[Favorability with the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy has risen to seventy.]
[The Yin-Yang Creation Strategy's favorability has risen from "Friendly" to "Fond."]
[Charisma attribute +2]
[Current Charisma: 32 points]
Gu Chengming stared at these few lines of golden text floating up in his sea of consciousness, his mood rather subtle.
It wasn't because of the rise in favorability or charisma, but because of something else entirely.
His cultivation had broken through. From the eighth layer of the Second Realm to the ninth layer, then to the Second Realm at Perfection, then straight into the Third Realm—all of it utterly smooth and effortless.
But this breakthrough had come far too easily.
Gu Chengming closed his eyes and carefully retraced the entire process of that breakthrough. It hadn't been a natural, water-flowing-to-form-a-channel kind of advancement—it was more as if something external had exerted a force, shoving him directly past that barrier.
The essence of that force was Red Dust Qi.
Rich to the point of near-materialization, carrying the origin-aura of the Yin-Yang Fish, the Red Dust Qi had poured into his body during the dual cultivation, scouring his meridians, tempering his dantian, and expanding the ceiling of his spiritual power in an extraordinarily efficient manner.
Then, at the very end of that process, he clearly sensed the existence of an "anchor point."
That anchor point was like a wedge driven in advance into the position marked "Third Realm." All the spiritual power, the Red Dust Qi, the twin qi of yin and yang—they all revolved around this wedge, as though his Third Realm cultivation had not been cultivated at all, but rather stipulated into being.
—Reverse the Effect to the Cause.
The Yin-Yang Fish had first anchored the effect of "Gu Chengming is already Third Realm," then, during the dual cultivation, used the core principle of the Red Dust Art to fill in that effect back into a cause.
Just like what Fu Xiaoxiao had done to that Fifth Realm great demon all those years ago—except that the effect Fu Xiaoxiao had planted back then was "the demon is dead," whereas the effect the Yin-Yang Fish had planted was "he has broken through his realm."
The principle was the same, but the technique was far more exquisite. It had caused no damage whatsoever to his dao foundation—indeed, even his meridians had been repaired into a state of seamless, unobstructed harmony.
Yet Gu Chengming felt no joy over this.
He frowned and circulated his spiritual power in a full loop through his body, and sure enough, he discovered the hidden flaw.
The Third Realm's spiritual capacity was there; the Third Realm's meridian strength was up to par. But his mastery and understanding of this realm still lingered at the Second Realm level, and the realm itself felt especially hollow and unstable.
Gu Chengming was just pondering how to tamp down this hollowness in his subsequent cultivation when a very faint sound suddenly came from beside him.
He opened his eyes. Fu Xiaoxiao lay on her side next to him, her condition much improved from before.
That pallid complexion had turned rosy, and her breathing had become steady and long.
As the Fish-Warden Elder, Fu Xiaoxiao's dao foundation had shattered over a hundred years ago, sustained through sheer bitter effort by the power of the Yin-Yang Fish.
But at this moment, Gu Chengming could sense that those meridian fissures, once on the verge of collapse, were being mended at a slow but definite pace.
Not fully repaired—old wounds of that severity could never be healed in a single dual cultivation—but at least they had retreated from the state of potential total collapse back to a temporarily stable one.
The effect of the dual cultivation was somewhat greater than Gu Chengming had anticipated.
As he was thinking this, the small figure in front of him, her back turned to him, suddenly stirred. The little strip of exposed skin between the base of her neck and the tips of her ears flushed as red as a boiled shrimp.
"Bad thing…" she mumbled a few incoherent words, her voice growing softer and softer, until she let out a hum of complicated meaning.
Looking at that curled-up little back, Gu Chengming couldn't help but want to laugh.
"How is Senior Sister's body feeling?"
"Much better than before." Fu Xiaoxiao paused, seeming to hesitate, then added in an extraordinarily awkward tone: "The compatibility between the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy and the Yin-Yang Fish really is very high. If it had been anyone else… the effect might not have been like this."
