There were too many souls of the dead in this awful place.

After the next life mist had diffused from the corpse of the big fish, Chang Jun, who had jumped into the sea, bore the brunt, becoming the first person to be swallowed by the mist.

Yao Qi, not far away, saw countless shades instantly attach themselves to him. There were common people, and there were low level cultivators in miserable plights; the majority of them were ants who had fled during the war two hundred years ago and had died on the way when some part of the fighting had touched them. The faces, frightened or blank, were projected one after another onto Chang Jun’s face, like the images on a revolving lantern; it was like the stories about being possessed by ghosts!

Yao Qi was a step behind him, still climbing over the edge of the hidden realm. His first instinct was to run ashore. He watched in bewilderment as Chang Jun, his consciousness hopelessly tangled with the dead, cried out on behalf of tens of thousands of ghosts: “Help…help…”

Then something seemed to yank at his feet, and Chang Jun sank into the water.

By the time Yao Qi recovered his senses, he had already thrown himself forward to catch his classmate and friend’s arm. The outcome was that he couldn’t pull him back but was instead dragged into the sea with him. His ears filled with the flow of water. A phantom passed through Yao Qi’s body. He was dazed, having the sudden feeling that he had eaten fertilizer. He grew a full palm-width taller and more, so tall he felt a little dizzy… Fortunately, he then went down on one knee.

Yao Qi heard himself pronounce a string of rapid words in the Southern He language. Steeped in the next life spiritual fish’s mist, he was in a stupor, but because it was truly a struggle to speak the Southern He Language, he accidentally bit his tongue and, like a miracle, his head cleared.

“I’ve also been possessed by a ghost!” he thought fearfully. “Hongzheng! Shiyong! Where are…”

Just then, he heard what the ghost that had “possessed” him was saying: “…that Lancang has reached this present pass is my fault. Not with a hundred deaths could I atone. But the people are innocent. The spiritual mountains no longer recognize me as Sect Leader, and the Lovebird Sword Array is out of control. If it is permitted to go into battle against the masters of all the nations, how can the people of the He Peninsula survive? Fellow cultivator, I beg you!”

Yao Qi was stunned.

This was Lancang’s Sect Leader?

To hear him talk, Shiyong had guessed right. It really had been their own Sect Leader who had caused the disappearance of the Lovebird Sword Array and the great mountain array!

Looking where the gaze of this thousand-fold condemned man from two centuries ago was pointed, Yao Qi raised his head and saw an even taller man with the typical appearance of the people of Li; but at his waist twined a very special soft sword.

As soon as the Sword Slave Wu Lingxiao landed amid the life and death mist of the next life spiritual fish, she noticed that her consciousness was being invaded by the mist. She seemed to be in another person’s body, with many thoughts that didn’t belong to her welling up in her mind.

The will of the foremost sword in the world wasn’t to be carried away so easily. Wu Lingxiao couldn’t figure out what was going on with this mist; she didn’t act rashly, only tightened her hand on Wanshuang. Suddenly, she realized something was wrong. She looked down and saw to her surprise that Wanshuang had changed into an exceptionally familiar soft sword.

Shizun…

Next, a man with his hair loose down his back was on one knee before her. “Fellow cultivator, I beg you!”

Wu Lingxiao was stunned; then she recognized him. This was Lancang’s Sect Leader.

During the Wan-He War, she had just moved to the Disciple Hall and had heard a rough account of events in Southern He. It was said that this matter had originally been her shifu’s responsibility, but the Beijue Array had acted up at the last moment, and he had been replaced by the Third Elder, who had rushed south.

Hadn’t they said that shifu hadn’t had time to reach Southern He?

Then why was he on Lancang’s Principal Peak, speaking to its Sect Leader?

Just then, she saw the former great array of the Lancang Mountains begin to heave. Blood surged in the Sect Leader’s eyes. “The great mountain array has broken. Fellow cultivator, I can’t suppress the Lovebird Sword Array much longer. You have spent hundreds of years sealing Beiyuan’s north wind on behalf of the continent. I’ve heard that the Heart Sword is a good…”

This was when the four nations joined forces to attack the Lancang Mountains.

Wu Lingxiao worked it out: yes, her shifu was always repairing the Beijue Array. He was an expert in array techniques. He would have been a step ahead of the others in reaching Lancang’s Principal Peak.

But…why had Kunlun hidden this portion of history? What honor was there in the four nations besieging the Lancang Mountains, ganging up on a single old lunatic who had lost his mind to an obsession? Why had the Third Elder found it worthwhile to compete for the credit?

