Within the Barrier, the towering trees, the village, the hills had all been razed flat under the Great Demon’s overwhelming spiritual power—only the Spirit Mustard Seed that Lin Zhuoyu had deployed remained untouched.
Guan Shan walked slowly up and glanced at the Spirit Mustard Seed. “Li Tongxu’s ‘Swallow the Vast Sea’?”
Lin Zhuoyu stood before it, sword in hand. The gale kicked up by demonic power whipped his azure robes about, but his frail body remained perfectly upright. “Fifteen years ago—did you go to Chaoping Marsh?”
Guan Shan raised a brow. “What if I did?”
The words had barely fallen when—
ZHENG!
Lin Zhuoyu was upon him in an instant, his spirit sword gleaming with uncanny frost as it slashed down.
Guan Shan recoiled sharply and landed soundlessly on the ruins. He looked down: a layer of frost had already formed over his bare shoulder.
“Then it’s you.” Amid the roaring wind, Lin Zhuoyu smiled. “After all, I’d hate to hunt my revenge and catch the wrong man.”
Li Tongxu’s sword was peerless in his age. Though he begrudged his youngest disciple the bitterness of the cultivation path, he had spared nothing of the sword arts and techniques that ought to be taught.
Compared with the Seven Golden Talismans of the Eldest Senior Brother, first among his disciples, Lin Zhuoyu’s sword carried more of the killing gravity of the Tongxu Sword.
In that one instant, that green sword intent stirred in Guan Shan an impulse to flee—
an instinctive terror, beaten into him long ago by the Tongxu Sword Intent.
Guan Shan regarded his faintly trembling hand with great interest, then abruptly clenched it shut, veins standing out along his forearm as he drove out an emotion that had no right to exist.
“Come to settle a score with me?” Guan Shan said. “In the last hundred years I have devoured countless humans. Which grudge, exactly, are you collecting?”
The hand gripping Lin Zhuoyu’s spirit sword went white. The ever-playful smile had vanished entirely, leaving frost.
“You don’t remember…”
“Hm? Should I?” said Guan Shan.
Lin Zhuoyu stared straight at him—and read from that ferocious face that he truly did not remember.
Fair enough, really. A Great Demon commits evil by the day, feeding on humans—how would it remember the wronged souls it had counted as ants a mere decade or so ago?
They remembered the grievance and humiliation of Li Tongxu cutting alone, one man and one sword, through Gengwu Province—but not one of them remembered that it began with Qingshan Sheng’s massacre of Chaoping Marsh.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lin Zhuoyu murmured. “Not remembering changes nothing.”
Origin Core stage against late Spirit Solidification—even a child of three knows who wins.
Inside the Spirit Mustard Seed, the villagers belatedly realized they had been shielded, staring blankly at the spectacle ahead.
When cultivators and the Demon Race clashed, mortal eyes couldn’t follow it at all—one could only glimpse an azure shadow and a black shadow colliding and interweaving midair, sword shadows layered upon sword shadows, blotting out the sky.
Even in despair the villagers were still instinctively chanting “Fox Immortal”—until someone suddenly cried out.
“An Immortal manifests!”
To mortals, whether cultivator or demon, both could overturn heaven and earth with a flick of the hand; ant-like lives were pinched between all manner of hands, and all they could do was grovel and survive.
This was the first time the morning fog over Lingshu Mountain parted, and they glimpsed the radiance.
The old man suddenly began to weep.
Lin Zhuoyu moved like the wind. The Eldest Senior Brother’s sword inscription flashed blood-red. His dantian’s spiritual power was nearly spent, yet he gave not an inch of ground; Qingru became white mist and burned across everything around him.
Guan Shan did not fear a mere Origin Core cultivator. His expression mild, the flames climbing his body beneath his notice, he drove his sharp claws straight for the Exquisite Heart.
BANG!
Blood sprayed.
A blow from the Spirit Solidification Realm could punch through an Origin Core cultivator’s heart with ease. But the instant it touched Lin Zhuoyu’s chest, Guan Shan’s brows arched in surprise.
A domineering protective Restriction erupted into being.
The Tongxu Sword Intent—the only sword art in the Three Realms brazen enough to name itself after its own creator—burst out from Lin Zhuoyu’s chest carrying a killing frost like snow, and with clean efficiency sheared off one of Guan Shan’s arms.
In Guan Shan’s instant of shock, Lin Zhuoyu’s spirit sword rang against the demon’s neck with a clang.
One breath from severing the Fox Demon’s head, Guan Shan moved at a speed no ordinary eye could follow, snapping his remaining arm up and ramming it forward with crushing force.
CRACK—Lin Zhuoyu’s spirit sword snapped clean in two.
Lin Zhuoyu froze.
