The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign was of the opinion that she'd come out ahead this round.
They said the outcomes of life fell into three tiers—small wins, medium wins, and great wins—and once some stage of victory had settled, there always came a moment of summing up the tally.
Thinking back on tonight's arrangement beneath the osmanthus tree, where she'd revealed her true name, the Sovereign mulled it over at length and decided the result probably counted as a small win.
But factoring in the successful interception of Yu Wenqiu at the very end, tonight's result abruptly climbed from a small win to a medium one.
Poor Elder Little Yu had managed, through her Clairvoyant Eye, to barely work out that someone had rigged a scheme against her tonight—but no matter how she tried to trace it back with her divine ability, she couldn't for the life of her find the source of the plot.
In the end she had no choice but to slink home in defeat—and on the way back, she discovered that the moment the thought 'I'll come find Gu Chengming again next time' rose in her mind, the Ghost Wall would end on its own.
After a few rounds of this, Elder Little Yu grew ever more certain that someone had set her up—and then an even more troubling thought occurred to her.
—Had she carelessly offended some Sovereign without even realizing it?
Was it that Director Zhou, Little Gu's superior? Or the reclusive Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign?
Well, whichever it was, the gap in cultivation realm was enough to leave her fuming in silence, not daring to voice a word of complaint.
Little Yu found herself once again reminded of just how much a higher cultivation realm was worth. Faced with an opponent of Sovereign-level strength, Elder Little Yu—who normally slacked off and lived by the creed that 'if the sky falls, someone taller will catch it'—found herself plunged into an unprecedented crisis of sheer helplessness.
Gu Chengming, on the other side of things, naturally had no idea how many twists and turns had unfolded tonight.
For the moment, he was still absorbed in studying the two new things he'd acquired.
The Knight Dharma Sword, and Senior Arnold.
Oh, wait—that wasn't quite right. Senior Arnold probably didn't count as a 'thing.' Not that it was meant as an insult; it was simply the literal truth.
Gu Chengming suspected he'd been influenced by that word 'Swing' in the system prompt.
Awkward phrasing aside, though, the way Senior Arnold could be stowed away really was quite convenient.
Gu Chengming had always thought of her as a living, breathing senior—but her current state honestly resembled something closer to an artifact spirit than a living person.
During this bit of free time in the evening, Gu Chengming took the chance to press Arnold for more details about the Free Heaven Dharma-Station and the events of her era.
The first thing he wanted to understand was how Senior Arnold, once the foremost body cultivator of her age, had ended up in her present, rather sorry-looking state.
After all, Arnold now couldn't even properly be called a complete remnant soul—yet in life she'd been a genuine Seventh Realm Sovereign, the foremost body cultivator of her time.
The gap between the two spoke to one thing: the sheer severity of that great calamity had been far more dangerous than Gu Chengming had ever guessed.
If even a Seventh Realm Sovereign—someone who'd all but touched the summit of the cultivation world—hadn't been able to withstand it, what exactly had happened by the end of that calamity?
Once she understood his doubt, Arnold cradled her head and racked her brain over it as well.
She admitted quite frankly that, owing to her lost memories, she genuinely couldn't recall what had happened at the end of that great calamity. But she still remembered that the calamity hadn't been a universal disaster—it had instead been quite deliberately 'hunting' Sovereigns, driving one Dharma-Station after another back to Heaven.
Which was exactly why the higher a cultivator's realm, the more dangerous that calamity had been for them.
"That's probably why you still haven't met a single 'surviving' Seventh Realm Sovereign to this day," Arnold added, rather seriously. "Almost as soon as that calamity passed, every occupied Dharma-Station trunk-line reverted to Heaven through the death of its host."
At this, a thoughtful look gradually settled over Gu Chengming's face.
Hearing all this genuinely deepened his understanding of the calamity.
—So, looked at that way, the calamity was really more like a 'version update'?
Wiping out the entire T0 tier of the previous version, then re-selecting a fresh batch of beings with T0 potential from among heaven and earth.
Arnold, oblivious to his internal commentary, went right on adding: "Generally speaking, the more crucial a Dharma-Station, the mightier its trunk-line authority, or the higher the grade of Dharma-Station one has proven—the lower that Sovereign's odds of surviving the calamity."
She paused there, tapped her own head, and added, "Come to think of it, I believe Jiahao actually died because of this very Free Heaven."
Gu Chengming blinked. There was that story too?
Looked at that way, this Free Heaven Dharma-Station really did seem to be quite a high-ranking existence.
