Whether he truly enjoyed killing was obviously just a joke; Xu Huayi clearly understood that this Fellow Daoist Yú Bǎo had harbored ill intentions.
It was only that Little Gu's reaction had been a bit too quick, and she really hadn't expected that the Sword Burial Tomb he'd only just obtained would be put to use so soon after.
Still, Gu Chengming's explanation made sense—simply "holding up" the Sword Burial Tomb consumed a great deal of spiritual power on its own, and Gu Chengming genuinely didn't have any spare spiritual power to spread out a sword formation and tangle with an opponent.
—Crushing someone to death with a mountain really was the most convenient move.
Xu Huayi nodded in agreement, entirely unaware that she seemed to have already been deeply influenced by the Snowfall Pass murder-demon.
Once the explanation was done, Gu Chengming suddenly realized there was still a scene Old Hundred loved most that he had yet to deliver.
He coughed twice, looked at Yú Bǎo's corpse, and declared, "Even though I must support the Sword Burial Tomb with one hand, I remain invincible in this world."
[Hundred Bones Resonance heard this, its eyes blazing, and loudly cheered for the mighty Heavenly Emperor Gu]
[Hundred Bones Resonance favorability +10]
Sure enough, Old Hundred loved this sort of thing best.
Ignoring the slightly subtle look Xu Huayi shot him from the side, Gu Chengming thought to himself.
Xu Huayi, for her part, spent a good long while not knowing how to comment. If she had to say something, Fellow Daoist Gu's words really weren't wrong.
—He had indeed crushed someone to death while holding up the Sword Burial Tomb.
About half an incense-stick's time after Yú Bǎo's death, Gu Chengming felt something. Standing where he was, he looked down at his own hand, deep in thought.
Xu Huayi had already put away the Judge's Brush and was waiting for him where she stood. Catching that thoughtful expression of his out of the corner of her eye, she didn't rush him, merely turning slightly to the side to give him room to sort things out for himself.
Gu Chengming carefully combed through this newly-flooding sense in his mind.
Interesting. He'd originally assumed Tianque's rule of "kill to gain the fortunes" was the crude, straightforward kind: you die, everything in your pockets falls into the hands of whoever killed you—like a robbery, clean and simple, no cheating anyone.
But that wasn't actually the case. The only things that entered his range of perception were the few spirit artifacts Yú Bǎo had carried on him; he could sense their specific locations, roughly in the snow not far off, swept aside as a byproduct by the Sword Burial Tomb.
The rest was another matter. Those "already used" fortunes—such as pills that had been swallowed, cultivation methods already practiced, half-grasped insights, meridians already opened—these things were no longer on Yú Bǎo's body; they had long since melted into his flesh and blood, dissipating along with his death. Gu Chengming couldn't take them, nor was there any way to directly inherit them.
Tianque's rules were clearly a bit more refined than that.
Those already-dissipated fortunes weren't simply annihilated; instead, they were reclaimed by Tianque, and through some method Gu Chengming couldn't quite articulate, the effect was reversed back into its cause, regenerated anew within this Secret Realm.
Then, from within the unseen, a thread of perception would come attached with a vague direction—and there lay the newly-generated fortune.
Take, for example, a spirit source fruit Yú Bǎo had swallowed years ago—Tianque reversed the fruit's cause and effect and grew a new one within the Secret Realm, positioned to the northwest, just waiting for Gu Chengming to go and pick it.
Gu Chengming ran through the logic of this mechanism in his head, and once he'd roughly worked it out, he turned to look at Xu Huayi:
"Tianque's rules about fortunes aren't quite what I thought before."
Xu Huayi: "Hmm?"
Gu Chengming briefly explained the perception he'd just received. After listening, Xu Huayi lowered her head and thought for a moment.
"So 'reversing cause and effect' is meant literally," she murmured. "The fortune gets used up, so Tianque recreates its 'pre-use' state, then gives the killer a pointer—but this newly-generated fortune, you still have to go retrieve yourself?"
