The moment Hundred Bones Resonance seized Gu Chengming's collar, her mind had more or less stopped working.
Her fingers clamped down hard, knuckles paling with the force, the fabric twisting into creases beneath them.
Hundred Bones Resonance dragged Gu Chengming a few inches closer, until the space between them had shrunk enough that she could see every detail of his face.
The white-haired girl's breathing had gone uneven. She told herself, with the flimsiest self-deception: this is to protect Heavenly Emperor Gu. We're partners fated to campaign across the heavens. It's only mouth touching mouth. So what!
Then she shut her eyes and leaned in.
Truthfully, as a body-refining cultivation technique, Hundred Bones Resonance's grasp of physical contact had never advanced past the distance between a fist and an enemy.
The so-called act of "kissing" was, in her estimation, much like throwing a punch: raise the hand, commit the force, land the strike, withdraw. Clean and decisive, start to finish.
In practice it was nothing of the sort. The instant their lips met, the girl revised her strategy without meaning to.
Clean and decisive became hopelessly entangled. A cautious taste became a deep push behind enemy lines. It was the first time Hundred Bones Resonance had ever found herself agreeing with the Huiyuan Sword Formula about anything.
We're already mouth to mouth. What's one tongue?!
Her heart pounded so loudly she could no longer tell whose it was, hers or his.
Gu Chengming was the first to recover, largely because the hand fisted in his collar kept tightening as her nerves mounted, giving him a thorough demonstration of a body-refining art's grip strength.
So kissing was this suffocating an experience?
About three breaths later, Hundred Bones Resonance let go.
She stepped back half a pace, her expression still laboring to maintain the dignity befitting a Heavenly Emperor, and lifted her chin toward the projections. "The Imperial Consort has been subdued by This Emperor."
Her voice, at least, didn't shake. Gu Chengming, only just recovered from near-asphyxiation, was rather impressed by her composure.
"You lot may withdraw to the Royal Court. There is no need to follow."
The lead projection was silent for a breath. Then all of them bowed as one. "Congratulations, Heavenly Emperor."
Bearing the title of "Imperial Consort" and a dozen-odd gazes of congratulation, Gu Chengming's feelings were rather complicated.
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula, thoroughly aggrieved: Detestable.]
[The Clear-Heart Formula, thoroughly entertained: Adorable.]
—Sure. Very exploitative.
The projections withdrew one after another, their spiritual pressure receding like an outgoing tide.
Hundred Bones Resonance held her Heavenly Emperor's pose, hands on hips, without moving a muscle, back ramrod straight, watching the last projection vanish entirely at the far edge of the wasteland.
After a long while, she cleared her throat and turned around.
"Hmph. Hmph."
She folded her arms and let her gaze drift toward the red-gold dome at the horizon, as though admiring scenery that didn't exist.
"Well, Heavenly Emperor Gu? This Emperor's performance just now — passable, wouldn't you say?"
Gu Chengming glanced at her, then dropped his eyes to the system panel.
[Hundred Bones Resonance favorability: 450/Unto Death, Unwavering]
One kiss. Forty points.
He looked up again at the white-haired girl currently staring very hard at the sky.
—You call that acting?
Gu Chengming started to speak, and in the end managed only three words. "Mm. Not bad."
Hundred Bones Resonance's ears went a shade redder. "Naturally!"
"A Heavenly Emperor does everything perfectly. Acting included."
Gu Chengming looked at the flushed, stubborn-mouthed white-haired girl in front of him and thought: exactly as expected. No matter how hard the mouth talks, it's soft to kiss.
"Let's go, Hundred Emperor." Understanding her embarrassment, he changed the subject. "The projections are gone. We should move somewhere else while we can."
Hundred Bones Resonance seized the reprieve like a pardon, made a small sound of agreement, and fell into step beside him.
Meanwhile, atop a cliff somewhere in the Secret Realm.
Yu Wenqiu sat cross-legged at the cliff's edge, eyes shut, the spiritual power of the Clairvoyant Eye gathering between her brows into a knot of pale violet light.
Su Qingmeng stood three paces behind her, guarding. The two of them had been hunting for Gu Chengming for most of the day.
