Something rather beyond Gu Chengming's expectations was that the personality this Fellow Daoist Su displayed diverged utterly from the image he'd first pictured.
The Dao-Children of the Daoning Gate cultivated a sword-dao of pure heart and severed desire. Day to day, always robed in plain white sword-vestments, her expression cool and remote, she seemed like a banished immortal seated high above the Ninth Heaven, keeping all others at arm's length.
That ought to have been the personality of someone proud and mindful of face, just like the other female cultivators of the Daoning Gate.
Yet only after genuinely dealing with her did Gu Chengming discover that this Fellow Daoist Su's degree of sword-obsession was, frankly, absurdly high.
Because every time he thrashed her with the sword, this Dao-Child of the Daoning Gate would let out a foolish little "heh heh," then pat down her robe, cup her hands with perfect propriety, and say, "Many thanks for the pointers, Fellow Daoist," before turning to leave — unwilling even to stay for a single extra cup of tea, as though she'd come today for the express purpose of taking a beating.
Honestly, Gu Chengming had rather worried at first that he might have knocked something loose in her head.
Later he understood: she'd been like this all along. The problem predated any beating of his.
Su Qingmeng's fixation on swordplay was roughly on the same order of magnitude as Yu Wenqiu's fixation on storybooks and snacks. The former could go without dinner over the flaw in a single sword-move, sitting bolt upright in a meditation chamber the whole night through; the latter could lie awake till dawn over a storybook. A matched pair of oddballs, truly.
And this sword-fanatic's talent was indeed worthy of the name Dao-Child.
Su Qingmeng improved with startling speed. After every beating she could pick out something genuinely useful from all those "bang bang bang bang" exchanges, kneading it bit by bit into her own swordplay.
Sometimes Gu Chengming would use the very same move and Su Qingmeng would answer it in a way completely different from the time before.
This stretch of sword-practice also gave Gu Chengming a long-absent sense of familiarity…
Back in his Wenjian Sect days he had often trained his sword like this with Junior Brother Jiang Lu.
It was just that his sparring partner had now become Su Qingmeng.
Meanwhile, the Free and Unfettered Art disguised as a system within his Sea of Consciousness went on diligently performing its role.
After this span of practice, his vengeance points had already climbed to "eighty."
There was no telling what the Free and Unfettered Art was even thinking. These were plainly ordinary sparring bouts, yet it insisted on finding grounds to declare: "Successfully humiliated your fiancée, reward: ten vengeance points."
With so many rounds of sparring, the vengeance points naturally rose along with the tide.
Though he had absolutely no idea what these vengeance points were good for, watching them pile up day by day did carry a genuine sense of accomplishment.
And so the days slipped by one after another.
It was on an afternoon five days later.
Gu Chengming returned to his residence to find a small wooden box sitting atop the table, a letter pressed beneath it.
The handwriting on the envelope was spare, with no superfluous flourish —
Wenjian Sect, to be opened personally by Gu Chengming.
Signed: Luo Chi Jian, Fallen People, Zhi Huan.
The letter's contents weren't lengthy. Luo Jinyao's writing style, like her swordplay, was direct and blunt, without much winding roundaboutness.
It opened by asking after Gu Chengming's recent cultivation, then briefly touched on the current situation at Snowfall Pass.
Since Gu Chengming's departure, the demon races of the Northern Territory had grown far more docile, and Snowfall Pass had come into a rare stretch of peaceful days.
Between the lines, Luo Jinyao voiced a trace of regret.
Stationed far away on the bitter-cold Great Wall of the Northern Territory, she had heard of the enormous stir Gu Chengming had raised in the Capital and within the Tianque Secret Realm. She knew full well that he now stood squarely in the eye of the storm inside the Wenjian Sect, soon to represent the sect in the Grand Tournament. As an elder, she could not remain within the sect to back him up, could offer no substantive help.
Still, at the letter's close, Luo Jinyao wrote that every time she heard of Gu Chengming's resounding victories carried up from the south, she would sit atop the ramparts of Snowfall Pass, her heart brimming with gratification.
