Chapter 40: Drifting Gaze

Chong Zhao was still on one knee when Zhe Sang's sword came down.

The strike carried everything — vast Spiritual Qi aimed directly at the spiritual core, intended to end the fight in a single blow. And then, from Chong Zhao's spiritual core, something erupted in answer: power that was pure and orthodox and unmistakably the Piaomiao Sect's at its most concentrated.

The Mountain-Sealing Jade Slip appeared before him, hovering steady at his forehead, and held.

Zhe Sang's pupils went very small.

He turned his gaze to Song Yun on the stone steps. The question on his face needed no words.

How?

"The Mountain-Sealing Jade Slip!"

It swept through the disciples in a wave — shock, confusion, something close to awe. The Jade Slip hovered there, shielding Chong Zhao, as real and impossible as it looked.

Had the Sect Leader passed it to Junior Brother Chong Zhao? Then what, exactly, had this duel ever been for?

Er Yun looked at Song Yun. Under Zhe Sang's furious gaze, the old man trembled but said nothing.

"This is unjust!"

The roar tore out of Zhe Sang as something in him broke loose from its last constraint. His eyes had gone bloodshot. The red pearl at his sword hilt blazed — and a darkness spread upward from the platform, vast and wrong, as if something foul had taken the form of a storm. Disciples stumbled in the sudden gale.

Zhe Sang struck again.

Chong Zhao, still kneeling, raised his gaze.

His hand closed around the Jade Slip.

In his palm, it transformed into an ancient jade sword, and Spiritual Qi in every color wrapped around him at once.

Er Yun's breath caught. "Peak Immortal Lord?"

It was impossible. Chong Zhao had emerged from seclusion at the Mid-Stage only hours ago.

Zhe Sang, still descending from his strike, had one terrible instant to register what he was looking at. He was at the Early Stage of the Immortal Lord Realm; the red pearl had forced him to the Mid-Stage. But the figure before him now carried the pressure of something beyond either of those, and before he could recalibrate, the jade sword came up and met his blade.

The explosion of light was blinding.

A figure fell from the air and hit the cloud platform hard.

When the darkness cleared: Chong Zhao standing. Zhe Sang on his knees, spitting blood, the sword in his hand shattered to dust — only the hilt remaining.

Silence across the steps and the platform.

Zhe Sang raised his head and looked at Song Yun. "Why?"

Blood came with the word.

He understood now what had happened. No one reached Peak Immortal Lord in three years. The Spiritual Qi surrounding Chong Zhao was unmistakably orthodox, unmistakably Piaomiao — unmistakably Song Yun's. The Sect Leader had transferred his own cultivation to his disciple.

Song Yun said nothing for a long moment. Then he looked at the disciple he had raised for a hundred years and raised his sleeve.

Immortal power struck Zhe Sang's spiritual core.

The scream that tore out of him was unlike anything the disciples had heard. His eyes went blood-red, and from his spiritual core came something that had no place in an Immortal's body: the chaotic wailing of mortal Spiritual Qi, twisted and thin, like the cries of infants.

The sound that moved through the gathered disciples was different from shock. It was horror.

An Immortal's spiritual core, carrying mortal Qi. There was only one way that happened.

"You consumed mortal Spiritual Qi to cultivate." Song Yun's voice had aged ten years in a breath. "Zhe Sang. I raised you for a hundred years. Is this how you repay an Immortal's cultivation?"

"For a hundred years, I gave everything!" Zhe Sang stabbed a finger toward Chong Zhao. "Never a single day of rest! All of it to revive Piaomiao! And then you cast me aside for him — you and Senior Martial Uncle both — what was I supposed to do?!"

"And still you refuse to repent."

"What have I done wrong?" He was laughing now, or something that resembled laughing. "Only the strong survive in the Three Realms. Isn't that what you taught me, Master?"

Song Yun closed his eyes. When they opened again, something had been decided in them. "Wretched disciple."

He channeled Immortal Qi directly into Zhe Sang's spiritual platform. The scream this time shook the air. Countless threads of Qi erupted from Zhe Sang's body — and then came the sound that ended it: clean and sharp, like porcelain dropped on stone.

His Golden Core had shattered.

The color left Zhe Sang's face all at once. He looked at his hands. He looked up at Song Yun. "You... destroyed my Golden Core."

