly composed a verse in praise of your wine. I have goosebumps from it to this day.”

“Here you are, Gucheng, come warm yourself up. Winter here isn’t as warm as it is in Zhaoye.” As if nothing were the matter, Zhi Xiu hid the piece of reincarnation wood he was using to cheat at his fingertips and greeted the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan familiarly; there was absolutely no sign that he actually couldn’t remember who the person in front of him was. “You must take another couple of jars of wine back with you.”

“Oh! General Zhi, I am overwhelmed by flattery, really overwhelmed…”

Xi Ping lowered his head to hide that he was rolling his eyes.

Since spiritual energy had been prohibited, apart from the old injuries and illnesses that gave life a bit of “flavor,” perhaps the greatest inconvenience Zhi Xiu felt was that he couldn’t “consult celestial phenomena” anymore.

So General Zhi’s masks of “ease and skill” and “steadiness like a mountain” had fallen and shattered to bits in front of his disciple.

After skillfully dealing with the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan, Zhi Xiu quietly squeezed the reincarnation wood in his hand. “Shifu’s getting old. These foreign ambassadors come and go like images on a revolving lantern. How could I remember their faces after seeing them once or twice? When they’ve come a few more times…”

Xi Ping shot a glance at his shizun, elegant as a jade tree facing the wind, and numbly said, “This brother has been stationed in Jinping for six years.”

Zhi Xiu: “…”

Xi Ping said, “This is the sixth time you’ve asked me ‘Who is he?’”

There were people who lost the ability to tell left from right as soon as they started to fret, there were people who naturally couldn’t tell directions, and there were people who could recognize written characters but not faces—none of that was rare.

But based on Xi Ping’s many years’ understanding of his shifu, Zhi Xiu didn’t have any of the above problems.

He simply didn’t pay attention.

The Sword of the South’s special skill wasn’t the sword, and it certainly wasn’t celestial divination, already determined to be a lost art; as Xi Ping saw it, shizun’s particular supreme feat was that no one ever noticed when his mind was wandering.

For rather dull occasions like ancestral sacrifices and social engagements, a peevish person like Zhou Ying would send a low-level paperman to disgust people, and a rude person like Xi Ping would of course simply not go.

But not so Zhi Xiu. He could be present from start to finish, behave so that no one could detect a hint of discourtesy about him, and if you asked him afterward whom he had seen, he would have to ask the stars.

Zhou Ying had always taken exception to General Zhi’s style of handling affairs. Mentioning it on occasion, he would snidely say, “Doesn’t he get tired?”

….No, he didn’t get tired at all.

Everything he wasn’t interested in, that wasn’t important to him, Zhi Xiu was guaranteed to forget as soon as he saw it. That person or thing certainly wouldn’t stay the night in his brain.

The Sword of the South’s way of the sword was the same. A sword had only a narrow cutting edge, and a person’s mental forces were also limited. It was enough to give one’s full attention at the important moment; for the rest, you could muddle through, relax when it was time to relax.

So neither of his disciples had obtained his full teachings: Xi Ping didn’t know what it was to “give one’s full attention,” and Xi Yue didn’t know what it was to “relax.”

It took a battle of wits and valor to get Xi Ping to practice the sword, and Xi Yue…

The expression Zhi Xiu said most to Xi Yue was That’s enough.

Especially after the sword heart he had inherited melted.

“What has little Xi Yue gone to do? Why was I the one selling my charms here this year?”

Having concluded an entire day of entertaining guests, neither teacher nor disciple wanted to smile again. They roasted tangerines and ate them with the door shut, expressionless. Even the tangerines became grave.

“Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s examinations are coming up. He’s gone to help Wenchang.” Zhi Xiu tapped the karma beast that had climbed up his sleeve. “Go ask Xiao Yue whether he’ll come back on the fifteenth to eat tangyuan.”

The karma beast rolled over indolently and came to the back of his hand. An image flashed over it as it sent an avatar to Heaven’s Design Pavilion.

“Isn’t there still another month before Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s examinations…?” At first Xi Ping was perplexed. Then he realized something. “What’s wrong with him now?”

