The cavern's space had never been generous, and now Gu Chengming, without the slightest warning, had hauled out the entire Sword Burial Tomb. The colossal iron-grey mountain body forced its way into this little pocket of earth and sky, and even the defensive formations all around groaned and creaked under the unbearable strain.
The lingering sword intent of the Fourth and Fifth Realms poured down through the coarse cracks in the mountain's stone.
"Martial Uncle Sect Master."
Paying no mind to the ghost-struck look on his own master's face, Gu Chengming stood at the mountain's foot and spoke as casually as if inviting someone to dinner. "Take a look and see whether all this sword qi is enough for you to work out your Sever-Self Heart Method."
Shen Qianqiu sat cross-legged on the white-jade platform, his whole body still wrapped in that mass of foul-smelling black sludge.
He had already braced himself to settle his affairs and, failing that, to drag a few enemies down with him by force. Then he opened his eyes and a mountain radiating world-shaking sword intent was shoved right into his face.
The expression on the face of this Wenjian Sect Master, who had weathered every storm, could only be called magnificent.
He worked his mouth, seeming to want to preserve the dignity befitting the head of a sect, but faced with a scene this far beyond all reason he swallowed the polite words that had already reached his lips.
"It's enough." Shen Qianqiu drew a long breath, and a strange ease settled over him. "Never mind working out how to sever myself, this old man could scour and re-forge his whole skeleton with plenty to spare."
Back when he was still a disciple he had often heard his own master say that the affinities and fates of this world were the most wondrous of all things. He had thought his many years of experience had already brought him to grasp that saying, yet it seemed he had still underestimated those two words, karmic affinity.
The thought stirred something complicated in Shen Qianqiu, but he wasted no more breath and began to work the Sever-Self Heart Method.
It does not sever outer foes; it severs only the stray thoughts and karmic burdens within oneself. This is called Severing the Self!
Drawn by Shen Qianqiu's guidance, the mighty sword intent split into countless thousands of threads too fine for the eye to follow and surged wildly in through the great acupoints all over his body.
As the sword qi entered him, Shen Qianqiu's frame shuddered violently.
The black sludge coating his skin began to writhe, as if sensing a threat.
It tried to bore deeper into his meridians, but under the peak sword intent of the Fourth and Fifth Realms grinding it apart, such struggling proved utterly futile.
Sssss—
With a corrosive hiss that set the teeth on edge, the black sludge was peeled away layer by layer by the razor-keen sword intent.
The instant those filthy things left Shen Qianqiu's body, the sword qi thick in the air ground them to nothing, reducing them to specks of black ash that drifted and scattered across the white-jade platform.
Watching from the side, Ren Wencai nodded again and again, his mind at ease at last, and he glanced without thinking toward his disciple, unsure for a moment what he ought to say.
He thought of his previous disciple, thought of how he had felt back when he had believed the inheritance of this body would never find a home again, and it struck him then that if the karma, chances, and hardships of this world were all fixed long ago, then trading a lifetime of every kind of tribulation for a disciple like this was truly worth it.
A thousand feelings surged through the old man's heart, yet not a flicker showed on his face; he only stroked his beard lightly and turned his gaze back to the black sludge being stripped layer by layer from the white-jade platform.
The hearts of elders have always run this way: however the storms rage within, the most they will say aloud is a careless "not bad."
Gu Chengming stood quietly to one side, and as his gaze fell on the flaking black sludge, that familiar half-transparent prompt window popped up out of nowhere.
[The Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method leans in for a closer look, brows tightly knit, and speaks a warning.]
[Chengming, be careful! This aura is broken and incomplete—it lacks entirely the derivational logic a natural heaven-and-earth calamity ought to possess. It looks more like some enormous underlying law forcibly patched it together into a shoddy counterfeit.]
[This is quite similar to what was said of that Filth Tide.]
Gu Chengming nodded; the guess matched his own thinking exactly.
The first half of that True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli's life had been full of doubt toward worldly rules, yet when the Filth Tide descended his character changed all at once, and he became a "sage" shut away in his sect building castles in the air. At the time Gu Chengming had felt that turn in the biography was stiff and forced.
If the Filth Tide still existed, and if the mastermind behind its creation had, for some reason, tampered with that stretch of history, then everything fit.
And if the Filth Tide was man-made, then what role did the Eternal Life Sect play in this conspiracy spanning thousands of years—the Eternal Life Sect that was now using black sludge of the same origin as the Filth Tide to ambush righteous cultivators all over Tianque's Secret Realm?
