Within the Yunyue Sect, the dust had yet to settle.
The "Little Junior Sister" still lay curled in the center of the rubble, both hands clamped over her stomach, loose black hair hiding most of her face. Water swirled in her silver-grey eyes — whether from anger or not was hard to say — but the memetic contamination had not gone anywhere.
Ringed around the plaza, the elders and disciples who had been swept up in the script of "innocent Little Junior Sister brutalized by a thug" now found themselves stranded in a blank page. Gu Chengming had refused to follow the plot at all, and for the moment none of them could process it.
"How dare this thief be so brutal!"
An elder with trembling sleeves was the first to tear himself out of his daze, his face flushed dark, anger climbing to his brow before he even noticed it.
He was entirely blind to how strange his own state of mind was — moments ago he had been calling for the girl's execution on the spot, and now he found Gu Chengming's punch unforgivable. "Even if the junior sister was at fault, who gave an outsider the right to commit violence in public!"
"Preying on the weak! You think the Yunyue Sect has no one!"
Several figures sprang up from the spectator seats, sword light glinting from their sleeves. They were clearly ready to enforce justice on Heaven's behalf.
Gu Chengming did not move a muscle. Instead, the crane-haired old Daoist at his side took half a step forward with a smile that was not quite a smile.
The Myriad-Theft Spirit Pupils turned lightly within the Nameless Daoist's sleeve. To all appearances he had merely shuffled half an inch forward, yet the elders who had risen to pounce felt the ground go soft beneath them, and their perfectly steady bodies dropped straight back into their seats.
"Oh dear, oh dear."
The old Daoist clicked his tongue and waved at the crowd, eyes crinkling. "Peace, Fellow Daoists, peace. When I first saw how pitiful that little junior sister looked, I nearly cried injustice on her behalf myself. But once I calmed down and thought it over—"
"When exactly did our entire Yunyue Sect acquire a junior sister like that?"
The words had barely left his mouth before the elders who had been brimming with righteous fury all stalled at once.
That script, laid out so neatly in their heads, suddenly had a large hole in the middle of it.
What was the junior sister's name again?
Gu Chengming paid the commotion no attention.
He walked straight toward the rubble, unhurried, flexing his fingers twice inside his sleeve.
Sprawled among the shards of broken porcelain, the "Little Junior Sister" saw him coming and shrank back half an inch without meaning to, a haze of unspent tears still clinging to her silver-grey eyes. Her lips parted, as though she meant to deliver the next line of the script.
"S-Senior Brother... how could you—"
Thud.
Another punch, landing in exactly the same place: her stomach.
"Guh—!"
The girl's line folded in half in her throat. Her body bent lower, both hands knotted over her belly, until she had curled into a ball.
Gu Chengming drew his fist back, eyes calm.
"Care to keep reciting?"
The girl did not dare make a sound.
But the memetic contamination still circled the outer edges of the plaza, refusing to disperse, and Gu Chengming had never expected one punch to snuff it out. He raised his arm and struck again.
Thud.
"Ngh—!"
After three punches, the mist in the girl's silver-grey eyes finally broke apart. With every muffled cry, another fraction of the script's compulsion dissolved. Out on the perimeter, the breathing of the elders and disciples steadied by degrees, the baleful qi draining from their eyes and leaving behind a blank, bewildered look that said, quite plainly, what on earth was I just doing.
Two more punches, and the girl curled on the ground finally forced half a sentence out through clenched teeth.
"...S-stop... stop it..."
Gu Chengming paused.
"Will you let go or not?"
The girl glared up at him through her tears.
An instant later, the white mist coiling around her vanished all at once.
It was as though a filter had been peeled off the entire Yunyue Sect plaza. Sunlight fell on their faces again, and the air itself turned clear.
The Yunyue elders shook free of the memetic contamination completely.
One old elder, who a moment ago had been so furious his beard was bristling, stared blankly at his own hand hanging in midair, then at the girl balled up in the rubble, and finally at Gu Chengming.
"This... this..."
"I was just now..."
Only then did the vast majority of the Yunyue disciples realize they had been led by the nose, start to finish, through an entire "stage play" that had appeared out of thin air.
Silence fell over the plaza. Several elders' faces cycled between green and white; hands withdrew quietly beneath sleeves, and nobody had the nerve to speak first.
The righteous indignation of that little performance was still hanging on their own faces, and thinking it through now sent a chill up their spines.
