Honestly, once those three rules were laid out, Gu Chengming didn't understand a single one of them.
"Master." Gu Chengming weighed his words carefully. "...What exactly is this 'Jiahao'?"
They say skipping the plot is the same as skipping your life. Gu Chengming understood that completely now.
A whole mountain of settings he couldn't parse had appeared out of nowhere. This really was skipping your life.
The thing is, I didn't skip the plot! Who pressed Skip for me?!
He griped inwardly, and even began to suspect the End Lotus had malfunctioned and caused all this.
The Master hesitated a moment, at a loss for how to explain.
After a long pause, he finally said, "One moment, young friend."
He made a hand seal. A ripple of Dharma-Station power spread outward — yet no Dharma-Station appeared.
In its place, the phantom of an old man who bore a certain resemblance to the Master materialized behind him: one hand on his hip, the other clasped behind his back, chin tilted slightly upward.
The phantom swept a hand through the air and declared, "Since ancient times, autumn has brought sorrow and desolation—"
It paused, apparently finding this insufficient, then flung out its arm and struck an even more flamboyant pose. "But I say an autumn day surpasses the dawn of spring!"
"It's just so—"
It dragged out the "so" as though preparing to append some weighty closing statement, then failed to find a suitable word and froze in place.
"?" A question mark practically sprouted above Gu Chengming's head.
Hold on. Who asked you?
The Master sighed and explained helplessly, "This thing is the 'Jiahao.'"
"There is a rule pressing down over the Capital these days. Even an ordinary Sovereign arriving here finds himself suppressed by thirty percent. The most critical clause of it is that a Sovereign can no longer openly and properly call forth his own Dharma-Station."
"What comes forth instead is this phantom."
The Master glanced again at the phantom, which was still holding its exaggerated pose. Obligingly, it switched to another — arms folded, face turned to the side, chin raised.
Withdrawing his gaze, the Master continued, "A Jiahao possesses no will of its own. Think of it as a projection formed where the nature of a Dharma-Station merges with the character of the one who holds it. The more flamboyant it is, the more singular and unlike anyone else, the greater the Dharma-Station's power it can draw upon."
Listening to this, Gu Chengming felt distinctly odd.
Hold on. So we've got Stand users now?
He suddenly felt a stab of pity for all those Sovereigns still on the road to the Capital, cut off from the news. They were probably still dreaming of "catching the Great Tribulation and scooping up a Dharma-Station," utterly unaware that the fashion in the Capital had turned into this.
Seeing Gu Chengming sink into thought, the Master assumed he was digesting the finer points of the rule and did not press him. Discreetly, he dismissed the rather eye-offending phantom.
Instead he drew a bound volume from his sleeve and offered it. "When Qingmu created Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, this old man studied it alongside her, and set down a few crude insights of my own."
"You are an heir of the Zhouli lineage, young friend. Perhaps it may be of some use."
Gu Chengming accepted it with both hands and thanked him for his kindness.
The Master exchanged a few more pleasantries, then rose and took his leave. His figure turned a corner in the corridor beyond the curtain and was gathered gently away by the night.
Only after he was gone did the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, who had not once cut in, speak up. "It is more or less as he says."
She shifted her low stool closer and picked up the chatter the Master had interrupted. "Here in the Capital, there is less I can do to help you now."
Gu Chengming cupped his hands. "I have already imposed on you enough, Sovereign."
"It's hardly an imposition." The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign blinked, seemed about to say something, swallowed it, and launched into another ramble instead.
"This matter isn't entirely bad for you, either. The Capital's means of suppressing Sovereigns mean that any ordinary Sovereign who comes here cannot use his full strength. Should you meet a situation like the last one again in this place, at least you won't be driven into such straits."
"Whether you seek to evade the tribulation or to seek fortune, the Capital is a fine place to be at present."
Listening to her ramble, Gu Chengming was genuinely moved.
Connecting it to what the Master had said, he thought back to how, when he'd woken, he had found her dozing beside his hand.
Come to think of it, that must be another consequence of the rules restricting Dharma-Stations, mustn't it?
He chose his words with care and said warmly, "Senior has worn herself out these past days. The Capital's customs are strange enough as it is, and still you must go to all this trouble on my behalf. I truly cannot bear it."
The tips of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's ears went red. She had been waiting this whole time for some reaction from her young friend regarding that particular "sleeping face" maneuver of hers — and he hadn't mentioned it at all.
She had assumed he was holding back to spare her embarrassment. Now, hearing how politely distant his words were, a subtle disappointment crept in instead.
