Now That Master Has Ascended, I'm Doing Whatever I Want!
My Honored Master ascended.
On the day of her Ascension, the whole Taiwei Sect beat drums and clanged gongs. Purple qi stretched three thousand li. Nine thunder dragons lay along the clouds, clearing the road for her.
When she left, she took the Sect Lord with her.
She took the Seven Elders.
The mute old man who had swept the Scripture Pavilion floor for forty years went too.
She even rolled up the lame tea stall owner down at the bottom of the mountain, the one who owed me three coppers for tea every day, and carried him into the sky in her sleeve.
Everyone except me.
Me. Gu Changsheng.
Jiang Tingxue’s only Direct Disciple.
Eighteen years on this mountain pouring her tea and fetching her water. I even raised the turtles in her sword-washing pool.
And when she ascended, she took the stone that weighed down the turtle pond too.
She just didn’t take me.
Before she left, she stood inside the Heavenly Gate, and through all that radiance she held up five fingers at me.
“Changsheng, after Your Master goes up, there are five things you must remember.”
“First. No cultivating.”
“Second. Do not go down the mountain.”
“Third. Do not go into the back mountain.”
“Fourth. Do not touch the black pot in the kitchen.”
“Fifth. Absolutely no taking disciples.”
I tilted my head back to look at her.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Jiang Tingxue was quiet for two breaths.
“Sunbathe.”
I said nothing.
Unbelievable.
Other people join a sect and cultivate the Great Dao of Longevity.
I joined a sect and got elder care.
Eighteen years ago, when I was eight, Jiang Tingxue picked me up from a mass grave.
Back then she said my Bone Structure was terrible, my Meridians were blocked, and my fate chart clashed with cultivation. Whoever taught me to cultivate would meet disaster.
So for eighteen years, three thousand disciples of the Taiwei Sect rode their swords through the sky, and I carried water.
Outer Disciples learned fireball spells. I split firewood.
Every Inner Disciple of the Inner Sect reached Foundation Establishment. I killed fish for their cafeteria.
By twenty-six I was still a pureblood Mortal who could not even feel spiritual qi.
It was not that I never tried in secret.
The first time I snuck in some Breath Work, I got one breath in before my Honored Master kicked the door open and burned the Secret Manual.
The second time I learned sword forms from an Outer Sect Junior Brother, she hung me from a tree and cursed me out all night.
The third time I made ready to go down and enter the sect Grand Tournament. I got as far as the Mountain Gate before the Mountain-Protecting Formation bounced me straight back onto my bed.
After enough of that, I understood.
Jiang Tingxue was not afraid I would hurt myself cultivating.
What scared her was me amounting to something.
Apparently Immortals have control issues too.
Pick up a disciple yourself, and you want to keep him at your side for life as a dinner companion.
“Good disciple.”
As the Heavenly Gate was about to close, Jiang Tingxue looked at me one last time.
That look was complicated.
Like she could not bear to leave.
Like she was worried.
“When Your Master finishes handling matters up there, I will come back for you.”
Having said that, she threw a glance at the Sect Lord and the others.
The Sect Lord, the Seven Elders, and the sweeping old man all turned to look at me in unison.
Every one of those faces was grimmer than the last.
And then.
Bang!
The Heavenly Gate shut.
Mountain wind blew past.
In that entire Taiwei Sect, I was the only living soul left.
And half a jar of pickled cabbage in the kitchen.
I stared at the sky for a good half shichen.
Then I turned and went back inside.
From under the bed I pulled out a copy of the Qi-Drawing Manual I had hidden for twelve years!
“Jiang Tingxue.”
“You finally left!”
“You won’t let me cultivate, is that it?”
“Today this young master cultivates, and you can watch!”
I sat down cross-legged.
Draw the qi of heaven and earth into the Dantian.
Simple enough.
Opened to the first page.
I shut my eyes.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
Inhaled again.
The next instant.
Boom—!
And Mount Taiwei shook.
I opened my eyes.
The old pine in the courtyard, eight hundred years old, had lost every needle.
Far off, the sea of clouds looked like something had grabbed it and yanked. For a hundred li around, spiritual qi turned into a white torrent you could see with your bare eyes, and poured into my body all at once.
I shut my mouth in a hurry.
No, wait.
One breath. That was all I took.
Did all of you have to come over?
I lowered my head into Inner Vision.
According to the Qi-Drawing Manual, a single thread of spiritual qi in the Dantian makes Qi Refining, first Layer.
My Dantian had no thread.
It had a sea.
Golden.
No far shore in sight.
“That’s bad.”
I muttered.
“My Honored Master really did lie to me.”
She had never been protecting me from harm.
I was, god help me, a genius!
…
Day one of her absence.
I broke the first rule.
Cultivation.
If I had already broken the first one.
What was the point of keeping the second?
The next morning, I packed a bundle and went down the mountain.
Eighteen years.
I had been cooped up on Mount Taiwei for a full eighteen years.
What the world below was like, I only knew from the mouths of my Junior Brothers and Junior Sisters.
They said there were Spirit Boats below, and taverns, and fox spirits who could dance, and a thing called a memory pearl. Two Spirit Stones would buy you a whole night of watching pretty Fairies dance.
Listening to that, I nearly cried.
This was not the world below.
This was freedom.
I ran straight to the Mountain Gate.
The Mountain-Protecting Formation that used to fling me eighty zhang had gone off with the Sect Lord.
I took one step out.
Nothing happened.
“Hahahaha!”
I planted my hands on my hips and howled with laughter.
“Jiang Tingxue!”
“There’s finally a day you can’t control me!”
The laughter had not even died down.
When a burst of wailing rose from the foot of the mountain.
I followed the sound.
In a Spirit Field down where the Taiwei Sect’s slope flattened out, a crowd of cultivators in blood-red martial garb was forcing the nearby villagers to move out.
At their head the one-eyed man stood on a field ridge with a blade in his hand.
“The whole Taiwei Sect has gone up in Ascension. Starting today, this Spirit Field belongs to the Blood Blade Sect.”
“If you are not gone by sunset, you go in the ground as fertilizer.”
I blinked.
The Blood Blade Sect. I knew them.
A small Sect next door to the Taiwei Sect.
Every year they came bearing gifts. When their sect lord saw my Honored Master, he bent his waist like a shrimp.
Her Ascension was barely over.
And they came to loot the place the very next day?
An old farmer recognized me and hurried over.
“Young Master Gu, what are you doing down the mountain?”
“These people say the Taiwei Sect is gone. They want to take our land.”
I frowned.
I had never been able to cultivate, true. But the twenty-seven villages below the mountain had sent rice and vegetables to the Taiwei Sect every year.
I had eaten their radishes for eighteen years.
Now someone was stealing their land.
That, I could not let pass.
So I walked over.
“This land belongs to the Taiwei Sect.”
The one eye flicked to me.
Then he smiled.
“So you are Jiang the Fairy’s useless disciple?”
My face darkened.
Useless disciple. Had those four words spread through the whole world below?
“I hear you are twenty-six and still have not reached Qi Refining.”
His smile widened.
“Fairy Jiang did not even take you with her in her Ascension. Seems she really was ashamed of you.”
Around him the Blood Blade Sect disciples roared with laughter.
I counted to three.
