Truthfully, Miss Ji Yixi had considered a great many possibilities. This one had never crossed her mind.
For as long as anyone could remember, the fact that she was the sole inheritor of the Record of the Myriad Worlds had been carved into common knowledge. What stood before her now overturned that entirely.
She was still frozen mid-sentence, mouth open. The little black dragon at her side — the one she called "Senior" — had already reacted.
It slid off the tea table with a smack, planted all four claws neatly on the floor tiles, and pressed its dragon-head flat to the ground in a posture even more textbook than the one it had assumed back in Floating Isle City.
"This one respectfully welcomes the return of the Great Qian's Heaven-Opening Sovereign!"
"…?"
A question mark surfaced over Gu Chengming's head as well.
It is worth reviewing the little dragon's train of thought.
As a being that had bound its karma to the Great Qian imperial house back in the ancient era — a creature that could genuinely be counted as the dynasty's auspicious beast — it knew perfectly well what the Record of the Myriad Worlds meant to the Great Qian.
It had lost most of its memories for some reason it could no longer name, but everything concerning the Record of the Myriad Worlds was cut into its bones.
That was precisely why, back in the Azure Lotus Secret Realm, when Ji Yixi woke it and it could recall nothing at all, a single sentence from her — "I cultivate the Record of the Myriad Worlds" — was enough to make it board her pirate ship without a backward glance.
And so, the instant it sensed the aura of the Record of the Myriad Worlds coming off Gu Chengming, one name rose unbidden in its mind.
— The Great Qian's Heaven-Opening Sovereign.
Founding emperor of the Great Qian. An Eighth Realm Sovereign. Creator of the Record of the Myriad Worlds.
The Record of the Myriad Worlds possessed a strict uniqueness. It had never been an ordinary cultivation technique to begin with — it was the product of that Sovereign binding a Spirit with a Dharma-Station and then cramming the result by force into the shell of a technique.
Which meant that in the present age, if one insisted on finding a second person capable of using the Record of the Myriad Worlds besides Ji Yixi, there was only the Great Qian's founding ancestor, who lay somewhere in legend, and whom nobody could say for certain was truly dead.
In hindsight, the little dragon had long felt something was off about this young man.
His cultivation climbed far too fast, for one. His methods were too numerous and too uncanny, for another. In private it had more than once wondered whether the boy was some Great Qian forebear who had seized a body and come back.
But no matter how it turned the idea over, it never quite fit — because from beginning to end the boy had never once revealed a technique connected to the Great Qian imperial house.
His whole gaudy arsenal looked far more like wool sheared off a hundred unrelated corners of the cultivation world.
And now look. He kept it hidden and kept it hidden, and the moment he finally showed something, it was the Record of the Myriad Worlds.
— No, wrong. "Boy" would no longer do. A correction was in order.
"Venerable Ancestor" was the proper form of address.
The little dragon might count as an old hand in the Great Qian, but in front of this one it did not quite measure up.
Ji Yixi had plainly walked much the same road in her own head, only half a beat slower than the dragon — after all, she had first needed to digest the shock of "I am not the only inheritor of the Record of the Myriad Worlds."
She hesitated, looked at Gu Chengming's face, then glanced instinctively at her prostrate spirit creature, and finally spoke with no confidence at all.
"Great… Great-Ancestor?"
Gu Chengming put a hand to his forehead.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds slapped her own forehead too, wearing the look of someone thoroughly mortified. "Two idiots."]
Remembering that she had once worked shoulder to shoulder with these two idiots along some world line long since annihilated, the Record of the Myriad Worlds found this particular moment unbearable.
Girl and dragon alike held the same posture of not daring to breathe, waiting eagerly for Gu Chengming to give them a firm word.
Gu Chengming coughed and told a lie.
"Your Highness misunderstands," he explained. "I am no Heaven-Opening Sovereign. This thread of aura is merely a simulation."
"…A simulation?" Ji Yixi stared.
Gu Chengming considered for a moment, then said, "The Unfettered Freedom Formula. I received it as an inheritance from a Senior. It specializes in mimicking auras."
"…The Unfettered Freedom Formula." She repeated the name, then lifted her eyes to him, a flicker of hesitation crossing her face. "That is Jiahao Sovereign's own destiny technique, is it not?"