Guan Shan had lived for centuries; his reactions were lightning. Though his right arm was gone, within half a breath he had recovered, and his remaining hand hammered a savage blow into Lin Zhuoyu’s waist.
Lin Zhuoyu staggered back several steps and was caught by Qingru, choking up hideous mouthfuls of blood.
That single blow had shattered three layers of his protective restrictions and, passing through the last one, gravely wounded his inner organs.
Suppressing a cough, Lin Zhuoyu wiped the blood from his lips and slowly pushed himself upright on his sword.
If not for the mountain of life-saving artifacts his Shizun had given him, he would already be a pile of corpses.
Lin Zhuoyu washed two Spirit Pills down, soothing his screaming five viscera and six bowels, then channeled Qingru’s water onto the broken blade and froze it into ice.
Guan Shan spread spiritual power over the stump of his arm and stared fixedly at Lin Zhuoyu. “Origin Core against Spirit Solidification. However you struggle, it is a death sentence.”
Lin Zhuoyu smiled. “Is it? I don’t see it that way.”
Guan Shan narrowed his fox eyes. “Offer me the food behind you, and perhaps I’ll leave you a way out alive.”
At the word “food,” Lin Zhuoyu’s eyes went abruptly, terribly dark.
The Spirit Mustard Seed was linked to his divine soul. He could hear, with perfect clarity, the agony within, the despair—and the faint, fragile hope rising despite it all.
They fought so hard to live, so vividly, so stubbornly alive—and they were called “food”?
Lin Zhuoyu closed his eyes and drew up the spiritual power left in his ruined organs.
When those thick lashes opened again, a deep blue light spilled from his pupils, and the crushing pressure of his spiritual power began to climb.
In mere breaths, Lin Zhuoyu broke through.
The Spirit Pill spread through him like violent poison, bringing agony even as his power climbed step by step—and within a few breaths he stood at mid Spirit Solidification.
Enough, Lin Zhuoyu thought.
He had ten breaths to slay the Great Demon, or the backlash of the forced breakthrough would drop him into a coma—or worse.
Lin Zhuoyu knew he was throwing an egg against a stone. But with his enemy before him, if he was to flee in fear and grovel for life—better that they kill him where he stood.
Spiritual power surging, Lin Zhuoyu drew a soundless breath and vanished from where he stood.
Guan Shan belatedly realized something was wrong with this man’s aura. He was still searching for his afterimage when a needle of pain stabbed through his chest—a blade punched clean through.
Qingru boiled the mist thick; hidden within the white fog, Lin Zhuoyu had pierced his chest without the slightest deviation.
The cat’s leisurely composure finally stripped away from Guan Shan. His face changed, and he clamped his hand around the neck of the Lin Zhuoyu before him.
But the claws closed on empty air.
At some point Lin Zhuoyu had already withdrawn; what remained in place was only a phantom body of condensed mist.
Blades wrapped in Spirit Solidification sword intent came from every direction. Seven swords in an instant—Guan Shan’s upper body drenched in blood—and his face hardened as he blasted out a palm.
Lin Zhuoyu didn’t dodge.
But the moment his hand moved, Guan Shan knew something was wrong.
That was Lin Zhuoyu’s heart.
He did it on purpose.
Guan Shan tried to pull back—it was too late. The instant before the claws touched the heart, a second Tongxu Sword Intent materialized and drove straight through his neck.
Guan Shan’s body locked for a beat; half his neck had been nearly severed.
Then Lin Zhuoyu’s eighth sword followed hard behind, punching through Guan Shan’s waist and pinning him to the earth.
Blood gushed.
All the composure had vanished from Guan Shan’s face; his eyes stretched wide in disbelief.
He could not believe he had been brought low by a human of the Origin Core stage. He strained desperately to grab Lin Zhuoyu’s throat.
The ten breaths ran out—to the very second.
Lin Zhuoyu disengaged and fell back, vomiting blood in great mouthfuls, toppling backward as his consciousness fled.
At the last flicker of his awareness, a Gold Talisman drifted out from between his brows, wrapping him gently and bearing him up into the air.
It was Yan Su’s Gold Talisman.
Lin Zhuoyu could no longer remember where that Gold Talisman had come from. His lashes sank shut, and he knew no more.
“Khh—khh—”
Guan Shan’s five viscera and six bowels were boiling. He thrashed, straining to pull the sword of Boundless Water out of his organs, flames still burning steadily.
His life force was draining away.
But Guan Shan could not, for the life of him, recall any grudge with this man.
He vomited blood, and with the last dregs of his strength forced his human form back into his enormous demon body—though the Boundless Water still burned inside him, at last he could move.
He dragged himself forward.
