The Red Dust Immortal spent three days observing that variable.
More precisely, he spent three days confirming exactly what sort of thing he had gotten himself entangled with.
He could not approach the region occupied by the white-haired projection directly. Their last encounter had taught him well enough what a reckless approach would cost.
But the Secret Realm was still his by first claim, and even with part of the control lost, he could use the surviving spirit vein nodes to spy indirectly on what happened in that region. He saw the white-haired projection seated atop the skeleton of some primordial demon beast, legs crossed, chin propped on one hand, surveying the entire wasteland with the eye of a landlord inspecting her holdings.
Projections stood packed all around her. They were not all the ones he had awakened; those had been scattered or beaten into submission in the first clash. The ones ringing the white-haired projection now had been conscripted by her, gathered from every corner of the Secret Realm.
The Red Dust Immortal had no idea how she managed it. Awakening a projection required karma as a medium. That white-haired projection seemed to do nothing at all. The sleeping projections simply woke on their own when she walked near, then fell in behind her as naturally as breathing.
Like ministers presenting themselves before a monarch. No command, no coercion, not even a word spoken. She merely stood there, and the pressure generated itself, and ten thousand spirits bowed their heads.
That put a word in the Red Dust Immortal's mind that he badly did not want there.
— Station.
Not long after, the white-haired projection began patrolling the territory she had seized.
Patrolling was the polite word. Strolling was closer to the truth.
Hands clasped behind her back, she walked the wasteland ravines and the primordial ruins, stopping here and there for a glance or two. But every place she lingered changed. The spirit vein nodes grew more stable after she left, and the entire region's law structure rearranged itself within a short span of time.
As much as the Red Dust Immortal hated to admit it, she seemed to understand this region's laws better than he did.
He could sense no realm from her whatsoever, yet the strength of her physical body was terrifying. As though a Great Emperor had dispersed her realm and left the body untouched...
As for why his mind kept reaching for the word Great Emperor...
Because that white-haired projection called herself Heavenly Emperor. Every single day.
In his own era the Red Dust Immortal had seen more than enough arrogant prodigies. Seventh Realm, Eighth Realm — not one of them had dared to take the two words Heavenly Emperor for themselves.
You could possess strength enough to crush heaven and earth. You could hold dominion over ten thousand worlds. But if your existence itself lacked that Station, then even if others called you Heavenly Emperor, would you dare accept it?
And this white-haired projection before him—
The Red Dust Immortal drew a deep breath and pressed the thought back down.
A variable spawned by the Returning River. A blank existence without so much as a karmic thread. What right did such a thing have to a Station?
Something had to have gone wrong somewhere.
She had a weakness. She had to. All he needed to do was find it.
The Red Dust Immortal's first attempt came at her through the spirit veins.
The reasoning was simple. Everything in a Secret Realm ran on the spirit veins, projections included. However absurd that white-haired projection might be, she was still inside the Secret Realm, which meant she had to be connected to the veins to some degree.
Sever the supply beneath her feet and her existence would wither like a tree torn up by the roots.
He spent half a day untangling the vein branches still under his command, located three main veins linked to the white-haired projection's region, and cut all three at once.
At that same moment, the white-haired projection was sitting on a rock with her eyes shut, resting.
She opened them, looked down at the spirit patterns drying up beneath her feet, then lifted one foot and stamped it against the ground.
All three severed veins reconnected in the same instant. Cold sweat broke out across the Red Dust Immortal's back, and he cut off his observation at once, terrified she would come looking for him again.
The attempt had failed, but the situation only made one thing clearer to him.
This variable had to be dealt with. Otherwise he would end up with a fate even more wretched than the one he had suffered in the last timeline.
So he began a new attempt. This time: the laws.
The white projection had taken over most of the Secret Realm's spatial laws, but a remnant portion was still his to move. He gathered those remnants, seeped them into the region she occupied, and buried karma inside them.
The rules those karmic strands carried had no direct offensive power. Instead they would slowly rewrite the underlying rules of that space, turning the real into the unreal, rewriting existence into nonexistence.
Once the rewrite finished, the space itself would be erased from the Secret Realm, and everything standing on it — the white-haired projection included — would dissolve along with it.
The Red Dust Immortal poured the karmic corruption into the earth beneath her feet.
