ATEG Chapter 128.1

In the Royal Palace of Liang, Li Quan reached out and caught the wolf-hair brush hovering in midair, swishing it lightly in the brush-washing basin. The remnant ink dispersed through the water, and ink-stained little ripples struck against the porcelain walls, their gentle splashing sounds startling Xu Huan at the other desk.

He raised his head and set down his brush, his eyes slightly vacant as his thoughts still lingered on the official documents in his hands.

“Finished?” he asked.

Li Quan waved a hand, and the book on the table slid smoothly across to the other desk.

Xu Huan reached out to receive it and began flipping through. He had invited Li Quan to help him establish codes of law that could reorder a chaotic world and harmonize with the workings of creation — this was no simple matter, but a path he would need to walk for his entire life, until at last, through wisdom and strength, he could compose a truly flawless and unblemished compendium capable of ordering all things under heaven. Xu Huan had never expected to achieve this in a single stroke, but as a first step, he needed this still-rough draft to be sufficient as his foundation.

At the outset he had thought he and Li Quan could explore the matter together — harmonious yet distinct in perspective, so that reasoning would grow clearer through debate, with fewer and fewer gaps. But he found that Li Quan had walked far deeper and further down this path than he had. Rather than mutual exploration, it had gradually come to resemble one-sided guidance and instruction.

Later it had slowly evolved into the current arrangement: Li Quan took no part in his initial drafting, but would raise questions about his finished drafts — each question precisely identifying where the problem lay. And through these repeated rounds of revision, Xu Huan had grown ever clearer in his own path.

He flipped through the booklet Li Quan had pushed to him. This long volume had been refined through a cultivator’s techniques — though it appeared thin, its contents were equal to half the library of the Liang royal palace. He turned the pages faster and faster, but all the way to the last page, he found not a single place marked with questioning ink.

“There is nothing left that needs changing.” He heard Li Quan’s voice, touched with a smile.

A bold little squirrel pushed the window open and squeezed inside to warm itself by the fire. Outside the window, the evening sky glowed golden, sunlight gilding the snow-laden earth. Amid the steady tolling of the dusk drums, the codes of law he had drafted with his own hand flowed through Xu Huan’s divine consciousness one by one, condensing into solid chains, hammered deep into his foundation. The murky, unresolved destiny suddenly revealed a single thread of clarity — in the midst of power as turbid and dark as a black void, a chain drove itself deep, like a sturdy anchor set beneath a drifting vessel.

Xu Huan’s head snapped up, his eyes blazing with astonishing brightness. “I—”

“Go.” Before he could finish, Li Quan was already smiling.

Xu Huan’s depleted foundation had only just been replenished — this was precisely the moment it needed to be consolidated.

The clepsydra ran dry, the dusk drums fell silent, and the sun tilted westward and slowly sank beneath the earth. Li Quan gazed out the window; the last rays of light were reflected in his eyes, resplendent as gold.

……

By the time Xu Huan emerged once more from the sealed stone chamber, the dusk drums were tolling again. He stood bathed in the warm glow of the sunset, his skin seeming at last to radiate warmth from beneath the chill that had long refused to leave him.

The corners of his mouth lifted — he seemed about to smile — but the smile was not yet complete when a premonition surging from the depths of his awareness interrupted it. Something had happened to Aunt Tiao.

Xu Huan’s expression went cold, his gaze sharp as a blade’s edge, piercing toward the direction of the premonition.

When something had happened to his mother, he had been only six — too young to do anything. He would not allow something to happen to Aunt Tiao.

After the sun sank and the last light of evening faded, a gust of wind swept up a scattering of fine snow. The flecks of gold light dancing upon it dimmed before they reached the ground, and in the grey-blue snowfield, Xu Huan’s silhouette was already gone.

……

“The human heart is probably the most laughable thing in this world. It holds good and evil alike, its desires all tangled together — it doesn’t even know what it wants, forever stirring up meaningless things, desperately trying to make amends only to sink ever deeper. Don’t you think so?” Bie Chunian asked with a faint curl at his lips — yet there was no one else beside him. He had only the wooden mask in his hands to play with, a crack running across it, its strange, twisting patterns looking like figures entangled in endless knots of thread.

The mask gave no reply. Bie Chunian didn’t mind. Bored to an extreme, he went on murmuring to the mask as though in conversation: “What does that person want to use you for? To replace the Puppet Master Envoy? To turn Mingdeng Sect against Xuanqing Sect? Or something else entirely?”

Feiying was trapped within the strange mask, not saying a word. He had already understood that he had, without realizing it, become a pawn in another’s hand — fought over and made use of by two sides. But whatever the players intended, it had nothing to do with him, the piece being played. This cultivator who had taken the strange mask murmured questions at him, yet though Feiying was already deeply entangled in this situation, he had no idea how he had become involved — before all of this, he had not even known he had already been laid down as another’s move. How laughable. He had believed that every action he took, every step he walked, was the result of his own deliberation — yet all along he had been advancing down a path laid out for him by someone else.