The Eternal Life Sect had stirred up storms in the Capital, provoked trouble at Snowfall Pass, buried schemes in the Harmonious Joy Sect, and now ran to Tianque to fish in muddied waters. Did they mean to reenact that man-made Filth Tide of old? Or was the Eternal Life Sect itself the remnant of that vast power that had once rewritten history?
Just as Gu Chengming was threading these many clues together, trying to piece out the full truth of that ancient affair, the commotion on the white-jade platform gradually settled.
The last wisp of black sludge was cut down utterly by the sword intent.
Shen Qianqiu's tightly shut eyes snapped open.
The aura that had been so listless now climbed rung by rung at a terrifying speed, like a withered tree meeting spring.
The spiritual energy all around, as if drawn by some higher law, rushed madly into Shen Qianqiu's body.
Though he had not recovered fully, he was back to about thirty percent.
Shen Qianqiu let out a long breath of turbid air, rose to his feet, smoothed his somewhat tattered Daoist robe, and looked at Gu Chengming with a complicated gaze.
"Chengming."
The Wenjian Sect Master's tone held nothing now but wonder and emotion. "Two short years apart, and you've grown to such a height. Never mind the younger generation—in all of Wenjian Sect's history, you'd not find a second soul with methods and daring to match yours."
Gu Chengming offered a junior's salute, neither servile nor arrogant. "Martial Uncle Sect Master flatters me. This disciple was merely a little lucky, picking up a few chances no one else wanted here in Tianque."
Off to the side, the corner of Ren Wencai's mouth twitched.
Chances no one else wanted? Others wanted them plenty—could they have carried them off?
Grumbling inwardly all the same, the old man was mostly just proud.
Shen Qianqiu inclined his head slightly, swept his gaze over that vast iron-grey mountain, and reached his decision.
"The situation within Tianque is far more tangled than we expected. Since the Eternal Life Sect dares set a killing snare here to ambush every faction, there must be some deeper design still."
Shen Qianqiu turned to Ren Wencai. "Wencai, though I've severed the Filth Tide from my body, the root of my spirit-soul has taken lasting harm. The lingering sword intent within this Sword Burial Tomb is extremely abundant. For the coming stretch of days, you and I will remain here for now."
He looked again at Gu Chengming. "Chengming, your master and I will stay here in secluded cultivation to recover. If there's anything you wish to do, do it freely. So long as you don't run into a Fifth Realm, leave that to us."
Hearing this, Gu Chengming felt his mind settle. "Many thanks, Martial Uncle Sect Master. Thank you, Master."
Tianque's third-stage rule was to kill for chances, but that was only the surface trick. The true prize lay in the underlying laws hidden deep within those Dharma-Station wonders.
He still had to uncover who exactly had been forging history back then, and what the Eternal Life Sect was searching for; only so would he find the thread to break through the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method binding event.
Just as Gu Chengming was ordering his thoughts, about to take his leave of the two elders, Xu Huayi, who had stood quietly behind him all this while, suddenly stepped forward.
She had heard the whole exchange plainly, and naturally guessed at the dangerous business Gu Chengming meant to undertake next.
"If Fellow Daoist Gu intends to look into certain matters…"
Xu Huayi looked at Gu Chengming, a lovely curve rising at the corner of her mouth. "You'll surely need a helper skilled at formation deduction who'll never drag you down, won't you?"
Warmth spread through Gu Chengming at the words, and he smiled. "Then I'll have to trouble Fellow Daoist Xu greatly for what comes next."
"No trouble at all!" Xu Huayi grinned foolishly.
After the two of them made their farewell salutes to Shen Qianqiu and Ren Wencai, they turned and walked out of the cavern.
Ren Wencai stood at the cave mouth watching their backs vanish into the depths of the dense forest, and only after a silent moment did he turn back around.
Shen Qianqiu had already resumed his cross-legged seat, guiding the Sword Burial Tomb's sword intent to mend the damaged root of his spirit-soul.
"Wencai." Shen Qianqiu spoke without opening his eyes, a note of feeling in his voice. "You really have taken on a fine disciple."
Ren Wencai found a flat stone at the mountain's foot within the Sword Burial Tomb and sat down, answering offhand. "But of course. Look at who taught him."
For all that he said it, the old man's gaze drifted without his willing it toward the cave mouth, toward that direction where no figures could be seen any longer, pride and worry splitting his brow evenly between them.
Elsewhere, deep inside the Zhou Shrine.
The light within the white-jade hall suffered an extremely brief rupture.
Not a dimming like an eclipse, but the very concept of "brightness" itself being cut through the middle by a pitch-black horizontal saber.