Gu Chengming chuckled and was just about to rise and stretch his limbs when a strange sensation suddenly welled up inside him.
That sensation came neither from his own cultivation method nor from the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy—it came from the Yin-Yang Fish.
Gu Chengming froze.
He closed his eyes and probed along the direction of that sensation, and in the next moment, his field of perception abruptly expanded to an inconceivable range.
He saw the entirety of Red Dust Mountain.
Not with his physical eyes, but through some perceptive ability that far surpassed the level of his cultivation. Every line of the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation, every node, every trajectory of flowing qi—all of it was laid out clearly within his perception.
This was the authority of the Yin-Yang Fish.
"This…"
Somewhat astonished, Gu Chengming opened his eyes and turned to look back at Fu Xiaoxiao.
"Senior Sister, I think I… can sense the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation."
Hearing this, Fu Xiaoxiao fell into thought. Gu Chengming had also obtained the perceptive authority of the Yin-Yang Fish.
The Yin-Yang Fish would not grant authority to an outsider without reason. In the thousand-year history of the Harmonious Joy Sect, those who had ever possessed the Fish-Warden authority numbered no more than four, and every one of them had been a core figure with a profound connection to the Yin-Yang Fish.
And now, the Yin-Yang Fish had granted this authority to two people at once.
One was her; the other was Gu Chengming. A single phrase leapt unbidden into Fu Xiaoxiao's mind.
—A match made in heaven.
The instant those four words took shape in her heart, she fiercely bit down on the tip of her tongue, her cheeks instantly burning scorching hot.
No, no, no, no.
What are you thinking, Fu Xiaoxiao?! Calm down! You are an elder of the Harmonious Joy Sect! You have cultivated the Great Dao of the Red Dust for several centuries! Your dao heart is like iron!
And yet, every time she looked at Gu Chengming, she still couldn't help but smile.
No matter what, this truly was the person she liked most in all the world.
The process of leaving the Yin-Yang Fish's body was far gentler than entering had been.
The twin qi of yin and yang receded like an ebbing tide, and that temporary space constructed by the Yin-Yang Fish slowly dissolved. Gu Chengming felt only a sudden brightness before his eyes, and the scenery around him shifted from the empty black-and-white back into that vast underground space.
The ancient runes on the dome no longer flickered, but had returned to a serene, faint glow.
High overhead, the colossal form of the Yin-Yang Fish had also vanished. Only the black-and-white currents of the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation drifted slowly in the heights, far calmer than before.
The imbalance of the twin qi of yin and yang—resolved.
Gu Chengming instinctively glanced around.
Everything in the underground space was almost unchanged from before he had entered the Yin-Yang Fish's body.
The moss on the walls was still the same moss; the pooled water in the corners was still the same pooled water; even the concentration of Red Dust Qi lingering in the air was about the same as before.
By the felt sense of the long time they had spent inside the Yin-Yang Fish, they had passed at least several hours in there.
But outside, it had been only a few minutes.
The interior of an innate spirit-object forms a world unto itself, its flow of time differing from the outside. This had been recorded in the classics, but experiencing it firsthand still gave Gu Chengming a slight sense of unreality.
Fu Xiaoxiao stood at his side, gently flexing her hands and feet.
As for the Grand Elder of the Harmonious Joy Sect who had earlier sat cross-legged atop the high platform, wreathed in dense Red Dust Qi—she now lay on her side on the cold stone platform, both eyes tightly shut, her complexion ashen, the fluctuations of spiritual power around her so faint as to be nearly imperceptible.
The bronze-colored mirror before her had shattered into several pieces, scattered across the ground, reflecting no image at all.
The backlash from the collapse of the Desires of All Beings system, compounded by the accumulated exhaustion of continuously manipulating that vast system for three years, had all come rushing back the instant the plan failed, striking her into a deathlike coma.