Gu Chengming sighed inwardly. Dealing with the source of the memetic contamination was one matter closed, at least — but before he could consider what came next, one sound after another of air being torn open rang out along the distant horizon.
Several auras arrived in quick succession, each of them tightening the chest of everyone below. This was the might of the Fifth Realm.
The Nameless Daoist's expression shifted. Light spun rapidly through the Myriad-Theft Spirit Pupils in his sleeve as he swept his gaze across all four directions.
"They came fast."
These were the very auras the two of them had felt deep beneath the Emerald Screen Range.
The thought had scarcely formed when the air-splitting sound to the southwest sharpened. A dark-cyan rainbow tore out of the depths of the cloud sea and slowly reined itself in at the edge of the plaza.
The man wore a dark-cyan Daoist robe, his beard frost-white, the authority of an old-school sect head sitting naturally between his brows. It was Song Heng, Sect Head of the Hunyuan Sect. His toes touched the ground and his gaze had already swept across the whole plaza.
First the suspiciously balled-up "Little Junior Sister," then the Nameless Daoist standing with his hands in his sleeves, and at last Gu Chengming, in plain robes and perfectly composed.
Song Heng's brow twitched. Of course it was this brat.
From the moment he had sensed the disturbance in the laws beneath the Emerald Screen Range from the back mountain of the Hunyuan Sect, something faintly uneasy had stirred in him.
A Dharma-Station was emerging, and its aura originated squarely within Yunyue Sect territory. He had ridden his sword the whole way here fully prepared to run into a few familiar old faces.
What he had not expected was that the one who had stirred up this earth-shaking commotion would be his own sect's Holy Son.
Song Heng's thoughts raced.
His Holy Son had gone down the mountain under the banner of "investigating the Dao Plague." How did a perfectly ordinary Dao Plague investigation manage to turn up a soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station?
Before he could reason out the cause and effect of it, another aura pressed down from the opposite side of the sky. There came the dull crack of an iron talisman splitting the air, and then two figures arrived one after the other.
The one in front wore a moon-white robe with a crescent embroidered at the hem, his brows cold, his lips thin, his cultivation as vast and deep as a chasm. This was Qin Wuwang, Grand Elder of the Yunyue Sect.
He had barely landed before he glanced at the "junior sister" in the rubble, then narrowed his eyes at the aftershocks of law still rippling through the air.
Close behind him came a tall, gaunt old man draped in white sable, a jade tablet in hand, snow-mountain patterns stitched along his hem. Wherever he passed, the spiritual qi condensed into a thin rime of frost. This was True Lord Baicang of the Western Territory.
True Lord Baicang gave the field a cursory sweep and said nothing at all, only fixing those golden pupils on the "junior sister" at the center of the rubble.
His knuckles tapped soundlessly against the jade tablet, gold light stirring in his eyes. He was clearly already using some hidden art to trace the roots of this soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station.
Along the far horizon, two or three more auras were drawing closer, though much more slowly — Fifth Realm cultivators with longer roads to travel.
The atmosphere turned heavy. The Yunyue disciples' feelings were complicated indeed; the longer they looked at this, the worse it seemed.
Several quick-witted stewards had already begun edging backward, muttering under their breath. "Where's the Sect Head? Why has the Grand Martial Uncle-Ancestor come out of seclusion in person..."
The Yunyue Grand Elder plainly had little patience to spare. He flicked his sleeve, and a moon-white sword intent swept straight down over the "Little Junior Sister" still clutching her stomach in the rubble.
The sword intent had not yet arrived, but the law within it went first. What it carried was the Yunyue Sect's exclusive Dao of Traction — he meant to drag the Dharma-Station away outright.
The qi shifted, and Gu Chengming frowned.
He was about to raise a hand when a hunched figure beat him to it, planting itself in front of the rubble.
"Aiya, aiya, aiya—"
The Nameless Daoist shook out his sleeves, light spinning through the Myriad-Theft Spirit Pupils, and stripped away the better part of that moon-white sword intent by main force. The remaining three-tenths he flung aside, where it slammed into a stone pillar at the plaza's edge and burst with a crack.
"The Dharma-Station hasn't even descended into the world yet, and here you all are, so eager to lift the lid off the pot?"
"Isn't your reach a little long, Fellow Daoist?"
Qin Wuwang's expression darkened by half an inch. His gaze settled on the Nameless Daoist. "Who are you? On what grounds do you meddle in the affairs of my Yunyue Sect?"
The Nameless Daoist smiled genially. "Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is that this old man finds all of you rather ill-mannered."
