On Xuanyin’s Moon Plated Peak, Lin Chi and Wen Fei stood around the Unbound Furnace and the still warm and toasty failed spirit-conducting gold, striving unsuccessfully to think things through.

Wen Fei considered and said to Lin Chi: Actually, I have a thought.

Lin Chi quickly said, “Instruct me, Wen-shixiong.”

Wen Fei waved a hand. Well…I wouldn’t dare, I’ll just tell you for what it’s worth. Just bear with me and listen, Lin-shixiong. I don’t understand toolmaking, but I’ve been neighbors with a sword cultivator for a hundred years, so I understand something about sword cultivators. Our own sword god, regardless of cultivation level, certainly has a temper that’s one in a million. You can count him as kind and gentle in disposition and refined in manner. But, look, when it comes to daily trifles, with a few extra sentences, you can always get him to meet you halfway, but the more he’s up against a dangerous situation or a formidable opponent, the less willing he is to turn around. To break off their line of retreat in a hopeless situation and use the point of their sword as a glimmer of hope for survival—that’s what sword cultivators like him rely on to cultivate their hearts.

“You mean that this sword cultivator Sect Leader of Lancang…”

Wen Fei said, He was also a sword cultivator. I’ve thought all along that instead of thinking up a way to make an immortal tool that would overcome the heavenly commandments of the spiritual mountains, under those circumstances, he might prefer to take aim at the “heavenly commandments” themselves.

Lin Chi was startled. “How could heavenly commandments break? Was he also planning to level the Lancang Spiritual Mountains?”

Wen Fei glanced at him. That’s not necessarily impossible… Lin-shixiong, he wanted to give Lancang’s spiritual energy back to the mortal world to begin with. The spiritual mountains aren’t incapable of collapse. Aren’t the Xuanyin Mountains already “melting” into the earth?

“But the Territory Map itself was left behind by the Southern Sage,” Lin Chi said doubtfully, coming to his senses. “Perhaps this was just what the sage intended at the time. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sealed the Territory Map into the veins of the earth. We were only following the current, and still we only narrowly managed to survive. I certainly haven’t heard that the Lancang Mountains’ Gold and Jade Sages left behind anything of the kind. How…how could that be?”

Wen Fei waved his hand. That’s right. He failed, didn’t he? The Lancang Mountains became the southern mines, and the Southern He Peninsula turned into the Land of Turmoil.

“You mean that because he had become obsessed, the Lancang Sect Leader went completely insane then.” As if he had swallowed an ice cube, Lin Chi slowly said, “Returning the spiritual energy of the spiritual mountains to the human world might only have been a deranged delusion of his before he died?”

Wen Fei made no comment.

The two of them remained silent for a long time. Then Lin Chi suddenly said, “No. I don’t believe it.”

Wen Fei raised his eyebrows. You don’t believe he was insane?

“He was definitely insane, or he wouldn’t have done so many improper things,” Lin Chi said. “But I still think that if he had a thread of lucidity remaining, then it was his obsession with returning spiritual energy to the human world… Lancang was her sect.”

Meanwhile, Xi Ping was also thinking of Hui Xiangjun.

The Law Breaker that she had made was an immortal tool, powered by spiritual stones.

And the spiritual mountains…

The spiritual mountains also relied on the spiritual energy surging through the veins of the earth to control the landscape and the climate; it seemed that you could also say that they were driven by spiritual stones.

The Ways of the Heart of the sages were like the Law Breaker, which could look for spiritual stones to activate itself; they had amassed a whole country’s spiritual stones into mountains. The sages had already left the mortal dust, but the human world was still like Tao County within the Law Breaker, operating under these heavenly commandments.

The Law Breaker, which could keep the Silver Moon outside its boundaries, warp space and time, and prohibit the use of spiritual energy, was certainly no mere toy that Hui Xiangjun had made after getting inspiration from the spiritual mountains. Behind it were very likely hidden the secrets of the workings of the spiritual mountains. And Lancang Mountain, which had been Hui Xiangjun’s sect, had had the Unbound Furnace in its keeping for centuries after her death.

Xiang Rong with his headful of marvelous ideas had comprehended how to realize “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” after acquiring the Unbound Furnace. So what had Lancang’s half-crazy Sect Leader comprehended?

Everything Yao Qi had seen and heard inside the next life mist was history.

