Now, here's the question.
You're mid-assault in Delta Force, and you come across some rat squatting in a corner flashing surrender signals at you, throwing in a couple of crouch-kowtows for good measure. Do you let him live?
The comparison might not be entirely apt. Not long ago, after all, this Delirium Jìntian had been contesting a Dharma-Station against Gu Chengming.
Strictly speaking, the two of them were not on good terms.
And whatever the state of those terms, expecting him to let her walk on nothing but her word was more than a little fanciful.
Surely she'd have to hand over some kind of tribute.
Gu Chengming looked down at the Delirium Jìntian kneeling on the ground. After a moment of silence, he said, "I've seen your Dao Foundation Oath."
She lifted her head, hope just beginning to surface in her eyes, and Gu Chengming continued, "But you did raise a hand against the Night-Watch Bureau. You joined the contest over a Dharma-Station. And you left any number of contingencies buried around the Capital…"
Her stomach lurched. His tone made his meaning plain enough, and she read it fast. "Lord Gu is right. Empty words alone can hardly win anyone's trust."
When you stand beneath another man's eaves, you bow your head.
The cultivation world had its share of hard cases who would sooner die than bend. More often, though, a cultivator who had made it to the Fifth Realm understood how to read a situation far better than any ordinary person. Anyone who had climbed this far had scraped through countless crises by knowing exactly when to keep their head down.
She understood perfectly well that whether she lived or died did not depend on whether her sincerity was genuine. It depended on whether Gu Chengming was willing to believe it was.
And sincerity backed by nothing but talk had always been the cheapest thing in the world.
She knew how to read a moment. Without hesitation she produced the single most valuable thing she owned.
A sword. Plain, unadorned, and very old-looking.
Gu Chengming studied it, and something complicated moved behind his eyes.
"Lord Gu, don't be fooled by its appearance," she said quickly. "This sword's origins are considerable."
Gu Chengming waited for her to keep spinning the tale, and she obliged. "I obtained it years ago in a Secret Realm. According to a broken stele there, it is one of the Dharma Swords left behind by the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign."
Huh? The Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign again?
Gu Chengming remained unconvinced. The Dharma Sword didn't look like some peerless divine weapon. It looked like a scrap of common iron dug out of a forgotten corner somewhere.
Storybooks were full of this trope, of course. The more worthless the rusty junk appeared, the more likely it hid some ancient power's world-shaking inheritance.
The problem was that this sword was a little too unremarkable.
He shook his head and told her to open her storage pouch.
It wasn't simple greed on his part.
Someone like the Delirium Jìntian, who had managed to bury that many contingencies across the Capital, might well be carrying something lethal on her.
Talismans, spirit artifacts, poison pills, mediums for heterodox arts, even some causal anchor point capable of sending word across a great distance. Any of it could turn into trouble later.
She was already kneeling here. There was no reason to leave the pouch unsearched.
He had meant to check whether there was any other loot worth confiscating, but once he had gone through it, distaste crept over his face.
The contents of this storage pouch were downright destitute. Not stripped bare, exactly, but nothing remotely like what a famed Fifth Realm cultivator ought to be carrying.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance, excitedly: Heavenly Emperor Gu, dragonblood grass! This one's actually pretty flush!]
The Hundred Emperor's reaction alone told you just how poor the Delirium Jìntian really was.
She had even stuffed blood-quickening grass into her storage pouch. Gu Chengming was starting to suspect she had some compulsive habit of hoarding junk in her bag.
He looked up at her, and a flicker of embarrassment finally showed on her face.
"Lord Gu may not be aware," she said, "but ever since the Delirium lineage split off from the Eternal Life Sect, our situation has been difficult."
"The Eternal Life Sect brands us traitors, and the orthodox sects won't take us at our word. We've spent these years hiding from one place to the next, and it costs a great deal. Besides, as a Jìntian, I have to provide for the disciples of my line. Most of our resources go to them."
He handed the pouch back and returned his attention to the plain old longsword. "Let me see the blade."
She offered it up with both hands at once. Gu Chengming took it. It sat slightly heavy in his grip, and he couldn't place the material. The scabbard was rough to the touch. He drew it half an inch: the edge was dull and lightless.
He began to suspect she'd been swindled with some knockoff out of a Secret Realm.
Not every Secret Realm in the cultivation world was an honest one, after all. Plenty of their masters had enjoyed cheating people while they still lived.
