Sunlit and clear over the lotus marsh, dragonflies wheeled and droned.
In the little pavilion at its center, the softness in Mei Yu's eyes deepened further. She reached out a finger and tapped lightly on the shabby wooden table before her.
"So that's your explanation? By that reasoning, whenever you decide something is right, that alone means it should be done?"
"If you decided Linglong could go die, then she could simply go and die."
Mei Yu lifted her head slightly, baring her neck, and pressed a fingertip lightly to her own throat as she went on.
"Or if you think it's my time to die — should I stretch my neck out to you right now?"
Boluo let out a faint sigh. "The matter at the East Sea — I already told you plainly how it happened. That is the truth of it. Linglong believed she could kill Chu Xingchen. But who could have known — not only had Chu Xingchen's wounds healed, his cultivation had broken through all the way to the Tribulation Transcendence realm…"
"That is not what I wanted to hear!" Mei Yu cut him off, her eyes narrowing. "Only when you cast aside your standing in the Buddhist fold and joined us to encircle and kill Chu Xingchen did we begin to trust you. Was Linglong there at the East Sea all along, following your arrangements?"
"Chu Xingchen left the East Sea — I doubt you didn't know. He had drifted those waters for how long, and Linglong never made a move the whole time. If you had truly wanted to avoid this, you could have called Linglong home early."
"But you looked the other way. Even granting you the best of it, you merely wanted to spend Linglong's life as the probe — to sound out whether Chu Xingchen's wounds had really healed, what his true realm was."
"If Chu Xingchen had been bluffing, then good — Linglong kills him. And if it was real, Linglong's life still bought you your answer."
"The wish-power you gave Linglong — was that meant all along to let Xu Linglong die there?"
Boluo raised his gaze. "I never told it to do any such thing."
"Hah. Spend long enough at the Buddhist gate, and you learn a fair bit of sophistry." The softness drained out of Mei Yu; contempt surfaced in her eyes. "You and I both know it. Your not-doing was itself the doing!"
Boluo shot the question back. "Could Linglong not see it clearly itself? Why is that not its own choice?"
"Linglong is already dead. What it did no longer matters to me." Mei Yu's voice went colder by degrees. "But you are still alive — so of course what matters to me is what you do!"
A dragonfly droned long and sharp, fluttering in through the pavilion's open side.
Boluo's gaze followed the insect.
"The great upheaval is at hand. Our Heavenly Demon numbers are already thinned. How is losing Linglong anything but a disaster for us?"
"That, you'll have to ask yourself." Mei Yu pushed herself upright. "If you never intended to give me the truth, then we're done here for today."
Boluo watched Mei Yu rise to leave. After a moment's deliberation, he spoke:
"If you want the truth, then yes. I did think along those lines."
"Knowing Chu Xingchen's true state mattered greatly to us too. And if Chu Xingchen could be killed — if that kept him from shepherding forth another True Immortal — that mattered more still."
"So I left Linglong un-instructed. If you want to call that my private design, then these are my private designs."
"But if Linglong had not gone after Chu Xingchen, then at the proper moment I would naturally have called it back. One Heavenly Demon alone makes the odds meaningfully greater."
"Its going, or its not going — either outcome was acceptable to me."
"So I left Linglong a store of wish-power, to use when matters turned desperate."
"But if you ask whether Linglong knew — you and I both understand. It knew. And it did it anyway."
"Now the situation is one spark from detonation. Chu Xingchen captured one of our kin alive and learned our secrets. I don't know whether he worked it out himself or whether word has leaked."
"But give them more time, and they will certainly see through the plan."
"And once they seal off the spirit veins everywhere, then it won't merely be Bai Bo and Linglong who died for nothing — you and I will die here too."
"And the one chance we have searched for over thousands of years ends right here."
"On you and on me rests the blood of who knows how many of our kin."
Boluo was the first to rise. He looked out at the lotuses beginning to wither, at the river water beginning to cloud, and spoke:
"What I have done, what I mean to do — it is all the one thread I have been pulling since the very beginning."