"Snowfall Pass is bitter and cold, with no local specialties worth presenting. In idle moments I used materials taken off those tactless demon beasts outside the walls to casually make a couple of little trinkets — take them as a congratulatory gift for you and Little Yu. The wind and snow of the Northern Territory are fierce; do not worry over me."
Reading the letter through, Gu Chengming was deeply moved.
Carrying that emotion, Gu Chengming undid the sealing formation on the wooden box.
With a click, the box opened.
Inside, two bracelets lay side by side, cushioned on plain cloth.
He picked one up and held it toward the light beyond the window. The bracelet's beads numbered about twelve, each round and glossy and of a different color. As his perception swept across them, his eyelid twitched.
Even the least of them was the demon core of a Third Realm demon beast.
Amid his emotion, something subtle stirred within him as well.
To bore holes through the demon cores of Third Realm — even Fourth Realm — great demons, string them into bracelets, and mail them over as "nothing worth presenting" — a gift like this really did carry Senior Luo's flair.
He folded the other bracelet together with the letter-page Luo Jinyao had written to Yu Wenqiu, tucked them into his robe, rose, and set out for the Hidden Sword Pavilion.
The Wenjian Sect's Hidden Sword Pavilion backed onto Cloud Peak and faced the valley below, occupying no small tract of ground.
Gu Chengming held a certain special fondness for this place.
Back when he'd first entered the inner sect, his first batch of cultivation resources, his first Dharma Sword, even that Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method which had laid the foundation for so much later — all of it had been redeemed here. In those days he'd stared at the merit-exchange list, tallying line by line, wishing he could split every single merit point in two before spending it.
Times had changed. Now Gu Chengming stood at the door of the Hidden Sword Pavilion, and a wave of feeling suddenly rose in him.
He pushed open the pavilion's side door and made his way toward the duty room of the inner-pavilion elder.
The duty room sat deep within the Hidden Sword Pavilion. The light here was a touch dimmer than in the front hall, bookshelves standing in ranks, scrolls stacked upon scrolls, everything steeped in the heavy air of accumulated years.
Gu Chengming rounded the last row of shelves and stopped at the duty room's doorway. The door stood half open.
Inside, Yu Wenqiu lay slumped and boneless across the broad rosewood desktop, not a shred of elderly dignity about her.
In her hand she held a green sachet, its embroidery exceedingly crude, comical even to look at.
It was the one Little Gu had casually bought for her while they strolled the night market in the Capital.
At this moment Yu Wenqiu was idly poking that green sachet, over and over, with a slender scallion-white finger.
The truth was, she badly wanted to go find Gu Chengming.
Ever since returning from the Capital, the little sentiment in her heart had long since become clear. Even though her last confession at the Star-Plucking Pavilion had come to nothing, she had already resolved to lay everything bare on the night the Grand Tournament ended.
But the Grand Tournament was still some days off, and right now she simply couldn't find a fitting excuse to go to his door.
According to sect rumor, Little Gu had lately shut himself away in bitter training for the tournament. Passing disciples even described in vivid detail how Little Gu drilled at the training grounds every day, drenched in sweat, with a Daoning Gate Dao-Child sparring alongside him.
He was risking everything for the sect's honor. She, a full-fledged elder, could hardly go running off to his little courtyard on the back hill to drag him into discussing the plot of some newly released storybook, could she? That would be far too inconsiderate.
But reason was one thing; feeling was quite another.
"If this Elder doesn't come find you, don't you even know to come and see this Elder?"
The more Yu Wenqiu dwelt on it, the more unbalanced she felt, and the force behind her poking finger unconsciously grew a few degrees heavier.
"Back at the sect all this while and I haven't even caught a glimpse of you."
She turned the sachet into a certain heartless sword-cultivator, muttering under her breath as she poked:
"Bad Little Gu."
"Heartless Little Gu."
"Little Gu who forgets his elder the moment he has a Dao-Child to spar with."
