Speaking of this matter of true names, Gu Chengming's thoughts drifted backward, unbidden.
What he recalled was an old score from Floating Isle City.
Back then in Floating Isle City, the Red Dust Immortal, trapped for ten thousand years, had still been able to pull at causality through the two words "true name," attempting to break through history's closed loop and claw his way back to life out of a battle that should have long since been settled.
Gu Chengming had previously assumed this was simply some crooked trick unique to the Red Dust Immortal. Only now, prompted by the Director's remark, did he realize that the Red Dust Immortal had been able to devise something as heaven-defying as "borrowing a true name to be reborn" precisely because, at the level of a Sovereign, a true name carried an absurd amount of weight.
The thing could serve as evidence for others to curse and kill you by, but it could equally serve, in reverse, as a fulcrum to lever causality in one's own favor.
No wonder that once a Sovereign shed their name, only a Dao title or honorific remained for the world to use.
The Master was simply "the Master," the Director simply "the Director," the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign simply "the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign," the Red Dust Immortal simply "the Red Dust Immortal" — none of them was willing to leave a true name out in the open for anyone to seize hold of.
Thinking this over, Gu Chengming suddenly landed on one thoroughly outrageous figure — the Jiahao Sovereign.
By the Director's account, the very first order of business after a cultivator advanced to Sovereign was to shed their name — erasing it entirely from the three currents of time, history, and causality, so that no one with ill intent could exploit it.
Yet the Jiahao Sovereign had done the exact opposite: not only had his true name spread across the entire cultivation world, but his very Dao title was simply "Jiahao Sovereign" — his own name, unchanged.
Put that way, the Jiahao Sovereign's sheer gravitas climbed another notch in Gu Chengming's estimation.
Setting the thought aside, Gu Chengming turned his mind back to that Eternal Life Sect Sovereign.
The man was hiding deep, and given the peculiar nature of his Dharma-Station, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau could offer only rough leads.
But the very fact that he'd come to the Capital meant he wanted something.
The hardest person in this world to kill is one who wants nothing. The easiest to draw into a trap is one who believes he already has the situation in hand.
Clearly, this Eternal Life Sect Perfected One likely wanted a Dharma-Station from within the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains, to use against the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign.
And so long as that judgment held true, Gu Chengming wouldn't need to comb the whole Capital for him — he need only wait by the stump for the rabbit to run into it.
Ambushing and killing a Sixth Realm Sovereign sounded, admittedly, a little unhinged — but it wasn't as if he hadn't done it before.
So what if it was an Eternal Life Sect Sovereign? The Red Dust Immortal had already died at his hands.
Granted, strictly speaking that battle had been a miracle stacked together out of the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, the Hundred Bones Resonance, Infinite Love, the causality of time, and himself all at once — but where results were concerned, outsiders only needed to see the final tally, and when reviewing his own record, he was entitled to leave himself a bit of face.
Gu Chengming connected several marks on the earth-vein chart into a single line.
The Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains gave off fluctuations with no fixed pattern, but the positions where the Dharma-Station had stirred most recently all seemed to skirt carefully around the Night-Watch Bureau's and the Imperial Academy's most tightly-guarded zones — as if someone were quietly guiding it, or as if some leftover arrangement were stirring awake from slumber.
That the Eternal Life Sect had contingencies planted in the Capital, the Director hadn't said outright — but Gu Chengming had already caught the implication in his line about the Imperial Astronomical Bureau being unable to pinpoint the man's exact position.
The Capital was Great Qian's capital — but it was also a chessboard the Eternal Life Sect had been working for countless years.
Buried beneath this city lay the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains, Great Qian's dragon-qi, and who knew how many secrets of past dynasties and shattered traces of old Dharma-Stations. If the Eternal Life Sect had never planted a single stone here, that would be an insult to their professionalism as the resident villain faction.
Gu Chengming lifted a hand and tapped a point on the chart marking an abandoned old ward.
The place was called Stringless Ward — in the early years of Great Qian it had been a gathering place for musicians, opera troupes, and acrobat cultivators. Later, when the earth-veins shifted course, the ward's fortunes declined, until now only a few derelict opera towers and a long-sealed stretch of underground canal remained.
The Imperial Astronomical Bureau's star-charts showed that a Dharma-Station fluctuation had appeared there recently — possibly one sloughing loose under the name Unstrung Dream.
