Though thoroughly baffled by Gu Chengming's request, in the end Luo Jinyao didn't press for details and simply agreed to it.
In the mornings that followed, whenever the wind and snow briefly let up, that very Luo Jinyao—the Northern Territory's foremost sword, the terror of countless demons—would take up her blade and head beyond the pass. Like someone picking through poultry at a market, she'd make a leisurely circuit along the border near the Demon Domain, then haul back a third-realm demon beaten within an inch of its life, clinging to its last breath.
Because of everything that had happened in recent days, the fourth-realm demon lords who once entrenched themselves in certain stretches of the Northern Territory's borderlands had all shrunk back into the Demon Domain. Even third-realm demons had become quite hard to find—sometimes she could only turn up creatures around the second realm, which vexed Luo Jinyao no end.
Not that any of this mattered much to Gu Chengming.
He rolled his wrist and looked down at the third-realm demon still twitching on the ground.
"BOOM——!!!"
A plain, unadorned fist came down. Before the third-realm demon could so much as wail, it was reduced in an instant to a puddle of bloody sludge, its original form no longer recognizable.
[Current Multiplier: 1.7]
Gu Chengming shook the blood from his hand and let out a long breath.
This single punch not only bumped up the multiplier—it also dispelled much of the pent-up frustration from these past few days of convalescence.
Yet Luo Jinyao, standing off to the side, couldn't bring herself to feel glad about it. After all, this had been going on for seven days straight.
The Northern Territory was thick with malevolent qi, and cultivators locked in endless slaughter were the most prone to breeding inner demons.
Little Gu might be extraordinarily gifted, but he was still young. If his Dao heart gathered dust, or if he developed some unhealthy compulsion...
The thought left Luo Jinyao faintly worried.
Just as Gu Chengming finished cleaning off the blood and was about to thank her, Luo Jinyao carefully weighed her words and spoke up first, easing into an oblique attempt at counsel.
She began by mentioning trivial matters within Snowfall Pass—how some soldiers had lately lost their mental equilibrium under the strain of cultivation. Then, as if in passing, she asked what had happened while she'd been away from Snowfall Pass, whether he'd gotten along with the deputy generals, whether he'd run into any difficulties in his cultivation, and so on. Her tone was that of idle chatter, but those eyes never left Gu Chengming's expression, afraid to miss the slightest flicker of anything amiss.
Slow on the uptake as he was, Gu Chengming wasn't so dull that he couldn't catch the undertone.
He blinked for a moment, then finally understood: Luo Jinyao was fishing, in a roundabout way, to learn whether he'd been bullied at Snowfall Pass—whether he was venting his pent-up misery on the demons.
Caught between laughter and tears, he hastily explained that his fist arts had hit a bottleneck. He needed to slay demons relentlessly to accumulate fist-intent and seek an opening for a breakthrough. It wasn't a psychological problem, but a necessity of cultivation.
After hearing him out, Luo Jinyao's expression still carried a trace of suspicion.
She studied him carefully, probing his aura with her divine sense, and only once she confirmed there was no sign of an inner demon did the taut string in her heart loosen a little.
It may have been a mix-up, but the misunderstanding actually drew Gu Chengming and Luo Jinyao a bit closer—a blessing in disguise, all things considered.
And beyond the private favors Senior Luo had agreed to grant him, Gu Chengming's gains from this battle at Snowfall Pass—the ones out in the open—were enough to make any ordinary third-realm cultivator green with envy.
As the foremost meritorious hero who had slain a fourth-realm great demon and turned the tide to keep Snowfall Pass from falling, even after splitting the credit evenly with Xu Huayi, the merit points left to him were still an astronomical figure.
"Enough to redeem a fourth-tier Dharma Sword, even..."
Standing before the redemption list in the Hall of Battle Merit, Gu Chengming rubbed his chin and did the math.
But he quickly dismissed the idea.
A fourth-tier Dharma Sword was strong, but it was meant for those at peak third realm or great cultivators of the fourth. With his current true essence, wielding one would still be a strain.