With the Royal Court's spirit veins interfering, the Clairvoyant Eye's efficiency had collapsed. It swept the corners of the Secret Realm in broken fragments, like groping for fish in muddy water.
Then, just now, Yu Wenqiu finally caught a familiar fluctuation of spiritual power at the edge of the Fallen Immortal Abyss.
The image sharpened. A collapsed cave. Dim light. Two figures standing back to back at the entrance—
Wait.
Yu Wenqiu focused her spiritual sense, pulling the image closer.
She saw the white-haired woman. The same face, exactly, that she had glimpsed when she spied on the Royal Court with the Clairvoyant Eye before. More than ten Fourth Realm projections stood respectfully outside the cave mouth, and Gu Chengming stood behind the white-haired woman.
Then she watched the white-haired woman turn, grab Gu Chengming by the collar, and kiss him.
"?"
In the image, the projections dropped to their knees as one.
"Congratulations, Heavenly Emperor."
Yu Wenqiu couldn't hear the sound, but she read the shapes of their mouths perfectly clearly.
Hold on. She actually got a bite in?
"Elder Yu, what is it?" Su Qingmeng caught the change in her and spoke up.
Yu Wenqiu dismissed the divine ability and forced the words out through her teeth. "Little Gu is in dire straits."
Su Qingmeng's fingers snapped tight around her hilt.
The two exchanged a look, and the quiet rivalry they usually nursed was shelved on the spot.
In the face of a genuine crisis, they arrived at an unprecedented consensus: find Little Gu as fast as possible and take him back.
Yu Wenqiu was grinding her teeth with regret.
Had she known it would come to this, back in the Capital she'd have thrown away all that Elder's dignity and dragged Little Gu straight into a room.
Su Qingmeng was running her own calculations. If Senior Brother Gu really got carried off by that domineering Heavenly Emperor, who was going to practice swordwork with her at the Daoning Gate from now on? Absolutely not permitted!
Wind rolled through the dead forest. Two figures shot up from the ground and became streaks of light tearing into the sky.
For the future of the Wenjian Sect, for the sword practice of every morning, and above all for Little Gu's gravely imperiled innocence.
The "Little Gu Chastity Protection Alliance" formally launched its emergency rescue operation!
What they didn't know was that the white-haired Heavenly Emperor they regarded as the greatest threat was at that very moment recruiting "allies" of her own.
Elsewhere, at the same moment.
Su Qiuzhi walked the broad spirit-patterned corridor with a light step.
This was the second day of her career as a mole. Two days, and already whispers of her as the "Heavenly Emperor's confidante" had begun to circulate.
Su Qiuzhi herself was reviewing the exchange she'd just survived and concluding that she was an infiltration prodigy the Harmonious Joy Sect saw maybe once a century.
With nothing but a few half-true sentences, she'd not only steadied that white-haired woman and her terrifying presence, she'd walked away with a free gift of cultivation on top of it.
Once she'd mapped out this wretched Royal Court from top to bottom and passed everything along to Gu Chengming, intact, Fellow Daoist Gu would surely remember the favor, and the matter of Dual Cultivation would follow as naturally as water finding its channel.
The more she thought about it, the brighter the road ahead looked. She'd already drafted the exact lines she would use to lord it over Fu Xiaoxiao afterward.
This undercover assignment was in the bag.
When two projections escorted Su Qiuzhi back to the Royal Court's outer ring, she assumed it would be a formality, a quick report and out.
Instead, the moment she reached the entrance, a guard announced: "The Heavenly Emperor summons you."
Alarm bells went off in her skull. One stroll outside and she was already being summoned? Had she been made?
The reality turned out to be far calmer than she'd braced for. Also far stranger.
Stepping into the Royal Court's core region again, she found the layout utterly transformed.
What had been a crude expanse carpeted in red-gold spiritual qi now had a floor of complete spirit-patterned flagstones. A high dais had risen from the center and taken the shape of a stern throne. The whole arrangement carried the severe regulations of an ancient imperial palace.
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance sat upon the throne, chin propped on one hand.
"You're here." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word seemed to rise from somewhere extremely deep.
Su Qiuzhi was about to salute when a sweep of the sleeve cut her off. "Dispense with it. This Emperor cares nothing for empty ritual. Sit."