He tried to stand. His legs gave out. He crawled toward the steps.

"The Piaomiao Sect has stood for a thousand years," Song Yun said, "and it cannot shelter those who harm mortals. Zhe Sang. Your Golden Core is gone. You will reflect on your sins in the Profound Ice Cave for ten years, and after that you will live as an ordinary mortal."

He said nothing more. He raised his hand, and a floating gate appeared in the air. A beam of light came from the direction of the cavern and took hold of Zhe Sang.

"A grand Piaomiao Sect!" The voice was barely human now. "Song Yun — from this moment, the bond between master and disciple is severed! If I live, I will return to kill you — to burn this entire sect to the ground—!"

The light flashed. The gate vanished. The voice went with it.

On the steps, Song Yun coughed blood. He seemed to have aged another decade in the space of a few seconds — his face set in a grief that had nothing to do with the duel.

Chong Zhao was beside him before Er Yun could move, supporting him on one side.

"Master."

"Second Uncle."

"Sect Leader—"

The disciples poured forward. Song Yun waved them back.

"It's nothing." He looked out at the gathered faces. "From this day, Chong Zhao is the successor of the Piaomiao Sect. Tomorrow, he represents us at the Wutong Martial Banquet."

The words settled over the platform. One by one, the disciples knelt.

"As you command, Sect Leader."

Chong Zhao knelt as well — one hand holding the Jade Slip, the other still steadying Song Yun. But before he bowed his head, his gaze moved, just briefly, to the back mountain. To the place where the Profound Ice Cave lay.

After a long moment, he lowered his head. "As you command, Sect Leader."

---

"Ow!"

Bai Shuo sat up sharply and connected forehead-first with something directly in front of her.

"Ouch—ouch—"

She pressed her hand to her forehead on instinct and reached out with the other — and found her palm flat against warm, bare skin.

She looked up.

Fan Yue looked back at her with an expression of uncomplicated delight.

"Mu Mu?" She took stock of the situation as quickly as her still-foggy mind allowed. Her hand. His chest. "Why aren't you wearing any clothes?!"

She scrambled backward, shoving him — gently, mostly from startlement.

He stumbled but didn't seem bothered. "I put my clothes on you," he said, with the air of someone explaining something obvious.

Bai Shuo looked down. There was indeed a robe draped over her. She grabbed it and flung it at him. "Put it back on."

"Oh." He tied it on without complaint.

She looked around. Still the Profound Ice Cave. The firewood had burned down to nothing long ago. The cold pressed in from the stone walls, and she rubbed her hands together, feeling it settle back into her palms as the shock faded.

Near death. People say you see what you long for when you're close to dying. She must have been very close — close enough to dream up the fireworks of the capital, close enough to imagine a figure in a palace hall she had never stood in. Fan Yue's warmth had been what pulled her back.

Something was nagging at the edge of her mind, some detail that felt wrong or missing, but her head was still too muddled to locate it.

Fan Yue had drifted close again. He poked her cheek with one finger. "Still cold?"

"No, I'm thinking — stop that." She caught his hand. "More importantly — why are you still on the island? I told Old Turtle to take you away."

"You were in danger." He said it simply, as if it explained itself. "So I came."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I didn't know. I thought of you, and then I was here."

She stopped. The Divine Soul contract — she had almost forgotten. He had lost his demonic powers and his memories, but the bond itself remained, some instinct underneath everything else that pointed him toward her without any deliberate thought on his part.

She started pacing, murmuring to herself. "Three days in here, and A-Zhao versus Zhe Sang — Zhe Sang had advanced to Immortal Lord, that's trouble, A-Zhao can't afford to—"

"You slept three days," Fan Yue offered helpfully, holding up the corresponding number of fingers.

"Three days, I know, I was just—" She stopped. Turned. Stared at him.

At the three fingers.

At his face.

At the fact that he had just formed a complete, coherent sentence without a single stammer.

"You can talk now?!"

She had been so disoriented from waking that she'd missed it entirely. This boy — this boy who had communicated almost entirely in single syllables and slow, halting fragments — had just spoken to her in full, connected, fluent sentences.

Was this it? Had the great demon recovered his memories? Bai Shuo's lips began to do something she couldn't control.

The boy stepped toward her and opened his arms.