"…?" Another question mark bloomed above Gu Chengming's head.
— What in the world was Sovereign Jiahao?
No, seriously, where had that come from?
His blank pause made Ji Yixi flustered instead. Convinced she had said something wrong, she was on the verge of blurting out, "Did I misremember?"
Gu Chengming caught himself and patched it in time. "That Senior never gave me his honored title. I received only the inheritance; as for his name, I have no way of knowing it."
Ji Yixi let out a breath, hesitated, and then explained.
It turned out that the Demon Pill Immortal Sovereign who created the Unfettered Freedom Formula bore the surname Ji, personal name Jiahao, and had been among the most renowned Sovereigns of his age.
Other Sovereigns took their honored titles or Dharma-names from their Dharma-Station, their nature, or their state of mind. This one had simply used his own birth name.
Gu Chengming clicked his tongue. That did fit his impression of the Demon Pill Sovereign rather well.
After that little farce, Ji Yixi outwardly accepted Gu Chengming's explanation, though inwardly she remained only half convinced.
After all, what caliber of technique was the Record of the Myriad Worlds? If some other technique could simulate its aura to that degree, the Great Qian royal house might as well pack up and go home.
Naturally she pressed no further. If Senior Gu — er, Fellow Daoist Gu — did not wish to elaborate, then she would not ask.
On the matter of the dragon-qi, and on a good many other matters besides, the two of them stood on the same side.
So all she had to do was trust him.
Ji Yixi walked herself through that reasoning once more.
The signs that someone had set eyes on the Dragon-Qi Seed had appeared long ago. She had spent these past years keeping still and giving nothing away precisely because she was waiting for someone who could act with her.
Now that such a person had shown himself, the opportunity could not be wasted.
Trust, as it happened, was the simple part.
The Son of Heaven who dwelt deep within the dragon-qi watched Ji Yixi closely, but had little guard against anyone else.
After all, the Dragon-Qi Seed was protected by "rules." Apart from the Great Qian's Son of Heaven and the inheritor of the Record of the Myriad Worlds, anyone who wished to draw near faced a difficulty steep enough that even an ordinary Sovereign would take the long way around.
Not that it was impossible. Certain Sovereigns on the main trunks could, by the nature of their own Dharma-Stations, sidestep that rule.
But methods of that sort made far too much noise. Let the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation sound, let the bell tower and the drum tower ring together, and in the next breath every Fifth Realm and Sixth Realm cultivator in the Great Qian would follow the tail of that aura straight here.
So long as a man wasn't dead, he'd find some way to react… whereas in the present case Gu Chengming already possessed the "authority" granted by the Record of the Myriad Worlds. What needed doing was far simpler: get him safely inside.
For Ji Yixi, that was no great trouble.
Once the barrier of the inner hall had closed, she drew from her sleeve a small bronze mirror the size of a palm, its back carved with a little beast curled into a ring.
"This is called Shadow-Following." She handed the mirror to Gu Chengming. "Using the Record of the Myriad Worlds as the conduit, I will lay a copy of your aura over my own. So long as the mirror is in my hand, your traces enter the Royal Court along with me."
Gu Chengming took the little mirror. "And Your Highness herself?"
"I will petition my Royal Father, saying the Imperial Astronomical Bureau has lately measured a minute deviation in the foundation of the Heaven-Honoring formation, and that I must enter the Royal Court in person to re-inspect it." Ji Yixi paused. "Royal Father is a suspicious man. That gate I must pass myself."
Gu Chengming made a sound of agreement, thought for a moment, then went over the entry procedure with her several times more — how the Shadow-Following mirror ought to respond, and what to do if anything went wrong midway.
By the time they had settled the last joint of the plan, the night-watch drum beyond the inner hall had struck three.
Moonlight slanted through the window lattice. Ji Yixi raised her eyes to that stretch of night.
Her Royal Father might dwell deep within the dragon-qi, but he was still her father, and she had traded move for move with him since the earliest thing she could remember.
Slipping something past him this time… no, she truly could not afford to be careless.
The next day, deep within the Imperial City.
The main hall stood empty. There were none of the ranked officials a proper court session called for; even the eunuchs holding the ceremonial fans had been dismissed beyond tier upon tier of jade steps.