She wanted to circle back, to steer the conversation toward that unintentional little nap and test his reaction — but the words reached her lips and went back down again.
The book had been clear on the point: the trick of this maneuver lay in "doing it and forgetting it." Anything too deliberate marked you as an amateur.
So the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign silently pressed the line back down, changed tack, and reeled off a whole string of small cautions instead, finishing with, "Remember them well."
Gu Chengming agreed to every one of them, and as the night deepened, he took his leave.
After he had gone, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign returned to her desk. The slim volume she had kept hidden there for several days now still lay open, its title perfectly forthright.
— A Veteran Harmonious Joy Sect Female Cultivator Teaches You How to Capture the Heart of the Cultivator You Fancy.
Author: Fu Xiaoxiao.
It had cost her no small effort to obtain. Its compiler was said to rank among the top three within the Harmonious Joy Sect, trained under a famous master, rich in experience, and her writing was blunt, plain, and easy to follow — perfectly suited to a clumsy beginner like herself.
The book lay open at the seventh section, its heading especially arresting:
[Facing a male cultivator newly recovered from grave injury, one may feign having dozed off beside his hand out of careless nursing, so that this is the first sight he meets on waking. The depth of the heart-stirring it produces far exceeds a thousand words.]
She understood the principle. But when her young friend had woken, his expression had not looked nearly as heart-stirred as the book described.
She sighed and turned the page.
Section Eight was On the Skillful Use of Friends to Convey One's Meaning Indirectly.
She thought it over. According to this method, she would first have to find a friend well acquainted with her young friend, entrust her feelings to that person, and let them pass the message along.
But she scarcely knew a soul in today's cultivation world.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign closed the book and let out a long sigh.
She had always walked the path of the cold, aloof sword cultivator — moonlight, wind, and frost. Asking her to turn on her heel overnight was, frankly, a bit much to demand of a person.
— Perhaps she could go and ask the book's author for guidance?
Meanwhile, Gu Chengming, who had been through no small number of events lately, looked at the state of the outside world and fell into deep thought.
The waiter at the door of a teahouse was drumming up custom. By rights, that trade called for a welcoming smile — but whatever nerve had been struck in this particular waiter, he was slouched sideways against the doorframe with his chin cocked high. "Cus~tom~er."
He dragged the syllables out. "Step right inside."
"Other teahouses brew their tea from tea leaves. They fuss over harmony, respect, purity, and stillness. Our teahouse uses no tea leaves at all. We fuss over letting the Dao follow Nature!" The waiter snapped his rag through the air and put on a you-get-it kind of look. "— it's just so!"
The proprietor of a rice shop was haggling with a longtime customer over the price of a peck of rice. By rights this was an occasion for bargaining, for sharp tongues and sharper words.
Instead the proprietor opened with, "Ah, Old Zhang. The wind today is awfully clamorous, isn't it?"
By rights, the Wanton Joy Sovereign's rules should only take effect on Sovereigns. Dharma-Stations suppressed, phantoms requiring a Jiahao — these were constraints the rule placed on the Sixth Realm, with nothing whatsoever to do with mortals.
So what was wrong with these people?
He followed that thread a while, and gradually the shape of it came clear.
The rules did not act on mortals directly. But the Capital had been altogether too eventful of late. The bells of the Heaven-Honoring Grand Formation, heaven and earth overturned above the Imperial City, the earth veins shuddering — even a blind man would have noticed a string of disturbances like that.
And where there is a disturbance in the world, there is rumor.
"I hear that once a Sovereign enters the Capital he has to put on a performance. The flashier, the stronger."
"I hear even that Master has to do it."
"I hear..."
Rumor passes from one to two, from two to three, and by the time it reaches the vegetable market it is no longer rumor. It is fashion.
The logic of the Capital's populace was really quite sound: if even Sovereigns have to be Jiahao, then wouldn't we common mortals be marking ourselves as inferior by not being a little Jiahao ourselves?
Nobody knew whether being Jiahao actually did any good. But it surely couldn't hurt, could it? What if it worked?
What if some passing Sovereign caught sight of you and decided this lad's bones were extraordinary? What if some street got showered with a heaven-sent opportunity for being sufficiently Jiahao?
Under that herd instinct, the mood and the face of the Capital had become something that left Gu Chengming rather at a loss.
Then again, the whole business wasn't doing any great harm.
Gu Chengming decided to let it lie for now and went to find Ji Yixi instead. The dragon-qi affair had, after all, been a scheme the two of them hatched together, and he ought to ask how things stood on Her Highness's side.
Ji Yixi's residence.