How terrifying.

Before he had ever encountered the Puppet Master Envoy, he had already been a puppet on another’s strings.

Replace the Puppet Master Envoy? Turn against Xuanqing Sect? Were the guesses this cultivator was making not absurd? Someone like him — someone who hadn’t even been worthy of knowing he’d entered the game — could he possibly accomplish such things?

“Naturally you cannot, but the one who intends to do these things is not you.” Bie Chunian said, unhurried.

Feiying’s heart lurched. The thoughts he had just been turning over had been entirely within his divine consciousness — he had not spoken aloud in reply to Bie Chunian. Yet a momentary stirring of his emotions had already been perceived. Feiying strained to rein in his divine consciousness, yet still felt as though he stood naked before this person, utterly without secrets.

And yet at the same time he could not help but be stirred to even greater turmoil by Bie Chunian’s words. The Puppet Master Envoy was inscrutable and strange; Xuanqing Sect’s roots ran deep and its branches wide. Beside them, he was nothing more than a pebble, a fallen leaf — but what a pebble or a fallen leaf could accomplish was not determined by the pebble or the leaf itself, but by whose hands it fell into. Had he not seen how a single drop of water in a cultivator’s hand could shatter a hundred-times-forged steel blade held by a mortal? And stones and fallen leaves — naturally, they were not entitled to know what it was they were actually doing.

After probing and confirming there was nothing to be gained from Feiying, Bie Chunian was untroubled. He couldn’t puzzle it out — so be it. No matter; this piece had already fallen into his hands.

Shitou, who was equally trapped within the strange mask, had been all along suppressing the ghostly mask using the Bright Lantern Method, and had likewise heard everything Bie Chunian had said. His mind was thrown into turmoil, his heart-flame flickering and guttering, and in an instant the delicate balance he had maintained against the strange mask teetered on the edge of collapse.

“Slow down — steady your heart. Observe the mind like a bright mirror: let every thought pass through it like a fleeting reflection. Though it is mirrored within, it cannot disturb the mirror’s surface…” Bie Chunian’s voice flowed like a clear spring, guiding Shitou on how to stabilize his heart-flame.

Shitou followed the instructions. The chaotic thoughts, guided by Bie Chunian’s voice, settled slowly like sand and silt to the bottom of his heart, leaving behind a heart-lake as clear and still as a bright mirror — and he could faintly sense that he might be able to turn the strange mask against itself.

“You…” Shitou concealed his strength, maintaining only the balance against the strange mask, and asked in startled suspicion, “You also know the Bright Lantern Method?”

Bie Chunian gave a soft laugh, his words carrying a hidden meaning. “And why would I not?”

A flash of realization lit up in Shitou’s mind. He cried out in shock. “You’re that person! The one who schemed against my master! You are Bie Chunian!”

Before he and his master had left Liuying City, Chaihuo had been manipulated into trying to harm his master, and the name that person had left behind was Bie Chunian. He knew his master well, and he knew Mingdeng Sect well. When Chaihuo used the formation given to him to trap Yang Cang, Shitou had been caught in the formation too — he had tumbled to the ground and been fixed in place by a surge of spiritual light. But that spiritual light’s purpose had been far more than merely immobilizing him. That was why he had suddenly found himself inside the strange mask — that was why he had now fallen into Bie Chunian’s hands. That had been the true purpose of that formation all along!

Bie Chunian drew a strand of soul-force laced with scattered fragments of memory and sensation from the strange mask, then casually cast that shred of divine consciousness into the void, to some unknown place. Feiying and Shitou, diminished by the loss of part of their soul-force, had no choice but to throw their full strength into resisting the strange mask and return to the previous balance. His concealment had been seen through and broken with contemptuous ease by Bie Chunian, yet he dared not allow the faintest trace of resentment to surface.

Bie Chunian smiled to himself. Making a special trip just to deliver an answer to Yang Cang — that was not something he would do. A single act need not serve only one purpose. Yang Cang was ruled by sentiment, and sentiment clouded the mind and veiled the eyes. He still had much to learn.

Bie Chunian idly played with the strange mask in his hand, entirely unconcerned with the plight of his fellow sect member’s predicament.

……

The Puppet Master Envoy was being pursued by Chi Zhenzi. She had been running the entire time, never once attempting to strike back — not because Chi Zhenzi was so powerful she couldn’t even fight, but because Chi Zhenzi held in his hand something with an extreme advantage over her.

Chi Zhenzi had come from Mount Tu. He had left Diancang Mountain this time for the purpose of dealing with the unworthy disciples from Mount Tu. Tushan Yin daren had given him two pieces of assistance: first, the approximate whereabouts of these wayward disciples; second, their criminal judgment scrolls.

