With those four lines of Jiahao spoken, the Delirium Jìntian was not the only one on the field breaking into a cold sweat.
That crowd of Fifth Realm cultivators who had been baiting the Night-Watch Bureau moments ago all pulled their heads down at once, looking for all the world like a row of big turtles.
There was no question that even before Gu Chengming revealed his own Jiahao, he and Zhou Qingmu — the Great Qian power they represented — had been the chief focus of every Fifth Realm cultivator present.
It was not only that the Night-Watch Bureau's official Great Qian standing already gave them a heavy edge in this contest over the Dharma-Station. Zhou Qingmu's raw combat strength, laid out plainly for all to see, was a point that demanded attention too.
She had made it obvious she could hold off several opponents at once, and with the weight of Great Qian officialdom stacked on top of that, so many advantages snowballing together meant her odds were already very good indeed.
So Zhou Qingmu had to be dealt with first; only then would the other Fifth Realm cultivators have any real chance at seizing the Dharma-Station.
All of that would have happened on its own even if the Delirium Jìntian had never arranged it in advance.
What she had not foreseen, not in the slightest, was this:
— a newcomer had just entered the world of Jiahao.
"Let this Heavenly Dao fall entire into my palm!"
What the hell was that?!
She had known this Murderous Demon of Snowfall Pass was somewhat absurd — the rumors she had half heard and the readings her own divinations had turned up both said the same thing, that Gu Chengming was not to be measured against ordinary cultivators. She had thought that treating him as a peer of Zhou Qingmu was already respect enough. Evidently it was not enough at all.
The Delirium Jìntian's face remained composed. Inwardly she had already started cursing.
She ran back through what had just happened. Yes, Gu Chengming's Jiahao line had been exaggerated to a preposterous degree — but exaggeration was only exaggeration. The Jiahao rules had appeared just days ago; everyone was still groping their way through them, and the finer particulars had yet to be dug out.
If whoever had the more outrageous Jiahao simply took everything, then they might as well have designated one supreme Jiahao at the moment of condensation and handed it every Dharma-Station the Wanton Joy Sovereign had ever held.
Put plainly: the rule that "the more Jiahao a Jiahao is, the stronger it is" still came down, in the end, to who was steering the thing.
There were no weak Jiahao, only weak cultivators!
That was it. Gu Chengming's Jiahao only had a big line. A Fourth Realm cultivator's ability to drive it might not keep pace at all.
Having talked herself through it this way, the Delirium Jìntian gradually cooled down.
The line across from her did sound fiercer, true. But her own was hardly at a disadvantage.
So her state of mind shifted from stunned, to frightened, to self-consolation, and finally to a hardened resolve —
Fine. I'll burn it all down with you.
The Delirium Jìntian let out a cold laugh, and the phantom behind her — white robes embroidered with silver — lifted one hand.
Her Jiahao had always been close to a physical embodiment of the Dharma-Station "Delirium Branch."
Delirium, as the name said: raving nonsense made true, a lie touching ground and becoming law.
Once magnified by the Jiahao rules, this phantom's function in combat was simpler still. Whatever came out of her mouth, her Jiahao could drive the rules to force that sentence into fact, here, on this spot.
So the moment the Delirium Jìntian's Jiahao was let loose, everything in the field would be ruled by her "word."
Watching the standoff open up, the several Fifth Realm cultivators around them felt half the weight lift off their shoulders.
When the Delirium Jìntian first stepped out, their hearts had sunk. However one looked at her preparations, at the posture she struck, it was all far too overbearing — for a while they had thought her odds better even than Zhou Qingmu's.
And then the next moment a monster with even better odds crawled out of the woodwork.
Fine. Now the situation had nothing whatsoever to do with them.
But they had worked out one thing: two poles in opposition beat one dominant power. If those two really slammed into each other, there might yet be muddy water to fish in.
The Fifth Realm cultivators exchanged glances and, without a word passing between them, stepped back.
Zhou Qingmu caught every one of those small movements and scoffed. So the ones who had shouted "what Heaven gives, to Heaven returns" the loudest were also the quickest to retreat.
Seizing the moment, she sent Gu Chengming a voice transmission.
"Careful with this one. She's the Jìntian of the Delirium lineage. Her ability is very hard to shake off."
Gu Chengming frowned slightly.
The Jìntian of the Delirium lineage… a Jìntian of the Eternal Life Sect? Eternal Life Sect people again?