Before the Lancang Sect Leader could finish speaking, there came a boom. The Lovebird Sword Array flickered in midair.

“Fellow Cultivator Heart Sword!”

In the next life mist, Wu Lingxiao, acting with Kunlun’s Second Elder the Heart Sword, shifted the point of that sword, joining Lancang’s Sect Leader in meeting the Lovebird Sword Array. Even with her present cultivation level, it was still appalling. The Heart Sword cut through the clouds of tribulation over the Lancang Mountains. Her shizun had been in his prime then; with a shed skin cultivation level, he was capable of curbing the divine tool of another nation’s spiritual mountains. He turned to ask Lancang’s Sect Leader, “Hey, this is a full moon grade immortal tool, what are you planning…”

Looking through the eyes of the Second Elder in the past, Wu Lingxiao froze along with her shifu. They saw Lancang’s Sect Leader, that old lunatic, beneath the divine tool of the mountains, tear open his inner store of essence. “Thank you. Move aside.”

The self-destructing shed skin blocked the sword light of the divine tool of the mountains. Wu Lingxiao saw for a moment how something like a prism flew out from the center of the Lancang Sect Leader’s brow and hit the Lovebird Sword Array.

The Lancang Sect Leader had sealed the divine tool of the mountains with his own Way of the Heart, corroded by the heart demon seed!

Yao Qi, whose consciousness had unhappily ended up inside the Lancang Sect Leader, had been truly unfortunate. He felt himself crushed flat, embedded in the Lovebird Sword Array.

Meanwhile, outside the mist—

Xi Ping had never been good at focusing, but the moment the Lovebird Sword Array descended, all the distracting thoughts in his mind suddenly vanished. Everything around him slowed.

The spiritual wind of the Lancang Mountains suddenly gained direction. The simple equipment and arrays in the various nations’ mining areas were swept up by the wild wind and utterly destroyed. On the ground, rows of inscriptions appeared automatically all of a sudden and spread in all directions like waves—this was the great array of the Lancang Mountains, lost for many years, appearing along with the Lovebird Sword Array.

When the inscriptions swept out, Xi Ping had no attention left to consider where the Sword Slave had been swept off to; he didn’t think of Qiu Sha, who had been destroyed upon meeting the Silver Moon; he had no leisure to consider why Wangge Luobao, whose acquaintance he had hardly made, would scheme so resolutely to get rid of him…he didn’t even have time to assess to what extent his meridians had recovered after being shattered by Zhaoting.

Beneath the light of the Lovebird Sword Array, which had lit up practically the whole Southern He Peninsula, all Xi Ping saw were the people looking up into the sky in panic.

Northern Li’s mine envoy, the Luwu, the common cultivators scrabbling to survive in the cracks, the mortals, the Turmoilers.

Countless people.

There was no retreat. He couldn’t die.

With a crack, Xi Ping’s dislocated spine returned to its proper location, holding up his wound-riddled body.

Zhaoting…

The jaws, an unimportant location, were always the very last to be fully repaired. Xi Ping hadn’t had time to get to them yet, so he couldn’t speak. He only reached out for the Sword that Mended the Heavens, which had fallen not far from him.

The shard in his spirit responded to the sword. In that moment, Zhaoting, a divine shed skin sword he found it difficult even to hold, came in answer to his thought. It flew straight into his hand, which had only three fingers remaining.

From the shard in his spirit came shifu’s voice. Xi Ping didn’t even split off his attention to listen to what he was saying.

When shifu had passed along the sword energy to him, he had teased him, saying it was too tiring to stand guard for his rebellious disciple; he didn’t even dare to breathe too loudly, since at the slightest sound, that disappointment would start looking this way and that.

Xi Ping had never accepted this—his spiritual sense was primarily attached to his hearing, anyway; it wasn’t like he was deaf. Of course he would hear.

Now, however, he had at last understood the meaning of “turning a deaf ear” and “forgetting world and self.”

Sword light blazed high. The second of Zhi Xiu’s attacks stored in his meridians flew out with a whistle from his hands with their incomplete fingers, meeting the Lovebird Sword Array head-on.

The effectiveness of the Sword that Mended the Heavens was at a discount in his hands, but fortunately, the Lovebird Sword Array had been sealed two hundred years ago by Lancang’s Sect Leader. Now, without a shed skin master to act as its mainstay, it seemed ancient and slow.

A bit of the next life spiritual fish’s mist was cleaned up by the sword wind. On the South Sea, Yang Wan shook. Her eyes cleared for an instant, and she saw Lord Guang’an. Blood flowed from all the apertures of her face.

