Chapter 33

Mu Xue broke free from the dreamlike haze, the souls of the dead clinging to her like trailing waterweed, reluctant to leave her skin.
False visions tangled the mind, but escaping them left her with new understanding. The dead, the past, and all those memories, good or evil, right or wrong, were just pieces of a life lived. Grief, joy, every shard had settled in the lake of her heart, shaping who she was now.
Looking back, the waters of her soul were clear at last. The old hurts and grinding trials no longer filled her with fear, they simply were. She could stand calmly at the water’s edge, watching ugly stones and dazzling jewels sink together, with no urge to reject or bury any of them. Let them rest quietly at the bottom, weaving the bright mosaic of her inner world.
“Humans really are fascinating. There’s always something new and surprising to discover with you.” A light, drifting voice sounded behind Mu Xue.
She turned. Atop the nine-story pagoda sat a strange man.
His skin was deathly white, chest split by a gaping hole where his heart should be, a tall white hat perched on his head. In a city overrun with spirits, that wasn’t the strangest part, what truly stood out in this power-starved realm were the four enormous, eerily shifting ghost faces swirling around him.
Maybe “man” wasn’t quite right; his form was human, but carried something inhuman, a weighty, ancient force slammed outward, as if the sea itself were crashing down. There was no happiness or sorrow in his eyes; just old, unshakable authority. Even Mu Xue, whose primordial spirit was honed razor-sharp, felt the urge to kneel before that pressure.
Gritting her teeth, Mu Xue released her divine sense. She sensed all the dead around them had fallen eerily silent. Her friends were nowhere near, all of them trapped in some unseen crisis, alive but unmoving for far too long.
“They call me… Wuchang.” The pale man, with his swirling ghost masks, descended slowly from the tower, hovering midair, tilting his head to study Mu Xue. “Humankind was molded by Nuwa, born with souls, desires, cravings, ever-changing hearts. In all these endless years, barely anyone has awakened from my Illusion of Wuchang on their own. Yet you, how did you do it?”
“I’m the only one awake?” Mu Xue eyed the ghost warily, taking a careful step back. “What about my friends? What did you do to them?”
“Friends? Ever since the divine path opened, who knows how many humans have stumbled into the Road of the Dead and fallen into dreams of Wuchang, trapped in grief they can’t escape.” Wuchang unfurled a pale palm; an uncanny velvet blossom opened in the center, fine red threads winding out from its base, curling out to all corners of the earth.
“Your friends, honestly, aren’t very interesting. Grew up soft, never weathered hardship, so easy to twist and control those delicate, brittle hearts.” He squeezed his hand; the very next instant, those fine blood-colored threads snapped back, yanking a person up from the ground. “But this one, he’s got a little more spark.”
Mu Xue’s pupils contracted. If she hadn’t forced herself to hold back, she would have struck right there.
Bound and dangling unconscious among the red threads, was her own disciple, Cen Qianshan.
“He’s a curious one. Steadfast, but gentle. All extremes.” Wuchang gazed at the man dangling limply like a puppet, an unnatural smile splitting his perfectly rigid face.
“He almost broke out, just like you. Lucky for me, at the last moment, I discovered his fatal weakness.”
Wuchang set Cen Qianshan down. Even in a dead faint, his brow knotted, lashes trembling faintly, and glimmering teardrops welled from his eyes, one after another, sliding down his cheek.
“He’s so strong, yet somewhere inside, utterly fragile. See? All I have to do is poke at it, and he starts to cry.” Wuchang tapped his own open chest, wide-eyed as if showing off a brand new toy. “What about you? Do you have a place like this too?”
“Of course I do.” Mu Xue’s eyes lingered on Cen Qianshan’s face, then coolly met those of Wuchang. “But if you touch that place, be warned, I’ll explode.”
She raised her arms. Her petite, pale fingers were slicked with fresh blood, without her noticing, two rows of strange symbols had been etched in midair, eldritch spirit-script, glowing and persistent. They hovered, then sank into her skin, tracing crimson lines from each of her eyes down to her neck.
A closer look would reveal: they matched the symbols etched along Cen Qianshan’s left cheek, stroke for stroke.
Six Paths Demonic Wheel Art, a technique that harnesses the power of vengeful spirits and ancient deities. Wickedly potent, fiendishly hard to master, it shared roots with the Infinite Rebirth Cycle Secret Art. In her last life, it was Mu Xue's ultimate trump card for survival.
