It was exceedingly peculiar. Even though Mao Xiaodong had clearly departed, not only was the main hall of the Confucian Temple still closed to the public, but it also felt as if it were under martial law.

In the rear hall, besides Yuan Gaofeng and the other Confucian Temple deities who had manifested their golden bodies, there were two groups of distinguished and rare guests.

The Great Sui Emperor, having left the palace incognito, stood with a white-haired eunuch in crimson python robes at his side.

There were also two men. The elder had snow-white hair and an aura that remained imperious even amidst human rulers and Confucian saints. The younger man, seemingly aware that he lacked the standing to participate in the secret affairs, had gone to the front hall to pay respects to the statues of the Seventy-Two Sages.

The elder, identifying himself as Lin Shuangjiang, was not a native of Treasure Bottle Continent, though he spoke both the refined Treasure Bottle Continent dialect and the official language of the Great Sui with perfect fluency.

“Lin Shuangjiang” was likely an assumed name. What mattered was that ever since the old man’s appearance in the Great Sui capital, his magical powers had proven extraordinary. The python-robed eunuch and a palace guardian, both acting in concert with all their might, had been unable to harm him in the slightest.

Lin Shuangjiang glanced displeasedly at Yuan Gaofeng and the other two Confucian scholar deities who had appeared alongside Mao Xiaodong to engage in verbal sparring.

His gaze shifted, taking in the deities who had been founding meritorious generals and those who, as scholar-officials in the Great Sui’s history, had achieved territorial expansion. These two groups of deities had naturally gathered together, forming a sort of court faction, separated by a subtle, nearly imperceptible line from Yuan Gaofeng’s sparse ranks. Finally, Lin Shuangjiang’s gaze settled on the Great Sui Emperor. “Your Majesty,” he said, “the hearts of the army and the people of the Great Sui are readily available. The court has literary courage, and the battlefield has martial valor. With the momentum on your side, must you continue to endure humiliation? If, at the time of signing the covenant, the Great Sui truly could not withstand the iron hooves of the Great Li cavalry and could not escape the fate of national annihilation, the situation is now vastly different. Must Your Majesty still live in ignominy?”

Lin Shuangjiang coldly sneered, “Should I, a mere outsider, tell Your Majesty how many officials in the capital have resigned and left, and how many scholars have retreated to the mountains to seek enlightenment in the past few years? And must I recount how severely the fortunes of the martial temples have declined from the capital to the provinces? It was said to be a century-long treaty, with Your Majesty exchanging a reputation of infamy in the annals of history for a century of peace for the people of the Great Sui. But is Your Majesty truly certain that even if the barbarian Song clan of the Great Li were to keep its promise and not deploy a single soldier against the Great Sui, the Great Sui could safely endure for a century? And then wait with bated breath for manna to fall from the heavens, for the Great Li Song clan to bring about its own demise, allowing your Geyang Gao clan to pluck the fruits of victory?”

Lin Shuangjiang’s expression was frigid. “When the upper beam is not straight, the lower beams will be crooked. Your Majesty is surely aware of the Great Li Song clan’s character. Now that Song Changjing, a feudal lord, is acting as regent and martial men hold power, the Great Li Emperor was even able to scheme against the righteous gods of the Five Peaks, who were connected to the Gao clan’s national destiny, stripping them of their titles. Is the covenant between the Eastern Flower Mountain of the Great Sui and the Northern Cloud-Clad Mountain of the Great Li truly reliable? I dare to say that within fifty years, at most thirty, even if the Great Li cavalry is stalled in the Vermilion Fluorescence Dynasty, the Great Li heir to the throne and that Embroidered Tiger will successfully digest the entire northern part of Treasure Bottle Continent. In thirty years, everyone in the Great Sui, from the common people to the border troops, from the clerks and petty officials to the important ministers of the court, will regard the Great Li Dynasty as a paradise to be yearned for.”