When Gu Chengming stepped through the door, Ji Yixi was sitting at her desk, one finger resting lightly on a jade slip, her expression distant.
The little black dragon on her shoulder reacted first, sliding off with a slap and landing squarely on the floor tiles, all four claws set.
"Welcome, Gu—" It stalled on the surname, apparently weighing whether to follow it with "Venerable Ancestor" or "Director."
In the end it settled on a compromise. "Welcome, Fellow Daoist Gu!"
Only then did Ji Yixi draw her gaze back from the jade slip. She rose as though to perform a formal salute, then seemed to think that excessive and made a simple bow instead. "Gu... Director Gu."
Gu Chengming's foot, just over the threshold, paused.
— Er? Director?
His first instinct was that she'd simply gotten used to "Deputy Director" and let her tongue run past it. But seeing the I-have-something-to-say look on her face, he judged that this wasn't the pressing matter and set the flicker of confusion aside.
"There's no need for such courtesy, Your Highness."
Gu Chengming cupped his hands. "I've come because there are some things I'd like to make clear with you."
Ji Yixi seemed to have anticipated his purpose. She invited him to sit opposite her and returned to her own place at the desk.
Half a low table lay between them. Neither spoke first.
In the end it was Ji Yixi who sighed. "Fellow Daoist Gu, this was my own failure of foresight."
Her fingertip scraped lightly along the edge of the jade slip. "I thought that drawing you into the Royal Court, and investigating the dragon-qi seed in the Imperial Astronomical Bureau's blind spot, would be the whole of it. I never imagined my royal father and the Master had been laying pieces here for a hundred years, and had turned this place into what it is."
She paused. "That I dragged you into danger is my fault."
She wasn't being modest. She was holding herself to account.
— An heir of the Record of the Myriad Worlds ought to observe the divergences of all things. On matters within the Great Qian royal house itself, at the very least, she should never have been this passive.
[The Record of the Myriad Worlds gave an ill-timed cold snort: I told you long ago there was no need to help these two fools.]
[She may hold the Record of the Myriad Worlds, but she doesn't necessarily know more than you do, and most of what she does know she can't tell you anyway. What exactly do you gain from cooperating with a being who does nothing but drag you down?]
You're carrying a lot of resentment, Gu Chengming noted silently.
He suspected the Record of the Myriad Worlds had lived through something genuinely unbearable on that destroyed world line — something that might well have led to its present state — or it would never hold such a grudge against Ji Yixi.
That said, this I-see-through-everything-you-fools attitude of hers really was insufferable.
Gu Chengming tossed back an offhand line in his mind. "You didn't observe it either, did you?"
The Record of the Myriad Worlds went instantly silent.
She had indeed known nothing whatsoever of the arrangements the Master and the Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau had laid over the Capital's dragon-qi, and found herself briefly mortified.
Ji Yixi, of course, hadn't heard that exchange. She pressed her lips together, as though she had a great deal more to say and no idea where to begin.
At last she raised her eyes and bowed solemnly. "In any case — my thanks, Director Gu."
Gu Chengming nodded, then couldn't leave it alone.
"Your Highness." He picked his words. "These two words, 'Director'..."
Ji Yixi looked at his face and blinked, taken aback.
"Oh? I thought Director Zhou had already informed you."
At that, something dropped in Gu Chengming's chest.
Ji Yixi drew a scroll of official documents from her sleeve and passed it over. Its cover bore two vermilion seals — one of the Great Qian court, one of the Night-Watch Bureau.
[By imperial edict, Gu Chengming is invested as Director of the Night-Watch Bureau.]
"?"
What did that mean, Director of the Night-Watch Bureau?
The fact that he was now Director took a while to turn over in his head.
If he was Director, then what about Zhou Qingmu?
Before he could ask, Ji Yixi guessed the question and answered first. "The present Director Zhou is now Deputy Director Zhou."
"?"
Hold on. Since when does a demotion come with this?!
[Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, smiling: Excellent. Chengming, we may now be said to have reached the summit of office.]
[Recalling how it felt back then, coming down the mountain and gazing out at the Capital from afar — today's success feels almost inevitable.]
[Not that there was anything wrong with serving the people as a lowly squad officer of the Night-Watch Bureau. But this Director's seat — now that is a wide-open sky.]
Miss Zhouli, Gu Chengming thought, this really isn't the time to be stealing other people's lines.
That aside, he was genuinely preoccupied with the business of "my own Director inexplicably becoming Deputy Director, and me inexplicably becoming her superior."