Rather than chase the quality of a single piece, better to first max out the count of his bonds.
So Gu Chengming waved a hand and redeemed two third-tier Dharma Swords and two second-tier top-grade Dharma Swords outright.
As these four new swords entered his stores, the bond entry in the Sword Chess system named [Dharma Sword] was at last complete.
[Dharma Sword (10/10): Ten Perfections Sword Formation]
[Effect: Sword formation power increased by an additional 100%. May command ten flying swords at once to form the "Ten Perfections Sword Formation." Within the formation, life is endless and sword-qi arcs like a rainbow.]
The so-called Ten Perfections Sword Formation was indeed more than double the power of the earlier Six Harmonies Sword Formation—but along with it came a proportionally greater burden on the divine sense and consumption of true essence.
Looking at those words, "power increased by 100%," Gu Chengming found himself surprisingly unmoved.
"Strange..." he mused, puzzled. "Could it be that the numbers the Hundred Emperor handed me were so absurd that I've gone numb to this kind of normal stat inflation?"
After all, compared to that kind of ridiculous mechanic where the "multiplier stacks infinitely," this steady, solid improvement really did feel a bit lacking in excitement.
But in fairness, the true core value of this [Dharma Sword] bond didn't lie in piling up raw power—it lay in "optimization."
The more flying swords the formation held, the more keenly Gu Chengming appreciated this.
An ordinary second-realm cultivator counted himself among the elite if he could split his focus to control two or three flying swords. Without the spiritual-line optimization and divine-sense assistance this bond provided, forget ten—even sending out five at once would drop Gu Chengming himself into a faint from divine-sense exhaustion before he ever wounded a foe.
Even though his true-essence reserves far exceeded others of his realm, before a mana-guzzler like the Ten Perfections Sword Formation he still found himself stretched thin.
"Looks like I can't keep being greedy for skills from here on." Gu Chengming quietly set his tone: "The focus has to shift back to raising my realm and stacking up my base attributes..."
With that realization, Gu Chengming returned to the side courtyard of the Northern Garrison Manor.
The moment he stepped through the door, another commendation decree from the Capital lay waiting on his desk.
Word of the great victory at Snowfall Pass had made it back to the Capital. The Court of State Ceremonial was still bickering over it, but within the Night-Watch Bureau, rewards and punishments were doled out with swift decisiveness.
Zhou Qingmu was greatly impressed by Gu Chengming's performance this time, promoting him beyond the usual ranks—raising his rank straight from "Small Banner" to "Chief Banner" of a Chiliarch office.
It was only a single grade's promotion, but this was a Chief Banner with real authority. Besides, a lord of the Night-Watch Bureau was a lord indeed—back when Senior Luo was at the third realm, she'd only been a Chief Banner too.
Gu Chengming himself took it in stride, showing not even half the emotional turbulence of Zhou-li.
[The "Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method" gazes at that brand-new Chief Banner waist token, brimming with tears: A name made right! Words made proper! This is the beginning of the Great Dao!]
[Chengming, do you see it? This is the echo of order, this is the recognition of the system!]
[Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li. From Small Banner to Chief Banner—this is not merely a promotion in post, but a solid stride forward on your path of upholding the order of Heaven and Earth and restoring the collapsed rites and music!]
[To serve within officialdom is the finest cultivation! With this identity, you can better exercise the duty of moral transformation, making those uncultured barbarians and heretic cultivators tremble beneath the majesty of the law!]
Listening to that impassioned oration echo through his mind, Gu Chengming found it amusing—yet he was also infected by such pure sincerity. Mustering his patience, he engaged this one in an in-depth discussion on the way of officialdom.
The long conversation bore remarkable fruit.
[The Zhouli Heavenly Harmony Righteous Heart Method's approval of you has reached new heights.]
[It holds that you are not only supremely gifted, but—more rare still—possess the heart of a gentleman who understands how to advance steadily within the system.]