“He advanced prematurely and suffered backlash from the sword traces at the back of the mountain. If he had continued to cultivate, he would have lost his mind.” Zhi Xiu frowned. “I told him to leave the mountains to cool off for a while, think about why he wants to practice the sword, and to stop practicing for now if he can’t understand it. This isn’t the way to cultivate one’s body.”

After Ways of the Heart had vanished, only half-immortals remained. Of course there were differences among half-immortals, but at Xi Yue’s level, he was capable of leaving the mountains to handle any situation.

This was the era of upgraded immortal tools. There was truly no need to be so eager for rapid progress.

“What, does he want to usurp Lao Pang’s position?” Xi Ping tossed a tangerine segment into his mouth. “Shifu, what are you glaring at me for?”

Zhi Xiu waved a hand. “You scoundrel… Fine, enough nonsense, go find me the locator, I don’t know where I tossed it again.”

The locator was another product of the next-door Moon Plated Peak, tailor-made for Zhi Xiu by Master Lin. This was a board about half a chi square that automatically recorded the locations of all the items inside the cottage. If you couldn’t find something, you would pick up the board to search, and it would automatically give directions. Special treatment for the scatterbrained—since he could no longer practice divination, apart from Zhaoting, Zhi Xiu could lose anything.

The only problem was, he also frequently couldn’t find the locator.

Teacher and disciple were both young masters. The lazier of the two set the other to the task, and after turning everything over, there was still no trace of the locator. A few days later, Xi Yue returned, travel-weary, to save his sloppy shifu and useless big brother; he found the wretched locator in the wine cellar under the cottage—the temperature in the wine cellar had previously been maintained by a talisman, and after the spiritual energy prohibition had begun, that had been changed to a half-mechanized upgraded immortal tool. There were two pipes of spirit-conducting gold, one to cool and one to heat. To economize on spiritual stones, it wasn’t always running. It only turned on when it detected a variation in temperature.

On Immortal Lady Shen’s birthday, Wen Fei had come over to find someone to drink with. When Zhi Xiu went down to get wine, the temperature stabilizer had just happened to be inactive. He hadn’t taken notice and had made a random grab, carrying back a wine jar and leaving the locator on the heating pipe.

When Xi Yue found it, the locator had been cooking on the heating pipe for over half a month.

Xi Ping craned his neck to look; it was quite well cooked, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. “Shifu, should I sprinkle on some spiced salt?”

Zhi Xiu: “…”

Xi Yue sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and, working hard without complaint, cleaned up the mess added to the already messy cottage after his older brother had “swept” it, then went to Moon Plated Peak with the medium-well cooked locator.

Xi Yue was taciturn. Outsiders might think that he was cold, but actually he was very easy to get along with.

He was attentive and generous, and never appeared impatient no matter how many of Flying Jade Peak’s trifles were left for him to handle. How could such a person nearly lose his mind over and over out of eagerness to make rapid progress?

A chestnut flew at Xi Ping’s head and bounced off. He snatched it, and before Zhi Xiu could say anything, he sighed. “Yes, shifu, I know.”

Zhi Xiu, hands behind his back, walked over to him. “When he occasionally makes progress, he always unconsciously looks around, but he never knows who he’s looking for.”

That “eliminate the past” had swept away the concerns of the first half of Xi Yue’s life. Now, for the half-puppet, Xi Ping was only a very close older brother who liked to tease him. When he returned, Xi Yue was as happy as shifu and all the auspicious animals on the mountain; when he went abroad with the Luwu, he might be gone for three to five months at a time, and Xi Yue couldn’t be especially concerned about him—when ordinary brothers grew up, they always had their own things to do; the two of them, moreover, weren’t brothers by blood, and the mortal relatives who had maintained their connection had passed away.

But unexpectedly, the “eliminate the past” had left behind dust.

Xi Yue had forgotten the sense of helplessness of his youth that could make him spit blood, but an unease that had no explanation remained. The goal he was pursuing was gone, but his legs were still fruitlessly racing.

Xi Ping squeezed the chestnut open and ate it. “Shifu, I’m taking a trip.”