In other words, before his death, Lancang’s Sect Leader, witnessed by Kunlun’s Second Elder, had rammed his Way of the Heart against the Lovebird Sword Array, and his remaining consciousness had recited this series of inscriptions. What did it mean? How should they be used?

Xi Ping had a sudden intense intuition that if he could work this out, then he would have grasped the crux of breaking through the canopy above their heads.

When speaking of inscriptions, everyone’s first thought was of Sanyue. Xi Ping opened his half-regenerated eyelids and placed all his spiritual sense in his vision to sneak a bold peek at Xuanwu while he was being beaten down by Zhaoting, then swiftly ducked back into a shadow when Xuanwu’s consciousness swept his way.

Just one look was enough to tell him that Sanyue’s foremost inscription master also had no clue.

The Law Breaker was in the Tai Sui Qin, but spiritual energy was prohibited in Tao County; no one could get it.

If only he could go through the reincarnation wood…

Just then, a chill suddenly crept up Xi Ping’s spine.

Oh no—the thought had hardly had time to flash by when the ice floes on the South Sea mingled with Zhaoting’s sword energy all broke, the dispersing sword light almost blinding. The sea breeze turned into sharp blades. Pursuing Xi Ping’s talisman, it pierced the next life spiritual fish’s mist.

Xi Ping didn’t have time to think much. He swept up the Queen Mother of the West’s masterless mustard seed and dove into the depths of the sea without a look back, moving instantaneously seven or eight times in a row; he moved several zhang in a flash—when his paperman had been attached to the waking dragon’s shadow, he’d had a sudden thought; adhering to the principle of “snatching every possible opportunity,” he tried using the Discard the False and Keep the True book to copy the waking dragon’s power. Yu Chang himself had probably never done such a thing.

As he’d expected, since he was missing some body parts, bridging the gap between species didn’t work very well. The waking dragon could fly a hundred li with a wave of its tail, while Xi Ping could only hop around within a radius of some dozen zhang with his strained copy, narrowly avoiding several beams of sword energy that nearly brushed against the center of his brow.

The voice floating over the Lancang Mountains suddenly broke off. Xi Ping’s heart sank.

At the extreme of the fatal sword images, two people holding swords showed their true appearances. One of them was someone Xi Ping had seen before, Kunlun’s Sect Leader.

The Kunlun sword cultivators had come faster than he had anticipated, and the cultivation level of this foremost Sect Leader in the world was higher than he had anticipated—the Sword Slave hadn’t been able to dispel the next life mist at one stroke!

While the Lovebird Sword Array had temporarily stilled, it was still hanging in the air and could attack at any moment, and Xuanwu and the Silver Moon were still in perfect condition.

The most unfavorable situation had happened!

Shifu!

But Xi Ping quickly found that compared to his shizun, alone and helpless, his own situation was the dangerous one.

When Xuanwu had appeared, he had uttered some pretentious nonsense before attacking, but the Kunlun Sect Leader carrying a heart demon seed seemed to have been drugged. He didn’t announce his home sect, and neither did he give a greeting. He raised his sword and slashed—what was more, he ignored the masters filling the sky and only took notice of Xi Ping in the sea!

Xi Ping: “…”

Why slash at him?

He had used a half-immortal grade talisman earlier for the sake of trickery. He was blending in inside the Queen Mother of the West’s hidden realm, pretending to be a lackey of one of the great evil cultivators. It was a fact that in the eyes of certain people, half-immortals didn’t even count as cultivators. With a crowd of masters gathered together, instead of deliberating national and international affairs, this one was going around all over the place stomping on ants—what kind of unique ideas were driving him?

Wasn’t the Kunlun Sect Leader’s heart demon aimed at the Sword Slave? What kind of provocation must he have received to flare up in a different direction?

In the sea, he covered his head and fled “like a frightened fish.” The fatal sword energy followed him like his shadow. He still had the final sword attack, but he was afraid of disturbing Zhi Xiu and didn’t dare to use it lightly. Xi Ping’s thoughts moved quickly: Kunlun’s Sect Leader wasn’t Wangge Luobao. With Zhaoting and Wanshuang right there, how could a mere ascended spirit like him merit such attention? Even if the old man had realized that the amplifying talisman earlier had been cast by him, his reaction still shouldn’t have been this outsized…

Wait!

