The dead silence around them stretched on for a long while.
The Qingyuan Sect disciples were frozen in place, not even daring to breathe too heavily.
Above them, the row of damage-boost entries stacked over Gu Chengming's head like a city wall had not yet dispersed; the glittering golden characters looked intensely oppressive in the dim light and shadow of Tianque.
They saw it all too clearly. Their own team-leading elder, in the early Fourth Realm, hadn't even had room to react before this youth poked him into the stone stele with a single finger—and now his fate, life or death, hung unknown.
If anyone stirred rashly now, no one could guarantee whose head the next finger would land on.
After all, among these Qingyuan Sect disciples present, they probably couldn't pick out even one who liked eating scallion-wrapped pancakes.
Gu Chengming withdrew his hand, flicked his sleeve, swept his gaze across the trembling cultivators, and spat out two flat words:
"Get lost."
Those two words fell on the Qingyuan Sect disciples' ears like heavenly music.
Everyone who a moment ago had been quaking felt as if pardoned; they scrambled toward the rubble heap and, with a flurry of grasping hands, pried Zhao Qingshi—embedded in the stele, every bone in his body shattered—forcibly loose.
Not one dared leave even a parting threat. They hoisted their half-dead elder, unleashed their fastest escape technique, and turned into several panicked streaks of light that vanished at the far edge of the dark-stone plain in an instant.
Only once the Qingyuan Sect's aura had faded entirely did Gu Chengming finally turn around.
Xu Huayi stood a few paces off, the Judge's Brush already put away in her hand, feeling rather peculiar within.
Gu Chengming met her gaze and found it amusing. "Fellow Daoist Xu, why do you look at me like that?"
Xu Huayi collected herself and teased with resignation, "I'm only thinking that from now on, whenever I spar with you, Fellow Daoist Gu, I'll have to prepare pancakes and scallions beforehand—lest I needlessly take a thirty-percent heavier blow."
Gu Chengming gave a slight smile and said no more.
The two set themselves in order for a moment, then stepped over the wreckage of the formation strewn across the ground and formally set foot on the gray-brick passageway leading to the Zhou Shrine.
The instant they crossed some invisible boundary, Gu Chengming keenly caught the anomaly in the laws of heaven and earth around them.
The wild, disordered spatial turbulence that had raged at the outer edge of Tianque was here smoothed entirely away—and with it, Gu Chengming noticed something rather troublesome.
He closed his eyes and cast his senses through his Sea of Consciousness.
The Sword Burial Tomb still floated serenely in the clouds at a great height, its spiritual-sense connection to him clear and distinct.
Yet when he tried to mobilize the Sword Burial Tomb and shift it above the Zhou Shrine, he met resistance; it was sealed off completely, kept outside the law-domain of the Zhou Shrine.
Gu Chengming opened his eyes and told Xu Huayi beside him of this development plainly.
Hearing it, Xu Huayi showed no surprise, but rather a look of understanding.
After a moment's thought, she gave the reason clearly and in order: "It should be so. The Dharma-Station wonders within Tianque all evolved from the obsessions and law-fragments of ancient great powers. Each wonder is an independent, complete law-domain of its own."
She raised two fingers and lightly traced two non-intersecting circles in the air.
"The Sword Burial Tomb has the rules of the Sword Burial Tomb; the Zhou Shrine has the rites of the Zhou Shrine. Both are Dharma-Station wonders of extremely high rank. Although you've refined the Sword Burial Tomb, Fellow Daoist Gu, your true body has now stepped into the domain of the Zhou Shrine. The laws of the Zhou Shrine will never permit another Dharma-Station domain of equal rank to force its way in and invade its territory. To bring the Sword Burial Tomb in, its laws would have to utterly crush those of the Zhou Shrine—but as things stand, the two clearly keep to their own wells and rivers."
Having heard the principle, Gu Chengming sighed with some regret.
Reckoned carefully, the Sword Burial Tomb was actually quite handy.
No cumbersome wind-up before casting, no excessive drain on his energy—a single thought and a mountain came crashing down: crude, simple, and enormous in visual impact.
But on second thought, Gu Chengming came to terms with it.
The long string of damage-boost entries he'd just gained from visualizing the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method carried extremely strict conditions for judgment: only techniques or fists and feet he executed himself could earn those terrifying bonuses.
