Zhou Ying stood alone inside the Ceaseless Mirror, looking at the starting point of this foul and tumultuous human world.

Five great spiritual mountains, with Kunlun as their beginning.

Whether it was Lancang’s Sect Leader wanting to spread the spiritual mountains’ inscriptions or Hui Xiangjun taking a section of the inscriptions to create the Law Breaker and the Riverward, both of them could only move bricks around on the foundation, with only localized impact.

This time, they had dug up the “foundation” in its entirety.

The Beijue Array was destroyed the instant the array transmitted the inscriptions outward. The wild wind stirred up the ice, snow, and fog. The Blind Wolf King’s charred corpse was mixed up in it, turned to dust in the blink of an eye.

There was pitch-blackness before Zhou Ying’s eyes. Supposing there had still been someone here, they would have seen the big “mirror” containing one man and one corpse slowly disappear like vapor. In the mirror, Zhou Ying turned to the Second Elder and at the very last sighed. “This disciple of yours…”

If this set of foundation-like ancient inscriptions fell into the mortal world, what would happen?

Xie Chu had asked this question at the start. At the time, he had just recovered his senses after his grief and rage over his shizun’s wrongful death and was mechanically digging up inscriptions on the ground according to Zhou Ying’s instructions.

Zhou Ying’s answer had been the same as the one Xie Chu had later used to fob off Xi Ping: How would I know?

He had also said: I’m only a young frog at the bottom of the well with slightly better eyesight than most. Do you depend on me to see through the East Sea? If I knew, I wouldn’t leave it up to Shiyong to choose for himself.

Xie Chu gave a ha. Anyway, he was charred and flaming; no one could see what shape his mouth made or whether he rolled his eyes. Taking advantage of Zhou Ying’s inability to hear him through the mirror, he simply muttered, “Like hell I trust you.”

No one, provided they were of average intelligence, would trust Zhou Ying.

A hero sacrificed themself for others, a villain harmed others for their own benefit, a great person did good for the people that was as plentiful as water and created a lasting institution, an idiot had paste cooking in their head and was driven by their emotions.

Zhou Ying was none of these. Xie Chu thought that this nephew of Xi Zhengde’s didn’t seem to have been born of the mortal world.

In order to investigate the Ceaseless Mirror, he had simply given up his Way of the Heart and physical body. In a few short months, the Kunlun Mountains had nearly been brought to ruin at his hands. Xie Chu dug up one horrifying ancient inscription after another. He didn’t know what the right thing to do was, but at any rate he knew that they couldn’t end up in Zhou Ying’s hands.

He tapped on the surface of the Ceaseless Mirror and tentatively scrawled a few words: Well, there’s nothing better to do. How do you guess that little devil will choose in the end?

Zhou Ying was briefly silent. I don’t need to guess. He’ll say no.

Had Xie Chu’s eyebrows not been burned away by the Lingchi Lantern, they would have risen all the way to the top of his head.

None of Kunlun’s previous High Priests had established foundations. Even though they inherited the memories, each and every one like the same person occupying a different body, they had still all been half-immortals. Everyone had started out in the open-eyed stage—what was a half-immortal’s cultivation level? Even with Zhou Ying’s paramount spiritual sense, as a half-immortal, he had still been unable to see the boundaries of the tiny Law Breaker Bracelet, unable to see the interference in the Bell of Tribulation. How could an old fogey like the High Priest dare to call himself “omniscient”?

Now it seemed that the Ceaseless Mirror was a higher-level Sea of Stars. Xie Chu even suspected that it didn’t predict circumstances but rather determined them, so what the High Priest said must be so… But the High Priest was after all only a half-immortal, with a weak consciousness, clearly unable to control the Ceaseless Mirror entirely. Basically, he was a slave to the mirror. So what if there were an ascended spirit in his place…or even a shed skin?

The former Heartless Lotus—the one that had bloomed in ancient times, that was—had gambled with his life trying to come get a peek at the Ceaseless Mirror.

Who could resist this kind of power?

But Zhou Ying seemed to have read something on his soot-blackened face. He wrote, Wolf King, have you heard of the Riverward?

Hui Xiangjun had left behind three great works after her death: the Gold Imitation Technique, the Law Breaker, and the Riverward.

The Gold Imitation Technique was the Eternal Flame’s true kindling, while the Law Breaker was a metaphor for the spiritual mountain. The inscriptions it used had been based on the Lancang Spiritual Mountains of eight centuries ago, of the same grade as all the spiritual mountains apart from Kunlun. Only the Riverward seemed to be out of place beside the other two.