Poke after poke, she suddenly heaved a heavy sigh and rested her chin on the desk.
Had she known, she'd have dragged him through a few more streets back in the Capital. Now that they were back at the sect, even a single meeting had become such a chore.
Just as Yu Wenqiu sprawled across the desk sighing her heart out, her mind wholly full of Gu Chengming —
"Elder Yu, sighing over a sachet in broad daylight — could it be the post here at the Hidden Sword Pavilion is simply too leisurely?"
That familiar voice dropped into her ears, and Yu Wenqiu jolted so violently she nearly sprang up out of her chair.
In a flustered scramble she swept the green sachet into her broad sleeve, and in her panic nearly knocked over the purple-clay teacup on the desk.
"Who's sighing!!"
Yu Wenqiu forced up her elder's dignity and snapped her head up.
There in her line of sight stood Gu Chengming before the attendant's counter, that familiar smile still curving at the corner of his mouth.
Once she realized the newcomer really was Gu Chengming, Yu Wenqiu's heart quickened a few beats, followed hard by the fluster of being caught red-handed.
Those things she'd just been muttering — Little Gu couldn't have heard them, could he?
Yu Wenqiu reached up to smooth the stray hair by her ear, her gaze darting everywhere, refusing to meet Gu Chengming's eyes.
"The Grand Tournament is upon us. Instead of practicing your sword properly on the back hill, what are you doing coming to my Hidden Sword Pavilion?"
Gu Chengming pretended not to have seen her frantic hiding of the sachet a moment ago, and quite naturally set the wooden box in his hand down on the desk.
"I received a letter sent from the Northern Territory, and came by to deliver something to you, Elder."
Hearing that he'd come to deliver something, Yu Wenqiu quietly let out a breath, and much of her earlier fluster dispersed.
"The Northern Territory?" She blanked for a moment, then caught up: "Is it a letter from Senior Sister Luo?"
Gu Chengming nodded and passed over Luo Jinyao's letter. "Senior Luo included a few words of instruction for you as well, Elder."
Yu Wenqiu hurriedly took the letter. Looking at that familiar, sharp handwriting, reading her senior sister's words — brief yet brimming with concern throughout — Yu Wenqiu's eyes reddened faintly.
The Northern Territory was bitter and cold; Senior Sister had guarded that place for years, yet still held them at the sect in her thoughts. Sob, Senior Sister.
"Senior Sister, really — just take good care of yourself out there. Why go to the trouble of mailing us gifts?"
Yu Wenqiu sniffed, put away the letter, and reached out to open the wooden box.
Inside lay the string of demon-core bracelet, radiating multicolored spiritual light and even carrying a faint whiff of blood, resting quietly on the velvet cushion.
She extended a single finger and gingerly poked at that oddly shaped bracelet. Feeling the pressure of a Third Realm great demon rolling off it, something subtle stirred in her.
"So this is the 'little trinket' Senior Sister said she casually made in the letter?"
Gu Chengming bit back a smile and nodded. "Senior Luo's handiwork has always been this distinctive. I've got a string of my own."
So saying, he gave his wrist a little shake.
Looking at that eye-catching string of demon cores on Gu Chengming's wrist, Yu Wenqiu suddenly grew a bit cheerful again.
— It rather looked like the paired bracelets a Dao-companion couple would wear. Heh heh.
Thinking this, Yu Wenqiu picked up the bracelet and slipped it onto her own fair, slender wrist.
The two chatted a while over Luo Jinyao's letter, one remark answering another, and the duty room took on a rare touch of warm, lived-in life.
Yu Wenqiu propped her cheek in her hand, tossing in the occasional reply, her gaze drifting of its own accord to Gu Chengming's wrist. That string of demon cores was identical to the one on her own hand, and set side by side they truly carried a few strands of some unspoken, indescribable harmony.
As they talked on, Gu Chengming's gaze went past Yu Wenqiu to the tier upon tier of bookshelves behind her and the long corridor leading into the depths of the Hidden Sword Pavilion.