Qin Wuwang sneered. "The Dharma-Station is born beneath the earth veins of my Yunyue Sect. For this sect to take it is simply the way of Heaven."
"You have all come from afar — arriving uninvited, taking without asking." He flicked his sleeve, and his presence grew abruptly heavy. "If anyone here is being unreasonable, it is your side. Is it not?"
At that, even Song Heng and True Lord Baicang paused for a heartbeat.
The Nameless Daoist was so amused by this home-turf logic that he laughed outright. His fingers flicked in his sleeve, silently setting a "Steal" incantation beneath his own feet.
"Beautifully put, Fellow Daoist!" He narrowed his eyes, brimming with good cheer. "This Yunyue Sect of yours lies beneath my feet, so naturally the Yunyue Sect is mine as well."
Qin Wuwang's gaze sank, sword intent already gathering quietly in his sleeve.
Just as the situation was about to ignite, True Lord Baicang of the Western Territory finally spoke. "The Yunyue Grand Elder speaks no falsehood. Yet before a Dharma-Station, This Lord has no intention of yielding either."
"Should any of you wish to contest it, This Lord will oblige."
Hearing that, Song Heng let out a long breath.
He knew better than anyone that he had been stuck in the late Fifth Realm for a full two hundred years.
If anything still stood between him and the Sixth Realm, it was nothing more than a Dharma-Station that was truly his own.
Attest a Dharma-Station and the Heavenly Dao was made whole. That was supreme fortune, the thing he had dreamed of his entire life.
But he was, after all, of orthodox stock. He had lived several hundred years and held the gates of a sect. However carefully he weighed profit and loss, certain lines still existed.
Right now the Hunyuan Sect's Holy Son was standing here. At the very least he had to understand the situation first and keep the boy safe. The matter of the Dharma-Station could be settled afterward.
What was more...
He glanced at the "Little Junior Sister" still curled up not far off, then at that faint, elusive baleful qi threaded through the laws, and his frown deepened.
There was an unnatural, brooding cast to this Dharma-Station's aura.
After all his years as a sect head, what strange arts had he not seen? From that aura alone he could tell, more or less, that this thing was no benign creature.
Once the thought settled, his qi drew slowly taut, cloud-vapor churning around him like a sea.
"If Fellow Daoist insists on moving, then kindly get past This Venerable One first."
True Lord Baicang narrowed his eyes, and the two camps' auras collided soundlessly above the plaza.
Around the perimeter, the Yunyue disciples had long since gone silent as cicadas in winter, none of them daring even to breathe too loudly.
When in their lives had they ever seen four Fifth Realm powers facing off in the same place? The mere pressure leaking from their sleeves was enough to chill their spines and turn their knees to water.
A few of the more nimble-minded disciples had already begun sidling backward, weighing whether to simply retreat to the inner sect and sort things out later.
It was precisely at this knife's-edge moment that the "Little Junior Sister" curled in the rubble finally lifted her head.
Her silver-grey eyes made a circuit of the plaza. First she caught the sword intent pressing faintly out of Qin Wuwang's sleeve, then True Lord Baicang's golden pupils and the greed he could not quite hide in them, and finally her gaze passed over Song Heng and the Nameless Daoist. Something in her lurched.
These wretched old men. Each one had a nastier look in his eye than the last.
Everyone else might have shaken off the romance-script influence, but the Dharma-Station itself had not changed at all. Her silver-grey eyes swept left, then right.
Of all the people here, which one was the least offensive to look at?
Her gaze made its round and came back to rest on Gu Chengming.
Well. True, this fellow had just hammered her stomach five times with his fist.
But now that she thought about it, the sore, weak, tingling numbness those punches had left behind had stirred up something in her that she could not quite put a name to.
In the next instant, this soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station made the least sporting decision of the entire chapter.
"...Seniors."
A frail voice, laced with carefully measured grievance, drifted up from the center of the rubble, and all four Fifth Realm auras on the field stalled at once.
"...There's no need for you to quarrel over me."
The "Little Junior Sister" slowly raised those tear-bright silver-grey eyes and lifted one jade-pale finger, trembling, to point at Gu Chengming, with all the calculated fragility in the world.
"I... I want to go with him."
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds has finally reached the end of its patience.]
[Could you punch her a couple more times?]
I'd love to, Gu Chengming thought.
