Xu Huayi's brain crashed for a full five seconds before it rebooted.
Then she slowly pulled her gaze back from the great mountain floating behind Gu Chengming and let it settle on him.
Xu Huayi opened her mouth to say something, only to find she couldn't string together a single word.
"Fellow Daoist Gu…" she finally managed. "You refined this entire mountain?"
Gu Chengming nodded.
Xu Huayi drew a deep breath. "And the swords inside it?"
"I suppose they came bundled in as a free gift?"
Xu Huayi: "..."
She glanced at the mountain again.
The iron-gray mountain body, the sheer vertical cliffs, the messy cluster of jagged spires at its peak looming in and out of the clouds—the whole thing hung there in midair, perfectly at ease.
Xu Huayi felt that the three abilities she'd honed over her years of cultivation at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau—reading faces, keeping calm in danger, and staying unshaken by shocks—deserved full marks in this moment.
Truth be told, when Gu Chengming had encountered that broken ancient sword within the Sword Burial Tomb, he hadn't expected this outcome either.
The instant his spiritual sense touched that sword, the sword intent of the entire mountain came surging toward him, and in that moment only a single thought had time to surface in his mind: I'm done for—I'll have to play this galge in my next life.
Then Hundred Bones Resonance began babbling incoherently with excitement in the dialogue box.
[Hundred Bones Resonance is greatly shaken and cries out: Heavenly Emperor Gu, this is Heavenly Emperor fortune!!]
Wrapped up in that surging sword intent, Gu Chengming thought, Hundred Emperor, could you cheer a little later? I'm in the middle of a life-and-death crisis over here.
Fortunately, that sword intent had no intention of tearing him apart; instead, it seemed to have finally recognized something—and just like that, the entire Sword Burial Tomb was refined by him.
The two of them stood there for a while, jointly surveying this headache-inducing situation.
"Let's start with the most pressing matter…"
Xu Huayi spun the Judge's Brush half a turn in her palm and was the first to get back on track. "A storage pouch definitely can't hold it, so we can rule that out."
Gu Chengming thought, Ha—Fellow Daoist Xu, you've quite the sense of humor.
"Fellow Daoist Gu, have you considered that we're very likely inside a Secret Realm crawling with all sorts of factions? If you walk around in here with a mountain like this, it's pretty much like…"
Xu Huayi struggled for the right words, but for a good while couldn't come up with a metaphor.
—Pretty much like wearing a sign on your head that says "You've become the new King of Opportunity," right?
Gu Chengming finished the sentence for her.
An iron-gray mountain floating behind a person—forget concealing it; as long as there was anyone in the Secret Realm with their eyes open, no one could pretend not to see it.
The two exchanged silent glances, then looked at the mountain together again.
The mountain kept quiet, hanging steadily in place, radiating a subtle sort of innocence.
"Have it fly up—up to a height where it can't be seen?" Gu Chengming suddenly said.
Xu Huayi's eyes flickered, then she shook her head. "There are wards within the Secret Realm. Above a certain height you can't fly, nor can you—"
Before she'd finished, Gu Chengming had already set his mind to it, and the mountain began to move slowly upward—one zhang, two zhang, five zhang…
Xu Huayi tilted her head back, watching the ever-shrinking mountain, and swallowed the rest of her words.
—That works too?
The mountain flew higher and higher, its outline growing blurrier, gradually sinking into the low-hanging clouds until it vanished entirely. The sky looked no different than usual, as though nothing had ever happened.
Gu Chengming tilted his head, sensing for a moment.
"I can still feel it."
Xu Huayi said, "Mm. The connection between a spirit artifact and its master isn't severed by distance. That's normal."
She paused, running the next line through her mind, and only continued after confirming the wording was right: "But others can't sense it. There's a concealment ward within this Secret Realm—above a certain height, any aura gets blocked out. Once your Sword Burial Tomb flies up in there, people outside won't be able to perceive it."
Having said it, she felt that the phrase "your Sword Burial Tomb" ranked among the top three most absurd things she'd ever said in her life.
Gu Chengming hadn't noticed her momentary distraction; he simply stared at the empty sky and thought, So how am I actually supposed to bring this thing back?
He could hide it inside the Secret Realm, but what about once he left?
He could picture the scene—emerging from Tianque, under the gaze of all, a great mountain silently crashing down behind him, the whole assembly falling dead silent, and then some elder or other being the first to speak, asking in a trembling voice: Gu Chengming, what is that you've brought out?
