Mount Fujun was not especially tall. Even standing at its summit and looking upward, the stars still remained impossibly distant. Yet Immortal Treasury Palace, the martial colossus renowned beneath Heaven, had risen from this very mountain to a height that made the entire world look up.
Late autumn in the north should already have been cold, but the weather had behaved strangely these past two days. After several consecutive days of falling temperatures, it had warmed slightly again. The night breeze flowed gently, and a trace of lingering warmth remained when it brushed the face.
Ying Zhu Cui stood facing the wind with both hands behind her back, looking at the starry sky without moving, almost like a wooden puppet.
Zhao Tong Qu, who had just emerged from the dungeon, stood behind her and watched.
She knew he was watching her too.
Immortal Treasury Palace had been a complete mess lately. Chief managers from regional Thunder Divisions had collectively come up the mountain to present grievances, while Zhao Tong Qu had requested imprisonment before events even properly unfolded, leaving behind an infuriating mess for everyone else.
This was the first time the two had met in five days.
“More and more people have been arriving at Mount Fujun these past two days. Not only from the Thunder Division, but also a few from the Rain and Wind Divisions.” Ying Zhu Cui spoke slowly without turning around, almost as though talking to the empty air ahead of her. “At this scale, I refuse to believe no one is encouraging them from behind.”
Zhao Tong Qu answered her back. “Three feet of ice do not form in a single day. Palace Master Pei is loyal and righteous and his martial arts are supreme, but when it comes to caring for the people beneath him, he truly cannot be called considerate.”
Ying Zhu Cui spun around and rebuked him. “Insolence! If the Palace Master did not stand tall enough to hold up Heaven and Earth, would Immortal Treasury Palace have what it has today? Would you have what you have today? In my entire life, what I hate most are ungrateful people who repay kindness with betrayal!”
A hint of gentleness appeared on Zhao Tong Qu’s otherwise ordinary face, lending him an unexpectedly innocent, pitiable look. He stepped forward and lightly rested both hands on her shoulders. “Aunt Cui, believe me. It wasn’t me… I truly did hear whispers beforehand. Listen to me. Do you remember a few months ago, when several Thunder Division chief managers suddenly came up the mountain to report for duty?”
Ying Zhu Cui asked, “The time when the Young Master brought the Young Madam back?”
Zhao Tong Qu nodded. “They came to persuade me to act together with them. I tried to stop them. I thought they had abandoned the idea when they left, but I never expected… sigh.”
Ying Zhu Cui scolded him. “Something this serious, and you didn’t report it!”
“I am the Thunder Division Chief Manager, after all. They confided in me because they trusted me. If I told others, wouldn’t I have betrayed that trust? Besides, I thought that as long as I refused to approve, they would give up. Sigh. A thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes, all of them are mine. In the end, I failed in my duty as their chief manager. I’ll go see the Palace Master right now and resign my position. I only ask that he show mercy and spare them.”
As Zhao Tong Qu spoke, he started toward Pei Xiong Ji’s residence, only for Ying Zhu Cui to stop him.
“Wait. You always rush into things without thinking through cause and effect! Entering the dungeon was the same. If I hadn’t come to see you today, were you planning to live in there for the rest of your life?!”
Zhao Tong Qu gave a bitter smile. “If I could live there for the rest of my life, that might actually be better. Better than coming out and being condemned from both sides.”
Ying Zhu Cui was silent for a moment. “This has become so serious that nothing like it has ever happened since Immortal Treasury Palace was founded. If you still want to protect them, we need to consider the matter carefully.”
Zhao Tong Qu immediately turned back. “Aunt Cui, teach me!”
Ying Zhu Cui shook her head. “One wrong step leads to another. Have you considered how these people will remain in Immortal Treasury Palace after the matter ends?”
Zhao Tong Qu froze. After thinking carefully, tears actually fell from his eyes and he began to sob. “This is my fault. My fault. If I had stopped them then, or told the Palace Master, things would never have reached this point! What can possibly be done now?”
