Gu Chengming let out a long breath. So he had guessed right after all.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's sword slid slowly home into the sheath at her waist, the jade pendants there chiming faintly. Before her, the Eternal Life Sect Perfected One had both hands clamped over the wound punched clean through his chest, black blood welling between his fingers and creeping down to the hem of his robe.
But there was no room in his mind for anger. Only one word was left.
Run.
A deeply veiled thread of qi surged up out of the black token at his waist, taking shape slowly around him, folding him up the way a letter is folded into an envelope — plainly meaning to roll him whole and stuff him back into that seam he had only just clawed his way out of.
The Sovereign's moon-white sleeve stirred. Seven blades of sword light lifted from her side and swept toward the Perfected One like poured moonlight.
One look was all she needed to name the origin of his Dharma-Station. "Counterflow Gu…"
"Using a Dharma-Station to duck the Great Tribulation — that much I could overlook." She lowered her eyes a fraction as she spoke. "But you still had the gall to throw your realm around in front of a junior."
As the words fell, the seven blades of light snapped into their positions, ring within ring, and nailed the Eternal Life Sect Perfected One in place where he stood.
The Perfected One ground his back teeth together and worked a seal between his fingers.
Everything before Gu Chengming's eyes was suddenly peeled away from the ordinary world. All that remained were two currents of qi clawing at each other, clouds furling and unfurling, time running backward against itself.
Gu Chengming's heart lurched.
The Dao of Time?
He understood in almost the same instant. No wonder there had been that unspeakably dim, familiar quality to the Perfected One's attacks earlier. It was not his own art at all — it was a fragment stolen from somewhere, crushed up and kneaded into a Dharma-Station to eke out a little more life.
The Sovereign hooked one finger upward, and the reversal force the Perfected One had wrenched into being was drawn straight out of him, gathered into the moonlight in her sleeve, and rolled away as cloud-vapor.
It was like ladling water out of a pot with a hole in its bottom. Before the water could fill, it had already emptied from below.
The Perfected One's face went whiter still, and beneath that pallor there surfaced a grey tinge, like grass and wood withering.
His opponent was a Sovereign whose Dharma-Station suppressed his own utterly. Meeting her head-on was a fool's dream.
But when a Sixth Realm Perfected One wanted to break off and flee, no ordinary Sovereign could hold him either.
He flung his sleeve out. The lingering echo of that Dharma-Station Gu Chengming had swallowed surfaced abruptly in front of him, pale golden skeletal veining spilling from his sleeves like creeping vine. A light hook of his fingertip, and a slowly reversing thread of time rose along the bones.
The whole thing looked like exactly the same trick the Red Dust Immortal had used.
The Sovereign reached out and gave her scabbard a single light flick. The thread of reversal, barely started, stopped dead.
That one simple motion had stripped it of its very qualification to be a "process."
Gu Chengming stared. The Sixth Realm was seriously broken. Every idle lift of a hand produced an effect no weaker than the End Lotus.
The Perfected One's face had gone bloodless. He clenched his jaw and turned his palm over, and a wisp of "possibility" spread out of it, countless threads forking away from his wrist.
This was precisely what he had relied on to tear himself free of that seam sealed away for ten thousand years — a method of shifting and borrowing corpses among a multitude of possibilities. Used against Gu Chengming, it would have forced him to spend every last card in his hand.
But in the eyes of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign… she merely extended one hand. A single line of moonlight bundled up the strand of "possibility" just as it began to fork, and a second strand was pinched out between her fingers.
Every "possibility" of his was dead before it could take form. Cold sweat slid down from his temple along the inside of his hood.
At the mouth of the cavern, the four Fifth Realm powers hung in midair, jaws slack.
Watching the last strand of "possibility" snuffed out between the Sovereign's fingers, the Perfected One reached the end of his tricks.
He shot a glance at the tottering remnant of the Dharma-Station in his arms, sighed inwardly, seethed inwardly. Enough. Enough. Enough!
In the next breath he gouged a certain "rule" bodily out of that skeletal framework, turned it into a causal seam, and dove into it without hesitation, not even sparing the time to straighten the split moon-white and black Daoist robe — vanishing entirely into the void.