If he merely steered the Sword Burial Tomb to smash people, the mountain was, in the end, an external object, and in theory could not trigger those stacked special-attack bonuses.
Stripped of its special-attack support, the Sword Burial Tomb, against a true expert, really did seem a bit of a chicken rib—too good to toss, too poor to savor.
Yet even as his reason coldly weighed the gains and losses, a wave of regret still welled up in Gu Chengming.
After all, who wouldn't want to beat someone to death by swinging around an entire mountain?
Xu Huayi, walking a little ahead and to the side, sensed that trace of regret on Gu Chengming's face.
She halted, looked back at him, and spoke with a note of amusement: "Fellow Daoist Gu, stop wearing that regretful look. Even if you could move the Sword Burial Tomb in here, it would be of no use in this place. Within the Zhou Shrine, combat basically won't occur."
Was his expression really that obvious, Gu Chengming wondered.
Still, the information in Xu Huayi's words caught him off guard.
He followed the thread and pressed, "No combat? Tianque has already entered its third stage—all fortunes fall to the killer. Cultivators everywhere fight with bloodshot eyes throughout the Secret Realm. A core wonder like the Zhou Shrine is bound to be where everyone gathers; how could it stay peaceful?"
Xu Huayi turned and walked on, explaining as she went, "It's not that people don't want to fight—it's that they can't. The Zhou Shrine's situation is extremely peculiar. It's one of the rare wonders within Tianque whose Dharma-Station rules step in and intervene directly.
"True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli entered the Dao through rites. The Zhou Shrine is the concrete embodiment of his rules of rite. To step through the gate of the Zhou Shrine is to obey the rules the True Lord laid down. The most central of these is the ban on private combat. Anyone who dares draw a weapon within the Zhou Shrine, or set off an outburst of spiritual power, will be suppressed outright by the laws of the Zhou Shrine—and may even be stripped at once of the right to seek fortune and expelled from the wonder."
Gu Chengming nodded again and again, thinking the rule fit the consistent temperament of the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method well enough.
"Is there truly no one who can break this rule?" Gu Chengming asked offhandedly.
Xu Huayi mulled it over. "Naturally, it isn't absolute. If one's cultivation realm could tower completely over the residual laws left by this Dharma-Station wonder, then of course one could ignore the rules and force one's hand—but such a realm would demand at least a Fifth Realm great cultivator."
At this she shook her head and contradicted herself:
"But by rights, Fifth Realm great cultivators are all after that faint, intangible source inheritance in the deepest reaches of Tianque. They'd never squander their energy on these concrete spirit artifacts or insights out at the edge. A Fifth Realm great power wouldn't deign to glance at the little the Zhou Shrine offers."
Walking behind her, Gu Chengming listened to this resounding pronouncement and muttered one line silently to himself.
Fellow Daoist Xu, do stop planting flags.
The two walked several hundred more steps along the gray-brick passageway and at last arrived before the main gate of the Zhou Shrine.
Beneath the towering gate tower, two heavy vermilion-lacquered doors were shut tight.
No guards stood before the gate; only a plain, ancient stone stele over a zhang tall stood solitary in the very center of the steps, blocking the way.
Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi stepped up. The surface of the stele had been polished perfectly smooth, and upon it two lines of large characters were carved in ancient seal script of iron strokes and silver hooks.
"All who wish to enter the shrine must inquire with rite. Those without rite shall not enter."
The stele sensed spiritual power, and ripples like water spread across its surface.
Then, beneath the seal script, five small characters formed of gathered spirit-light surfaced, from left to right: Poor, Passable, Good, Excellent, Superb.
It seemed the Zhou Shrine would assign a corresponding rating based on the words and conduct of whoever performed the rite; only upon reaching a specific standard would these vermilion doors open.
As he was thinking this, a translucent light-shadow suddenly projected above the stele.
That light-shadow was no real person, but a human outline traced from pure law-spirit-light.
This humanoid light-shadow stood on the steps, facing the vermilion doors, and began to demonstrate the so-called standard of "inquiring with rite."
Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi stood behind and watched intently.
At first, both assumed it was no more than an ordinary bow or cupped-fist salute, but after only a short while, Xu Huayi's brows knotted tightly together.