“A grown man crying whenever something happens. Useless! Wipe away your tears and listen. Identify the few ringleaders and hand them over to the Palace Master. The rest were misled by others. Have them voluntarily drop one rank as punishment, and I will swallow my pride and plead with the Palace Master as well. Perhaps this can still be settled.”
She was not saying this merely to resolve the matter. She was also giving Pei Xiong Ji a way down from the stage. Northern Zhou was Immortal Treasury Palace’s home ground, after all. The number of chief managers who had come up the mountain was nearly one quarter of all the palace’s chief managers, enough to shake its foundations.
Even Pei Xiong Ji could not suppress a dispute of this scale without paying any price whatsoever. Ying Zhu Cui’s plan was already among the more balanced solutions possible when neither side’s feelings were taken into account.
Zhao Tong Qu, however, shook his head. “If someone must be punished, then let it be me.”
Ying Zhu Cui snapped, “Punishing you solves nothing.”
Zhao Tong Qu said, “They are all my subordinates. Their mistakes are naturally my mistakes.”
Just then, a Thunder Division guard hurried over. “Reporting to Elder Ying and Chief Manager Zhao! Brothers from the Thunder Division are gathering at the foot of the mountain. There are roughly three or four hundred of them, and they’re coming up.”
Ying Zhu Cui’s expression changed. She gritted her teeth. “What do they think they’re doing?” If a scene like this took place outside an imperial palace, it would already qualify as a mutiny!
“Who let them onto the mountain?” Her eyes widened, and the pressure around her became terrifying.
The guard glanced at Zhao Tong Qu and quietly said, “The brothers stationed below didn’t stop them…” So they had met no resistance at all and were already approaching the middle of the mountain.
Pei Yuan Jin’s worries had been justified. The Thunder Division on the mountain was not a sieve. It was a whip in Zhao Tong Qu’s hand, striking wherever he pointed.
Zhao Tong Qu asked, “Does the Palace Master know?”
The guard said, “Vice Chief Manager Shen and Chief Manager Yu just went to the forbidden seclusion grounds.”
Then the news could no longer be contained. Ying Zhu Cui’s brows tightened slightly. She was about to speak when another set of footsteps came running over. Another guard arrived and said, “Vice Chief Manager Tan has taken people to block the road entrance.”
The “road entrance” referred to the mountain path leading toward Immortal Treasury Palace. For martial artists, of course, that path was hardly the only way up or down, but it was the route the three or four hundred people were currently using.
Ying Zhu Cui looked at the guard, then at Zhao Tong Qu. For a long time she said nothing. Zhao Tong Qu, standing to one side with his hands lowered, had no choice but to speak. “You can both leave.”
Obviously, those two guards had not come to report to her. They had come to pass information to this Thunder Division Chief Manager who kept insisting the whole affair had nothing to do with him!
When Zhao Tong Qu turned back, he found Ying Zhu Cui glaring at him in fury. He could only smile bitterly. “I hid inside the dungeon and still couldn’t avoid it.”
Ying Zhu Cui asked, “Then what do you plan to do now?”
Zhao Tong Qu was silent for a long moment before softly saying, “They trust me. I cannot betray them.”
Ying Zhu Cui finally could not restrain herself. “So you intend to betray Immortal Treasury Palace instead?”
Zhao Tong Qu slowly clenched both fists, then slowly opened them again. Forcing himself to remain calm, he asked, “I will not betray Immortal Treasury Palace. But if my brothers want to reclaim their own interests and I cannot help them, then I can only advance and retreat together with them.”
“Reclaim their own interests?” Ying Zhu Cui sneered. “Who taught them their cultivation methods? Where did the wealth they accumulated come from? When they encountered bottlenecks in cultivation, who answered their questions? Have the benefits they gained from Immortal Treasury Palace still not been enough?”