[Favorability raised to: 90]
[Bond feedback obtained: All Attributes +2]
[Strength: 20][Agility: 14][Spirit: 23][Charm: 30][Constitution: 12]
Holy—Lord Zhou-li?!
He'd anticipated that Zhou-li's attribute points at the moment of a breakthrough would be generous, but this was almost too lavish—altogether it amounted to a full ten points of bonuses.
How was this still the panel of a second-realm cultivator?
In sheer attribute totals, he was already fully a match for cultivators who had just stepped into the third realm.
Especially the towering 28 Charm and 23 Spirit, which granted him a resilience far beyond ordinary folk, and... uh, dual-cultivation capital?
In other words, as he was now, even taking up those third-realm techniques with their brutal demands on physical caliber would pose no strain at all.
But by the same token... next up, it was time to look into Zhou-li's bond event.
There was no telling what it might be tied to.
Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye ten days had passed.
The wind and snow of Snowfall Pass remained, but the pall that had weighed on everyone's heads had largely dispersed with the retreat of the demon tide.
Gu Chengming's wounds had fully healed, and the two prodigies from Tianding Sect, Xu Huayi and Zhou Hui, had also reached the time to depart.
The Heaven-Seeing Earth-Hearing Grand Formation was complete; her mission had come to a perfect end.
Wind swept the lingering snow, and beyond the pass the red plum blossoms bloomed at their most brilliant.
Today Xu Huayi had traded her usual long dress for a robe of pale cyan brocade, draped over with a moon-white fox fur that only accentuated her tall, willowy figure and otherworldly air. Yet those eyes—normally so open and clear—today seemed to harbor some unspoken matter of the heart.
Gu Chengming stood shoulder to shoulder with her, gazing out at the vast, desolate snowfield in the distance, and broke the silence: "For this crisis at Snowfall Pass, I owe much to Fellow Daoist Xu. Not only did you lay down the grand formation, you risked your life at my side in Hawk's Sorrow Ravine. This kindness Gu will keep engraved in his heart."
Xu Huayi turned to look at his profile, her gaze flickering faintly.
"Fellow Daoist Gu is too kind," she said softly. "Had it not been for that one sword of yours, I fear I'd long since have been buried in a demon's belly. If we're truly weighing debts, then it is I who owe you a life."
The two exchanged courtesies, but the mood did not lighten for it—instead, a thread of parting melancholy crept in.
Xu Huayi seemed about to say something, her red lips parting only to close again.
That hand of hers, so accustomed to gripping the Judge's Brush, steady as a mountain even before a fourth-realm demon, now hid within her sleeve and, of its own accord, clenched tight around the hem of her robe.
For a long while, she seemed at last to make up her mind about something.
"Fellow Daoist Gu." Xu Huayi suddenly called out, deliberately lending her voice a carefree lilt. "At the moment of parting I have nothing of worth to offer. I'm not much for words, but these past two days, watching the snow in the city, something stirred in my heart, and I sketched a small piece on a whim. If you don't find it beneath you, let it serve as a parting gift."
Gu Chengming was a little surprised, and said with a smile, "Fellow Daoist Xu is too modest. How could I ever find it beneath me?"
Xu Huayi smiled faintly. Rather than produce a scroll right away, she drew from her sleeve that white-jade Judge's Brush and tapped it once into the empty air.
"Hummm——"
A single trace of ink bloomed and spread across the void.
This time there was none of the sharp lethality of her earlier killing formations, nor the crushing weight meant to bind foes—only pure, gentle painterly intent. As the brush-tip flowed, Gu Chengming felt as though the wind and snow before his eyes had come to a halt.
The scenery around them began to shift. The grim, frigid border pass vanished, and in its place appeared a ten-li peach grove that could never possibly exist in this season.
The peach blossoms blazed, fallen petals drifting in riotous profusion.
A clear little stream wound its way through, and by its bank stood a simple yet elegant bamboo hut. Before the hut, a man and a woman sat facing each other, drinking wine.
