“Tai Sui!”

“Shiyong, what’s the…”

Doctor Wen said, “Make…way…”

The shrill sound of a horse’s whinny interrupted the chaos of human voices.

A Luwu from the Tao World Record came hurrying over. He staggered as he dismounted his horse, bringing the latest news from Northern Li: “The freezing north wind has reached Yanning!”

Lin Chi turned pale. “So fast?!”

Before Xi Ping had come out of the tree, they had just received word of a change in the Kunlun Mountains.

It was over three hundred li from Kunlun to Northern Li’s capital Yanning, and the utterly freezing wind from the northern plains had crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. Without the Sword Ancestor to guard the northern border, would the wind from the utter north freeze all the five nations?

Wen Fei glanced at the Unbound Furnace as if willing to try anything in desperation. Wu Lingxiao, who could move only half her body, on hearing these words pushed aside the Luwu supporting her.

“Fine, then I’ll be firewood. This wretched place has turned me into a cripple. Just as well. My shizun spent his whole life guarding the Beijue Mountains. I can see this trifle through to the end for him.” Her gaze swept coldly over Wanshuang, which she would never again take up. “I only regret that I never got the chance to fight against Zhaoting.”

“There’s nothing to regret. Even without the spiritual energy prohibition, I would not have fought you face-to-face. Zhaoting is inferior.” Zhi Xiu verbally admitted defeat without any impediment, then single-handedly picked up his disciple, who was full of bloody holes. “All the Kunlun Mountains’ spiritual energy and spiritual stones have been carried off already. There’s no sense in pushing the spiritual energy prohibition further north. There’s no lack of kindling in the furnace—everyone, let me say a few words.”

General Zhi’s tone was even, perfectly steady. As ever, it seemed as if he would never lose his temper. Xi Ping’s blank gaze fell on him, and he wondered whether Shifu already knows the truth about Ways of the Heart was a mistaken impression on his part.

Then he heard Zhi Xiu say, “The spiritual energy prohibition line has already forced the hidden bones out of the southern continent. They truly have no spiritual energy to use. Knowing full well that Kunlun is Northern Li’s protective screen, they still drained the spiritual mountains dry. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—Shiyong?”

Xi Ping responded numbly: “The cold wind of Beiyuan can freeze a cultivator’s essence. The hidden bones’ cultivation level is only late stage ascended spirit. Once they’ve knocked over Kunlun, it will be hard for their heap of reincarnation wood to survive. These are the dying struggles of a trapped animal. Moreover, as soon as the utterly freezing wind comes down from the northern border, those shit-stirring evil cultivators won’t dare to go outside the spiritual energy prohibition line to hold it back again. But, shifu…”

It wasn’t the hidden bones that had driven people to the end of the road.

Zhi Xiu waved a hand, interrupting him again. “Inside the spiritual energy prohibition now, can reincarnation wood serve as a transport array?”

“As long as the person at the other end spills blood on reincarnation wood and lets me pull their consciousness into the Law Breaker.”

Zhi Xiu turned to Wu Lingxiao. “There are flying goose machines in Tao County. Please compose a letter to send to Northern Li to combine the Night Revenants and the other remaining cultivators within the borders. If I recall correctly, areas inhabited by northerners all have arrays and immortal tools to protect against wind and cold, yes?”

“They do have them,” Wu Lingxiao said, nodding, “but hasn’t spiritual energy been prohibited? What can those useless things do?”

“We still have spirit-conducting gold,” Zhi Xiu said. “Lin-shixiong, you go with Senior Wu, see whether you can use spirit-conducting gold to activate some arrays, give people some latitude to temporarily shelter and warm themselves.

“Publish this matter urgently, have the people of all nations prepare. If there are any changes, the Tao World Record will print the information at once.” Zhi Xiu turned to Wen Fei. “Fenghan, deal with something for me. When the various forces recover their senses, they’ll all request reincarnation wood for the sake of convenience. Have Heaven’s Design Pavilion and the Latent Cultivation Temple help you draft up regulations, as quickly as possible. This is precisely our opportunity to get this chaos under control. Otherwise, all the nations are like scattered sand. Even if we resolve the danger of the mountains collapsing, it will still be hard to calm things.

“While the wind is fast, the temperature needs time to drop. The northern continent is regularly cold and frozen, and everyone has a means for handling an emergency. They won’t freeze to death at once. They ought to be able to hold out for a few days. Contact the Kaiming Department for me, have them prepare to evacuate everyone to the south—Bai Ling can handle the organization.”