Then I did not.
“Say that again.”
His blade came down planted at my feet.
“Use—”
I raised my hand and slapped him.
Crack!
The man was gone.
Really gone.
Only a pair of shoes was left where he had stood.
I froze.
Everyone around me froze too.
A long silence.
Then a boom rolled over from the far side of the mountain.
A figure slid down out of a cliff several li away.
It was the one-eyed man.
He was lodged in the mountain, mouth crooked and eyes askew, neither alive nor dead as far as anyone could tell.
I examined my own hand.
Then at the mountain.
“My apologies.”
“I only just started cultivating. I am still not used to my own strength.”
Not a word from the Blood Blade Sect crowd.
The next second.
Thud, thud.
They were all on their knees.
After that.
A serious problem dawned on me, the first of many.
Maybe the lie went further than I thought.
She might have lied to me rather badly.
I had thought I was an ordinary Mortal.
And one slap had just sent a late-stage Foundation Establishment Guardian of the Blood Blade Sect into a cliff three li away.
So what Realm was I now?
I had no idea.
Because the Qi-Drawing Manual only went up to Qi Refining, ninth Layer.
And that golden sea in my Dantian did not look like nine Layers of anything.
Down on the ground went the Blood Blade Sect disciples, every one of them shaking like a sieve.
I asked, “What Realm is your sect lord?”
“G-golden Core. Early Stage.”
“Is he strong?”
They all nodded in unison.
“For a thousand li around, very strong.”
I gave it some thought.
“Then tell him to come find me on Mount Taiwei.”
“Bring back everything you took from the villagers.”
“And bring two hundred Spirit Stones. For emotional damages.”
One of them asked, trembling, “And if the sect lord does not come?”
I glanced at the mountain with the one-eyed man stuck in it.
“Then I will go find him.”
They ran very fast.
That night.
The Blood Blade Sect lord arrived.
He did not bring two hundred Spirit Stones.
He brought two thousand.
He also led in three spirit sheep, two carts of Spirit Rice, and a gold plaque inscribed with the words “NUMBER ONE SECT UNDER HEAVEN”.
That plaque held my eyes a long while, and I said nothing.
“When my Honored Master was here, why did you never send this?”
Sweat stood on the Blood Blade Sect lord’s forehead.
“Before… there was never time.”
I understood.
Bully the weak, fear the strong.
The cultivation world really was no different from a vegetable market.
Then came the third day without her.
I had the first Spirit Stones of my life.
Two thousand of them.
I took the Spirit Stones and went to Linxian City, three hundred li away.
The second rule, smashed to pieces.
Linxian City was livelier than I had imagined.
Swordsmen riding blades, cranes being ridden, Demonic Beast being walked. All over the street.
I dived into the biggest shop in the city, the Wanbao Tower, and spent one thousand eight hundred Spirit Stones on a Middle Grade dharma sword.
The proprietor swore on his chest that no Foundation Establishment cultivator’s Full-Power Strike could so much as scratch it.
I walked outside and fed a thread of spiritual qi into the blade.
Crack.
The sword broke into seventy-six pieces.
I stormed back to argue.
Shen Wanjin, proprietor of the Wanbao Tower, came down himself, looked at the pieces, and then asked my name.
“Gu Changsheng.”
“My master is Jiang Tingxue.”
Clack.
His teacup hit the floor.
Half a shichen later he had not only returned my Spirit Stones, he had given me the Purple Gold Token, the highest grade they issue.
I decided he was a decent man.
It was just that after hearing my Honored Master’s name, his legs would not stop shaking.
…
Back on Mount Taiwei.
I sat in the courtyard looking at those seventy-six pieces of dharma sword, and the longer I looked the more wronged I felt.
Not even a decent sword to be had.
How was I supposed to cultivate like this?
Then.
I remembered the third rule.
No going into the back mountain.
In eighteen years I had never once set foot in the back mountain of the Taiwei Sect.
When I was small I climbed the wall once to sneak in. When my Honored Master found out, her face went white.
This time she did not scold me.
She only gripped my shoulders, hard.
“Changsheng.”
“Whatever is in there, do not touch it.”
At the time I thought she was making a fuss over nothing.
Thinking about it now.
Could there be treasure in there?
An immortal sword, say?
A divine weapon?
Or had she hidden it out of fear that I would take it, and was that why she kept me out?
At that thought.
I perked up.
“The third rule.”
“Today I break you too!”
I headed straight for a bronze door in the back mountain.
After my Honored Master’s Ascension, the Restriction on that door had faded.
Inside were nine graves.
In front of each grave stood a piece of junk.
The first, a rusted iron sword.
The second, a black spear snapped in two.
The third, a wine pot with a chip out of it.
The fourth, a charred wooden stick.
The fifth, a cracked bronze mirror.
The sixth, a worn-out shoe.
The seventh, a kitchen cleaver.
The eighth, a string of bronze bells.
The ninth, half a brick.
That pile of junk got a look. I had nothing to say.
Jiang Tingxue hid me for eighteen years, and all she hid was a pile of junk?
I walked to the first grave.
I pulled the rusted sword out and weighed it in my hand.
Heavy enough.
I gave it a casual swing.
Hmm—
The whole back mountain went silent.
The wind stopped. The insects stopped.
Even the clouds in the sky were cut neatly in two.
A moment I studied the rusted sword in my hand, then muttered:
“Sharp enough.”
That night.
Seven thousand li from Mount Taiwei.
In the Heavenly Sword Palace, the self-proclaimed first of the Eastern Wilderness sword dao, a founding ancestor’s sword stele that had received offerings for nine thousand years split in two without warning.
The Palace Lord came out of seclusion in the middle of the night.
“The Presence of the Sword Ancestor!”
“The Heaven-Severing Sword, missing for nine thousand years, has appeared!”
I knew nothing about any of it.
I was using the Heaven-Severing Sword to peel potatoes.
Say what you like, it worked beautifully. One slice, one peel.
When the potatoes were done, I suddenly remembered my Honored Master’s fourth rule.
The black pot in the kitchen.
In eighteen years she had never let me touch it.
Back then there were dedicated disciples from the meal hall to do the cooking.
Now the whole sect had ascended and the meal hall was empty.
I could hardly starve to death.
So the fourth rule was not worth keeping either.
I scrubbed that big black pot under the stove three times.
Poured in water, added spirit mutton, added potatoes.
Threw in a handful of mountain pepper.
Lit a roaring fire. Bubble, bubble.
The smell drifted ten li.
I picked up a piece of mutton and put it in my mouth.
It melted on the tongue.
Boom!
The golden sea of spirit inside me rose another ring.
My eyes lit up.
“This pot has something to it.”
So I stewed another.
The second pot had just come to a boil.
When a girl’s voice came from outside the Mountain Gate.
“Is anyone there?”
“Please, save my grandpa!”
I went out to look.
A Miss of thirteen or fourteen was kneeling at the Mountain Gate.
Her clothes were in tatters, and she carried an unconscious old man on her back.
The old man’s chest had gone black. Clearly poisoned.
The moment she saw me, she kowtowed.
“Immortal Master, a Black Wind Wolf bit my grandpa.”
“The villagers say the Taiwei Sect has Immortals. Please, grant us an antidote pill.”
As if I had an antidote pill.