The man's features were blurred, but that figure and the long sword at his waist were unmistakably Gu Chengming. The woman, robed in cyan, gazed at the man with shining eyes—though her face couldn't be made out, that grace and bearing were exactly like Xu Huayi's.
Xu Huayi withdrew her brush. The painted scene held frozen in the air for a moment, then dissolved into flowing motes of light that scattered into the wind and snow, leaving behind only a faint, elusive fragrance of plum blossom.
"May Fellow Daoist Gu, through the long years ahead, find at the end of every storm a road home—and, when he pauses in his pursuit of the Dao, still have leisure wine to hand."
Xu Huayi looked at Gu Chengming, those eyes startlingly bright—only, in the next instant, her lashes swept down, trembling faintly as they veiled the emotion beneath:
This world is vast, and the road stretches long... but some scenery, if there is someone to see it with you—even if it's only painted—is a wonderful thing indeed.
Gu Chengming stared blankly toward where the light had scattered, deeply moved.
—This hand-rendered CG of Fellow Daoist Xu's really isn't bad at all.
He turned to look at her and nodded earnestly.
"Fellow Daoist Xu's painting skill borders on the divine, and such a vision is truly beautiful. I really must thank you for this gift."
Xu Huayi had meant to say something more, but after a long, tangled hesitation she swallowed it back down, deflating a little.
Never mind, never mind. The mountains are high and the rivers long; there will be days ahead.
With a light wave of her slender hand, the sky-filling peach grove dissolved into motes of light, at last condensing into a warm, lustrous cyan-jade message talisman that fell into Gu Chengming's palm.
"So long as Fellow Daoist likes it."
Xu Huayi lowered her lashes to hide the flash of disappointment, and when she looked up again she had regained her usual composure. "This message talisman was refined by my own hand. Within it dwells a strand of my divine thought—even across ten thousand li, it can carry my voice."
"If in the future Fellow Daoist Gu ever feels weary or runs into some trouble—whether it's a question of cultivation or simply wanting someone to share wine and discuss the Dao—you may contact me anytime."
"Tianding Sect may be far, but so long as it's news of you, Fellow Daoist, I will never refuse."
To anyone with a discerning ear, these words were about as blatant a confession as could be.
Especially that line, "I will never refuse"—for a female cultivator, that was already an exceedingly weighty promise.
Yet Gu Chengming, rubbing the extraordinary-quality message talisman in his hand, was running an entirely different calculation.
—This message talisman is brimming with spiritual energy; clearly it's a high-grade artifact. Fellow Daoist Xu really is generous!
And from the sound of it, if he ran into some great demon he couldn't beat later on, he could hit her up for a party-up?
At the thought, Gu Chengming tucked away the message talisman and cupped his fists. "If ever the chance arises, Gu will be the first to come pester you!"
The moment of parting had, after all, arrived.
Xu Huayi took half a step back and made a graceful bow to Gu Chengming.
Just as he thought she was about to turn and leave, she instead stayed where she stood, those lovely eyes fixed steadily on him, her chest rising and falling faintly, as if gathering some kind of courage.
"One more thing."
"Hm?"
"You and I have passed through life and death together. If we keep on with this 'Fellow Daoist' at every turn, it seems... a touch too distant."
Xu Huayi lifted her head. The winter sun spilled across her face, clear enough to reveal even the fine down on her skin. The roots of her ears flushed a faint pink, and her voice, though soft, was extraordinarily clear.
She paused, her gaze wavering a little, and then, as if throwing all caution to the wind, said: "Might I be so bold as to call you Chengming?"
Gu Chengming was slightly taken aback, then broke into a smile—clean and bright as winter snow first melting: "Why not?"
"Then... Chengming, take care."
She looked at him long and deep, as if to carve his likeness into her eyes, and then, without lingering, turned and stepped onto the flying skiff that had long been waiting.
With a soft murmur, the skiff shot into the sky, carrying that woman who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with him through life and death in Hawk's Sorrow Ravine, until she vanished into the boundless sea of clouds.