Fu Xiaoxiao looked at Yun Ni's state, her expression growing rather complicated.
Then she turned and walked back to Gu Chengming's side.
"Let's go." Fu Xiaoxiao tilted her head up to look at him, her tone recovering some of its usual crispness. "Outside must already be in complete chaos. We need to hurry and clean up the mess."
"The Yin-Yang Fish has regained its balance, the formation has returned to normal operation, and those disciples affected by the Red Dust Qi should also be gradually waking up… but the power base Yun Ni spent three years building is deeply entangled and interwoven. Relying on just Elder Kurong and Elder Jingxin, I'm afraid they won't be able to hold the situation down." As she spoke, she observed Gu Chengming's reaction out of the corner of her eye.
Then she saw that Gu Chengming was looking at her with a very earnest gaze.
"What?" Her tone noticeably wilted, for even deliberate disguise could not block the fondness that kept welling up from the depths of her heart.
Gu Chengming withdrew his gaze. "It's just that Senior Sister recovered faster than I imagined."
Fu Xiaoxiao turned her face away. "This one is a Fourth Realm cultivator, after all. It was only the effect of a single dual cultivation—there's no need to make such a fuss… we'll have to dual cultivate many more times after this, so don't you go crying about how hard it is then!"
With those words, her steps suddenly quickened, and she walked ahead of Gu Chengming, the hem of her red skirt flying with her hurried pace.
Gu Chengming watched that small figure walking so briskly and shook his head.
Her ears had gone red again.
...
The aftermath cleanup proved far more drawn-out and tedious than the confrontation itself.
After Yun Ni collapsed, the entire Harmonious Joy Sect fell into a brief vacuum. Over a thousand disciples woke one after another from the dreamlike trance of the Desires of All Beings. Most had no idea what had happened, remembering only that at some moment they had suddenly felt an overwhelming wave of drowsiness sweep over them, and then had a very, very long dream.
As for the content of that dream, what each person remembered differed, but nearly everyone mentioned the same feeling.
Some had seen themselves. Not the kind of "seen" from a mirror, but the kind that reached straight into the heart.
Elder Kurong and Elder Jingxin stabilized the situation at once.
Elder Kurong had an odd temperament, but in critical moments her decisiveness was unmatched. She sealed off the entrances on the northern slope of Red Dust Mountain with the utmost speed, severing the connection between the underground space and the outside world, while dispatching her trusted disciples to take over all the vital positions within the sect.
Elder Jingxin, meanwhile, was responsible for soothing the people's hearts. She had a gentle nature and had always held a reputation among the disciples as easy to talk to. With her stepping forward to explain that the earlier phenomenon had been an accidental fluctuation of the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation, it did not stir up too great a panic.
As for the confidants Yun Ni had cultivated over three years—faced with the accomplished facts of Yun Ni's coma, the formation's restoration, and the Yin-Yang Fish's return to balance, no matter how many thoughts those people harbored, they could only furl their banners and still their drums for the time being.
And so, after weathering a crisis that had nearly overturned the entire sect, the Harmonious Joy Sect completed its transfer of power with unexpected smoothness.
Fu Xiaoxiao took temporary charge of sect affairs.
Yun Ni's cultivation was sealed, and she was locked away in the dungeon.
All had settled into place.
Three days later, a flying vessel bearing the banner of the Night-Watch Bureau split the sky and arrived.
The vessel's speed was absurdly fast—clearly it was traveling at full throttle at the cost of burning through its spirit-stone arrays. On the deck at the prow, Li Suizhuang stood clad in snow-white robes, her hair whipped wild by the fierce wind, a communication jade slip clutched in her hand. Behind her was an elite squad allocated by the Great Qian, led by a Fourth Realm cultivator, the rest all experts above the Third Realm—a lineup lavish enough to handle the vast majority of contingencies.
The vessel halted steadily in the no-fly zone outside Red Dust Mountain. Li Suizhuang was the first to leap down from its hull. Landing without a word, she strode with long, forceful steps up the mountain.