The transmission had been too brief, so he simply pinned her as one of theirs — after all, the title Jìntian generally referred to those few at the very top of the Eternal Life Sect's elder ranks.
The next instant the Ten Perfections Sword Formation unfolded and swept straight in. He found a breath to speak.
"You're a Jìntian of the Eternal Life Sect?"
Something stirred in her at that. She had heard the loathing in his voice, and remembered that the name Murderous Demon of Snowfall Pass had been earned by killing Eternal Life Sect followers.
A moment's consideration and she could guess that this Director Gu had some old grudge with the sect.
The Delirium lineage had split from the Eternal Life Sect long ago; strictly speaking, she and its orthodoxy were fire and water — traitors are sometimes more hateful than enemies. But she had no intention of explaining that parting of ways.
In the present situation, "Eternal Life Sect" was a chip she could play.
If she used that identity to shake this young Director's Dao Heart, the Delirium lineage's Dharma-Station could widen its advantage.
Clearly misreading Gu Chengming as a man carrying some blood feud with the sect, she answered, "And what if I am?" — meaning to unsettle him.
The words had barely left her when she saw his gaze harden with resolve.
The Delirium Jìntian: "?"
Zhou Qingmu, watching from the side, saw it all clearly, and privately offered the woman a moment of silence.
The next instant, without another word, Gu Chengming came in with a punch.
The Harmonious Joy Sect's Sword Domain spread out with him at its center, all ten swords deployed, Cling sword intent circulating through the formation and sealing off every Retreat around the Delirium Jìntian, one by one.
Then his Jiahao phantom surged forward from behind him and slammed head-on into hers.
Ora ora.
The sound of two phantoms colliding in midair wasn't the ear-splitting crash of ordinary cultivators trading blows. It was heavier, duller — a muffled pounding.
Every impact rolled a visible ring of shockwave through the air around them. The Fifth Realm cultivators on the outer ring all fell back another half step, wearing very different expressions.
The Delirium Jìntian drove her Jiahao to meet him. For the first several exchanges her whole mind was bound up in defense; she had no attention to spare for reading the situation.
That four-line Jiahao declaration had been too terrifying. Without thinking, she had begun treating Gu Chengming as something that might grind her to pieces at any moment.
But as the ora-ora exchange dragged on, doubt began to creep in.
If his Jiahao truly was what those four lines proclaimed — let this Heavenly Dao fall entire into my palm —
then what she should be feeling right now was a crushing weight bearing down from the level of the Dharma-Station itself. Like Sixth Realm over Fifth. Like trunk over branch. Like heaven over earth — an order that could not be defied.
She felt nothing of the kind.
Every punch his Jiahao threw was heavy and vicious, yes, but it felt like brute strength from the one steering it, not the downward pressure of a higher Station.
Delight leapt up in her.
His Jiahao held no dominion over hers, none of that authority a higher Dharma-Station exercised over a lower one.
And if there was no suppression, then his Jiahao stood no higher than her own. And if the two were level, her advantage swallowed the field whole.
Because her Jiahao's ability was this: so long as the Jiahao did not die, she herself could take no harm at all.
In other words, to beat her, one first had to beat her Jiahao.
And as everyone knew, a Jiahao was the outward sign of a Dharma-Station. Apart from a higher Dharma-Station on the main trunk exerting dominion over a lower one, no other concept could wound a Dharma-Station itself.
For Fifth Realm cultivators, at least, that held true.
She relaxed by degrees. Seen this way, she need only stall — let the boy burn through that Hunyuan Sect and sword-cultivator true essence of his, and the match was hers for the taking.
The Fifth Realm cultivators ringed around them seemed to have grasped the same thing — that Gu Chengming's Jiahao had no hold over hers — and restless thoughts began to stir.
On the other side, though, the scene in Gu Chengming's own field of vision was something else entirely.
One of his Jiahao's abilities was letting him see the health bar hanging above an enemy's head. This time, when he looked above the Delirium Jìntian, he found her bar locked.
The white-and-silver phantom behind her, however, had an HP value floating over it.
Gu Chengming considered this. So killing this Eternal Life Sect elite mob meant killing her Jiahao first?
— A mechanics boss, then.
Thinking so, he turned all ten flying swords around at once.
And sent them hacking at the white-and-silver phantom.
The Delirium Jìntian didn't react at first, and the Fifth Realm cultivators on the outer ring, watching his swords wheel toward the phantom instead of her, all arrived at more or less the same thought: has this brat lost his mind?
