“You ought to know already that after Kunlun formed, on the northern continent, practically everyone who didn’t accord with the Sword Ancestor’s Way of the Heart passed away, and the so-called ‘demons’ on the southern continent were also rejected and died as the four spiritual mountain ranges of the south arose—they were put to death by ‘heaven and earth,’ irresistible to human efforts. Those who could ‘go against the current’ in the face of this general trend had Ways of the Heart that were unusual.

“The demonic god of the Heartless Lotus was different from that poor sap forced to insanity by Xuanwu. That was a person born with two consciousnesses in one body, capable of containing multiple Ways of the Heart. Even if some of them were put to death, he could always find some others.

“Late-Autumn Red can be counted as one with Eternal Spring Brocade. The demonic god of the Eternal Spring Brocade wasn’t the mild and gentle lover of Xuanyin’s Golden Hand’s dreams. This person’s evil surpassed the Heartless Lotus. The ‘material’ he was most infatuated with was humans. Nearly all the evil arts you’ve heard of in your life, traced back to their roots, originated with him. His highest achievement, apart from the exceptionally talented and beautiful half-puppet of the Late-Autumn Red, was that he could refine Ways of the Heart. The way of toolmaking’s understanding of inscriptions is extremely profound. It’s said that as soon as Kunlun formed, while the vast majority of people on the southern continent were still bewildered, he refined a false Way of the Heart for himself and avoided the heavenly commandments.

“Only Yuan Hui of the Reincarnation Wood was out of place among his ‘fellows.’” At this point, Wangge Luobao paused briefly, then gave a faint sigh. “The ungovernable way has no Way of the Heart. It cannot be countenanced by the world, nor can it be restrained by the heavenly commandments—haven’t you wondered how he could be without a Way of the Heart?”

Of course Xi Ping had wondered. He had inwardly ruminated on this subject more than once—if you had no Way of the Heart while establishing a foundation, as soon as you swallowed the established foundation pill, the spirit between your brows would explode. He had personally experienced this. He had been lucky enough to hide inside the reincarnation wood then, but Yuan Hui had only acquired an accompanying plant upon becoming a shed skin. Where had he hidden while establishing a foundation? When everyone else exploded, what made him special? Was his skull made of iron?

But Xi Ping was really in no mood to listen. Through his eyelids, he couldn’t see what Wangge Luobao was doing, only hear water and an ominous dripping. His spiritual sense was sending up frantic warnings, urging him to run, but where was he supposed to run?

He was worse off now than when he had been held in place by the Lovebird Sword Array. Then, his consciousness had been trapped, but at least his true body could still move freely. Now he couldn’t move, and his consciousness couldn’t run, and there was shifu…

Xi Ping’s ears were full of ancient secrets, and his mind was moving rapidly: as he spoke, Wangge Luobao was not only deliberately dragging out his voice, he was also periodically throwing out hooks to entice him to listen.

A great evil cultivator wasn’t a tea shop storyteller. This compelling rendition certainly wasn’t just for the sake of amusing him. It probably also wasn’t to disrupt his train of thought. Thinking about eight things at once was normal for Xi Ping. Never mind a bit of talk, if Wangge Luobao had stripped naked and said that he was actually a girl, it still wouldn’t have disturbed him. It also certainly couldn’t be to stall for time. Even if Wang didn’t make a sound, as a total paralytic, Xi Ping couldn’t pull out a gun and blow his miserable head off.

So…

Xi Ping clamped down firmly on a bellyful of curiosity, turned a deaf ear on Wangge Luobao’s voice, full of bewitchment and implication, and meditated—at the same time, he determined something: what was trapping him was this place. Wangge Luobao obviously also couldn’t use spiritual energy, or else there would have been no need for him to waste spit. A beast-taming flute could most easily subdue a person like Xi Ping, who was easily distracted by nature.

Xi Ping swiftly restrained his mind, dismissed distractions, and sank his consciousness into his spirit. When his mind was at its calmest, he perceived the thing passing through his spirit—it was an extremely thin golden thread.