Su Qiuzhi found a seat. A projection brought over a flask of liquor brewed from some unknown spirit material, red-gold in color, identical to the shade of blood and qi surrounding Love's Hundred Bones Resonance.
"Drink."
Su Qiuzhi hesitated a moment, then reached out and took it.
The instant it touched her tongue, a warm, mellow current of spiritual power flowed through her meridians and out to every limb, purer than any support pill she had ever swallowed.
This wasn't ordinary spirit wine. This was liquid spiritual qi condensed directly from the essence of the Secret Realm spirit veins.
From a single mouthful, she could feel the spiritual power inside her grow a measure denser.
Su Qiuzhi's heart skipped half a beat. If she could get this on a steady basis, her cultivation speed would rise by thirty to fifty percent at minimum.
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance seemed to see straight through her, though she didn't say so. Her tone turned offhand. "You're from the Harmonious Joy Sect, correct."
"Answering the Heavenly Emperor, yes."
"Mm." Love's Hundred Bones Resonance spoke mildly. "You have feelings for Heavenly Emperor Gu."
Su Qiuzhi's back went rigid, but she was, after all, a Harmonious Joy Sect disciple who had cultivated the Red Dust Dao for years. She held her composure, barely.
"What makes the Heavenly Emperor say so?"
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance ignored the deflection. "The Harmonious Joy Sect's cultivation of the Dao of passion leaves a karmic mark whenever two parties form a deep emotional bond. The color and density of that mark are plain proof of how deep the feeling runs."
She raised a hand and swept it through the air, drawing out a nearly transparent, pale pink thread. One end connected to Su Qiuzhi. The other vanished into the depths of the Secret Realm.
"This thread is not the bond of master and disciple, nor the fellowship of those who share a path. The color is faint, but the texture is remarkably pure."
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance let the thread go and looked down at Su Qiuzhi with neither hostility nor jealousy.
"Put plainly. You like him."
Su Qiuzhi said nothing. Arguing would be pointless.
"If the Heavenly Emperor intends to silence me—"
"Why would This Emperor kill you." Love's Hundred Bones Resonance let out a short laugh, rose, and descended the steps. The projections on either side drew back automatically.
"This Emperor's design, stated in a single breath: take this place as the foundation, refine the Secret Realm's spirit veins, gather the projections into an army, forge the imperial palace into a royal city. When all is prepared, shatter the Secret Realm's barrier, draw in the heaven and earth of the outer world, and establish a true Royal Court in the present world."
Su Qiuzhi's stomach lurched. She heard the implication clearly enough.
This woman's ambition didn't end at the Secret Realm. The Secret Realm was only the starting point. Her target was the present world.
"But all of it rests on one premise—" Love's Hundred Bones Resonance's aura softened abruptly, in stark contrast to the pressure of a moment before. "Heavenly Emperor Gu must remain at This Emperor's side."
"He won't come," Su Qiuzhi said before she could stop herself.
Love's Hundred Bones Resonance showed no anger at all. "This Emperor is aware. Which is why This Emperor will not use force. This Emperor will make him stay of his own free will."
She stopped in front of Su Qiuzhi and looked down at her.
"And until then, This Emperor intends to keep him inside this Secret Realm. Not as a prisoner. As someone unwilling to leave. When the Royal Court is complete, when all things stand ready, when he sees the world This Emperor has conquered for him—"
"He will stay on his own."
Su Qiuzhi was quiet for a long stretch before asking, "Why is the Heavenly Emperor telling me this?"
"Because you're useful." Love's Hundred Bones Resonance answered without a shred of evasion. "You know how he behaves. You know the people around him. And the Harmonious Joy Sect's arts of the Dao of passion excel at sensing emotion. This Emperor needs someone who understands Heavenly Emperor Gu to manage the Royal Court's daily affairs."
The corner of her mouth curved, the smile long and meaningful. "Besides. This Emperor has never minded a few extra handmaidens around the Imperial Consort."
A fastball straight down the middle. Su Qiuzhi's brain shut down for a full three seconds.
"Whatever you wish to do with him, This Emperor will not obstruct, so long as he consents." Love's Hundred Bones Resonance folded her arms, her tone carrying a composure calculated to raise anyone's blood pressure. "This Emperor is a Heavenly Emperor. My breadth of mind can contain the four seas. A mere handmaiden's rank is a thing This Emperor can well afford to bestow."