The Sovereign raised a hand and sent her sword light chasing after that thread of causality, but did not pursue it herself, as though some constraint held her back.
The moonlight in her eyes dimmed. She said quietly, "Sooner or later I'll have to drag him out with my own hands."
The moonlight drew in. The howling gale over the Emerald Screen Range slowly settled back to normal.
The four Fifth Realm powers hanging in the air finally struggled free of the shackles that had pinned them down.
Song Heng was the first to let out a long breath, his sleeves shaking loose in the mountain wind. True Lord Baicang and Qin Wuwang stretched their limbs as well. The Nameless Daoist wiped the blood from beneath his eyes and forced one of them open — just in time to catch the Sovereign in her moon-white robe gazing at Gu Chengming with a look of undisguised tenderness.
The old Daoist's heart gave a lurch. A bold guess surfaced in his mind for a moment, and then he swallowed hard and threw the guess away, finding it absurd even to himself.
Meanwhile Qin Wuwang, being the Yunyue Sect's Grand Elder after all, felt that with everything having just happened on his own sect's ground, he ought to say something — at minimum trot out a few polite words along the lines of "our thanks to the Sovereign for her intervention."
He cleared his throat and squeezed out a smile. Now that the Sixth Realm pressure crushing down on him had lifted, he found he hardly dared open his mouth at all.
"S-Sovereign…" He got the words out in the end.
Moonlight flashed.
Thud.
A head dropped to the ground, rolled over twice, and came to a neat stop before the hem of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's robe.
The remaining three Fifth Realm powers flinched as one.
True Lord Baicang froze solid for half a breath, the jade tablet nearly slipping from his grip. Song Heng shuddered from head to foot. The Nameless Daoist clapped his hand back over the eye he had just opened, thinking that this eye of his had gone blind at a very good time indeed — not seeing was its own kind of blessing.
Gu Chengming was rather taken aback himself. For all her cool, gentle appearance, this Sovereign handled matters with a ruthlessness that left no room for hesitation.
Her expression did not change, and not a drop of blood touched her sleeves. The instant the moonlit sword light drew in, it brushed that single streak of blood away on its own.
She turned and said, "Qin Wuwang, Grand Elder of the Yunyue Sect."
"Colluded with Eternal Life Sect infiltrators. Tolerated the abuse of spirit artifacts within the sect. Allowed baleful qi to be planted into the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following sword art and left it uninvestigated for a thousand years, so that generation upon generation of the sect's own sword cultivators were reduced to firewood for the Dao Plague."
"The rest, item by item, we will set aside for now." She tilted her head toward the other three. "Any objections?"
True Lord Baicang all but raced to shake his head. Song Heng cupped his hands with perfect obedience. "This junior has no objection."
The Nameless Daoist muttered from behind his hand, "This old man didn't get a clear look just now, so I can hardly object or not object to anything."
After all, the Yunyue Sect's mess was the Yunyue Sect's own business, and as a patriarch-generation figure the Sovereign was entirely within her rights to clean house.
Besides — who would dare object? Forget killing one Fifth Realm cultivator. If she had killed everyone present, nobody would have dared come looking for trouble.
Gu Chengming looked at the head the moonlight had shorn away, and felt a distinctly odd sensation.
This older generation of cultivators really did have the flavor of their era running through everything they did.
He was still wondering whether his own technique panel would pop up some new buff along the lines of "Shock-and-Awe Education +1" when the Sovereign turned around. Her sleeves settled, her gaze came to rest on him, and the cool detachment she had worn while cleaning house was replaced by something soft and warm.
"Little friend." She lingered on the two words, drawing them out with a trailing note like a moonlit night in the mountains. "Do you happen to have time just now?"
The other three Fifth Realm powers all raised their eyes at once. Song Heng looked at the Sovereign, then at Gu Chengming, and thought to himself that there really was nothing like having your own Holy Son on hand. Then he stole one more glance at Qin Wuwang's head and body lying apart, and wondered whether the real cause of death there had mostly been offending said Holy Son.
True Lord Baicang took one look and immediately lowered his head, not daring to so much as breathe loudly, as though terrified the ancestor's gaze might sweep his way next.