Upon the dragon throne at the hall's center coiled nothing but a mass of dragon-qi. It hung down from the roof beams, converged at the throne, and condensed into a phantom.
Ji Yixi stood below the steps and bowed with lowered eyes. "Royal Father."
The mass of dragon-qi stirred, and a voice came from within it — neither male nor female, of no discernible age, so flat that it produced a wrongness, as though it did not belong to a living thing.
"The Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation." It paused. "As I recall, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau inspected it only a few years ago."
The flames in the four bronze lamps of the hall all shrank half an inch at once.
"And you wish it inspected again."
"Is this the Imperial Astronomical Bureau's intent… or yours?"
Ji Yixi kept her eyes down and did not answer at once.
If she said it was the Bureau's intent, the Director might not cover the lie for her. If she said it was her own, she would then have to supply a reason her Royal Father would believe — one that would not move him to enter the Royal Court and look for himself, or today's effort would be wasted. And if she said the Bureau had noticed first and she had merely memorialized on the strength of it, that sounded safest of all, yet the very implication her Royal Father most detested was "I have made connections with the Imperial Astronomical Bureau."
Ji Yixi hesitated a moment, then raised her eyes. "It is your daughter's intent."
The sexless, ageless voice drifted down unhurriedly. "Why?"
"Of late your daughter has used the Record of the Myriad Worlds to deduce the fortunes of the Capital region, and what I observe has grown more blurred than before," she said. "Were it not a matter of consequence, I would not trouble Royal Father with it. But for the Record of the Myriad Worlds to be obscured to such a degree — I dare not say whether the fault lies in the Record itself, or in some fine flaw in the foundation of the Heaven-Honoring formation."
"Since it cannot be confirmed, it must be re-inspected. Royal Father's dragon-qi is the most abundant of all; were you to inspect it yourself, you would only disturb the formation's foundation. The Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau has cultivation enough, but he is not an inheritor of the Record of the Myriad Worlds, and any deviation he observes may not be accurate."
"Therefore your daughter volunteers to make the journey into the Royal Court." She paused briefly, then added, "If the re-inspection finds no deviation at all, then it is simply that my own technique is shallow and my eyes deceived me. Royal Father may punish me severely."
The hall went quiet for a spell. The outline of that mass of dragon-qi seemed to rise and fall slowly, and when the voice came again it carried more weariness than before.
"…The fiends troubling the Capital of late. Is this connected to that?"
Ji Yixi's lashes flickered. So it came around to this after all.
Which meant her Royal Father knew the Night-Watch Bureau had been moving in force — and therefore knew what Gu Chengming had been doing in the Capital.
"Matters of fiends fall under the Night-Watch Bureau's jurisdiction. Your daughter has not involved herself."
The dragon-qi was silent for a moment, then stirred wearily, as though someone within that phantom had lifted a hand a fraction.
"…Very well. As you wish, then."
Ji Yixi kowtowed her thanks, bowed once more outside the hall doors, and only then turned to go.
Within the main hall, the door she had just withdrawn through swung shut again. The dragon-qi coiled upon the throne loosened slightly, and from deep in its outline half the shape of a human figure emerged. Then came the sound of coughing, filtered through a layer of qi, so that by the time it reached beyond the hall it had become nothing at all.
The bronze lamps could not throw their light into the depths of the dragon throne. But they did reach a short stretch of floor tile before its armrest, and on those tiles lay several dark red specks.
Over the two days that followed, Ji Yixi made her customary visit to the Imperial Astronomical Bureau and dealt with a few odd matters at court, laying all the groundwork proper to a "re-inspection of the formation's foundation."
Gu Chengming, meanwhile, nursed his qi and gathered his momentum within the Night-Watch Bureau, keeping the Shadow-Following mirror against his person where no one noticed it.
By nightfall of the third day, everything was ready.
Three days later, deep within the Royal Court.
Gu Chengming held the little bronze mirror. Its surface reflected a stretch of grey-white stone steps outside — the section of palace road Ji Yixi had just walked.
With every step she took, the image shifted an inch. The instant she neared the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation, the mirror dimmed.
The ground dropped out from under Gu Chengming's feet. Some force pulled him down and set him inside a stone hall.
There were no beams or pillars to be seen, no doors either — only masses of pale golden dragon-qi drifting slowly along the walls. Gu Chengming raised a hand, drew his aura in tight, and looked around.
