The sun, a molten disc, hung high in the midday sky.

Chen Ping An set down his bamboo fishing pole, straightened, and with a flick of his toe, sent his wineskin spinning into the air. He caught it deftly, took a lingering draught, and declared, “Let us walk and talk.”

Thus, Lu Chen, finding temporary refuge in the aged innkeeper’s wayside lodge, strolled along the creek bank with Chen Ping An.

To any casual observer, it would seem unremarkable. Bai Bo, the mine overseer of the Jade Hewing Mountain, and Chen Jiu, the outer sect greeter, were known to be on amiable terms.

“A mere phantasm, conjured from the ether,” Chen Ping An said, his voice laced with a dangerous calm. “Why the need for such grand theatrics, Headmaster Lu? To defy the edicts of the Confucian Temple and slip unbidden into this Blessed Land? Unless…”

Lu Chen chuckled, picking up the thread. “Unless this humble Taoist already possessed a shard of spirit, long adrift within this mortal realm. Since I did not arrive from Jade Capital, I am not in violation of their precious rules.”

Chen Ping An shook his head, a hint of amusement playing on his lips. “Unless Headmaster Lu seeks to ascend directly to the Fifteenth Realm, filling the void left by your master’s dispersion and your senior brother’s return to Jade Capital, to awe the fourteen provinces of Azure Heavens. If the Blessed Land and the Savage Desolations are but two ships upon the Void, so too must be Azure Heavens. As the old adage goes, ‘If the ruler lacks virtue, all souls aboard become enemies.’ As for invincibility… its true nature is no doubt clear to you, an impartial observer. You have discerned that an immediate breakthrough carries an inexplicably diminished chance of success. Something amiss. You pondered, and your thoughts turned to me. Suppressing your realm, you employed a secret art to deceive the heavens. How long can you linger here, Headmaster Lu? A quarter of an hour? The burning of an incense stick?”

“Chen Ping An,” Lu Chen retorted, his eyes glinting with amusement, “you are not so difficult to decipher. You risk much in dividing your spirit, striving to bring your inner world ever closer to truth, attempting to attain the Dao through artifice. But when an outsider penetrates your illusion, a lesser man might hesitate, seek compromise. Not you. You have but two choices: to watch and wait, gambling on a false alarm, or to shatter that shard of spirit, wounding the very root of your being, forging an eternal enmity. While simultaneously alerting the Sages of the Confucian Temple to guard the celestial barrier and summoning Master Xiao and the Lady Xie to bar the path. Chen Ping An, after all these years, you still cling to this dichotomy of right and wrong.”

These two unlikely companions, reunited in a foreign land, spoke past each other, each lost in their own intricate dance.

“What difference is there between thought and process?” Chen Ping An inquired.

“Thought is boundless, limitless, immeasurable. Process, however, demands order, logic, and entry points.”

Chen Ping An nodded slowly. “Does this imply a divergence of the spirit? Like a single path branching into feeling and reason?”

Lu Chen smiled. “Celestial learning cultivates the heart, mortal learning shapes the body. A tranquil heart and a peaceful body: that is the divine within. Perhaps that is too broad. Allow me a simpler example: memorial tablets. Found within grand ancestral halls, humble family shrines, and even national temples. They are used to honor ancestors and forebears. The name of the departed is inscribed upon the tablet, along with the name of the officiating descendant. Reverence for the heavens and veneration of ancestors, the careful observance of life’s end. So tell me, if the spirit is truly divided, which is master, and which is servant?”

Chen Ping An frowned, perplexed. “Is such a comparison valid?”

“Assuredly.”

“No!” Lu Chen declared with a mischievous grin.

Chen Ping An turned, and if not for the borrowed visage of Bai Bo, he might have been tempted to land a fist upon the rogue Taoist’s jaw.

Lu Chen laughed. “I merely sought to prove you wrong. There is no time limit, no quarter of an hour or burning incense stick. I shall tarry in this Blessed Land as long as I please. The Confucian Temple holds no sway over me.”

Suddenly, Chen Ping An’s expression sharpened. “In truth, I misspoke at the outset. Man’s feeling and reason are not divergent paths, but a singular lineage. Feeling precedes reason… no, reason precedes feeling. The divide between heavenly law and human desire? Like your memorial tablet and those who offer it reverence. Tracing back to the ancestor of a clan, and further… the body ruled by man, the heart ruled by the heavens?”

Lu Chen nodded eagerly, like a chick pecking for grain. “Ah, to think it could be interpreted thus! A blind cat finding a dead mouse! Exquisite, truly exquisite.”

Lu Chen peered upwards at the sun, then surveyed the surroundings, shaking out his sleeves. “Indeed, the Great Declaration is aflame, the word of the Dao burns like fire, its teaching resounding across the four seas, embracing all, escaping none.”