Hearing this, Su Qiuzhi felt she ought to be furious.
She was Su Qiuzhi. Personally taught disciple of the Harmonious Joy Sect. Foremost of her generation! And in this Heavenly Emperor's blueprint, her assigned position was handmaiden.
Yet for some reason, the first thing that surfaced in her mind wasn't anger. It was the second half of what Love's Hundred Bones Resonance had just said.
Whatever you wish to do with him, This Emperor will not obstruct.
She was finished.
She had come here to be an inside traitor. But the enemy was offering far too much!
Resources without limit. Absolute guarantee of personal safety. And an officially stamped permit to pursue Gu Chengming.
Compare that to the outside world, where the Harmonious Joy Sect's attitude was ambiguous, where chasing Gu Chengming meant shouldering enormous gossip and getting propositioned by her direct superior on top of it!
Here she could simply lie flat as a handmaiden on the official payroll and skip the harem politics entirely.
The traitor's heart was rotting through at a terrifying rate.
Su Qiuzhi pinched the inside of her thigh, hard.
Wake up! She was here to help save the situation. She absolutely could not be bought. Besides, Gu Chengming had already agreed to Dual Cultivation with her. Going from principal wife to a bedchamber servant would be an appalling loss!
With her reason back in place, Su Qiuzhi stood and put on a polite, distant front. "The Heavenly Emperor's favor is engraved on this one's heart. However, I still need time to consider."
"No hurry." Love's Hundred Bones Resonance returned to the throne and propped her chin on one hand again. "This Emperor can afford to wait."
It wasn't until she'd left the core region and walked a hundred paces that Su Qiuzhi realized her palms were slick with cold sweat.
Calm. Deep breath.
She looked down and found her hand clamped in a death grip around that flask of red-gold spirit wine.
—She'd walked out with it without thinking.
Su Qiuzhi silently screwed the stopper down tight.
No more drinking. Any more and she really would defect.
But pouring it out would be a criminal waste of a heavenly treasure. She'd hold on to it for now.
Finding a quiet corner, Su Qiuzhi settled her strategy in short order.
On the surface, accept the "handmaiden candidate" offer and use the legitimacy to fleece the Royal Court for resources and intelligence. Underneath, look for chances to pass the Royal Court's defensive layout, the projections' patrol patterns, and this Heavenly Emperor's true agenda to Gu Chengming in full.
A flawless double-agent operation.
But in one corner of her heart, a worry circled and refused to leave.
Her feelings for Gu Chengming couldn't be faked, and the terms Love's Hundred Bones Resonance had laid out had landed precisely on her weakest point.
If, even by the smallest chance, Gu Chengming really were persuaded by this Heavenly Emperor and chose to stay of his own will…
That "handmaiden" position. Would she take it or not?
Su Qiuzhi shook her head violently and shoved the terrible thought back down where it came from.
Now was absolutely not the time to think about that!
After shaking off the projections, Gu Chengming led Hundred Bones Resonance to another region where the spirit veins hadn't yet fallen under control.
The Royal Court's spirit-vein coverage was still expanding, and the safe zones left to them were shrinking. At the current rate, two more days at most and the entire Fallen Immortal Abyss would fall within Love's Hundred Bones Resonance's perception.
After that, no hiding place would keep them.
And once he was dragged out, the fate awaiting him was "Imperial Consort."
By all rights, the situation now called for Gu Chengming to assemble a party and take on Love's Hundred Bones Resonance as the BOSS.
But across the whole Secret Realm, the only one left with the ability to arm-wrestle Love's Hundred Bones Resonance was probably that Red Dust Immortal.
And that man was obviously far more dangerous than she was.
As things stood, he might have to deal with Love's Hundred Bones Resonance and then handle the Red Dust Immortal's lurking threat afterward.
Sigh. If only there were an option to talk the two of them out of fighting.
The thoughts churned back and forth a few times before Gu Chengming rubbed his temples and decided to shelve them. Better to finish the things within reach first.
Such as finding Yu Wenqiu and the rest of the Wenjian Sect and regrouping. Such as finding a way to contact Ji Yixi for more intelligence on the Returning River and the Dharma-Station. Such as—
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula stirred and warned in a low voice: Fellow Daoist Gu, careful!]