Those she had kept.
But her pill room had been cleared out too.
I turned it over in my mind.
“Eat something first?”
The girl stared at me, dumbstruck.
“Huh?”
“This pot of mutton of mine seems fairly nourishing.”
I ladled out a bowl of broth and poured it down the old man’s throat.
The girl burst into tears.
She probably thought I was giving her grandpa a last meal.
But the broth had barely gone down.
When the black qi in the old man’s chest visibly receded.
Three breaths later.
He opened his eyes.
Five breaths later.
He sat up.
Ten breaths later.
He slapped a mosquito dead beside him.
Boom!
A pit two zhang deep appeared in the ground.
The three of us fell silent together.
The old man looked at his own hands. His lips trembled.
“I… I reached Foundation Establishment?”
The girl said, “Grandpa, yesterday you were still Qi Refining, second Layer.”
The old man said nothing.
I said nothing.
I looked at the pot.
And suddenly felt that something was off.
The girl’s name was Ye Xiaoman.
The old man’s name was Ye Tieshan.
Grandfather and granddaughter, out of Qingshi Village down below.
After Ye Tieshan woke, he walked three circles around that black pot.
Then he dropped to his knees.
“Senior!”
“This is immortal fortune!”
“I beg Senior to take my granddaughter as your disciple!”
I had meant to refuse.
Because of the fifth rule.
It was a rule she had laid down herself.
Absolutely no taking disciples.
But then I thought about it.
I had broken the first four.
Why keep the fifth?
Collecting them?
My eyes found Ye Xiaoman.
The little girl was thin. Her eyes were very bright.
“Do you want to cultivate?”
She nodded like a madwoman.
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“So that next time a wolf bites grandpa, I can stew the wolf.”
A plain and honest reason.
I approved.
By the seventh day she had been gone.
I took the first disciple of my life.
Ye Xiaoman knelt and knocked her head on the ground three times, properly.
“Disciple Ye Xiaoman greets the Honored Master!”
As the third knock landed.
Rumble!
Thunder cracked out of a clear sky.
A purple-gold light flew from between my brows and sank into her body.
Ye Xiaoman fainted on the spot.
I jumped.
“She did not knock herself dead, did she?”
Thankfully she woke half a shichen later.
Her first words were:
“Honored Master, I think I can see spiritual qi.”
I had her try the Qi-Drawing Manual.
One night and she was at Qi Refining, ninth Layer.
Foundation Establishment the next day.
Golden Core the third day.
Ye Tieshan knelt in the courtyard and wept all morning.
He said the smoke rising from the family graves would never dare rise that high.
I, on the other hand, felt a little numb.
I finally understood why Jiang Tingxue had not let me take disciples.
Ruin someone else’s disciples? That had never been the worry.
The worry was her job.
She taught me eighteen years and I never reached a single Realm.
I taught Ye Xiaoman three days and she was Golden Core.
A gap in teaching ability like that really would wound a Honored Master’s self-respect.
Once I had worked it out, my mood opened up.
“If I can teach one, I can teach ten.”
“And if ten, then a hundred is the same.”
A mountain as big as the Taiwei Sect.
Empty is empty.
So I reopened the Mountain Gate.
At the foot of the mountain I put up a sign: THE ZIZAI SECT IS TAKING DISCIPLES. NO LIMIT ON BONE STRUCTURE. NO LIMIT ON BIRTH. REGISTRATION FEE: FIVE SPIRIT STONES.
The name Taiwei Sect, I did not dare use.
After all, the Sect Lord was still alive.
Even if the man had gone up in Ascension.
If he came back one day and said I was illegally occupying sect assets, that would be awkward.
So I started my own pot.
I called it the Zizai Sect.
The meaning was simple.
She was gone, though.
I was free and easy.
Those first three days, not one person signed up.
On the fourth day, Ye Xiaoman went back to Qingshi Village to visit family.
She rode her sword there.
A girl of thirteen, who seven days ago had still been digging wild vegetables, rode a Flying Sword three circles over the heads of the whole village.
On the morning of the fifth day.
I pushed open the Mountain Gate.
Down at the mountain’s foot the queue ran two li.
“Stop shoving!”
“One at a time!”
“Have your registration fee ready!”
My hands went weak from taking disciples.
One month.
A thousand disciples, and the Zizai Sect had passed the mark.
And the problems came too.
A thousand mouths.
Eating is expensive.
Cultivating is more expensive.
My two thousand Spirit Stones were long gone.
So I thought up a method.
Selling soup.
Whatever went into that black pot in the kitchen, it increased your Cultivation Base.
Mutton soup worked best.
I priced it at twenty Spirit Stones a bowl.
Two for disciples, internal price.
Ye Tieshan took charge of the ladle.
I took charge of the money.
The first day, nobody bought.
Everyone thought I had gone mad with poverty, charging twenty Spirit Stones for a bowl of mutton soup.
I sent a bowl to Shen Wanjin at the Wanbao Tower in Linxian City, free.
The second day.
Shen Wanjin arrived in person, in a carriage drawn by eight spirit horses.
He had gone from early-stage Nascent Soul to middle-stage Nascent Soul.
“Senior Gu.”
“One hundred bowls to start.”
Word spread.
The Mountain Gate was jammed.
Golden Core masters came to drink.
Nascent Soul Old Ancestors came to drink.
Even a few old monsters who had been in Closed-Door Cultivation for two hundred years came, leaning on canes, to line up.
The most absurd was a man who drank one bowl and broke through on the spot.
He clung to the edge of the pot and howled.
“This Old Man has been stuck at late-stage Nascent Soul for one hundred and seventy-three years!”
“One bowl of soup!”
“One bowl of soup!”
From then on.
Zizai Sect mutton soup was known among the cultivators of the Eastern Wilderness as the Enlightenment Immortal Soup.
I thought that was laying it on thick.
The potatoes were good too, honestly.
Half a year later.
I had made three hundred and seventy thousand Spirit Stones.
Ten thousand, by the next reckoning.
Ye Xiaoman had become a Nascent Soul.
And me? What Realm was I?
Still no idea.
All I knew was that the so-called Nascent Soul and Spirit Severing masters down there could not last one arm-wrestle against me.
The only thing that annoyed me was this.
Once the Zizai Sect got famous.
Trouble came with it.
The Heavenly Sword Palace came knocking.
The day they came, the sky was packed solid with swords.
Three thousand sword cultivators at least.
A white-bearded old man stood at their head.
The Peak of Spirit Severing.
The acknowledged first of the Eastern Wilderness sword dao, Palace Lord of the Heavenly Sword Palace, Lu Jiuxiao.
He stood outside the Mountain Gate and his voice carried a hundred li.
“Fellow Daoist Gu.”
“My Heavenly Sword Palace has come for one thing only.”
I was in the back kitchen cutting mutton.
So I went out carrying the rusted sword.
“What thing?”
Lu Jiuxiao saw the sword in my hand.
His eyes went red at once.
“Heaven-Severing!”
Three thousand blades left their scabbards at once.
The song of the blades rang to the clouds.
Instinctively I tucked the rusted sword behind my back.
“You want to steal it?”
Lu Jiuxiao drew a deep breath.
“This sword is the sacred guardian sword of my Heavenly Sword Palace, lost for nine thousand years.”