This etiquette was far too elaborate.
The light-shadow's demonstration was exhaustively detailed—detailed to the point of rigidity. It not only showed the movements but also annotated dense lines of text in midair.
Step one: stand solemn. Feet together, toes level, not a hair's deviation permitted. Arms hanging naturally, palms pressed to the outer thighs, the curve of the bent knuckles required to match a certain specific arc.
Step two: raise the hands. Both hands lifted slowly from the lower abdomen, the pace neither too fast nor too slow. Beside the light-shadow even appeared a timing incense stick, requiring the entire raising motion to match perfectly the span it took the incense to burn one inch.
Step three: clasp. The hands overlapped three inches before the chest, left hand outside, right hand inside. A faint gap had to remain between the palms; they could not press tightly flush.
Most absurd was step four, the bow. Bend one degree too far, and it counted as fawning; bend one degree too little, and it counted as arrogance. The bowing posture had to be held for a full nine breaths, and the length, depth, and shallowness of each breath all carried explicit regulations.
"This really is far too strict…"
Complaints aside, the gate still had to be entered.
Xu Huayi drew a deep breath, stepped forward twice, and stood within the area marked out before the stele.
She closed her eyes and swiftly replayed in her mind every detail of the light-shadow's demonstration.
As a prodigy of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, her aptitude for learning and her memory were beyond question.
The spirit-light on the stele flickered violently; the five rating characters began to rotate, and at last the glow settled on the middle one.
"Good."
On the heels of that, the heavy vermilion doors let out a low rumble, and the left door leaf swung slowly inward, opening a crack wide enough for only one person to pass.
Xu Huayi wiped the sweat from her brow, looked at the "Good" upon the stele, and felt both the relief of a burden lifted and an indefinable sense of defeat.
She reckoned her movements had already been flawless, yet she'd earned only a middling "Good." Just what level did that so-called "Excellent" and "Superb" demand?
"Fellow Daoist Gu, it's your turn."
Xu Huayi withdrew to the side and rubbed her somewhat stiff neck, watching Gu Chengming with a faint flicker of anticipation.
She was quite prepared to watch him make a spectacle of himself.
After all, this Fellow Daoist Gu's style was bold and sweeping; he snatched up a mountain to smash people without so much as a blink—by no reckoning did he look like a man who could endure such fussy rules.
Gu Chengming walked before the stele and stood still, and the very instant he began to move, an abrupt change came over the stele.
The original five ratings—Poor, Passable, Good, Excellent, Superb—all vanished at once.
In their place appeared four enormous pure-gold seal characters, blazing with dazzling radiance, printed squarely in the very center of the stele.
[Please, come right in!]
With a rolling rumble—
as those four characters appeared, the vermilion door that had opened only a crack instantly swung wide to both sides.
Within the gate, along the once-dim passageway, two rows of bright palace lanterns lit up one after another, extending all the way to the deepest part of the Zhou Shrine.
Xu Huayi stared blankly at those four characters on the stele that seemed to carry an air of fawning—"Please, come right in"—then at the two vermilion doors flung wide ahead and the palace lanterns lining the way in welcome, and at last, with difficulty, shifted her gaze to Gu Chengming, who still stood where he was without having bent so much as his waist.
There was even a VIP-exclusive channel?!
The present situation was rather galling, but this sort of thing was hardly the first or second time it had happened with Fellow Daoist Gu; Xu Huayi even felt she was getting somewhat used to it.
Gu Chengming stepped into the Zhou Shrine ahead of her, and the moment he crossed in, he felt the space around him ripple.
The passageway blazed with light; the bronze branching lamps on either side burned soundlessly, illuminating the smooth bluestone floor tiles bright as day.
Gu Chengming walked forward several zhang and was about to say a few words to his companion beside him about the formation layout within the Zhou Shrine, but the words halted at his lips.
The space beside him was empty. Xu Huayi had not followed in.
Gu Chengming raised his brow a fraction and soon pieced his present situation together.
The Dharma-Station wonders within Tianque had always kept strict rules. Since this Zhou Shrine had set that rating stele at its gate, it naturally wouldn't let everyone remain together.