"More or less."
Xu Huayi's Judge's Brush spun a half-circle between her fingers. She ran the matter through her mind once, then suddenly said, "So this rule of Tianque's is actually a roundabout way of encouraging everyone to rob and kill one another, constantly churning the fortunes of the entire Secret Realm and concentrating them toward the strong."
—A battle royale, truly.
Gu Chengming thought to himself: they say the Secret Realms in cultivation novels were the earliest battle royales, and this time he was really seeing it firsthand.
Thinking this, he turned aside and gathered up the few spirit artifacts scattered in the snow, giving Yú Bǎo's assets a rough once-over. The quality was decent; two of them were fairly handy, while the rest were the jack-of-all-trades sort that rogue cultivators habitually kept on hand—nothing outstanding, but winning on practicality.
There was also a storage pouch, bulging and full—it seemed that after two years in Tianque, he'd accumulated a fair bit of a nest egg.
Gu Chengming put these away, stood up, and brushed the snow off his knees.
"Fellow Daoist Gu's technique is quite practiced," Xu Huayi teased.
Gu Chengming didn't argue, and said with a smile, "Let's go—we'll find the main force first."
After walking for about two quarter-hours, the terrain began to change. The snowfield gradually gave way to hard dark stone ground, and in the distance several massive boulders towered up, their outlines strange, as though some force had forcibly twisted them and then frozen them in that posture.
Xu Huayi slowed her pace, reconfirmed the direction, and turned her face to the side: "The last sensed position of the Great Qian main force was roughly to the east, but spells are unstable within the Secret Realm, so the margin of error could be fairly large."
Gu Chengming acknowledged this, then couldn't help glancing toward the northwest.
Xu Huayi followed his gaze—there was nothing there, only the endless grayish-white snowfield. She thought for a moment and understood: "The fortunes that scattered from Yú Bǎo just now?"
"Mm." Gu Chengming withdrew his gaze. "The perception points that way, but there's no rush—let's regroup first."
"How many spots?" Xu Huayi asked casually.
"Three."
Xu Huayi silently tallied up Yú Bǎo's two years of accumulation. Three scattered fortunes was no small amount, and combined with that bulging storage pouch, it seemed this Fellow Daoist Yú had been living quite comfortably in Tianque.
At least, that was the case up until today.
She said nothing more, merely keeping pace and continuing east.
Within Tianque, by the decree of the Dharma-Station, all fortunes belong to the killer.
Fortunes, as a thing, included inheritances, included insights, included cause and effect.
Thinking this far, some train of thought in her mind somehow veered off course.
—The benefits gained after Dual Cultivation—by Tianque's rules, did those count as "already-used fortunes"?
Tianque, deep within. No one knew what this place was called.
The space inside Tianque was a realm of its own—mountains and rivers displaced, directions in chaos; an ordinary map was no better than scrap paper here.
Any cultivator who had spent some time in Tianque understood that the places within this Secret Realm that could truly be called fixed were exceedingly few.
And the place before them was one of them.
In the very center of the clearing stood a stone table, around which three people were currently seated, with two others standing.
Seated on the left was an extremely burly man, broad-shouldered and thick-backed, both hands resting on the edge of the stone table, veins faintly bulging on the backs of his hands—one glance was enough to tell that this man had walked the path of body cultivation.
From the moment he'd sat down until now he hadn't said a single word, only occasionally lifting his eyes to sweep over everyone present, somewhat nonchalant.
Seated on the right was a female cultivator who looked rather young, a half-worn wooden hairpin fastened in her hair. Her clothing was plain, save for a ring of extremely fine silver-thread patterning embroidered at the collar—unnoticeable unless one looked closely.
Seated in the middle was an old man, his hair and beard all white. Before him sat a Go board, more than half the stones already placed, black and white interlaced, the situation looking vaguely chaotic.