Then she stopped short at the mountain gate, because the one who had come to greet her was Gu Chengming.
Gu Chengming stood on the stone steps of the mountain gate, hands clasped behind his back, his expression relaxed—he even gave her a slight nod. That posture looked nothing like a man who had just survived a life-or-death crisis, and everything like a host waiting for a guest at his own doorstep.
Li Suizhuang looked at him, the expression on her face cycling through several rounds.
From the taut wariness of facing a formidable enemy, to confusion, to disbelief, finally settling on a subtle complexity.
"Resolved?"
"Resolved."
Li Suizhuang was silent for three breaths.
She glanced back at the aggressive, fully braced elite squad behind her, ready at any moment to throw itself into a great battle.
Then she turned back to look at this smiling Second Realm—no, Third Realm now?—young man before her.
"…When did you reach the Third Realm?"
"It's a long story."
Li Suizhuang drew in a deep breath, forcibly swallowing back the breath that had nearly failed to come.
She turned around to face the official members of the Great Qian and said in a somewhat apologetic tone: "Everyone has worked hard. The matter has already been handled. You may return."
The Fourth Realm cultivator leading the squad exchanged glances with the others, hesitating as if wanting to speak but not knowing what to say.
They had traveled day and night for four days, only to arrive and be told it was already resolved?
Looking at this young man so renowned within the Night-Watch Bureau, the Fourth Realm cultivator suddenly recalled the epithet Gu Chengming bore within the Great Qian…
—Could it be that he beat the mastermind behind this whole incident at the Harmonious Joy Sect to death?
The air went quiet for about five breaths.
In the end, the leading Fourth Realm cultivator silently put away the dharma-artifact in his hand, turned, and returned to the flying vessel.
Li Suizhuang did not leave immediately.
She stayed at the Harmonious Joy Sect for a day. After hearing out Gu Chengming's detailed report, she personally went to see Elder Kurong and Elder Jingxin, confirming the fact of the Yin-Yang Fish's return to balance, as well as the follow-up matters of compensation for the impact the Harmonious Joy Sect's incident had inflicted upon the capital region.
The process of these negotiations was dull and trivial—nothing but haggling over quantities of spirit stones and carefully worded exchanges of documents.
The Harmonious Joy Sect's attitude was very cooperative.
Not because they held any great deference toward the Great Qian, but because they truly were in the wrong.
That the effects of the Yin-Yang Fish's imbalance had reached the capital region was a fact. That the disciples had been swept up and lost control by the Red Dust Qi was a fact. That the Grand Elder had secretly maintained dealings with the Eternal Life Sect was, moreover, a scandal enough to strip the entire sect of its dignity.
Under such circumstances, the Harmonious Joy Sect chose the most pragmatic course: pay the compensation that ought to be paid, offer the apologies that ought to be offered, then shut their gates and handle their internal affairs themselves.
The Great Qian had no intention of pursuing the matter further either—at least not on the surface.
Li Suizhuang left Red Dust Mountain carrying a compensation document stamped with the Harmonious Joy Sect's seal and a detailed report of the incident. Before departing, she looked at Gu Chengming, seeming to want to speak but hesitating.
In the end she said only one sentence: "After you return to the capital, Director Zhou wants to see you."
Gu Chengming nodded.
The flying vessel receded into the distance, the white-robed figure vanishing at the edge of the sky.
The Harmonious Joy Sect's dungeon lay in the deepest depths of Red Dust Mountain.
Gu Chengming and Fu Xiaoxiao walked down the corridor leading to the innermost cell, their footsteps echoing between the stone walls, hollow and dull.
Fu Xiaoxiao walked ahead, the expression on her face not quite discernible.
The stone door was pushed open by the guarding disciple. The cell was not large, roughly three zhang square, its furnishings crude—
a cot, a table, a single oil lamp. The lamp's flame was so weak as to be nearly invisible, teetering on the verge of going out in the draft blowing through.
