“The water’s rising.”
The white-haired tiger drifted lazily down from the sky, circling the young man in white.
Xue Cuo lifted his head. The moon had been completely blotted out. The land lay submerged in deep blue; the scattered lights of Qianyun Mountain and the high-hung Milky Way seemed to have been joined together by boundless water.
Gu Ruhui and Ren Shu also descended. Xue Cuo held the lotus Dao-rhyme in his palm, frowned slightly, and drew in a sharp breath.
“Is there something… up in the sky?”
A sudden gust of wind rose, sweeping them bodily into the small temple and slamming the doors shut.
“Oof.”
Xue Cuo rubbed his backside as he got to his feet. Yin Feixue lit a lamp. The goddess’s shrine was shrouded in drifting incense clouds, emitting a soft, warm divine glow.
Gu Ruhui studied the shrine pensively. His expression was not reverent so much as appraising, as though weighing something. Ren Shu, however, was far more sensitive. No sooner had he stepped inside the temple than his breathing unconsciously slowed, a cold sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow.
Yin Feixue reached to open the door, but Xue Cuo caught his arm.
When Yin Feixue turned back, he met a pair of pitch-dark eyes. The look alone made his limbs turn ice-cold.
Gu Ruhui sensed it as well. He did not turn around, but the fine hairs on his arms prickled upright. “You… aren’t Xue Cuo.”
There was no reply. Instead, He pointed towards the three prayer cushions before the shrine.
Yin Feixue and Gu Ruhui exchanged a glance, then lowered their heads and sat down with their backs to Him. Ren Shu did not dare move at all.
Measured footsteps sounded behind them for some time, unhurried, as though talismans were being drawn. After a while, the door opened, and He walked out.
Outside, the wind howled.
Gu Ruhui asked quietly, “It’s Him?”
Yin Feixue folded his arms and looked towards Ren Shu. He was the only one cultivating the Xianghuo Divine Dao. The talismans on Ren Shu’s face glimmered faintly. He was deeply affected: sweat poured from him, his lips were deathly pale, and he nodded weakly, as though barely able to remain standing.
A heavy silence fell over the three.
Gu Ruhui was about to speak, but Yin Feixue stopped him with a gesture. “He is Xue Cuo’s choice. You must trust Xue Cuo.”
Ren Shu, ever meticulous, ventured, “His revival must have alerted something. With no other option, He borrowed Xiao Cuo’s body to calm matters. Fellow Daoist Gu, there’s no need to worry.”
“As for us… we were likely noticed when we opened that bridge.”
“He’s warning us not to leave.”
Gu Ruhui frowned. “Xi Tao and the people of Qianyun are still outside.”
Ren Shu smiled faintly. “Xianghuo Divine Dao requires cultivation too. What we gather is faith. And in this world, what is purer than belief born of witnessing a miracle with one’s own eyes?”
“This place is already His Dao arena.”
Gu Ruhui neither agreed nor disagreed. He continued gripping the bamboo sword, never loosening his hold.
Yin Feixue appeared calmer, but his ears remained pricked, tilted subtly outward, alert and tense.
That night, everyone on Qianyun Mountain heard a terrifying roar of water, as though it surged up from the Yin River itself… deafening and unrelenting. Thunder, gales, and floodwaters raged without pause through the long night.
Gradually, dawn broke. The golden crow rose.
The temple doors, which had remained tightly shut, suddenly flew open. Yin Feixue reacted first, spinning around.
The doorway stood wide. A tall, slender figure braced himself against the doorframe as light poured in behind him, flooding the small temple.
“Xue Cuo!”
Yin Feixue instinctively opened his arms and caught the collapsing cultivator. Tiger claws clamped onto his pulse. There was not a trace of divine power left in him, drained utterly, down to the last drop.
Xue Cuo ached from head to toe, as though he had been pinned beneath wooden boards all night. He was utterly spent, barely clinging to life.
Gu Ruhui’s expression shifted. “Shixiong!”