“Please, Fellow Daoist, return it.”
I was a little unwilling.
“I picked it up in my own back mountain.”
“What makes you say it is yours?”
“Is your name written on it?”
Lu Jiuxiao paused.
“No.”
“Is there an IOU?”
“No.”
“Is there a deed?”
Nothing.
I spread my hands.
“No proof, no paperwork, and you just open your mouths and claim it?”
A young sword cultivator behind Lu Jiuxiao shouted in fury.
“Insolent!”
“The Heaven-Severing Sword was the Sword Ancestor’s own blade. All under heaven knows it!”
“You, this junior living off Fairy Jiang’s leftovers, how dare you—”
What I hate most is people bringing that up.
What did they mean, living off my Honored Master’s leftovers?
When she was here, I could not even leave the mountain.
Everything I have now, I sold one bowl of soup at a time!
“Then let us fight.”
I brought the rusted sword around in front of me.
“Winner keeps it.”
Lu Jiuxiao said in a low voice, “Good.”
He drew.
In an instant, three thousand li of sword qi gathered.
A golden greatsword a full hundred zhang long appeared in the sky.
The cultivators watching from the foot of the mountain scrambled backward.
“The Heavenly Sword Palace’s ultimate art, the Nine Heavens Single Sword!”
“Palace Lord Lu has not used that strike in twenty years!”
“Gu Changsheng has overreached himself!”
Listening, I got a little nervous.
The Peak of Spirit Severing. That ought to be quite something.
So I decided to test it first.
No spiritual qi.
I just held the rusted sword up and gave it a light block.
Tink.
A crisp ring.
Lu Jiuxiao’s sword snapped.
The hundred-zhang greatsword in the sky snapped.
The swords on the backs of three thousand sword cultivators snapped with it.
Crack, crack, crack, crack—
Like firecrackers at New Year.
Broken blades rained onto the ground.
The whole field went quiet.
Lu Jiuxiao stared at the half-blade left in his hand, the sword that was his own life.
His eyes were empty.
I felt a little awkward too.
“Um…”
“Do I pay for it?”
Lu Jiuxiao’s head snapped up.
I thought he was about to turn ugly.
Instead he dropped to his knees.
“Senior!”
“Please, take me as your disciple!”
I said, “…Huh?”
Down they went too, three thousand sword cultivators on their knees.
“Please, Senior, take us as disciples!”
A solid black mass of people, and me looking at it.
Then it struck me that the fifth prohibition was no longer a question of whether to break it.
There was not even ash left.
…
One year later.
Eighty thousand disciples by then.
The former Heavenly Sword Palace had been folded into the Zizai Sect as its Sword Hall.
Lu Jiuxiao insisted on the whole Take a Master business.
I thought he was too old. If he stood out there, people would easily mistake which of us was whose master.
What I gave him was the rank of Nominal Disciple.
He was happy for three days.
And I was finally free of teaching eighty thousand people in person.
Teaching, I say.
Honestly I had nothing to teach.
They asked me about the sword Dao.
I said, “Be faster.”
How to push past a Bottleneck, they wanted to know.
I said, “Take two more breaths.”
And what Enlightenment felt like.
I said, “No idea. Never had one.”
And every one of them got more excited than the last.
“Honored Master, truly the Great Dao Is Simple!”
“Those three words, be faster, contain the true meaning of all martial arts under heaven!”
“Take two more breaths, that is really the method of swallowing and spitting out the universe!”
My brain hurt listening to it.
Later I stopped explaining.
Let them realize whatever they wanted to realize.
And oddly enough, it kept working.
One disciple heard me say “a sword is for cutting people” and did seven days of Closed-Door Cultivation, and came out with a Slaughter Sword Intent.
A female disciple asked me how to cultivate the heart.
I was eating at the time, and said offhand, “Hungry, eat. Sleepy, sleep.”
That night she had a sudden Enlightenment and broke through to Spirit Severing.
The most exaggerated was Lu Jiuxiao.
He asked me why the Heaven-Severing Sword could sever heaven.
I was scraping fish scales with it at the time.
I answered offhand, “Because it is fast enough. Heaven did not have time to react.”
The next day.
He came running to tell me he had understood.
I never dared ask what it was he had understood.
I was afraid of looking uneducated.
The second year.
First Sect of the Eastern Wilderness, no contest.
That was not my doing.
The other Sects voted on it, unanimously.
The reason was simple.
They could not beat us.
And they could not poach our cook either.
I had no interest in being hegemon.
My greatest pleasure every day was sleeping until the sun was high, going to the back mountain to fish, and stewing meat in that black pot at night.
When my Honored Master was here, I rose at the mao hour and slept at the hai hour. Twelve shichen in a day, and she could find thirteen shichen of work for me.
Now nobody was in charge.
I slept as long as I wanted.
I ate whatever I wanted.
I went down the mountain whenever I wanted.
Sometimes I even lay on purpose on that cold jade bed she used to treasure most, eating peanuts.
Peanut skins all over the bed.
Wonderful.
This was what cultivating was supposed to be.
Cultivating is about a mind with no knots in it.
A pity.
Once a man is famous, trouble grows legs and comes running.
Autumn of the second year.
People came to the Eastern Wilderness from the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty of the Central Provinces.
The one who came was the dynasty’s guardian marquis, Xie Wufeng.
The Void Refining Realm.
They say above the Eastern Wilderness there are the Central Provinces.
The big Sects of the Central Provinces look on us Eastern Wilderness cultivators as city folk look on country relatives.
When Xie Wufeng arrived, a dragon carriage spanned the sky and thirty thousand black-armored soldiers pressed down on the clouds.
An impressive display, certainly.
He brought me an imperial edict.
“His Majesty of the Great Zhou has heard that a rare treasure has appeared in the Eastern Wilderness.”
“The Zizai Sect is ordered to present the Sacred Pot and the ancient sword, and to send its Sect Lord, Gu Changsheng, to the Central Provinces to appear before His Majesty.”
I sat on the stone steps of the Mountain Gate cracking melon seeds.
“And if I do not go?”
Xie Wufeng smiled.
“All under heaven is the king’s land.”
“Sect Lord Gu had best not put this Marquis in a difficult position.”
I asked Lu Jiuxiao.
“Is the majesty he talks about strong?”
Lu Jiuxiao’s face turned grave.
“The Great Zhou Emperor. Late-stage Great Ascension.”
Something dropped in my chest.
At last, one that sounded strong.
I stood up.
Behind Xie Wufeng, thirty thousand black-armored soldiers gripped their weapons at once.
The air went tight.
I said seriously, “How about this.”
“You have your majesty come get it himself.”
Xie Wufeng’s face darkened.
“Insolent!”
He struck out with one palm.
Heaven and earth went dark in an instant.
A heaven-covering hand came down out of the clouds, and the mountain forests for a hundred li around shook.
Instinctively I lifted my foot.
And kicked.
Bang!
The hand was gone.
Xie Wufeng was gone too.
Thirty thousand black-armored soldiers looked up.
There was one more star at the edge of the sky.
Blinking.
I squinted at it for a while.
“That one, I think I put a bit too much into.”
The black-armored soldiers were silent for three breaths.
Then, very neatly, they put their weapons on the ground.
“Sect Lord Gu.”