The medium-well cooked locator was naturally unsalvageable. Lin Chi took it back, the corner of his eye twitching; he would have to remake it. And after that day, Xi Ping once again ran off somewhere unknown. He was nowhere to be found on the Lantern Festival.

Three months later, a message came from Moon Plated Peak. The new locator was done.

The new locator was only palm-sized, so thin it was like a little mirror, much more exquisite. But while exquisite it might be, even the big one had been casually roasted. Wouldn’t the little one be even easier for its careless owner to lose?

The instant Xi Yue saw the object, he made to speak, then held back.

“This one won’t be so easy to lose,” said the understanding Master Lin. “This version of the locator can enter dreams. If you’ve touched it within the last twelve shichen, when you’re asleep or in meditation, it will link up with your consciousness. If there’s anything you’ve forgotten, it will automatically straighten it out for you, and it will ‘appear in a dream’ to tell its owner to find it when he wakes up.”

Xi Yue: “…”

Master Lin had really put a lot of thought into this.

Lin Chi said, “I also made it resistant to water and fire. This time there won’t be anything to worry about even if you drop it into a furnace pit. Go ahead and roast it.”

The “good neighbors” who were always coming up with outrageous requests could claim a large share of credit in the fact that Moon Plated Peak could always be first under heaven, making outstanding contributions in the field of upgraded immortal tools.

Xi Yue brought the new locator back home and reported on his task, then relegated this matter to the back of his mind.

Unexpectedly, that very night, he became the first person to receive a visitation in his dreams from the locator.

While meditating, Xi Yue already felt that his mind was a little unsettled. It was considerably harder than usual to remove distracting thoughts. When he finally managed to settle his mind, hardly an incense stick of time passed before his spirit once again shook faintly.

If your spirit shook while you were in meditation, normally it was due to major, insoluble matters appearing in your mind; pushing them down by force was not conducive to cultivation. Xi Yue knew that he had experienced no difficulties lately and figured that this was happening because he had touched the locator during the day, so he relaxed his mind and allowed his thoughts to wander, wanting to see what dream the locator would send him.

Soon, he seemed to be transported beside a long river. An event from the past flashed before his eyes: while he had been a walker in the mortal world with Heaven’s Design Pavilion in his youth, he had fulfilled a filial duty on someone’s behalf at the Marquis Manor…

Fulfilled a filial duty on someone’s behalf? Whose?

Before he could get a clear look at this thought, time continued to flow, and he saw himself following his big brother off the mountain to the Land of Turmoil, beset by terrors and alarms the whole way…

Further back was the Latent Cultivation Temple…

Xi Yue stood beside the river of memory, a little confused: hadn’t Master Lin said that the locator would only send a dream to remind you of things you had forgotten?

He hadn’t forgotten anything.

The past was long. There really were some trifling details he didn’t remember—like who had worn what color, what they had eaten for three meals a day; he wasn’t a camera.

But he knew the sequence of events clearly. Could it be that because he didn’t like to forget things, the locator would pursue them to perfection, remind him of all the details?

It seemed that this thing had no sense of priority.

Xi Yue wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. If even he was getting this treatment, wouldn’t shizun be overwhelmingly busy tonight?

Master Lin could also be unreliable sometimes. He would have to pay a visit to Moon Plated Peak tomorrow morning…

Xi Yue had meant to focus and break free, but he tried a few times and couldn’t rid himself of the past events before his eyes, so he just had to make the best of it, allow that demented locator to lead him into the past. He felt that his memory was pretty good, so there shouldn’t be too many forgotten details. He might as well get it over with quickly so this thing would let him go.

When he saw his big brother lazing in bed on the ship, asking him to do his assignment for him, then immediately being discovered by shifu far away in the Xuanyin Mountains and getting chased around and beaten by sword energy, Xi Yue smiled involuntarily. This really was something he would have done.

He also remembered that after this da-ge had used an immortal tool to drag General Commander Pang next door down with him…

In the memory, the hither seal flashed; the pleasure at another’s misfortune had yet to be wiped clean off Pang Jian’s dumbfounded face. All the details were recreated, true to life, by the locator. Xi Yue seemed to find himself once again on that ship, surrounded by chaos.