Ren Shu, by contrast, remained composed. He rolled up Xue Cuo’s sleeve and checked him over. “His body is fine. His divine power is exhausted.”
Xue Cuo’s lips moved, his voice no louder than a mosquito’s hum.
Yin Feixue couldn’t make it out and gestured for silence. He bent down, listened closely for a moment. Then, once he understood, hoisted Xue Cuo up, grabbed a large sea-bowl, and poured water down his throat.
Xue Cuo gulped it down greedily. After catching his breath, he sniffed weakly, slumped forward, and fell straight asleep. “So tired…”
Yin Feixue carried him with one arm and patted his head, urging him to rest.
At last relieved, the three stepped outside the temple.
Beyond it, mountain ranges and ravines rose sharply from the earth. Blazing crimson maples drew flocks of birds; herds of deer wandered to and fro, drinking at the edge of the great marsh, while the calls of beasts echoed through the forests.
Between the mountains stretched a vast, fertile expanse of tidal flats. It was thousands of miles of rich soil, countless acres of good farmland, like a paradise beyond the world.
The great marsh itself had expanded soundlessly, tenfold, a hundredfold, like the sky inverted and pressed upon the earth, its far shore invisible.
In its waters, colossal serpents coiled and writhed. Shoals of strange fish, shaped like small boats, leapt into the air, cheerfully blasting thick columns of water.
Ren Shu stood frozen for a long time. Even seasoned cultivators like the three of them were shaken, let alone ordinary mortals who understood nothing at all.
Gu Ruhui gazed across the marsh. “To move mountains and fill seas… such heaven-shaking might. What sort of ancient god is Shixiong bound to?”
Ren Shu’s silence stretched even longer. “Fellow Daoist Gu, what’s more terrifying is that He has already fallen, and achieved this under the surveillance of the New Heavenly Dao.”
Yin Feixue exhaled slowly, spiritual energy surging around him. “The geomantic veins here have been completely altered. It’s a treasure land. And a tremendous problem.”
The road ahead was long. Fortune and calamity remained unknown.
As the three fell silent, a small golden dragon suddenly burst from the marsh, shooting straight into the clouds and vanishing into the mist. The spray it left behind formed a brilliant rainbow, arcing across the distant sky.
A small monk in white rode a stag at a distance, palms pressed together. “Amitabha.”
Xue Cuo slept for three full days before he recovered his strength. He remembered nothing of what he had done, nor what had occurred outside.
Gu Ruhui tried asking around, but to no avail, and eventually gave up.
Ren Shu, adept at all manner of affairs, proved especially skilled at building houses and temples. He resettled the people and raised a small fishing village upon the tidal flats. Unsure of themselves, the villagers sent someone to ask, “Milord, what land is this? What marsh? What village?”
At the time, Gu Ruhui had gone to the Cold Pool to wash his sword; Xi Tao was subduing demons in the water; Kong Yun had returned briefly to the demon clans.
Yin Feixue, having experience in city-building, was dragged into discussions by Xue Cuo. Unexpectedly, the two found themselves at odds. Each clung to his own view, and the argument escalated into a full-blown quarrel over incense and faith.
Yin Feixue snapped, “Xue Cuo, don’t keep drifting further off course, sinking deeper and deeper. You may not feel it, but I sense a blade hanging over the heavens. All these reviving Great Daos are false. Nothing but a calamity. They’re all waiting for that strike. When He is obliterated beneath it, what will you do? What will become of His believers?”
Xue Cuo replied, “My lord, everything in this world exists for a reason.”
Yin Feixue’s tone hardened as it touched on his own Dao. “What reason? The reason that the weak are crushed by the strong? That gods oppress mortals? That great demons devour the lesser ones? Do you truly believe the old gods can triumph over the new? Do you think their destruction was innocent? Have you learned nothing from what the evil gods of Qianyun City did?”
Xue Cuo said, “That’s because there has long been only one Great Dao. The Dao of cultivators. Aside from cultivators, no one is permitted to ascend.”
“In ten thousand years, has the demon race produced a single immortal?”