Its so-called ability to “step between life and death” was overstating the truth somewhat. The Riverward wasn’t the next life spiritual fish, after all. While it also rated as a matchless divine tool, “silently entering and exiting any place” made it sound like a burglar’s tool; it didn’t seem so high-grade. Moreover, the Riverward had a limited number of uses, also making it look second-rate by comparison.

Considered closely, the limited number of its uses was also very delicate—Zhou Ying thought that if he had been Hui Xiangjun, hiding Qiu Sha would have taken one use. Expecting that if Qiu Sha really could break through the ascended spirit pass, she would be certain to give rise to carnage when she went out and draw the pursuit of all the great spiritual mountains, he would have given her another use as a lifesaving trump card. But there was truly no need for the third time. If a person brought themselves to a dead end twice, a dead person’s relic wouldn’t be enough to protect them. If he’d had the strength to spare, he would have preferred to use it on the Law Breaker, making the scope that the Law Breaker could envelop a little more useful than the area of minuscule Tao County.

Then why was the Riverward limited to three uses? It couldn’t be because this sage had some kind of peculiar obsession with numbers, could it? Where had the third use been meant to be used?

The Law Breaker and Riverward, “children of the same mother,” didn’t get along; that also seemed to be a metaphor—

Xie Chu was surprised. You mean that the destination of the Riverward’s final use was originally this place?

Yes. Hui Xiangjun had left behind the Unbound Furnace, created the Law Breaker. That showed that the successor to the Eternal Spring Brocade—who, after Kunlun had formed, had broken through the shackles by force and grown an accompanying plant—had had an understanding of the spiritual mountains’ system that far surpassed the average person’s. For her to have figured out Kunlun’s secret using the other spiritual mountain as leads wouldn’t have been surprising.

But in the end, she hadn’t revealed this information to anyone, including Qiu Sha, who had taken away the Riverward. It seemed that after consideration, that master had given up on digging up the spiritual mountains’ foundations and focused her attention on the Gold Imitation Technique; never mind bringing about her own death, she had also made later generations take an eight-century detour.

Why? said Xie Chu.

Because it would have been meaningless, said Zhou Ying.

If the ancient inscriptions had appeared and the heavenly commandments had fallen into the mortal world, it would only have meant the collapse of the spiritual mountains and the rise of new spiritual mountains.

And between the fall of the old and the rise of the new, there was certain to be instability, certain to be disaster on a grand scale. Where would the ants go to take shelter then? After the calamity, the past sages would be gone, and future generations would follow the same road to ruin. It would only be a sin.

Zhou Ying wrote on the surface of the mirror: I won’t conceal from you—during the Dragon Boat Festival, in the South Sea, I asked him more or less the same question.

Xie Chu came back to his senses and looked meaningfully at Zhou Ying. And if he agrees?

I already told you, said Zhou Ying, if he agrees at once, then it must be those hidden bones he’s carrying.

I’ve never heard of anyone inheriting a way and refusing to acknowledge it, said Xie Chu. Did he actually inherit a Way of the Heart, or did he get possessed? …Fine, I don’t understand this “way of death” anyway—if he keeps calm and thinks it over, and then decides to agree?

Zhou Ying said, Then it means the hidden bones have grown strong enough to be on the point of going out of control. Unable to control him, they’ll be controlling the reincarnation wood.

Xie Chu said in surprise, Then why are you still making him choose? To test how far the hidden bones have gone out of control? Then I’m not digging anymore.

Zhou Ying said, What strength you have, you didn’t bring with you when you were born won’t take with you when you die. If you save it up, there’ll only be more here to freeze in a little while.

Xie Chu said, …The Xi bloodline couldn’t produce a scoundrel like you. What kind of bastard did that young lady marry to end up with you?

Having heard this out, Zhou Ying was very approving. Indeed, the Wolf King is wise. Keep digging, trust me. You’ll know in the end.

By the time Xie Chu had uncovered all the inscriptions, he would have caught up and looked inward to his Way of the Heart. When his Way of the Heart shattered, he would understand why Xi Ping was completely at odds with the hidden bones, which were like a Way of the Heart.

There was a reason that none of Kunlun’s High Priests had established foundations: a person with a Way of the Heart was the Way of the Heart’s slave; they couldn’t inherit these inscriptions. If the successor to the hidden bones didn’t want them, then, starting from the established foundation level, no one could receive this set of inscriptions. Each of the spiritual mountains of the southern continent might dissolve, but Kunlun would be eternally strong as a fortress. This great wall and these shackles cast by immortals and mortals together would live forever.

Here and now, the one who would make the decision wasn’t Xi Ping. It was Xie Chu.

Your Highness the Blind Wolf King, you have stood guard at the Beijue Mountain Pass for so many years. When you go, it will be clean, not leaving behind a single remaining shard of a Way of the Heart.

When you reach enlightenment, how will you choose?