"Little Gu?" The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign stood by the window, watching him revise a deployment order, her expression puzzled.
Gu Chengming looked up. "What does the Senior think?"
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign swept her gaze over the earth-vein chart and let it settle on Stringless Ward, clearly understanding at once what Gu Chengming meant to ask. "He should come," she answered simply.
"The Unfettered River hasn't fully broken its seal yet — he can't beat me on the strength of his own Dharma-Station alone, so he'll have to borrow another to make up the gap."
"Unstrung Dream isn't a high-ranking station, but it's tied to the three powers of dream, music, and string on the Wanton Joy main trunk. If he claimed it, it would give him another lever to work with here in the Capital. For him, this station is a fitting one to test the waters with."
Gu Chengming laughed at that. "Good. Then let him come and try."
With the plan set, Gu Chengming unexpectedly found himself with half a day of rare idleness.
Calling it idle wasn't quite accurate — ambushing a Sixth Realm Sovereign demanded thorough preparation no matter where it happened — but Gu Chengming had already finished every arrangement within his power to make.
So he used the lull to look into the Knight Dharma Sword.
Under the influence of Love's Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method, the Knight Dharma Sword seemed to have entered a rather peculiar overlapping state. It was no longer a simple weapon in the ordinary sense, but seemed instead to be locked together with the sword move known as the "Sword of Universal Discrimination."
In other words, if a target failed to meet the Sword of Universal Discrimination's judging conditions, the sword simply would not leave its sheath.
The conclusion left Gu Chengming faintly unsettled, because he soon discovered the condition carried a subjective element.
Take Nuo Tao, for instance — Gu Chengming had to actually discriminate against her for being from the East Sea, for being a woman, for being short, before he could budge the Knight Dharma Sword even the faintest fraction.
Identity, allegiance, wrongdoing, karmic burden, blemish of character — anything Gu Chengming could level as criticism became fuel for drawing the sword. The higher a target's realm and the heavier the causality they carried, the more pronounced the response when that judgment landed.
Gu Chengming ran a finger along the hilt, his gaze growing subtle.
An Eternal Life Sect Perfected One. A Sixth Realm Sovereign. Suspected of body-snatching the Sorrow-and-Joy Jìntian.
Being Eternal Life Sect's card-carrying villain came with a baseline weighting all its own.
Put that way, the man already fit the bill rather well.
Gu Chengming just needed to confirm whether the Eternal Life Sect Perfected One had any further qualities worth discriminating against.
He had a sudden hunch that this sword would likely see use soon enough.
The Eternal Life Sect Sovereign was hiding beneath an abandoned well in the Capital.
The well bottom held no water; moss covered its four walls, and three zhang further down lay a small cave-heaven folded into being by some technique.
No light burned within the cave-heaven — only a black-red seed-talisman hovering in midair, pulsing slowly. He sat cross-legged beneath it, his face pale.
He hadn't chosen this well purely for its concealment.
The well walls were damp, thick with moss, and earth-vein moisture seeped bit by bit through the cracks in the stone — for this present-world body of his, it eased his injuries somewhat.
He glanced down at his palm. The hand looked no different from an ordinary cultivator's — long-jointed fingers, pale skin — except that faint black scale-patterns would occasionally surface on his fingertips, vanishing again the instant he circulated his power.
He frowned. This body still wasn't stable enough.
The Sorrow-and-Joy Jìntian's original standing didn't fully match his own, and the present world's rejection of him was far heavier than he'd expected.
Had the Eternal Life Sect's surviving main trunk not shielded him through most of it, he'd likely already have been ground out of existence by the Capital's dragon-qi and the Wanton Joy remains' rules combined.
Moisture trickled down the well wall and dripped onto his shoulder. He raised a hand on reflex to catch the drop; the bead of water rolled about his palm for a moment before, like some living thing, threading its way between his fingers and sinking into the almost-invisible ring of scale-marks around his wrist.
He closed his eyes briefly. A low, faint breath rolled through his throat.
The sound was nothing like a human cultivator's breathing — more like some ancient monster lurking between the deep sea and a hidden river. A moment later, he opened his eyes again.
Deep within his pupils, a vertical slit flickered and was gone.
He quickly pressed the strangeness back down inside himself, his expression settling back into that of a mild-mannered Daoist.
