“What…what is this?” Xie Chu held his forehead blankly and twisted his head to look at Zhou Ying, but he saw Zhou Ying standing next to the two-century-old remains with his arms folded. Watching the movements of his mouth, Xie Chu thought he seemed to be saying, “I see.”

In the Law Breaker and the South Sea Hidden Realm, Zhou Ying had seen very similar blurred boundaries. At the time, his cultivation had only been a half-immortal’s, and he had been unable to pry into it. But when his consciousness, protected by the heart demon seed, had entered the Ceaseless Mirror with his physical body, he had known that he had bet right.

In the Ceaseless Mirror, he could see an identical boundary. This time, he had succeeded in coming to the end of that unclear boundary.

This human world, stifled for a thousand years by the spiritual mountains, was like the Law Breaker, like the South Sea Hidden Realm—it was a manmade universe.

The Law Breaker was Hui Xiangjun’s creation and the South Sea Hidden Realm was suspected of being Ancestor Tianbo’s masterpiece, while the makers of this human world were the ignorant masses themselves.

The inside of Xie Chu’s head roared, whether because he was freezing, burning, or had faintly touched upon a truth that threatened his Way of the Heart; the questions in his mind were so numerous that they jammed together. He actually didn’t know which one to spit out first. “You see what? What is it? Just because of this… Nearly a thousand years of mutual support and friendship, and just because of this he actually killed him…”

Zhou Ying looked away from the inscriptions and waved a hand, interrupting him. He wrote: “Your honored Sect Leader wasn’t necessarily acting of his own volition.”

“Who could have coerced him…?” Having said this, Xie Chu suddenly saw the inscriptions at the center of his brow reflected in the mirror. His words cut off abruptly. Before a thought could arise in his mind, he was once again interrupted by Zhou Ying.

Zhou Ying was intentionally keeping him from thinking carefully about the relationship between cultivators and Ways of the Heart. “Certain of my doubts about the Kunlun Mountains have been resolved for the time being. There is another matter of utmost urgency.”

Xie Chu was exhausted, his flesh and bones nearly all burned away. His essence had nearly frozen. His mind was unavoidably going numb. “What?”

Zhou Ying bent his head and looked at the Second Elder’s corpse, which seemed to be sleeping.

The Wolf Kind had said that the Ceaseless Mirror could only be summoned by the High Priest, the Sect Leader, and the Sword Slave together. Of them, there was no need to count the Sword Slave. She had only had Wanshuang for a little over two centuries; he figured that calling her up was only a ceremonial need, to demonstrate respect for Wanshuang—but the Sect Leader and the High Priest, especially the High Priest, must be indispensable to summoning the Ceaseless Mirror.

Zhou Ying distinctly recalled that the High Priest had summoned his “corpse” up in front of him. Then a beam of light had flashed from between the old man’s brows, and he had left the human world and entered the Ceaseless Mirror and, following the boundary that only a paramount spiritual sense could see, had found his way here.

Adding in the peculiar inheritance of Kunlun’s High Priests…

“This is the main body of the Ceaseless Mirror,” Zhou Ying wrote, tapping on the surface. “Its entrance is between the brows of your honored sect’s High Priests. It seems that they are incarnations of the divine tool of the mountains. Your honored teacher’s corpse is here, and the scene of the murder is at your feet. In other words, there was a third person here then…a half-immortal. How did he get here?”

Right now, no one could have answered this question better than Xi Ping.

After he had narrowly avoided the pursuit of Kunlun’s ninefold sword and sent his consciousness into the mustard seed to speak to Yao Qi, he hadn’t stood around in place like an idiot.

Shifu had been tricked by the shard of Zhaoting, but that mixed-breed Wangge Luobao knew what was up. If that jerk hadn’t been bitten to death by the Cauldron of Nine Dragons yet, the Kunlun sword strike earlier must have indicated his position to Wangge Luobao. Therefore, after dodging the point of the sword, Xi Ping, hidden in the sea, raced without hesitation toward the battle of two Kunlun swords—the most dangerous place was the safest place.

As expected, no sooner had Xi Ping left his original position than the huge figure of a waking dragon emerged on the surface of the sea. Furious roaring dragons poked their heads up from the bottom of the sea.

Wangge Luobao, having attracted the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, disappeared in a flash, somewhat flustered and hard-pressed.

Damn that Tai Sui!

Wangge Luobao cursed inwardly: he’d slipped away faster than a loach! Had his flesh healed? He didn’t seem worried about his wounds getting steeped in saltwater!

Xi Ping heard dragon roars nearly brush past his shoulder and didn’t so much as turn his head. “Come at me if you’ve got the balls.”

It wasn’t that Wangge Luobao didn’t know that Xi Ping might head for the shed skin battlefield, but with his guts, he didn’t dare to barge in boldly with the Cauldron of Nine Dragons after him. He could only lie to himself, betting that Tai Sui was as “rational and cautious” as him, fruitlessly leading the Cauldron of Nine Dragons in the wrong direction to try his luck.

