The cultivation world has never lacked for strange sights — take the one unfolding right now.
Statistically speaking, what are the odds of surviving after being hit by Infinite Love?
Zero.
Plenty of them hadn't died to Infinite Love head-on, admittedly. But there was no denying it: every last person who ever ate that punch went and died-died, meow.
Put another way, every mortal enemy who ever pushed Gu Chengming into using this particular method had, essentially, ended up dead.
In a certain sense, that made it something of a conceptual ability.
And right now, that conceptual ability had run into a small problem.
It had produced its first cultivator to take the punch and not die — the Delirium Jìntian.
Fighting a cultivator of the Delirium lineage had always been a maddening affair, and the reason came down to four words: word becomes law.
In the Capital as it stood now, that maddening quality had only been amplified.
Because her destined Jiahao could touch a lie and make it truth, could take a falsehood and settle it into law.
It was thanks to precisely that, upon foreseeing her own possible death, that the Delirium Jìntian was able to bring out the greatest method of her life to dodge this one strike.
Watching that fist swell larger and larger, she gritted her teeth and spoke. "I — am not here!"
In the same instant the punch came down, her whole body thinned into a wisp of phantom and scattered with a hiss of air.
The red-gold force of the blow slammed into a pocket of emptiness. No crunch of flesh, no snap of bone. Gu Chengming blinked.
Huh?
He looked down at his own fist, then at the patch of void beneath his feet that was slowly congealing solid again, and clicked his tongue.
The Hundred Bones Resonance puffed out her cheeks, thoroughly put out, like someone whose story had been cut off halfway through.
"Heavenly Emperor Gu! One got away!"
Fast on her feet, Gu Chengming thought. Then he lifted his eyes from the empty ground before him and let them settle on the ring of Fifth Realm cultivators frozen in place all around.
The atmosphere had already been pushed to its peak.
The Delirium Jìntian's "if I do not speak, the world falls silent," Gu Chengming's "I will have this Heavenly Dao entire within my palm" — the two sides had looked ready to crash together in earth-shaking fashion. Instead, the two high-tier Jiahao had settled it in a single exchange, the plot turning faster than a storyteller flipping a page, leaving a whole field of Fifth Realm cultivators with no idea how to react.
Gu Chengming stood in the middle of it with his hands behind his back. He didn't strictly need to say anything more, but he had never been the type to leave people guessing at riddles.
"Does anyone else still wish to contest it?" He paused. "If not, then the matter's closed. The Dharma-Station goes to our Director."
Ah — no. He was the Director now.
He hurried to patch it. "Our Deputy Director."
Standing behind him, Zhou Qingmu felt something stir. Somehow those two words — Deputy Director — sounded even better coming out of Gu Chengming's mouth than the "Little Qing" she'd been imagining.
Unfortunately, that rosy little atmosphere had no chance to spread before the people beside them, entirely deaf to romance, cut it short.
The Sect Head of the Central Province had been the first after the Raving Speech Jìntian to stir up trouble, and he was also the one least willing to let this Dharma-Station go.
He ground his teeth and was about to offer some polite variation on "hold a moment" — then saw the Hundred Bones Resonance's gaze slide toward him, and swallowed the words whole.
The Hundred Bones Resonance sniffed. "Heavenly Emperor Gu, none of them want to fight anymore. What now?"
Then everyone goes home happy, Gu Chengming thought.
The Hundred Bones Resonance pouted. "But This Emperor still wants to fight."
She glanced at the Sect Head of the Central Province, then down at her own conspicuously empty fists, with all the grievance of a child whose brand-new toy had been confiscated the moment she took it out.
Fine, Gu Chengming thought. The next moment he tipped his chin up. "Then beat up a few more."
The Sect Head of the Central Province: "?"
The Hundred Bones Resonance lit up with delight and launched herself forward with a gleeful ORA ORA ORA.
The Sect Head of the Central Province finally forced out his "hold — a — mo—" — but the back half of it never made it out of his throat before a fist punched it back down.
He rolled three times across the ground, hauled himself up filthy and disheveled, opened his mouth to try again, and was flattened by another punch.
The Frost Cloud Immortal Maiden saw which way the wind was blowing and moved to cast a technique and leave — only for one of Gu Chengming's flying swords to pin her where she stood.
She whipped her head around, eyes wide, and met Gu Chengming's pleasant smile, the one that said: and where might Senior be going?
The Wandering Swordsman of the Eastern Reaches tried kowtowing. "This one knows he was wrong!"
Gu Chengming nodded and flicked a glance at the Hundred Bones Resonance. Her fist came thundering across anyway.