“The Marquis was tired from his journey and has gone back to the Central Provinces to rest.”
I nodded.
“Understandable.”
Seven days later.
Then the Great Zhou Emperor came himself.
He did not bring an army.
He brought the keys to the treasury.
He stayed at the Zizai Sect three days.
When he left, he carved out the Eastern Wilderness and gave it to me as a fief.
I never asked for it.
I said administering a realm was too tiring.
He thought about it.
And left the crown prince behind.
“This worthless son of mine is stubborn by nature and has long admired Senior Gu.”
“I hope Senior will discipline him on my behalf.”
That “worthless son” who was already over three hundred years old got a long look from me.
And sank into thought.
Another one here to Take a Master.
If my Honored Master knew, she would probably be angry enough to fall out of the upper realm.
I assumed it ended there.
What I had not counted on was this, less than half a year after he went back.
Something happened to the Nine Provinces.
The sky cracked.
That day at noon.
Everyone in the Nine Provinces saw a black fissure ten thousand li long split open at the center of the sky.
Behind the fissure was no starfield.
It was an eye.
Blood red.
So cold that nothing human was left in it.
The instant it appeared, the spiritual qi of all nine provinces went berserk.
Cultivators fell to their knees by the thousand.
Word came from the Great Zhou Emperor that same day.
Those were the otherworldly Heaven-Devourers.
Every ten thousand years they tear open the world barrier and devour the living of the lower world.
The last time they came, seven tenths of the cultivators in the Nine Provinces died.
Word spread.
The world fell into chaos.
Every Sect and every kingdom set up a Formation of its own.
Only I stood in the courtyard staring at that eye, sure I had seen it somewhere.
Not that I had seen it before.
I just hated it for no reason.
Like a fly crawling around on your dinner table.
More annoying still.
The eye seemed to have seen me too.
It turned.
And fixed on Mount Taiwei.
Then a hoarse voice came from behind the fissure.
“Fou… nd… you…”
I Frowned.
Found who?
The next instant.
A pitch-black finger reached in from beyond the sky.
One finger, bigger than Mount Taiwei.
It did not attack the Central Provinces.
It did not attack the dynasty.
It came straight down at me.
The eighty thousand disciples of the Zizai Sect went white in the face.
“Honored Master!”
“Sect Lord!”
“Senior!”
I lost my temper too.
I am at home eating hotpot. Who did I even offend?
I grabbed the half brick from the edge of the table.
That is right.
The half brick from in front of the ninth grave in the back mountain.
The kitchen table had started to wobble a few days back, so I brought it home to prop up a leg.
Nothing better within reach now.
It would have to do.
I flung it at the sky.
“Scram!”
The brick did not fly fast.
It drifted.
About like a village kid throwing a roof tile.
The moment it struck that black finger.
Heaven and earth went silent for an instant.
Then.
Crack!
The finger burst.
The fissure burst.
That blood-red eye burst.
A scream came through the world barrier.
Everyone in the Nine Provinces heard it.
The half brick kept climbing.
Flew into the void.
Gone.
My heart ached and I slapped my own thigh.
“Damn!”
“The table is going to wobble again!”
The eighty thousand disciples below the mountain said nothing.
Three days later.
Over three thousand Sect Lords, emperors, and Old Ancestors arrived from the Central Provinces.
They stood outside the Mountain Gate of the Zizai Sect in a solid rank.
And asked me to be the common lord of the Nine Provinces.
I refused seven times.
They knelt seven times.
The eighth time, I got annoyed.
“Fine. Fine.”
“Put my name down.”
“Do not come looking for me on ordinary days.”
And so, in the third year after my Honored Master’s Ascension.
I somehow became Dao Lord of the Nine Provinces.
Zizai Sect membership climbed from eighty thousand to six figures and then some: 360,000.
Their Cultivation Base started at Golden Core.
I still did not know what Realm I was.
But the world had given me a nickname.
Heavenly Venerable Gu.
To be honest.
A bit rustic.
I would rather they called me Sect Lord Gu.
Zizai.
Salt of the earth.
…
After becoming Dao Lord of the Nine Provinces, I honestly felt nothing.
Every day I ate what I wanted and slept when I wanted.
The only change was that more people sent me gifts.
More Spirit Stones than I had places to put.
So I cleared out the Tingxue Hall where my Honored Master used to live and made it a storeroom.
Her favorite white jade table, I used for keeping accounts.
Her Closed-Door Cultivation cushion, I gave to Ye Tieshan to pad his stove.
That cold jade bed of hers, since it was cool to sleep on in summer, I moved into my own room.
One day Ye Xiaoman asked me carefully.
“Honored Master.”
“If the founding ancestress comes back and sees all this… will she be angry?”
I gave a cold laugh.
“She has the nerve to be angry?”
“She ascended and took the whole Sect with her, and left me behind alone.”
“Left five rotten rules too.”
“If she really comes back, I have questions for her.”
“Why keep me from cultivating for eighteen years?”
“And why not let me leave the mountain?”
“And why not let me touch the things in the back mountain?”
“And that pot.”
“It works so well. What was she hiding it for?”
Ye Xiaoman thought about it.
“Maybe the ancestress had her reasons?”
“What reasons could there be?”
I waved it off.
“Nothing but this. She thought my talent was too high, and she was afraid I would outdo her, and her face as a Honored Master would suffer.”
Ye Xiaoman was silent.
“Honored Master, I think that explanation is a tiny bit shameless.”
I was just about to educate her on respecting one’s master.
When the sky suddenly sounded.
Dong.
Like something knocking outside a door.
Then.
Dong!
A second time.
Dong!
A third time.
Every cultivator in the Nine Provinces looked up at once.
At the center of the sky, an enormous golden portal slowly took shape.
I knew it at a glance.
Three years ago.
Through that very door she had gone up.
The Heavenly Gate.
The gate opened a crack.
Endless immortal radiance poured out.
A figure in white walked out from inside.
She was the same as three years ago.
White robes.
Silver hairpin.
Cold brows and cold eyes.
A sword in her left hand.
And in her right, a bloody human head.
The instant I saw her.
The melon seeds dropped out of my hand.
“Jiang… Jiang Tingxue?”
She saw me too.
First she let out a breath of relief.
Then she looked down at Mount Taiwei.
And the expression on her face slowly froze.
The old quiet Mountain Gate now packed in Cave Residences for all 360,000.
The Spirit Field that once grew cabbage had been turned into a martial drill ground.
At the door of what used to be Tingxue Hall hung a big sign reading THE ZIZAI SECT FINANCE OFFICE.
The sword-washing pool she had loved best now held over two hundred edible spirit fish.
And that black pot she had strictly forbidden anyone to touch was now set up square in the Sect plaza.
Under the pot burned nine fire dragons.
Beside the pot stood a price board: the Enlightenment Immortal Soup, eighty-eight Spirit Stones a bowl.
The head fell out of Jiang Tingxue’s hand.
Thud.
It hit the ground and rolled twice.
She paid it no mind.
She only stared at me.
“Gu.”
“Chang.”
“Sheng.”
Three words.
Each colder than the last.
Instinctively I shrank my neck.
My body remembered the eighteen years of being hung from a tree and whipped before my brain did.
But quickly.
I straightened my back.