Zhao Tong Qu closed his eyes. The calm mask on his face finally tore apart. “Those are the people who are still alive. What about the ones who died for so-called orders? When the Puppet Path was being exterminated, the Thunder Division was always first into battle and suffered countless casualties. Yet in the end, we still have the great Buddha of the Lightning Division sitting above our heads! Among the four divisions, what does the Rain Division do? Move abacus beads around. Whenever there’s difficulty or danger, the Thunder Division charges at the front, but in the end? Most of the benefits we earn flow into their pockets! And the Wind Division? One ‘we found nothing,’ one ‘we made a mistake,’ and it is Thunder Division brothers whose lives get thrown into the gap! We have grievances. We have injustices. Is it somehow wrong for us to resent them?”
Ying Zhu Cui said, “When the Wind Division makes a mistake, the Lightning Division punishes them!”
Zhao Tong Qu’s eyes were bloodshot as he asked, one word at a time, “With their lives?”
Ying Zhu Cui said, “According to palace law!”
“What we refuse to accept is palace law!” With those words, Zhao Tong Qu finally tore away the last scrap of covering from himself and stepped from behind the curtain onto the stage. The endless night seemed almost like a backdrop created for him.
Ying Zhu Cui’s cheeks flushed with anger. “If you were dissatisfied, why did you never say so all these years?”
“Because I was afraid.” Zhao Tong Qu said, “Shen Bo You yielded the position of Thunder Division Chief Manager to me. This life of mine has always been hanging beneath the Crimson Dragon King’s blade. All these years, I’ve been like a condemned prisoner sleeping with his head beneath the executioner’s blade, suffering while waiting for the day it finally falls. How could the voice of a prisoner ever dare reach Heaven’s ears?”
Ying Zhu Cui said, “If you had wholeheartedly stood with the Palace Master and possessed a clear conscience, why would you need to fear?”
The baleful pressure around Zhao Tong Qu slowly receded.
He shook his head, apparently mocking his own loss of control. On such an important night, the dark emotions buried deep inside him had actually burst out.
Zhao Tong Qu sighed desolately. “How could I not want that? The Young Master is a heaven-born genius. Sooner or later he will inherit the Palace Master’s mantle, become the central pillar of Immortal Treasury Palace, and become the shining light of the righteous martial world that everyone beneath Heaven admires. I was willing to become his deputy, just as Chief Steward Jing supports the Palace Master, and support him. Unfortunately, he refused me.”
Ying Zhu Cui said, “You can wait a little longer. The Young Master’s prejudice against you runs too deep.”
Zhao Tong Qu said, “You’ve advised me with that sentence many times. But between the Young Master and me, I have never been the one who gets to decide. And I no longer have the chance to wait.”
He slowly turned away, as though he had just removed a crushing set of shackles from his body. A relaxed expression appeared on his face.
Ying Zhu Cui could not resist following one step. “You’ll regret this.”
Zhao Tong Qu said, “Regret is an emotion that can only come after taking the step. Perhaps I’ll regret it. Perhaps I won’t. Both are possible. But if I never take that step, I know for certain I will regret it.”
Ying Zhu Cui’s emotions gradually settled from their peak of fury. She watched this child, whom she had treated as her own for so many years, walk farther away and felt an indescribable mixture of disappointment and aching guilt.
She had watched Zhao Tong Qu grow up. At first, her position had been the same as Pei Xiong Ji’s.
A child who might have caused the death of his own biological mother possessed a coldness and cruelty that chilled the heart. Yet after spending enough time with him, watching him stumble under countless cold looks, awkwardly trying to please others, doing everything he could with his tiny arms and legs to find footing and survive in the world of adults, she could not help being moved.
She had never married and had never been a mother, yet with him she had experienced the pity and tenderness a mother might feel toward a child. And Zhao Tong Qu had never been stingy about showing his dependence on her.