Chen Ping An sighed. “Headmaster Lu, you are formidable. To find my second division of spirit so quickly.”

Lu Chen smiled faintly. “With time on my hands, why not solve a riddle or two?”

He shifted sideways, craning his neck to study Chen Ping An’s profile. “Chen Jiu, the greeter of this place. Wu Di, the Taoist of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom. Add to them the bamboo pavilion incarnation within the Fallen Mountain. Three shards of spirit. And then that ‘memorial tablet’ within the village school at the foot of Yun Province Mountain… rarely moving, unyielding as a mountain, like the North Star, drawing a straight line across the heavens. Are the remaining incarnations divided along a path of seven? Ah, I understand! A terrestrial manifestation of the Dipper constellation! Did the Mountain Lord Chen draw inspiration from the Golden Summit Temple of the Tung Leaf Continent? Though, at its heart, it is but an imitation of my own methods. I am flattered, immensely flattered! Since the mortal world defines east and west by the rising and setting of the sun, and north and south by the North Star, does this imply that the range of activity of your seven spirit-infused talismanic incarnations within the Blessed Land is somewhat limited, save for the ‘mouth of the Dipper,’ which must ever point towards the main body within the school? Allow me to guess the locations of the remaining three. The Yu Province of Great Li. The Azure Apricot Kingdom, south of the Great River… The last one is a challenge. Regardless, you have clearly labored to safeguard these seven shards of spirit from being intercepted and destroyed one by one.”

Such an array brought greater stability to Chen Ping An’s risky venture of dividing his spirit. Linked by the constellation, it was as if each scattered shard had been given a life-extending lamp within an “ancestral hall.”

Unless targeted by a sage capable of foreseeing the future, even immortals within the Blessed Land would struggle to peel away and imprison a single incarnation’s spirit. Should a battle erupt, the victorious foe would be baffled to find that the living cultivator possessed no soul. Only when that shard of spirit dispersed, returning to the “ancestral hall,” revealing the true nature of the talismanic puppet, would they realize they had provoked a force beyond reckoning.

Chen Ping An said, “There are two hidden stars, auxiliaries, to provide support, lest an immortal too easily shatter a single talisman, causing a chain reaction, undermining everything, forcing me to immediately withdraw all my talismanic incarnations.”

Lu Chen sighed in admiration. “No wonder you once told me, within the Mud Bottle Alley, that your memory was good, that you remembered everything you saw.”

That young shoe mender from Mud Bottle Alley had once addressed him with respectful deference, calling him Taoist Lu. How nostalgic.

From Taoist Lu, to Lu Chen, to Bastard, to now, Headmaster Lu. How melancholy.

Lu Chen now rejoiced that this journey had not been in vain. Chen Ping An was now a student well on his way up the mountain of cultivation, perhaps halfway there, and not as others might understand the term, but positioned where one could glimpse the view from the summit. That was the qualification. It had no bearing on realm, as so many Great Immortals who had attained Ascension never discovered the trigger to merge with the Dao. To Lu Chen’s eyes, they remained outsiders, who had not reached even the mountain’s base.

Now, wielding two flying swords and their combined innate powers, Chen Ping An had found an expansive “sword path”: to draw upon all that he had seen, heard, learned, and imagined, to construct an endless series of micro-universes. If it was but a somewhat naive notion before his return from the Sword Qi Great Wall, it had begun in earnest as Chen Ping An set about forging a river of time using golden copper coins, and in its latest manifestation, since his return from beyond the heavens, he had enhanced the quality of the ‘Moon in the Well’. Now his seven incarnations throughout the Blessed Land were constantly drawing upon all they saw, heard, thought, and felt in their respective locations, sharpening the edge of his sword on the realities of the world.

Such a method of sword cultivation was an eye-opener even to Lu Chen.

For example, at the feast, Chen Jiu the Greeter had recorded every minute detail of Bai Ni, Xia Hou Zan, and Liang Yuping – their bodies, their features, their expressions, their voices, their tones, their mannerisms. All had been quietly integrated into the main body’s sword-realm.

In short, all people and landscapes upon Chen Ping An’s path were but “words.” The feast at the Jade Hewing Mountain’s Flower Scattering Beach was a “sentence.”

The more numerous, dense, and detailed the words comprising that sentence, the closer it came to approaching “truth,” as opposed to “illusion.”

Like Lu Chen’s previous question about time: did it exist, or was it but an illusion of countless frozen moments strung together into a singular “one?” Lu Chen’s theory saw the entire world as a static book. Only when the “one” acknowledged by Lu Chen began to turn the pages did the book’s characters and scenes come to life and flow. Clearly, Lu Chen’s theory, and Li Xisheng’s, had the same roots, but different streams.