Gu Chengming stood where he was, watching the skiff dwindle into the distance, marveling in his heart at how precious this comradeship-in-arms was.
Just then, a somewhat awkward figure walked over.
It was Zhou Hui.
This Tianding Sect disciple who had come alongside Xu Huayi wore a decidedly peculiar expression at the moment.
He first glanced toward where the skiff had departed, then looked at Gu Chengming, on the verge of speaking, then swallowing it, then on the verge again.
"Fellow Daoist Zhou?" Gu Chengming was a bit puzzled. "Is there something else?"
Zhou Hui drew a deep breath, and as if bracing to complete some arduous task, took a step forward and bowed heavily to Gu Chengming. "Brother Gu, with this parting at Snowfall Pass, there's no telling when we'll meet again."
"Brother Gu is a talent gifted by Heaven itself; I am truly in awe. If in the future you should ever miss your friends of Tianding Sect, or want to inquire after some piece of news... ahem, please, by all means, absolutely, whatever you do—contact Senior Sister Xu more often."
Gu Chengming: "?"
Before Gu Chengming could even react, Zhou Hui tacked on another line:
"If you contact me, I might be in seclusion, or being disciplined by my master—in short, odds are you won't get through. But Senior Sister Xu is different; her message talisman... mm... in short, contact Senior Sister more."
Having said this string of baffling nonsense, Zhou Hui took his leave and boarded the other accompanying skiff.
"Take care, Brother Gu! And don't forget what I said!"
Watching both of Tianding Sect's brilliant disciples depart Snowfall Pass, Gu Chengming looked at the message talisman in his hand, thoroughly puzzled.
So what exactly was the thing Fellow Daoist Xu had been hesitating to say before she left...?
So he wondered.
That night, at the hour of Zi, he got his answer.
...
[Ahhh, I so badly want to dual-cultivate with Chengming. I emptied out my storage pouch and scraped together fifty thousand spirit stones but didn't dare bring it up with him. I really am a useless wretch.]
"?"
Hearing the voice, brimming with regret, come through the Heart Is All Things / CG, whatever little bit of emotion Gu Chengming had felt at the daytime hand-made CG evaporated on the spot.
The hell—what on earth are you even trying to do?
No, seriously, what exactly is the judgment mechanic of this Heart Is All Things?!
She'd already flown off on her skiff who-knows-how-far—could it maybe stop making me listen to Fellow Daoist Xu's inner voice?
Gu Chengming's face was a mask of exasperation.
With Xu Huayi and Zhou Hui seen off, the side courtyard of the Northern Garrison Manor recovered a measure of its old quiet, leaving only the occasional soft rustle of snow sliding down outside the window.
But the quiet didn't last long before a loud, boisterous voice started up again—this time it was Nuo Tao.
This former Myriad-Theft Gate roving agent, now Snowfall Pass's "registered law-abiding citizen," was looking rather well.
Today she'd donned a goose-yellow padded dress, still holding the Azure Luan Token that Gu Chengming had handed her, and came striding in with a light step.
"Young Master Gu!" Nuo Tao slapped the token down on the table with a crisp clack. "Regarding the Founding Patriarch's secret realm, this lady has pretty much cracked it."
Gu Chengming's gaze fell to the token. The once quaint, obscure surface of the azure luan now faintly shimmered with a thin layer of spiritual light—clearly activated by some secret method.
"Oh? It seems Miss Nuo has made a great discovery?"
Gu Chengming was a little surprised. He hadn't expected that, over these past few days, Nuo Tao had not only been helping out at Snowfall Pass but had also found time to break through the restrictions within it.
"But of course!" Nuo Tao tilted her chin up smugly. "Do you even know who you're dealing with? The Myriad-Theft Gate may keep a low profile, but when it comes to breaking restrictions and probing hidden mysteries, if we call ourselves second in the Nine Provinces, no one dares claim first."
She extended a finger and lightly tapped the token; a miniature holographic map of light instantly projected into the air.