Lin Zhuoyu hung suspended in the air, eyes half-closed, azure robes and black hair trailing down, Gold Talisman after Gold Talisman winding around his body, guarding his heart-meridians and organs.
The Exquisite Heart.
Devour this man, and even on death’s door, I might yet keep my life.
The Fox Demon’s sharp claws reached for Lin Zhuoyu, so close.
Suddenly, someone stepped into his sight.
That tottering old man had come out at some point, raising his staff to stand between the demon and Lin Zhuoyu, terror brimming in his eyes—and not retreating.
“De-mon… demon spawn…”
The Fox Demon didn’t so much as look at him; one sweep of its claws sent him flying.
But more and more “ants” blocked the way. The Exquisite Heart was inches away and could not be taken—irritation curdled into fury in Guan Shan’s chest, and he blasted the crowd apart with his power.
His claws finally reached that azure silhouette.
At that very moment, a long hand reached in from the side, and with the gentlest force, pressed Guan Shan’s claws down.
Guan Shan saw who it was and relaxed.
Qingshan Qi had left and returned. His form had already shed the boy’s shape and resumed its true state—tall and powerfully built, fox pupils regarding his own clan member, wretched and dying, with a smile still on his face.
“Young Master, save me…”
“How pitiful,” Qingshan Qi said, smiling at him. “If Father knew his most capable right hand had been wounded this badly by an Origin Core cultivator, I imagine he’d lose face too.”
Guan Shan’s life was still draining away, but he held on. “It won’t happen again.”
Lin Zhuoyu had broken through without warning and carried Li Tongxu’s sword intent as armor; Guan Shan had disdained the Origin Core “ant” and so walked into the trap.
“Ah, so careless.” Qingshan Qi reached out and pressed lightly three cun from his organs, in the posture of one about to draw out a sword.
Before Guan Shan could even breathe out in relief, Qingshan Qi said mildly, “Be more careful in your next life.”
Guan Shan’s eyes flew wide. Ice flooded his whole body as he felt it—Qingshan Qi was ripping out his Inner Core.
“Young Master!” Guan Shan thrashed, voice rising in a snarl. “I acted on our Lord’s command to help you seize the Exquisite Heart! If you kill me, our Lord will hunt you to the very end—”
Pfft.
Blood burst out, spattering Qingshan Qi’s brow and eyes, making his smile look all the more sinister and cold.
“Noisy.”
Black blood poured from Guan Shan’s mouth. “You…”
Qingshan Qi’s path of cultivation was different from the Qingshan Clan’s—he grew strong mostly by tearing out and refining the Inner Cores of his own kin and other demons.
An Origin Core of the Spirit Solidification Realm was a once-in-a-lifetime prize. Qingshan Qi’s long, blood-slick fingers closed in a light squeeze—and that perfectly round Golden Core detonated, crushed to powder between them.
Guan Shan’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. He could manage no reaction at all; his breath guttered out at last.
Qingshan Qi didn’t spare his kinsman’s corpse a glance. Eyes lowered, he wiped the blood from his hand, inch by inch.
He kept his back to Lin Zhuoyu the entire time. Only when the bloodstains were gone did he breathe out silently and turn slightly to look.
Lin Zhuoyu floated in midair, borne up by the Gold Talismans, his features at peace. Talisman after talisman wound about his body, like a spirit-creature deep in slumber.
…Nothing like the bedraggled child of his memory.
Qingshan Qi moved closer, reaching out without thinking to touch that face.
Sss.
The Gold Talismans wound around Lin Zhuoyu struck like vipers the instant Qingshan Qi drew near, coiling on without mercy and cinching deep into the bones and blood of his arm.
Qingshan Qi yanked his hand back.
The pain was a reminder that none of this was a dream he had conjured. What he had lost and now regained, he held in his own hands—that old regret of childhood, lifted up by his own fingers.
Qingshan Qi abruptly laughed out loud.
Heaven, it seemed, favored him after all.
Most of the Gold Talisman’s power lay hidden around Lin Zhuoyu’s heart. Paying no heed to the talismans that would gladly strangle him to death, Qingshan Qi reached out with both hands and caught Lin Zhuoyu as he floated down.
Trapped in some nightmare, Lin Zhuoyu’s pale lips parted, and four words slipped out like sleep-talk.
“…Save me…”
Qingshan Qi didn’t catch the first two, almost inaudible. His large palm settled over Lin Zhuoyu’s slender throat—as if to throttle it, or as if to caress it.
Does he still hate me?
One born with an Exquisite Heart is pure from birth. A coward who groveled to survive—he must despise such a creature beyond all measure.
If in this lifetime I can never drag him down into the mire with me, why not throttle him in my arms and wipe away, once and for all, the shadow that has haunted my heart?