A thought flashed by like lightning: Kunlun’s Sect Leader perhaps had no idea who he was, but he might have recognized those inscriptions that had stumped even Xuanwu!

At the Lancang Sect Leader’s death, Kunlun’s Second Elder had been next to him!

As his mind wandered for the space of a breath, Kunlun’s great sword split apart the South Sea. Since ancient times, it had been impossible to cut water with a sword, but this thousand-year-old shed skin sword cultivator had cleaved a precipice into the South Sea. There was nowhere for Xi Ping to hide.

Just then, another person on the scene moved.

The Sword Slave suddenly gave up on the Lovebird Sword Array, turning Wanshuang against her own Sect Leader.

“Wu Lingxiao!”

Ninefold Kunlun swords of the same origin clashed. The precipice made of seawater collapsed. Xi Ping didn’t hesitate. Like a cunning fish himself, he ducked into a fish’s shadow and dove into a patch of sea.

Above the Lancang Mountains now, the Lovebird Sword Array was suspended on high, and Wanshuang and the Sect Leader were engaged in a stand-off; Xuanwu was in as sorry a predicament as the Silver Moon, his ruthless gaze fixed on Zhaoting; in front of outsiders, Kunlun’s Third Elder, holding back his astonishment and not cutting the ground out from under his shixiong’s feet, stood behind the Sect Leader with his sword raised; Zhi Xiu put away Zhaoting and out of the corner of his eye shot a glance in the direction that the Kunlun Sect Leader’s sword had been pointing earlier. He kept thinking that something was wrong and once again quietly sent out his consciousness, calming down only when he had checked on the location of the shard of Zhaoting.

“Interesting,” Xuanwu said gravely. “Evil cultivators are overthrowing the heavens, we are faced with formidable foes, and the Cauldron of Nine Dragons has sunk into the sea without a word, while the masters from Kunlun have gone ahead with a power struggle.”

The Third Elder also thought it was completely unreasonable. He shot a glance at the Sect Leader. Perhaps it was his mistake, but he thought that the bloody light in the Sect Leader’s eyes was becoming increasingly ghastly, so he stepped forward and spoke on the Sect Leader’s behalf: “Beneath the ninefold sword of Kunlun, all evil retreats. There is nothing to be anxious about. Please do not be impatient, Fellow Cultivator Xuanwu—Lingxiao, what are you doing?”

The Sword Slave was short-tempered and despised intriguing more than anything, but that didn’t mean she was stupid.

Cold light flitted over Wanshuang. She aimed her pitch-dark eye sockets at the Sect Leader and rasped in a voice like a crow’s: “And I would like to know, shibo, why did the Sect Leader want to break off those inscriptions?”

Xuanwu frowned, at last turning his eyes on Kunlun’s Sect Leader. Beneath the astonished gazes of the great shed skins of the era, Kunlun’s Sect Leader’s features twisted savagely. Xi Ping almost thought he could hear the heart demon seed sprouting.

Zhi Xiu immediately recalled Zhao Yin’s self-destruction and death and saw at once that this was an omen of losing one’s mind. His intuition told him that this had to be related to Zhou Ying. He said nothing, only squeezed Zhaoting’s hilt. With a wave of his sleeve, he sent some mustard seeds full of spiritual stones to the Luwu steamships bringing up the rear.

Before he could complete his maneuver, he heard the Sword Slave say with emphasis on each word: “Was it because my shifu heard these inscriptions in the Lancang Mountains that you decided he had to be silenced?”

The Sword Slave was only worked up, bluffing at random. She hadn’t expected that no sooner had she spoken than the Sect Leader’s admonition of “impertinent” would come toward her along with the slashing point of his sword.

Xuanwu and the Third Elder quickly got out of the way to either side. Zhi Xiu leapt down from the clouds, landing on the surface of the sea. Zhaoting caught the better part of the sword energy, and the remainder was promptly parried by the upgraded immortal tools on the Luwu ships.

The stagnating Lovebird Sword Array was assaulted by sword energy from two great swords of Kunlun and seemed to come back to life. The sword array that had nearly been scattered by the Sword Slave took shape once again and pointed at her back.

Xi Ping gasped. His consciousness plunged into the Queen Mother of the West’s mustard seed hidden realm. “Ziming-xiong, wake up!”