The Lovebird Sword Array instantly stagnated.

But at the same time, Xi Ping was like a sandcastle on the shore amid the wind and rain. After sending out two shed skin sword attacks in a row, he seemed to dissolve entirely into dust in the sword light.

Wangge Luobao slowly wiped his beast-taming flute, trying out high and low notes.

When Qiu Sha had seen the Silver Moon, she had stood stock still and met her death. On the South Sea, upon seeing the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, everyone had scattered in all directions. This was the first ascended spirit in history to dare to point a sword at a divine tool of the mountains.

It truly filled one with admiration. A pity it wasn’t any use.

The Sword Slave was trapped, and there were no accompanying plants on the Southern He Peninsula; even if Zhi Xiu immediately reached the Wan-He border, he would be too late to bury his disciple.

The courage of an ant trying to shake a tree.

Yang Wan meanwhile seemed to have fallen into a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. She was trapped within her spirit, not one of her movements free.

Lord Guang’an’s corpse hung in the depths of her pupils. She stared at that unmoving person, a frail sliver of her consciousness struggling wildly in her spirit. She herself tore a rift in the Way of the Heart on her spirit.

No, I’m…

I’m…

The next moment, the inexorable mind of the Lancang Spiritual Mountains swallowed her up. Yang Wan’s consciousness let out the most mournful shriek.

The stagnating Lovebird Sword Array concentrated its sword energy with a rumble. Xi Ping, who could no longer feel his body, couldn’t manage to put himself together no matter what to use the third sword attack.

But just then, three bursts of gunfire flew into the sky like shooting stars, precisely hitting the Lovebird Sword Array.

Wangge Luobao instantly raised his head: ascended spirit grade!

What was this?

Apart from Tai Sui, there could be no other ascended spirit on the Southern He Peninsula!

Wei Chengxiang dropped out of midair, creating a deep pit in the ground where her knees hit.

She was only a half-immortal. She had been unable to move a muscle under the Lovebird Sword Array, until Xi Ping had blocked it with Zhi Xiu’s sword.

Xi Ping had brought three sword attacks from Flying Jade Peak. The first two had been of the defense and shielding type. His second attack had won a moment’s breathing room for all the people frozen beneath the sword light.

In that moment, Wei Chengxiang had seen the Lovebird Sword Array.

The reincarnation wood’s connection had severed. She didn’t know whether Xi Ping was dead or alive. She couldn’t contact the Luwu or the Turmoilers.

But no one who could survive in the Land of Turmoil would cry until they had seen the coffin.

In a flash, Wei Chengxiang took from her mustard seed the upgraded immortal tool Xi Ping had given her to protect herself with—a cannon over four chi long; instead of cannonballs, what it had inside it were three ascended spirit grade talismans.

In a last ditch effort, Wei Chengxiang emptied the cannon all at once.

Wangge Luobao ordered the waking dragon to swim further away. He frowned. “Fighting with their backs to the wall.”

Though Zhaoting’s effectiveness was at a discount in Xi Ping’s hands, it was still a shed skin sword. If even a shed skin sword’s wind couldn’t force the Lovebird Sword Array to retreat, what could an upgraded immortal tool that was at best of ascended spirit grade do?

Those three shots that could overturn mountains and shift seas were only enough to make the Lovebird Sword Array momentarily indisposed.

The sword array paused slightly. Its sword light blazed more and more fiercely. Wei Chengxiang almost had the impression that her eyes were being stabbed.

“It’s over,” she thought. “It’s no use.”

But then, before she could despair, an earthshaking rumble reverberated over the canal.

Wei Chengxiang’s three breakthrough shots hadn’t managed to harm a single one of the Lovebird Sword Array’s hairs, but they seemed to have been a signal.

On the steamships, on land, the Luwu brought out the upgraded immortal tools they had brought along!

They had brought ten ascended spirit grade ones in all, and each person had an established foundation grade one.

Unable to contact each other, the Luwu acted with perfect coordination, firing on the Lovebird Sword Array almost simultaneously.

Fierce light exploded over the Southern He Peninsula, shoving the Lovebird Sword Array up into the sky.

The spiritual wind on the Southern He Peninsula was like knives, sweeping into the sea, stirring up countless vortexes of varying size.

The Eternal Flame had not seen the light of day in eight hundred years. On the first public appearance of spirit-conducting gold, manmade tools flagrantly matched themselves against a divine tool of the mountains.

Aside from the people of Wan, there was universal shock.