But just as he was about to push the blade back into its sheath, the Sword Chess system interface, silent for a long while now, gave a faint flicker.
[New Bond Added: Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing]
Gu Chengming stared. Hold on. This thing was actually real?
He looked up at the Delirium Jìntian, his tone turning several degrees more serious. "How much do you know about where this sword came from?"
Watching his expression change, she finally let out half a breath. It seemed her life had bought itself a little more time.
"Not a great deal," she said quickly. "Only what the broken stele in the Secret Realm recorded, back when I took the sword."
"They say the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign's sword cultivation was extraordinarily eclectic. There was scarcely a sword Dao under heaven he hadn't glimpsed or studied. In the end he divided his own sword Dao into ten portions and vested each of them in one of ten Dharma Swords, every blade holding a different true meaning of the sword."
Gu Chengming looked down at the sword.
"And this is one of the ten?"
"It is," the Delirium Jìntian said. "Its name is Knight."
That gave him pause. The name didn't feel like it belonged in an immortal-cultivation story at all.
She had no idea what he was thinking. "That is how the stele had it. Besides Knight, there were Thunder, Raptors, Warriors, Pacers, Kings, Suns, Nuggets—"
Even she found the names strange as she listed them, but she pressed on regardless. "In any case, all of them are Dharma Swords forged by the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign in his day."
—Hold on. Thunder? Raptors? Are we running the NBA now?
Gu Chengming complained inwardly and chalked it up to the game's designers indulging their own bad taste.
Oblivious to all of it, she kept explaining. "Most of these Dharma Swords lie dormant, and ordinary methods can't rouse them. Only when the one bearing the sword acts in accordance with its true meaning do the seals within gradually loosen, letting the blade shine again."
"Meaning this Knight needs me to act in accordance with the Dao of the knight," Gu Chengming said thoughtfully.
"That's what the stele said." She added, "Though I've had the sword for years and never once got the slightest reaction out of it, so I couldn't tell you what the true meaning of 'Knight' actually refers to."
Gu Chengming looked at her and decided that made sense. She hardly looked like a good person, let alone one with any chivalry in her.
He put the Dharma Sword away. "I'll take it."
She lowered her head at once. "Thank you, Lord Gu."
"As for you," Gu Chengming went on, "you'll come back with me to the Night-Watch Bureau and be registered. You swore on your Dao foundation, so I'll leave you your life for now. But if you try anything clever, I shouldn't have to spell out the consequences."
Relief flooded through the Delirium Jìntian.
Once she was entered on the Night-Watch Bureau's rolls, Zhou Qingmu said she would take charge of arranging what came next for her.
With the pressure off, Gu Chengming set the whole matter aside and turned instead to two projects: the Dharma Sword called Knight, and some workable strategy for clearing Love's Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method. The latter, unfortunately, remained at a dead stop.
By comparison, the Knight sword looked easier to puzzle out.
Gu Chengming sat in the courtyard with the plain old blade laid across his knees. At the bottom of his vision, the Sword Chess system interface surfaced quietly.
[Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing: Knight]
[Unlock Progress: 0]
[Description: Perform acts that accord with the true meaning of the Knight's sword Dao to unlock this sword step by step.]
His first thought, naturally, was protection. Loyalty. Honor. Vigil. Sacrifice.
All of which sounded like a decent fit for him. He'd cut down demons, sheltered commoners, killed Eternal Life Sect followers and put down fiends the whole way here. Guarding all under heaven, more or less.
So he set about farming unlock progress. The only trouble was that he had already wiped out every last fiend inside the Capital. Two days of hunting turned up not one specimen worth the name, and in the end he had to go beyond the walls.
Thirty li outside the Capital stood an abandoned village, troubled in earlier years by plague ghosts. The Night-Watch Bureau had swept it once, but scraps of yin filth still lingered there now and then.
When Gu Chengming arrived, two fiends happened to be crawling up out of a dried-up well.
The pair looked plenty vicious at first, right up until they got a clear look at him. One of them turned and bolted. The other, half a beat slower, wore the unmistakable look of something thinking, my buddy's already running, should I maybe also be running?
Gu Chengming gave them no chance. A flash of sword light, and both scattered into grey mist where they stood.
Sure enough, text surfaced at the bottom of his vision.
[Act in accordance with the Knight's sword Dao completed. Unlock Progress +1]
[You possess the resolve to guard all under heaven. I acknowledge your will.]