For the stability of the overall situation, let the gross injustice done to the Second Elder remain in silence, let the cycle of the puppets of Ways of the Hearts continue? Or make a reckless move, risk the sky falling and the earth cracking, carry away the resentment and indignation of millions of the unjustly dead, shoulder the burden of this heavy crime and pierce the thread of heaven, in the midst of a raging storm place the rudder in the hands of a young man locked in ceaseless struggle with his “Way of the Heart”?

Hui Xiangjun had shrunk back, and Xi Shiyong wasn’t so arrogant. He would have to put the Wolf King to the trouble.

Xi Shiyong’s constitution, his spiritual sense, his natural talents…even his ability to concentrate were all no better than average. For his cultivation level to have risen to such a degree within a few decades of beginning to cultivate was completely unreasonable. The only explanation was that his cultivation level had nothing to do with him. Those hidden bones of his had been shed skin bones to begin with. After the Blind Wolf King had told him about the Beijue Array, he had been silent for a very long time. Zhou Ying had known then that he could no longer completely suppress the hidden bones.

Using the ancient inscriptions outside the Beijue Mountains to lure out the hidden bones now would still leave room to maneuver. Once the hidden bones found an opportunity to reach the shed skin level and returned to their peak, that would be when the person who had accidentally picked them up would have come to a dead end.

This was also Xi Ping’s chance at survival.

When the Riverward had come into Zhou Ying’s hands, he had made the wrong decision to use up the last opportunity. It had been wasted.

Now he had come here in the Riverward’s stead. That was probably fated.

Xi Ping felt that his consciousness had been broken up and left behind on the northern and southern continents, among all the mountains of the five nations.

Amid his mixed shock and anger, he sensed the reincarnation wood go out of control—and it was different from when the Lovebird Sword Array had severed his connection to it. Before, the reincarnation wood had been like his hands and feet, his to use at will. Now it was still attached to him, the connection hadn’t severed, but it seemed to have turned into a prosthetic limb that wouldn’t take orders.

Before, the reincarnation wood had been like an orderly flying goose net, but now it had gotten jumbled up into a knot. The great mountain arrays of the immortal mountains and all the nations’ border arrays were seized by an invisible power.

On the Southern He Peninsula, the Lovebird Sword Array suddenly shrank. The Silver Moon’s light dimmed. The Nine Dragons, like dissipating beast spirits, returned to the Cauldron of Nine Dragons, which had floated up. Under the horrified gazes of the great shed skins, the Ceaseless Mirror suspended above the Lancang Mountains vanished like vapor!

At the same time, Xi Ping’s consciousness, scattered all over, glimpsed the demonic energy of the Impassable Sea rise steeply and surge over Great Wan’s vanished border inscriptions—

Meanwhile, at the Wan-He border, the upgraded immortal tools had put up an initial show of strength against the demons. The demonic energy retreated briefly. Then, an enormous figure identical to the Southern Sage walked out of nothingness.

The sage’s face floated in the air, looking ghastly, yet there was a faint smile on it. “Oh? What kind of manmade toys are these?”

Pang Jian certainly couldn’t fail to recognize the founder of his sect. He gasped. The karma beast on his sleeve roared furiously.

The “Southern Sage” didn’t respond, but someone did answer: “This is the great demon that the Zhou family raised at the bottom of the Impassable Sea.”

A white figure landed. Bai Ling, personally leading Kaiming Department reinforcements, had traveled nonstop to get here. “The Kaiming Department has sealed the walls and dropped the arrays. I guarantee that we will burn the wildfire vines dead at the border—there’s no need for you to worry about it, General Commander Pang. There are enough spiritual stones, don’t stop the upgraded immortal tools…”

Before he could finish, familiar shrill howls came their way on the sea wind. The swarming demon host was sucked in like the tide and swallowed by the great demon with the face of the Southern Sage. A cold that could freeze the blood and a reeking wind rushed toward them—this was the nightmare that Bai Ling had regularly had to face before meeting Zhou Ying. His face paled. He couldn’t finish his sentence.

The ascended spirit grade upgraded immortal tools converted spiritual energy into firepower and shoved it out with earthshaking force, but the manmade divine tools that could temporarily hold off the Lovebird Sword Array were defeated. The enormous figure on the sea only paused infinitesimally, then continued to approach step by step.

The murderous demonic energy fell a step ahead on the blue-clothesers and Kaiming Cultivators at the front lines. Like wheat seedlings lodging, the outer sect experts were swallowed by the demonic energy before they even had a chance to struggle.

Pang Jian grit his teeth, raised the Barrier Dispeller Bow, and charged forward with a leap.

Bai Ling just missed holding him back. “General Commander Pang!”