Yun Ni leaned against the wall. Her complexion was terrible—not because some specific injury was claiming her life, but because her entire vitality was draining away irreversibly, like the wick of an oil lamp that had already burned down to its base. No matter how much more oil was added, that faint little flame was destined to quietly extinguish at some moment.
Fu Xiaoxiao saw it too.
She stood at the cell doorway, silent for a long time.
"You knew all along." Fu Xiaoxiao's voice was very soft.
Not a question—a statement.
"The plan to reverse the Yin-Yang Fish could never end with anyone walking away unscathed—not from the very start." Yun Ni's voice was very flat, as if she were recounting something that had nothing to do with her.
Fu Xiaoxiao said in a low voice: "The moment the Dharma-Station transferred from my body into yours, you needed to use your own vitality as the price to stabilize the Dharma-Station's form. A thing that has already existed in spirit-object form for a thousand years—to make it revert back into a Dharma-Station requires a power far beyond any single person's limit to endure."
"So, whether the plan succeeded or not, you wouldn't live long."
"My life was never going to be long anyway." Yun Ni's voice grew very soft. "Three years ago, when I began to guide the Desires of All Beings, I had already overdrawn my lifespan. All of this was merely putting a life that was going to end anyway to use in a worthwhile place."
To use the power of the Dharma-Station to achieve the Land of Ultimate Bliss, to let all the disciples of the Harmonious Joy Sect break through their own shackles in that single instant, to trade her death for the sect's next thousand years.
Yun Ni closed her eyes, as if weighing her words, but in the end she abandoned the embellishment and chose to speak plainly.
"The Eternal Life Sect helped me accelerate the accumulation of the Desires of All Beings. They provided a secret art called the Heart Gu, which could amplify a cultivator's emotional fluctuations without being detected. Two years ago, I wove this secret art into the sect's daily practice routines."
"In exchange, the Eternal Life Sect wanted one thing—a certain byproduct generated during the Harmonious Joy Sect's accumulation of the Desires of All Beings. They called it the 'Red Dust Seed.'"
"What exactly it is, what they wanted it for—I don't know, and I never asked."
"I walked a wrong road, and I dragged the entire Harmonious Joy Sect down it with me. The deaths of that batch of disciples three years ago, the sealing of the mountain, the disciples being swept up and losing control by the Red Dust Qi—all of it, every bit, was because of me."
"But I no longer have the time to repay these debts."
Her gaze moved back and forth between Gu Chengming and Fu Xiaoxiao several times, finally settling on Fu Xiaoxiao's face.
"Xiaoxiao, the matter of the Eternal Life Sect—I leave it to you."
Fu Xiaoxiao stood where she was, silent for a long time, then turned and walked out.
—Pitiable, and detestable.
But Gu Chengming felt no sympathy for Yun Ni. "Go in peace, Senior Yun."
—You made your choice, and you bear the consequences of your choice. That is all.
Yun Ni looked at him, her lips moving.
In the end she said nothing, only slowly closed her eyes.
...
Yun Ni died on the seventh day.
The guarding disciple who came to bring breakfast at dawn found her already without breath, her body still holding its cross-legged seated posture, her face serene, as if she had merely fallen asleep.
The funeral was held in a bamboo grove on the northern slope of Red Dust Mountain.
Very few came. A handful of senior disciples who had once served under Yun Ni came, but they stood before the grave not knowing what to say, and after standing a while they silently dispersed.
In the end, only two people remained before the grave.
Fu Xiaoxiao crouched before the freshly heaped grave mound, a plate of osmanthus cakes in her hands—identical to the plate Yun Ni had brought her at the Secluded Bamboo Dwelling while she was alive. She set the osmanthus cakes before the tombstone, patted the dirt from her hands, and stood up.
"Fellow disciples for several hundred years."
She said those words, then fell silent for a very long time.
The wind blew through the bamboo grove, rustling.
"You bastard."