"Of course, no matter how impressive Free Heaven is, it still can't compare to my Shatter Myriad Laws!"
Arnold suddenly puffed out her chest, looking rather pleased with herself as she spoke.
Gu Chengming: "...?"
For a moment he couldn't work out where this claim of 'can't compare' had even come from.
But Arnold had already launched into her own argument, and the logic of it left him not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
"Jiahao's current condition is absolutely far better than mine, which proves the calamity he went through back then definitely wasn't as vicious as the one I went through."
"And if the Heavenly Dao tormented me even more harshly, doesn't that just prove my Shatter Myriad Laws is a cut above his Free Heaven?"
Listening to this self-justifying logic, Gu Chengming's expression grew steadily more complicated.
Well, put that way, it was true enough... at least, going by everything he'd seen from Jiahao Sovereign before—both the various methods he'd displayed and the information he'd let slip in conversation—it was more than clear that Jiahao Sovereign's current state was leagues better than that of this Senior Arnold, who couldn't even be called a proper remnant soul.
Privately, Gu Chengming grumbled to himself—if Sovereign Arnold truly hadn't been this scatterbrained, endlessly Arnold-babbling sort back when she was alive, then that calamity really had done a number on her.
...
Setting aside that rather weighty speculation, the pile of information he'd pried out of Senior Arnold did leave Gu Chengming with a bit more confidence.
But the contest for the Free Heaven Dharma-Station clearly wasn't going to be as simple as he'd originally imagined.
After all, by Senior Arnold's account, this Free Heaven Dharma-Station was one of the very source-points on the Sentient Beings Bough's main trunk—a genuine, high-ranking Dharma-Station in every sense.
In the cultivation world, no small number of Sixth Realm Sovereigns had their eye on it.
Even with the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign and Director Zhou standing guard to assist him, Gu Chengming had no full confidence that he could secure first claim in this contest for the Dharma-Station.
And the trouble of contesting it was only one part of the problem.
More important still was where the Free Heaven Dharma-Station would actually come to land.
By the Imperial Astronomical Bureau's earlier calculations, the exact landing point of a Dharma-Station sloughed loose from the Wanton Joy Sovereign's remains was inherently unpredictable. If it landed within the Capital, so much the better—Gu Chengming could lean on whatever arrangements Jiahao Sovereign had left behind in the Capital to widen his advantage and claim the Dharma-Station securely.
The worst-case scenario was the Dharma-Station landing out in some remote wilderness.
In that case, Gu Chengming would have no choice but to contest it head-on, with little support, against Sovereigns of unknown origin in some uninhabited place—the danger impossible to predict.
Gu Chengming had already prepared himself to handle the worst-case scenario.
But to his surprise, after drifting slowly for several days, the Free Heaven Dharma-Station's final landing point turned out to be a plain not far from the Capital.
It was, admittedly, a rather delicate spot.
Not close enough to the Capital that Great Qian's various forces could easily blanket it in full protection, yet not so far that reinforcements couldn't be dispatched from the Capital at any time should something go wrong.
Such a middling location counted, in Gu Chengming's eyes, as something of an advantage—though not a very large one.
Gu Chengming turned the scroll of Dharma-Station calculations the Imperial Astronomical Bureau had handed him over in his fingers, silently weighing his various plans for what came next. Ambush or open contest—whatever preparations needed making, he'd more or less already made them over these past days. The only thing still left unsettled was just how many Sovereigns would come sniffing after the scent of this high-ranking Dharma-Station when the time came.
What happened next, though, was entirely beyond anything Gu Chengming had anticipated.
On the day the Dharma-Station finally settled, Gu Chengming arrived at the plain as arranged—but the scene he found wasn't the one he'd pictured, with only the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign and Zhou Qingmu standing guard to protect his path.
Far more than just the two of them had come to help him.
...
Out on the plain, the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign stood to the east in her moon-white robes, while Zhou Qingmu stood to the south in her purple-and-gold official robes, the saber Night-Sever at her hip.
And standing in the other two directions were two more figures—figures Gu Chengming knew quite well.
—the Master, and the Director.
The Master stood with his hands clasped behind his back atop a rise to the west; seeing Gu Chengming arrive, his expression remained as kindly as ever. "Young friend, we've come to lend our aid as well."
These two carried weight in the Capital beyond measure—the Master presided over the Imperial Academy, the Director ran the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, and both were truly the anchoring pillars of Great Qian in the fullest sense. On any ordinary day, either one so much as stirring would be enough to send ripples through the whole sky above the Capital.