The familiar sandalwood scent mingled with the smell of aged paper, pulling his thoughts back to those early days when he'd first entered the sect.
"Come to think of it, it feels like it's been a very long time since I last had a proper wander through this Hidden Sword Pavilion."
Gu Chengming let the feeling out. "Back when I'd just become an inner-sect disciple, my first batch of cultivation resources, my first Dharma Sword, and that Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method — all of them were redeemed right here."
In those days, gazing at the top-grade treasures and techniques on the jade slip catalog that ran to hundreds or thousands of merit points apiece, he could only swallow enviously and scrimp over every last merit in his hands.
"Now, after everything in the Capital and the Tianque Secret Realm, I've built up a fair pile of merit myself."
Gu Chengming looked at Yu Wenqiu with a smile. "I'm a little curious, actually — with my current means, what fine things could I trade for in this Hidden Sword Pavilion?"
Hearing this, Yu Wenqiu rolled her eyes without mercy and grumbled inwardly.
You're a peerless prodigy on the Hidden Dragon List now, the standard-bearer of the Wenjian Sect's younger generation. The Sect Master practically wants to enshrine you like an ancestor. Whatever technique or treasure you want, just go to the main peak's great hall and say a word to the Sect Master. What need is there to stand here like an ordinary disciple, clutching a jade token and painstakingly counting merit points?
These grumbling words had already reached the tip of her tongue, and Yu Wenqiu was on the verge of firing off a few jabs at him.
But a second thought made her forcibly swallow them back down.
This was a rare chance to spend time with Little Gu, after all.
Having thought it through, Yu Wenqiu rose naturally from her chair, rounded the attendant's counter, and came to stand at Gu Chengming's side.
"As it happens, this Elder has already finished tallying all the accounts due for checking today, so I'm free just now."
Yu Wenqiu clasped her hands behind her back and tipped up her chin slightly. "Come along. This Elder will show you the truly fine things inside this Hidden Sword Pavilion."
Watching Yu Wenqiu's manner — straining so hard to cover up yet riddled with tells — Gu Chengming found it privately amusing.
But he didn't puncture that little bit of scheming of hers. Instead he obligingly cupped his hands.
"Then I'll trouble Elder Little Yu to lead the way."
Yu Wenqiu gave a satisfied hum and turned to walk toward the pavilion's deep, shadowed corridor.
Under the cover of that broad sleeve, the hand wearing the demon-core bracelet swayed lightly and happily in time with her steps.
Deep within the Hidden Sword Pavilion, the sandalwood scent hung faint.
Gu Chengming and Yu Wenqiu walked shoulder to shoulder between two rows of ancient wooden shelves that soared up to the vaulted ceiling.
All around was silence, only the faint sound of their two sets of footsteps echoing down the corridor.
As they walked, an old piece of hearsay from many years ago suddenly surfaced in Gu Chengming's mind.
Back then, when he was still a nameless outer-sect disciple, Junior Brother Jiang Lu had once solemnly peddled him a secret rumor about the Hidden Sword Pavilion.
"Elder Yu, I recall hearing someone mention this years ago."
Gu Chengming glanced around. "They say that in the deepest part of this Hidden Sword Pavilion, a peerless ancient sword is enshrined. So long as one can earn its recognition, one can draw it forth. Rumor calls it one of the mightiest Dharma Swords in the whole Wenjian Sect. I wonder — is it true or not?"
He remembered how Jiang Lu had spun that rumor into something miraculous, wearing the look of a man who'd grasped an earth-shattering secret, dragging him off to a corner, glancing left and right to make sure no one was near before lowering his voice to speak.
Gu Chengming, hearing it back then, had merely brushed it off with a laugh. After all, this sort of tale — a peerless treasure sword hidden away, awaiting its fated one — circulated in seven or eight versions at every sect, most of them nothing but idle talk to string along outer-sect newcomers. He'd only just now thought of it and mentioned it in passing.
Yu Wenqiu walked ahead and waved a hand without turning her head. "That's all made up by disciples with too much time on their hands to hoodwink the new recruits."