Lin Shuangjiang said sternly, “When the people of the Great Sui, from the depths of their hearts, regard another country as better than their homeland, what face will you, the Great Sui Emperor who single-handedly brought about this calamity of national subjugation, have to meet the ancestors of the Geyang Gao clan?”

Yuan Gaofeng angrily rebuked, “Lin Shuangjiang, you are insolent! The affairs of my Great Sui are not for you to rant about here!”

A Great Sui scholar-official who had once drafted a national policy that led to the Huangting Kingdom becoming a vassal state said softly, “Your Majesty, please consider this carefully.”

Lin Shuangjiang said no more.

The art of diplomacy: Opening is speaking; closing is silence.

The unspoken words after speaking, the things left unsaid, are where the true skill lies, and where one can truly bewitch the hearts of others.

While silence reigned in the rear hall, in the front hall, the long-robed man with a handsome and youthful face, like Chen Pingan, examined each statue of the Seventy-Two Sages.

The Great Sui Emperor finally spoke, “It was only after Song Zhengchun’s death that you two gentlemen decided to pay us a visit today, is that right?”

Lin Shuangjiang nodded in agreement.

The Great Sui Emperor pointed to himself and laughed, “Then what if one day I am beaten to death by a tenth-realm martial artist, or pierced by a flying sword from that wandering Moist named Xu Ruo? How would that be accounted for?”

The Great Sui Emperor pointed to the ceiling and then to the front hall behind him, “If Xu Ruo were to recklessly kill a monarch, as a cultivator, he would likely be punished by one of the saints over there. Xu Ruo is an important figure in the Moist school. Earlier, the side branch of the Moists helped to build a replica of the White Jade Capital, which was destroyed. The Moist main branch of the Central Earth Continent changed their minds and chose to bet on the Great Li Song clan. Xu Ruo is likely a key figure, so he may not be willing to make a move and trade with me. The Moists would lose too much. But if Li Er kills me, a pure martial artist, it seems that according to the rules of you cultivators, the Confucian sages wouldn’t interfere.”

Lin Shuangjiang said calmly, “That Li Er, as long as he hasn’t reached the God-like realm among tenth-realm martial artists, I can prevent him from even entering the Great Sui capital, provided that your Confucian Temple is willing to cooperate with me and activate the city-protecting formation.”

Even so, the Great Sui Emperor was still unmoved and continued to ask, “It’s not the fear of being robbed, but the fear of being targeted. Will we be able to guard against a thief every day? Does Elder Lin intend to stay in the Great Sui forever?”

Lin Shuangjiang frowned.

At this moment, a warm, mellow voice resounded in everyone’s hearts, “If Li Er dares to come to the Great Sui capital to kill, I will be responsible for going out of the city to kill him. I can only guarantee this one thing. I will not interfere with anything else.”

Yuan Gaofeng sneered, “Well, the Qi refiners of the Central Earth Continent are indeed formidable. Killing a tenth-realm martial artist is like a child pinching a chick to death.”

Lin Shuangjiang did not say much, and said in a deep voice: “Mr. Fan says what he means.”

The Great Sui Emperor laughed: “Really?”

The person in the front hall smiled and replied: “The business family has passed down the generations, and integrity is the foundation of survival.”

Li Huai played Gomoku (Five in a Row) according to the method Pei Qian taught him, and lost miserably.

After admitting defeat, he couldn’t hold back his anger and wiped away the densely packed chessboard with both hands. “I’m not playing anymore, it’s boring. Playing this game makes me dizzy, my eyes blurred, and hungry.”

The crisp sound of the chess pieces clashing against each other could be heard.
Xie, cultivating at one end of the green bamboo-floored corridor, felt a prickling unease, her eyelashes fluttering. She had to open her eyes and glance over. Pei Qian and Li Huai were picking out black and white chess pieces, tossing them back into their respective chess containers with a clatter.