The next instant, the space in front of him rippled, and a figure stepped out of the resulting fissure.
Moon-white brocade robe, jade belt at the waist, folding fan in hand.
The moment Gu Chengming made out who it was, he sprang up. Ten flying swords burst from his body, and his Sword Domain unfurled in the same breath.
The Red Dust Immortal stood thirty feet in front of the fissure, fan resting on his shoulder.
It was, frankly, absurd.
He had lived through he no longer knew how many ages, held an ancient Dharma-Station, laid plans across a thousand years, and turned his hand to summon clouds or rain at will.
Then he lost the entire board on the previous timeline and was forced into the Returning River. And the Returning River gave birth to a variable even more preposterous than himself, and that variable kicked him off the board altogether.
After that string of setbacks, the Red Dust Immortal had taken the pain to heart and, through karmic observation, confirmed that a profound karmic bond existed between that white-haired projection and Gu Chengming.
What the relationship actually was, he couldn't calculate. The other party's karmic threads were blurred beyond all reason. But the existence of the link itself was certain.
So his plan was to exploit it: lead Gu Chengming into revealing his connection to the white-haired projection, then use that information to find a way to deal with her.
As for using karma to teleport directly in front of Gu Chengming, he'd had no other option. Authority over the spirit veins had fallen entirely into the white-haired projection's hands. The only route left was to borrow the karmic connection he had built with Gu Chengming during the last Returning River and, using karma as an anchor, project himself to the man's side.
Cutting the thread of thought short, he cleared his throat, snapped the fan open, and was about to speak.
"Fellow Daoist Gu, I have long anticipated this. The karma between you and I — no doubt you—"
Halfway through the sentence, his gaze traveled past Gu Chengming's shoulder and landed on the white-haired girl behind him, and his voice cut off dead.
The fan hung in midair, its paper trembling faintly.
The Red Dust Immortal's pupils contracted. He spent an entire breath confirming he hadn't misread. That face. That white hair. That aura he had encountered countless times in karmic observation. It stood within three paces of Gu Chengming's back, posture relaxed, like someone who had been traveling alongside him for a long time.
—Why is she here? Why is she at his side?
Through karmic observation and the piecing together of time fragments, the Red Dust Immortal had long since confirmed some manner of connection between that white-haired projection and Gu Chengming.
His original intention had been to appear before Gu Chengming, put on a suitably mystifying performance, and use him to find the means of countering her.
Since authority over the spirit veins had been seized from him, karma was the only method left for manifesting directly in front of Gu Chengming.
But upon arriving, a fact of considerable violence was laid out in front of him.
—They were on the same side.
The Red Dust Immortal's mind spun into overdrive.
No. All wrong. Everything he had assumed was wrong!
He had believed the white-haired projection was an accidental variable spawned by the Returning River. But what if it had never been an accident at all?
On the previous timeline he had lost everything. His arrangements had been seen through by a Third Realm cultivator. A thousand years of scheming had collapsed one step from completion, forcing him to invoke the Returning River and reverse it all.
At the time he'd assumed it was simply bad luck, or that the Third Realm cultivator was genuinely uncanny. But now a question struck him.
A Third Realm cultivator. By what means could such a person see through his design?
The Red Dust Immortal had lived he knew not how many ages. The games he had played spanned longer than the transmitted histories of most sects. His methods were so concealed, his plans so far-reaching, that even fellow holders of Dharma-Stations might not unravel them quickly.
Unless, from the very beginning, Gu Chengming had never been alone.
Cold sweat broke across the Red Dust Immortal's back. What if Gu Chengming were not a Third Realm cultivator at all, but a being even he could not measure?
Then everything made sense. What had passed for exposure on the last timeline had not been Gu Chengming's own judgment at all. He had thought himself the player. In truth he had been a piece on the board.
Gu Chengming had deliberately exposed his ability to receive karma, drawing his attention.
And he had swallowed the hook, expending enormous effort to plot, to probe, to hunt.
What Gu Chengming needed was precisely that: for him to act first.
—Because only if he acted first would he employ his Dharma-Station.
Only by employing the Dharma-Station would the existence of the Inverted Cause Lotus be exposed.