Most of the world knew only that this Eternal Life Sect Perfected One was cunning and hard to kill; few knew that, before his Dao attainment, he hadn't been purely human to begin with — which was precisely why, once he'd taken up the Unfettered River lineage, he'd become so unmatched at slipping form and dodging calamity.
But the price he'd paid to escape the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's hands last time had been steep.
The Unfettered River lineage excelled above all at escape and evasion — an ordinary Sovereign trying to hold him back would have little chance of success. But the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's Dharma-Station outranked his own, and her mastery of the Dao of Time naturally cut off much of the room he needed to maneuver.
In that battle, he'd had almost no power to strike back.
Every time he tried to swap positions through causality, she pressed him back into place half a step ahead of him; every time he tried to slip into a seam in the past, that woman would strike him down from the future into the present with a single sword-stroke.
In the end, his escape hadn't come from besting her — he'd simply used the power of the Eternal Life Sect's surviving main trunk to tear open a path of Retreat by brute force.
But that path grew narrower each time it was used. The Eternal Life Sect's main trunk hadn't fully unsealed, and though he now walked the present world wearing the Sorrow-and-Joy standing — seemingly restored to a Sovereign's rank — he was, in truth, hemmed in on every side. If he crossed swords with the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign head-on a second time, he had no confidence he'd walk away alive. And that was without even counting Gu Chengming.
Gu Chengming — that name had been circulated many times within the Eternal Life Sect.
The first time he'd read the reports, he'd assumed the sect's operatives in the present world had simply had their nerve broken by some junior.
But after the battle at the Emerald Screen Range, he'd understood that this youth carried far more trouble in him than his cultivation level let on.
Killing him would be difficult. Winning him over would be even harder.
Precisely because of that, he needed a new Dharma-Station... If he could seize a sufficiently suitable one from within the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains, he could patch the gaps in his present-world body under the Capital's own rules.
If his luck ran even better, he might use the entanglement between the Wanton Joy main trunk and the Eternal Life Sect's surviving main trunk to turn the tables and suppress the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign instead.
Then, at last, he could kill the Sovereign who had spoiled the Eternal Life Sect's great affair ten thousand years before.
The Eternal Life Sect had left contingencies in the Capital. From the very moment the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains were buried into the earth-veins, the sect had secretly planted one stone each from its Delirium, Sorrow-and-Joy, and Unfettered branches.
Great Qian had swept away a great many of them over the years, but could never clear them all out — and it was on the strength of exactly these old stones that he now dared come to the Capital.
Still, he understood that Great Qian had probably already marked him.
The Imperial Astronomical Bureau couldn't pinpoint his exact location, but it excelled at reading trends, at reading the ripples of causality, at reading the unnatural creases in heaven and earth that appeared just before something was about to happen.
Zhou Qingmu had run the Night-Watch Bureau for years — forthright in her methods, but never slow-witted.
As for Gu Chengming... at the thought of that name, his brow furrowed slightly.
No matter how gifted an ordinary cultivator might be, there was always a logic to be found in them — a sword cultivator was strong in the sword, a body cultivator strong in the body, a technique cultivator strong in technique, a causality cultivator strong in schemes. The trouble with Gu Chengming was that you never knew what he'd pull out of his sleeve next.
The Eternal Life Sect Sovereign brooded for a long while, but in the end still turned his gaze toward Stringless Ward. He knew full well it was dangerous — but the Unstrung Dream's fluctuations were simply too tempting.
He could see the trap for what it was, of course.
But if Great Qian truly meant to use this setup to kill him, they'd need to send someone capable of actually holding him in place.
Zhou Qingmu was currently in the dangerous window before shedding her name — she wouldn't easily expose herself before the Eternal Life Sect's eyes. The Master and the Director needed to hold their respective foundations steady; moving rashly would only invite greater complications.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign? At the thought of that name, a faint chill rose in his eyes.
If that woman really were waiting for him at Stringless Ward, matters would actually be simpler.
All he wanted was to confirm her position.
So long as he could draw her into acting, the old stone the Eternal Life Sect had left within the Wanton Joy remains would have a chance to strike back through her time-Dharma-Station — even if it couldn't kill her, it could still cost her the initiative in whatever came next for the Capital.
He wasn't coming unprepared.