Suddenly, Xi Yue froze, noticing that something was wrong.

He very rarely recalled the past, so he had never realized that the scenes of events that came clearly to mind had absolutely no feeling of authenticity. There was a strange insubstantiality about them, as if he had read about them in a book…or as if someone had “written” them into his mind.

Only now had this memory truly “come to life” in his mind, becoming once again his own experience.

A familiar sense of consternation arose, filling his chest. Every time Xi Yue overdid it when practicing the sword and entered a condition of forgetting self, he would feel this consternation, forcing him to become a little stronger, a little stronger still, or else…

Or else what?

Or else…

He recalled his childhood, spent starving, in a constant state of anxiety, and all his joints began to ache. He was only a half-puppet who had been born at death’s door. Being “useful” was his entire guarantee of safety.

“Useless thing, I’ll chop you into firewood one of these days.”

This was the first sentence he had understood in his life.

Or else…

He was caught by Heaven’s Design Pavilion, a dragon-taming chain put around his neck. He was afraid, angry, dove headfirst among the tantalizing blue jade, and with a bit of the relief of this is how it ought to be, he waited in perfect contentment for death.

The sharp knife hadn’t cut open his belly. He had found a new cornerstone for his misshapen life.

Or else…

With a rumble, the dams laying across his heart cracked, and love and hate came roaring out like a flood, bursting the calm, waveless river of his emotions.

He remembered being forced to throw the inscription in the Latent Cultivation Temple, the dragon-taming chain shattering in the Resurrection Vortex, the seemingly unending five years of waiting, the wind and intermittent singing blowing past him at the funeral of the Marquis Manor’s old lady. It was as if he were lame, never fast enough. Using all his strength, he could only glimpse a retreating figure.

Or else…what was the point of a half-puppet’s life?

During the sudden attack in Jinping, he destroyed his half-puppet core, was taken back to the Xuanyin Mountains by shifu. An icy hand holding spiritual light touched the center of his brow, bit by bit wiping away the marks etched deep into his soul, turning his past into emptiness.

The big clock on the first floor of the cabin ticked off a character. The phoenix representing the “Grain Rain” solar term flew past the karma beast’s nose. The karma beast, asleep on its back with its limbs splayed out, slitted open its big eyes and was just about to close them indolently when its eyelids suddenly moved. It rolled over and sat up. There was a human figure leaning toward it, seated in the rattan chair by the window.

Xi Ping, who had been gone for several months, had returned at some point. He hadn’t turned on the light. His breathing was shallow and urgent. There was a sword in his hands. He was practically collapsed over that sword.

The karma beast sniffed in alarm and sniffed out a faint scent of blood. It strolled over along the wall, jumped onto the side of a flowerpot, and stared at Xi Ping.

Xi Ping, following the karma beast’s gaze, looked at himself and realized that a wound on his chest had begun to bleed; it had soaked through the front of his clothes.

This was the only thing he had found inconvenient since shattering the hidden bones; his body didn’t heal as quickly.

“Shh…hss.” Xi Ping waved a hand at the karma beast and carefully put down the sword. “Don’t make a sound, or I’ll put a rat into your clock tomorrow.”

Hearing this, the karma beast’s fur stood on end, and it glared: Asshole.

“If shifu asks, say A-Xiang needed something and I’ve gone to winter in Southern He.” Xi Ping laughed and put down the sword. He left a note, turned, and ducked into a reincarnation wood tree.

The note said: For Yue-bao’er: The ancient sword Xiuluo, makes anyone who uses it powerful.

The famous sword Xiuluo, which had been out of the ordinary since its creation. According to legend, it had been created by the hand of the first Eternal Spring Brocade. After it was damaged, it had been repaired by the second Eternal Spring Brocade.

Hui Xiangjun had preserved the famous sword’s sword aura whole and entire, and used the Unbound Furnace to pare away the remaining violence in the sword, leaving this famous sword without any “airs”; it didn’t have a temper like Zhaoting and Wanshuang. It wasn’t picky about its master. Any living creature with hands could pick it up. Before spiritual energy had been prohibited, anyone who got ahold of it gained a tremendous aid that could spare them a hundred years of struggle. Even the good-for-nothing Xiang Zhao had been recommended for promotion to ascended spirit.