Only with the Inverted Cause Lotus exposed would the Returning River be triggered.
And once the Returning River was triggered, the Heavenly Dao would balance itself, and a new variable would be born in the fissure of causality.
That white-haired projection, the being who had taken over the entire Secret Realm and demolished every one of his arrangements, was that variable.
No. Perhaps even calling her a variable was misdirection.
Perhaps that being had been there all along, and had merely used the fissure the Returning River opened as her opportunity to descend once more.
The further the Red Dust Immortal followed the thought, the colder he became.
Cause encompasses the sea of effect; effect pierces to the source of cause.
He had believed he was reversing causality. In fact someone had used his hands to complete a ritual on the level of causality itself.
Across countless ages he had met more self-important creatures than he could count. But never had any of them made his spine go cold at the mere sound of the words "Heavenly Emperor."
He had been schemed to death. If everything they had done was truly as he now supposed.
And here he was, having appeared directly in front of the pair of them by karmic teleportation.
Was this not walking straight into the net?
At that thought the Red Dust Immortal wasted no more time. The moment his grip closed on the fan, he burned a strand of origin power and hauled the karmic thread backward.
The road he had come by, retraced exactly.
Karmic teleportation could only be used once. It was solely the karmic bond established with Gu Chengming on the previous timeline that had given him this single chance.
Reversing it cost origin power as well, and once he withdrew, that karmic bond would be severed completely, never to be re-formed.
But the Red Dust Immortal had no attention left for regret. The moon-white figure faded away inside the glow, far faster than he had arrived.
The light dispersed. The fissure sank back into its original gloom.
The Red Dust Immortal's aura vanished utterly. Even the residual echo of karma had been cut away by his own hand, leaving it so clean it was as if he had never come.
Gu Chengming recalled his flying swords, and the Sword Domain slowly withdrew.
Back in the last remaining pocket of darkness deep in the Secret Realm, the Red Dust Immortal sat in the void for a very long time.
The folding fan rested across his knees. On its face, that painting of a world turned upside down gave off a faint glow in the dark. He stared at it for a while, then reached out and snapped the fan shut.
"So I'm not the only one trying to borrow a corpse to return to life."
He said it quietly, with a note of self-mockery.
What was Their purpose?
To use his Dharma-Station, the Inverted Cause Lotus, to reverse causality and establish as settled fact that They had never perished at all?
So from beginning to end, the one being targeted was him, the Red Dust Immortal?
That Third Realm cultivator had deliberately displayed the ability to receive karma, like bait hung on a hook. He'd bitten. He'd been led step by step through the entire game, and at the end he had invoked the Returning River of his own free will.
—And the Returning River was exactly what they needed.
"What deep attainment."
The Red Dust Immortal opened his eyes, his tone flat, like a man appraising a finished match.
"Worthy of a Heavenly Emperor indeed."
He decided to stop contesting it.
Control of the Secret Realm was entirely lost. The retreat route of karmic teleportation had been cut by his own hand. The Inverted Cause Lotus was badly depleted after two rounds of abuse and could not launch another Returning River for some time.
To remain in the Secret Realm was to become fish on the chopping block of those two "Heavenly Emperors."
The Red Dust Immortal rose and tapped the fan lightly against his palm.
"So be it. I concede this game, for now."
His form began to turn transparent, like an ink painting being wiped away.
"But the board for the next game is mine to choose."
The words faded, and the void held no one at all.
From the Red Dust Immortal's appearance to his disappearance, only a few breaths had passed. He hadn't even managed to finish a single complete sentence.
Hundred Bones Resonance walked over, tilted her head at the spot where the fissure had dissolved, then looked at Gu Chengming. "That guy ran away?"
Gu Chengming nodded, though he felt anything but relieved.
The Red Dust Immortal's arrival had been strange. His departure was stranger.
—What exactly had he seen?
Gu Chengming turned it over and got nowhere.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula was equally baffled: That man's reaction was far too abnormal. With his cultivation and his methods, even wariness of Fellow Daoist Hundred shouldn't have reduced him to such an undignified retreat.]
[The Qingxin Formula stroked its chin: Could he have simply frightened himself?]
Gu Chengming shook his head. The man was an old monster who had lived through unknowable ages. How could he possibly frighten himself?