"And don't you forget how, at the end, Chudai Meiyu on her deathbed poured her entire cultivation and her true blood into you."
"I have not forgotten how Chudai Boluo charged me, in his turn."
Mei Yu's expression went cold. She rose as well, feeling the true-source blood running through her body, and said icily:
"So tell me — with what exactly do you intend to gather spirit power vast enough for all this? I have watched every move you make. Are you counting on those meager spirit-vein offshoots? Or on us assaulting the next of the Eighteen Immortal Sects? Or can you truly turn one of the Eighteen Immortal Sects to our side?"
Boluo turned back, raised a hand slightly, and crushed the dragonfly still beating its wings in the pavilion with a grip of spiritual power.
The dragonfly fell to the ground as a pinch of dust.
Boluo lowered his gaze to the dust that had been the insect, his tone calm:
"Raise the grand formation on those meager spirit-vein offshoots — then make up the spirit power with our own lives."
"The spiritual power of a Tribulation Transcendence cultivator surges like an ocean. A True Immortal's, all the more so."
"If we do not have that much spirit power, then we gather it at any cost. With ours. With theirs."
"I have already picked out my grave. As for you… well, that depends on what you decide for yourself."
"That you came to see me today means others have their designs riding on it as well."
"Whether any of this should be passed along to them — you know in your own heart. My promise stands as ever: on that day, I will be the one who faces Bai Xuanling head-on."
"I will certainly stand in front. And I will certainly die before every one of you."
Mei Yu said nothing more — neither agreeing nor refusing. Not a ripple crossed her face.
The next moment, her form dissolved, as though she had never been there at all.
Boluo tilted his head slightly upward, gazing at the sun, half-swallowed by dark cloud.
No one lives for the sake of dying — which is why every living being fears death by instinct.
Everything has its price.
Without staking it all on one throw, how could there be any counterattack from the brink?
When you hold the losing hand, you must be all the more willing to burn everything.
It's a pity that, most likely, not everyone thinks the same way.
Still, before the final gamble, you must learn to play out every card in your hand.
Central Continent, Daoxuan Temple.
Before the temple gate, Qian Qing — clad in tight black fighting garb — hammered on the doors with all her strength. But before her fists even touched the wood, an unseen force warded her off.
A little novice monk shook his head, his face worn thin with helplessness.
"Benefactor, you've come so many times now. Don't think that because we're monks we don't know how to get angry."
The martial qi in Qian Qing's whole body boiled; her inner force surged forth and slammed, again, at the door she would never reach.
"I said — either send for Yuan Kong to see me, or take me to Tianyan Sect! How many of your trials have I already walked through? You are the ones who broke faith!"
The little novice monk's helplessness only deepened.
"First, not every temple on earth happens to have the monk you're hunting for. Second, you're a martial artist — you have no idea what manner of sect Tianyan Sect is. It's not something we can take you to just by wanting to."
Qian Qing stopped mid-strike and asked in a cold voice:
"Then just tell me the way. I'll go myself!"
The little novice monk shook his head again and again. "There are places in this world that knowing the road won't get you to."
Qian Qing kept her tone as even as she could manage, parleying.
"Then simply take me as far as Tianyan Sect. Whether I can get in is my own affair."
The little novice monk was about to keep shaking his head when a large hand suddenly settled on his crown. He turned — and at once bowed in greeting.
"Abbot."
The abbot's gaze rested on Qian Qing, his tone mild.
"A heart sincere in its wish — then this monk will make the journey with you once."
The little novice monk turned to the abbot, plainly shaken.
All along, his refusal to bring Qian Qing hadn't truly been about the impossibility of reaching Tianyan Sect. It was that Qian Qing was a pure, unadorned mortal.
The divide between immortal and mortal — to look across it was to look into an abyss.
And even if she saw it… what difference would that make?
Tianyan Sect, though — that was fast passing beyond even the reach of the word "divide."