But look closely, and every stone's position had its reason—order within chaos, where pulling a single hair moved the whole body.
The old man held a white stone yet to be placed, suspended above the board just so, held there for who knew how long, never falling.
The two who stood were arrayed at either end of the stone table.
One was a male cultivator of medium build, his features ordinary and unmemorable. At the level of the Fifth Realm, being able to hone one's own aura to such a degree usually meant one had walked far enough down some exceptionally particular path. The other was a person draped in a dark cloak, the hood pulled very low, concealing the face and revealing only the lower half of a chin, its outline clear—impossible to tell man or woman, impossible to tell age.
All five came from different powers, but unlike other cultivators, they curiously didn't care about the fortunes each had obtained, nor did they show any intent to seize resources by force.
After all, the higher one climbed, the rarer such life-and-death struggles became.
If Fifth Realm cultivators fought each other, it would be a true case of both sides suffering ruin—and even the winner might not have much left.
So everyone was waiting for a more suitable moment, waiting for a window that would let them claim the greatest benefit at the smallest cost.
The one who finally spoke was the male cultivator of medium build.
"In seven more days—" his voice was low as he spoke, "—the rules of Tianque's third stage will formally open."
The old man's fingers twitched slightly; still, the white stone did not fall.
"Seven days." The female cultivator holding her tea spoke up, her tone airy. "Did you receive some news, or did you calculate it yourself?"
"Both."
"Then there's no need to go into detail." The female cultivator glanced down at the tea in her cup. "In that case, let me speak to what everyone's thinking."
"Whether it's Tianque's fortunes and inheritances, or spirit artifacts, or insights—there are far too many valuable things. But what everyone ultimately truly wants, I trust we all know very well."
No one picked up the thread, but no one refuted it either.
Taking this silence as tacit agreement, the female cultivator continued, "The inheritance of True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli is within Tianque—more and more people are coming to know of this."
The cloaked figure shifted, slightly adjusting their posture against the rock.
True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli had, in his day, used the whole of his cultivation to deduce heaven and man, ordering the cosmos through ritual. It was said the inheritance he left behind was no ordinary cultivation method, but rather the way of deducing the Dharma-Station itself.
To deduce one's own Dharma-Station.
To an ordinary cultivator, these words might be nothing more than a concept so distant as to border on absurd, but to these few present, what those words represented carried an entirely different weight.
The Dharma-Station was bestowed by the Heavenly Dao—a brand that naturally coalesced from the unseen once a cultivator reached a certain realm. What kind of Dao Heart walked what kind of path, what kind of path bore what kind of Dharma-Station—this process could only ever be complied with, never forced.
To be able to deduce a Dharma-Station of one's own—
"Saying all this is useless..." The medium-built male cultivator drew his sleeves together, pulling the topic back. "Right now, the most pressing matter is the third stage of the rules."
"At that point, Tianque will, in some fashion, make everyone's Dharma-Station manifest outwardly. After that, the flow of fortunes will no longer depend solely on killing, but on the contest between Dharma-Stations."
The surface calm among the group still held, but what surged beneath that calm was no longer being concealed.
The cloaked figure pressed the hood down a little further. "Speaking of intelligence, there have been some new faces in Tianque lately. Have any of you taken notice?"
"People from Great Qian have entered..."
The female cultivator was unimpressed. "Known that for a while. Two years late to enter, and no sooner had they set foot in the Secret Realm than the rules changed—the timing really was struck just right."
"They've come." The old man finally set his stone down with a soft click. "But whether they've come in time is another matter."
The tableland fell silent once more.
Auras drew back into themselves, retreating to their respective boundaries, redrawing clearly that invisible line no one was willing to be the first to cross.
Cooperation—there was some.
But before the moment of the final reckoning truly arrived, this cooperation was as thin as a layer of window-paper, ready to be poked through at any time.