The Nameless Daoist kept his hand over his eye, his skull buzzing. For no good reason at all, an image surfaced in his mind of his own little Tao, that idiot habit of hers of clutching the Dragon-Seeking Token up to the sun every other day and polishing it to a shine. Then that classic scene of her rolling around on her bed wrapped in a quilt, muttering, "You big block of wood, just wait till I've grown into myself — I'll show you."
The old Daoist told her silently: little Tao, oh little Tao. Forget getting a bite of meat. This time you'll be lucky to get a sip of the broth.
On the other side, Gu Chengming took in the tenderness of the Sovereign's gaze, and a strange feeling stirred in him.
This Sovereign's favorability toward him… seemed inexplicably high?
He thought it over carefully. Counting generously, he and this Sovereign had met exactly once. Back in the Land of Nowhere, all he had done was borrow Infinite Love to patch in the "half-move of feeling" her sword stroke had been missing.
But that was only half a move—
Wait.
[Yin-Yang Creation Strategy, beside itself: Here it comes here it comes here it comes!!!]
[One look and you can tell this Sovereign's a virgin! Absolutely a virgin! Gu Chengming, don't you dare let her down!]
[A figure like that is the wildest ride there is!]
Gu Chengming: "…"
On the summit of Emerald Screen, the night wind rolled slowly past. The head lying before the Sovereign's hem still wore its half-smile, both eyes wide open, as though even in death it had never worked out what had happened in that one brief instant.
Far off, the sea of clouds churned. Night birds burst up in a startled flock from some peak or other and circled without settling around the crescent moon, polished bright by the moonlight.
Getting no answer, the Sovereign gave a small cough and said, in a voice that came out gentle and a little pinched, "If you do have time, I'd like my little friend to make a trip with me."
The word "Senior" reached the tip of Gu Chengming's tongue and was swallowed back down. He nodded.
The next moment, before he had begun to untangle this layer of cause and effect, a wisp of moonlight wrapped around him and he was hanging in the air at the Sovereign's side.
The three remaining Fifth Realm powers stayed where they were. Moonlight swept along the ridge of the Emerald Screen Range, and Qin Wuwang's headless body toppled slowly into the night wind.
Beneath the sea of clouds, the Emerald Screen Range.
Two figures walked the moonlight, streaking toward the depths where the baleful qi ran thickest.
Gu Chengming had been planning to use the trip to admire the Flowing Cloud Moon-Following's new CG, but out of the corner of his eye he caught the Sovereign quietly turning her head to look at him again. He had lost count of how many times that made.
His face gave nothing away. Inwardly he was baffled.
The Sovereign seemed to have something to say to him and kept putting it off. Was the occasion too formal to break? Or was there something else behind it?
While he was still puzzling over it, she finally spoke.
"Little friend." She sounded as though she had deliberated a long while before producing this particular topic. "Do you know why body cultivators in the immortal world tend toward foul tempers, while artifact refiners are mostly mild?"
Gu Chengming blinked. Body cultivators had been famous for bad tempers since ancient times — even the Eternal Life Sect, laying its Dao Plague scheme, had chosen body cultivators as its "firewood."
The Hunyuan Sect had no shortage of buried secrets that surely tied into this. Expecting her to reveal something hidden, he asked earnestly, "I would be grateful for Senior's instruction."
The corner of her mouth lifted. "Because an artifact refiner spends every single day tempering."
Gu Chengming: "?"
It took him a good long moment to get the double meaning straightened out in his head — tempering metal in the forge, and tempering one's own temper.
How was that a dad joke?
The Sovereign's brows and eyes were bright with expectation, waiting for his reaction.
Gu Chengming couldn't bring himself to leave her hanging, so he managed two strained laughs.
"Senior — Senior really is very funny."
The Sovereign paused. Something wasn't right here.
Ten thousand years ago, when she had first heard that joke from an old friend of one of the Penglai Immortal Sect's branch halls, she had laughed for ages. Had the tastes of the world shifted over ten thousand years? Or had her delivery simply lost some of the spark it had that day?