Reading his confusion again, Ji Yixi explained, "It's because of the dragon-qi affair... Director Zhou took the responsibility upon herself, and recommended you to my royal father to succeed her as the new Director of the Night-Watch Bureau."
She stopped short of saying more.
By rights, although the proposal was outwardly Zhou Qingmu's alone, not a single voice at court or beyond had objected — and even her royal father had agreed at once. That degree of smoothness was itself faintly uncanny.
But she turned the thought over privately and kept it to herself.
Gu Chengming was baffled too.
Through the whole dragon-qi affair, Zhou Qingmu could hardly be said to have earned merit, but she certainly hadn't erred either. This move of hers, stepping aside for another, didn't look like shrugging off a burden. It looked more like shrugging off a set of shackles.
After all, in this Capital, someone who surrenders power of their own accord bears far more thinking about than someone who reaches out to grasp it.
Ji Yixi glanced at him several more times as though on the verge of speaking, and in the end only nudged the scroll of investiture a little further toward him and said nothing more.
Without question, he now held the highest office in the Capital of anyone from any sect, past or present.
Second only to one man and above ten thousand within the Night-Watch Bureau — and with the favor the Master had laid down besides, calling him a power at court would not be an exaggeration.
As for the aftermath of the dragon-qi affair, it seemed Ji Yixi wasn't the only one carrying it.
Zhou Qingmu had originally intended to seize the opportunity of the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains being unsealed to find some fortune there and make a run at the Sixth Realm. Gu Chengming had held the same intent — partly to make early contact with the gateway to a Dharma-Station, partly to lend his old superior a hand along the way.
Unfortunately, the string of wild escalations along the way had flipped that perfectly good plan clean off the table.
So from the moment he learned he had become Director, he decided to go find Zhou Qingmu first.
...
In a side hall of the Night-Watch Bureau, the scent of tea still hung in the air.
When Gu Chengming pushed the door open, Zhou Qingmu was seated beneath the window annotating a stack of documents. She looked up at the sound.
Seeing Gu Chengming in the doorway, official robes not yet donned, her eyes curved — and then she gave him a perfectly proper, formal salute.
"Director! Good afternoon!"
The salute was executed by the book, which instantly reminded Gu Chengming of how she had looked back in the Tianque Secret Realm, disguised as Chief Banner Officer Shen Jinghong.
Director Zhou had thrown herself into that performance with relish. In hindsight, that acting had apparently been a genuine expression of her true self.
"Director... stop making fun of me."
"I wouldn't dare." Zhou Qingmu laughed as she poured his tea. "You're the Director now."
She pushed the cup toward him, her tone loosening.
"Just call me Little Qing."
Gu Chengming silently picked up the cup, weighed that "Little Qing" in his mind, and found himself briefly at a loss for how to answer his old superior.
"I was going to come find you once you woke, and here you've come knocking first." Zhou Qingmu set the teapot back on the table. "Why not rest a while longer?"
"I wasn't badly hurt. There's no need for more rest. But, Director... what exactly is this whole business about?"
"What could it be about?" Zhou Qingmu raised an eyebrow. "The Night-Watch Bureau has always gone to the most capable. You're stronger than I am, so of course the Director's seat should be yours."
She laughed again as she spoke, and then — as if afraid the words would weigh on him — added a little more.
"Don't feel pressured, Little Gu. I really do mean it. I've always thought this Director's post was too hard to hold. During the stretch when you were away from the Capital, I lay awake night after night working out arguments and inducements, all just to trick you into coming back to assist me."
"But after all this, something suddenly clicked."
"You're growing too fast. Sooner or later you were going to need a wider sky."
"And if that's so, why does it have to be you assisting me? Me assisting you works just as well, doesn't it?"
She spread her hands and smiled. "So I recommended you to His Majesty."
Her rhetoric really was a practiced thing.
The indignation Gu Chengming had come armed with on her behalf fell apart entirely in the face of that smooth, flowing speech. Director Zhou's maneuver left him feeling no debt of gratitude at all — if anything, it sounded like she'd come out ahead and was playing modest about it.
In the end all he could do was nod with a rueful smile. "I'll remember the Director's kindness in this."
"Director this, Director that." Zhou Qingmu topped off his cup. "We're colleagues now. By seniority, you've no business being so formal with me."
So the "call me Little Qing" proposal was going to be enforced in practice after all.
Gu Chengming took a sip of tea and quietly changed the subject. "Then what does the Director intend to do next?"
Zhou Qingmu caught the meaning under the question. Little Gu was of course asking about the Dharma-Station.
A moment's thought told her that the boy's grasp of the Capital's new rules was surface-deep at best, the actual mechanics still beyond him.