In the dead of night, when she searched her conscience and asked whether some part of his dependence had been performance, perhaps the answer was yes. But so what? She possessed the body of a Martial God. No matter how large the problem, she had always believed she could settle it. Yet events had now developed beyond even her control.
Watching Zhao Tong Qu walk step by step out of sight, she finally asked, “Was tonight’s bowl of tremella soup meant to remind me to visit the dungeon and give you an excuse to leave?”
Since Zhao Tong Qu had entered the dungeon at the first sign of trouble to distance himself from events, naturally he needed an appropriate excuse and opportunity to leave it as well.
Zhao Tong Qu’s steps paused slightly. In that brief instant, he seemed to sigh. “Tremella soup is nourishing. Drinking more of it is good for you.”
Ying Zhu Cui asked again, “Even if you somehow get past the Palace Master, Jing Luo will return eventually.”
Zhao Tong Qu said, “With this much movement in the Thunder Division, do you truly think it could be hidden from him?”
Ying Zhu Cui froze and wanted to ask more, but Zhao Tong Qu was already walking without looking back into the thick darkness.
At that moment, the entrance to the mountain road leading toward Immortal Treasury Palace was stretched taut with confrontation.
Tan Bu Ju sat in a grand armchair, both hands gripping his longbow, and launched into a blistering tirade at the Thunder Division members who looked ready to charge up the mountain at any moment.
“So under Heaven, only your Thunder Division is wronged and suffering? And the Lightning Division is supposedly full of useless grand lords who create trouble for nothing and only know how to bully their own? Who said that? Stand the hell up! I’m from the Lightning Division! Half a year ago I was still suffering in the Spirit Sect’s dungeon. My injuries only just healed and the scars still itch. Come on. Want me to strip and let you admire them?!”
The Thunder Division members stood holding torches, neither advancing nor retreating nor speaking, like wooden dolls.
Tan Bu Ju shouted until his throat hurt, accepted water from a subordinate, wet his throat, and continued. “You choose an auspicious day for a wedding, and apparently you bastards do the same for a rebellion! You rush up here looking for trouble right when the Young Master and Young Madam are preparing to come home and get married. You’re not just good at choosing dates, you really know how to live! What? Afraid the Young Master’s wedding will demand red envelopes from you and you won’t get the money back later, so you’re all in such a damned hurry to reincarnate first?”
The Thunder Division members finally became too aggrieved to remain silent. Someone shouted, “If the Palace Master agrees to our conditions, we’ll give the Young Master a huge one!”
“Go screw yourself!”
Tan Bu Ju drew the bow and fired. The arrow passed directly through a gap between the Thunder Division members and buried itself just in front of the speaker’s toes. The man jumped backward in fright and stepped straight onto the foot of the person behind him, provoking several isolated curses.
Tan Bu Ju sneered. “That little bit of rat courage and you want to imitate rebels? Get the hell down the mountain, wash up, and go to sleep!”
“Vice Chief Manager Tan has excellent aim.”
The chief managers from various Thunder Divisions who had formed the first group to come up the mountain and submit the petition arrived together. The moment they appeared, the Thunder Division crowd seemed to find its backbone and instantly came alive.
Tan Bu Ju scratched his ear and turned toward them.
The Thunder Division chief managers stood in a line. Looking over those familiar faces, Tan Bu Ju sneered. “Quite the complete gathering. Looks like Lu Rui Chun of the Shaanxi Thunder Division¹ was only the tip of the iceberg. He died too early. If he had hidden a little deeper, maybe he’d have had a place among you tonight.”
Elio’s Notes: The source places a superscript ① after Lu Rui Chun’s name here, but the archived raw and accessible mirrors contain no corresponding footnote text. The marker is preserved rather than silently reconstructed.
The Thunder Division chief managers said nothing. They merely looked at him.