The containers, crafted in the official kilns of the Great Sui Dynasty, were worth a few dozen taels of silver. But Xie knew the chess pieces themselves were priceless.

If Cui Dongshan were still in this little courtyard, Xie would occasionally be dragged into playing chess with him. If she so much as put a bit too much force into placing a piece, she’d be swatted across the room, sent spinning into a wall. Cui Dongshan would declare that if she broke one of the pieces, she would be bankrupting his collection, ruining its “completeness,” and destroying its value; Xie couldn’t afford to pay for it with her life.

Common chess pieces were made of polished stones, or for richer families, baked clay or porcelain. Immortal families of the mountains used carved rare jade.

But Cui Dongshan’s two containers of chess pieces had an astonishing origin. They were the “Colorful Cloud Stones” that every chess player in the world would covet. A thousand years ago, the younger brother of the White Emperor City Lord, the master of the Glazed Pavilion, had created them using his unique “Dripping” secret technique. With the collapse of the Glazed Pavilion and the disappearance of its master, this special Dripping method had been lost forever. A certain chess-obsessed immortal from the Central Plains had once obtained one and a half containers of Colorful Cloud Stones and offered a Summer Solstice Coin, an astronomical price, for a single piece to complete the set.

And now, these Glazed pieces were no better than pebbles in the hands of Pei Qian and Li Huai.

Xie sighed inwardly. Fortunately, the Colorful Cloud Stones were indeed worth their weight; a strong young man could exert all his strength and still fail to break them. Instead, they produced an increasingly resounding clatter on the game board.

Li Huai didn’t want to play connecting-five, so Pei Qian suggested playing the jacks game. Li Huai was immediately full of confidence; he was good at this! He used to play it often with his classmates at the village school. That pigtail girl, Shi Chunjia, lost to him all the time! And when playing jacks with his sister Li Liu at home, he had never lost!

The two of them picked out five pieces each from their respective containers and started a game. After one round, they found it too easy and decided to increase the number to ten.

Xie heard the sounds, even crisper than the clatter of pieces on the board, and her heart trembled. She could only hope that Cui Dongshan would never learn of this disaster.

From time to time, one or two Colorful Cloud Stones would fly off the back of a hand, crash onto the bluestone floor of the courtyard, and then be casually picked up by the two clueless children.

Xie was completely unable to focus on her breathing exercises. She simply stood up and went to her room to look through her books.

Li Baoping walked out of the main room study and squatted down next to Pei Qian and Li Huai to watch. Li Huai was still being utterly defeated.

Li Baoping silently grabbed five black pieces from another container and put five white pieces back into the white piece’s container. There were now five black pieces and five white pieces on the floor. Li Baoping explained to the two who were looking at each other in bewilderment, “It’s more fun to play this way. You each choose a color, black or white. Every time you grab the stones, say Pei Qian, you pick black. If you grab seven pieces and two of them are white, then you can only count three black pieces.”

Pei Qian said timidly, “Sister Baoping, I want to choose white.”

Li Baoping nodded. “Alright.”

Li Huai exclaimed irritably, “I want to choose white too!”

Li Baoping glanced at him.

Li Huai immediately changed his tune, “Never mind, black looks better.”

Shi Rou’s thoughts stirred.

This little girl in the red skirt always seemed to have such unique ideas. Among everyone, Shi Rou observed Li Baoping the most, because Chen Ping’an obviously favored her. She found that the little girl’s words and actions couldn’t be described as deliberately precocious; she was actually quite innocent. But many of her ideas were both within the rules and beyond them.

Just as Shi Rou was secretly observing Li Baoping, the battle ended. According to Li Baoping’s rule, Li Huai lost even more miserably.

Pei Qian shook her head, weighing a few chess pieces in her hand, tossing them up and catching them again and again. “Lonely, all I ask for is a single defeat, is it really that hard?”

Li Huai was sneaky, his eyes darting around, trying to find something else to get revenge with.