The old man's voice drifted over, carrying an ambiguous casualness: "Everyone, look after yourselves."
No one responded to this.
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
The two had walked for nearly an hour and found nothing.
Xu Huayi confirmed the direction once more with the Judge's Brush in her palm, her brow knitting slightly. She was silent for a moment, then finally spoke: "The perception's a little off. The spatial distortion within the Secret Realm is worse than I anticipated—the Great Qian team's current position is hard to pin down."
Gu Chengming gave an acknowledgment without pressing her, merely halting and lifting his head to look around.
This area's terrain was open, the dark stone ground stretching to the edge of sight, with a few jagged stone pillars occasionally growing up from the ground at uneven heights, as if some giant creature had once left claw marks here.
The wind was low, now and then laced with a few extremely faint soft sounds, like something resonating in the distance.
Gu Chengming listened carefully but couldn't make out anything.
There were too many strange and peculiar things in Tianque; it really wasn't feasible to study each one.
"We won't find them by walking on, so we might as well take a break and wait for the perception to stabilize before deciding."
Xu Huayi swept a glance around, confirmed there were no obvious signs of danger, and came over to sit down as well.
Leaning back against a stone pillar, she stood the Judge's Brush upright on her knee. The two of them sat there like this on the empty dark stone ground, and Gu Chengming finally had a chance to start interacting with his cultivation methods.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula was still mulling over that business with the Sword Burial Tomb, thinking to itself that they were finally rich, and from now on Dharma Swords could be taken by the batch]
[Then it thought further: shouldn't it also put in some effort down the line and research some new things, or else it would feel like such a waste]
Gu Chengming thought: no wonder the Dharma Sword sword formation's bond capped at ten at most—so it had been guarding against this.
But thinking about it, it really was true—if there were no mutual safeguard, then later, with a wave of his arm, a sword formation made of an entire Sword Burial Tomb's worth of swords could just pile up and crush someone to death by sheer numbers.
—Too numbers-based; not playing that.
[Hundred Bones Resonance agreed: Heavenly Emperor Gu is right! We don't play the too-numbers-based stuff; a true powerhouse has to rely on a physique forged step by step through one's own effort!]
[Hearing this, the Huiyuan Sword Formula puffed up its cheeks in a huff. That was just a line I told myself for comfort, Hundred Emperor—if we're really talking numbers, aren't you the most numbers-based one of all?]
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula harrumphed: Chengming is right!]
[Hundred Bones Resonance took it all as praise for itself and puffed out its chest.]
Gu Chengming found it amusing. As his gaze left the dialogue box and he lifted his head again, about to loosen up his shoulders and neck, his movement suddenly froze.
The sky had changed.
Deep in the firmament, some invisible axis was gently turned by an unseen hand.
There was no rosy glow suffusing the sky, no clouds diverting their course—but the very texture of the entire Secret Realm's space was undergoing a fundamental shift, and some dimension that had always lurked deep in the folds of reality was slowly seeping out through a "mirror surface" growing gradually clearer.
Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi stood close together, and the two withdrew their gazes from the sky almost simultaneously, exchanging a look.
That glance held no words, but no words were needed.
Both understood.
In the instant the Dharma-Station manifested, Tianque told the rules to everyone.
Gu Chengming ran through them in his mind.
[Each person must select an object with a deep connection to themselves and a sufficiently deep obsession, and use it as an anchor to perform visualization.]
[Based on the object's characteristics and history, Tianque will grant the visualizer corresponding "trait tags," attached to their Dharma-Station, thereby determining each person's combat tendencies and manner of obtaining fortunes in the coming stage.]
[Whatever the anchor object has killed, whatever it has experienced, whatever it has accumulated—all of these will become quantifiable entries settling upon the visualizer.]
[Then, in the time that follows, whoever obtains the most fortunes—]
[—will obtain the Dharma-Station.]
So he really did have to become the kill king?