The Wandering Swordsman of the Eastern Reaches bounced away across the ground like a rubber ball.
The Hundred Bones Resonance tilted her head back, smug. "Begging doesn't reduce damage!"
In less than three breaths, the ring of high-spirited Fifth Realm cultivators who had surrounded the ruins of the Joy Palace had been reduced to a heap of rogue cultivators barely holding human shape, all of them lying on the ground and doing their level best to project the sentiment: I'm already dead, please stop hitting me.
The Hundred Bones Resonance made a slow circuit of the field, thoroughly satisfied.
"Cleared!"
She stuck out one small hand toward Gu Chengming, brimming with anticipation. "Heavenly Emperor Gu, This Emperor wants her reward."
At that exact moment, from behind the vermilion-lacquered door of the Joy Palace ruins, a thread of hazy purple-gold radiance seeped quietly out.
The light coiled slowly in midair and condensed into a sigil shaped like a gu worm — the Dharma-Station: the Folly-Joy Gu!
Zhou Qingmu's gaze shifted. Gu Chengming smiled. "Director. Go on. I'll guard the Dharma for you."
Hearing that, something unfamiliar rose in Zhou Qingmu.
All her life she had relied on herself and no one else. This was the first time she had ever felt what it was to lean on another person.
But now was plainly not the time to savor it. She folded the feeling away, nodded to him, and stepped half a pace forward, fingers already working the incantation for refining a Dharma-Station.
The purple-gold sigil sensed her aura, became a streak of light, and shot into the space between her brows.
The refining of a Dharma-Station is a clash between a cultivator's state of mind and the Great Dao. To an outsider it lasts no longer than the moment a person stands still with closed eyes; to the cultivator inside it, it often means enduring a long Heart-Questioning Tribulation.
In the next breath the world spun out from under Zhou Qingmu, and she vanished from where she stood.
Gu Chengming watched, thoughtful.
This was the first time he'd seen a Fifth Realm cultivator refine a Dharma-Station. So it required going off into a separate, dedicated Secret Realm? Nicely ceremonial.
The Hundred Bones Resonance rose on her toes to peer at the empty patch of ground, lost interest almost at once, and picked her earlier thread right back up.
"So where's This Emperor's reward?"
…
When Zhou Qingmu came back to herself, she was standing on an opera stage.
It wasn't large. The red lacquer was flaking, and a thin layer of frost lay across the boards.
Below the stage there was nothing at all, only a single lantern hanging between the beams, its dim glow falling on her alone.
Her hand went to her waist for Night-Sever out of pure habit and closed on empty air.
She looked down at her clothes. The purple-gold official robe of the Night-Watch Bureau was gone, replaced by a plain white pleated garment with a thick red silk sash knotted at the waist — very much the costume of some clown role on a stage.
Zhou Qingmu frowned.
She was about to speak when the curtain on the far side of the stage was flung open from behind with a rustle.
Someone was standing over there.
That person also wore a white pleated robe and a red sash — even the hairstyle was identical to Zhou Qingmu's.
The only difference was the mask on her face, grinning outrageously wide, a dab of red on the nose, the mouth split all the way to the ears.
That "Zhou Qingmu" cupped her hands in greeting, the gesture exaggerated to the point of farce.
"This one is Zhou Qingmu." She dragged the syllables out. "Come especially — to perform a play!"
Zhou Qingmu: "?"
The other "Zhou Qingmu" didn't wait for a response. She simply launched into the performance.
The first scene she played was the year Zhou Qingmu turned seventeen — freshly graduated from the Imperial Academy, entering the court as a promising new talent, and on her very first day of roll call, so nervous that she mispronounced a character in her superior's surname.
Then the scene shifted, and she began acting out the year Zhou Qingmu was promoted to Deputy Centurion.
That was the day she took her first case handled entirely on her own: a cat that had gone missing in some alley in the southern quarter.
The file still sat in the very bottom slot of the Night-Watch Bureau's archive, titled The Case of the Missing Black Cat of the Chen Household, Southern Quarter. She had kept watch at the mouth of that alley for three full days and finally found the cat on a roof.
The cat had come to her and rubbed a faceful of fur all over her, and up on the stage the other "Zhou Qingmu," reciting the opening lines of the case file, threw her head back and mimed the fur going up her nose in the broadest way possible — even producing an enormous sneeze.
"A — CHOO!"
Zhou Qingmu bristled, humiliation crawling up from somewhere beneath her ribs.
The phantom before her went right on performing, and every scene that followed was one Zhou Qingmu least wanted to remember.