Pei Qian threw down the chess pieces, picked up the walking stick at her feet, and hopped into the courtyard. “Sister Baoping, defeated general Li Huai, I’ll show you all what it means to ‘fly over houses and leap over ridges with a staff!’ My divine skills haven’t fully matured yet, so I can only do some wall-running for now! Watch closely! You must watch closely!”

Pei Qian retreated to the far end of the courtyard wall, facing the opposite wall. She took a deep breath and sprinted forward, suddenly and accurately plunging the walking stick into the gap between the courtyard flagstones. Pei Qian’s feet left the ground, and the staff bent into a large arc. As the staff sprang back with a bang, Pei Qian leaped high, her petite body stretching out in the air, and she stood steadily on the wall. She turned around, grinning at Li Baoping and Li Huai. “See!”

Li Huai watched in amazement, shouting, “I want to try too!”

Pei Qian jumped lightly off the wall, like a little wildcat, landing silently.

She generously tossed the walking stick to Li Huai.

Li Huai mimicked Pei Qian, retreating to the base of the wall. He ran forward in quick, short steps, glanced at the ground, and abruptly plunged the walking stick into the gap in the flagstones. He gave a shout, and the walking stick bent. Li Huai’s body rose with it, but his final posture and application of force were wrong, so his legs went up, his head went down, and his body tilted. He cried out a few times, then fell back to the ground.

Yu Lu turned into a gust of gentle wind in an instant, catching Li Huai and setting him upright.

Li Huai said without shame, “Failure at the last step, just a hair’s breadth away, what a pity, what a pity.”

Pei Qian sneered, “Then I’ll give you ten more chances?”

Li Huai said earnestly, “Although I, Li Huai, have extraordinary talent, a martial arts prodigy that is rare even in a thousand or eight hundred years, my ambitions lie elsewhere. I won’t compete with you in such matters.”

Li Baoping took the walking stick from Li Huai and tried it once.

As a result, the little girl in the red skirt, under everyone’s gaze, not only succeeded, but succeeded too well, flying straight over the wall.

There was a faint sound from outside the wall.

Li Baoping, familiar with this kind of thing, wasn’t injured, but she landed unsteadily, her knees gradually bending. After squatting on the ground, she fell backward, landing on her bottom.

Li Baoping stood up, unscathed.

An old hunchback stood not far away, smiling. “Are you alright?”

Li Baoping laughed. “Of course I’m alright!”

Zhu Lian nodded with a smile.
Li Baoping sprinted back to the courtyard.

Zhu Lian, a martial arts grandmaster of the Distant Travels realm, possessed discerning eyes. He knew Li Baoping was safe, which was why he hadn’t intervened.

Zhu Lian continued his stroll around the courtyard.

He had overheard Chen Ping’an’s conversation with Li Baoping before leaving the academy. Chen Ping’an hadn’t deliberately concealed anything from him.

Zhu Lian even felt sorry for Sui Youbian, for missing out on that dialogue.

Back when the painting scroll quartet was still together at the Old Dragon City dust medicine shop, the old man surnamed Xun, who had early on recognized Sui Youbian’s “sword immortal potential,” frequented the place. Once, during a Go game, Sui Youbian and Lu Baixiang were playing in the courtyard. The old man, with just a few words, expounded on the Dao of the Sword through the principles of Go.

Horizontal and vertical lines, a focused placement of stones.

The essence lay in the word “sever.” This was swordplay.

The quality of the Go formation lay in the word “define.” Claiming territory, warlord separatism, natural barriers, these were all sword intents.

At the end of the game, including the review, Sui Youbian remained unmoved. This embarrassed the old man, and Pei Qian even mocked him for half a day, exaggerating wildly and scaring people with empty words. No wonder Senior Sister Sui didn’t appreciate it.

However, that very night, Sui Youbian went into secluded meditation to comprehend the sword, not leaving her room for a day and two nights.