Wangge Luobao’s incessant talkativeness seemed to be for the purpose of keeping him from finding this.

Xi Ping immediately approached it with his consciousness. Just then, a sharp stabbing pain came from his physical body—Wangge Luobao seemed to have sensed something. He had stabbed through his finger!

While the fingers were connected to the heart, Xi Ping’s body and mind both had been shattered countless times. A gentleman could afford to wait a decade for the moment to be ripe to get his own back. His mind only wavered slightly, then ignored it. But Wangge Luobao took this opportunity to slip a sentence into his ear: “Don’t you want to know where Ways of the Heart came from?”

Xi Ping was abruptly distracted.

“Don’t you want to know…how the shackles of a Way of the Heart can be escaped?”

To speak of Yao Qi and Chang Jun in the meantime, when the two of them were swept up by the sudden whirlpool in the sea, they seemed to have fallen into an excavator. When they had dizzily revolved for an unknown length of time and nearly gone through the bed of the South Sea, they finally stopped.

Their stealth boat was caught in a narrow entrance.

The two of them consulted briefly, then each arrayed himself with a handful of protective immortal tools. They shouldered upgraded hand cannons, filled them with spiritual stones, and went into the mouth of the cave.

This seemed to be a hidden realm. Though it was in the sea, there was no water inside. Only the passage became narrower and narrower. At last it was just wide enough for a single person to pass through, and it became darker and darker—at last, the two of them were holding onto each other, completely unable to see each other.

Yao Qi kept thinking, What kind of place is this? It’s very uncomfortable. He felt for his upgraded hand cannon and opened the spiritual stone compartment a crack, but there wasn’t a sliver of the spiritual light that ought to have spilled out. There was something here sucking up all the light.

“Hongzheng-xiong, have you noticed, this place…”

Yao Qi stopped talking abruptly. His words just now had been voiceless—even he hadn’t been able to hear.

Yao Qi suddenly realized what the strange feeling he had been having was: in the midst of utter silence, he couldn’t even hear his own breathing and pulse!

Next, his senses of taste, smell, and touch disappeared together.

Once his sense of touch was gone, he no longer knew where Chang Jun was. Yao Qi yelled—as before, there was absolutely no sound. A strange sort of illusion arose: he couldn’t feel himself.

It was as if he were dead, nonexistent.

As soon as this thought flashed by, Yao Qi’s mind became muddled. It seemed that his awareness was about to disappear as well…

Just then, a protective upgraded immortal tool Yao Qi was carrying suddenly exploded. With a snap, the white spirit inside the immortal tool turned to powder, and spiritual energy blasted Yao Qi away, simultaneously blowing a crevice in the narrow passageway. Icy seawater poured in, splashing his head and face.

Yao Qi breathed a mouthful of it into his lungs. His senses abruptly returned, and he was pushed forward by the seawater. Befuddled, he was thrust into a circle of weak light, and the seawater was abruptly blocked out, while Yao Qi toppled in headfirst and slammed the bridge of his nose into the thigh of Chang Jun, who was following closely after him.

Blood immediately poured from Yao Qi’s nose and got all over his mouth. It was stinking and salty and suffocating. It was the feeling of being alive.

The two of them, just getting over their fright, looked at each other blankly. Chang Jun began to heave as though he had a collapsed lung.

Yao Qi quickly put a hand over his mouth, sharing the blood that had just come down in a torrent, giving Hongzheng-xiong a handprint “full of life force.”

Then the two of them heard a foreign-accented voice speaking: “As everyone knows, establishing a foundation is the only step along the path of cultivation that requires the aid of a pill. The main ingredient of the established foundation pill is the silk dragon heart. Apart from assisting cultivators in concentrating an essence and establishing a foundation, a silk dragon heart can also be made into a special immortal tool, which helps poor half-immortal evil cultivators unable to get spiritual stones ‘pilfer heaven’s order’—do you know of another ingenious use for a silk dragon heart?”