By the time the ever-burning lamps in the hall rekindled their glow, the grey-robed Fifth Realm male cultivator had already slammed like a ragged sack against the jade wall at the hall's edge.
He still hadn't managed to flee.
"Cough… pgh!"
The grey-robed cultivator abruptly spat out a great mouthful of blood laced with fragments of his own organs, sliding limply down the smooth jade wall until he crumpled onto the white-jade floor tiles. His Dharma-robe, which had claimed to block all spiritual sense probing below the Sixth Realm, had now been neatly sliced open in a gash deep enough to show bone, running from his left shoulder clear to his right waist.
No blood gushed from the wound; only pure, utter black saber qi churned endlessly between flesh and skin, greedily devouring the root-source spiritual power in his body that struggled to mend the injury.
The grey-robed cultivator stared fixedly at the woman standing at the hall's center, his eyes brimming with regret.
"That wasn't easy."
Zhou Qingmu sheathed the horizontal saber, and it clicked crisply home.
She rolled her shoulders and pulled off the wide bamboo hat she'd used to disguise herself, tossing it aside.
"If I hadn't drawn a touch faster, you really might have slipped away in the confusion."
Zhou Qingmu crossed her arms, her manner quite unhurried. "So tell me—with all those lone fat sheep loose on Tianque's outer reaches to slaughter, why come all the way to the Zhou Shrine's core hall to play at gods and ghosts? What are you after?"
The grey-robed cultivator clutched his chest, panting violently, every breath tugging at the searing pain of the saber qi rampaging through his meridians.
He looked at that face of Zhou Qingmu's, oppressive even bare of any powder or paint, and let out a wretched laugh. "Night-Severing horizontal saber… you're the Chief Commander of the Great Qian Night-Watch Bureau, Zhou Qingmu."
"Sharp eyes."
Zhou Qingmu admitted it freely. "Since you know me, you ought to know the Night-Watch Bureau's methods of interrogation. While my mood's still fair, answer what I ask and you'll suffer a little less."
The cultivator spat out a mouthful of bloody foam, his smile uglier than weeping. "Why must Director Zhou ask what she already knows?"
The most core chance in this Tianque was the Dharma-Station, and to win a ticket into the final contest for the Dharma-Station, one had first to seize control of a Dharma-Station wonder!
This Zhou Shrine was the largest masterless wonder in the region.
Refine it before all others and it became an anchor point from which one stood in an unassailable position.
He had thought he was here to raid an empty home—who could have known it hid the Chief Commander of the Great Qian Night-Watch Bureau?
Once the cultivator finished speaking, the last flicker of light in his eyes dimmed with it. The Night-Severing saber's blade intent had bored into his meridians and gnawed ceaselessly at what vitality remained; he struggled to say more, but only a few mouthfuls of bloody, fragment-laced foam welled up his throat.
"Ah, and here I'd meant to let your dying words run a few lines longer."
Zhou Qingmu sighed and paid no further mind to the grey-robed cultivator clinging to his last breath on the floor. Instead she turned and cast her gaze toward the white-jade platform at the hall's center, upon which a jade slip floated.
In the aftershocks of the clash the hall was a ruin, cracks spreading spiderweb-fine across the jade walls, half the ever-burning lamps toppled to the ground, their oil trickling slowly along the seams between tiles.
Yet the white-jade platform stood unmoved, as if it were the one thing in this hall untouched by mortal force. The jade slip floating above it gave off a warm, gentle radiance, seeming to wait quietly for someone.
At that same moment, on a nameless hidden mesa elsewhere in Tianque's Secret Realm.
Before that stone table laid out with black and white stones, the atmosphere plunged to freezing in an instant.
The old man holding the white stones jerked his wrist to a stop, and the smooth stone at his fingertips cracked with a snap into countless grains of powder, sifting down through the gaps of his fingers to scatter across the crisscrossed board.
The cloaked figure on the other side shuddered head to foot and snapped their head up; the burly body-cultivator seated on the left surged to his feet, knocking over the stone stool behind him with a dull, heavy crash.
Until now, to check one another, none had been willing to lightly show his hand, and they had held an exceedingly delicate cold-war balance.
They had tacitly let the grey-robed cultivator go scout the Zhou Shrine, meaning for him to test its depths and, in passing, feel out the truth of the formations within.
"What ferocious blade intent…" The burly body-cultivator glared toward the southeast. "Severing time, splitting the night itself—the Great Qian court actually let that madman inside?"
"The Great Qian's appetite is vast."