Zhi Xiu had given his rebellious disciple three sword attacks, and the very last one still remained to Xi Ping. It wasn’t necessarily stronger than the others, but its keen edge was unmatched—which had aggravated the symptoms of Xi Ping’s overweening audacity; right now, he was the exact antonym of “rational and cautious.”

Xi Ping slipped through the omnipresent sword wind. If he took a breath wrong, a cleft would appear in his head. Apart from him, there was no other living creature in a hundred li radius beneath the shed skin level.

While waiting for the outcome of Lin Chi’s analysis of the inscriptions, he prepared to dig up the foundations of Lancang’s great mountain array and trip up the Lovebird Sword Array as necessary.

When the change took place, he had just arrived beneath the feet of Kunlun’s Sect Leader and the Sword Slave.

Of course Kunlun’s Sect Leader had higher cultivation than the Sword Slave, who was a junior, but the Sword Slave wielded Wanshuang; the two of them were deadlocked.

Actually, thinking about it carefully, this seemed rather like a metaphor—the Sword Ancestor had left the mundane dust and his essence had dispersed into the Kunlun Mountain Range; the Sword Ancestor’s Way of the Heart was the foundation of Kunlun, and Kunlun’s Sect Leader and High Priest represented the utmost orthodoxy. Only the vital sword that was like half of a sword cultivator’s body didn’t acknowledge them. It was just like the karma beast, wandering through the mortal world and avoiding the immortal mountains.

“My—shifu!” The Sword Slave met the Sect Leader’s reddened eyes and let out an inhuman roar. “Where is he?!”

This howl could have shattered the spirit of a low level cultivator whose mind was unsteady. Not far away, the Third Elder staggered on his sword, his heart and guts ready to burst—he wasn’t entirely unaware of the situation. It was just that his understanding was slight.

When the Second Elder had stood his ground and quarreled with all the great sects, the Third Elder had been on the sidelines trying to smooth the situation over. Though everyone’s mouths were full of pretentious talk, in fact they all knew perfectly well what was going on, so when the Second Elder was later forcibly summoned away by his sect, everyone present was of one mind and didn’t mention him again. He didn’t know what had happened afterward. He hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t investigated. A person who had lived for a thousand years knew when to be clever and when to be dumb.

But having seen the Sect Leader’s reactions to this point with his own eyes and now hearing this question from the Sword Slave, it was like a sudden bolt of lightning breaking a stone.

The Third Elder trembled. Beneath the assault of the Lovebird Sword Array and the Silver Moon, his vital sword flew out of his hand. Seeing an opportunity arise, Zhi Xiu reacted swiftly, seizing the chance to deliver another blow; the Third Elder’s vital sword flew straight at Kunlun’s Sect Leader.

The Sect Leader had no time to turn and dodge. How could Wanshuang permit him to split his attention? It slammed heretically against the Sect Leader’s protective spiritual energy. Had Xi Ping, hidden in the shadows, not been afraid of being beaten like a drum by Zhaoting, he simply would have given a cry of good work!

Just then, the world suddenly fell silent. Time seemed to congeal. A mustard seed flew from the Sect Leader’s sleeve and, exposed to the sword wind, was shredded to bits. Light burst from it.

“Wu Lingxiao, you are disobedient!”

The word “disobedient” was pronounced by two voices layered together.

Zhi Xiu, who was nearest to them, suddenly received a warning from his spiritual sense. In a flash, he withdrew several li away. Without so much as turning his head, he used Zhaoting to knock aside several oblique strikes that the sword array had thrown at him. His pupils contracted slightly.

A human figure flew from the intense light between the Sect Leader and the Sword Slave. This person’s spiritual energy was so weak it was negligible. It was an old man…an old half-immortal!

In a battlefield of sword cultivators at the pinnacle of cultivation, even a shed skin didn’t dare to rashly charge in; an ascended spirit would be more brittle than a piece of old paper, so what about a half-immortal?

Almost as soon as the outlines of that old half-immortal’s figure appeared, his body was destroyed. Only a little mirror on his spirit, two cun square, remained, fixing the world and everything in it in place.

The core array of the Sword Slave’s half-puppet body was locked dead at once. She froze in place.

Zhou Ying had asked how a half-immortal like Kunlun’s High Priest could enter the Beijue Array and place the Second Elder’s corpse in the Ceaseless Mirror?

This was the answer: the Sect Leader had brought him.

Apart from the Silver Moon, the Lovebird Sword Array, and the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, which didn’t dare to show its head, there was also a fourth “divine tool of the mountains” here.

Wanshuang slipped from its master’s hand. The current High Priest’s body was destroyed, and his crazed human-shaped puppet of a Sect Leader slashed at the Sword Slave. There was no time for Zhi Xiu to save her.

But just then, a beam of sword energy flew up from the ground, knocking the Kunlun Sect Leader’s attack astray—it was of shed skin grade!

Apart from Zhaoting, Wanshuang, and the two Kunlun elders, there was another person here who held a sword attack.