To suddenly forget a word, and then to suddenly recall an event, as if it had already happened…

How sorrowful was life. The despair of fretting over imagined problems, the tears shed at the end of the road. Lu Chen had felt them keenly.

Like when Chen Ping An was returning from beyond the heavens with Xiao Mo and Bai Jing, and Bai Jing tossed him a pile of paintings depicting ancient landscapes. Chen Ping An felt as if he was looking at a children’s picture book, like Pei Qian doodling in the corner of her textbooks: different poses, quickly flipped to show a set of actions.

So when Chen Ping An, the author, extracted a single “sentence” and placed it within the River of Time inside his birdcage, others would find it all the more real.

If today’s feast was a short sentence, then Taoist Wu Di within his residence in Yongning County, the capital of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, the ghost Xue Ruyi, the boy Zhang Hou, the flowers and grasses of the courtyard, plus his daily outings to wine and chat with the underlings of the government, or to set up a fortune-telling stall on the streets, that was a “long sentence,” stretching across the river of time for months.

And Lu Chen’s “illusion” was the progenitor of all methods, like the first… memorial tablet.

But when Chen Ping An and Li Xisheng chatted about Zou Zi, Chen Ping An thought that a river anchor couldn’t possibly be Lu Chen.

It was a form of self-deception in Chen Ping An’s habitual “thought process.”

And from this self-deception, to the deception of others, and then to the deception of the heavens, a method learned from Cui Chan, though he hadn’t mastered it. Chen Ping An was learning on his own, groping in the dark, like working backwards from the answer of a mathematical proof to construct a complex solving process. At the same time, this unnecessary act of self-deception allowed Chen Ping An to speak Lu Chen’s name in his heart. Lu Chen, who was watching on from afar, immediately sensed that something was wrong, and began to reverse-engineer events. Another moment of heart-stopping suspense, not unlike the ambush that almost happened at the Sword Qi Great Wall. Had Lu Chen not left the Azure Heavens, had he not joined the fray, shielded from the Heavenly Secrets by a Great World, he might have missed that clue.

Lu Chen’s return to the Blessed Land was not a violation of the rules. He had informed Ritual Sage of his intentions.

He did have legitimate business, but seeing Chen Ping An was but a side trip.

“Allow me to calculate. This year, on Pure Brightness Day, the Dipper’s mouth will point towards… Everlasting Peace Street in the capital of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom?!”

Lu Chen still moved like a crab, matching Chen Ping An’s stride. “Is Ma Kuixuan truly worth dividing your spirit for this ritual?”

The ritual Lu Chen spoke of was not one of consecration, but of confinement, of sealing.

Chen Ping An and Ma Kuixuan both knew of an old debt, someone owing and someone collecting.

Perhaps two. Perhaps three. If Ma Kuixuan insisted on interfering, then perhaps three or four.

All would die.

Lu Chen turned and kicked a stone into the creek. “Even if Ma Kuixuan’s parents become mountain spirits, receiving divine protection from the Western Peak Mountain Spirit Court, what then? Could they stop you from avenging yourself?”

“Ah, yes, I see. Somewhat tricky.”

“The couple is seeking to join the ranks of the City Gods, to obtain a protective talisman from the Underworld. A different path entirely from the mountain spirits. A veritable life-saving charm.”

“Strange. How did they do it? With their miserly natures, even if they sought to accumulate virtue through acts of charity, the Underworld has an iron law of ‘Well-intentioned acts, though good, go unrewarded’. Even if mortals are adept at the laws of the Underworld, attempting to accumulate merit through loopholes, they could never pass that test. Aspiring to become high-ranking City Gods is but a fool’s dream.”

Chen Ping An finally spoke. “Ma Kuixuan is clever. He long ago intended to bypass them, secretly arranging for people in the capital of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom to force his parents to do certain things, without telling them why, even forbidding them to ask. He had once warned and threatened them with dire consequences.”

“Better to teach a man to fish than to give him fish. Ma Kuixuan has taken the opposite approach. Slower, perhaps, but effective.”

Lu Chen smiled. “When did Ma Kuixuan begin this scheme?”

Chen Ping An said, “Not too late, not too early. When the Ma family, together with their relatives from Apricot Blossom Lane, left the town, left the Great Li Dynasty, for the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, under the jurisdiction of the Western Peak. Back then, Ma Kuixuan was proud and arrogant, and didn’t think I was worthy to be his enemy. The most he intended was to protect his parents, akin to Cai Jinjian and Fu Nanhua. After all, he would be cultivating on True Martial Mountain. He couldn’t keep an eye on the Li Pearl Grotto all the time.”