Gu Chengming grumbled inwardly.
The greatest means of obtaining fortunes had already become quite clear once the second stage's rules were established:
Kill others, gain the pointer to their fortunes, then go retrieve them, then keep killing—fortunes snowballing onto the strongest person.
Whoever set Tianque's rules was clearly not much interested in the concept of "subtlety."
Gu Chengming tilted his head toward the girl beside him: "Tianque's rules really are crude and simple—it's basically written the words 'raising gu' out plainly across the sky, and the deeper one's background, the more one gets to grab."
After all, the deeper one's background, the more formidable the object one visualized.
Xu Huayi laughed, with a hint of carefree ease: "Look on the bright side—at least we won't have to wander this wretched stone field like headless flies anymore."
Her brows and eyes curved, the light and shadow of the sky's transformation reflected in her bright pupils: "Since the rule is winner-takes-all for the strong, then we just fight our way through. Judging by that Fellow Daoist Yú just now, there's nothing in this Secret Realm that calls for holding back."
"This visualization anchor object is rather interesting, though—I'm quite curious what Fellow Daoist Gu will visualize."
After a quick run-through, the two discussed it a bit and then began choosing their objects of visualization.
A moment later, Xu Huayi had already closed her eyes.
She was visualizing one of the Tianding Sect's sect-guardian spirit artifacts—the "Myriad Phenomena Compass Needle."
She'd seen that spirit artifact countless times. From the very first day she cultivated at the Tianding Sect, that needle had stood in the very center of the sect's main hall—jet-black all over, its body exceedingly thin, yet able to sustain the operation of the entire main hall's formation. Generation after generation of sect masters had come and gone, but the sect-guardian spirit artifact had always been that single one.
And according to the Tianding Sect's regulations, if her cultivation succeeded and she returned to the sect in the future, the duty of guarding that spirit artifact would fall upon her shoulders.
So that Myriad Phenomena Compass Needle could indeed be counted as having quite a close connection to her.
Xu Huayi traced the spirit artifact's outline in her mind—the body of the needle, the tip, that extremely fine pattern at the needle's tail—and then began to visualize.
In this instant, Tianque's rule descended precisely, like a seal lightly pressed against her brow.
Right after, two tags appeared above Xu Huayi's head.
[Formation power increased by twenty percent]
[Damage against body cultivators increased by thirty percent]
These were already quite formidable entries. After all, she'd visualized the Tianding Sect's sect-guardian spirit artifact—an artifact steeped in the spiritual power of who knew how many generations of sect masters, having accumulated who knew how many years of formation might. Pull out any bit of it at random, and no ordinary object could compare.
Xu Huayi opened her eyes, glanced briefly overhead, then withdrew her gaze, her expression as usual. She said nothing more, merely turning her face to look at Gu Chengming.
Gu Chengming was still pondering the matter of the anchor object.
Tianque's rule stated it clearly: the anchor object required a "deep connection" as well as a "sufficiently deep obsession." These two conditions together often meant the object had either accompanied you long enough, or gone through matters important enough, or both.
Gu Chengming ran through everything he could think of.
His first thought was Hundred Bones Resonance.
In terms of connection, Hundred Bones Resonance was one of his earliest cultivation methods, having refined his body all the way to now—the connection was deep enough. In terms of obsession, Hundred Bones Resonance was itself an existence whose obsession ran deep enough to brawl with the gods of all heavens within an illusory realm—that was never anything to worry about.
Using Hundred Bones Resonance as the anchor object made logical sense, and given Hundred Bones Resonance's temperament of keeping "wage war across all heavens" on the tip of its tongue, once the Dharma-Station rules descended, the things that would show up among the entries...
Thinking this far, Gu Chengming suddenly felt this might be a decent idea.
[Hundred Bones Resonance seemed extremely happy]
[Heavenly Emperor Gu thought of me first at a time like this—truly our bond is unbreakable, yeah!]