Unexpectedly smooth.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds said mildly: You are an acknowledged bearer of the Record of the Myriad Worlds. So long as you do not break the rules, the rules will not trouble you.]
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds studied the scene ahead and added: The Dragon-Qi Seed's root system is more than half severed. The little that still connects is held up entirely by the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation. Once the formation disperses, the seed dies.]
Her speaking up unprompted took Gu Chengming rather by surprise.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds: I told you long ago. This is an inevitable node.]
[As for who moves against it, that differs on every timeline. It may be the Eternal Life Sect's years of corrosion. It may be some other Sovereign fishing in muddied waters with the Great Tribulation drawing near. Or it may be… the Heavenly Dao itself, drawing the Dragon-Qi Seed back home.]
Gu Chengming seized on the key point. "The Heavenly Dao is pulling the Dragon-Qi Seed back?"
[For once the Record of the Myriad Worlds volunteered more: "The Dragon-Qi Seed is itself another manifestation of a Dharma-Station. Naturally the Heavenly Dao wishes to draw it back."]
[As to the specific reasons, and who exactly is meddling — no one has ever known, and different world lines produce different causes.]
[Because nearly every Sovereign alive wants the Dragon-Qi Seed.]
Gu Chengming turned that over, and a point struck him.
Every Sovereign wanted the Dragon-Qi Seed? Why?
By rights, once a cultivator reached the Sovereign tier, a Dharma-Station was no longer such a critical thing.
Ascending from the Fifth Realm to the Sixth required a Dharma-Station, true. But going from the Sixth to the Seventh required Dharma-Stations on the same "main trunk." Stations from other trunks were, to them, so much chicken bone — too meagre to be worth the trouble.
So that line — "every Sovereign wants the Dragon-Qi Seed" — was decidedly worth chewing on. Did it mean the Dharma-Station the Dragon-Qi Seed represented was unlike any other?
Gu Chengming asked the Record of the Myriad Worlds. She gave no answer.
[Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, thoroughly displeased: This technique observes not one of the Three Obediences and Four Virtues. She ought to be dragged into the Hat Tribunal and thrashed soundly with a belt.]
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula agreed wholeheartedly.]
Gu Chengming sighed inwardly. He too would have liked to put the disobedient bratty-girl technique to the question, but this was hardly the moment.
He started walking, moving slowly inward from the center of the stone hall.
Dragon-qi flowed along the walls on all four sides. Beneath the ground he trod, a low humming stirred faintly. After roughly twenty paces the densest knot of dragon-qi ahead parted slowly, revealing a narrow entrance behind it.
Gu Chengming stopped short, his pupils contracting.
He had assumed the stone chamber was empty. Instead a figure stood squarely at its center.
The figure had its back to him — tall and slender, the line of the shoulders curved in a way he knew, a sky-blue robe gathered at the waist by a rather finely braided silk sash.
The hair was familiar hair too, and a very familiar sprig of osmanthus was tucked in at a slant behind it.
Gu Chengming's heart lurched.
— Elder Little Yu?!
No. Not Elder Little Yu. An illusion?
The figure turned at the sound, saw him, and her eyes curved. "Oh?"
She tilted her head, her tone carrying a note of delighted surprise — exactly the pitch Elder Yu used when a rare guest turned up unannounced.
"I thought no one else would ever come in."
She smiled and took a step toward him. "Little friend, how did you get in here?"
Gu Chengming did not move. Love's Qingxin Formula activated of its own accord.
[Stay clear-headed under any circumstances!]
In the next instant the figure of "Yu Wenqiu" before his eyes was punctured outright, the sky-blue robe unravelling.
What entered his field of vision was a mass of black mist with no discernible shape at all.
The mist held still for a breath. It had plainly noticed something as well.
The same voice came out of that black mist, though the timbre had changed. Gone was Yu Wenqiu's lazy warmth with its trace of laughter; what remained was stranger, and distinctly taken aback.
"What manner of art is this? It broke my Heart-Reflecting Mirror."
The few threads of dragon-qi that had been drifting along the walls of the stone chamber all halted at once.
Gu Chengming said nothing. His left hand settled soundlessly on the hilt at his waist; between the fingers of his right he pinched a white jade talisman.