Their staring made Tan Bu Ju’s skin crawl. He thought, If the heaven-tier spiritual artifact Soul Spirit at the foot of the mountain couldn’t reveal whether someone’s soul had been damaged, I’d seriously suspect this whole group of being somebody’s puppets.
But even an intact soul could not prove they were not puppets.
After all these years of preparation, Zhao Tong Qu had finally pried loose a corner of Immortal Treasury Palace. At a time like this, Tan Bu Ju could not help missing his superior, currently somewhere he did not even know.
If Jing Luo were here, someone would naturally be able to hold up the sky no matter how large the problem became, instead of forcing Tan Bu Ju to sit here like a wooden stopper plugging the hole. Or the Young Master. The Young Master would do just fine too.
While he was thinking, a crimson arc suddenly swept across the sky and flashed overhead like lightning.
When everyone turned, they saw Pei Yuan Jin walking inward with one hand behind his back without so much as looking toward them.
The regional Thunder Division chief managers felt their hearts seize. Instinctively they wanted to salute, but before they could even raise their hands, Pei Yuan Jin had already vanished beyond their field of view. He had not spoken half a sentence or spared them half a glance, as though they were nothing more than weeds by the roadside or a few scattered stones on the ground.
Watching their awkward expressions, Tan Bu Ju felt both delighted and strangely dissatisfied. Even if those people were not worth Young Master Pei’s attention, was he not worth it either? He was sitting right there, such a large living man. Surely Pei Yuan Jin could have at least greeted him.
He curled his lip and was just planning to transform that dissatisfaction into some creative new method of tormenting the “Thunder Division pigheads” in front of him when Xiao Sang, his former fellow patient and now equally recovered, hurried out. “Young Master says that’s about enough. Your body only just recovered. Stop showing off outside.”
Tan Bu Ju thought the Young Master’s concern was rather subtle. His brows were just beginning to brighten when Xiao Sang slowly added the second half. “You know how much medicine you burn through.”
Tan Bu Ju: “…”
Could he not burn through medicine? He spent every damned day being aggravated!
The moment Pei Yuan Jin returned, Mount Fujun itself seemed to sense it. The restless tension suspended in the air quietly settled. The Lightning, Wind, and Rain Division members remaining at headquarters all secretly breathed easier.
If Pei Xiong Ji had once been Immortal Treasury Palace’s stabilizing pillar, then over the year Pei Yuan Jin spent traveling outside, he had unquestionably inherited that quality.
A man willing to draw his sword against the two most powerful rulers in north and south had nothing he did not dare do and nothing he could not settle.
Wrapped in that blind confidence, the night slowly deepened.
Pei Yuan Jin headed directly toward the forbidden seclusion grounds on Mount Fujun.
When Pei Xiong Ji chose this place to build Immortal Treasury Palace, it had been because of the legend of the Yellow Emperor seeking the Dao. Since it was only a legend, the details were naturally vague and had accumulated generations of later imagination.
Relying on his own imagination, Pei Xiong Ji had built a platform somewhat resembling the Temple of Heaven. It had neither roof nor walls. Once someone reached the Martial King or Martial God Stage, wind, frost, rain, and snow could no longer easily invade the body. If their clothes ever got wet, it was probably because they wanted to commune with nature.
The forbidden grounds had one distinctive feature: there were no visual barriers. If several people entered seclusion at the same time, any one of them could raise his head and see the others. The reason this counted as a feature rather than a flaw was that it encouraged discipline. No one wanted colleagues watching them lose focus and stare into space.
And if something unexpected happened to someone, the others could immediately provide help.
So although Pei Xiong Ji, Baili Shen, and Ji Mo were nominally accompanying Yi Jue in seclusion, Shou Nan Shan was actually not far from them. Over the past several days, Shou Nan Shan had been refining his state of mind and had reached the critical point. Tonight or tomorrow night would be the moment he attempted to break through to Martial God.
Shen Bo You and Yu Su Huan arrived outside the forbidden grounds at precisely that moment.