"Look, hidden inside this token is an extremely complex star-position chart... I compared it against the Northern Territory star map issued by the Imperial Astronomical Bureau and deduced that the entrance to this secret realm isn't fixed—it shifts along with the earth-veins and the celestial patterns."
"That said..."
Nuo Tao deliberately dragged out the tail of her words, her eyes drifting over toward Gu Chengming as if waiting for something:
"Even though this deduction was terribly draining on the mind—especially having to account for the variables of the earth-veins' flow, finding the one and only node among tens of thousands of possibilities—I still worked it out. The next time the entrance opens will be three days from now, at the Tianquan position, that is, deep in the snowfield due north of Snowfall Pass."
Gu Chengming nodded and was about to voice his praise, but Nuo Tao didn't stop talking.
She suddenly gave a light cough, sat up a bit straighter, drew back the hand she'd rested on the table, and "casually" brushed at some nonexistent dust on her sleeve. "Actually, this bit of deduction is nothing much, really. The main thing is—these past few days, Snowfall Pass was in utter chaos, wasn't it?"
A vague premonition rose in Gu Chengming's heart, and he asked, following her lead:
"Indeed, with the demon tide besieging the city, things inside were thrown into turmoil for a time. Did it give Miss Nuo a fright?"
"A fright? As if!"
Nuo Tao's voice shot up at once, then—feeling that hardly seemed dignified—she hurriedly lowered it and put on an air of breezy nonchalance:
"This lady may be only a second-realm cultivator, but I've seen my share of great storms and mighty waves. With the city in such chaos, I watched those logistics soldiers running off their feet, and plenty of opportunistic little scoundrels trying to fish in troubled waters..."
She snuck a glance at Gu Chengming, and seeing him listening intently, went on:
"I figured, since I'm a registered member of Snowfall Pass now, I couldn't just stand by and watch, could I? So I just so happened to lend the tiniest little bit of a hand."
Gu Chengming suppressed a smile and played along: "Oh? And what sort of help did Miss Nuo lend?"
"Nothing much, really."
Nuo Tao waved a hand, wearing a look of it's-hardly-worth-mentioning, but her eyes were sparkling and the corners of her mouth simply wouldn't stop curling up:
"Just caught a few rogue cultivators over in the East Market who were trying to loot an apothecary amid the chaos, and along the way got back all the healing pills they'd stolen and delivered them to the wounded-soldiers' camp."
"Oh, and also—at one point the formation spirit-stones over by the west wall were running critically low, and the transport team got blocked by a demon-bird. I figured, since I'm fast on my feet anyway, I helped them run the spirit stones over a few times."
"Aiya! You have no idea—that demon-bird's talons grazed right past my scalp. Any slower and this lady's face would've been ruined."
At this she even pointed deliberately at her smooth, fair forehead, as if wanting Gu Chengming to see the wound that wasn't there.
"And actually there's more than just that—there's also..."
The girl prattled on, counting off her "glorious deeds," and with each one she'd sneak a look at Gu Chengming's reaction.
Gu Chengming, naturally, would not be stingy with his "rewards," and said: "The demon tide was ferocious, and everyone feared for their own life. With her body arts, Miss Nuo could easily have kept herself safe, or even slipped away in the chaos—yet not only did you stay... you stepped forward in the hour of peril."
"These deeds may not carry the grand momentum of slaying demons on the front line, but for the defense of the city they were a crucial cornerstone. Had Miss Nuo not been working things in the rear, the soldiers at the front might well have bled a great deal more."
Gu Chengming looked at the girl's rapidly reddening face and smiled: "As I see it, calling Miss Nuo the unsung hero behind Snowfall Pass's defense would not be an exaggeration in the least."
"Un-unsung hero?!"
Nuo Tao felt a little dizzy. She'd only wanted to hear a couple of "nice work"s or "you worked hard"s—she'd never expected Gu Chengming to give her such high praise.
"It's not that grand, really."