A sword attack that had cut through clouds of tribulation.

After his mind emptied out altogether, Zhi Xiu almost had the impression that he was cracking to pieces. For the first time in his life, the world’s most good-tempered sword cultivator understood that “hair standing up in anger” wasn’t an exaggeration of the ancients.

Xi Shiyong, I’ll break you to pieces!

The Kunlun Sect Leader’s attack brushed past the Sword Slave and was blocked by Zhaoting before it could hit the ground. In the space of a breath, Zhi Xiu landed at the place that sword attack had originated.

After going through a major battle that had made his cultivation leap up a minor boundary, Xi Ping’s hidden bones had obviously firmed up quite a bit. Using that sword attack had only broken him halfway. Just as he was about to duck into the shadow of a wizened tree, a light grey figure appeared before his eyes. Xi Ping’s reaction was extremely fast. As if he had been “rescued,” he used his sole remaining hand to cling to shizun’s leg, pretending he’d had absolutely no intention of running off. “Shifu, the Luwu ship capsized, and that Wang from Southern Shu is drooling over my beauty, he just won’t leave me alone. Because of him I got chased all the way back here by those big worms…by the Cauldron of Nine Dragons. I nearly died! I thought I’d never see you again, shifu!”

There was nowhere for Zhi Xiu’s raised hand to fall. He had to retract it. Zhaoting buzzed as it vibrated; it was unclear whether it was pleading for mercy on Xi Ping’s behalf or lodging a complaint against him.

“Good child.” Zhi Xiu crushed a handful of spiritual stones and elixir pills and sprinkled them over him. Xi Ping trembled, feeling as if what shizun had crushed was his skull. “If I can’t teach you a lesson after all this, I’ll be calling you something.”

But just then, the east wind suddenly turned keen.

There had been an east wind blowing over the Southern He Peninsula the whole time, strong enough for a hurricane, unusually so. But the fighting among the masters had been too intense. Everyone had been ignoring the wind.

But right after the Ceaseless Mirror appeared, that wind suddenly became an astral wind.

The houses on the ground, the mining machinery…all the remnants were swept away. Zhi Xiu threw out a hand behind himself to shield his wretched disciple, currently an inhuman lump. All the cultivators sniffed out an inauspicious aura.

The east…

In a flash, Xi Ping gave a start.

The Resurrection Vortex, the Impassable Sea!

Not caring that his body hadn’t yet regenerated after being shattered by sword energy, his consciousness entered the paperman on Wei Chengxiang’s boat—he really had a crow’s mouth; the Luwu ship had indeed overturned. It was only that, protected by arrays and immortal tools, it hadn’t yet sunk or fallen into the water. It was floating precariously on the sea. The half-immortals on the ship were brandishing all kinds of talismans, struggling to maintain equilibrium. The paperman Xi Ping fought free of Wei Chengxiang’s arms and snatched up a Heavenly Question that had just come flying toward them and read it quickly.

Lin Chi’s letter discussed the important points about the origin of the inscriptions and the cause of Kunlun’s formation.

Since ancient times, the northern and southern continents had been inhabited by different peoples, their cultures and languages incomprehensible to each other. When the Sword Ancestor had put an end to the natural disaster in Northern Li, it hadn’t yet impacted the southern continent.

But there was no barrier between the northern and southern continents, and spiritual energy circulated. After the first range of spiritual mountains formed and heavenly commandments were established on the northern half of the continent, the flow of spiritual energy throughout the whole human world changed its pattern along with him.

The southern continent had no sea of inscriptions created by the common people, and naturally it also had no veins of the earth. But spiritual energy began to assemble around those masters who shared the ideals and followed the way of the Sword Ancestor.

The south had the Two Sages, the east had the Southern Sage, the west had the Black Emperor, and on the sea there was Tianbo. Their cultivation rose with the tide; one after another, they reached the full moon boundary.

Kunlun had formed under the impetus of the people, and the Sword Ancestor had reached his “full moon” position because of the birth of the Kunlun Mountains. The other four ranges of immortal mountains had been made on this basis. First came the full moon sage, and then the spiritual mountains gathered with the sage as a foundation and put forth veins of the earth.

In the present, the cultivation world said that the Great Way has three thousand paths, all different paths with the same end; this was because those with different ends had nearly all been eliminated during that period. The ways of those who had fallen behind had shattered, and their essences had been plundered. The remnants of their consciousnesses had been unwilling to scatter; they had formed pestilences or lost their minds, nourishing the shadow beneath the feet of those in the cultivation world—heart demons.

In this way, “demons” had been born.

Lin Chi wrote: The origins of the world’s heavenly commandments, the origins of inscriptions, are in the Kunlun Mountains, in the Ceaseless Mirror. Lancang’s senior wished to use them to alter the heavenly commandments and disperse Lancang’s spiritual energy.

Xi Ping: “…”

Well, wasn’t that a coincidence? The demon host was sealed in the resurrection vortex next door.