The mass of black mist stood quietly in place, as though waiting for him to answer. Unfortunately, Gu Chengming had no intention of doing so.
It let out a low, faintly regretful "ah," the sigh of someone mourning a small missed chance at a pleasant conversation.
"So be it." The voice came drifting over. "Since the little friend would rather not say—"
The dragon-qi on all four walls reversed and surged inward.
A towering pressure rolled at Gu Chengming from below and from every side at once.
At the deepest point of that pressure, the black mist closed into the shape of a hand.
The hand simply pressed down. On instinct alone Gu Chengming spun the Red Dust Phantom Body Art, and the phantom he left behind held that descending palm for the barest fraction of a moment.
That hair's breadth was enough. He slipped out from under it.
Damn it. A point-blank instagib.
Squeezing out from beneath that palm, Gu Chengming cursed viciously to himself.
Were all Sovereigns this underhanded?
His whole plan had been a fish-in-a-barrel run: slip in, get a look at the state of the Dragon-Qi Seed, and if anything seemed off, back out and confer with Ji Yixi about the next step. He had not counted on a Sixth Realm squatting in this fish pond — one who opened with a point-blank burst the instant they met, too impatient even for the courtesies of a duel.
More unexpected still, the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation had not so much as stirred. He and Ji Yixi had made all those arrangements to avoid tripping it, and now here it was doing nothing. The Great Qian really only ever sabotaged its own people.
Behind him the black mist was still coming, karmic threads biting into his spine. He threw seven or eight turns at it and could not shake it.
He flipped his hand over. The spirit artifact at his waist, refined from the remains of the Inverted Cause Lotus, lit up without a sound. The instant his spiritual sense touched it, Gu Chengming set "escape the depths of the Royal Court" as its directive.
Jump.
Within a single breath he stood outside the Royal Court, nine tiers of jade steps below him wrapped in a thicker layer of dusk, the lamps in the corner towers of the Imperial City kindling one after another in the distance. The Sovereign hidden deep in the Royal Court did not follow at once — but the attack he had already launched did.
The Inverted Cause Lotus could let him skip the process. It could not let him skip a causality already locked onto him.
In the next breath, blackness poured out of the sky from the direction of the Royal Court and came down to swallow Gu Chengming whole.
Alarm shot through him and he was already reaching for his trump card when the space in front of him seemed to stop dead.
The sheet of black mist bearing down on him halted an arm's length away, then dissolved like water.
At some point a figure had appeared before him. Moon-white as ever; flowing clouds unchanged.
Gu Chengming blinked — and met the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's gaze, half reproach and half grievance. "Lucky for you I was quick enough."
She sighed softly. "Why is it you always go charging into something this dangerous alone?"
Relief loosened Gu Chengming's chest at last; the figure before him carried no small measure of safety with her. Still, hearing that faintly scolding tone, he answered privately: How was I supposed to know?
He'd thought this was a fish-in-a-barrel job, and then out pops a Sovereign to instagib him point blank. Who could tank that?
He did not dare say any of it aloud, only cupped his hands properly. "…I have caused Sovereign worry."
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign looked both exasperated and pained. Her gaze left his face and settled on the churning dragon-qi over the Royal Court, and her expression turned steadily graver.
She murmured, "The Dao-Mending Jade… this is trouble."
Gu Chengming looked up. "Sovereign, what is that?"
She glanced at him, and the reproach in that glance deepened by several degrees.
This child of hers had genuinely flung himself in without learning a single thing first. All those times she had nagged him — "in any matter touching a Dharma-Station, first investigate its source" — evidently not one word had lodged.
Still, she had some grasp by now of Chengming's slightly reckless nature, so she explained patiently. "The Dharma-Station Dao-Mending Jade is also the source of the Great Qian's dragon-qi… and it exists on no main trunk at all."
Gu Chengming went still for a heartbeat as it came together.
Sixth Realm to Seventh required Dharma-Stations of the same main trunk as one's conduit. Stations from other trunks were worthless to a Sovereign. But what of a Dharma-Station belonging to no trunk whatsoever?
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign seemed to hear the question in his mind. "Because it stands on no trunk, any Sovereign, after proving the Dharma-Station of his own trunk, may patch the Dao-Mending Jade into it."