But leaving the Dharma-Station here was out of the question. The root of the Dao Plague had not been pulled up yet. If the Dharma-Station fell into the hands of the Yunyue Grand Elder or Baicang of the Western Territory, the corrupted baleful qi mixed into it would lose its last layer of suppression, and everything within a hundred miles of the Emerald Screen Range would suffer for it.
And even setting the corruption aside, the "mother-child karmic thread" trailing behind the Dharma-Station was still tied to the Record of the Myriad Worlds. If this thing landed in Qin Wuwang's or Baicang's hands, there was no telling what would happen to the Record — or to him.
With that, Gu Chengming's figure blurred.
In the next breath, the "junior sister" who had been curled up in the rubble was dangling from a hand fisted in her collar.
"Eh?!"
Her silver-grey eyes went round with fright, her feet kicking at empty air, all four limbs flailing.
Gu Chengming did not look back. He swept his sleeve, wrapped himself in condensed sword intent, and shot into the sky, riding the air straight out past the edge of the plaza.
The Yunyue Grand Elder's face changed. "Insolent brat—!"
Before the words were out, white light flashed in front of him.
The Nameless Daoist was rather stunned himself. His plan had been to steady the situation first and then, together with Song Heng, find an opening to bring the Dharma-Station into his own keeping. He had not counted on this troublesome kid absconding with the thing without so much as a word of warning.
He cursed him inwardly for an ungrateful wretch — but cursing was one thing and his hands were another. Light spun through the Myriad-Theft Spirit Pupils, his body twisted, and he was already planted squarely between Qin Wuwang and the direction Gu Chengming had fled.
"What's the hurry?" The old Daoist smiled until his eyes curved shut. "The young are hot-blooded and don't know their own strength. We of the older generation ought to observe the proprieties—"
"The rest of the account, leave to this old man. We'll settle it slowly."
Qin Wuwang's face had gone dark enough to wring water from.
On the other side, Song Heng drew and rose at the same moment. A rainbow of cloud-sea erupted from his palm and roared skyward, cutting off True Lord Baicang mid-pursuit.
"True Lord Baicang." Song Heng's tone was as calm as if he were discussing tea. "This Venerable One already said the matter is not yours to comment on."
"Kindly stay where you are, Fellow Daoist."
Four auras split at once into two camps.
The Yunyue Grand Elder and True Lord Baicang of the Western Territory on one side; the Hunyuan Sect Head and the Nameless Daoist on the other. The line between them was drawn as clean as a river's edge.
Cloud-vapor boiled over the plaza. Sword intent, law seals, cloud-sea rainbows and stolen light — four utterly different traditions crushed together in the same stretch of empty air.
The four-way melee broke out on the instant.
The Nameless Daoist had never wanted this corrupted Dharma-Station falling into anyone else's hands to begin with. Covering Gu Chengming's retreat was half old sentiment and half cold calculation: the boy wasn't even Fourth Realm yet, and there was nothing he could do with a Dharma-Station tucked under his arm.
Better to let the kid run with it. Once the other factions had worn themselves out, he could take his time prying the thing back off him. The old fox's abacus clacked away merrily.
Song Heng's mood, on his side, was no less complicated.
He genuinely meant to protect the Holy Son, and he genuinely did not want the Dharma-Station in anyone else's hands. As for what would be done with it once it was in his own sect's Holy Son's keeping — that could wait until they were back at the Hunyuan Sect.
In short, letting Gu Chengming get away was the most profitable move on the board right now.
Beneath the horizon, a streak of sword light turned into a flowing rainbow and cut straight across the layered ridges of the Emerald Screen Range.
Gu Chengming ran through the sky with a kicking "Little Junior Sister" clamped under one arm.
The one in his grip had stopped reciting her lines. She simply kept her face rigidly set, her silver-grey eyes broadcasting one message — I'm finished, I'm finished, I'm finished.
Gu Chengming's mind worked fast on what came next. Taking the Dharma-Station away was the best available option, but holding a soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station with a tendency toward corruption was no different from carrying a lit bomb in his coat.
The root of the Dao Plague lay deep in the Emerald Screen Range. Even with the Dharma-Station removed, the earth veins below — steeped in baleful qi for ten thousand years — would not heal themselves. That much was beyond him. It would have to be left to Song Heng and the Nameless Daoist.
He steadied himself. Escape first, sort the rest out later. The "junior sister" in his arm finally squirmed a few times, then hung there limply, muttering, "G-gently... my stomach still hurts..."
Gu Chengming glanced down at her. "Weren't you the one who wanted to come with me?"
"I did come, but could you put me down and let me walk on my own?"