Just then, snow-bright sword light fell like a thunderclap. The seawater surging like a tidal wave was frozen in place. The sword drew a line outside the coast. The chill rushed forward. The demon host, accidentally crossing the sword light, all dissolved in midair. Zhaoting, returned to its master’s hand, fell with a whistle and hacked at the all-powerful great demon’s head.

Pang Jian nearly burst into tears. “General Zhi…”

The great demon was split in half by Zhaoting. The black fog instantly faded. Heaven’s Design Pavilion and the Kaiming Department’s cultivators charged forward to save their colleagues who were still living.

Zhi Xiu had just withdrawn from a shed skin battlefield. He was in a wretched state. He brushed a hand over himself and the loose hair that had fallen from his crown, the tears in his robes all returned to position or healed as appropriate. Several heaps of white spirits disappeared in Zhaoting’s sword light. Zhi Xiu landed, patted Pang Jian on the shoulder, and pulled him back. “Good work, Wenchang.”

Not far away on the sea, the demonic energy that he had dispelled reassembled. The Southern Sage’s face looked down from on high at the puny sword cultivator.

“Only fourteen years have passed in the human world, yet it seems that everything has changed.” The great demon kept his eyes fixed on Zhi Xiu. “We meet again. This is a truly familiar scene, little General Zhi.”

Zhi Xiu didn’t fly his sword. He only walked onto the harbor’s pier, going around the upgraded immortal tools and the border inscriptions. “I haven’t yet thanked you for your instruction last time, senior.”

Pang Jian suddenly remembered that last time, during the events in the Resurrection Vortex, General Zhi had nearly died in the East Sea. Alarm appeared on his face.

Bai Ling quietly said, “Don’t worry. Fourteen years ago, the Impassable Sea’s altar was disturbed by the Viscount. He didn’t have time to recover his full glory. The Bell of Tribulation could suppress him then, and now General Zhi is already a shed skin…”

“Oh?” Across several li, the demon with the Southern Sage’s face heard his whisper clearly. “Little half-demon, I wouldn’t dare to be so sure if I were you.”

The great demon’s voice raised echoes amid the freezing tide. As if he had pronounced some final verdict, it was just at that moment that the Wan-He border inscriptions dispersed as the ancient inscriptions from outside the Beijue Mountains came into the world. As a half-demon, Bai Ling was the first to sense something. Under Pang Jian’s shocked gaze, a row of inscriptions like tattoos quickly flashed over his face. Before Pang Jian could see their contents clearly, they disappeared.

Bai Ling’s aura abruptly turned strange. His cultivation, previously around the middle established foundation stage, rose sharply, coming close to ascended spirit level!

The Resurrection Vortex boiled. The Impassable Sea’s demon seal was completely destroyed, both the patch laid down by Xuanyin’s three sages and the one that the demon subduer had created by sacrificing his own body.

Demonic energy slammed against the mark drawn by Zhaoting. It was rebuffed, then slammed again—the tide frozen by the sea wind shattered into splinters and splashed. Each time, that sword mark was weaker than before. After the third time, there wasn’t a trace of it left. The great demon was blocked by Zhaoting.

“Little sword cultivator, enough of this futile effort. It isn’t easy to become a shed skin. You have already betrayed the spiritual mountains and may be said to walk the same way as me and mine. Why waste your strength?”

Zhi Xiu was trapped in black fog. He turned at deaf ear on this. Zhaoting wove a big net of sword light, horrifyingly holding the black clouds trying to ravage the city. Spiritual energy swept by around him now and then. There were the outer sect cultivators, unwilling to retreat, still helping him with upgraded immortal tools, just like Jinping’s Heaven’s Design Pavilion two hundred years ago.

Only this time, there might be no help coming when Xuanyin’s masters descended from the sky.

Currently, the Luwu who had just made landfall in Great Wan’s Guzhou had yet to recover their senses. The paperman beside Wei Chengxiang suddenly fell exhausted to the ground. The broken shard of a sword flew out and knocked a hole in the demonic energy surging toward the sky. It brushed past Zhi Xiu and sacrificed itself for its master.

The great demon’s sage’s face was distorted by the shard of Zhaoting. He gave a roar of anger and twisted into a ball with the sword energy. He split into three parts, revealing his true body that sucked in all light.

Zhi Xiu turned his head and looked into the crack cut by the broken sword. The vast plains of Southern Wan’s nine provinces were dimly visible. He didn’t hesitate again. He leapt and went in pursuit of the vanished shard of Zhaoting, charging toward the gathering place of the great demon’s demonic energy—

Just then, from the hole cut by the broken sword, an aged hand reached out and held down the young sword cultivator’s shoulder.

Zhi Xiu was caught unawares. He dodged. When he saw the newcomer clearly, his eyes abruptly opened wide.