Gu Chengming ran the scene through his mind and felt it would be rather hard to wrap up.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula, starry-eyed, sensed that vast sword intent from afar and said: Chengming, there are so, so many swords in there!]
[They're all yours now—Chengming is amazing!]
They're all mine, sure, Gu Chengming thought, but the problem is where I'm supposed to put them.
"Fellow Daoist Gu." Xu Huayi's voice pulled him back. "Let me ask first—is the spiritual power drain heavy?"
By rights, flying a mountain that high ought to be a frightening drain.
She was actually a bit worried that Gu Chengming was simply toughing it out without letting it show.
"I've still got… seventy, eighty percent of my spiritual power left." Gu Chengming made a rough estimate. "Far less than I expected—not too uncomfortable."
Xu Huayi was somewhat surprised. After pondering a moment, she analyzed, "All those Dharma Swords settled inside over the years are themselves an enormous reservoir of spiritual power. It may not all rely on you to drive it."
Gu Chengming nodded in agreement.
Xu Huayi withdrew the Judge's Brush back into her sleeve and gathered her thoughts.
"Then the most urgent thing right now," she finally said, "is to find the main group, rejoin everyone, and confirm each party's safety. As for the Sword Burial Tomb, we can work out a plan slowly later. For now it's hidden within the ward, so there's no need to be too anxious."
The two looked at each other for a moment, then, in unspoken agreement, set the topic aside for the time being.
The packed snow crunched underfoot, the sky still an ashen white, and among the distant clouds those few threads of spiritual light still drifted, unhurried.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Secret Realm, in the temporary camp where the Great Qian cultivators were stationed, the mood was far from as quiet as it was on this snowfield.
With Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi long overdue, everyone harbored their own thoughts.
And among the crowd, there was one person more uneasy than anyone else—evidently, Fellow Daoist Jiang.
On the surface his expression was calm, even tinged with a bit of worry, blending right in with the Great Qian cultivators around him who waited anxiously for news, looking quite like one of the group.
In reality, his mind was at this moment replaying everything that had happened from the instant he entered the Secret Realm up until now.
The conclusion he reached was disheartening.
Gu Chengming had very likely already figured out his identity.
And now, the only way out seemed to be to run.
Jiang Yun quietly flexed his fingers, shifting the spirit artifact in his sleeve to a more accessible position, while out of the corner of his eye he began discreetly surveying the surrounding terrain.
Flying was forbidden within the Secret Realm—that was a nuisance.
But Tianque's internal spatial structure was complex, crisscrossed with turbulent flows and full of natural barriers to exploit. As long as he ran fast enough and had a good sense of direction, shaking off pursuers wasn't impossible.
Besides, he had his own people within the Secret Realm.
He just needed to seize the right moment, quietly slip out of the Great Qian's sight, rejoin his people, and then—
"Fellow Daoist Jiang."
Jiang Yun's heart skipped half a beat.
Maintaining that placid look on his face, he slowly turned around, a proper smile already prepared at the corner of his mouth.
Then he saw Shen Jinghong. This Third Realm Chief Banner Officer of the Great Qian had appeared, at some unknown point, three steps behind him—simply standing there in a casual posture, hands tucked into her sleeves, eyes curved, a not-quite-smile playing at the corners of her mouth, watching him with evident interest.
"Fellow Daoist Jiang…" Shen Jinghong's voice was unhurried, carrying an inexplicably skin-crawling leisureliness. "Where are you off to?"
Jiang Yun: "..."
He raced through various responses in his mind and finally settled on the safest one—playing dumb.
"Fellow Daoist Shen jests." He smiled, his tone offhand. "It's just that Fellow Daoists Gu and Xu still haven't returned to the group, so I was a little worried and thought I might go check on things."
"Oh?" Shen Jinghong drew out the word meaningfully, the smile on her face not changing in the slightest as she slowly slid her gaze from his face down to the tips of his toes, then back up again.
"But just now I noticed the direction of Fellow Daoist Jiang's steps—it seemed to be heading toward the deeper parts of the Secret Realm."
"Perhaps my sense of direction is a bit poor," Jiang Yun said, still smiling. "Space is distorted within the Secret Realm—it's not unusual to wander off course for a moment."
"Indeed." Shen Jinghong nodded, expressing deep agreement. "It really is easy to get lost within the Secret Realm."
She gazed at Jiang Yun with a bright smile, showing no intention of finding another topic nor any sign of leaving. Jiang Yun met her eyes for a moment and felt that, for some reason, this Chief Banner Officer who was clearly only at the Third Realm had a particularly unnerving expression.