Now, Sui Youbian had gone to Tongye Continent, to the Jade Decree Sect, which had inexplicably become the leader of the immortal families of the continent, to become a sword cultivator.

Wei Xian had run off with Cui Dongshan.

Lu Baixiang was to travel the lands alone.

That left only Zhu Lian, who chose to stay by Chen Ping’an’s side.

Chen Ping’an’s two actions at the Lion Garden, one against the rampaging demon and the other against Li Baozhen, Zhu Lian didn’t find particularly outstanding.

But it was Chen Ping’an’s conversation with Li Baoping that Zhu Lian repeatedly savored, admiring from the bottom of his heart.

Li Baozhen, Li Baoping, Li Xisheng, the Li family of Fortune and Prosperity Lane.

The four were connected by blood, yet Chen Ping’an, though called Little Martial Uncle by Li Baoping, was ultimately an outsider.

How Chen Ping’an should deal with Li Baozhen was extremely complicated. To hope that no matter the outcome, it wouldn’t hurt Li Baoping’s heart was even harder, almost a dead end where doing anything was “not wrong,” yet also “not right.”

If Chen Ping’an concealed the matter or simply explained the circumstances of meeting Li Baozhen at the Lion Garden, Li Baoping certainly wouldn’t have a problem at that moment, and their relationship would remain as it was.

But if Chen Ping’an were to kill Li Baozhen one day, who was seeking death himself, even if Chen Ping’an was completely justified and Li Baoping understood the reasoning, it wouldn’t change the fact that the little girl would be heartbroken.

That was the crux of the matter.

Thus, that conversation occurred.

Zhu Lian walked slowly, muttering to himself, “This is the sword art of the heart, cutting with extreme precision.”

What is severing?

Chen Ping’an’s initial decision not to kill Li Baozhen was a promise kept, fulfilling his pledge to Li Xisheng, essentially akin to upholding the law.

Furthermore, using the family heirloom on Li Baozhen to make a “pawn” with Li Baoping and the entire Li family of Fortune and Prosperity Lane was reason, it was human nature.

This separated Li Baozhen from the entire Li family of Fortune and Prosperity Lane, as if Cui Dongshan’s flying sword had created a prison, a forbidden zone, confining Li Baozhen within it.

Li Baozhen was Li Baozhen, and the Li family behind Li Baoping and Li Xisheng was the Li family after Li Baozhen was removed.

Chen Ping’an drew a circle and made a definition.

And in silence, he pointed out a path for Li Baoping’s heart, providing a possibility of “no one is wrong, everyone is responsible for their own life and death,” so that in the future, even if Chen Ping’an and Li Baozhen fought to the death, Li Baoping, even if still heartbroken, would never fall from one extreme into another.

This was what the old man surnamed Xun called sword art.

Chen Ping’an’s drawing of his sword perfectly matched this path.

It was a subtle tug-of-war of the heart.

Therefore, that day, Chen Ping’an also watched the Go game in the backyard of the medicine shop, and also heard the priceless words of wisdom from the old man surnamed Xun, but Zhu Lian dared to assert that even if Sui Youbian meditated in seclusion for a day and two nights, no matter how good her talent for learning the sword, she might not be able to grasp its true meaning as well as Chen Ping’an.

Everyone’s path under their feet has different distances, but also different heights.

Remember the two sentences Li Baoping taught Pei Qian.

Carrying a bamboo box, wearing straw sandals, a million fists, the翩翩 (piān piān) young man is most at ease.

Carrying an immortal sword, wearing a white robe, ten thousand miles, the best Little Martial Uncle in the world.

Zhu Lian murmured, “Little Baoping, your Little Martial Uncle, although not a sword cultivator yet, his sword immortal disposition should already have taken shape, right?”

Zhu Lian suddenly stopped and looked towards the end of the small path leading to the courtyard, squinting his eyes.

An elderly scholar accompanied by a white deer appeared there.