But before he could think it through, a system panel popped up in front of him.
[Son Coin generation conditions met.]
[Obtained Son Coin - Inverted Cause Lotus (Completed)]
"?"
Floating Isle City's city-guarding grand formation gave one last roar before dawn, then finally fell silent.
The first wave of the Otherworldly Heavenly Demons had been held off by the combined sects.
The pressure of the Fifth Realm grand cultivators anchoring the core district had yet to lift. Fourth Realm cultivators were still sweeping the districts clean of leftover Heart Demon fragments. The air carried the scorched residue of clashing spiritual power.
In the eastern quarter of Floating Isle City's inner city, one secluded manor carried several more layers of wards than the buildings around it.
Ji Yixi sat cross-legged behind a low desk, her face pale.
She had held the Record of the Myriad Worlds in its perceptive state for more than four hours.
The essence of the technique was observation, not combat.
But amid the chaos of the Otherworldly Heavenly Demons striking Floating Isle City, observation itself was the scarcest resource of all. While everyone else was occupied repelling the enemy outside, she was the only one who could also keep watch on developments inside the Secret Realm.
And what she saw gave her a worse headache than the demons outside.
A power calling itself the "Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court" had already replaced the Mohist Gate's control over the Secret Realm.
She had also watched the Red Dust Immortal's remaining forces shrink at a rate visible to the naked eye. The being who had once held more than half the Secret Realm was now compressed into a single corner, spirit veins severed, causality withered.
But she hadn't found Gu Chengming. The Record of the Myriad Worlds' perception was severely disrupted by the Royal Court's red-gold spirit veins. She could make out the Secret Realm's broad structure but couldn't lock onto any specific individual's position.
Ji Yixi withdrew her perception and opened her eyes.
"The aura in that Secret Realm gets weirder by the hour," the little dragon said, keeping its voice down, whiskers twitching. "What in the world is that white-haired thing?"
Ji Yixi didn't answer. The little dragon's question was her question too.
The abilities that white-haired being had displayed went far beyond the scope of the Third Realm, or even the Fourth. And the core value of the Record of the Myriad Worlds lay in cross-referencing parallel worldlines.
If the same being appeared across multiple worldlines, comparison could derive its nature, its origin, and its weakness.
So Ji Yixi did what she did best.
She mobilized the Record of the Myriad Worlds and searched every parallel worldline record connected to "hundred bones" and "heavenly emperor." The result: not a single line contained even a tangential mention of that white-haired being.
In every parallel worldline she could observe, the master of the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court had never once appeared.
She belonged entirely and exclusively to this timeline. A variable spawned by the Returning River. A correction made by the Heavenly Dao to preserve balance.
But how could a correction be this powerful?
Comparison across parallel worldlines had run into a dead end. Ji Yixi drew a deep breath and switched approaches.
If no reference could be found in the parallel worldlines, then she would have to extrapolate the future's direction from what was known on the current timeline.
This was the most mentally taxing use of the Record of the Myriad Worlds. Not observing what already existed, but calculating what had not yet happened.
Ji Yixi closed her eyes, and the power of the Record of the Myriad Worlds descended like an anchor chain sinking into the deep sea, passing through the present and extending toward the possibilities of the future.
Images surfaced.
Blurred, fragmentary, incomplete. But enough for her to piece together a rough outline.
—The Royal Court within the Secret Realm was expanding without pause.
Red-gold spirit veins crept outward from within the Secret Realm and broke through its spatial barrier. First Floating Isle City. Then the spirit domain above the East Sea. Then several cities along Great Qian's southeastern coast.
That red-gold firmament was like a curtain swelling without end, gathering more and more of heaven and earth beneath itself.
Ji Yixi's brows began to knit together.
The extrapolation continued. The Royal Court's expansion did not stop.
The white-haired figure rose from her throne of white bone and stepped out of the Secret Realm.
Behind her followed hundreds upon thousands of projections in an army: those ancient projections, and more beings besides that Ji Yixi couldn't even name, advancing in formation with the momentum of a primordial celestial host marching to war.
Then she saw the Eternal Life Sect. That shadow power entrenched within Great Qian's borders for thousands of years, that colossus the imperial house and every great sect handled with caution—
Swept away like rotten wood. Kicked to death like a stray dog by the roadside.