“When I first left the Sword Qi Great Wall and returned to the Blessed Land, especially after leaving the Book Slip Lake, Ma Kuixuan might have become wary. But, more likely, it was to deliberately disgust me, to keep me consumed with a revenge I could never achieve, to keep me living in hatred and regret. When news of my becoming the Hidden Official of the Sword Qi Great Wall reached the Blessed Land, only then did Ma Kuixuan truly see me as a threat. I have closely studied the actions of the Ma family in the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, and in the past few years their clansmen have been frequently intervening, even attempting to obtain official recognition and glory for the family through the imperial examinations, and then trying to get someone, or several, to receive posthumous titles from the imperial court. It all began, step by step, in those years. The only surprise was that I caught up to his realm so quickly.”

When Fallen Mountain had the ceremony at the True Yang Mountain, Ma Kuixuan had listened to the advice of Yu Shiwu from the True Martial Mountain. The latter had frankly admitted that if they didn’t act, they would lose their chance.

Unfortunately, Chen Ping An had nearly dismantled the entire True Yang Mountain, yet still hadn’t given Ma Kuixuan the opportunity to act.

Chen Ping An smiled faintly. “When Ma Kuixuan’s parents become City Gods of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, I believe the first thing they will do is deal with the evildoers within their own Ma family, securing their golden statues. Within the Capital City God Temple, the Civil Judge will be transferred out of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, and Ji Xiaoping, the Chief Official of the Yin Yang Department, will be promoted to Civil Judge. The vacancies left in the Yin Yang Department, and a certain other Department, will be filled by City Gods from regional prefectures who are coming to the capital to report on their work and be promoted.”

Lu Chen chuckled. “Truly, Ma Kuixuan has put forth great effort, and to a very good purpose.”

City Gods of all levels were different from mountain spirits. Although the Five Sacred Mountain Spirits had the right to govern both, the true superiors of the City Gods were the Underworld. The Five Sacred Mountain Spirits could directly decide the promotion, and even the life and death, of the mountain spirits within their territory, but they could not punish the City Gods. They had to hand over the case to the Underworld, which would make the decision based on their own laws.

Within the bureaucratic hierarchy of the land, the City God Temple was like the Imperial Censorate of the imperial court. They had a detached and honorable status, and could supervise all officials, yet the Ministry of Personnel could not directly decide the promotion or demotion of a Censor.

Of course, Ma Kuixuan was able to do this because the Li Pearl Grotto had its own natural cycle, and the life, death, merit, and sin of the townsfolk were not controlled by the Underworld.

Lu Chen asked, “Is there a way to solve this?”

Chen Ping An nodded. “There is.”

“One of those rare times when you swordsmen act unreasonable?”

“On the contrary, acting by the book. Not only will the Capital City God Temple of the Jade Promulgation Kingdom, but the Underworld itself will find nothing amiss. Since nothing is amiss, they cannot protect Ma Kuixuan’s parents based on the laws of the Underworld, and must act impartially. Anything else will lead to endless entanglement, to cycles of revenge. The grudges of the previous generation will be settled by us, this generation. Those who owe a debt shall repay it, and those who have an enemy shall exact their revenge. We shall not leave it for the next generation.”

Lu Chen laughed. “Ma Kuixuan will have schemed for naught. Won’t he be infuriated to death?”

Chen Ping An said, “His Dao-heart is strong. It will not enrage him.”

Lu Chen was speechless.

*I was just joking. You don’t have to take everything so seriously.*

Lu Chen changed to a more pleasing topic. “Chen Ping An, you have truly become a greeter.”

Lu Chen had once suggested to Chen Ping An that he should become a greeter if he had the chance. It would be very interesting.

Chen Ping An smiled. “I’m happy to learn from your advice.”

Lu Chen sighed without explanation. “All that one sees becomes one’s world. How precious, and how fragile, is one’s memory.”

The sun was about to set, a riot of purple and azure, transforming endlessly in an instant, like a dream.

Wait, wasn’t it midday? How could the sun already be setting?

*I’ve been too confident. This is bad.* Lu Chen immediately closed his eyes, then reopened them.

*He who walks by the river is bound to get his feet wet.* Miserable.

*Chen Ping An, you are not showing any sentimentalism. This humble Taoist helped you connect with the Lady Ning!*

By the riverbank, Bai Bo sat next to the apricot tree and asked, “How many fish have you caught?”

Chen Ping An, squatting and holding the fishing pole, smiled. “No catch yet, but a big fish has taken the bait. Even if I hook it, I may not be able to reel it in.”

Bai Bo laughed. “You’re a cultivator, aren’t you? You can’t even pull in a fish?”

Chen Ping An straightened his face and nodded. “The fish must be a spirit.”

Bai Bo chuckled. *The kid is quite the joker.*

Within a bizarre, fantastical realm, Lu Chen stared face-to-face at another Lu Chen, as if looking into a mirror, thus seeing endless Lu Chens.