Her brows drew faintly together, and she actually split off a strand of divine sense from the serious business of "handling the baleful qi," devoting it entirely to the question of what joke to tell next.
The two of them rode the air to a small pool in the deepest reach of the Emerald Screen Range.
This was the floor of the very cavern where Gu Chengming had lured True Lord Shi Fa to his death.
Her single stroke earlier had scoured away the greater part of the baleful qi, but ten thousand years of accumulated resentment beneath the Emerald Screen Range was hardly something one sword could wash clean. The severed remnants had gathered slowly in the depths of the earth veins and quietly congealed into a black seed.
The seed hung at the center of the pool, baleful qi rolling around it like ink.
"A Baleful Seed." The Sovereign stopped, brows knitting. "This thing takes baleful qi as its root. Touch it and it defiles the Dao Heart. Cut it down outright and the baleful qi merely scatters and returns to the earth veins. It calls for a longer view."
Gu Chengming studied the pitch-black mass for a while, questioned her closely about its origins and its nature, and arrived at a judgment.
Stripped of the mystique, this thing was nothing more than a Heart Demon given physical form.
When it came to Heart Demons, Gu Chengming had some experience. Never mind that the "Legacy Teaching of Peace" in Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method was a natural bane of Heart Demons — the sheer stock of illusion-resistance counters his techniques gave him was already enough to cut most of the risk to a minimum.
He looked at the Sovereign and considered a moment. "Senior, why not let this junior give it a try?"
Her brows tightened and she moved instinctively to stop him, then held the words back at her lips.
She had been at a loss herself precisely because she could not touch the thing directly. If Gu Chengming really could make the attempt, the situation gained a good deal more room to maneuver.
Still, she warned him in a firm voice. "This is no ordinary thing. The moment you make contact it will use every means available to enrage you — a single sentence can be enough to send your fury surging. It does temper the Dao Heart, admittedly, but do not let it find a crack to slip through."
Gu Chengming made a soft sound of surprise. One sentence and a person would snap?
He was a man who had lived on forums, been through message boards, survived countless internet flame wars. That description genuinely piqued his curiosity.
He reckoned his temper was quite good, all told. But if a single sentence could set him off, he was honestly interested to see what sort of sentence this seed of baleful qi could come up with.
Seeing his composure, with not a trace of flippancy in his face, the Sovereign finally nodded slowly. "At the first sign of anything wrong, pull back at once."
"Understood." Gu Chengming stepped forward and reached out. The instant his fingertip touched the seed of baleful qi—
The black mist churned violently before his eyes.
A tide of text welled up out of nowhere and poured straight into his Sea of Consciousness.
(whats the extraction password? why cant i extract it online? how do i use the link? what do i do if the download is too slow? are you any good at this or not? why cant you just post the installer? can i play it on my phone? why cant i play it on my phone? which one is the emulator? how do i extract it? where are the files after i extract them? why wont this link open in wechat? does it cost money? why isnt it free? whats the extraction code? what do i need to extract it with? is there a chinese version? what am i supposed to do once its downloaded? i extracted it with baidu cloud, so why did the link break after i finished extracting? what does split archive mean? how do i extract it after ive extracted it? i extracted it and got a whole pile of files, now what? is there no actual game in here? why do you make everything so complicated, im only trying to play a game.)
"?"
Looking at that block of text, Gu Chengming slowly closed his hand into a fist.
At the edge of the pool.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign hung quietly in the void, one hand resting on her sword hilt, and waited a full six breaths.
Six breaths later, she caught the aura of the seed at the pool's heart shuddering wildly — and then, astonishingly, being beaten apart by a strain of absolutely pure "rage." She stared.
Three breaths after that, Gu Chengming opened his eyes. The seed of baleful qi dissolved in his palm into a wisp of black smoke that vanished at once. The Sovereign looked at him in amazement. "Little friend, you actually resolved it?"
A moment later she said with feeling, "I already thought my little friend formidable enough. I never imagined your cultivation of temperament was equally accomplished."
Gu Chengming felt distinctly guilty. "Senior flatters me."
At this point, there was no way he could admit he had simply punched the Baleful Seed apart with his bare fists.
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