“General Zhi,” a Luwu couldn’t resist saying, “even if all the emergency immortal tools and arrays on the northern continent can be activated, without the Kunlun Mountains, there will still be nothing to block the freezing wind from Beiyuan—unless the Sword Ancestor manifests, it will be only a matter of time before the southern continent freezes as well. This…”

Softly but with absolute confidence, Zhi Xiu said, “That won’t happen.”

The Luwu who had asked the question stared.

“When the Sword Ancestor raised Wanshuang to block the wind from the utter north, he had not yet become a full moon sage,” Zhi Xiu said. “The world’s shed skins haven’t all died out yet. Go, get on with it.”

The Sword that Mended the Heavens of a thousand years earlier had cracked, but the one of a thousand years later was still in the hands of the new sword god.

Of the figure of Kunlun’s founder, the Sword Ancestor, with Wanshuang in his grasp, only scant words remained in the history books. No one had seen him…but that Luwu suddenly thought that if the Sword Ancestor were here now, he would probably be willing to have a drink with Zhaoting.

He leapt onto his horse, turned, and left.

In a few words, Zhi Xiu had sent everyone running around. At last, only Xi Ping remained beside him.

Xi Ping was a monkey to begin with. He got into everything. And what was more, inside the spiritual energy prohibition, the reincarnation wood, which could connect to the Law Breaker’s space, was the sole “spiritual item.” Under ordinary circumstances, he would have been hopping by now, but instead he was off to the side, wordlessly lost in thought while things happened around him.

Only when everyone in the vicinity had left did Xi Ping’s eyes move. The toppled reincarnation wood trees around them stood up once more and circled around, making a place where no one would disturb them. “Shifu, I…”

“Don’t fret,” Zhi Xiu said. “You’re agitated now. Go get out your qin.”

Xi Ping was briefly silent. With a thought, he reached out across space and brought out the Tai Sui Qin, which had been sealed in the trunk of a reincarnation wood tree.

This qin had been born of Xi Ping’s bones. At the start it had been invisible and formless, its strings intermittently sounding, so no one could make anything of it, as confused and undetermined as its master.

Immediately upon entering the world, it had met the great tribulation of the Impassable Sea, run right up against the great demon of the East Sea, been sealed away by the sages, remained mute for five years, until it had recorded all the sad cries of the human world.

But while the Law Breaker had dredged Xi Ping’s true body up from the abyss, it had also trapped the qin inside the spiritual energy prohibition. For eight years, it had hidden alone in the gnarled tree in the yard of the house in the countryside, with only a replica made by the Discard the False and Keep the True book to accompany its master. When one broke, another could be made, in a neverending cycle.

It was like its master, constantly struggling, constantly being imprisoned, but while it was located beyond the reach of the light of day, its sound could still raise countless storms.

Zhi Xiu reached out and plucked a few notes on the Tai Sui Qin, tunelessly, then handed the qin over to Xi Ping. “I studied a bit when I was little, but it seems I’ve given it all back to my teacher. Come here, play something for shifu.”

Xi Ping didn’t move.

He had started messing around with a qin as soon as he could use chopsticks properly. He could reproduce a large majority of all the tunes he had ever heard. But now, when he accepted the qin, the only thing that came to mind was that bleak and desolate Soul Calling Melody.

“What would you like to hear?”

Zhi Xiu considered it. He slouched against the Unbound Furnace. “The one that moved the Lingyang River—the one that won you the camellia crown of the Queen of Flowers.”

“I said that was only a rumor.” Xi Ping forced a laugh. “I was cheering on a friend. With your disciple’s celestial countenance, would there be any need to waste effort singing and dancing to win Queen of Flowers? I could just stand there, and anyone who didn’t acknowledge me as a beauty surpassing all the rest would have to be blind.”

Zhi Xiu: “…”

Xi Ping rolled up his sleeves and pressed his fingers to the qin strings. For a long moment, they didn’t stir. Finally, he sighed. “Shifu, I can’t remember the tune. Can you make do if I switch to one about hastening home for an elder’s funeral? Weddings and funerals are both happy occasions, anyway.”

“Get out of here,” Zhi Xiu scolded jokingly. His gaze passed over the Xia River, looking at Great Wan’s Yuzhou on the opposite bank. With service suspended, the bridge of the Cloud Soaring Flood Dragon was cheerless and deserted. Following the tracks, the tall clock tower was visible at a glance.