More striking still, when Zhou Qingmu had proven her own Dharma-Station within the Capital earlier, she hadn't received their help—and yet now both of them were willing to stand guard together for him, a junior nominally only Fourth Realm.
It genuinely left Gu Chengming unsure how to take it. Before he could fully process it, all four Sovereigns had taken up positions around the plain and begun slowly letting their auras unfurl.
The Master's aura, warm and smooth as jade, spread outward from the western rise; wherever it passed, the tangled, chaotic earth-vein spiritual currents across the plain fell into a sense of 'proper hierarchy,' flowing on their own along some ancient, ritual-patterned course.
The Director stood to the north, his ash-grey robes stirring faintly in the wind, starlight seeping from his fingertips to slowly weave a fine star-chart above his head.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign gave her sleeve a light sweep, and the flow of time across the plain abruptly slowed by half a beat, the surrounding scenery taking on a faint, sluggish quality, as though time itself had been folded.
At Zhou Qingmu's waist, the saber Night-Sever remained sheathed, yet the sheer, crushing killing intent around her had already spread as tangibly as a physical force.
With four Sovereigns' auras crisscrossing the plain, any Sovereign hoping to seize the Dharma-Station the moment it settled would first have to consider whether they could handle all four of these guardians at once.
The attitude the Master and the Director were showing right now was, honestly, rather ambiguous.
After all, across the whole of Great Qian, these two were about as close to trump cards as it got—pieces almost never played openly.
Gu Chengming knew his own friendship with the two of them wasn't especially deep—nowhere near the point where they'd willingly stand guard for him or help him prove a Dharma-Station.
After all, a cultivator proving a Dharma-Station was already a matter of nine deaths and one life. Being willing to guard someone through it meant risking a direct clash with other Sovereigns. And at the level of a Sovereign, every clash carried the potential to plunge oneself into real danger—ordinary Sovereigns, unless truly necessary, were never willing to cross blades with another Sovereign lightly.
Not to mention that they were still in the middle of the great calamity—the more a Sovereign drew on their own Dharma-Station's power, the more likely they were to draw the Heavenly Dao's attention. That these two were willing to come at such a critical juncture was clearly not simply because of whatever small friendship they had with Gu Chengming—there had to be some other reason. Or perhaps this represented Great Qian's own will?
A new awareness of just what faction stood behind him abruptly settled over Gu Chengming.
Sometimes, having a sufficiently prominent identity or faction standing behind you really did bring all sorts of indescribable conveniences.
He'd had a vague sense of this before, back at the Wenjian Sect—just not this clearly.
Now, with four Sovereigns standing guard for him all at once, he felt more and more that the faction-dividends he'd been reaping along his path had truly been a notch above what an ordinary cultivator could expect.
—Could it be his charisma stat was simply too high?
His thoughts spun rapidly, but on the outside he quickly cupped his fists in thanks.
After all, with Seventh Realm Sovereigns now all but extinct, four Sixth Realm Sovereigns gathered together already counted as a force capable of steamrolling almost anything.
Even if some Sovereign lurking in the shadows truly harbored designs on the Free Heaven Dharma-Station, after weighing the sheer weight of these four guardians, they'd most likely have no choice but to set aside such ambitions, at least for now.
And just as those hidden Sovereigns were each weighing their odds, still harboring a lingering reluctance to simply give up—right at the instant the Dharma-Station finally settled, everything took an abrupt, unexpected turn.
The phantom image of the Free Heaven Dharma-Station, slowly solidifying at the center of the plain, did not—the instant it fully took shape—rise toward the sky by the ordinary rule of reverting to Heaven. Instead, it shot directly toward Gu Chengming.
An instant later, a vast burst of light erupted from the Dharma-Station, sweeping up everyone standing on the plain. Even Gu Chengming himself was left momentarily stunned. As for the hidden Sovereigns still weighing their own plans, along with those standing openly—the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign among them, to the east—every one of them was even more stunned than Gu Chengming.
He'd expected the contest for the Dharma-Station to be a grueling affair—so what exactly was this, the Dharma-Station just flying straight at him?
As the burst of light slowly faded, Gu Chengming realized his surroundings had changed. All around him stretched a boundless, strange space—no ground beneath his feet, no sky overhead.
[The Red Dust Phantom Body Formula sensed the surroundings, brow furrowing slightly.]
[Chengming, tread carefully here.]
After a brief moment of blankness, Gu Chengming, too, came back to himself.
The Dharma-Station flying straight at him was obviously not normal—but recalling what Jiahao Sovereign had once told him, "if necessary, prove the Free Heaven Dharma-Station," Gu Chengming had a vague suspicion forming.