As the progenitor of the Tushan clan, and with the assistance of Diancang Mountain’s divination, Tushan Yin could in principle have pinpointed the location of every Tushan descendant directly. But these rebellious disciples who had defected had pledged themselves to Hundun, and with Hundun’s power interfering, Chi Zhenzi could only determine their general vicinity — he could not find them directly.

As it happened, Chi Zhenzi also needed to make arrangements for the many ghost-gods entrusted to him by Marquis Wu, and his fellow sect members had divined that the person responsible for Marquis Wu’s death was connected to the task at hand. He decided to first settle the matter of avenging Marquis Wu’s death, which could also yield leads in tracking down the Tushan rebels.

Guided by Yue Niang, Chi Zhenzi located the hiding place of the many ghost-gods under Marquis Wu’s command. After discovering that Xuanqing Sect was paying unusual attention to them and hunting them, Chi Zhenzi sent these ghost-gods away and used this to lay a trap, then waited patiently in the abandoned village.

He waited for the killer who had taken Marquis Wu’s life — and also waited for the heaviest of the Tushan defectors on his list. As it turned out, the two were one and the same. It saved him considerable effort.

Tushan’s rules were strict; all disciples took binding oaths upon beginning their cultivation. These defectors had used Hundun’s power to suppress the karmic consequences of breaking their oaths, but with the criminal judgment scroll written personally by Tushan Yin in hand, each true charge recorded upon it was a layer of suppression. It was upon sensing the presence of the criminal judgment scroll that the Puppet Master Envoy had made the instant decision to flee.

The Puppet Master Envoy was worthy of her place as one of Xuanqing Sect’s Six Envoys: within the killing formation Chi Zhenzi had laid, she had used Feiying as a death-substitute, abandoned the strange mask in exchange for a single breath of relief, and forcibly shattered the confining formation — escaping in a matter of seconds.

But struggle as she might, she had now been cornered with no way out. Her puppets were all spent, and she had no remaining trump cards — yet Chi Zhenzi still pressed closely behind her, not shaken off for even a moment.

The thunderclap of Dao-sound erupted, reverberating through her to set her very soul aching. Weighed down by Tushan Yin’s personally written criminal judgment scroll as though bearing a mountain, she spent every last ounce of strength barely evading Chi Zhenzi’s thunder technique — then turned, only to find that lethal sword edge already before her eyes. In her constricting pupils the blade’s light suddenly flared enormous, already upon her.

“Stop!”

A handleless willow-leaf blade came hurtling through the air, forcing Chi Zhenzi’s sword edge aside — the sword intent grazed Tushan Tiao’s cheek and left a bleeding wound across her jade-white face.

Xu Huan’s figure arrived just behind the willow-leaf blade. The blade that had wrenched Chi Zhenzi’s sword aside came spinning back to his side, and two more willow-leaf blades of narrow, keen edge were pinched between his fingers — their killing edge pulsing with a cold, piercing bite.

His gaze swept across the blade — his brow knitted tight. The willow-leaf blade had been shattered more than halfway.

Xu Huan fixed his eyes on Chi Zhenzi, his gaze heavy with a murderous edge. This grey-robed old Daoist was not easy to deal with. He had struck in shock and fury with his full strength, yet had barely managed to deflect the old Daoist’s sword edge by a few inches.

He had rushed here and arrived just in time to see the desperate, unwilling look in Tushan Tiao’s eyes as she faced that sword’s edge. He thought of his mother. On the day of the palace upheaval he had been only six — before he even understood what was happening, he had been dragged into the old ancestral hall. He had never seen his mother one last time, never seen whether she too had struggled and despaired in those final moments, but he had imagined it countless times in a thousand agonizing reflections. Aunt Tiao and his mother were blood sisters and looked exactly alike. When he saw that moment just now, it was as though he was seeing his mother’s despair from all those years ago.

He would not allow something to happen to Aunt Tiao.

A flick of Xu Huan’s fingertip sent two willow-leaf blades arcing in crossing trajectories toward Tushan Tiao — he himself moved with the blades and arrived at Tushan Tiao’s side before they did, checking her condition.

Chi Zhenzi’s sword edge had already surged forward again. Without lifting his head as he took Tushan Tiao’s pulse, Xu Huan’s two leading willow-leaf blades looped back past his ears, crossed behind his head, and with precisely angled deflecting force braced apart the sword edge sweeping in again. The willow-leaf blade that had already half-shattered from blocking the first strike came slashing at Chi Zhenzi in turn.

The sudden appearance of a new figure did not perturb Chi Zhenzi in the slightest. A bolt of thunder technique struck toward the willow-leaf blade in front of him, while the sword edge darted forward again to cut down at Tushan Tiao. The half-ruined willow-leaf blade was shattered by the thunder light — yet from within the shards there suddenly erupted a cold, desolate killing energy of absolute keenness. This lone, unrelenting edge caused Chi Zhenzi’s sword intent to stall for just an instant, and Xu Huan seized that window to pull Tushan Tiao and turn to go.