That flash of Fifth Realm blade intent, brief though it was, had utterly shattered the balance they'd painstakingly maintained for days.
The Zhou Shrine falling into Great Qian hands was all but settled. If they kept idling here, burning time, then by the time that madman of the Night-Watch Bureau fully digested the Zhou Shrine's Dharma-Station power, they would have one more rival on their hands.
What a useless wretch…
They began, despite themselves, to curse that Fifth Realm male cultivator who had meant to refine the Zhou Shrine on the sly.
Meanwhile, within the Zhou Shrine's great hall.
Zhou Qingmu had no idea what scale of chain reaction the exposure of her identity had already set off—and even had she known, she likely wouldn't have cared.
When soldiers come, block them with a general; when floods come, dam them with earth. The Great Qian Night-Watch Bureau had always cared for one thing only: cutting down everything in its path.
All her attention now rested on the white-jade platform before her.
That jade slip recording the life of True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli, after enduring the grey-robed cultivator's intrusion and the baptism of the "Night-Severing" blade intent, had not been damaged at all; instead it radiated a dazzling golden light.
Zhou Qingmu could feel with perfect clarity that the underlying laws of this hall shared a common origin with the heart method she cultivated.
That utterly unremarkable Fifth Realm cultivator, hoping to forcibly crack the formation and steal the nest, had simply had water in his brain.
This Dharma-Station wonder was the transformed orthodox lineage of an ancient great power, and what it prized was a single thing: succession of the Dharma-lineage.
The technique she, Zhou Qingmu, cultivated had itself sprung from this very Zhou Shrine lineage.
In terms of origins, her standing here was no different from the shrine's rightful heir returning home with the key.
The vast laws of the Zhou Shrine, like weary birds returning to the wood, swiftly spread up her arm and through her whole body.
The jade walls all around the hall erupted with a deafening roar, and those obscure, unreadable ancient seal-characters seemed to gain life, peeling from the walls and taking flight, at last converging into a huge golden pillar of light that shot straight to the vault of the ceiling.
This force of law was not an anointing but an authorization.
Zhou Qingmu closed her eyes, and in an instant the entire structural map of the Zhou Shrine unfurled across her Sea of Consciousness.
From the formation hubs of every side hall down to every last warding rune along the grey-brick corridors, all of it laid itself out in the finest detail before her perception.
After some unknown span the golden light gradually drew in.
The hall returned to calm, only the white-jade platform had dimmed entirely, all its spiritual essence transferred onto Zhou Qingmu.
And above her head a line of characters slowly surfaced.
It was the very mark of qualification in this Dharma-Station contest.
[Master of the Zhou Shrine]
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Not long after Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi took their leave of Wenjian Sect's two elders, an anomaly struck Tianque's firmament once more.
This time it was not an update to the Dharma-Station rules, but a ripple of spiritual power radiating out from the northwest of the Secret Realm, as if someone had torn a rent by main force through that stretch of space.
Gu Chengming halted and exchanged a glance with Xu Huayi.
The two changed course at once and sped northwest at full speed.
All along the way, the clues he'd just sorted out in the cavern churned through Gu Chengming's mind—the Filth Tide, the Eternal Life Sect, the tampered history.
He had a faint sense that this anomaly to the northwest was no coincidence, more like someone deliberately stirring the situation within Tianque.
Yet to understand where this upheaval the two of them now rushed toward had come from, one must pull the gaze back to an earlier hour.
At the very time Gu Chengming was helping Shen Qianqiu work the Sever-Self Heart Method in the cavern, another hidden thread had quietly detonated within the ranks of the Great Qian Celestial Survey Bureau.
The matter must be told from half a day earlier.
The instant Zhou Qingmu drew her saber, the Great Qian company toiling away out on the perimeter to crack the formations were the first to sense that aura.
The compass needle in Chu Heng's hand jerked to a stop, then trembled violently. "Fifth Realm?!"
Jiang Yun stood where he was, holding an exactly proportioned look of shock on his face, while inwardly he felt he'd just made a round trip past the gates of hell.
Clearly this aura belonged to that "Chief Banner Officer Shen." He'd long guessed the man was no simple figure, but he'd never dreamed it would be a Fifth Realm.
What in the world are you after, a Fifth Realm disguising himself as a Third Realm just to blow fish out of the water?!
Jiang Yun forced down his surging feelings. The Fifth Realm aura within the Zhou Shrine was clashing fiercely with another force of equal grade—which meant Shen Jinghong was tied up for now.
A great Fifth Realm cultivator could not be in two places at once.
This was his one and only, his final window.
