Fang Longxi tipped back his head and drank deep. The stone dragon leaned against him as he sneered: “Living men refined into elixirs. Ten, twenty thousand years ago, those damn Xianghuo gods did the same. And now? My immortal sects are circling back to that filth.”
The mistress of Ningxiang Palace flushed crimson, shrieking: “You stinking Daoist! Cease your slander!”
Fang Longxi smiled thinly. “Oh? Slander?”
“Yes! You’ve framed me this day!”
“Framed?”
Fang Longxi laughed loud and long. “I recall you had a favoured disciple, not seen these ten years. Look well. Is that not he, hanging there upon the screen?”
“What use to bandy words with her?”
Zhu Xuewei’s voice was calm as falling snow. White silk trembled cold in her hand. “Those medicine-men in your chamber, are they a frame-up? Your inexplicable cultivation, is that a frame-up? Your soul drenched in blood-debt, a frame-up as well?”
“A fine ‘frame-up’! Do you even deserve the word?”
The immortal lowered her gaze. Her eyes were winter ice, her voice a blade of frost. With steps like drifting lotus petals she came forward. “Your heart is petty, your envy venomous. Your means cruel, your killings numberless. If the Dao itself will not destroy you, then I shall.”
“Who dares come forward!”
The palace mistress stood aghast, ringed by cloud upon cloud. How many cultivators had come? No gap remained.
Among them scurried low-born, low-ranked disciples, scattering flying books like snow.
“Come see, honoured shishus and shibos, fellow shijies and shixiongs. Behold this Letter to Fellow Daoists!”
“Shimei, pass it on. And you too, shixiong.”
The letters whirled through the clouds like flurries. Cultivators fresh from seclusion, ignorant of events, caught them and gaped wide-eyed. Anger surged. “Unheard-of! Shocking beyond belief! We toil in cultivation, only to be reaped like leeks at another’s pleasure!”
Some frowned, striving for calm. “Best think thrice before rashness. Reflect well. What if there is misjudgement? Those human skins may not be our Wendao Palace’s, but some outer sect’s.”
“Pei! Think thrice, nine times. Rot your ancestor! The knife is on your neck and you still prattle your neck is clean?”
“You are too violent, fellow Daoist! Why may you rage, but we not be cautious?”
“Look at the time! Those young disciples risked death days ago to spread the Letter to Fellow Daoists. Truth is thrust before your eyes… and you still whimper for your own skin?”
“What if it’s all their own trickery, framing others? Young disciples today brim with ambition.”
“Are you even human—?!”
A cultivator roared, smashed his fist into the Daoist’s nose. Others rushed to break it up, treading him underfoot while they chided: “Fellow daoist, a gentleman uses words, not fists. Why wrangle with him?”
Another cheerfully joined: “Move aside, my feet reek. Let me have a stomp!”
The Daoist howled, nose broken, yet still bickered on with the crowd.
On a neighbouring cloud, one dazed cultivator asked his fellow: “So many elders are here?!”
“You’ve been in seclusion too long. Big trouble. Look, this Letter to Fellow Daoists.”
He read, his face darkening line by line.
“Good. Very good! Today I’ll burn my cultivation if I must. Cross fire and knives, and kill one without loss, two for profit!”
“Ningxiang Palace… refining men into pills…”
“Die! Damnation!”
“Unorthodox ways! Devils in high seats!”
“Slay them all!”
Others turned pale, whispering: “Quick, summon the elders. Ningxiang Palace is undone.”
Xiaofeng stood amongst them, face ashen, rooted. Someone nudged him kindly: “Go, tell your Bai-shijie.”
Xiaofeng went green. “Bai-shijie? Tell… her?”
His pupils shrank. At last he placed the scent he had caught before. He gagged, dropped to his knees, shuddering. Hands reached, he shrieked, “Get away!”
“Are you mad as well?”
Xiaofeng’s mind reeled back to childhood. The famine year. His village. His family corpses stiff around him. Himself gnawing his fingers from hunger.
Long buried, the memory rose.
He knew his own baseness, clawing upward through flattery, servility, tricks. That much he could stomach.
But eating men?
Were the pills he swallowed forged from human cultivators?
His face blanched corpse-white. His guts seemed to breathe another man’s breath.
Filthy.
So filthy.
The stench was unbearable.
The mistress of Ningxiang Palace had nowhere left to flee.
Whispers swarmed her ears. Exposed beneath heaven’s gaze, her face drained white.
Whatever happened, the Wendao Pills could not be shown. She had transgressed taboo, fallen to ill fate… and been ensnared by mere brats!
Cultivators who had shielded her, seeing the truth could not be buried, now edged silently away lest they be tainted.
The palace mistress braced, roaring with all her qi: “I am a mountain-guarding elder of Taiyi Sect! Who dares strike me?”
“I dare!”
Before the words died, a fair figure flew in, clashing with her.
Treasure-light flared, weapons colliding. Within moments the palace mistress spat blood, aghast. “How is this possible!”
She wheeled to flee, but a sword-light cut him short. A young Daoist barred the way, arms folded. “Where are you running to, fellow Daoist, with the truth unsaid?”