No.
I was Dao Lord of the Nine Provinces now.
Honored Master to a standing army of 360,000.
What did I have to fear from her?
“You are back?”
I put my hands behind my back and tried to look very dignified.
Jiang Tingxue landed one step in front of me.
“Before I left, what did I tell you?”
“Quite a lot.”
“The first rule.”
“No cultivating.”
“Did you cultivate?”
I coughed.
“A little.”
Her eyelid twitched.
“Second rule. Do not go down the mountain.”
“I go down now and then for a look around.”
“Third rule. Do not go into the back mountain.”
“It was very dusty in there. I cleaned it up for you.”
Jiang Tingxue’s breathing got heavier.
“Fourth rule. Do not touch the refining… that black pot.”
“Oh, that one you can set your mind at ease about.”
I pointed at the plaza.
“Well protected.”
“It is now a key business of our Sect. Daily turnover, over a hundred thousand Spirit Stones.”
Jiang Tingxue swayed.
She put a hand to her forehead.
“And the fifth?”
I mulled it over.
That one really might have gone a bit too far.
“I… took a few disciples.”
She stared at me.
“How many is a few?”
Ye Xiaoman drew my eyes.
Ye Xiaoman reminded me in a small voice.
“Registered: 367,009.”
Jiang Tingxue said nothing.
I added, “Nominal ones do not count.”
Jiang Tingxue closed her eyes.
For a long while she said nothing.
I thought she had fainted from rage.
Then she asked suddenly.
“The nine things in the back mountain. How many did you touch?”
“Not many either.”
“The Heaven-Severing Sword?”
“Used it for chopping vegetables.”
“The God-Slaying Spear?”
“Lu Jiuxiao took it as a flagpole.”
“The World-Illuminating Mirror?”
“The female disciples’ dormitory took it to look at their whole bodies.”
“The Soul-Calming Bell?”
“Hung it on a sheep’s neck so it would not get lost.”
“The Heaven-Shattering Seal?”
I considered for a second.
“You mean that half brick?”
“Threw it away.”
Her eyes snapped open.
“Threw it where?”
“Beyond the sky.”
“A while back a big eye reached down to grab me, so I hit it with that.”
Jiang Tingxue went completely still.
Behind her, in the Heavenly Gate, a crowd of people who had just been about to come out went still too.
I looked closely.
They were all people I knew.
The Sect Lord.
The Seven Elders.
The mute sweeper.
The lame tea stall owner.
Everyone who had gone up in Ascension with her three years ago, not one missing.
Only their getup was a little strange now.
Nine dragons coiled over the Sect Lord’s immortal robe.
Behind the First Elder hung 12 immortal swords.
No longer hunched, the sweeping old man stood straight as a plank, and behind him stood ten thousand silver-armored immortal soldiers.
Most exaggerated of all was the lame tea stall owner.
His leg was not lame anymore.
And a golden wheel floated behind his head.
I swept my eyes over them.
Then at Jiang Tingxue.
“You went up three years and struck it rich?”
Nobody answered.
The mood was frighteningly strange.
Last of all.
It was the Sect Lord who broke the quiet.
He swallowed.
“The Sovereign.”
“Should we… just tell him?”
Sovereign?
I turned to Jiang Tingxue.
“He is talking to you?”
Jiang Tingxue sighed.
“Changsheng.”
“There are things I meant to keep from you another hundred years.”
I laughed.
“You want to lie to me for another hundred years?”
“Fine.”
“Say it all now.”
“Start with the first one.”
“Why keep me from cultivating?”
Jiang Tingxue did not answer at once.
She raised her hand.
Her fingertip touched the space between my brows.
Boom!
Lightning seemed to burst inside my skull.
Countless unfamiliar images came swarming in.
A white jade heavenly palace vaster than the Nine Provinces.
A hundred million Immortals kneeling below the steps.
An ancient tree that held up a river of stars.
A black sword that cut every heaven there was clean in two.
And a man.
His back to all living things, seated at the highest point of them all.
His face stayed hidden from me.
But I knew.
It was me.
The next instant.
My eyes flew open.
My forehead was soaked in sweat.
“What was that?”
Jiang Tingxue spoke quietly.
“Your past life.”
I said nothing.
She went on:
“A hundred thousand years back, the Immortal Realm had twelve heavenly domains.”
“Over all twelve, one man was honored as the Dao Ancestor.”
“The Taichu Dao Ancestor. Gu Changsheng.”
I pointed at myself.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“A hundred thousand years ago, to seal away the Heaven-Devourers beyond the world, you mended the sky with your Dao body, and your Soul went into Rebirth.”
“I searched for you for ninety-seven thousand years.”
“Eighteen years ago, I finally found the body your Rebirth had taken in the lower world.”
My head was buzzing.
“No.”
“Are you not my Honored Master?”
The moment I asked that.
The faces of the crowd behind the Heavenly Gate turned stranger still.
Head turned quietly aside, the Sect Lord said nothing.
The First Elder began studying the sky.
Two coughs came from the sweeping old man.
Jiang Tingxue let the silence run a long while.
Then.
In full view of the whole Zizai Sect, every last disciple of it.
She took a step back.
Gathered her hem.
And knelt.
“Disciple Jiang Tingxue.”
“Greets the Honored Master.”
Boom!
I felt that hit harder than the otherworldly big eye.
The whole Zizai Sect.
Went dead silent.
Ye Xiaoman’s mouth hung open wide enough to fit an egg.
The wine gourd dropped out of Lu Jiuxiao’s hand.
The Great Zhou crown prince looked completely stunned.
Kneeling on the ground there, Jiang Tingxue held my stare.
“Say that again?”
She looked up.
Her ears were actually a little red.
“And a hundred thousand years ago, you took me as your disciple.”
“I was ranked ninth among your disciples.”
“After you fell, I took over the Taichu Immortal Court.”
“To let your Rebirth grow up safely, I sealed your memories and your Cultivation Base, and pretended to be your Honored Master.”
I opened my mouth.
And after a long while managed only one line.
“So you had me carry water every day for eighteen years?”
Jiang Tingxue’s eyes drifted away.
“Tempering the Temperament.”
“You had me split firewood?”
“Return to the Uncarved.”
“You hung me from a tree?”
“That one…”
She paused.
“A personal grudge.”
I said, “…?”
Jiang Tingxue said quietly, “In the past, when I made a mistake, you hung me too.”
I understood.
Fine. Fine. Fine.
Settling personal scores under official cover, is it?
I drew a deep breath.
“And those five rules?”
This time, Jiang Tingxue’s expression turned serious.
“After your Rebirth, the Dao Ancestor’s primordial source went dormant.”
“First, no cultivating, because an ordinary Cultivation Technique cannot bear your primordial source. The moment you draw qi of your own will, the primordial source wakes early.”
“The first time you tried in secret, the Heaven-Devourers’ ancestral land beyond the ninth heaven lit up for three whole days.”
My eyelid jumped.
“And that time, why did you only burn my book?”
“Because that night I crossed the border and killed thirty-seven Heaven-Devourers who had come to investigate.”
“…”
“Second, I would not let you go down the mountain, because Mount Taiwei is itself one great formation. The Heaven-Shrouding Formation. The moment you leave, your Presence may leak.”