Gu Chengming found it amusing, closed his eyes, and began to attempt the visualization.
Then Tianque's rule descended right on cue, with a thunderous boom, as if something were trying to stuff Hundred Bones Resonance's vast, unconcealed aura into a fixed framework—
And then that framework, after holding for roughly half a breath, cracked.
Visualization failed?
[Hundred Bones Resonance was somewhat dejected]
This too was somewhat beyond Gu Chengming's expectations. Though he'd guessed the Hundred Emperor might be quite formidable, he hadn't anticipated it being formidable to the degree of "the Dharma-Station rules simply can't contain it."
He lowered his head again and thought for a moment.
At this point, the dialogue box in his mind stirred.
[The Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method perceived the current situation, mused for a moment, and spoke: Chengming.]
[Its tone was as usual, the only difference being that it sounded a touch more proactive.]
[Try me.]
Gu Chengming looked at this line of text and thought for a moment.
The Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method had always been the one that spoke least among his many cultivation methods. Ordinarily it didn't speak up on its own initiative, nor did it lightly voice its stance, only occasionally saying a few extra words on matters involving "ritual order."
For it to volunteer itself was, in itself, already a rather rare occurrence.
Gu Chengming didn't overthink it; he closed his eyes and began the visualization anew.
This time, the Dharma-Station rules descended and settled onto the right track.
The aura of the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method connected smoothly with that rule—neither bursting nor collapsing—only, in the moment of contact, something began to slowly overflow outward, like a classic text laid open, the writing on its inner pages seeping out line by line—seeping into Tianque's rules, into the framework of the visualization, into that process that would ultimately coalesce into entries.
What was the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method?
It was ritual, it was order, it was "the high and low in proper sequence, the gentleman harmonious yet not conforming"—an extremely systematic framework of moral principle concerning how people ought to get along with one another.
What was accumulated within this cultivation method was its founder's entire understanding of "what constitutes the righteous path"—who was a person of loyalty and righteousness, who was a person of propriety and wisdom, who was a person of benevolence and filial piety. This cultivation method knew more clearly than Gu Chengming himself, clear to a nearly exacting degree.
Tianque's rules quietly received all of this, digested it, and then began to output it.
Above Gu Chengming's head, the entries began to surface.
Xu Huayi stood beside him, close enough that her gaze naturally fell that way, and the first line clearly caught her eye—
[Damage against non-Great Qian cultivators increased by thirty percent]
Xu Huayi was curious.
Huh? What had he visualized—a Great Qian spirit artifact?
She'd originally assumed Gu Chengming would visualize some Dharma Sword from within the Wenjian Sect—or failing that, visualizing the Sword Burial Tomb from earlier should have worked well too.
Then the second line: [Damage against those of lower official rank than oneself increased by thirty percent]
Xu Huayi paused slightly, growing more puzzled. Could it be some spirit artifact of the Great Qian imperial house? But why would Gu Chengming be connected to a Great Qian imperial spirit artifact—didn't it have to be an object with a connection to oneself?
Still, these two lined up together made reasonable enough sense.
Right after, the third line began to surface—
[Damage against female cultivators increased by thirty percent]
Xu Huayi: "..."
She stared at this line for about two breaths, then took the words "reasonable enough sense" back out again in her mind.
Then a whole string of entries began to surface.
[Damage against the disloyal and unrighteous increased by thirty percent]
[Damage against the improper and unwise increased by thirty percent]
[Damage against the unbenevolent and unfilial increased by thirty percent]
[Damage against those who don't like eating jianbing wrapped with scallions increased by thirty percent]
[....]
[Against...]
The entries kept spilling out, line after line, arraying densely downward. In that patch of space above Gu Chengming's head, the writing was nearly stacking into a wall.
Finally, one last line popped out—
[The above damage bonuses can stack]
Xu Huayi stood where she was, head tilted up, her mind crashing into a blank state once again.
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