She turned around and walked toward Gu Chengming, who waited outside the grove.
As she passed by him, she did not stop her steps, but reached out and tugged at his sleeve, neither light nor hard.
Amid all the aftermath, drawing toward its end yet not quite ended, Gu Chengming discovered one thing that left him feeling rather uneasy.
Although the matter had been largely resolved, his nominal identity as an "Imperial Academy Medical Apprentice" had not yet been formally rescinded, so for the time being he was still lodging in the guest court of the Harmonious Joy Sect. Passing by the practice grounds, he inadvertently overheard a conversation between two outer-sect disciples.
"Say, that person you dreamed about—did he use a sword?"
"Yes, yes! You dreamed of him too?"
"Not just me—all dozen or so junior sisters living in our row of dormitories dreamed of him! And everyone's dream had different details!"
"Really?"
"Really! Xiaolu dreamed of him holding an umbrella for her in the rain, Xiaodie dreamed of him watching the sunrise with her, Xiaohe dreamed of him praising how amazing she was, and I dreamed of him saying that he saw me…"
"That sounds so romantic…"
"The key is, that person was especially good-looking! Even though I couldn't make out his exact features, it was just that kind of… the moment you see him you know he's good-looking feeling!"
"And, and—he seemed to be a sword cultivator! I remember he wore a sword at his waist!"
"In my dream too! And his hands were especially beautiful, with very long fingers—one look and you could tell they were the kind of hands that grip a sword!"
The hand holding his rice bowl froze. Gu Chengming slowed his steps and pricked up his ears to keep listening.
"Oh right, did any of you feel that dream was especially real? It wasn't like an ordinary dream—it was more like… someone had actually said those words to you."
"Yes, yes, yes! When I woke up I still thought it was real, and I felt dejected for the longest time…"
"Me too! And ever since I had that dream, I've just… how should I put it, it's like something in my heart was unlocked, and things I could never figure out before suddenly made sense."
Gu Chengming listened, cold sweat breaking out. He hurried away from the practice grounds, found a deserted corner to sit down in, and began earnestly recalling everything he had done within the Desires of All Beings.
The situation at the time had been this—in order to dismantle the Desires of All Beings system Yun Ni had constructed, he had used the perceptive ability granted by the Yin-Yang Fish to trace those chaotic desires back to each specific individual, then "conquered" them one by one through Galgame-style "options."
Each person was different; the answer each person needed was different too.
At the time, what he had been thinking was—as long as I can wake them from the dreamlike trance of desire, that's enough.
But he had overlooked one thing.
Those words he had spoken to each person within the Desires of All Beings, those choices he had made—within the operating logic of the Red Dust Art, that was not "conquering." That was confessing love to over a thousand people simultaneously.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance cheered: The Heavenly Emperor Gu is mighty! A harem of over a thousand in a single night! Truly worthy of being—]
Expressionlessly, Gu Chengming forcibly suppressed the Hundred Emperor's remark back down.
Calm, calm, calm down and analyze this first.
He drew a deep breath and once again circulated the perceptive authority granted by the Yin-Yang Fish, extending his attention across the entirety of Red Dust Mountain.
If, before this, the aesthetic preferences of the Harmonious Joy Sect's disciples had been a hundred flowers blooming, each with her own love, then after undergoing that Desires of All Beings, their aesthetic preferences had become highly uniform.
"Let me tell you all, I think my 'beloved' must be a sword cultivator! Just think about it—the temperament of that person in the dream, gentle yet resolute, decisive yet considerate—isn't that exactly a sword cultivator?"
"But our Harmonious Joy Sect doesn't have any sword cultivators…"
"That's exactly why we have to go out and find one! Once the sect lifts its seal, I'll be the first to apply to go out and train!"
"I want to go too!"
"Me too! Do you think the Wenjian Sect over there might really have a sword cultivator like that?"
Gu Chengming silently set down his rice bowl.
He had lost his appetite.
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