Black corrosive veins spread out from the cracks in the ground, spreading fast. Grass and trees withered where they passed, stone split apart, and even the air turned thick and murky.
The vassal projections standing behind the white-haired projection were the first to feel it. Their outlines blurred, their spiritual light guttering.
At last the white-haired projection stood. She raised a hand, palm down.
Red-gold blood-and-qi force poured from her palm — but unlike before, this was not simple physical power.
This time, something the Red Dust Immortal knew intimately was mixed into that power.
The power of karma.
Wherever it passed, the spirit vein nodes lit up again.
Every vein he had extinguished, broken, or twisted came back one after another beneath that soaking red-gold radiance.
The Red Dust Immortal could feel his control over the Secret Realm bleeding away at a truly horrifying rate.
By the time the red-gold light reached the last corner of the Secret Realm, he found that he controlled nothing at all.
Everything he had schemed and clawed to seize was ripped out by the roots in less than a quarter of an hour and transferred into the hands of that white-haired projection.
The Secret Realm had changed masters completely.
The white-haired projection stood high in the sky, the whole Secret Realm beneath her feet.
The spirit vein network she had rewoven circulated red-gold light deep beneath the earth, like blood vessels — and she was the heart of that body.
Wind rose.
White hair churned in it, the hem of her training robes snapping. She looked down over the domain, and her gaze came to rest at last on the place where the Red Dust Immortal was hiding.
She knew he was there. She simply did not care.
The white-haired projection drew her eyes away and let them half close. Her voice was not loud, yet it carried through the entire Secret Realm.
"A rat crouches in the dark, coveting This Emperor's territory. This Emperor has not troubled herself with it — not from inability, but from disinclination."
She opened her eyes. Red-gold light flashed once through her pupils.
"From this day forth, all things within this place belong to the Imperial Rule."
"If you know your place, lie low and behave. When This Emperor is in a good mood, she may leave you a Retreat."
"And if you do not—"
She did not finish the sentence.
Heaven and earth changed color, as if finishing it for her.
The Red Dust Immortal sat alone in the one dark corner left to him, folding fan resting across his knees, his face ashen.
He had endured countless failures across the long ages. Not one of them had been as absurd as today.
He had used the Returning River to reverse time. He had laid out his design with care and devoured the Secret Realm piece by piece. He had woken the ancient heroic spirits and assembled an army of the dead. He had drawn the Otherworldly Heavenly Demons in to strike from without while he struck from within.
And in the end, all of it — every last piece — had produced a variable he could not handle at all.
The moment the Secret Realm changed hands, every cultivator still inside it felt it.
The dark red leaden curtain that had covered every region tore open in a single breath, replaced by a deep red-gold firmament. The color was like a dusk sky magnified without limit, rich and heavy. It pressed down overhead without quite suffocating, but it carried a weighty solemnity, as though the sky itself were a silent decree.
The soil underfoot finished its transformation in the span of a few breaths. The gray, cracked wasteland was covered over with red-gold spirit patterns, and the way those patterns ran looked less carved by hand than grown naturally, reaching up from deep underground to the surface and weaving into a vast net that covered the whole Secret Realm.
The last thing to change was the rules themselves.
[The old order is abolished. The new law is established.]
[All things within this place, from this day forth, belong to the Imperial Rule.]
[— Decree of the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court]
Disciples of every sect stared at one another.
"...What Court?"
Mu Chen of the Taiyi Sword Sect confirmed he wasn't hallucinating, and his expression went from confused to blank.
Meanwhile, at a camp somewhere in the Myriad Dharma Sect's territory, several disciples who had just barely escaped a projection hunt were crouched on the ground gasping for breath. The announcement that popped up overhead froze all of them at once.
"Does that mean the projections that were hunting us don't answer to that other guy anymore?"
The Secret Realm's second rule appeared an hour later.
[Decree of the Royal Court]
[From this day forth, the Secret Realm is sealed. Inside and outside are severed. The road home is closed.]
[All persons within the Secret Realm are subjects of the Royal Court.]
"What does 'the road home is closed' mean?"
"What does 'subjects of the Royal Court' mean?"
"Doesn't this Secret Realm automatically send everyone out when the grand tournament ends?"
"Who is the Royal Court? Who sealed the Secret Realm?"