No one answered him. The speaker paused briefly, then went on, answering his own question: “Hunting silk dragons is a Shu tradition, predating the existence of written language. At the time, the northern continent was still a wilderness, people had yet to domesticate cattle and horses, and there were no nations, no city-states in the world, only one tribe after another, living off the land. Of course, there also weren’t any cultivators… Individuals who were extraordinarily talented and particularly spiritual might by happenstance open their spiritual eyes, but from a modern point of view, they were only half-immortals who knew some tricks.

“Shu was rich in natural resources and overwhelmingly full of spiritual energy, but the ancients inhabiting it led lives of untold suffering and hardship—because they were all slaves of the ‘Shamanic Way.’ They were treated as pigs and dogs under the rule of a small smattering of people.

“Back then, Ancestor Tianbo, of mixed Miah and Xiuyi blood, led one hundred twenty-eight warriors—half Xiuyi and half Miah—and launched a spiritual beast tide, overthrowing the tyranny of the Shamanic Way, which had occupied Southern Shu by force. After this, the Miah and Xiuyi clans, with the founder as a bond, made a vow to join forces and be of one heart, the main peninsula and the Three Islands to keep watch for and aid in defending one another, never to betray each other. The slaves of the ‘Shamans’ became the mighty Shu. After Kunlun’s ancient inscriptions appeared, Ancestor Tianbo as a matter of course became Shu’s uncrowned king, attained a full moon position, and raised the Lingyun Mountains.

“‘Shaman’ is a translation into the Miah language. Tai Sui, you have a wide social net and are proficient in the languages of all nations. You ought to know what it means.”

Yao Qi and Chang Jun’s eyes met uncertainly: Tai Sui… Was the great evil cultivator talking to Xi Shiyong?

Was he awake?

Chang Jun patted Yao Qi’s arm and pointed upward.

Yao Qi raised his head and looked in the direction he was pointing. He nearly had a heart attack. Right above their heads, an adult silk dragon lay on its stomach, its big eyes wide open and staring at the two of them!

But they waited for ages, and the silk dragon didn’t move a muscle. Only then did Yao Qi work up his nerve and fumble out a jade stamp, lighting the scene above him with its faint green light: it wasn’t a real dragon; it was an incredibly realistic mural.

Around the dragon, graceful aquatic plants grew, with their tips like hair—this was the legendary “three-day dream grass,” said to be extinct.

The form of a peculiar fish was faintly discernible amid the thicket of three-day dream grass. Yao Qi and Chang Jun recognized it at a glance. That fish was the next life spiritual fish.

This place seemed to be a secret underground sacrificial altar. It was all dark, with an unspeakable sense of deathliness. It made Yao Qi and Chang Jun all at once recall that feeling from earlier, as though they were dead.

Amid the silence, the great evil cultivator said in a singsong voice, “That’s right, ‘Shaman’ means ‘a person with control over life and death.’”

Chang Jun gestured, and the two of them quickly took stock of the upgraded immortal tools they were carrying, then crept in the direction of the voice.

Inside the spiritual energy prohibition, Wangge Luobao was also deaf. Unaware, he spoke to Xi Ping, who didn’t answer: “The ‘Shamans’ had three treasures: the next life spiritual fish, the three-day dream grass, and the silk dragon. The next life spiritual fish could travel between the lands of the living and the dead, the three-day dream grass could pull a dying person back from the abyss, and they also kept ‘living corpse warriors’—”

For some reason, though Yao Qi and Chang Jun heard this line out of context, their scalps both went numb.

“The silk dragon heart was the main ingredient in refining living corpse warriors.

“The silk dragon heart can ‘pilfer heaven’s order,’ so naturally it can store the universe’s spiritual energy. The Shamans discovered that if a silk dragon heart were put in place of a dead person’s heart, it would keep the corpse from rotting. If they were appropriately remade, the dead person’s bones and meridians would be nourished and fixed in place by the spiritual energy. They would have endless strength and boundless magic power. The Shamans had no writing system, only a set of secret arts used to control living corpses. With this method, they were completely wanton. There was no evil they would not sink to. The other clans did not dare to speak against them…until the Shaman king became reckless in his lust and abducted a woman.