Her tone carried a trace of amusement. "Every brick and every sword in this Hidden Sword Pavilion, this Elder knows by heart. If there really were such a peerless divine weapon, would it fall to some outsider to draw it? It'd have been collected into the main peak's treasury by the Sect Masters of generations past long ago. How could the Hidden Sword Pavilion possibly—"
Halfway through, Yu Wenqiu's voice jammed hard in her throat.
Because up ahead in the corridor, the bluestone floor tiles that had been utterly empty distorted, without the slightest warning, for a brief instant.
Then, an antique bronze sword-dais materialized out of thin air.
Upon the dais, a sword stood quietly, driven point-down into it.
The air in the corridor seemed to freeze solid.
Yu Wenqiu's eyes went wide, red lips parted, still holding the exact pose of her wave from a moment ago, her whole body locked in place.
No — it's actually real?
Yu Wenqiu turned her head to look at Gu Chengming, and the two of them stared at each other, at a loss.
Clearly, Gu Chengming too had, at this very moment, plainly and clearly seen this sword-dais that had sprung out of nowhere.
Gu Chengming's gaze went past Yu Wenqiu and settled on that sword, his brows slowly knitting.
This sword looked rather familiar.
The blade was long and slender, its edge like autumn frost, cord wound about the hilt, and intricate ancient patterns carved into the collar at the mouth.
The whole sword gave off an aura of bared, cutting edge — sharp enough, it seemed, to pierce the vault of heaven itself.
Fresh as new, untouched by dust.
"Elder Yu, what is this?" Gu Chengming pointed at the dais.
Yu Wenqiu swallowed, straining to keep an elder's composure, but her voice still came out a little unsteady: "I don't know either."
Gu Chengming asked no more. Instead he stepped slowly forward two paces and halted before the sword-dais.
The longer he looked at this sword, the stronger that sense of familiarity in him grew…
The feeling was strange to describe — not like seeing something never before encountered, but rather as if he'd already crossed paths with it once, only he hadn't looked at it closely at the time.
Gu Chengming focused, extended a thread of spiritual sense, and lightly brushed it against the sword-body — then, stunned, discovered:
Wasn't this exactly that broken ancient sword from the Tianque Secret Realm, the one that had recognized him first, before he'd refined the Sword-Burial Clan?
It was just that the ancient sword in his own hands had a blade riddled with cracks and an edge chipped and incomplete, whereas the one before him looked as though it had just been drawn from the forging furnace.
Standing before the sword-dais, Gu Chengming felt not a single warning from the Huiyuan Sword Formula, the Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method, or even the Free and Unfettered Art within him.
He hesitated briefly, then reached out with his right hand and gripped that cold, hard hilt.
At the instant his fingertips touched the hilt —
The Hidden Sword Pavilion around him, Yu Wenqiu behind him, and even the whole ridge upon ridge of the Wenjian Sect's peaks all drained of color and peeled away in an instant from Gu Chengming's perception.
Space collapsed with a roar, like shattered colored glass.
The next moment, before Gu Chengming's eyes unfurled a vast scene grand enough to overturn everything he knew.
Heaven and earth were no longer the heaven and earth an ordinary person understood.
Gu Chengming found himself suspended, from a bystander's vantage, above a boundless sky.
As far as the eye could see, there was no sun, moon, or stars, no mountains or rivers.
The entire world lay smothered beneath a layer of ash-black sludge, thick to the extreme and reeking of something that turned the stomach.
This was the terrifying calamity recorded in the fragmentary scrolls of the Tianque Secret Realm, the one that had all but destroyed the ancient world of cultivation —
The Filth Tide.
It was not some concrete demon or devil, but a malignant tumor born after the laws of heaven and earth collapsed — an aggregate of every negative, twisted, deranged concept.
Gu Chengming saw, within that vast and boundless ash-black sludge below, countless colossal things of grotesque shape churning endlessly up to the surface.