The Eternal Life Sect Sovereign raised a hand, and a slender length of string surfaced across his palm.
The string looked something like bone yet not quite bone, something like silk yet not quite silk. A faint music seeped from it — no melody one could make out, only a strange, absurd joy that rose unbidden in the heart.
This was one of the old relics the Eternal Life Sect had buried within the Wanton Joy remains, long ago.
The moment Unstrung Dream truly sloughed free, he could use this as a lead-thread to draw the Dharma-Station into himself before Great Qian even had time to react.
As for Gu Chengming... if the boy happened to be there too, he might as well take the opportunity to test him.
He'd never believed a game of chess had to be finished in a single sitting.
Night fell, and rain came down over the Capital.
Rain fell thin over the broken tiles of Stringless Ward, dripping from the eaves of derelict opera towers, tapping against dust-laden stone steps in a fine, scattered patter, as if some unseen musician were tuning a string somewhere in the dark. No one had lived in the ward for years; several opera towers stood tilted deep within the curtain of rain, their faded paintwork mottled with water stains, and the performers' masks on the walls, blurred by the rain, looked from a distance like so many laughing faces.
Gu Chengming stood on the second floor of one derelict tower, his presence entirely gathered in and hidden by the Red Dust Phantom Body Formula.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign stood right beside him, using her Dharma-Station to hide herself in a seam within time. At this moment she existed in a state of "one hour prior" — Gu Chengming could see her, but found it nearly impossible to lock onto her with spiritual sense. She seemed to stand in the present, yet also to stand a breath just past; when her sleeve brushed the falling rain, the raindrops would even pause a moment before continuing their fall.
Watching this, Gu Chengming couldn't help but marvel: a Sovereign's battle-craft really was on another level entirely.
Here he was still working out how to conceal his presence, while she'd already started making her moves from within the timeline itself.
Just then, as the rain thickened, Gu Chengming saw the standing water at the ward's gate ripple outward in a ring.
A gray-robed Daoist appeared within the curtain of rain.
He looked entirely ordinary — a lean figure, mild features, like some wandering cultivator who'd merely wandered into the ruined ward to shelter from the rain. But wherever he passed, the falling rain would briefly lose its downward direction, and the grins on the broken masks along the walls seemed smoothed away, ever so gently, by some unseen force.
Gu Chengming's chest tightened.
The gray-robed Daoist didn't rush toward the depths of the opera towers. He stood a moment at the ward gate first, raising his eyes to survey his surroundings, his gaze sweeping in turn over the ruined towers, the old canal, the abandoned well, and the stage — then he smiled faintly and stepped forward.
With every step, his figure grew a shade fainter, as though he could vanish from this place at any instant. And just as he reached the old stage and raised a hand to touch the fragment of Dharma-Station light about to surface, the sound of rain across all of Stringless Ward abruptly stopped.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign had made her move.
She raised a single finger. The standing water beneath the gray-robed Daoist's feet froze in place; the falling rain hung suspended in midair; the rain-worn performers' masks on the wall all turned their faces at once, as though, in that single instant, they had together taken note of his presence.
The gray-robed Daoist seemed to have anticipated this — his figure blurred as if to slip into a seam in causality, but in the next instant he was back where he'd started.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign stepped down from the second floor of the derelict tower, the moon-white hem of her robe sweeping through the curtain of rain, the suspended raindrops slowly parting to make way around her.
The gray-robed Daoist stared at her, and a shade of darkness finally surfaced in his eyes. A muffled sound of music rose immediately from beneath the ground of Stringless Ward.
All the derelict opera towers shuddered at once, as though countless long-dead performers were applauding below the stage. The Wanton Joy remains' Dharma-Station aura, stirred by that slender string, truly began gathering into his palm — the gray-robed Daoist had clearly come prepared.
Gu Chengming's gaze sharpened, but the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign seemed to have anticipated this too — she gave the ground a light tap with her foot.
Time itself, throughout Stringless Ward, suddenly folded inward.
The old stage, the abandoned well, the underground canal, the masks on the wall — everything was strung together by a web of moon-white light, as if someone had snipped this ruined ward clean out of the Capital's night and pinned it to an invisible scroll.
The slender string in the gray-robed Daoist's hand let out a piercing, snapping sound. His face darkened. "You'd already left a seal here?" he demanded in a low voice.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign lifted her gaze. "A bit late to be noticing that now."