In the end, those murderous hands hesitated half a moment—and then, gently, so gently, brushed the strand of hair fallen across Lin Zhuoyu’s cheek back behind his ear. Qingshan Qi’s uncanny fox pupils stared unblinking into his face as he began to laugh, low and diseased.
“All right. I’m back.”
A rain fell on Floating Jade Mountain.
On Warm Spring Peak, Yan Su was attempting to condense his seventh Gold Talisman—but each time he reached the final stroke of the sigil, a single teardrop shattered it, undoing all his work.
In the Water Mirror, that tear hanging on Lin Zhuoyu’s cheek was like a sword of ice, stabbing straight into his heart.
That tear had churned Yan Su’s Sea of Consciousness into chaos, his heart wavering between regret and tenderness—either emotion could destroy his Heart-Purifying Dao with ease. Neither had any right to exist.
Yan Su’s brow knotted tight. In his Sea of Consciousness, the Inner Demon returned with a vengeance.
The “Lin Zhuoyu” with a face full of tears straddled his knees, hooking his neck to kiss the seam of his closed lips; when it could not manage even that—
those reddened eyes went glassy, and the voice broke with sobs. “Senior Brother… don’t you want me anymore?”
Yan Su kept his eyes shut tight and didn’t move.
Tears soaked through Yan Su’s collar. That weightless “person” hugged him, weeping softly, as though wronged beyond all measure. “Senior Brother, it hurts, a demon is eating me.”
At that sentence, Yan Su’s whole body jolted.
“Senior Brother…” the phantom murmured. “…Save me.”
Save me.
Yan Su’s eyes snapped open. The final stroke of the seventh Gold Talisman fell—and with a boom, half a sigil condensed into being.
Barely a success, and riddled with cracks.
Before Yan Su could even steady himself, a Sect Master Seal descended upon Warm Spring Peak.
Yan Su froze.
Daoist Lord Tongxu was aloof by nature; without grave cause, he never summoned anyone with the Sect Master Seal.
Yan Su recalled that cry of “Senior Brother, save me” from the phantom—and a dark premonition stirred. He rose at once and hastened to Deer Jade Terrace.
The rain fell in sheets.
Yan Su strode up the steps of Deer Jade Terrace and pushed into the inner hall without so much as a salute.
Wei Qingxiao had already arrived and stood to one side, sighing to herself.
He Xing stood by, face drained white. Seeing Yan Su enter, his eyes reddened. “Eldest Senior Brother!”
Yan Su’s heart pounded harder than it ever had. “What happened?”
He Xing’s voice hitched. “It’s Little Junior Brother’s Life Lamp…”
Yan Su’s eyelid slammed down hard, and he rushed into the Life Lamp Hall nearby.
The life lamps of all Floating Jade Mountain were kept in the Side Hall, bright lamps hung high, blazing with light.
The peach-blossom-patterned lamp inscribed “A Thousand Carefree Years” was forever darting playfully about the hall—now it had sunk to the very center of the jade platform.
The candle flame guttered, dim, as if about to go out.
Yan Su’s breath locked in his chest.
On the other side, the lamp carved with “Chengbi” had long since gone dark, veiled in a faint Barrier.
Daoist Lord Tongxu stood before Lin Zhuoyu’s life lamp, his expression, rare thing, one of stunned stillness.
“Shizun!”
Daoist Lord Tongxu started as if waking from a dream. He closed his eyes. “Zhuoyu’s life lamp is about to go out. He must have met with calamity and been gravely wounded. The ‘Breath Concealment’ I left with him can preserve his divine soul for three days.”
Yan Su’s pupils contracted violently; the hand hidden in his sleeve was trembling.
Gravely wounded…
The lamp so dim—the injuries must be fatal.
Yan Su couldn’t imagine what Lin Zhuoyu had met with, to be wounded this badly in less than five days beyond the sect.
Daoist Lord Tongxu stood amid the blazing lamps, gazing at the three extinguished lamps of Chaoping Marsh, his pupils reddening inch by inch.
It seemed like fifteen years ago again—three lamps falling one after another, going dark.
And now it was Lin Zhuoyu’s turn.
Deep beneath Deer Jade Terrace, the long-sealed Tongxu Sword trembled without pause, exuding a bloodthirsty Baleful Aura.
“Both of my sword intents appeared on Lingshu Mountain in Eastern Province, and immediately after, Zhuoyu vanished—hidden, no doubt, by someone who meant it so.”
Daoist Lord Tongxu closed his eyes, suppressing the killing intent that could not be fully hidden. “Your Gold Talisman is on him. It can be tracked. Go to Lingshu Mountain at once. Bring him back.”
Yan Su’s face was terrible to behold. He didn’t even answer—only turned and flew off on his sword.
In an instant, he was gone from the sky.