This sword had previously ended up in Qiu Sha’s hands, and had been taken by Xuanwu after Qiu Sha’s death. Out of selfish motives, he hadn’t turned it over to the Sanyue Mountains and had taken it with him when he had fled. Later, it had been forgotten in the no-man’s land of the All-Devouring Marsh on the Chu-Shu border. It had taken Xi Ping several years of scouting with reincarnation wood to find a trace of it.

It was only that there were fierce beasts among the spiritual creatures nearby. He had come in at the wrong angle and disturbed the clutch of lizards guarding the Xiuluo Sword. While being hunted by those big brutes, he had been scratched a few times.

Fortunately, the journey hadn’t been made in vain.

Xi Ping concealed his injuries and joyfully went to hide.

As expected, the Xiuluo Sword would let you get twice the result with half the effort. From then on, Xi Yue really didn’t have any more inexplicable instances of trying to rush ahead to make quick gains.

And maybe it was a mistaken impression on Xi Ping’s part, but Xi Yue seemed closer than before. Previously, apart from asking after an elder’s health as a matter of etiquette, Xi Yue had practically never voluntarily spoken to anyone—though when others spoke to him, he would always respond at once. Now, when he encountered something he couldn’t wrap his mind around in the mortal world, he would occasionally ask Xi Ping about it, and he had even asked for help once.

After Pang Jian retired from office with honor and entrusted Heaven’s Design Pavilion to Xi Yue, he kept the peace in the human world for fifty years.

He had spent his life proving that even though he was “useless,” he still deserved to be loved; though he had been born defective and needed to spend twice as long as others slowly growing up, he also had his place at last.

Only when Xi Ping had grown tired of being “Tai Sui” and duplicated the souls of the departed in the Law Breaker’s little space did he notice that he only had a score preserved for Xi Yue from his youth. After obtaining the Xiuluo Sword, for some reason, he hadn’t entered the Law Breaker again.

“What secret were you hiding that you were afraid would be revealed by the Law Breaker’s music for me to hear?” Xi Ping said to the puppet at his side.

The puppet smiled without answering and refilled his teacup.

After all, half of a half-puppet’s body was human. A puppet body could be repaired and have parts replaced without limit, but the human body always had an end. Xi Yue’s dying wish had been to have the puppet body he left behind made whole and left to Xi Ping.

“I’ll be able to make tea…young master…” He seemed a little confused and whispered the wrong form of address. “Too…bad…”

Too bad that a mechanical puppet can’t help you with your assignments.

“You silent type.”

Hundreds of years later, the Law Breaker was realized, and the human world returned to the human world. An old gentleman came along with his puppet and countless forgotten old tunes that had once been popular and began a retro fad. He had a head of white hair like satin. The puppet could always brush it shiny and smooth for him and tie a snow-white peony into it.¹ His stage name was “Mr. Peony”; he dressed in whatever way was fashionable.

Mr. Peony made a movie. During the public screening, the old fellow shamelessly said that the leading man wasn’t as handsome and elegant as him, and spontaneously played the ending theme; for the first time, he accidentally played off-key.

“Hey, I’m losing my skills. I’ve gotten old.” He didn’t feel embarrassed in the least, as if “getting old” was yet another gift in life worth celebrating. Grinning, he put away his qin and turned his head to call to the puppet, “Yue-bao’er, we’re going home.”

There were those who said that he stumbled when he left the theater, and the people who stepped forward to help him into a car were dressed in blue.

There were those who said they had seen him in the vicinity of the Xuanyin Mountains.

The identity of “Mr. Peony” was a topic on which opinions varied wildly for a time, but his popularity quickly passed. He never appeared again.

“According to legend, Tai Sui is an ancient god—”

“No, that’s wrong, I did a search, it said ‘Tai Sui’ means a magic meat fungus.”

“And what’s a magic meat fungus?”

“Maybe it’s a big mushroom that gives you immortality if you eat it…”