“This woman… There was no writing then, so no record has been left behind of her name. I only know that she was the holy woman of a certain tribe. It is said that she was unusually beautiful and remained youthful and unaging, that she had eyes that could ‘see through good and evil.’ Working off the records, she must have been a consummate open-eyed half-immortal, with a paramount spiritual sense—before the heavenly commandments of the Kunlun Mountains were created, the paramount spiritual sense had yet to be stifled by the false heavens. It was not yet a curse. It was a rare natural gift.

“The holy woman sent out dozens of tokens asking for help, but all the world’s cowards feared the living corpses, and no one dared to answer. In order to get her, the Shamans ordered the living corpses to slaughter her entire tribe. Apart from the holy woman’s son, who had gone to distant lands to study as an apprentice, not one survived.

“In order to take her revenge, the holy woman endured humiliation for many years. With the gift of her paramount spiritual sense, she saw through the secret arts of the living corpses, committed herself irrevocably. She did a mighty deed: she secretly ate a silk dragon heart and turned herself into a ‘living corpse.’

“Beforehand, she carved instructions to take revenge onto her spirit, to ensure that she wouldn’t be controlled by others. But an unexpected thing happened. Because she already had spiritual bones, when the immense wave of spiritual energy pierced her body, it was mediated by the spiritual bones. The silk dragon heart she had eaten not only failed to kill her, it created a ‘spiritual core’ surrounding the ‘instructions’ she had carved, repairing her shattered spirit… You must have realized that these were the first ever Way of the Heart and essence. This woman whose name is unknown was the first established foundation in the world.

“But she was only one person, with her foundation newly established. She was no match for a hundred thousand living corpses. So after she escaped, she hid herself, combined silk dragon hearts with the secret arts of living corpses, and created an ‘immortality pill’ that she disseminated. I think that she did it for the sake of revenge. Considering it from her point of view, she must not yet have known what a mighty thing she had done. She must have thought she was only a living corpse, neither human nor ghost.”

Yao Qi was scared witless at hearing this. He slipped. Chang Jun quickly used a protective immortal tool to cushion his fall, at any rate keeping Ziming-xiong from knocking any teeth out.

Just then, Wangge Luobao laughed quietly. His laughter echoed in the enclosed space, covering up the bit of noise Chang Jun was making.

“The established foundation pill…what was then called the immorality pill, became a precious treasure as soon as it came into the world. Countless people were provoked into fighting over it. Those whose spiritual bones were incomplete and whose Ways of the Heart were yet unsettled exploded and died if they took it. Only a tiny number of masters succeeded in establishing foundations. Amid the bloody struggle, the pill spread throughout the northern and southern continents, and belatedly came to the attention of the Shamans.

“The Shaman king obtained three immortality pills. That incompetent fool didn’t realize that this pill had originated in his own clan’s secret arts. At the time, people didn’t know that an established foundation pill needed the two criteria of ‘spiritual bones’ and ‘a Way of the Heart’ to succeed. They had only roughly surmised the magical theory that ‘Only people with sufficiently high spirituality and firm wills could pass the test of heaven.’ So the Shaman king caught two people to try the pill on.

“These two people to whom good came from ill are both familiar to you. One of them had been sold out by his fellow clansmen because of his parentage and their envy for his talents, a rebel against the Shamans on Shu’s Three Islands, the Miah-Xiuyi mixed blood Ancestor Tianbo.

“The other one was the holy woman’s son who had gone to distant lands to apprentice himself and who now, finally hearing that his home had fallen into enemy hands, had come back to take revenge single-handed…and he was also the person who passed on those hidden bones to you.”

Yao Qi had fallen onto the soft protective immortal tool and was just about to get up, but he saw a sliver of weak light appear in a crack in a nearby stone. He quickly crawled a few steps forward and waved at Chang Jun to shift the stones.

The two of them pried open a little gap and stuck a spyglass into it. Shock appeared simultaneously on their faces—