Panic spread fast through every region. For every participant, the Secret Realm had always been absolutely safe. What they projected in was a spirit soul projection; losing meant getting ejected at worst, without a scratch.
But those four words — the road home is closed — changed everything. If they couldn't leave the Secret Realm, their spirit souls would stay trapped inside it. Nobody needed to explain what happened when a spirit soul stayed separated from its body too long. Best case, cultivation regressed. Worst case, the Dao extinguished and the body died.
How was that any different from simply being killed?
No — it was worse than being killed.
Being killed outright was at least quick. Sitting trapped in a Secret Realm watching your own spirit soul grind away bit by bit — that was a fate genuinely worse than death.
And then new rules began to appear.
[One. All who dwell within this domain are vassals of the Royal Court. Sect, realm, and birth make no difference. All are treated alike.]
[Two. Martial merit is earned only through battle. Defeating historical projections, clearing trial dungeons, or winning on the arena all accumulate it. Martial merit may be exchanged for insights into cultivation techniques, spiritual resources, and special opportunities within the Secret Realm.]
[Three. Each day at the hour of the Dragon, the Royal Court shall open a Bestowal. The pure spiritual qi held within the Secret Realm's spirit veins shall be released at a set frequency, covering the entire domain. All who dwell within this domain, whether cultivating or not, may absorb it naturally to the benefit of their practice.]
[These statutes take effect immediately.]
[— Decree of the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court.]
In a dense wood somewhere in the Third Realm region, a group of young disciples from different sects clustered around their jade tokens and stared at one another.
In the end a Myriad Dharma Sect disciple spoke first. "Can somebody tell me what in the world the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court actually is?"
"Why would anyone pick a name that long? Isn't it a mouthful? Feels kind of tacky, honestly."
"That's not the point, is it?!"
"The point is we can't leave the Secret Realm."
The air around them went heavy at once.
"So we've been locked up... how is that any different from dying and having our Dao extinguished?"
"There is a difference," a Tianji Pavilion disciple said with a sigh. "Dying and having your Dao extinguished gets you nothing. At least this place feeds you."
He pointed at the third rule. The others looked at one another.
"So as long as you stay here, even if you do absolutely nothing, your cultivation slowly grows?"
Two breaths of silence.
"Hold on. Isn't that a good thing?"
The same conversation was happening in nearly every corner of the Secret Realm at nearly the same moment.
Now it falls to you to make the most important decision of your life, and to prove to all that you have the strength and the courage to campaign across the heavens.
Join... the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court!
Of course, however nicely you dressed it up, trapped was still trapped.
Everyone in the Secret Realm was a prodigy of some great sect, and heaven only knew what was actually going on in here. Family, friends, masters, Sect Heads — none of them could be reached.
Some of the more fragile disciples had already begun to panic. A few even tried to force their way out of the Secret Realm, and got exactly nothing for the effort.
So the disciples of the great sects started looking for ways to band together and overthrow this so-called Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court.
Give me liberty, or give me death!
That surge of rebellious feeling reversed itself the moment the first "Bestowal" descended.
Red-gold spiritual qi fell from the firmament like fine rain, soaking into the earth and seeping into the meridians of every cultivator.
A quarter of an hour later, the qi dispersed.
People looked down to check their own cultivation, and their eyes went wide.
"I think I just touched the threshold of the Third Realm, second layer?"
"Me too! There's a strand of spiritual qi in my qi sea I've never felt before — that's more than three days of meditation back at the sect got me!"
"And this is only day one..."
Some broke through bottlenecks that had blocked them for years. Some grasped a sword intent they had never encountered before. Some felt their physical bodies undergo a full transformation under the soaking qi — and after repeated testing, none of it showed the slightest sign of fading.
Cultivators are practical people. Put fear on one end of the scale and profit on the other, and once the profit grows large enough, the fear starts weighing very little.
So the mood inside the Secret Realm underwent a subtle but decisive shift.
After all, who picks a fight with their own cultivation?
One group insisted they had to find a way out no matter how good the conditions were. Trapped was trapped. A cage made of gold was still a cage.
But another group had already begun to waver.
Especially those from small sects, short on resources, who in ordinary times couldn't get their hands on a single decent insight into a cultivation technique.