Meanwhile, beyond the fading afterimage of that sword light—
On the eastern side of the Emerald Screen Range, deep in the mist, stood a figure everyone had overlooked.
On the registers of the cultivation world, this man had left only three characters behind: Shi Fazi.
His lineage was obscure. He had come out of the Withered Rock Sect of the Southern Marches, a minor sect already in decline centuries ago, whose cultivators for generations had taken grinding as the foundation of their Dao. They practiced no ornate arts, coveted no shortcuts to the great vehicle, and did nothing but grind their own flesh and spirit soul toward the toughest edge they could reach.
There was a maxim in that sect: every Dao has a seam, and every seam can be entered.
Shi Fazi was the personal disciple of the Withered Rock Sect's last First Seat — and there, fortune had played its cruel joke.
At the Third Realm he already had the talent to glimpse the true meaning of a Dharma-Station, a rare seedling by any measure. But on the very day he laid the foundation of his Fourth Realm, his master ran afoul of old enemies and died, body and Dao alike destroyed, not even his corpse left whole.
Overnight, he was all that remained of his sect. Every thread of Dharma-Station lore his master should have passed down was severed clean.
From then on he drifted alone through the cultivation world for close to a century. With nothing to lean on, he had only a set of bones tempered by bitter practice and a temperament ground down to stone with which to beg his living in the cracks of the world.
And it was precisely that foundation of grinding that produced a set of methods wholly unlike anyone else's. He could use his own spirit soul as a whetstone, working and shaving at any law he touched until he found its thinnest seam, then forcing that seam open inch by inch with the strength of his spirit soul.
After the Fifth Realm the art only sharpened, until it ground out a nickname for him: Shí Fǎ, the Law-Eroder.
It was a vicious set of methods.
Rumor among rogue cultivators held that in the past hundred years Shi Fazi had used it to sever the road to Heaven for three late Fifth Realm great cultivators outright.
Such a career naturally earned him no shortage of enemies. Yet the man was strange in his conduct: he never killed indiscriminately, never robbed for wealth, never seized territory. All three whose Dao foundations he had eroded had come knocking at his door to make trouble first. And his movements were so elusive that after every strike he would vanish soundlessly into some wild mountain or old forest, where even a Sixth Realm power would be hard-pressed to find him.
He had ground away in the late Fifth Realm for centuries and remained stuck at the threshold of ascension the whole time.
It was not that his talent fell short. It was that the Dharma-Stations of this world had long since been carved up among the various great powers.
A rogue cultivator past the Fifth Realm who wished to attest a Dharma-Station had two choices: open a new Dao himself, or intercept a strand of undetermined opportunity from someone else and drop it into his own spirit soul before that person could attest the station.
And this soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station deep in the Emerald Screen Range should have been his chance to turn everything around.
Who could have guessed that the moment the Dharma-Station emerged, the Yunyue Grand Elder would seize it first, and then Song Heng and True Lord Baicang would descend one after another, their vast auras pinning the entire plaza flat.
He was weaker than all three. Forcing a move would only mean throwing his life away for nothing.
And yet — that soon-to-be-born Dharma-Station had just been hauled off by a young man who looked no better than Third Realm?
A smile curled at the corner of Shi Fazi's mouth.
Fortune. It was fortune after all.
He shook out his sleeves, drawing the black mist around him quietly back inside them, and pressed his aura down until it was all but gone.
A fortune like this ought to fall to Shi Fazi and no one else.
Mountain wind howled. Cloud-vapor rolled.
With one arm around the boneless "junior sister" and his feet on his sword light, Gu Chengming plowed a straight white furrow through the massed ridges of the Emerald Screen Range.
More than a dozen miles behind him, the thunder of colliding auras rumbled on. The Nameless Daoist and Song Heng were locked in an inextricable fight with Qin Wuwang and True Lord Baicang. The pressure of four Fifth Realm powers poured down until the Yunyue disciples below huddled together like quails.
On the eastern flank of the range, black mist gathered and a dark-robed figure drifted unhurriedly into view, an ink-black compass balanced on his palm, its needle locked on Gu Chengming's fleeing light from far away.
It was Shi Fazi. He pinched up a scatter of black ash and cast it into the wind, where it became formless shadows that crept silently onto the trailing wake of Gu Chengming's sword light.
At that moment, Gu Chengming had no idea an old fox was following behind him, biding his time.
He was too busy having his head worn down by the one in his arm. At first this "junior sister" had struggled and resisted; now that she had wilted, she had switched to lodging complaints.