They had no fixed form — some were lumps of flesh grown over with tens of thousands of compound eyes, some were mountains pieced together from countless wailing human faces. With each writhe, the space around them rotted accordingly, spiritual energy defiled into lethal miasma.
It was a vista fit to drive any cultivator to despair.
At the very instant this Filth Tide was about to devour the world's last flicker of life utterly, a light appeared.
It was a sword-light vast enough to blanket the entire sky.
No deafening roar, no gorgeous, dazzling colors.
That sword-light was the purest plain white. It fell without warning from beyond the Ninth Heaven, as though the center of a painted scroll had been sliced straight open by the sharpest of carving knives.
When the sword-light swept across that churning Filth Tide, those colossal things built of twisted laws did not bleed, nor did they scream.
Like ink droplets fallen into water, in the blink of an eye they thinned, turned transparent, and then vanished completely.
Not merely vanished — the collapsed space corroded by the Filth Tide actually restored itself in that instant; the spiritual energy defiled into poisonous miasma turned clear and abundant once more.
It was as though this heaven-ruining, earth-destroying disaster had never existed from the very start.
Across heaven and earth, only a long, drawn-out voice, laced with a trace of lament, came drifting slowly forth.
To sever a concept itself — this Fellow Daoist Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing has actually done it.
As this voice fell, that sky-blanketing sword-light gradually drew inward, at last condensing into the blurred silhouette of a figure bearing a longsword upon his back.
— It was none other than the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign.
Alarm shot through Gu Chengming, as if he'd made some connection.
No wonder that, having leafed through countless ancient texts in the Wenjian Sect's Scripture Repository and searched painstakingly through every official and unofficial history of the Great Qian dynasty, he had never found the slightest record of the "Filth Tide." Only within that isolated Tianque Secret Realm, which preserved the laws of antiquity, remained a few fragmentary records of True Lord Zhou Gui Tianli battling the Filth Tide.
If the scene before him was real, then everything made sense.
The one who had ultimately, thoroughly resolved the Filth Tide was this Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign — who had not only slain the Filth Tide itself, but with one sword-stroke gouged the very concept of "Filth Tide" clean out of the memories of all living beings, out of the operating laws of the Heavenly Dao, out of history itself.
Then that sword — what was the relationship between that sword and this Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign?
Just as Gu Chengming pondered, the scene before him shifted once again.
Within the void hung an exceedingly crude thatched pavilion.
At the pavilion's center, a man reclined at a slant.
He wore a broad crimson robe with wide lapels, his long hair loose about him.
Though Gu Chengming had never seen him before, for some reason he recognized the other at a single glance.
It was as if a voice told him this was precisely the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign, the one who had created the Free and Unfettered Art.
And beside the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign sat another figure, cross-legged, wreathed all over in swirling immortal radiance, his features indistinct — yet the aura he gave off marked him plainly as a Sixth Realm grand cultivator.
This Sixth Realm grand cultivator followed the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign's line of sight toward the empty distance and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
He drew his gaze back and asked, a note of puzzlement in his voice, "What are you looking at?"
The Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign tipped back his head and swallowed a mouthful of wine, carelessly wiping the residue from the corner of his mouth.
His eyes cast straight toward the direction where Gu Chengming stood, and he spoke with a smile: "Just caught sight of a young friend with whom I share a certain karmic bond."
Hearing this, alarm struck Gu Chengming all the harder.
As that sentence of his fell —
Time all around seemed to freeze on a still-frame.
The turbulent flows of the void drifting outside the thatched pavilion halted; the stroking of the beard by that Sixth Realm grand cultivator beside him froze; even the single drop of wine falling from the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign's chin hung suspended in midair.
The Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign turned his head slightly, his gaze crossing countless epochs, crossing the tangled threads of cause and effect, meeting Gu Chengming's in the unseen dark.
He put away that smile, his expression taking on, rarely, a touch of gravity.
"Young friend."
The Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign's voice sounded directly in the depths of Gu Chengming's Sea of Consciousness: "If need be, you may take the 'Free Heaven' Dharma-Station."