For them, the world outside was the real cage. Birth decided where you started. Resources decided how high you could climb. However great your talent, it couldn't outweigh another family's accumulated heritage.
In here, everyone stood on the same line.
Martial merit didn't care what sect you came from. Nobody shut the door in your face for belonging to some minor school.
"Three days in here got me more than three years at my sect."
More and more voices said the same thing.
And gradually, people started saying that other line, half joking, half not.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could just stay here forever?"
Before long, it stopped being half a joke at all.
Disciples began forming teams on their own initiative, dividing labor according to the difficulty of each trial ground — one to scout, one to strike, one to clean up afterward. They even named their teams, set rotations, and drew up internal rules for splitting resources.
Put another way, weren't those just miniature sects?
And what left the Sect Heads and elders of the great sects truly unable to sit still was that these self-organized teams mixed disciples from different sects together — and they were getting more in sync by the day.
The boundaries between sects were blurring at a rate you could watch with the naked eye.
Some had gone further still, stacking stones into altars on the open ground outside the trial grounds and bowing toward the direction of the Royal Court, murmuring their thanks for the Royal Court's Bestowal.
Not everyone, however, was drunk on this so-called "Bestowal."
"Stop letting yourselves be blinded! We are trapped inside this Secret Realm. And the one who caused all of it, the master of this so-called Hundred Bones Royal Court — we know nothing about her!"
"Everyone acts together. Third Realm to Fourth Realm, disciple to elder, every sect, every cultivator. Set aside the walls between our schools and unite."
"This may be our only chance!"
Word passed quietly from hand to hand.
In under two days, two flatly opposed camps had taken shape inside the Secret Realm. On one side, the Settled faction, already accustomed to the Royal Court's rules and even enjoying them. On the other, the Resistance faction, determined to break the status quo and win back their freedom. The friction between them was heating up fast.
And the one who had caused all of it, Love's Hundred Bones Resonance, did not care in the slightest.
It was far more interested in something else entirely.
In a collapsed cavern somewhere in the Fallen Immortal Abyss, Gu Chengming rested with his back against the stone wall and his eyes shut.
Hundred Bones Resonance sat cross-legged across from him, toying with a spirit stone she'd picked up off the ground. The two of them had been hiding here ever since the Secret Realm changed.
Thanks to their familiarity with the Fallen Immortal Abyss and Gu Chengming's careful judgment, they had stayed clear of the projection army's search range and found a temporarily safe foothold out here on the fringe, where even the Royal Court's spirit vein coverage was still thin.
But the word temporarily was getting shakier by the hour. The Royal Court's vein network kept expanding, its reach widening day by day, and the space left for them to hide in was shrinking fast enough to watch.
"Heavenly Emperor Gu, I'm hungry," Hundred Bones Resonance said.
"Eat a spirit flower."
"Don't want spirit flowers anymore. This Emperor wants meat!" She stuck out her lip.
Just then Gu Chengming's jade token buzzed.
He looked down. It was the first message he'd received since communications in the Secret Realm came back, and it was from Yu Wenqiu.
[Little Gu, the Secret Realm has been taken over by a power calling itself the Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court. Nobody can get out. The sects are discussing countermeasures. Contact me as soon as possible.]
— The Primordial Divine Domain Myriad Dharma Dominion Origin Nine Heavens Hundred Bones Royal Court.
The white-haired girl's eyes lit up. "Heavenly Emperor Gu, that name is so cool!"
Her head snapped up, eyes blazing. "Heavenly Emperor Gu, when we conquer a domain of our own someday, I want a name like that too! No — longer than that one!"
Gu Chengming, meanwhile, felt something turn uneasily in him. The bad feeling he'd been carrying had just picked up a few more confirmations.
Though honestly, the answer was already obvious. Within Love's Hundred Bones Resonance there was a phantom representing Hundred Bones Resonance's theoretical strongest state — and by some route he couldn't guess at, it had gotten out of the system space and into the Secret Realm.
Gu Chengming was about to tell Hundred Bones Resonance his guess—
The jade token buzzed again.
Same format as the earlier Royal Court decrees. Same red-gold script.
[Royal Court Decree, Special]
[To whoever delivers Gu Chengming before This Emperor.]
[This Emperor shall grant her an opportunity to become an emperor.]
"?"
Right. It wasn't a guess anymore.
...
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