"Why does your sword light keep bobbing up and down? My physical body isn't stable yet. You've rattled my qi apart—"
Gu Chengming pretended not to hear.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds has decided to hold out no further hope for this Dharma-Station.]
Gu Chengming laughed to himself. Aren't you rather enjoying this whole doting-grandparent, baby-in-arms experience?
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds, flushed with embarrassment, says shut up.]
But just as the sword light skimmed past the third peak, a subtle spiritual pressure bore down from behind and to the side. More than ten miles separated them, and still it raised the hair on the back of Gu Chengming's neck.
He glanced back. Black mist roiled through the cloud sea, clamped onto his trail like a hunting serpent.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula's gaze sharpened: Fellow Daoist Gu! This one comes with ill intent!]
Gu Chengming raised a brow, sneering inwardly.
So that grand four-way standoff had had an eavesdropper tucked away in it after all.
This one had clearly weighed his own worth and hadn't dared stir trouble under Qin Wuwang's nose. But the moment the roast duck flew off alone, he had come scrambling after the scraps.
A fine calculation. Gu Chengming's fingers formed a seal and the sword light beneath his feet shot higher.
The instant it climbed, the cold behind him did not fall away at all. If anything, it clung half a measure closer, like rot fused to bone.
Gu Chengming's brow twitched.
The man wasn't struggling to keep up. He had no need to keep up. Whichever stretch of cloud sea Gu Chengming's sword light crossed, that was where the man's gaze already lay, as though this whole world had become his eyes.
The old monster's face was veiled in black gauze, his voice a rasp. "Gu Chengming of the Wenjian Sect? This Lord has long heard the name. Seeing you today, I find you rather young."
Gu Chengming did not look back. "Senior flatters me. My cultivation is shallow — hardly worth your personally giving chase. If you wish to discuss the Dao, perhaps come back another day, bright and early?"
"We'll skip the discussion."
Shi Fazi sneered. The compass in his hand spun abruptly, and a karmic thread so faint it was nearly nothing stretched taut between the compass and the "junior sister."
"Leave the Dharma-Station and This Lord might yet leave you a whole corpse."
Gu Chengming brushed his sleeve and sighed lightly. "The way Senior says that, one would think that if I refused, you could actually take it by force."
Shi Fazi's eyes went dark.
The whelp. Death at his door and still running that sharp little mouth.
He swept one great sleeve, and the cloud sea for miles around buckled as if under a hammer, the spiritual qi collapsing inward.
What came down was not only black mist but a solid weight of law — a pressure carrying more than a century of honed erosion, layer upon layer, seeping into everything, boring specifically for the seams in a man's qi.
Gu Chengming's chest tightened all at once, and even his breath carried the taste of rust.
A Third Realm body against a late Fifth Realm cultivator: a straight fight was suicide. But it was not only a Dharma-Station Gu Chengming carried with him.
Ten Perfections Sword Formation — rise.
Scabbards sang. Ten flying swords shot out like spirit-serpents from their dens, taking the ten directions. Pale cyan Cling sword intent spun out like silk from a spring silkworm and enclosed Shi Fazi at the center in an instant.
The old monster paused a beat.
A Third Realm sword formation? He dared bring that out to embarrass himself?
He was raising a hand to break it when the world around him turned to thick, clinging mire. The Cling sword intent piled up layer on layer, climbing at a rate that beggared belief.
"What a troublesome sword intent—"
The words were not out before Gu Chengming, under the formation's cover, closed to within thirty feet of him like a ghost.
Shi Fazi's pupils shrank. The boy could hide his qi to this degree? And as the old monster's thoughts turned, Gu Chengming's left hand had already settled on the End Lotus at his waist.
Gold light broke open. The Cling sword intent, which normally required patient, water-worn layering, had its causal process severed by the End Lotus and skipped straight to its final outcome.
Shi Fazi froze in place, his entire qi nailed to the empty air, unable to shift a hair's breadth.
In the instant the End Lotus's glow dimmed, Gu Chengming's right fist came around with the weight of a thunderclap behind it.
White-gold shot through with crimson-gold veins—
—Infinite Love!
The impact roared.
That punch was in no way inferior to the strike of a Fifth Realm power.
A mid-Fifth Realm burst on the stat sheet, driven under the End Lotus's causal lock right up to the threshold of the late Fifth Realm.
Shi Fazi had no time even to raise his body-shielding qi. He took the blow full and square and went tumbling backward like a burst sack for over a hundred zhang, turning seven or eight somersaults before he barely steadied himself.