Jiang Yun's fingers, hidden within his sleeve, pinched a spell-sign so slight as to be imperceptible.
The hidden hand the Eternal Life Sect had planted through years of labor within Tianque finally came into play.
Across the dark-stone ground of the Zhou Shrine's perimeter, lines of dark-red veining began to spread at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Those lines seeped up from deep underground like the blood vessels of some long-slumbering behemoth surfacing on its skin as it woke, interweaving, spreading, joining into a formation network covering an extraordinarily vast range.
"What is this?" Tao Yong was the first to notice the wrongness beneath his feet and sprang aside.
Chu Heng looked down at those dark-red lines and his face changed sharply. "Everyone, get off the ground now! This is a formation! Someone's laid a formation under our feet!"
But it was already too late. In a single instant every dark-red line blazed alight, a stabbing bloody radiance surging skyward and sealing off the space for miles around utterly.
A vast and ancient formation rose from the earth.
The firmament was dyed dark red, and the air filled with a nauseating stench of rot.
[Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation.]
This was no ordinary trap-and-kill formation, but a strategic-grade formation that the Eternal Life Sect, rooted in a certain Dharma-Station node within Tianque, had spent decades laying down.
Once the formation activated, the cultivators trapped inside not only could not flee—even the circulation of their spiritual power would be suppressed to a severe degree.
And the underlying logic of this formation did not rely on the formation-layer's cultivation to sustain it; it hung directly upon Tianque's Dharma-Station rules, counting itself among the Dharma-Station wonders.
The Great Qian company were trapped in the formation's core zone.
Chu Heng at once spurred his compass to parse the formation's structure, but the moment the needle touched those dark-red lines it shook violently, then burst into fragments.
"A Dharma-Station-grade formation…" Chu Heng's voice was a little dry. "There's no way this was laid on the spur of the moment. Judging by how deep the formation base has soaked in, it's been in the works at least several decades."
"The Eternal Life Sect." Ma Xiao finally spoke, his voice low and heavy as iron.
As that name fell, the faces of all present darkened.
Right on its heels, from the formation's edge, a great throng of bandit cultivators of ragged, uneven cultivation began to pour in.
These bandit cultivators wore all manner of garb and followed a jumble of technique-paths, but their faces were dull and blank, their bodies coated in black sludge—plainly their minds had long since been seized by the Eternal Life Sect.
Lu Mingzhang cut back the first few bandit cultivators to charge in; Ma Xiao's unremarkable short saber finally left its sheath; Tao Yong and Qin Huaiyuan worked in flawless concert, one attacking, one guarding, shielding Chu Heng's flank.
And with the melee at its height, at the crowd's outer edge, Jiang Yun quietly took two steps back.
The Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation sealed the space; the perimeter bandit cultivators bore the task of pinning down the Great Qian cultivators' strength. And these Great Qian cultivators?
They had already become nourishment for my Eternal Life Sect.
At the outer edge of the Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation, Gu Chengming and Xu Huayi stood shoulder to shoulder before the dark-red curtain of light.
The Judge's Brush in Xu Huayi's hand flowed with spiritual radiance as she raced through parsing the structure of the formation before them.
"A Dharma-Station-grade formation…" Xu Huayi's brows knit tight. "Breaking it open by force from outside is all but impossible—unless we find the Formation Eye."
Gu Chengming said nothing. His gaze passed through that layer of dark-red light and fell upon a figure inside the formation who was trying to flee.
Jiang Yun.
Gu Chengming had, in truth, been waiting for this moment all along.
From the flying vessel where Jiang Yun had gone out of his way to offer tea and gift a jade slip, to that flicker of emotion when the man faced the list, to the repeated warnings the Red Dust Phantom Body Formula had issued about this person—every clue pointed to the same conclusion.
He had simply never moved, because he lacked ironclad proof, and because the timing was wrong.
And now the ironclad proof had come.
Jiang Yun turned and saw that familiar figure at the formation's edge.
The Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation had already activated. If he still wished to go on masquerading as a loyal minister and good general of Great Qian, he'd have to explain why this formation just happened to activate at his side while he stood unharmed.
Jiang Yun gritted his teeth and decided to take the desperate gamble.
The Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation was a formation built on Dharma-Station rules. A Dharma-Station-grade rule's binding meant that whether you were Third Realm or Fifth Realm, so long as you stood within the formation you had to obey its underlying logic, without any exception.
Even if Gu Chengming truly were the reincarnation of some old ghost who'd lived centuries, before the Dharma-Station rules he'd have to bow his head obediently.