Fellow Daoist Xu had earned a "Good" rating, so she'd most likely been transported to the outer region of the Zhou Shrine, to methodically crack its formations and hunt for fortune.
And he, having crossed the threshold under those four glittering gold characters—"Please, come right in"—had clearly been judged by this wonder's underlying laws as a guest of the highest grade, sent alone straight into some hidden, exclusive domain.
—This Zhou Shrine really knew how to size a person up and serve them accordingly.
Gu Chengming grumbled inwardly, then cast his slight worry for Xu Huayi aside.
With Xu Huayi's abilities, plus the rather potent boost entries above her head, so long as she didn't go provoking any Fifth Realm old monsters, protecting herself in the private-combat-forbidden outer region of the Zhou Shrine would be more than within her means.
Since he'd already come this far, he might as well follow the road to its end and see just what fine things this True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli had hidden in the depths of his own shrine.
Gu Chengming straightened his sleeves and walked on, deeper along the passageway.
Meanwhile, on the dark-stone plain on the other side of the Tianque Secret Realm, the parties of the Great Qian Celestial Survey Bureau and the Night-Watch Bureau pressed forward with difficulty beneath the gray sky.
Wild wind swept the ground, and the turbulent spiritual-power currents that seeped now and then from the seams in the dark stone let out shrill howls.
Chu Heng walked at the very front, brows locked tight, the needle of the dragon-seeking compass in his hand spinning madly like a headless fly.
"No good. I can't find them."
Chu Heng stopped, wiped the wind and frost from his face, and turned to the others:
"Once the rules of Tianque's third stage descended, the spatial folding within the Secret Realm grew several times more violent than before. Deputy Commander Gu's and Miss Xu's auras have been erased completely. To keep searching this aimlessly is no different from fishing a needle out of the sea."
Lu Mingzhang put away the folding fan he used to affect refinement, tucked it back into his belt, and for once spoke in earnest: "Vice Envoy Chu is quite right. The Secret Realm bristles with peril, and every faction is stirring. If our party exhausts its spiritual power just to hunt for people, we'd only end up getting the worse of it."
All along she had trailed in the middle of the party, disguised as a Chief Banner Officer of the Night-Watch Bureau. Zhou Qingmu clapped the bits of grit from her hands and cut in with a breezy tone:
"Both my Lords speak sense. What manner of man is our Deputy Commander Gu? And Miss Xu's attainments in formations are extremely high besides. With the two of them joining forces, they could walk sideways through this Secret Realm and still come to no harm. Rather than wandering around blind, we'd do better to head straight for the largest Dharma-Station wonder nearby."
At these words, everyone turned to look at this rather brashly spoken female Chief Banner Officer.
At the rear of the party, Jiang Yun heard "Shen Jinghong" speak, and his already taut nerves twitched hard.
These days, the very moment he heard this voice, that deadly line would surface unbidden in his mind: [Fifty-percent chance to certainly behead those who flee].
"Chief Banner Officer Shen's words happen to align with my own thinking."
Chu Heng paid no mind to Jiang Yun's oddness; he tapped twice on the compass, steadied the wildly leaping needle, and pointed it straight to the southeast:
"By my deduction, there's an enormous spiritual-power vortex to the southeast—it must be that fabled Zhou Shrine. Great Qian listed this place as a primary objective before ever entering the Secret Realm; if Deputy Commander Gu means to find us, he too will ultimately gravitate toward the Zhou Shrine. Going there to wait is the superior strategy."
The plan settled, no one raised further objection; they turned about at once and made straight for the Zhou Shrine.
This Tianque held more than one Zhou Shrine, yet they all ultimately led to the same central shrine.
Everyone inquired with rite before the Zhou Shrine, and Zhou Qingmu was, of course, no exception.
Only, no sooner had her front foot crossed the threshold than her vision swam, and the auras of her colleagues around her vanished clean away in an instant.
When her sight refocused, she was already standing in a broad corridor paved with mutton-fat white jade.
Along the walls on either side hung scroll after scroll depicting ancient sages lecturing and expounding the Dao; a faint sandalwood scent lingered at the tip of her nose, carrying a serene, far-reaching Zen sensibility.
Zhou Qingmu tilted her head, feeling no alarm at this manner of spatial displacement.