Nuo Tao was a bit flustered, but still harrumphed as she said it—the very image of a little puppy, one that, had it a tail, would surely have wagged it into a blur:
"But since you put it that way, this lady will just have to grudgingly accept the title."
Having seen off a thoroughly satisfied Nuo Tao—who all but walked on air—Gu Chengming let out a helpless chuckle and sat back down at his desk.
This side courtyard, however, was fated to know no peace today.
No sooner had Nuo Tao left than a familiar sensation drifted in.
Yu Wenqiu came ambling in with her hands clasped behind her back.
Today Elder Yu's whole vibe was a bit odd, too.
She ambled from the doorway to the window, from the window over to the bookshelf, and finally, hands behind her back, paced back and forth right in front of Gu Chengming.
At first Gu Chengming paid it no mind, wondering if his elder had simply overeaten and was walking it off.
But as Yu Wenqiu made her third loop in front of him, Gu Chengming finally sensed something was off.
Earlier, worn out and wounded from the great battle, he hadn't sensed it carefully.
Now, focusing his attention, he saw that the spiritual-energy fluctuations around Yu Wenqiu were no longer what they'd been before.
"Elder?" Gu Chengming ventured, uncertain. "Did you break through?"
At those words, Yu Wenqiu—in the middle of pretending to admire the view—stopped dead in her tracks.
She turned around, her face wearing an expression of "aiya, you finally noticed, how embarrassing."
Yu Wenqiu cleared her throat, doing her best to maintain the reserve befitting an elder, but the upturned corners of her mouth betrayed her mood all the same:
"Heh heh, a blessing in disguise—this Elder has reached the fourth realm!"
"From now on, if anyone out there dares bully you, this Elder can crush them with a single hand!"
At this, she seemed to recall something and leaned in with a hint of fishing for credit:
"Well? Don't you think this Elder Yu is especially reliable now?"
[Hundred Bones Resonance is aghast: One Yu now is worth at least four Yu from before.]
—There's an exchange-rate inflation segment too?
Having finished his mental quip, Gu Chengming looked at this elder before him—already a fourth-realm great cultivator, yet still like a child seeking attention and praise in front of him—and his heart filled with both amusement and warmth.
He knew the reason Yu Wenqiu cared so much about this breakthrough wasn't just for her own sake, but so that she could truly possess the power to protect him.
So Gu Chengming stroked her fur the right way: "Elder's might overshadows the age, peerless under heaven. With a fourth-realm great cultivator like you watching over me, won't Chengming be able to swagger about the Northern Territory from now on? Even if Senior Luo were here, I daresay she'd have to praise you with a 'the latecomer surpasses the rest.'"
Yu Wenqiu waved a bashful hand at the praise, but the upturned corners of her mouth simply would not come back down.
"Well, everything you said is the honest truth, but out in public we still have to leave Senior Sister Luo a bit of face, you know... heh heh, heh heh heh..."
With her mood lifted, her appetite naturally followed.
"Little Gu."
Yu Wenqiu slumped back onto the nearby reclining chair with practiced ease, gazing at Gu Chengming with expectant eyes.
"Since this Elder has broken through, shouldn't we celebrate a little? I hear that restaurant in the eastern part of the city has come out with a new snow-mochi, and there's that roasted spirit-lamb leg..."
"Alright, celebrate—we absolutely must celebrate."
Gu Chengming waved a magnanimous hand, brimming with generosity: "Whatever the Elder wants to eat today, just go ahead and order it."
"Yesss! Little Gu is the best!"
It was a feast great enough to leave even Snowfall Pass's finest chef with wrists aching from exhaustion.
Once they'd eaten and drunk their fill, and Elder Yu had gone off, thoroughly content, to enter seclusion and stabilize her newly attained fourth-realm cultivation, Gu Chengming finally found a window to make a trip to the main hall of the Northern Garrison Manor.
Though this secret-realm expedition seemed to be nothing more than a private venture, it did, after all, mean pushing eight hundred li deep into the snowfield during a period of military readiness. By reason and by propriety, he needed to report it to Luo Jinyao, the presiding general of Snowfall Pass.