At that thought, Jiang Yun grew calm instead.
Since the disguise had lost all meaning, he might as well lay his cards on the table.
"Fellow Daoist Gu." Jiang Yun turned around and met Gu Chengming's gaze head-on. "I'd thought our fellow-Daoist bond could hold a while longer yet."
He raised his right hand, fingers spread.
Dark-red formation veining spread out from his palm, climbing up his arm to wrap his whole body; the formation lines that had lain hidden underground now all gathered around him, shrouding him in a thick, blood-colored glow.
Control of the formation had returned wholly to his hands.
He was the Formation Eye of this Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation.
At the same moment, the lone line above Jiang Yun's head—[Increases harm dealt to those of unsteady spirit by one tenth]—began to twist violently, and that thin disguise, barely pasted over, cracked and flaked away under the impact of the Eternal Life Sect formation's spiritual power.
In its place came several new lines glowing with a murky light.
[Inflicts spiritual erosion upon the target, weakening their Dao Heart]
[Erosion probability against righteous-path figures increased by thirty percent]
This was Jiang Yun's true face.
Eternal Life Sect Elder, the Delirium Speaker.
Seeing these lines, the faces of the Great Qian company all changed drastically.
"Jiang Yun… you!"
Jiang Yun did not look at him. His whole attention was fixed on Gu Chengming beyond the formation.
Sensing the sealed space around him, Gu Chengming thought that it seemed he really couldn't strike the man… a bit of a bother.
Oh, no, wait!
He suddenly recalled the chat he'd had with Jiang Yun on the very first day, boarding the flying vessel, and that one "Fellow Daoist Karma"—and his expression turned subtle.
The karma of this world truly was fixed long ago.
He called out with a smile, "Fellow Daoist Jiang."
Jiang Yun, already tense beyond measure, was caught off guard by that sudden "Fellow Daoist Jiang" and froze.
In the unseen dark, the threads of karma drew taut in an instant.
[Dao Conduit] activated.
[Whenever, wherever, retreat to behind the Fellow Daoist.]
What the Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation sealed was "space"—but what the Dao Conduit bypassed was precisely not space. It was karma.
So when Gu Chengming's figure appeared without warning three feet behind Jiang Yun, this Eternal Life Sect Elder's brain crashed outright.
His first thought was: how could a Dharma-Station-grade spatial seal possibly be bypassed? Even a Fifth Realm great power would pay a grievous price to force through a Dharma-Station's binding—by what right could a Third Realm cultivator—
And then Jiang Yun could not produce a second thought.
For in Gu Chengming's field of vision, the several lines above Jiang Yun's head were now perfectly clear.
The bonus-harm conditions were, in this instant, almost all satisfied at once—not a Great Qian cultivator, of lower official rank than himself, disloyal, unrighteous, discourteous, unwise, unbenevolent, unfilial, steeped in killing karma.
Every bonus-harm line save the one for female cultivators stacked together.
Gu Chengming raised his right fist.
[Hundred Emperor, aid me!]
The instant these words landed in his Sea of Consciousness, the Hundred Bones Resonance's answer was deafening.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance lets loose a long roar to the heavens—]
[Heavenly Emperor Gu, I come to your aid! Beneath one fist, though the firmament collapse and the stars fall, none can withstand my divine might!]
[Hundred Bones Resonance favorability +10]
The Righteous Noble Breath and the body-refining force of the Hundred Bones Resonance merged flawlessly upon Gu Chengming's right fist, layered and amplified again and again by that wall of Dharma-Station bonus-harm lines.
In that instant Jiang Yun finally reacted; instinct drove him to turn, but his body had only managed to twist half a step around.
The fist-wind arrived first.
The leading edge of the shockwave carried an extraordinarily thick Righteous Noble Breath, and within that Righteous Noble Breath was mingled the Hundred Bones Resonance's body-refining force, so savage it heeded no reason at all; and over the outer layer of these two forces lay that long string of unnameable law-amplifications.
Judgment upon the disloyal. Reckoning upon the unrighteous. Chastisement upon the discourteous. A lesson for the unwise. And for those who don't like scallion-rolled pancakes… pure fury from the very depths of the soul.
Every bonus-harm, on this one fist, was cashed in full.
When Jiang Yun's body-protecting spiritual glow touched the leading edge of the fist-wind, it was annihilated outright without so much as shedding a single ray of light.
The Eternal Life Sect formation lines wreathing his body were torn to shreds, and his hidden Fourth Realm cultivation was as fragile before force of this scale as a withered leaf in an autumn wind.
He couldn't even make out the arc of that fist.