Suddenly, apropos of nothing, he said, “When I was little, there weren’t so many strange cars and ships. It took a day’s riding even to take an outing to the southern outskirts. The furthest place I ever went was Yuzhou, sending my a-jie off to get married.”

“Oh?”

“My brother-in-law was the son of an old family friend. Their engagement had been fixed since the two of them were little. It was thought originally that this was someone we knew inside and out, but unexpectedly, that old friend was transferred to Yuzhou, and his whole family moved here… All the adults said we might have a hard time seeing her in the future, and indeed, for over thirty years after, there were only rare letters.”

Wiping his vital qin, Xi Ping listened quietly, not interrupting.

Mortal carriages were slow, cherished memories were long, and lifespans were short. Everything came suddenly as the dew. What was unusual about separations in life or partings by death?

“But I was still young then, I didn’t understand these things. I only thought that the scenery in Yuzhou was very different from Jinping. Everything was fresh. My sister was always a madwoman. She let me pick water chestnuts and catch frogs with the local children, and even had the lousy idea of having me keep one in da-ge’s teapot. Then, at the appointed auspicious hour, she was married, and I was a page at the wedding, and even lost my first tooth when it got stuck in a Yuzhou caramel.” Zhi Xiu turned to Xi Ping. “Have you ever eaten Yuzhou caramel?”

Seeing Xi Ping shake his head, as if struck with sudden inspiration, he patted himself down and unexpectedly really did come up with a few copper coins. “Money for the New Year, go to the opposite bank and buy a bag, then come back.”

“Thank you, shifu,” Xi Ping said, sighing. “You’re so generous.”

He went back and forth along both banks of the Xia River by means of the reincarnation wood. He put the coins in front of a peddler’s window and used a tree branch to snag a bag of candy and bring it back.

Yuzhou’s tastes were similar to the Chu. When they put the caramels in their mouths, teacher and disciple’s expressions turned dismal simultaneously.

“Still the same taste,” said Zhi Xiu. “Hss…no better than the rattan pepper sunflower seeds.”

“You really lost that tooth for nothing,” said Xi Ping.

The two of them spoke almost at once, and at once each was interrupted by the other.

Xi Ping was silent for a long time, then finally recovered from his earlier numbness. With his head in his hand, he laughed bitterly.

“I spent most of a month in Yuzhou, enjoying myself to the full, and only right before leaving did I find out that a-jie wasn’t going back with us. I was heartbroken. I jumped out of the carriage and ran back to find her. When da-ge sent someone to grab me, I stayed in her carriage and wouldn’t leave, crying so hard I nearly choked.” Zhi Xiu pushed the bitter Yuzhou caramel into his left cheek. “Do you know what my sister said to me then?”

Xi Ping’s teeth were glued together by the caramel. Indistinctly, he answered, “What?”

“She said, Without partings, there are no cherished memories. No one can enjoy themselves to the full at a banquet that never ends.” Zhi Xiu raised his eyes and calmly looked at Xi Ping. “I have no regrets about entering the Way, but when I think about it now, had I died of illness at thirty, I may have had as much of my fill of joy as now. You are the only one in the world without a Way of the Heart. Shiyong, you’ve been keeping it in for a very long time, haven’t you? In fact, when a person establishes a foundation, it’s no different from dying, right?”

Xi Ping was taken unawares. With a crunch, he bit through the piece of candy.

“Do not worry, my Way of the Heart has not broken.” As Zhi Xiu spoke, he opened his hand. In his palm was a snow shuffler seed. “‘Heretical ways’ are always a little sturdier. What did you see in the Unbound Furnace? Let’s go to the Law Breaker and you can show me.”

Xi Ping hesitated for a long moment, then took Zhi Xiu’s consciousness into the Law Breaker’s space. He had meant to carefully gloss over what he had seen in the Unbound Furnace, but unexpectedly, perhaps because these feelings knotted in his heart had been oppressing him for too long, once he started, there was no stopping—

Xi Ping quickly restrained his consciousness, wanting to push shifu’s consciousness out, but Zhi Xiu held his shoulder down with Zhaoting. The sword cultivator’s hand as he held his sword was steady as Mount Tai.

Even inside the spiritual energy prohibition, a shed skin consciousness was far faster than anything else. In a single glance, Zhi Xiu had seen the whole sequence.

“Three-day dream grass.” Xi Ping was watching for shifu’s reaction in terror, but Zhi Xiu laughed. “I see.

“These second-hand accompanying plants.” Zhi Xiu gave him a smack with Zhaoting and sighed. “Didn’t you notice that when Yuan Hui died, his essence didn’t explode?”