That said, he raised the hand holding the wine gourd, extended his forefinger, and gave a light point from afar toward Gu Chengming's direction.
A humble little gift, hardly worth a mention.
Light flickered faintly at his fingertip.
Before Gu Chengming could even react in any way, the entire grand and ancient vista shattered like a broken mirror, splitting instantly into countless shards of light and shadow, and dissolving away completely.
His field of vision refocused.
The sandalwood scent hung faint; the ancient wooden shelves still soared high.
Gu Chengming found himself still standing in the corridor deep within the Hidden Sword Pavilion. His right hand hovered in midair, no more than an inch from the hilt of the ancient sword on the bronze dais.
Yu Wenqiu beside him still held that same dumbstruck look from before — clearly, out in the external world, not the slightest fraction of time had passed.
It was as though that gaze spanning the ages, that world-ending sword-stroke, had all been a fleeting dream within Gu Chengming's mind, and nothing at all had happened.
Gu Chengming slowly withdrew his hand, drew a deep breath, and strove to calm the surging blood and qi within him.
The "Free Heaven" Dharma-Station? A humble little gift?
Doubts sprang up one after another in Gu Chengming's mind.
He shut his eyes at once and looked inward at himself, trying to find just what that single point of the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign's had left behind.
Yet his meridians were stable, his spiritual power abundant, and no extra foreign object had appeared within the sea of qi in his dantian.
Just as Gu Chengming wondered whether he'd been seeing things —
The next moment.
Before his eyes, without any warning, a brand-new dialogue box popped up.
That Free and Unfettered Art disguised as the "Rebirth Vengeance System" now had its panel flashing wildly with golden light effects.
[Congratulations, your vengeance points have accumulated successfully!]
Then the status bar at the bottom of the panel refreshed rapidly.
[Free and Unfettered Art current favorability: 40 / Friendly (struck through)]
After this "(struck through)" appeared, the screen began erupting madly with masses of garbled code. Characters twisted and flickered, their color shifting from golden light to a glaring blood-red.
The feeling was as if this technique had had its underlying logic forcibly tampered with by someone, and was now caught in a state of utterly furious yet helpless system crash.
The garbled code went on for a full ten breaths.
In its place came a brand-new dialogue box, hovering steadily at the dead center of Gu Chengming's field of vision.
[Ding, the Divorce Counterattack System has finished loading and is ready.]
Looking at this new name, a question mark slowly surfaced across Gu Chengming's forehead.
[At two hundred years of age you have only just stepped into the Fourth Realm. Looking back on the past, you find your life an utter failure. Standing at the edge of a cliff above the sea of clouds, inner demons breeding thick, in a daze of the spirit you suddenly recall the mature, commanding Elder Yu Wenqiu who cultivated the Dao at your side. Ever since you entered the Grand Tournament, your worldly bond with her was severed, and you had no word of one another again.]
[System Mission: Rekindle your former bond with Yu Wenqiu, and make your ex-wife Su Qingmeng bitterly regret it.]
[Mission reward: Hypnosis App.]
"…?"
— No, seriously, why do you hold such a grudge against Su Qingmeng?
Meanwhile, over on the other side, several of the techniques finally stirred groggily awake.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula, a little muddled: Chengming, how did it doze off again just now?]
[The Clear-Heart Formula rubbed its head, looking thoughtful.]
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula, on the other hand, braced as if facing a great enemy: Fellow Daoist Gu, we were just caught in an illusion technique!]
Seeing the techniques' reactions, Gu Chengming's frame of mind gradually turned somewhat subtle.
Why does it feel like some great power went to an awful lot of trouble just to show me that scene?
[Hundred Bones Resonance seemed only now to catch up.]
[It paid no mind to the fact that it had just been trapped in an illusory realm; the first thing it saw on waking was the content on the system.]
[Hundred Bones Resonance, overjoyed: Heavenly Emperor Gu? And what mighty divine weapon might this Hypnosis App be?!]
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