The white-haired figure walked up to the Eternal Life Sect's headquarters, lifted a foot, and brought it down once. The headquarters' mountain-guarding grand formation and the entire mountain along with it were annihilated.
With the Eternal Life Sect destroyed, the Royal Court's expansion turned toward Great Qian's imperial capital.
The red-gold canopy blanketed the whole of the Capital, and the decree of the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court descended from the sky, proclaiming Great Qian a vassal state of the Royal Court.
Then came resistance. Then the inability to resist. Then submission.
Ji Yixi's mouth would no longer close.
The little dragon noticed the change in her expression and leaned in. "What are you seeing?"
Ji Yixi didn't answer, because the extrapolation was still running, and it kept getting more preposterous.
The Royal Court's territory expanded at breakneck speed. Great Qian was only the starting point. Next came several neighboring great nations, then the rogue cultivator powers overseas, then the realms beyond.
The red-gold canopy stretched on and on, swallowing one stretch of heaven and earth after another.
With each world conquered, the white-haired figure left behind a new branch hall of the Royal Court, projections garrisoned, spirit veins linked through, folding the conquered region into her own system of law.
This was a being who called herself a Heavenly Emperor waging, in the most literal sense, a campaign across the heavens.
Ji Yixi's scalp prickled, but she didn't break the extrapolation, because she needed to see the endpoint. The images rushed on toward a more distant future.
Years and months flipped past like pages. One year. Ten. A hundred.
The red-gold canopy covered every world she could perceive.
At last, the extrapolation froze on a single image.
Beneath a red-gold firmament, the myriad worlds bowed in submission.
The white-bone throne was gone. In its place stood an imperial seat condensed from pure law itself, the patterns upon it carved by no hand but traced by the very motion of the Heavenly Dao.
The white-haired figure sat at the summit of the myriad worlds, endless stars and lands beneath her feet, the far edge of the red-gold heavens above her head.
And beside her stood another figure, shoulder to shoulder with her, matching Gu Chengming exactly.
At that point, the Record of the Myriad Worlds' vision cut out.
Ji Yixi opened her eyes. The room was very quiet, only the spirit lamp casting a warm halo across the wall.
The little dragon lay on her shoulder, head tilted, watching her.
"Finished? What's the verdict?"
Ji Yixi stared into the empty air in front of her, eyes unfocused.
She ran back through everything she had just seen.
The Secret Realm expanding into a campaign across the heavens. The Eternal Life Sect punted into oblivion. Great Qian reduced to a vassal. The myriad worlds in submission. Gu Chengming and the white-haired Heavenly Emperor holding eternity between them.
So the catastrophic ending she had racked her mind trying to avert was going to be resolved… like that?
If that was truly how it went, one could indeed call it a good ending.
But what about the calamities she knew were coming? Why had not one of them appeared from beginning to end?
"Hey." The little dragon patted her cheek with its tail. "What did you actually see? That face of yours is frightening This Venerable One."
Ji Yixi turned her head and looked at the little dragon.
"I think something's wrong with the Record of the Myriad Worlds."
The little dragon froze. In all the time it had spent following Ji Yixi, it had never once heard her say that.
The Record of the Myriad Worlds was the supreme technique for observing parallel worldlines, the core inheritance passed down through the hidden line of Great Qian's imperial house. Ji Yixi's trust in it was very nearly absolute. That technique was the bedrock of every judgment she made, the sole thing she leaned on to find a path through countless endings of ruin.
"You're certain?" The little dragon's voice turned cautious as well. "Was the observation disrupted, or—"
"The extrapolated result is too absurd. So absurd that I don't know whether it's the real future or whether the Record of the Myriad Worlds is talking nonsense."
The little dragon worked its mouth. "What did you see?"
Outside the window, the sky over Floating Isle City was brightening. The afterglow of the city-guarding grand formation traced a pale golden band along the edge of the cloud sea. The spirit lamps went out one by one, and the morning wind carried the salt damp of the East Sea across the eaves.
Ji Yixi was silent for a moment, then said something the little dragon had not remotely anticipated.
"Senior. That name you called Gu Chengming by at the very beginning. I think it's about to come true."
"?"
A question mark sprouted above the little dragon's head.
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