"You already know about the Capital's new rules... the new Jiahao rules."
"They do sound absurd." Zhou Qingmu laughed. "But this particular rule is actually quite favorable to half-step Sixth Realm cultivators."
Surprised, Gu Chengming settled into an attentive posture.
Zhou Qingmu went on to explain.
What was sealed and pressed down within the Capital's earth veins was the Wanton Joy Sovereign's entire main trunk. Every Dharma-Station upon it had already come loose from its original ownership and turned into a masterless Jiahao, drifting through the seams of the rules.
So Jiahao were not to be found only beside Sixth Realm Sovereigns. There were also the Jiahao conjured out of ownerless Dharma-Stations.
Hearing that, Gu Chengming stared. "...So all the Dharma-Stations that Wanton Joy Sovereign once proved have now become wild Jiahao?"
Saying the phrase "wild Jiahao" out loud produced a distinctly absurd sensation.
"Correct." Zhou Qingmu nodded firmly.
Gu Chengming grumbled inwardly.
Damn. So they're not Stands after all — they're Pokemon!
"But isn't it only a Dharma-Station's rules that can contend against a Dharma-Station? How could an ordinary Fifth Realm cultivator go head to head with a wild Jiahao?"
"That's the most elegant part of this rule." Zhou Qingmu raised an eyebrow. "An ordinary half-step Sixth Realm cultivator who wants to prove a Dharma-Station has to prepare for ten deaths and no way out. Dharma-Stations are hard enough to prove as it is, and most of them have to be wrested by force from another Sovereign's hands."
"Here in the Capital it's different. The method for proving a Dharma-Station is no longer a fight to the death with another Sovereign. It's hauling a wild Jiahao out of the earth veins' rules by force."
"And the strangest part... it isn't only the Sixth Realm that can possess a Jiahao of its own."
"The Fifth Realm can as well." As she finished, a phantom surfaced soundlessly in the empty air behind her.
Its outline bore a certain resemblance to her, but its bearing was considerably more flamboyant than the woman herself.
One hand behind its back, the other resting on the hilt of a saber that did not exist at its waist, chin slightly lifted, gaze fixed straight ahead.
"Had Heaven not given birth to me, Zhou Qingmu—"
"—the Great Qian would be one long endless night!"
"?"
Gu Chengming pulled his eyes away from the phantom and looked at Zhou Qingmu.
"When exactly did the Director come up with that line?"
Zhou Qingmu's gaze drifted half an inch to the side in a distinctly telling way.
"Just now. While I was waiting for you."
Gu Chengming: "..."
So the better part of an hour you spent waiting for me was spent workshopping that one line?
Gu Chengming was still trying to stack the two images on top of each other in his head. It took him a while to catch up.
Which meant that any cultivator with a real hope of pushing into the Sixth Realm would certainly be heading for the Great Qian's Capital.
"Precisely." Zhou Qingmu spelled it out for him. "Over the next while a wave of Fifth Realm cultivators will be arriving. You, our new Director, had best be mentally prepared."
She went on to explain the "method of congealing" a Jiahao.
First, sketch out an empty shell within your heart, then pour into it your obsessions, your wildest fancies, your arrogance, and the nature of the Dharma-Station, all together.
The ordinary person can only congeal a single Jiahao.
And, of course, congealing one on the spot wasn't remotely realistic.
Gu Chengming committed it all to memory and thanked her, then lifted his eyes to Zhou Qingmu and said with a bright smile, "In that case, I'll certainly not go back on what I promised the Director before. If you need help, just say the word. I'll not shirk it."
He meant, of course, his earlier promise to guard her while she proved a Dharma-Station inside the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains.
Except the situation had shifted. The remains had become rules, and the Dharma-Stations had become wild Jiahao.
Still, a promise was a promise. If "seeking fortune inside the remains" had to be swapped out for "going pet-catching with the Director," so be it.
Watching him, Zhou Qingmu felt her heart lurch, and sat there stunned for a good long while.
Her gaze stayed fixed on that bright, open smile of Little Gu's without moving, and she wondered how on earth he could smile so beautifully.
He'd always smiled at her exactly like that before. Why did it look like a completely different person this time?
Either this time was different, or she was.
Some small thought she had never dared look at directly had crept quietly out into the open.
This Little Gu really is a treasure.
She even half regretted never having leveraged her authority to proposition him back when she had it.
Though on second thought — perhaps she could find some way to get him to proposition her instead...?
"Director, you're drooling," Gu Chengming pointed out.
Zhou Qingmu sat bolt upright and wiped her mouth.
____
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