I remembered my first day down the mountain, when one slap sent the Blood Blade Sect’s Guardian flying.
I felt a little guilty.
“And third, the nine pieces of junk in the back mountain… the nine things?”
At last the Sect Lord could not hold it in.
“Those are not junk!”
He pointed at me, his voice shaking.
“Those are the nine Dao Weapons of your past life!”
“The Heaven-Severing Sword, the God-Slaying Spear, the World-Illuminating Mirror, the Soul-Calming Bell, the Heaven-Shattering Seal…”
“Any one of them, set down in the Immortal Realm, could have the Immortal King of a whole domain beating each other’s brains out!”
I remembered the rusted sword I had used to peel potatoes for two years.
Silence.
He went on, “Once the nine Dao Weapons bind to a master, word of the Dao Ancestor’s return reaches every heaven. That is why the Sovereign would not let you touch them.”
I asked, “Then after I touched them, why was there no declaration?”
Jiang Tingxue’s expression was complicated.
“Possibly because…”
“You were using the Heaven-Severing Sword to chop vegetables.”
“It did not expect you to be awake already.”
I said nothing.
That was a thing that could happen?
“And fourth, that black pot?”
This time everyone behind the Heavenly Gate drew a breath together.
Jiang Tingxue looked at the black pot stewing mutton right there in the plaza.
The look on her face was that of a woman watching her own father being taken away to boil water.
“That is the Heaven-Refining Cauldron.”
“The first supreme treasure you forged in your past life.”
“It can refine stars. It can melt the Great Dao. It can remake an Immortal King’s Bone Structure.”
I blinked.
“So stewing mutton in it raises your Cultivation Base?”
“It is not the mutton.”
“Throw a handful of grass in, and what comes out is an immortal medicine.”
Light dawned.
No wonder Ye Xiaoman reached Golden Core in three days.
No wonder Ye Tieshan went straight to Foundation Establishment after one bowl of soup.
So it was not my cooking at all.
“Last question.”
Her. I looked at her.
So why not let me take disciples?
Jiang Tingxue kept her mouth shut.
A hand came up to bury the Sect Lord’s face.
The First Elder let out a long sigh.
The lame tea stall owner, no, whatever big shot of the Immortal Realm he was now, squatted straight down on the ground.
I had a bad feeling.
Jiang Tingxue lifted her eyes to the mountain, where 360,000 disciples stood.
“Because you are the ancestor of every heaven and every dao.”
“Any living thing that sincerely performs the three kneelings and nine knockings of Take a Master before you receives a thread of the Dao Ancestor’s mark.”
“From then on, no Great Dao barrier stands in their cultivation.”
“Put simply…”
She closed her eyes a moment.
“Your disciples.”
“So long as they do not die young.”
“Will be Immortal Lords at the very lowest.”
I turned around.
And 360,000 pairs of eyes were looking right back.
I said nothing.
Beside me, a hundred and eighty years of Honored Master went quiet.
Not a word out of the Sect Lord.
The ten thousand immortal soldiers behind the Heavenly Gate said nothing.
I finally understood why their faces had gotten uglier one after another since the moment they appeared.
After a long pause.
I asked tentatively:
“Three hundred and sixty thousand Immortal Lords… is that a lot?”
Jiang Tingxue’s voice was a little dry.
“In the whole Immortal Realm.”
“The Immortal Lords currently on the register.”
“18,602, last I checked.”
I said nothing.
Damn.
It did seem I had taken on a few too many.
I hurried to change the subject.
“What have you all been doing up there these three years?”
Jiang Tingxue pointed at the bloody head on the ground.
“Killing people.”
“Of the twelve Immortal Emperors who besieged you back then, seven are still alive.”
“I faked my Ascension because I had found their trail.”
“Taking the Sect Lord and the others away was also to carry off every trace of Presence connected to you, and draw them out.”
“We killed six in three years.”
The head drew my eyes.
“The seventh?”
Jiang Tingxue’s expression suddenly turned very odd.
“Dead.”
“Who killed him?”
Nobody answered.
Last of all, the sweeping old man silently drew half a brick out of his robe.
A familiar chip.
A familiar color.
My eyes lit up.
“The one under my table leg!”
A twitch ran through the sweeping old man’s mouth.
“Half a year ago, this Heaven-Shattering Seal charged up from the lower world into the Immortal Realm.”
“Across nine domains.”
“First it smashed the Heaven-Devourers’ ancestral land.”
“Then it bounced out thirty-seven million li.”
“And last of all…”
He pointed at the head on the ground.
“It flattened the last traitor emperor in his Closed-Door Cultivation Cave Residence.”
I was silent.
Beside me, Jiang Tingxue kept quiet as well.
After a while, I asked:
“So you killed six in three years.”
“And the brick holding up my table killed one?”
Quietly, the Sect Lord put in, “Strictly speaking, you threw it without looking.”
It struck me suddenly that they had had a hard three years.
Jiang Tingxue, though, looked as if she had remembered something, and her head came up.
“Wait.”
“You said just now that you only threw the Heaven-Shattering Seal because an eye reached down for you?”
“That is right.”
“What did that eye look like?”
I described it.
Jiang Tingxue’s face changed.
“The Devouring Heaven Ancestor.”
“What?”
“The ancestor of the Heaven-Devourers, the one who forced you to mend the sky a hundred thousand years ago.”
“It is not dead.”
The mood went heavy at once.
Behind the Heavenly Gate, the Immortals all gripped their weapons.
Jiang Tingxue raised her head and looked into the void.
“If it has already locked onto the Presence of your Rebirth, then very soon…”
She did not finish.
A tremendous crash came from beyond the ninth heaven.
A black fissure a thousand times larger than the one three years ago tore the sky open.
Countless stars went out behind it.
An enormous head, so huge no edge of it could be seen, slowly leaned in from beyond the world.
One of its eyes was indeed blind.
The other, blood red, was fixed on me.
“Gu… Chang… Sheng…”
As the sound fell.
The mountains and rivers of the Nine Provinces cracked at the same time.
Behind the Heavenly Gate, the Immortals went white as paper.
Jiang Tingxue drew her sword and stepped in front of me.
“Honored Master.”
“Your primordial source has not fully recovered.”
“Get back.”
Hearing that.
For a second my mind drifted.
For eighteen years.
She had always stood in front of me.
Would not let me cultivate.
Would not let me leave the mountain.
Anything I wanted to touch, she would not let me touch.
I had always found her management of me annoying.
Only today did I know.
Every time I decided she was fussing over nothing.
She may have been somewhere I could not see, killing for me.
One glance at her was enough.
“Jiang Tingxue.”
“Hm?”
“By seniority, I suppose I really am your Honored Master.”
“But…”
I moved her behind me.
“You have managed me for eighteen years.”
“Today it is my turn to manage things once.”
I raised my head to that enormous head.
The Devouring Heaven Ancestor opened its maw.
Countless black thunderbolts pressed down on the Nine Provinces.
Three hundred and sixty thousand Zizai Sect disciples drew their swords at once.
“Protect the Honored Master!”
Ye Xiaoman was the first into the sky.
Lu Jiuxiao right behind her.
The Great Zhou crown prince, the hall masters, the Old Ancestors of every Sect in the Nine Provinces…
Rays of light filled the sky, three hundred and sixty thousand of them.