Jiang Yun quietly pressed this judgment down into his heart, the smile on his face not shifting a fraction. He exchanged a couple more innocuous pleasantries with Shen Jinghong, then, using "I'll wait here for news of Fellow Daoist Gu" as his excuse, calmly took a few steps in another direction, striking an innocent pose of "I really did just go the wrong way."
Shen Jinghong didn't stop him, merely watching him take a couple of steps before suddenly saying, "Oh, right, Fellow Daoist Jiang."
Jiang Yun halted and turned back. "Hm?"
"That sensing artifact at your waist." Shen Jinghong's gaze paused at his side for a moment. "When we entered the Secret Realm, everyone handed theirs in for a round of inspection. As I recall, the one registered under Fellow Daoist Jiang's name during the check-in was… a different model?"
The air fell silent for a beat.
"Oh, this…" Jiang Yun heard his own voice come out steady, his tone as usual. "I swapped in a new one right before entering the Secret Realm and forgot to update the registration. That was my oversight."
"I see." Shen Jinghong nodded, her expression unchanged in the slightest. "Then remember to go file a supplementary record another day. One should still be mindful of artifact control within the Secret Realm."
"Thank you for the reminder." "You're welcome."
At that, the two had nothing more to say, and Jiang Yun made an excuse that he had other matters to attend to.
Only after he'd completely left Shen Jinghong's sight did he suddenly realize his back was already drenched through.
There was no doubt—apart from that Gu Chengming, that Heavenly Emperor Gu, this Third Realm Chief Banner Officer Shen Jinghong, of unknown origin, was also far from as simple as she appeared.
"Don't tell me I've actually blundered into some high-end life-and-death game."
The thought slowly floated up from the bottom of his heart.
Jiang Yun stood in the cold wind of the Secret Realm, his back to the direction where Shen Jinghong might still be, feeling as though the sky itself was about to collapse.
On the snowfield the wind was gentle. Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi walked side by side, their footsteps falling one deep, one shallow.
On the whole, the situation was still under control, but Gu Chengming kept feeling that something was somehow just shy of complete.
Just then, Xu Huayi suddenly said softly, "Someone's here."
Gu Chengming raised his head.
About fifty zhang ahead, at the boundary where the snowfield met dark stone ground, a figure was walking unhurriedly toward them.
The other party walked very slowly, his pace leisurely, like someone strolling in his own backyard, cupping a hand warmer in his hands and now and then breathing onto it.
If not for the deathly cold wind of this Secret Realm, his manner might even have been called cozy.
The two slowed their steps and, by tacit understanding, stopped in place to wait for the figure to draw near.
At about twenty zhang, the newcomer halted, lifted his head, and gave them a rather kindly smile.
He was a middle-aged man with a round face, cheeks a touch fleshy, eyes small yet unusually bright. Paired with that grayish-blue Daoist robe washed nearly white, he looked for all the world like the retired old sect master of some minor sect—benevolent-featured, harmless to man and beast alike.
"Two Fellow Daoists," he said, tucking the hand warmer into his sleeve and cupping his hands, his voice warm and mellow. "To meet fellow travelers of the Dao within this Secret Realm is truly a matter of fate. I am Yú Bǎo, a rogue cultivator. May I ask how the two of you are addressed?"
Both Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi felt a stir in their hearts.
Just as expected—indeed, long before Tianque opened, quite a few cultivators had already arrived here.
Gu Chengming betrayed nothing on his face and gave his name as usual; Xu Huayi likewise offered a courteous greeting.
Yú Bǎo's smile grew all the more sincere. He took two steps forward and sized up the pair, his eyes full of feeling. "Both of you are outstanding young talents. To be able to walk within Tianque, your cultivation must be no small thing. I, Yú, am impressed."
Xu Huayi said politely, "Fellow Daoist flatters us. The two of us are but newcomers to Tianque, completely in the dark. We hope Fellow Daoist will offer us plenty of guidance."
"Not at all, not at all…" Yú Bǎo waved a hand. "Within Tianque, everyone's just feeling their way across by the stones underfoot. What guidance is there to speak of?"
As the three conversed, they began, without quite realizing it, to walk side by side—Gu Chengming on the outermost side, Yú Bǎo in the middle, Xu Huayi on the other side.
As their strides opened up, so too did the conversation.
As he walked, Gu Chengming quietly circulated a strand of the Red Dust Art, spreading his spiritual sense out like a thin mist and gently laying it over Yú Bǎo.
At the first touch, he narrowed his eyes slightly.
Smiling so sincerely—yet what he had packed away inside wasn't clean at all.