Gu Chengming brightened. Just as he'd thought.
He made several more sweeps outside the Capital and rounded up a few scattered fiends. At first the unlock progress still budged. After that it slowed, and kept slowing.
It went from plus one per kill, to nothing at all for half a day, to Gu Chengming cutting down three yin souls and getting only a token flicker from the interface, which didn't even bother awarding a number.
He frowned. Diminishing returns? Seriously?
[The Qingxin Formula reminds you that the name "Knight" may hold more than the single reading of "protection" — it may conceal some other meaning as well.]
Gu Chengming thought the Qingxin Formula had a point. But what other meaning?
Riding a horse? Wearing armor? Keeping night vigil outside a princess's door?
They couldn't seriously expect him to find a horse and ride a lap around the Capital.
He was still turning it over without getting anywhere when Nuo Tao came to fetch him for a meal.
The Myriad-Theft Gate's externally hired consultant had been adapting to the Night-Watch Bureau remarkably well of late.
For one thing, she had genuinely helped root out a good number of the false identities and causal hollows the Delirium Jìntian had planted, and the Bureau's records office was unanimous in recognizing her professional skill.
For another, on the strength of the Myriad-Theft Gate's Dust Merging art, she had established herself in the Bureau canteen as a figure of legend: the woman who demonstrably never queued and yet was always first to the hot dishes.
By the time Gu Chengming reached the side courtyard off the canteen, Nuo Tao had already claimed a spot.
The table held several small dishes, a plate of pan-fried dumplings fresh out of the pan, and a steaming bowl of mutton offal soup.
Nuo Tao sat with her chin propped in both hands, and her eyes lit up the moment she saw him.
"Brother Gu! Over here, over here!"
Gu Chengming sat down and looked over the food. "You've got an eye for it."
She hummed smugly. "Naturally. For an Illicit Cultivator out roaming the world, the most important skill is knowing where the good food is."
Gu Chengming picked up his chopsticks. Nuo Tao didn't start eating. She stared at the plate of dumplings for a while, stole a glance at him, then blinked up at him and said, "Brother Gu."
"Mm?"
"I worked so hard going through case files today."
Gu Chengming nodded. "You've worked hard."
She waited, and no follow-up came, so she made the hint more obvious. "My hands ache, too."
He looked at her hands. Nuo Tao promptly tucked them back into her sleeves, playing the victim of some monumental injustice.
"So eating might be a little inconvenient for me."
"You carried that mutton soup over steadily enough."
Her face stiffened. Then, with complete conviction: "That's a secret art of the Myriad-Theft Gate. Carrying soup doesn't count as using my hands."
That nearly startled a laugh out of him. "And?"
Nuo Tao gazed at him with wide, hopeful eyes. "And so Brother Gu should feed me one."
Looking at her, plainly delighted and still straining so hard to seem pitiful, Gu Chengming surrendered and lifted a dumpling with his chopsticks.
She sat bolt upright, prim as a model student. "Mm-hm!"
Gu Chengming brought the dumpling to her lips.
"Hot, hot, hot!"
It had come straight out of the pan, and the juice inside was scalding. She flinched back on reflex, and the dumpling dropped onto the tabletop with a small wet slap.
Nuo Tao clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes going watery, and still refused to break character, mumbling thickly, "Brother Gu, you're murdering your externally hired consultant."
Gu Chengming set down his chopsticks and passed her the water cup. "Nobody told you to bite down that fast."
She took the cup and drank. Once she'd recovered, she looked down at the innocent dumpling lying on the table and decided that although the whole episode had been undignified, it had generated interaction, which made it a solid net gain.
She was gearing up for another round of looking pitiful when a line of text sprang up in front of Gu Chengming's eyes.
[Act in accordance with the Knight's sword Dao completed. Unlock Progress +15]
His hand stopped. Huh? Plus how much?
Before he could process it, the next line of commentary drifted slowly into view.
[That's right. That's exactly how you humiliate a Northern Territory native. Northern Territory folk are only allowed to eat their dumplings off the table.]
Gu Chengming: "?"
Nuo Tao sat cupping her water, puzzled by the way he had suddenly gone still.
"Brother Gu? What's wrong?"
Gu Chengming looked down at the dumpling on the table, then at the plain old Dharma Sword lying motionless at his elbow, then at the unlock progress at the bottom of his vision that had just leapt a whole chunk.
So this Knight of yours is a goddamn Knight of Regional Bigotry?!
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