She knew that the technique she cultivated shared a very deep origin with this True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli; that the laws of the Zhou Shrine would form a special resonance with her and draw her here alone was only to be expected.
Zhou Qingmu was about to step forward and investigate when, from the corner at the far end of the corridor, came extremely faint footsteps.
Her gaze condensed a fraction; her thumb, with the utmost naturalness, hooked onto the guard of the saber at her waist, and the towering, mountain-still aura of a Fifth Realm great cultivator was flawlessly compressed within the shell of a Third Realm Chief Banner Officer—coiled and ready to spring.
A tall, slender figure in azure robes rounded the corner.
That man was lowering his head, studying an old jade slip in his hand; sensing the movement ahead, he looked up sharply, and their eyes met.
Within the broad white-jade corridor, the air fell into a brief stall.
"Chief Banner Officer Shen?"
Gu Chengming looked at the woman before him—bamboo hat on her head, a Night-Watch Bureau standard-issue saber hanging at her waist—with genuine astonishment in his voice.
He truly hadn't expected that, after wandering this VIP zone isolated by the Zhou Shrine's laws for so long without spotting a single ghost, he'd round some random corner and run smack into this topmost superior of his, out on an incognito inspection.
Zhou Qingmu was equally surprised, though on second thought it made sense—after all, Gu Chengming likewise cultivated the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method.
Still, surprise aside, the show had to go on.
Before Gu Chengming had fully gathered himself, the hand Zhou Qingmu had pressed to the saber's hilt let go in an instant.
The wariness she'd kept latent and coiled dissolved naturally, and she switched in a blink into a Night-Watch Bureau member who'd knocked about the jianghu for years—bold and unbridled in temperament.
"Deputy Commander Gu!"
Zhou Qingmu strode over, her voice brimming with delight and familiarity, closing the gap in a couple of quick strides and reaching out her hand with easy intimacy.
"Found you at last!"
Gu Chengming steadied himself and, without a trace of hurry, retreated half a step, trying to open up a little safe distance.
"You've worked hard, Chief Banner Officer Shen."
But Zhou Qingmu clearly had no intention of letting him off.
Seeing Gu Chengming standing there whole and intact, not a single hair out of place, her interest only burned stronger.
She simply leaned in closer, even reaching out to grab a length of his sleeve, and asked in puzzlement:
"But Deputy Commander Gu, where exactly have we been transported to? I was watching that stele outside just now—clearly you have to fuss over the rules for ages before you can get in. I couldn't be bothered with all the trouble, so I just nodded my head at random, and then everything went black and I dropped right in front of you."
This performance rendered, to the very bone, a guileless subordinate who admired her superior's strength.
Gu Chengming looked at Zhou Qingmu, so close before him, and thought: since the boss wanted to savor the thrill of an incognito inspection—of playing the pig to prey on the tiger—then as a competent subordinate, all he could do was cooperate and see the scene through with her.
Gu Chengming quickly adjusted his frame of mind and, backhanded, gently brushed away the hand Zhou Qingmu had clamped on his sleeve.
"Chief Banner Officer Shen, there's no need to be so jumpy."
Gu Chengming thought for a moment and explained, "The Secret Realm is fraught with unforeseeable dangers. Fellow Daoist Xu and I only stumbled upon this domain by chance. The laws here are quite strange—they cut me off entirely from everyone else. That you could be transported here must likewise be a stroke of fortunate coincidence."
Zhou Qingmu didn't mind him brushing her hand aside; instead she took the chance to step back half a pace and executed an extremely proper military salute:
"Deputy Commander Gu's rebuke is well-taken!"
That said, she at once slipped back into that grinning, cheeky manner and leaned in to ask:
"So, my Lord, which way should we head next? Your subordinate obeys your every command. You point east, your subordinate will never stray west; you tell your subordinate to cut someone down, and your subordinate draws the blade on the spot!"
"Since we're here, let's make the best of it."
Gu Chengming turned, tucked that old jade slip into his sleeve, and cast his gaze toward the half-closed white-jade stone door deep in the corridor:
"This place must already be the edge of the Zhou Shrine's core region. Stay close to me; if anything sudden happens, just keep yourself safe."
"Yes, sir! Deputy Commander Gu!"
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