“Why can’t the Xianghuo Divine Dao be cultivated? Do Daos truly have ranks of high and low? The times demand it. Heaven and earth are trying to save themselves. Only by reviving many paths can there be strength enough to contend with what lies ahead!”
Yin Feixue slammed the table in fury, pointing at the trembling old man by the door. “Listen to what he calls you: milord. Isn’t that what you want too? A crowd of pitiful souls on their knees?”
Xue Cuo snapped back just as fiercely. “If a bow can buy safety, why don’t you ask whether he’s willing?”
Yin Feixue stared. “You—!”
Xue Cuo ignored him. He helped the old man up after the white tiger’s roar had knocked him down, sent him away, and only then turned back. “You bastard.”
That was the scene Gu Ruhui and Xi Tao returned to.
The two had fought hard enough to demolish half a mountain. Falling rocks struck Xi Tao mid-exorcism, and crushed the honest monk into the marsh, where he swallowed more than a mouthful of water.
Xi Tao was in the middle of lodging a complaint with Gu Ruhui when they arrived… only to find:
One man and one tiger, faces dark, each looking away in silence.
Xi Tao and Gu Ruhui were utterly baffled.
Judging by the aftermath, the two had likely begun with a cordial exchange of views, which somehow escalated into a minor disagreement. One that obliterated half a mountain, killed several strange fish, and destroyed a swathe of crimson maples.
And, entirely unsurprisingly, marked the beginning of a cold war.
Xue Cuo wandered through the mountains and across the tidal flats.
The newly built fishing village was named Goddess Village. The temple was called Goddess Temple, and the mountains beyond it were known as the Eighty-Nine Peaks of the Goddess.
The resettled villagers lit scattered sticks of incense, weeping with joy as they listened to Ren Shu announce the new land laws and tax codes.
Xue Cuo was not a miser. Yin Feixue even less so. By nature, Yin Feixue was open-hearted and unrestrained, and at first he had not cared much about such matters. Yet Xue Cuo’s insistence ran counter to Yin Feixue’s own longing for a Dao of absolute freedom.
The path Yin Feixue walked was one without fetters: heaven, earth, and humanity moving unbound.
Xue Cuo, by contrast, sought to revive the myriad gods. To contend with illusory enemies, an illusory future, an illusory Great Dao.
Only then did they realise that they did not understand one another at all.
It was a regret. A profound regret.
From that day on, the man and the tiger never spoke again. Instead, they fought whenever they met. Later on, whenever Xue Cuo saw Yin Feixue, he would turn his head from afar and walk away.
Yin Feixue would watch his retreating back, lifting a hand as if to speak, only to let it fall. In the end, he merely frowned and remained where he stood.
This went on for about seven days.
Xue Cuo was ferrying living beings across the great marsh when he was suddenly seized on both sides by a monk and Ren Shu. Startled, he cried, “Xi Tao? Ren Shu? What are you doing?”
Xi Tao replied faintly, “This little monk truly can’t bear it any longer.”
A crack appeared in Ren Shu’s usually wooden expression. “Xiao Cuo… you and Yin Feixue have made the household restless…”
Xi Tao added, “Gu Ruhui says the two of you have already affected the feng shui of his Cold Sword Mountain.”
Xue Cuo widened his eyes, craned his neck, and protested loudly, “That’s sheer fabrication. Utter nonsense!”
Xi Tao and Ren Shu said nothing. They hauled Xue Cuo all the way to Cold Mountain, where a clear spring lay. It was an immortal spring Gu Ruhui had transplanted from far away.
At that moment, white steam curled up from the pool.
Gu Ruhui sat immersed in the water, bare-chested, his lean, powerful torso half-submerged. Opposite him was a massive silver-striped tiger, likewise bare to the waist, broad-chested and snow-furred. The two raised their cups and drank together.
Xuan Zhao and Ying Xiao were drinking nearby. The little golden dragon was up in a tree, snatching birds.
Even the peacock, whose temper outweighed his beauty, sat on a great stone by the spring, lazily fanning himself, pale feet soaked in the cold water.