When she did catch up, a sense of pure absurdity welled in her, and she laughed coldly despite herself.
Turning his sword-points on her Jiahao — what on earth was he thinking? Had he realized his defeat was sealed and gone mad?
The thought had barely landed when she saw a fist crash into her Jiahao's chest.
A dull thud. The chest caved in.
The Delirium Jìntian: "?"
She saw it plainly. That wasn't damage his Jiahao had done to hers. That was Gu Chengming himself, in the flesh, stepping up and throwing a punch.
She had heard the rumors about how hard Gu Chengming hit. But what the hell was this? Was this what people meant by hitting hard?
Before she could work out how he was managing to wound it at all, the ten flying swords swept back through.
Ting — ting — ting —
The HP above the white-and-silver phantom grew shorter and shorter, and from where she stood, her Jiahao was being beaten steadily backward.
The Delirium Jìntian was simply dumbfounded. She even forgot that this was the moment to drive Word Becomes Law and slap on a patch.
How could some junior at the mere Fourth Realm cut open her Jiahao — the projection of a Dharma-Station — with ten ordinary flying swords?
The onlooking Fifth Realm cultivators were baffled too. Only Zhou Qingmu wore the look of someone who had seen it coming.
And then came the epic, super-mighty, invincible thunder punch Gu Chengming had been winding up.
One blow. A roar like collapsing sky.
The health bar above the white-and-silver phantom bottomed out. The phantom broke apart from the top down, dissolving into a wisp of pale silver-white smoke that the night wind blew away to nothing.
In that instant the bar above the Delirium Jìntian's own head, locked until now, finally lit — and because her Jiahao had collapsed, the backlash had already taken its cut. The bar was not full when it appeared.
Gu Chengming's eyes settled on her.
The health bar was up. Now it was time to get to work.
Just then, another figure appeared in the empty air at his side, without sound or warning.
A white-haired girl, small of frame, barefoot on nothing, her expression arrogant in the extreme.
It was the Hundred Bones Resonance.
— Endless War God, come forth! CG activated.
At some point she had quietly slipped out on her own, and now she looked down at the Delirium Jìntian from above.
She muttered something the woman could not understand at all.
"Let's take her together, Heavenly Emperor Gu."
The Delirium Jìntian: "??!"
The Fifth Realm cultivators on the outer ring hadn't caught up either. The Frost Cloud Immortal Maiden even leaned toward the Wandering Swordsman of the Eastern Reaches and whispered, "This Lord Gu — does he have a second Jiahao?"
"Impossible! The rule here is that a cultivator can condense only one Jiahao."
"Then what is that phantom?"
They looked at one another. Nobody had an answer.
Zhou Qingmu's face had gone subtle too. She had thought she'd worked out eighty percent of the boy's hidden cards, and then she looked up and found a white-haired girl he had never once mentioned to her.
As Little Gu's deputy, being reduced to watching "white-haired girl descends from the heavens" alongside a handful of outer-ring rogue cultivators was, frankly, a little humiliating.
But this was hardly the moment to dwell on it. She pushed the flicker of grievance down and put her attention back on the fight, keeping a close watch on the Fifth Realm cultivators around her in case one of them meant to move in and fish in muddy water.
She could not act carelessly. She had to stand here to hold the others in check — and if things went badly, she might have to hold off every Fifth Realm cultivator present by herself.
As for Gu Chengming, he remained entirely oblivious to that thread of quiet grievance in his own Deputy Director's heart.
The red-gold phantom and the white-haired girl raised their arms at the same moment, their fist-force locking together in midair into a single stroke.
— In. Fi. Nite. Love.
The next instant, that fused gold-and-crimson force came down.
The Delirium Jìntian's mouth fell open.
Violent true essence surged skyward with a roar that shattered the void, punching clean through the heavy curtain of night.
The aftershock did not disperse over the field. It became a line of light tearing across the night sky, spreading toward the horizon — dragging the Capital bodily out of deep night and into daylight ahead of its hour.
…
On East Street in the Capital, Old Li, who sold hot soup, jerked his head up from his creaking wooden stool.
He had been dozing behind his stall. That sound, carried across who knew how many streets, had hauled him bodily out of a dream about whether his son would ever find a wife.
Old Li rubbed his eyes and squinted out into the flood of brightness beyond.
"Eh?" he muttered to himself, twisting around to look at his mutton soup pot, only just set on the stove and not yet lit.
That wasn't right. He distinctly remembered setting up at the Hour of the Tiger.
How was it already dawn?
…
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