Before he could cough up the old blood in his throat, Gu Chengming's figure had already dissolved.
Red Dust Phantom Body Formula!
Shi Fazi hacked out a clot of blood, eyes splitting with rage, and drove the compass frantically — but the needle spun like a headless fly, unable to find Gu Chengming's true body at all.
"Little beast!" Fury poured off him, baleful qi spilling everywhere. "This Lord will see where you can possibly run!"
He forced down the residual stiffness the End Lotus had left in him and gave chase as a raging black wind. The moment that wind appeared, half the sky went dark.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula, grave: This man specializes in grinding laws and prying seams. Every moment you stay entangled, the danger grows. Fellow Daoist Gu, flight is the best policy!]
Gu Chengming could feel it faintly — while he ran the Red Dust Phantom Body Formula, that eroding intent behind him was testing, inch by inch, at the seams where his qi joined together.
If not for the End Lotus's lingering effect, that hairline seam would already have been pried into a gaping mouth. Cold sweat gathered on the back of his neck, layer on layer.
There was no question about it: this was the most troublesome enemy Gu Chengming had ever run into in a straight, honest engagement.
Can't beat him.
Gu Chengming reached that verdict quickly and decided at once to run first and think later.
The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula finally showed its potential — a feint to the east, an afterimage left to the west, its illusions half real and half false, until a full Fifth Realm power was being led in dizzy circles.
The old monster ground his teeth to splinters, smashed half a peak apart with one palm, and clung stubbornly to that one thread of qi.
On the other side, Gu Chengming, still holding the "Little Junior Sister," plunged straight into the heart of the Emerald Screen Range, making for the abyssal karst cavern where he had first encountered the Record of the Myriad Worlds.
Deep in the cavern, the gloom was unchanged. Black-purple veins crawled across the vault overhead, and the rank wind of the Dao Plague blew slow and steady.
The vast phantom eye of before had dispersed, but the wreckage of the observation field at the center still gave off the pressure of what it had been.
Gu Chengming landed cleanly and set the girl down against the stone wall.
She rubbed her stomach, her silver-grey eyes shining with tears shaken loose by the flight. She looked pitiful indeed.
Gu Chengming had no time for tenderness. His spiritual sense swept the surroundings; the veins beneath his feet pulsed quietly.
The web of observation the Record of the Myriad Worlds had left behind still lay dormant here.
[Record of the Myriad Worlds: This place is where I laid my design for ten thousand years. It is more than enough to trap one half-crippled late Fifth Realm cultivator.]
[Gu Chengming, if you trust me, follow the plan.]
Gu Chengming smiled inwardly. In a situation like this, whether he trusted her was hardly up to him.
"Let's hear it."
In his Sea of Consciousness, the Record of the Myriad Worlds' voice unfolded slowly.
Gu Chengming listened with lowered eyes. Seven or eight thoughts turned over in his head, and not one of them showed on his face.
Outside the cavern, the churning of black mist drew nearer and heavier.
Within moments, Shi Fazi swept up to the mouth of the cavern wrapped in a sky-filling shroud of black mist.
His eyes were red, his face twisted. "Gu Chengming! This is a dead ground. If you don't come out and surrender yourself, you will not leave here alive today—"
The grand declaration cut off short. The ground gripped his feet, and the whole cavern seemed to wake like a slumbering beast.
The black-purple veins blazed. Dim halos of light swept in from every direction and welded him where he stood.
"What in the hells is this thing?!"
In the next instant, Shi Fazi's karmic threads collapsed entirely. He was standing perfectly still, yet in his perception he had fallen into ten thousand utterly different world-lines.
In every one of them, he was being beaten.
Song Heng's sword, Baicang's law, Qin Wuwang's seal — and even Gu Chengming's fists. The pain of a million thrashings fed back along the observation circuit into his true body, every blow of it real.
Trapped, at least for the moment.
Listening to the howling outside, Gu Chengming withdrew his gaze without the slightest twinge of conscience and turned inward to his Sea of Consciousness.
"What do we do next?"
[Return the Dharma-Station to the core of this cavern. Use ten thousand years of Dao Plague baleful qi as fuel, drive that End Lotus of yours, burn away every trace of baleful qi the Dharma-Station holds, and let it die stillborn of its own accord.]
[With the baleful qi gone, the Dao Plague loses its root. Once the Dharma-Station is stillborn it is nothing but a dead stone, and the old monster outside will withdraw on his own.]