So this, too, was a contingency Jiahao Sovereign had left behind?
No sooner had the thought settled than a human figure gradually took shape from his glabella, slowly manifesting before him—Senior Arnold herself.
The moment she appeared, she looked around the pale-gold space with obvious curiosity, taking it all in for a moment—then her eyes suddenly lit up.
"Is this the inside of the Free Heaven Dharma-Station?"
Gu Chengming blinked, then asked quickly, "You recognize this place, Senior?"
Arnold nodded quite frankly. "Back when I was fighting Jiahao, to keep him from running, I once tried swinging my fist to smash this very Dharma-Station."
A rare flicker of frustration crossed her face as she said this. "Shame it didn't break." "Still, I did land the hit that time, so I know this place well enough."
Gu Chengming: "..."—Well, that was certainly true: the mighty were full of surprises, every one of them.
Setting Senior Arnold's remark aside, what actually troubled Gu Chengming more right now was something else entirely.
Namely—how exactly did one go about proving a Dharma-Station?
He did have some understanding of the matter, actually—partly gained while helping Zhou Qingmu prove her own Dharma-Station, and partly because he'd since entertained the idea of proving one himself and had asked around about the relevant details.
Unlike the steady, step-by-step progression from the First Realm through the Fifth, the Sovereign realm was, in truth, a rather 'peculiar' existence.
Because no matter what realm you currently stood at, so long as you truly had the ability to prove a Dharma-Station, you could leap directly to Sixth Realm Sovereign. The Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign, for instance, had forcibly proven a Dharma-Station while still only at Third Realm, vaulting straight to Sixth Realm in a single stroke.
Which meant that if Gu Chengming could prove the Free Heaven Dharma-Station here, he could leap straight over the long-standing chasm between realms, going from late Fourth Realm directly to Sovereign in a single bound.
But that brought him right back to the original problem: Gu Chengming, in truth, didn't really know how one went about proving a Dharma-Station.
Just as he was mulling this over, another figure abruptly appeared within the space.
The figure stepped slowly out from among threads of light, tall and slender in build, his face indistinct behind a veil of golden radiance—yet the aura drifting naturally off him let Gu Chengming recognize him the instant he laid eyes on him.
—Jiahao Sovereign, unmistakably.
"Young friend. It's been a while."
The figure walked closer at an unhurried pace, his tone as composed as Gu Chengming remembered.
Gu Chengming straightened his expression and cupped his fists toward him. "Senior."
Though a whole belly's worth of questions sat unanswered in his mind, he didn't rush to ask them, simply waiting quietly for the other to speak first.
Jiahao Sovereign noticed his caution but didn't call attention to it, simply standing before him with hands clasped behind his back and saying slowly, "What you see before you now isn't my true body. It's merely an obsession I deliberately left behind within this Dharma-Station, back when I first proved Free Heaven."
Something stirred faintly in Gu Chengming. "You anticipated this day, Senior?"
"'Anticipated' isn't quite the word." Jiahao Sovereign shook his head, his tone carrying a certain suggestive weight. "I simply found a suitable heir for this Dharma-Station before it could revert to Heaven, and set a threshold in place."
"As for exactly who that heir would turn out to be—"
He paused, his gaze settling on Gu Chengming from behind the golden radiance. "That was a matter of Heaven's will, and of one's own ability."
The suspicion in Gu Chengming's mind settled fully into certainty at that moment.
So it was true—this bizarre business of the Dharma-Station flying straight at him had, from beginning to end, been a contingency Jiahao Sovereign had long since laid in place.
He weighed his words for a moment before finally voicing several questions that had been circling in his mind for a while. "Senior, what exactly is so special about this Free Heaven Dharma-Station? Why did Senior Arnold once say that you had... because of this Dharma-Station..." He trailed off there, unable to bring himself to say the word 'died' outright.
Jiahao Sovereign, however, seemed to have expected this question all along, his expression unchanged. "Because Free Heaven was proven too early, its foundation sunk too deep. When the great calamity came, it was the very first thing the Heavenly Dao set its sights on."
"One of the source-most Dharma-Stations on the Sentient Beings Bough's main trunk—that alone made it the most conspicuous target in the calamity's eyes.
He went on, his tone level.
"The great calamity is no ordinary disaster. It has always targeted those standing highest. The higher a Dharma-Station one has proven, the deeper the foundation, the more vicious the backlash one must weather in that selection."
"Which is exactly why," Jiahao Sovereign's tone shifted, "after I first proved Free Heaven, I never dared to sink my own foundation fully into it. That's the only reason I managed to leave myself a sliver of a chance to survive that round of selection."