She only dared leave it behind for Xiao Shan at home just before braving her own tribulation.
Spiritual energy was thin as mist in the Dongyue Temple, snuffing out all mortal things. But this art drew on the might of ghosts and gods, still formidable here. Mu Xue never dared reveal it before her senior brothers, sisters, or even Xiao Shan. Now, with Xiao Shan unconscious and time running out, she had no reason to hold back anymore.
An enormous phantom surged from behind Mu Xue’s small figure: a fierce thousand-armed god, its eyes wild and cruel, a massive halo of power spinning behind its back. As tall as a nine-story tower and surrounded by divine radiance, countless arms each gripped a different divine weapon, filling the sky with overwhelming force.
Next to it, the ghost-faced man named Wuchang seemed small and fleeting, just another human body before a god’s rage. Yet he didn’t so much as blink. He rose into the air to face the monstrous power head-on, completely unfazed.
“Tch. Nothing I hate more than a fight,” he said flatly, raising one arm. A flimsy-looking barrier sprang up and met the thousand-armed god’s onslaught, holding steady in a deadlock high above the ground.
“I know you. Secretive. Cleverer than most. But do you really think you can beat me?” His deadpan gaze swept across Mu Xue. “Oh, right, those forbidden words of yours mean you’ll never admit it.”
Four ghost masks orbited Wuchang, each face pale as bone. One grinned playfully, delight crackling in its eyes; one glowered in wrath, its sneers twisted; one drooped with misery, keening with grief; one smiled with wide-eyed joy, releasing eerie, high-pitched chortles.
Joy, rage, sorrow, and mirth, four primal emotions circled her. The infernal sound waves rattled Mu Xue’s mind, flooding her with rollercoaster feelings: joy that bordered on delirium, sorrow that nearly drowned her. Each mask spun above, her mood swinging dizzily from bliss to agony, nearly driving her mad.
She forced herself to steady her breathing, calling on the Xingtin Heart Method to still her mind, but her chest felt tight, her head throbbed, and she could barely restrain the rampaging god-form.
“Hey!” she snapped, clapping both hands to her pounding head, red veins crawling through her eyes. Suddenly, she raised her face and shouted skyward, “What, is that it? You don’t have a heart yourself, so all you can do is try to drive people crazy, huh? Must be jealous.”
Wuchang looked down at her from above, voice even and mechanical: “Jealous? Of you all?”
The four noisy faces around him abruptly shut their mouths and turned to stare.
The twisted cacophony faded. Mu Xue gulped a stealthy breath and pushed on, “You’re not a god. Not even a living thing, are you? You... you’re just a creation, a puppet made by gods.”
The man in the sky held off the thousand-armed god’s onslaught with crossed arms, lips pressed into a thin line, staring coldly down at her. All four masks froze, their blank gazes fixed on Mu Xue, their laughter gone.
She sensed she was on the right track. Desperately, she tried to calm herself and ran through every clue she could remember from the earlier dream-world trap.
Wuchang had trapped her in an illusion, but mind games ran both ways. If she deciphered the illusion’s seams, she could glimpse the controller’s own scars and motives.
Whoever wove that fantasy left traces, in who they were, and what passed for their heart.
If she could just follow that thread, maybe she could break free when it mattered most.
“You don’t even know what real joy or sorrow feel like. You don’t have a heart at all. So you twist emotions, drive people to pain, push them to the edge, trying to sneak a peek at what it means to be truly alive, to feel real human passions.”
She spoke slowly, while one hand, hidden behind her back, made a flicking gesture. Out from Cen Qianshan’s robes, a tiny metal puppet crawled free. It crept quietly over and began untying the red bindings around his limbs, careful not to draw attention.
“How did you know?” Wuchang’s voice echoed above, curious and unguarded.
A puppet felt nothing, that made them simple. What you saw was what you got. No tricks or schemes.
The looming foe shifted tactics, launching attacks from all directions, yet he kept dissolving every blow with a casual sweep of his arm.
His entire focus never left the little human girl below him.
“Because you’re nothing like a real person. You’re exactly like the puppets I've made, just a divine automaton, nothing more.”
Mu Xue spoke as she inched along sideways, step by step.