And meanwhile, the Blind Wolf King Xie Chu was struggling to trek over a field of snow.

This was outside the Beijue Mountains, a place of utter cold that no gaze in the world could reach. It could freeze a person’s essence.

And once a cultivator’s essence was frozen, all techniques and protective spiritual energy would be useless. Whether ascended spirit or shed skin, they would freeze to death here.

You couldn’t even turn back and retreat if you sensed something wrong. Extreme cold caused hallucinations; it was extremely easy for the consciousness to become lost. The Blind Wolf King normally remained in the Snow Observation Pavilion in his true body, only sending his consciousness through the Beijue Pass; this was already extremely dangerous, but this time he had come in his true body.

He was prepared not to come back.

As he went deep into the Beijue Array, it seemed that he couldn’t move a sliver of the spiritual energy in his essence. Light like a ghost fire glimmered on his body. He held a Lingchi Lantern in his hand—the Snow Wolf had once used this clumsy method to get to the feet of the Beijue Mountains, burning his own flesh and blood the whole way. Xie Chu had always turned his nose up at this stupid buck’s conduct; he had never thought that he would become the next stupid buck.

“I’ve spent a lifetime building an illustrious reputation. Why the hell did I trust you?” he muttered. His senses seemed to have entirely stopped working. He could no longer distinguish anything; he was simply walking forward on a single held breath…following the dull rhythmic knocking on the Beijue Array. “I’m likely to die today thanks to you…”

The knocking on the Beijue Array ignored him. The knocker couldn’t hear what he was muttering, anyway.

“If my guess is correct,” Zhou Ying had said before leaving, “as Kunlun’s divine tool, the Ceaseless Mirror is likely to be linked to the Beijue Array.”

“What’s the evidence?”

“The official history of the cultivation world,” said Zhou Ying. “The first lesson that inner and outer sect disciples of each sect are taught upon entering, concerning the origin on the immortal mountains—each sage had their own Way of the Heart and their own strength, but there were so many shed skin masters then, yet only five people stood out and became full moon gods. Do you still recall why this was, Wolf King?”

“The sages had visions of protecting the common people, according with the wishes of all.” After reciting this, Xie Chu rolled his eyes. “Stay on topic, little devil. How old are you? Do you still believe that crap?”

“No, the official history is admittedly whitewashed, but it’s coherent.” Zhou Ying calmly interrupted the Blind Wolf King’s cynicism. “You don’t have to believe that the sages were righteous and selfless, but it isn’t without cause that a balance has been kept between the cultivation world and the human world for thousands of years. Up to the present, while the masters struggle over power and act in all manner of nauseating ways, they still do their best to avoid affecting mortals. Wolf King, is this because they still have some conscience, or because of a warning from their spiritual senses?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Kunlun Mountains are the first spiritual mountains in the world. Legend says that the climate of the northern continent suddenly changed for the worse, bringing punishing cold, causing innumerable people and livestock to freeze to death. The Sword Ancestor took all his disciples and acolytes and used himself as a shield to block the killing wind coming from the north. He became a full moon sage after undergoing this tribulation, becoming the hope of the populace. The northern continent’s spiritual energy gathered at the border, from east to west, and the Kunlun Mountain Range arose—that is the myth,” Zhou Ying said. “But there’s one part of it that’s right—the Kunlun Mountain Range did rise from east to west, because the east is densely populated. At the northwest corner, the power of the ‘will of the people’ might have been exhausted—that would be the Beijue Pass. Kunlun’s Ceaseless Mirror is perhaps the only divine tool of the mountains in the world that isn’t located within the immortal mountains. It’s likely that it’s located at the extreme end of the Kunlun Mountains.”

“This is pure conjecture.”

“It is,” said Zhou Ying, who had still been in the midst of the way of clarity at the time. “Why don’t we bet on it and perform an experiment? I’ll go to the Kunlun Mountains and think of a way to enter the Ceaseless Mirror. If you can hear our prearranged flying goose signal at the Beijue Pass, Wolf King, then we’ll have bet right.”

“You’ll think of…what? Kid, are you…”

“If that really is the case, we can find the source of the birth of the spiritual mountains,” Zhou Ying said, taking no notice of his views. “And perhaps also the true reason for your honored teacher’s death.”