After hearing out Gu Chengming's account of the Myriad-Theft Gate secret realm, Luo Jinyao showed no great surprise—she merely enjoined him on a few necessary matters.
Senior Luo's reactions always put one at ease.
In the days that followed, the atmosphere within Snowfall Pass visibly relaxed.
The demon tide had withdrawn, and there was much to rebuild.
Deputy General Liang Si busied himself with repairing the city's defenses and comforting the wounded, while Elder Yu was, most miserably, dragged off by Luo Jinyao to "consolidate her realm."
As for Gu Chengming, he was adjusting his condition.
He honed his vital essence, energy, and spirit to their peak, inspected the spiritual resonance of every Dharma Sword, and prepared his pills and talismans.
Though Nuo Tao would lead the way, this was, after all, a legendary secret realm left behind by the Myriad-Theft Gate.
Without a bit of preparation, he'd hardly be doing justice to that Myriad-Theft Immortal Sovereign's name.
...
Three days later, at the auspicious hour, the Tianquan position stirred.
Dawn in the Northern Territory always came especially late.
Beneath the dim, gray firmament, two figures slipped soundlessly out of Snowfall Pass's northern gate, melting instantly into the boundless wind and snow.
Gu Chengming and Nuo Tao did not soar high on their swords—lest they provoke the high-altitude gale-winds or some wandering demon-bird—but instead employed evasion arts to skim low across the snowfield.
For second-realm cultivators, this stretch of road was little more than an hour or so's journey on foot.
The farther north they went, the more bitter the cold. The already sparse withered trees had long since vanished, and as far as the eye could see there remained only a dead, ghastly expanse of white.
The spatial turbulence here was far more violent than near Snowfall Pass; from time to time, spatial rifts visible to the naked eye flashed through the air and vanished like darting fish.
At last, upon a stretch of ice field that looked no different from its surroundings, Nuo Tao came to a stop.
"This is the place."
Nuo Tao caught her breath, her little face, flushed red from the cold, set in utter seriousness.
She drew the two tokens from her bosom, while in her other hand she held a strange compass produced from who-knows-where, murmuring incantations under her breath, her fingers tracing something rapidly through the air.
Gu Chengming looked around.
The place was empty and bare, nothing but the ice several zhang thick beneath their feet and the howling cold wind overhead—nothing at all.
No fluctuation of spiritual energy, no trace of any formation, not so much as a single passing bird or beast.
"How much longer do we have to wait?" Gu Chengming asked in a low voice.
"Soon."
Nuo Tao stared fixedly at the compass in her hand, watching its wildly trembling needle, a glint of sharp light flashing through her eyes: "By my calculations, the flow of the earth-veins will align with the celestial position above three breaths from now. That instant is when this spatial node is at its weakest."
The Azure Luan Token in Nuo Tao's hand began to grow hot; the once-still azure luan on its surface seemed to come alive, letting out a clear, high phoenix cry.
The wind around them suddenly ceased.
The wildly raging wind and snow seemed to have been paused by an invisible great hand, hanging suspended in midair. An ancient, obscure aura—yet one carrying a hint of mockery—slowly seeped up from deep within the ice beneath their feet.
Nuo Tao jerked her head up and raised the token high overhead.
Upon the token, the azure luan abruptly opened its eyes. A blinding azure light shot skyward, then slammed viciously into that seemingly empty patch of air before them.
Right after, Nuo Tao's own Fire Phoenix Token opened its eyes as well, red light surging into the heavens.
Above the once-empty ice valley, the air suddenly twisted, as though a sheet of white paper were being torn savagely down the middle.
A pitch-black rift, bottomlessly deep, quietly split open amid the wind and snow.
—The Myriad-Theft secret realm had opened.
[Hundred Bones Resonance is suddenly rather moved: Emperor Gu, I've finally waited for this episode.]
Hundred Emperor, is there any chance that I came to this secret realm precisely for your sake?
Gu Chengming thought helplessly.
____
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