A dim, shadowy river surfaced behind the gray-robed Daoist.
Within that river ran countless forking paths, each leading to a different escape. The instant he stepped into it, his figure split into layer upon layer of afterimages — some fleeing into the past, some circling around into the future, some attempting to swap causal positions and replace the self trapped here and now with an incarnation from another thread entirely.
But the moment each afterimage appeared, the moon-white light pinned it down, one after another.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign raised a hand, and a pale moon surfaced in her palm.
"This place is called Stringless Ward," she said, pressing her fingertip lightly down. "Tonight there is no string — and so there is no path."
Every fork beneath the gray-robed Daoist's feet severed at once.
His figure solidified once more, stamped bodily back before the old stage.
This time, he had no way out at all.
Stringless Ward had already been linked to the Wanton Joy remains' Unstrung Dream. Drawing on the fourfold causality of place-name, old opera, broken string, and rainy night, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign had turned the two words "no string" into a temporary Dao seal. Her opponent hailed from the Unfettered River, most skilled at escaping through a thousand roads at once — so she simply made certain that, tonight, this place had no road at all to offer.
The gray-robed Daoist finally let his air of easy confidence drop. He raised his eyes to the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign, the dim river behind him churning bit by bit.
"To bait me, you were willing to walk into an old scheme in the Capital yourself. Aren't you afraid of what the Eternal Life Sect buried in the Wanton Joy remains striking back through your own Dharma-Station?"
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's expression didn't change. "When that time comes, a young friend of mine will lend a hand."
Hearing this, Gu Chengming thought privately, Senior, that's rather more faith than I deserve.
At the same moment, the gray-robed Daoist's gaze finally landed on Gu Chengming, and darkened.
Without another word, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign raised her hand, and moon-white light closed in on the gray-robed Daoist from every direction. He gave his sleeve a shake; the slender string snapped taut once more. He forced the old stone buried in the ground into motion, and a stream of black-red aura climbed up the opera tower's beams, holding the moon-white light back by brute force.
The two Sovereigns' Dharma-Stations collided within Stringless Ward, and everything around them abruptly froze.
The rain hung suspended in midair; the opera tower held itself in a posture forever on the verge of collapse; the standing water on the ground mirrored the two figures, yet dared not so much as ripple.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's time-seal locked this place in place; the gray-robed Daoist, drawing on the Eternal Life Sect's old stone and the Wanton Joy remains' aura, forced open a single inch of space by main strength.
One side meant to pin him to this instant forever; the other meant to tear a seam out of that same instant.
A standoff formed, just like that.
Standing in the shadow of the derelict tower, Gu Chengming watched the near-frozen curtain of rain between the two Sovereigns and suddenly realized he was the only one in this whole scene still free to move.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign couldn't let go; the gray-robed Daoist couldn't retreat.
Every scrap of causality, time, Dharma-Station, and buried old stone around them was locked in the grip of these two beings.
And so this ambush against a Sixth Realm Sovereign, after all its twists and turns, had somehow circled back around to rest on him — a mere Fourth Realm cultivator.
Gu Chengming stayed silent a moment, gazing at the Eternal Life Sect Sovereign pinned before the old stage. Well, he thought, being a Fourth Realm cultivator caught up in a Sovereigns' standoff was already outrageous enough — and now he was expected to be the one to break the deadlock.
But at this point, he really was the only variable left.
And in the midst of that standoff, Gu Chengming suddenly saw the Eternal Life Sect Sovereign's hood slip down.
The curtain of rain hung suspended, and before the old stage, the moon-white light and the black-red aura pressed against each other, driving him past the point where he could hold onto his earlier guise of a mild-mannered Daoist.
The skin beneath his gray robe split open bit by bit, revealing fine, dense black scales; his brow ridge swelled slightly, and his pupils were pressed down into a single dark-gold vertical slit.
Gu Chengming saw it too — the man's face still held roughly human shape, but the curve of his brow, the line of his jaw, even the scale-sheen along his neck, all showed the strain-marks of a disguise being held together by force.
Going by the several files on demon-cultivator transformation he'd pored over at the Night-Watch Bureau these past days, this Eternal Life Sect Perfected One's true form was likely not of the human race at all.