Pei Xiong Ji opened his eyes and glanced left and right. Baili Shen still had his eyes closed and head lowered, as though deeply absorbed in contemplation. Ji Mo’s eyes were closed too, but his acting was clearly worse than his colleague’s. His eyelids were even twitching provocatively.
Pei Xiong Ji felt a headache coming on.
He was beginning to wonder whether that group had once chased after him calling him Big Brother and pushed him into becoming Palace Master because they respected him, or because they had secretly conspired to avoid doing any work themselves.
He lightly slapped both palms against the ground and, still sitting cross-legged, floated toward the entrance of the forbidden grounds. Landing on the steps, he looked up at the two hardworking employees and asked kindly, “What is it?”
Shen Bo You always felt slightly nervous in front of Pei Xiong Ji, so Yu Su Huan was the one who explained everything that had happened recently.
After hearing it, Pei Xiong Ji frowned slightly. “Between Jing Luo and Xi Yan, who is back?”
Yu Su Huan said neither had returned.
Pei Xiong Ji looked faintly melancholy. “Then that brat definitely isn’t back either.”
Yu Su Huan said, “The Young Master has already reached the foot of the mountain.”
Pei Xiong Ji froze and calculated the journey. Dissatisfied, he said, “He actually abandoned Xi Yan and his two aunts?” His expression remained relaxed. He clearly had not taken the Thunder Division mutiny seriously at all. Waving a hand casually, he said, “Since he’s here, leave the matter to him.”
Shen Bo You grew anxious. “What if they attack the mountain before the Young Master comes back…”
Pei Xiong Ji chuckled. “Then stall them.”
Shen Bo You stared blankly, then looked at Yu Su Huan. “How?”
Yu Su Huan brushed a stray lock of hair by her temple. “Whoever organized the situation should naturally be the one you stall. The Palace Master has everything under control. There’s no need to worry.”
When Pei Yuan Jin had first gone down the mountain, Yu Su Huan had accompanied him throughout the journey. Naturally, she knew the father and son shared one defining trait: overwhelming force could smash through ten thousand tricks. If the Thunder Division members truly lost their minds and charged upward, they would gain nothing from it.
But events would never actually reach that point. As one of the four chief managers, Yu Su Huan understood better than most the greatest difference between Pei Xiong Ji’s group and Zhao Tong Qu.
In Zhao Tong Qu’s eyes, Immortal Treasury Palace was the greatest sect beneath Heaven and a symbol of supreme power in the jianghu. Therefore, he would never choose mutual destruction. He would only try to extract the greatest possible benefit from the situation.
To Pei Xiong Ji and the others, however, Immortal Treasury Palace was merely a gathering of like-minded people: making money together, doing business together, upholding justice together. It had only accidentally snowballed into a giant of the jianghu.
Immortal Treasury Palace. A palace for storing immortals. Their true goal had always been ascension and immortality. If they were as obsessed with fame and profit as Zhao Tong Qu, their states of mind would probably have shattered long ago.
Perhaps that was also why Zhao Tong Qu had attempted to break through several times yet had never reached the Martial King Stage, though he himself had never admitted it.
The forbidden seclusion grounds had two gates.
Yu Su Huan and Shen Bo You stood at the inner gate. Zhao Tong Qu stood at the outer one.
When Zhao Tong Qu saw them emerge, his face turned slightly pale, looking exactly like someone consumed by remorse after making a mistake. Unfortunately, that performance worked on neither Yu Su Huan, who had seen too many sophisticated people in her life, nor Shen Bo You, who had suffered far too much at Zhao Tong Qu’s hands.
As Yu Su Huan passed him, she said as though casually, “The Palace Master said the Young Master has full authority to handle the matter.”
Zhao Tong Qu lowered his head and said nothing. Inside, however, he thought: Just as expected. Good thing Fu Xi Yan was delayed.