The first to sense something wrong with the proposal was the Red Dust Phantom Body Formula.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula turned wary: The plan itself is sound — but this business of the Dharma-Station being "stillborn." Who exactly judges that it is stillborn?]
[It frowned. If, at the moment the Dharma-Station burns down, someone were to slip a strand of remnant soul in through the karmic circuitry — that isn't a stillbirth. That's a soul stealing a corpse! Fellow Daoist Gu, it's a trap!]
Gu Chengming saw it as clearly as a mirror.
He glanced at the limp, boneless "junior sister."
A fine bit of scheming from the Record of the Myriad Worlds. If she could complete the swap of shells at the instant the End Lotus closed, she would no longer be bound by the Observer's Paradox — she would truly be born anew.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds spoke, unhurried: What, you don't believe me?]
"I believe you. How could I not?"
[Record of the Myriad Worlds: ...Oh? Then get on with it.]
Gu Chengming swept his sleeve, lifting the Dharma-Station into the air, and drew out the End Lotus.
Having seen through the trick and said nothing, he naturally had confidence he could turn her plan to his own ends.
Inside the cavern, the black-purple veins converged like a hundred rivers pouring into the sea, funneling ten thousand years of baleful qi into the core of the Dharma-Station. The girl's eyes were shut, her body hanging in midair. The End Lotus bloomed with pale golden radiance, devouring and burning the baleful qi with hungry greed.
The Record of the Myriad Worlds' narration grew fainter. She was gathering the whole of her observational power into a single thread, waiting only for the End Lotus to close before seizing the body.
Gu Chengming glanced sidelong at his Sea of Consciousness and murmured, much obliged.
Love Laboratory — activate.
Boom.
The cavern shuddered. The End Lotus closed. The baleful qi was swept clean.
It should have been the perfect moment for the Record of the Myriad Worlds to drive straight in — but in that flash of an instant, the Love Laboratory's panel unfolded without a sound, its border of white-gold shot through with crimson-gold sweeping over the entire Dharma-Station like a butterfly net. It was precisely the same maneuver that had once bundled up the Record of the Myriad Worlds herself.
Her remnant consciousness slammed headlong into that impregnable white-gold light.
[...!!]
For the first time in her existence, that lofty narration produced a burst of frantic exclamation marks.
The body practically in her hands had been snatched away.
Gu Chengming's heart skipped a beat.
He had only meant to drag the Record of the Myriad Worlds back. He had not expected the Love Laboratory to have such an appetite that it would carry off the whole pot.
A Pre-Nascent Dharma Rank meeting the dregs of the "Dao" was like a wanderer coming home. It was swallowed down by the Love Laboratory without the least resistance.
...
Far away, the auras of Qin Wuwang and True Lord Baicang stalled at the same moment.
In the midair standoff of four, the two elders who coveted the Dharma-Station turned their heads in unison toward the depths of the Emerald Screen Range.
—The Dharma-Station's aura was gone.
On the other side, True Lord Shí Fǎ had wrenched half his body free of the observation chains and was fighting with everything he had to force his way into the cavern.
He had chased Gu Chengming the whole way here with his internal injuries unhealed, and then been tormented by those inexplicable observation chains until his qi ran ragged. The fire in him had already burned to its peak.
And in that moment, he felt the Dharma-Station's aura simply cease to exist.
Like a branch that should have borne fruit, snapped clean off in the instant before it fruited.
True Lord Shí Fǎ's eyes went wide, the blood vessels within them rupturing inch by inch.
That Dharma-Station had been about to be born. He had finally been within reach of a fortune he could call his own—
And that brat had made it disappear?!
"...Gu Chengming!!!!"
The roar of a late Fifth Realm cultivator crashed in from outside the cavern, setting the whole vein trembling. Black qi boiled up, carrying a killing intent so thick it nearly congealed into something solid, and surged toward the cavern's depths.
Deep within the cavern.
Gu Chengming slowly opened his eyes.
In his Sea of Consciousness, a brand-new light-screen spread quietly open.
Beyond its white ground and crimson-gold border lay another layer of grey mist, as though it had not yet set into shape.
Within that mist, a few faint lines of text surfaced—
[??? (CG Not Yet Edict-Named)]
[CG Unlocked: 1/??]
Gu Chengming stared at that unnamed blank for half a breath.
Then he raised his eyes slowly to the single lit CG icon beneath the screen.
[CG: Endless War God, come forth!]
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