"BOOM—!!"
The sound of that fist was less the dull thud of a fist striking flesh than the pronouncement of a verdict.
The moment Jiang Yun's body took the blow, it collapsed utterly.
His flesh, his meridians, his Golden Core, his spirit-soul—all of it was violently annihilated by that single fist.
In the end only a rapidly dispersing clump of grey-white dust remained, drifting for a moment in the dark-red curtain of the formation before Tianque's wind of law blew it away without a trace.
Inside the formation, dead silence.
The battlefield that had been a churning melee moments before was now so quiet a dropped needle would ring.
The bandit cultivators, robbed of their controller, halted their movements in nearly the same instant, like puppets whose strings had been pulled out, toppling one after another to the ground as the black sludge slowly peeled from their bodies and sank into the soil.
The Great Qian company held their various combat stances, the spiritual light on their weapons not yet faded, yet there was no one left to cut.
Chu Heng stood with his mouth open, unable to close it for a long while.
The scene from moments ago was still looping through his mind.
The deputy who'd followed him for eight years turned out to be an Eternal Life Sect mole—that alone was enough to break him.
And before he could even finish breaking, Gu Chengming had passed straight through from outside the formation and erased the man with a single punch.
What in the hell was this.
The folding fan in Lu Mingzhang's hand had dropped to the ground at some point; he bent to pick it up, then straightened halfway, clearly deciding that stooping for a fan in a scene like this would harm his image—yet leaving it lie left him thoroughly uncomfortable. In the end he chose to pretend the fan had never been his to begin with, clasped his hands behind his back, and gazed steadily into the distance with a composed face.
Ma Xiao slowly sheathed his short saber and shifted his gaze from where Jiang Yun had dispersed onto Gu Chengming; through those eyes, which for years had worn no expression, a rare flicker of something complicated passed. He said nothing, only inclined his head slightly. For a man who hoarded his words like gold, the gesture already carried meaning enough.
Tao Yong and Qin Huaiyuan exchanged a glance, swallowed in unison, then silently drew back their raised fists and drawn swords, resolving to pretend they too had seen the whole process clearly.
As the core Formation Eye of this Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation, Jiang Yun's fall left the formation without a controller, and the mind-seized cultivators all slumped unconscious to the ground.
The dark-red curtain of light began to surge violently, and the formation lines fell into large-scale disorder.
And the controller-less Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation—its core hub was seeking a new host in a manner near instinctive.
The dark-red veining rose from the ground and climbed up Gu Chengming's ankle.
The moment those lines touched the Righteous Noble Breath surrounding him, the murky, gloomy blood-color began, bit by bit, to fade. Gu Chengming looked down at the change beneath his feet, his brow twitching.
Control of the Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation had fallen into his hands.
And with the transfer of that control, an even vaster stream of information poured into his Sea of Consciousness.
It was the full information of the Dharma-Station node this formation connected to behind the scenes.
The Dharma-Station wonders within Tianque's Secret Realm—apart from independently existing ones like the Sword Burial Tomb and the Zhou Shrine—came in another sort, the "parasitic" kind: they clung to some artificially constructed formation, taking the formation as their skeleton and the Dharma-Station rules as their flesh.
The Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Grand Formation was just such a place—a man-made Dharma-Station wonder the Eternal Life Sect had cultivated over sixty years.
And now this Dharma-Station wonder belonged to Gu Chengming.
He closed his eyes, feeling that vast, orderly force of law flow through his body.
"Deputy Commander Gu!" Chu Heng was the first to step forward, looking at Gu Chengming with a face full of complicated feeling.
He worked his mouth as if to say something, but in the end only let out a heavy sigh and cupped his hands in a deep salute.
"About what just happened… Chu had eyes but failed to see. Eight years, and I was kept in the dark by that villain the whole time. Had Deputy Commander Gu not arrived in time—"
"Vice Envoy Chu need not blame yourself."
Gu Chengming cut him off, his tone even. "That Jiang Yun could lie hidden within the Celestial Survey Bureau for eight years without slipping shows how skilled his methods were. In your place, another might not have fared any better."
The words stirred deep feeling in Chu Heng, and he cupped his hands in thanks once more.
Just then, from the distant edge of the sky came an extremely low rumble.
It was not thunder, but the sound of something far grander waking.
Gu Chengming lifted his head toward the firmament.
Above the dim clouds, something was slowly taking shape.
It was Tianque's contest for the Dharma-Station.
The third stage of the Dharma-Station rules had entered its final period of reckoning, and every cultivator who had won control of a Dharma-Station wonder would be swept into this great struggle to decide the final ownership.