"Whichever trunk you have proven, whichever rung on that trunk you lack — it can fill the gap."
Gu Chengming's stomach dropped.
Bloody hell. Even Dharma-Stations came in broken varieties.
All at once he understood the true weight behind the Record of the Myriad Worlds' line — that nearly every Sovereign alive wanted the Dragon-Qi Seed.
The Dao-Mending Jade might not be the strongest Dharma-Station in itself, but it was the cheapest and most precious patch under heaven. Whatever anyone was missing, it could slot in and become that missing thing.
And something every power in the world would covet — the Great Qian had it sitting out in the open in the Capital?
Did that mean the Great Qian of old had been strong enough to ignore every greedy eye in existence, or had it simply been swaggering blindly for ten thousand years?
As the thought crossed his mind, the churning dragon-qi deep within the Royal Court blazed.
The Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation. Lights flared across the whole sky above the Imperial City, and a bronze bell tolled heavily from the direction of Tianshu.
And then, from somewhere unseen, three auras came tearing through the air one behind another and settled into place.
This was the true meaning of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's "this is trouble."
The auras came to rest.
Atop the palace walls, a figure appeared in each of three directions. The one to the east was a woman in a coarse blue Daoist robe, a withered peach branch tucked slantwise at her temple. Her hands were empty and her lips never parted, yet with every step she took the tiles along the palace ridge split of themselves into a hairline crack. She was styled the Raving Speech Sovereign.
The one to the west was thin nearly past the point of human shape, in white robes whose hem was soaked partway up with something that might have been pus and might have been water. When she raised a hand, her knuckles cracked and grated, and a piece of flesh was plainly missing from her palm. She was styled the Death-Saving Foul Physician Sovereign.
The north came last. He wore a sky-blue robe with a very prettily braided silk sash at the waist, and that face turned toward Gu Chengming with a small smile carrying a great deal of familiar amusement.
"Little friend." He cupped his hands at Gu Chengming. "We meet again."
None other than the black-mist Sovereign who had struck at him deep within the Royal Court — styled the Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign.
Four figures held the four directions. Raving Speech glanced at the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign and did not open her mouth, yet her voice landed in everyone's ears.
[A fine wind and a fine moon tonight. And now we are all assembled.]
The Death-Saving Foul Physician shook a petal steeped in corrosive fluid out of her sleeve and rolled it between her fingertips. The petal became ash, the ash became mist, and the mist spread out from beneath her feet.
"Assembled, then. So let us discuss."
The Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign smiled and folded both sleeves together. "The Dao-Mending Jade lies right over there. It is what every one of you wants."
He tilted his head, his gaze coming to rest meaningfully on the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign. "Surely Fellow Daoist has not come today to claim a share as well?"
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign shifted Gu Chengming half a step further behind her. "I have no interest in this affair."
"You would all do well not to obstruct me either."
The peach branch at Raving Speech's temple trembled faintly, and the whispering in the cracks of the palace tiles swept out from her side again.
[None will obstruct you. You came to guard a person. Nor do any of us wish to make an enemy of a Fellow Daoist who proved her Dao upon the Unfettered River.]
The Death-Saving Foul Physician gave a nod. The Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign smiled, a flicker of wariness crossing his eyes. "In that case, Fellow Daoist Moon-Tracing is excluded from the reckoning."
He swept a hand toward the depths of the dragon-qi. "By the rules, then."
Behind the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, Gu Chengming's expression turned complicated. Everyone seemed thoroughly afraid of Senior Flowing Cloud. Apparently the Dao of Time was universally acknowledged as a nightmare to deal with.
Fair enough, really. The Dao of Time was a broken mechanic and a monstrous fighting style, and even killing its wielder was no guarantee they were actually dead. Make a real enemy of that and you'd never sleep soundly again.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign seemed to catch that thread of distraction, and evidently misread it. She sent her voice to him directly. "From the founding of the Great Qian there has been an unwritten old covenant: once the Dragon-Qi Seed separates from the Royal Court, it returns to Heaven of its own accord."
"But if, before it returns, a Sovereign can take it down, then it counts as that Sovereign's opportunity."
Hearing that, Gu Chengming was genuinely lost for words.