Gu Chengming looked thoughtful. "So you, Senior... still exist in this world in some form, even now?"
The corner of Jiahao Sovereign's mouth curved faintly behind the golden radiance, though he didn't answer the question directly. "You'll come to know in time." "For now, you'll need to get past me first."
A chill ran through Gu Chengming and he was just about to speak when Senior Arnold, who'd been quietly listening beside him, suddenly stirred. She stepped forward toward Jiahao Sovereign, plainly indignant. "Jiahao, if you've got the guts, fight me! What kind of skill is it, picking on a junior!"
Jiahao Sovereign glanced at her, then raised a hand and swept it toward where Arnold stood.
The next instant, a curtain of golden light rose slowly from beneath Arnold's feet, sealing her entirely outside the space. "This trial is one I've left for my heir. Don't interfere here." "Don't worry—I won't take his life."
Sealed outside the golden curtain of light, Arnold stamped her feet in frustration, her round face full of indignation.
She raised her fists and pounded at the curtain of light a few times, but it didn't so much as budge, standing firm no matter how hard she struck it.
In the end, she could only press herself against the curtain, gazing anxiously through the golden glow at Gu Chengming inside, her face plainly saying 'young friend, you'd better not let me down.'
Within the curtain of light, only Gu Chengming and Jiahao Sovereign remained.
Jiahao Sovereign's gaze settled back on Gu Chengming.
"Since you're a sword cultivator, young friend, let's settle this trial with swords, plain and simple."
As he spoke, he raised a hand and beckoned; a Dharma Sword, its whole body rippling with pale golden light, condensed out of the threads of light at his call and settled steadily into his palm.
Gu Chengming's expression sharpened, and almost by reflex his hand moved toward the Knight Dharma Sword at his waist.
But in the next instant, a new problem struck him.
His state here seemed to be purely one of spirit—not just the Knight Dharma Sword, but every Dharma Sword, spell, and even the pile of hoarded treasures in his storage pouch that he'd previously relied on, had all vanished without a trace in this space woven purely from rules. Gu Chengming's heart sank.
—This was trouble. A sword cultivator without a sword—how was he supposed to fight this bout at all?
Jiahao Sovereign, however, gave him little time to think it over.
The golden figure stepped forward, the Dharma Sword in his hand abruptly transforming into a golden rainbow of light, bearing with it a sweeping torrent of sword intent, coming straight down on Gu Chengming's head.
A chill shot through him, and Gu Chengming's body snapped backward, narrowly dodging the strike.
The golden blade-light streaked past the spot he'd just occupied, tearing open a rift across the pale-gold space—within that rift, countless threads of past and future light could faintly be seen scattering apart. What a vicious blade. A jolt ran through Gu Chengming.
Unarmed, and bound by this place's rule that only sword techniques could be used, he found himself, against Jiahao Sovereign's relentless wave after wave of attacks, reduced for the moment to nothing but frantic dodging.
Jiahao Sovereign's assault grew ever more urgent, the golden Dharma Sword spinning and weaving in his grip, every strike carrying an overwhelming, unstoppable sword intent that drove Gu Chengming steadily backward.
Retreating in a wild scramble, Gu Chengming's mind raced through every possible way to break the deadlock.
He tried condensing sword intent from his own spirit soul to take the blows head-on, but meeting that solidified blade-light bare-handed was no different from an egg striking stone. He also tried borrowing the power of the techniques within his Love Laboratory, but this space, woven purely from rules, seemed to have severed most of his connection to his techniques as well.
Just as he was driven to the point of having nowhere left to retreat, a sudden flash of inspiration struck Gu Chengming, and a rather audacious idea surfaced in his mind.
No sooner had the thought settled than Gu Chengming, almost without thinking, raised his hand and beckoned toward the curtain of light sealing Arnold outside.
The next instant, Senior Arnold, sealed outside the domain, abruptly turned into a streak of light, breaking free of the golden curtain's hold and sinking back into Gu Chengming's glabella.
And almost in that very same instant, Gu Chengming raised his hand again and called her back out from his glabella.
Senior Arnold's figure reappeared within the curtain of light.
Her round face still carried a trace of the bewilderment from being shut outside a moment ago, as though she hadn't yet figured out just how she'd made it back inside from beyond the curtain.
Gu Chengming didn't give her much time to stand there dazed, though—he reached out and took hold of Senior Arnold's small hand. Arnold: "...?" Jiahao Sovereign: "...?"
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