Deep within the firmament, countless rays of light, bright and dim, began to converge, interweave, and collide.
Gu Chengming felt the information transmitted by this newly won Dharma-Station wonder in his hands, then sensed for a moment the Sword Burial Tomb far above the clouds, and a plan gradually formed.
Gu Chengming nodded and turned his gaze toward that violently shifting firmament.
Tianque's contest for the Dharma-Station had begun.
The firmament's upheaval lasted a full incense-stick's time.
The force of law gathered deep within the clouds grew thicker and more violent, until in the end even the air itself began to give off a low resonance, and the entire firmament of Tianque's Secret Realm turned into a huge mirror-surface, within which was recorded the identity, origin, and controlled Dharma-Station wonder of every participant in this contest.
The first figure to surface was that old man playing the board game.
On the mirror-surface, an aged shade with white hair and beard slowly coalesced into form.
The old man kept that same air of an idle wild crane, a white stone pinched in his hand, eyelids lowered, as if the myriad eyes upon him from the firmament were no more than a passing breeze at the edge of a game board, unworthy of a glance.
His identity information began to surface line by line beside the shade.
Right after, his Dharma-Station wonder appeared.
Behind the shade, a vast board of black and white stones unfurled across the firmament, its nineteen crossing meridian-lines like the veins of heaven and earth, every stone radiating a heart-shaking force of law.
A title was branded at the very center of the board.
[Master of the Eternal Life Dao-Choking Chessboard]
The moment those words appeared, the faces of countless cultivators within Tianque changed.
So he really was of the Eternal Life Sect?
The second figure followed close behind.
What surfaced on the mirror was a form wrapped tight in a dark cloak, the hood pressed low so the face could not be seen, nor whether man or woman—only that half of a sharply defined jawline showed beneath.
The cloaked one's Dharma-Station wonder appeared with them: a huge, endlessly rotating sphere pieced together from countless shattered bronze mirrors. Each mirror reflected a different scene—some rivers and mountains, cities and towns, some stars, sun, and moon, and some only a chaotic void.
[Master of the Thousand-Face World-Mirror]
The third figure was that extremely burly man.
The shade on the mirror was towering as a mountain, broad-shouldered and thick-backed, both arms hanging at his sides, the veins on the backs of his hands faintly visible; even standing quietly there, he gave off a pressure like mountains toppling and seas overturning.
[Master of the Ten-Thousand-Fathom Unyielding Arena]
The fourth figure was that young female cultivator with a half-worn wooden hairpin in her hair, plain garments, the collar traced with the finest silver threading, magnified on the firmament's mirror to look especially exquisite.
Her Dharma-Station wonder was a white-jade medicine hut floating in the void, ringed by the shades of countless medicinal herbs, giving off a refreshing fragrance amid its flowing spiritual light.
[Master of the Hundred Herbs Life-and-Death Medicine Hut]
Next, a woman's shade of commanding presence appeared upon the firmament, and this figure blanched the faces of many.
Zhou Qingmu, Chief Commander of the Great Qian Night-Watch Bureau. Her Dharma-Station wonder unfurled across the firmament—it was the very Zhou Shrine, with its flying eaves and bracket-sets, grey tiles and white walls, solemn and severe, its dharma order strict and imposing.
[Master of the Zhou Shrine]
Deep within Tianque.
Zhou Qingmu stood at that moment upon the ruins of the Zhou Shrine's inner hall.
Her earlier battle with the grey-robed cultivator had forced him back, yet the aftershocks of two Fifth Realm great powers clashing had wrecked most of the shrine's core zone.
She was clearing away the wreckage and, in passing, smoothing out the slightly disordered aura left by the exposure of her identity.
When the mirror-surface upheaval struck the firmament, naturally she saw it too.
The play couldn't go on anyway; laying her cards on the table was fine.
Yet the next second, a new change appeared above the vault of the sky.
A young figure surfaced upon the firmament—Night-Watch Bureau uniform, clean and handsome features.
The instant she made out that face, Zhou Qingmu's mind suffered an exceedingly rare stall.
Gu Chengming?!
Before her thoughts could turn the corner, a title appeared behind that figure of Gu Chengming's.
[Master of the Sword Burial Tomb]
"?"
A question mark floated up over Zhou Qingmu's mind.
Just as she was mired in her bewilderment, another new title popped up behind Gu Chengming's.
[Flesh Master of the Eternal Life Heaven-Devouring Dao-Trapping Formation]
"??!"
Director Zhou's mind crashed completely.
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