He gave no sign of it, only made his steps a touch more leisurely, turned his face aside, and exchanged a glance with Xu Huayi.
Xu Huayi's eyes flickered lightly, then she continued chatting with Yú Bǎo as if nothing were amiss.
On his end, Yú Bǎo was secretly sizing them up as well.
His coming to this area was a long story.
Back when a commotion had come from the direction of the Sword Burial Tomb, he'd already sensed it.
That aura had come suddenly and violently; the sky-blotting sword intent had been drawn in within an extremely short span, and the qi of the entire Sword Burial Tomb had undergone some indescribable change. Yú Bǎo had been inside Tianque for nearly two years, and an anomaly of this magnitude—he'd never seen a second like it.
At the time, only one thought was in his mind: someone had obtained a great opportunity.
So he'd traced the aura over, walking and guessing all the way, speculating about what sort of figure had come into such a great fortune.
Fourth Realm? Fifth Realm? Or perhaps some Grand Supreme senior, sealed away for many years, come out into the world to temper himself?
Then he saw Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi.
One young male cultivator, one young female cultivator, both with fairly restrained cultivation auras. At first glance, they were nothing more than two youngsters around the Third Realm, even carrying a bit of that cautious freshness of having just entered the Secret Realm.
Yú Bǎo had fallen silent for about two breaths.
Then he thought—perhaps the opportunity had fallen into these two's hands, and they themselves didn't even know it yet?
He'd seen such situations before. Opportunities within Tianque came in all shapes and forms; some were hidden very deep, and those who obtained them only knew they'd picked up a treasure, without understanding just how weighty that treasure truly was.
Yú Bǎo weighed this possibility in his mind and found it quite plausible—
If these two young cultivators truly understood what the Sword Burial Tomb meant, their expressions right now should be far more ostentatious than this, or far more panicked—in any case, not this careless, nonchalant look.
He pressed down that flicker of greed in his heart, tugged his sleeves together, and decided to feel out their depths first.
What was the rush? Robbery wasn't the only path.
If the two were naive and easy to talk to, then he'd boil the frog in warm water, coaxing them into handing the opportunity over.
And if the two were shrewd—Yú Bǎo lowered his gaze to the spirit artifact in his sleeve that he could trigger at any moment, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
"Fellow Daoists…" He spun the hand warmer around in his palm, his tone casual. "You're with the Great Qian, aren't you?"
Gu Chengming: "Mm."
"Just as I thought…"
Yú Bǎo sighed and said with feeling, "I'd heard early on that the Great Qian had also gotten involved with Tianque, but I didn't quite believe it. Didn't expect it to be true. And when did the Great Qian… come in?"
"Not long ago."
Xu Huayi said calmly, "We only entered after the Secret Realm opened."
Yú Bǎo silently reckoned the timing in his mind, then nodded on the surface as if it all made sense. "No wonder, then. The Great Qian's hands and feet are—ahem, they've got a lot of rules; being a step slow is normal, perfectly normal."
Gu Chengming: "..."
He went quiet for a moment, thinking: this fellow's phrasing was tactful enough, but what he'd originally meant to say after that stumbled-over "hands and feet" wasn't hard to guess.
A bureaucracy, after all—slow was slow. He thought so himself.
Seeing that neither of them picked up the thread, Yú Bǎo steered the topic toward the situation inside Tianque, speaking as he walked:
"This place, Tianque, is far more complicated than the rumors outside make it out to be."
His tone was flat, as though discussing some trivial matter that had nothing to do with him. "I came in two years earlier. Back then the situation was still fine—everyone came and went, and though privately they all had their own designs, on the surface they could still cooperate in scouting the way. You could call it downright convivial."
"And after that?" Xu Huayi asked at just the right moment.
Yú Bǎo paused.
"After that, the rules of Tianque changed."
He let those words drop, his tone carrying a faint, hard-to-place undertone.
Gu Chengming tightened his gaze a fraction, kept his pace unchanged, and listened with a cocked ear.
"One day, a Dharma-Station decree descended from the heavens."
Yú Bǎo's voice was steady, in the tone of one reciting fact. "The decree read: For any who obtain an opportunity within Tianque, should they be slain by another, all opportunities they have gained shall pass entirely to the killer."
Xu Huayi's steps hitched slightly, then she continued walking as if nothing had happened.
"All of it…"
Yú Bǎo glanced at her and bit down clearly, meaningfully, on the words. "Including inheritances, including Dharma-Station insights… even, including karma."
The snowfield fell quiet for a moment, leaving only the sound of footsteps.