He spun the other way, only to meet another cultivator stepping forth. “Daoist, where are you going?”
There were people everywhere, yet the elders dared not move. She fought alone. Zhu Xuewei stood cold as frost.
A length of white silk lashed out, shattering the elder’s true energy. She spat blood, staggered, and collapsed at her feet, clutching the hem of her skirt.
“Immortal, spare me!”
“Immortal, I have patrons in Heaven. I can see you safely onto the immortal path, to attain the supreme Dao-fruit!”
She gave a soft, scornful laugh, the silk tightening in her grasp. Looking down from above, Zhu Xuewei flicked her fingers, forcing the mistress of Ningxiang Palace to reveal the spirit platform of her spiritual domain.
Her Dao foundation was flimsy, yet crowded with endless forms of manifestation… far too many for a single cultivator to have achieved.
Zhu Xuewei’s fingers became blades. With a single stroke she severed the first layer of her spirit platform. The palace mistress screamed, rolling on the ground:
“You dare harm me! Do you even know whom I work for?”
Zhu Xuewei sneered, her gaze flickering: “Oh? And who might that be?”
She shuddered, realising at once her slip, and bit her tongue. She cut away a second layer of her platform; agony all but robbed her of consciousness.
Just then, war drums thundered overhead, and a menacing black cloud surged into view.
“The Hall of Malice handles this! Idle rabble, withdraw!”
“Clear the way!”
From the black cloud came rolling Daoist chants.
Down swept a host of black-robed cultivators, white sashes at their waists, ghost masks covering their faces. The leader wore coarse hemp shoes with his green robes, and over his face a red mask of a laughing demon. “Who dares make such clamour within Wendao Palace?”
The mistress of Ningxiang Palace brightened with hope.
The Hall of Malice disciples descended with crushing momentum, waving their heavy cudgels. “Clear off, idlers!”
The leader folded his hands behind his back, all righteous indignation: “Within Wendao Palace, private torture is forbidden. Seize this law-breaking criminal and escort her to the tribunal! Zhu Xuewei, step aside at once!”
Instead, she remained impassive, and sheared away yet another layer of the palace mistress’ spirit platform.
The Hall of Malice lord bellowed: “Courting death, are you?!”
Fang Longxi took a pull of wine. A century ago, he too had believed in the justice of the Great Dao. But after joining the Hall of Malice, his cultivation had withered, and his sword path had gone no further.
He patted the stone dragon at his side. With a roar, it summoned its kin from the sleeves of his robe and hurled itself at the Hall of Malice disciples.
Chaos erupted. Long-smouldering grudges burst forth. One by one, cultivators snatched up their treasures and weapons, leaping to the cloud tops.
“Suffer my artefact!”
“Die, villain!”
Meanwhile Fang Longxi descended on his sword, striding into Ningxiang Palace. Above, battle raged fierce and wild; below, all was still.
Wen Renyi and the other disciples saw him and bowed. “Shibo.”
“Greetings, Fang-shibo.”
Fang Longxi brushed a sleeve dismissively and went to the pill chamber. There, on the steps, sat young Xue Cuo, head bent, drawing talismans. Beside him, a little demon lifted its head at the sound.
Fang Longxi watched for a while, then asked, “Good lad, what are you sketching? Even I cannot make sense of it.”
Kong Yun, who had been grinding ink, said frankly: “Me neither.”
Xue Cuo’s face was grave. He dared not break his focus until the talisman was complete. Only then, drenched in sweat, did he lift his head, too weary to speak.
After a long pause, he asked, “Lang Cui, do you know of another pill chamber like this?”
Only then did Fang Longxi notice a third figure in the room: a young man standing in shadow, pale as snow beneath his crane-feathered cloak. His expression was cool, his eyes fixed on the fierce spectacle in the skies. He seemed elated… yet no trace of joy reached the heart.
“I underestimated you,” he said softly.
But Xue Cuo only shook his head. “This is not mine to do alone.”
The disciples duelling in the clouds, those who had staked their lives to storm Ningxiang Palace beside him… they were all part of this unveiling.
Above, a dragon’s roar scattered the Hall of Malice disciples like leaves. Zhu Xuewei struck again, cutting away the last layer of the palace mistress’s spirit platform. Her shrieks rose louder than the wind.
More white clouds swept in, each bearing palace guardians. Their eyes blazed as they cried:
“Disperse!”
“Any who linger in Ningxiang Palace today, regardless of origin, will be expelled from Wendao Palace!”
“You may not gather in mobs, nor be swayed by slander. Leave at once!”
“Defy us, and we will show no mercy!”
For a moment, silence reigned. Then a cool female voice echoed back: “Mercy?”
Zhu Xuewei’s silk lashed out, flinging a cultivator from the clouds.
One disciple crushed his identity tablet without hesitation, sneered, and flung his treasure down with a thunderous blow. “You need not cast me out. I’ll walk of my own accord!
“But Wendao Palace has more than one furnace. Today we’ll scour them all clean, to avenge our shixiongs and shimeis wronged these hundred years. We will not stop till our last breath!”
“Kill!”