That "Zhou Qingmu" was clearly enjoying herself enormously. When she got to the part where Zhou Qingmu first met Gu Chengming and pretended she was only "passing by the Night-Watch Bureau and thought she'd have a look at the new Squad Leader," she even waggled her eyebrows at an imaginary "Gu Chengming" somewhere in the air.
It was an extremely greasy eyebrow-waggle, the kind some street thug directs at a respectable young woman.
Zhou Qingmu's face went scarlet in an instant. Her hand shot for her saber — she was angry enough to swing first and think later — and grabbing nothing reminded her that she stood inside a Dharma-Station's trial, with no blade, and even her true essence suppressed.
The only way forward was to sit through the whole play before she could reach the next step of proving the Dharma-Station.
Zhou Qingmu ground her teeth and forced down the urge to charge over and twist that clown's head off.
On the stage, that "Zhou Qingmu" performed with mounting enthusiasm, and with each scene finished, one of the lanterns at the stage's four corners flared alight.
Zhou Qingmu held her face rigid at first — yet somehow the heat in her chest kept draining away.
She thought of the black cat that had rubbed fur all over her face. She thought of the day her Master's wife had said through the door-curtain, "Qingmu, reading storybooks isn't the crime. Getting caught reading storybooks is the crime." She thought of the day at court when she'd fought and fought and still failed to hold back that sneeze. She thought of the day she first met Gu Chengming—
—mm. Better not to think about that one.
But as she went on thinking, the corners of her mouth tugged upward without permission.
In the next breath, every lantern on the stage blazed to life at once.
The "Zhou Qingmu" at center stage stopped. She cupped her hands toward Zhou Qingmu — the gesture as exaggerated as before, though this time it didn't look ridiculous at all.
"This one is Zhou Qingmu." She paused. "Come especially to return your original heart."
The clown mask shattered into a wisp of purple-gold smoke. The white pleated robe became the purple-gold official robe she knew so well.
The phantom bowed low to her, then rushed into the space between her brows.
Zhou Qingmu stood frozen — and understood, all at once, that "Folly-Joy" meant neither the joy of making fools of others nor laughter at another's folly. Only one who can laugh at her own folly has found true joy.
What the Wanton Joy Sovereign had originally intended when he left this Dharma-Station behind, Zhou Qingmu had no way of guessing.
But the "Folly-Joy" that had fallen into her hands felt rather like someone teaching her how to be a little more alive.
Zhou Qingmu drew a deep breath. The power of the purple-gold Dharma-Station poured down from her brow, and the shackle of half-step Sixth Realm was nudged aside by that single thread of Dharma-Station force as easily as flicking away a latch.
— The Sixth Realm was hers!
Outside.
The Hundred Bones Resonance had no idea how long Zhou Qingmu had been in there watching plays. She tipped her face up at Gu Chengming, eyes enormous with expectation. "Heavenly Emperor Gu, This Emperor wants her reward."
She stamped a foot. "One got away, sure, but I beat up more than one, so by rights the reward should be doubled!"
"Heavenly Emperor Gu, a kiss!"
The instant Zhou Qingmu returned from within the Dharma-Station, the ruins of the Joy Palace were still the ruins of the Joy Palace, the flattened Fifth Realm cultivators were still lying where they had fallen, and Gu Chengming was still standing exactly where she'd left him.
The only thing different from when she'd departed was that the white-haired girl Gu Chengming had summoned earlier was now up on her toes with her chin lifted, and she was… kissing him?
Zhou Qingmu: "…?"
She had come back with a whole bellyful of Little Gu, I've proven the Sixth Realm, I want to tell you all about it fizzing inside her.
She had even rehearsed several times in her head exactly how to phrase it so she wouldn't sound too pleased with herself.
She had considered just hugging Gu Chengming outright, but that plan had seemed a touch too forward, and in the end she'd vetoed it.
And in the blink of an eye, the two of them were kissing!
Kissing was bad enough — since when did it come with strings?!
This was too enviable— no, wrong, this was going much too far. In broad daylight, no less. What sort of conduct was that? Scandalous, absolutely scandalous!
Eyes shut, the Hundred Bones Resonance kissed away for a while, then felt a gaze land on her.
She cracked one eye open and cut a look toward the Joy Palace — straight into Zhou Qingmu's enormous, staring eyes.
The Hundred Bones Resonance blinked, wearing an expression that said: see that? This is This Emperor's reward, and all you get to do is envy it. She gave Zhou Qingmu a proud little sniff.
Then her form dissolved away.
A rather desolate autumn wind swept across the wreckage of the Joy Palace, kicking up dust and a few fallen leaves.
Won the Dharma-Station. Lost Little Gu.
Zhou Qingmu found that the Sixth Realm she'd just proven wasn't making her the least bit happy anymore…
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