Gu Chengming: "Karma can be transferred too?"
"The rules of Tianque."
Yú Bǎo shrugged, looking utterly unfazed. "Things inside Tianque aren't like things outside. The rules in here are ancient rules no one can explain—they don't reason, they only care about results."
Saying this, he slowed by half a step, turned to the side, drew his gaze back from the snowfield, and fixed it on Gu Chengming.
That smile was still there—kindly, warm, carrying a touch of the worldliness of one who'd seen it all, looking for all the world like a senior sincerely wanting to remind a junior to mind their safety.
"So, you see…" he began slowly, a long, drawn-out sigh entering his voice. "The two of you are new to Tianque; it's only natural you don't know some things. The rules of Tianque… since those above have set them down—"
"Then this works out perfectly."
Gu Chengming cut him off, saying with a smile:
"Fellow Daoist, hand over your opportunity."
"…?"
A question mark popped up over Yú Bǎo's head; he thought, That's my line you're saying.
No sooner had the thought landed in his mind than the sky abruptly darkened.
It wasn't clouds covering the sun—there was no sun in Tianque to begin with. It was something extremely massive blocking out the light from above.
Yú Bǎo reflexively looked up.
Then he saw the mountain—the iron-gray body, cliffs sheer as if carved, that dense cluster of jagged spires at the peak standing out with peculiar clarity against the low-hanging clouds—the whole mountain descending from the heavens with a soundless yet inescapable pressure.
Yú Bǎo's brain shut down completely in that instant.
He didn't even have time to think "what is this," no time to think "how do I run," no time to think anything at all—he just tilted his head back, in a nearly stupefied posture, watching the mountain draw closer and grow larger, blotting out the entire sky.
In the instant the mountain landed, there was no thunderous roar.
An iron-gray colossus large enough to blot out the sky and sun came crashing down with such unstoppable momentum, yet when it settled onto the snowfield it was as quiet as a leaf coming to rest on the surface of water.
Just a single "pft."
Very light, very muffled—like a boot stepping on a fully ripened fruit.
The patch of snow where Yú Bǎo had been standing no longer existed.
To be precise, the patch of snow was still there; it was just that the spot beneath it where a person should have been now held only a thin layer of something squeezed out from the edge of the mountain's base—a mottle of colors, red and white and gray mixed together, as though someone had knocked a dish of paint over onto the snow and then rolled a boulder across it, smearing it into a streak no more than three chi wide and no more than half a cun thick.
That streak wound out from the foot of the mountain, dragging across the snow for about a zhang, its tail end still trailing a few strands of dark red liquid, not yet congealed, slowly seeping down into the snow.
The hand warmer had been squeezed off to who-knows-where, finally landing on the snow seven or eight zhang away, rolling over a couple of times before its lid came loose and the embers inside spilled across the ground, searing several tiny black spots into the white snow and sending up a few pitiful wisps of smoke.
The spirit artifact he'd hidden in his sleeve, ready to trigger at any moment, was now shattered into three pieces, wedged into a crack in the stone at the mountain's foot, bearing a smear of some blurred residue that could no longer be told apart as cloth or flesh.
The wind blew over, lifting a few crushed bone fragments, mixing them with snow spray, whirling them once at the mountain's foot before letting them fall again, silently melting into that streak.
From start to finish, Yú Bǎo hadn't made a single sound.
Not because he didn't want to—because he hadn't had the time.
The speed at which the mountain fell was far faster than his reactions, his spiritual sense, his survival instinct. His body had been compressed into a plane bearing no human features whatsoever before his brain could even issue the command to "run."
The physical strength of a Third Realm cultivator, before this mountain, didn't even qualify to make it pause for a beat.
Gu Chengming lowered his head to glance at the streak at the foot of the mountain, and fell silent for a moment.
Right up to the moment he was utterly smashed into pulp, that line—"what the hell is this thing"—had never made it out.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula praised: Fellow Daoist Gu is truly my kindred spirit—this manner of conduct is quite to my liking!]
[Dao Conduit CG unlock progress +10]
—So it's not just befriending fellow Daoists; killing fellow Daoists can unlock CGs too, huh?
As he thought this, at that very same moment, Gu Chengming suddenly felt a strand of karma settle onto him out of the unseen.
Before he could examine it closely, he saw Xu Huayi beside him watching him with a subtle expression.
—What's with that look, Fellow Daoist Xu?
Xu Huayi weighed her words for a moment, then spoke. "Fellow Daoist Gu… don't tell me you actually rather enjoy killing people?"
"…?"
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