Was the Great Qian's founding emperor breezily unbothered, or just staggeringly careless? Who wrote a rule that blatant, that practically invited catastrophe? By rights a rule like that was either handing your enemies a handle, or it was bait…
No — wait. Bait?
Something turned over in him, and a strange presentiment surfaced.
The Great Qian's Son of Heaven was more corpse than man. And the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation had been active for a while now with not a single Great Qian Sovereign showing his face.
As far as he knew, the Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau was a Sovereign, and the Master was an openly declared Sovereign as well. By rights it made no sense that not one of them had appeared.
It really was bait, wasn't it?
Three sides stood motionless on the palace ridge, each constraining the others, their natures mutually opposed — whoever reached out first would be pressed down by the other two together.
But that mutual restraint was only ever appearance.
The Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign's sleeve stirred in the wind, and the thread of the Floating Life Painting inside it had already crept soundlessly out of his cuff, travelling along the night breeze, along the cracks between tiles, along every angle nobody could see, pressing inch by inch toward the churning dragon-qi deep within the Royal Court.
His presence on the field was only a decoy. The real move had been played months ago.
That thread of Floating Life Painting wound around one corner of the Dragon-Qi Seed.
In the next breath, the Dharma-Station now sloughing free of the Royal Court's foundation was hooked lightly by that thread and began to drift toward him.
The Death-Saving Foul Physician Sovereign saw it and her brows snapped down in furious alarm. "You tampered with the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation long ago."
The Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign did not so much as turn his head. "You are all dodging the Great Tribulation. How could I be the exception? Only, you dodge the Tribulation itself, while I took one step further and dodged the rest of you as well."
His fingers stretched out toward the suspended Dragon-Qi Seed.
The seed shuddered, as though refusing him, or perhaps only struggling on instinct.
The peach branch at Raving Speech's temple shook three times, hard. The Foul Physician's plague-haze erupted an inch outward.
Both were a step too slow. There was no telling how long the Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign had spent laying this out; when his thread descended, even the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign had not sensed it.
The Dao-Mending Jade was about to pass into his sleeve.
And at that very moment, Gu Chengming's Unfettered Freedom Formula spun to life without warning.
His entire body went out of his control. Alarm flared through him, and before he could react an aura borrowed his body, crossed a weight of causality no one could measure, and reached a hand through from some stretch of time long since concluded.
That hand used the Unfettered Freedom Formula, used Gu Chengming, used the dragon-qi shaking over the Great Qian in this instant, and dragged itself out of a moment that had already "passed" and into the "now."
Gu Chengming cried out inwardly and could not force a single syllable past his lips.
Meanwhile, at the center of the field, three figures still faced one another.
The Raving Speech Sovereign. Dharma-Station: Delirium Branch. Once First Seat of an immortal sect's Hall of Precepts, she went mad delving into the Dao of "word becomes law," and discovered that speech itself could warp reality and causality. After betraying her sect she wandered the world with words for blades, able with one sentence to redeem the multitudes and with another to curse a Sovereign to death.
The Death-Saving Foul Physician Sovereign. Dharma-Station: Death Flower. Once a sage of the healing arts, she tested poisons on her own body in the search for a way past the boundary of life and death, fusing filth-qi with vital force to refine an uncanny Dharma-body that was neither defiled nor pure. Her flesh is half rotted and half living; she can scatter into plague-haze or gather into human form.
The Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign. Dharma-Station: Floating Life Painting. One who proves this Dharma-Station can weave, perceive, and even interfere with the dreams and deep thoughts of living beings, working his arts in the space between the real and the false. In a duel there is rarely a flash of blade or blur of sword; the opponent has already sunk into layer upon layer of illusion or Heart Demon, with no way to defend.
Each was the other's match, and being evenly matched, none dared move rashly — a three-way deadlock of mutual restraint.
And now, in the instant before the Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign claimed the Dharma-Station and that deadlock collapsed —
One of the three corners fell.
…
"Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign…"
Gu Chengming watched his own hand pass through the Corpse-Loosed Hundred Plays Sovereign's chest and pull out his heart, watched the disbelief and despair in the man's eyes, and heard his own mouth speak the next words without his consent:
"What an interesting junior."
Then the hand resting in the center of that ribcage withdrew, slowly.
A Sovereign's blood pattered onto the ground.
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