A thought sparked suddenly in Gu Chengming's mind.
The plain, ancient longsword at his waist seemed to sense that flicker of thought, its blade trembling within the sheath as if eager, as if to say What did you just think of? — the Knight Dharma Sword.
Almost the instant the idea rose, Gu Chengming had already run the possibility through his mind several times over.
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance's punch was formidable, certainly, but the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign was already stretched near her limit by that hidden thread binding her. If he threw the punch too soon, it might not fully put the man down — and could instead throw the standoff into worse disorder.
Better to try the Sword of Universal Discrimination first.
By Miss Zhouli's earlier remark, this sword regarded every living being under heaven, without exception, as something that could be discriminated against — and so it held suppressive power over every living being.
Of the three present, he obviously couldn't turn his discrimination against the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's sword intent and moonlight — which left the man across from him as a ready-made target.
With a thought, Gu Chengming pressed his fingers to the hilt and began, silently in his heart, piling labels onto the man's head. Eternal Life Sect remnant scum!
A crooked-hearted schemer with a twisted Dao Heart!
With every line, the thread of golden light along the blade crept up another inch, until it had finally slid roughly a full inch out of the sheath.
Gu Chengming had been fairly pleased with himself, but the blade stopped moving the moment it reached that point.
He furrowed his brow slightly, his gaze settling once more on the disheveled, trapped figure before him. In his heart he sneered: Demon beast!
At that, the blade edged up another half-inch, in the manner of grudgingly conceding the point — then stuck fast again.
Something occurred to Gu Chengming.
Right — he'd already gotten a feel for this sword's temperament. "Demon beast" might be the most direct term for a demon-cultivator wearing human form, but the phrase still carried a shade of neutral, official description wherever it appeared in Great Qian's documents — nowhere near heavy enough to count as real discrimination.
To get this sword to fully accept it as discrimination, "demon beast" alone clearly wasn't going to cut it.
Gu Chengming's gaze dropped, settling on the scales slowly spreading across the Eternal Life Sect Perfected One's skin.
The scales were black, gleaming in the night with a sheen so dark it seemed to swallow the light.
Inspiration struck Gu Chengming all at once. Black devil!
The blade gave a sudden shudder, and the golden thread within the sheath surged upward with a hum, sliding out a full two more inches.
Something jolted through Gu Chengming.
Wait — this thing actually goes for that?!
Only then did it hit him: he'd been going about this entirely the wrong way from the start. Whatever discrimination this Knight Dharma Sword recognized had nothing to do with moral high ground or the rightness of one's stance.
His thoughts spun rapidly.
Working backward from that logic, his earlier "demon beast" had clearly been far too proper a term for the job.
He tapped a fingertip lightly against the hilt, wiped the "demon beast" label from his heart entirely, and cast about for a new word instead — Furui-sweeper!
The golden thread along the blade, stuck at just over three inches, trembled all at once. Darkie Sweeps Furui!
In the next instant, the Knight Dharma Sword's blade let out a long, ringing cry.
The sword-light, which until now had been as plain and dim as ordinary iron, surged out in a sweeping wave, driving back the thick night pressing in on every side.
The blade slid free inch by inch, the thread of golden light along it condensing into an almost tangible river of gold, flowing along the edge and lighting a new pattern with every inch it crossed.
The entire sword seemed reborn in that instant — the plain, mortal-iron disguise it had worn all this while was torn away entirely by the sweeping tide of light, laying bare the true nature hidden deep within the blade —
one of the ten Dharma Swords forged long ago by the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign, named Knight.
In the same instant the sword-light blazed to full brilliance, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's pupils contracted sharply. She glanced instinctively toward where Gu Chengming stood, and for once her composed poise wavered, however slightly.
The Eternal Life Sect Perfected One's slitted eyes flew wide, and the power of causal escape that had been pinned down by the moon-descending secret art abruptly spiraled into chaos.
Gu Chengming stood behind a great boulder with his hands clasped behind his back, the Knight Dharma Sword at his waist blazing with such surging light that it seemed almost ready to leap free of his hand.
"Darkie Sweeps Furui — die!"
As the words fell, the Sword of Universal Discrimination surged, in that instant, to a brilliance it had never before reached.
Then, with a thunderous roar, it came crashing down.
And the Capital, in that moment, greeted daylight once more.
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