Jiang Tingxue was stunned.
“Have they gone mad?”
I shook my head.
“Young people are impulsive.”
At the very instant every one of those 360,000 circulated their Cultivation Technique together.
Something changed.
Thread after thread of purple-gold marks, the mark of the Dao Ancestor, lit up between their brows.
Dao Ancestor marks, three hundred and sixty thousand of them.
Resonating as one.
Boom!
That golden sea of spirit inside me, silent for three years, boiled for the first time.
Countless shattered memories returned.
I reached out.
The first grave in the back mountain burst open.
The rusted sword that had been cutting vegetables in the kitchen shot into the sky and landed in my palm.
The second grave burst.
The God-Slaying Spear rose from the ground.
The third.
The fourth.
The fifth…
Nine Dao Weapons hung across the firmament.
Only then did I finally know what Realm I was.
None.
Because those things the Immortal Realm later called Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Severing, Void Refining, Great Ascension…
I had drawn that whole ladder up myself, back then, for something to do.
I raised my head.
Clearly the Devouring Heaven Ancestor had recognized me too.
In that blood-red eye, fear appeared for the first time.
“You…”
“You cannot possibly have returned this fast!”
I thought about it.
“It was pretty fast, true.”
“Mostly because I took too many disciples.”
I swung the sword.
No blade light.
No earth-shaking vision.
Just as three years ago, when I used it to peel potatoes.
One light stroke.
A thin line appeared between heaven and earth.
The line passed through the Devouring Heaven Ancestor’s brow.
The next instant.
The endless darkness behind it.
Split in two.
Its voice cut off.
The enormous head turned to black ash filling the sky.
The Nine Provinces went quiet.
The Immortal Realm went quiet too.
Down my eyes went to the sword.
And suddenly understood why Lu Jiuxiao kept asking me about the sword Dao.
This thing really was quite useful.
…
Half a month later.
The Heavenly Gate opened fully.
The twelve domains of the Immortal Realm welcomed the Dao Ancestor home together.
Every disciple of the Zizai Sect, 360,000 of them, went up in Ascension as one.
That day, they say every major Sect in the Immortal Realm rewrote its enrollment notice overnight.
Many Immortal gates with a million years of Inheritance simply stopped taking students.
No need.
They could not compete.
Jiang Tingxue returned to the Taiwei Immortal Court.
And I finally got one thing straight.
It turned out she was no ascender.
She had always been the Sovereign of the Immortal Realm.
The so-called Sect Lord of the Taiwei Sect was my eldest disciple from my past life.
The Seven Elders were several of my other disciples.
Once, this sweeping old man had been the Sword Slave guarding the Heavenly Gate for me.
As for that lame tea stall owner.
He had the grandest origin of all.
He was the incarnation of The Heavenly Dao.
When I found out, my first words were:
“Then when are you going to pay back the three coppers for tea you owe me?”
The Heavenly Dao was silent a long while.
That same day it sent me three Spirit Stone lodes.
Rich people do things properly.
After I got back to the Immortal Realm, I did not take back the Immortal Court.
Too much trouble.
She was doing a fine job as Sovereign. Let her keep at it.
I made one request.
Leave me a mountain in the back of the Taiwei Immortal Court.
I wanted to reopen the Zizai Sect canteen.
The Heaven-Refining Cauldron stewed mutton project could not be dropped.
The Immortal Realm has a big population.
A bigger market.
Opening day.
The line outside ran eight thousand li.
One bowl of soup, I sold for eight hundred and eighty-eight immortal crystals.
When Jiang Tingxue heard the price, she charged into the back kitchen to find me.
“Gu Changsheng!”
“The Heaven-Refining Cauldron is for refining the Great Dao!”
“You are using it to stew meat again!”
I was dropping potatoes into the pot.
I never even looked up.
“What did you call me?”
Jiang Tingxue froze.
Slowly I looked at her.
“A hundred thousand years ago, who knelt outside my door for three hundred years before I grudgingly took her in?”
Her face went dark.
“Honored Master.”
“Good girl.”
My mood was excellent.
Eighteen years.
Eighteen whole years.
The wheel of fortune had come around at last.
Jiang Tingxue gritted her teeth.
“Then may I ask Honored Master, can your disciple take this pot back?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I thought about it seriously.
Then gave her the reason she herself had used to shut me up countless times.
“For your own good.”
Jiang Tingxue said nothing.
She stood there, fists clenched.
I added at once:
“Of course, you could also hit me.”
“But by current seniority, what crime it is to beat one’s Honored Master, you understand better than I do.”
Her fists clenched harder.
Not a single one of them moved.
I laughed so hard I nearly fell into the pot.
That night.
I lay at the highest point of the Immortal Court, moonbathing.
Jiang Tingxue sat beside me and suddenly asked.
“Any regrets?”
“About what?”
“I sealed your Cultivation Base for eighteen years and let you do nothing.”
I thought about it.
Eighteen years had been a tight, stifling thing.
But without those eighteen years.
My enemies might have found me when I was eight.
And none of everything that came after would have happened.
I shook my head.
“No regrets.”
Jiang Tingxue’s mouth had just begun to curve.
And I added one line.
“But the accounts still have to be settled.”
The smile left her face.
I counted on my fingers.
“When I was twelve, you burned three of my Secret Manuals.”
“At fourteen you hung me from a tree all night.”
“At sixteen you confiscated half a year of my savings.”
“At nineteen I wanted to go down and see the lantern festival, and you opened the Mountain-Protecting Formation three Layers deep.”
“At twenty-one…”
Jiang Tingxue got up and walked off.
“Where are you going?”
“Closed-Door Cultivation.”
“I am not finished.”
“Death Seclusion!”
I lay where I was and laughed out loud.
I laughed a good while.
Then I thought back to the day she Ascended, three years ago.
I had stood on an empty Mount Taiwei, thinking my Honored Master had thrown me away.
And the moment her back was turned.
I broke all five rules.
Cultivated.
Went down the mountain.
Dug up the back mountain.
Stewed mutton in a supreme treasure.
And took on 360,000 disciples in one go.
Looking back.
It really was a bit much.
But still.
Who told her not to explain things properly before she left?
I rolled over and went on moonbathing.
From now on.
Nobody could manage me again.
Oh.
Wait.
Somebody still dared.
The next morning at dawn.
Jiang Tingxue kicked my door open.
“Gu Changsheng!”
“Get up!”
“The sun is on your backside!”
I pulled the blanket over my head.
“I am your Honored Master!”
“Honored Master still has to eat breakfast!”
“I am not eating!”
“There is a court session at the Immortal Court today!”
“Not going!”
“You promised yesterday!”
“I take it back!”
Outside the door, two breaths of silence.
Then.
Bang!
My bed flew.
I sat up out of the wreckage, hair a mess like a chicken coop.
Jiang Tingxue stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.
Smiling very gently.
“Honored Master.”
“After you.”
I stared at her.
And suddenly understood something.
So what if I was her Honored Master in a past life?
So what if no one under heaven could beat me?
Some people manage you.
And it has nothing to do with your Cultivation Base.
I sighed and got up, resigned.
Fine.
After my Honored Master ascended, I really did do exactly as I pleased for three years.
And after she came back?
That is another story.