This is it, she thought. I'm finished.

She braced herself — and he hugged her. Simply and completely, pulling her in and pressing his face against the side of her neck, a child who has found the person they were afraid of losing.

"Master." His voice was muffled, slightly urgent, trying to explain itself. "If I hold you, you won't be cold. You were asleep and I couldn't wake you. But when I talked, you woke up."

"...Mu Mu?"

"It's me. I can talk now. I'll stay hidden and I won't cause trouble anymore. Please don't send me away."

Bai Shuo stood very still.

Her heart, which had been described on more than one occasion as approximately diamond-hard, did something she would not have predicted. It cracked. The warmth that came out of that crack was embarrassingly large.

He hadn't recovered his memories. Only his intelligence — the fog that had been sitting over his mind had lifted, and he had come back to himself as himself, not as the great demon he'd been before. He remembered everything from the medicine hut onward: including that night, including Zhe Sang's threats, including the conclusion he'd arrived at entirely on his own: that Bai Shuo had been imprisoned here because she'd sheltered him, that she'd stolen the Jade Slip under threat, that it was his fault.

The child had decided all of this was his fault.

Bai Shuo didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. She settled for patting his back, steadily, the way you would with someone very young and very frightened. "All right. You're grown up now. No need to act like this. I won't send you away."

He lifted his head. His eyes were searching. "Promise?"

"Promise. When has your Master ever lied to you?" She pointed at him. "But you have to promise me something. After we leave here — stay hidden. Don't let anyone find you again. Do you understand?"

Before he could answer, sunlight cut through the cave mouth. Two figures stepped inside.

Fan Yue moved in the same instant — one moment a boy, the next a thin vine coiled neatly around her wrist.

Bai Shuo arranged her expression into something neutral.

Yi Fan and Chang Xu stopped when they saw her standing there unharmed. The relief on their faces was genuine. "Junior Sister Bai Shuo — your three days are up. You may leave."

Junior Sister. Bai Shuo blinked. Since when did inner island disciples call her that with any warmth in it?

She shook it off. "A-Zhao — how did the duel go? Zhe Sang had advanced to Immortal Lord, and I've been in here, and A-Zhao can't have—"

"Junior Sister, you needn't worry." Chang Xu couldn't contain himself. "Senior Brother Chong Zhao won. The Sect Leader has announced him as successor of Piaomiao. Given your relationship with him, there's no reason for you to leave—" He dropped his voice, leaning in. "Everyone knows you stole the Jade Slip for him. With him here, he'll protect you."

"A-Zhao won."

The relief that moved through her was large enough to make her slightly lightheaded. She exhaled slowly.

Then she frowned. "If the Sect Leader announced A-Zhao as successor... what happened to Zhe Sang?"

Yi Fan's face, which was generally set to a pleasant blankness, showed a brief flash of something sharper. "He absorbed mortal Qi to advance his cultivation. The Sect Leader shattered his Golden Core and imprisoned him."

Bai Shuo stood with this for a moment. What is wrong with this sect? First Bodhi Songhe, now Zhe Sang. They kept producing them.

"Junior Sister, the Sect Leader is grieving," Yi Fan said, more carefully now. "Junior Brother Chong Zhao is attending to him. It would be better for you to return to the medicine hut and rest." He sent Chang Xu a look that ended whatever the younger disciple was about to say.

Bai Shuo heard the shape of it clearly enough. "Of course." She yawned — wide, theatrical, entirely performed. "I've been asleep for three days, I'm exhausted. And I should brew more Spirit Medicine for Piaomiao. Senior Brothers, I can find my own way back."

She was gone before they could offer to accompany her.

---

In the Profound Ice Cave, Chang Xu stared at the now-empty entrance, a mild pout on his face. "Senior Brother. Junior Brother Chong Zhao is going to be Sect Leader. Bai Shuo went through all of this for him — he must care deeply for her. Why didn't you let me take her to the inner island? It was a perfect opportunity."

Yi Fan glanced at him with the patience of someone who has explained things to this particular person many times before.

"If Junior Brother truly cared for her," he said, "would we be the ones welcoming her out of the Profound Ice Cave?"

He turned and left.

Chang Xu remained where he was, rubbing his nose.

He thought about it.

Then he thought about it a little more.