Even a god-made thing was the supreme ruler in this field, too powerful to underestimate. But this was her best shot at drawing his attention, and maybe staying alive.
“Let me guess, your creator locked you here for good. You can’t leave, can’t feel joy, don’t even know what sadness means. Your world is an endless blur of gray, so you keep every lost soul trapped here, desperate for company, trapping us forever in your hopeless abyss.”
No sooner had Mu Xue finished than the phantom god above exploded in fury, hurling itself at Wuchang. Three burning beams of light tore from its eyes and mouth, slamming into the man. He crossed his arms and weathered the blast, but the force drove even his body backward into the tall tower’s shadow.
At the same time, Mu Xue dashed to Cen Qianshan’s side. The battle had revealed something odd every time: the thousand-armed god could only stray so far from the nine-story tower before Wuchang refused to follow. He was restricted to a certain radius, beyond that, he only attacked with illusions and mental force.
His territory was severely limited; outside that zone, his power waned.
Mu Xue braced Cen Qianshan with one arm, while the other produced a tiny yellow talisman. She pressed it between two fingers and murmured, “Ancestor, protect us.”
This talisman held no secret runes or magic script, just a tiny black whale stamped in the corner. The little whale flicked its tail, swam free, growing larger and larger.
Wuchang seemed to sense something amiss and dove from the tower to intercept, but the black whale already opened its mouth, swallowing Mu Xue and Cen Qianshan whole. In an instant, all three, girl, boy, and whale, vanished from sight.
High atop distant Xiaoyao Peak, Su Xingtin suddenly looked up, as if sensing something. “So soon? Has Xiao Xue already been forced to use the talisman?”
On the Road of the Dead, far from the looming black tower, a huge, round-headed whale behemoth surfaced amidst the ruins. With a lazy flick of its tail, it spat out Mu Xue and Cen Qianshan, then melted back into the ether, vanishing into thin air.
The day Mu Xue left Xiaoyao Peak, eyes on the sacred realms, her Master Su Xingtin didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he simply sighed and drew out three ancient-looking talismans, slipping them carefully into the pouch she kept at her waist.
“These are relics from our grandmaster, each carrying a gift from an ancient demon lord. They’ll work even in the Dongyue Temple, keep them on you, for safety, Xiao Xue.”
Mu Xue glanced toward the distant black tower, making sure Wuchang hadn’t shifted positions to chase her. For now, she breathed easy.
But just as she rose, someone in a delirious faint caught hold of her sleeve. “No, don’t go…”
Within his fever-dream, Cen Qianshan saw the last face he wanted to see at this moment. He was mired in filth, and his Master’s boots stepped into the mud, stopping before him.
“So you’ve been lying to me all along. You said you never killed your father, that you were framed. And I, actually believed you.” Her tone remained as gentle as ever, but her words pierced him like a red-hot needle, searing straight through his heart.
“No, I didn’t…” Cen Qianshan shook his head desperately.
“You didn’t wield the blade, true. But you secretly used drugs to stir up rage. And while he argued with his wife, you planted a sharp blade in the worst possible spot.” His adoptive father, skull split open, thrust his head forward with a sneer. “You pitiful, ruthless little liar. Absolutely disgusting!”
His Master, his foster father, everyone stared at him the same way, disgust plain as day. Cen Qianshan felt despair wash over him.
“No, Master, ” He reached out, clutching a corner of that crimson robe. “It’s true at first I schemed just to be taken in by you,
But later, later, after all you did for me, my heart changed. Master, everything I feel for you is real. More real than anything. No more tricks, no more lies.”
But the one who’d never once raised a hand to him only shook him off, cold and resolute, turning to go.
“No, please, don't leave!” Cen Qianshan clung to that flash of red, panic sparking. “Punish me, hit me, do whatever you want, just don’t leave me alone!”
“Master, do you even know what it was like, back then, when you sent me away, when I rushed back through the storm to find only the things you’d left behind for me? You can’t imagine what I felt.” His eyes burned red, staring into the chaos reflected in the water, shoulders trembling. “You’ll never know how I survived those first years, alone in that house that reeked of you, but you were gone. I almost didn't make it.”
A soft little hand reached in from nowhere. It tunneled through decades of lonely pain, across mountains and rivers, just to stroke his hair as gently as always.
“Don’t cry, my Xiao Shan.”