Let us set aside Gu Chengming's headache for a moment.
Regarding the fact that the entire Hehuan Sect had collectively gained a dream lover, the person who felt the most despair was not the person himself, but Su Qiuzhi.
The matter began three days ago.
At that time, the topic of the so-called dream sword cultivator had just begun to ferment within the Hehuan Sect, but it was already showing signs of intensifying as disciples gathered in small groups to describe the figure in their dreams.
As for Su Qiuzhi's mental state at the time, it could be described with a very intuitive metaphor:
A cat that had stolen a fish suddenly discovered that every cat on the street was talking about that same fish.
The fact that Yun Ni had been executed was strictly controlled within a very small circle of insiders in the Hehuan Sect.
Elders like Fu Xiaoxiao, Kurong, and Jingxin naturally knew the role Gu Chengming had played, but for the vast majority of disciples, the events of that night were simplified: the former sect leader Yun Ni had died suddenly in a secret room due to a qi deviation, and Elder Fu Xiaoxiao had been ordered to take over as acting sect master in the crisis.
As for the outsider who had disrupted the entire chessboard at the critical moment, few people knew of him, and even Su Qiuzhi only had vague suspicions.
For Gu Chengming, the hidden lines of the Longevity Sect had not been cleared, and the truth of the red dust seeds had not been investigated. Although the Hehuan Sect appeared calm on the surface, the undercurrents beneath the water had never stopped.
In such a situation, he had to stay in the shadows to see more, so in the eyes of most disciples, Gu Chengming's identity remained that of a medical apprentice following Elder Li Suizhuang.
Su Qiuzhi, of course, was the exception. When the matter of the dream sword cultivator began to ferment, she felt a strong sense of crisis.
By the second day, she could no longer sit still and decided to go and test him.
Su Qiuzhi never used the front door, so the fact that she was now standing properly outside and knocking three times was unusual in itself, but Gu Chengming let her in anyway.
Between the two of them sat a table, a pot of cold tea, and the romantic dreams of over a thousand Hehuan Sect disciples.
Of course, only Su Qiuzhi thought the latter; in reality, a certain elder surnamed Fu was also having those dreams.
Su Qiuzhi did not speak immediately after sitting down, instead picking up the cup of cold tea and taking a sip while her gaze swept across Gu Chengming's face inconspicuously.
"There's a rumor going around the sect lately. Have you heard it?"
"What rumor?"
"They say that when the Yin Yang Twin Fish Array fluctuated that day, many disciples had a dream. In the dream, there was a sword cultivator who was very handsome and said different things to everyone." She paused, then added, "A thousand people, the same sword cultivator."
Gu Chengming sighed helplessly in his heart, his hand holding the tea not faltering. "Is that so? That's quite interesting."
Su Qiuzhi stared at his profile for three breaths.
Then she pulled a piece of paper from her sleeve, smoothed it out on the table, and pushed it over.
The paper was covered in information she had collected from various places over the past two days—a summary of the disciples' descriptions of the man in their dreams.
Seeing that this scoundrel was still pretending, Su Qiuzhi stared into his eyes and got straight to the point. "That sword cultivator was you, wasn't it?"
Seeing that he could no longer hide it, Gu Chengming could only admit it.
"What you said to everyone was different?"
"Yes."
"Then what you said to me..." Su Qiuzhi's voice trailed off, and she swallowed her original words, changing her question. "Was that also part of your strategy?"
Gu Chengming recalled the choices he had made for Su Qiuzhi within the collective desires.
At the time, among hundreds of dialogue boxes, he had found the one labeled with Su Qiuzhi's name. Her heart's knot was the injustice she had suffered in her youth, the resentment of living in Su Xiaoshao's shadow, and the despair of being unable to reach the back of the figure she looked up to no matter how hard she tried.
So when that dialogue box appeared before him, he didn't hesitate for long.
There were many options, but he chose the simplest one.
—You don't need to become anyone else, Su Qiuzhi. At least with me, you only need to be yourself.
"That sentence was sincere," Gu Chengming added, fearing she might think it was too empty or fake.
Su Qiuzhi took a deep breath, then another, and then drained the cold tea as if she were downing wine.
She stood up and leaned over the table, her eyes swirling with complex emotions.
"Just you wait."
Her voice sounded a bit fierce, but the crimson on the tips of her ears betrayed her true feelings.
"Once the sect's affairs are less busy, I'm coming to find you for dual cultivation."
Her face flushed as soon as she said it, but she refused to look away, as if competing with him and those thousand-plus rivals from the dreams.
Gu Chengming's expression was subtle. What he thought was: You might have to beat Senior Sister Fu to it first.
But he didn't say that out loud, only nodding. "I'll be waiting."
Su Qiuzhi glared at him, pulled up her hood, and flipped out the window.
...
The matter of the dream sword cultivator finally reached its peak amidst the growing frenzy.
It started with a painting.
Among the geniuses of this generation in the Hehuan Sect, a young girl named Qingluo had a hobby. She was skilled in the art of painting, using red dust aura as ink and spiritual power as a brush to draw erotic art. Since the dream sword cultivator incident, she had lost interest in food and drink, spending every day painting, yet never satisfied.
Because her dream was much clearer than most, the man's face remained blurred, but she remembered his build, temperament, mannerisms, and even the angle at which he held his sword with perfect clarity.
Every day, she painted the silhouette of a young man standing with a sword. There was no face, but the outline of that back and the indefinable temperament around him were enough to make everyone who saw it gasp in their hearts.
"That's him!"
Qingluo had originally been painting for fun in her studio, but somehow a junior sister who came to visit saw it. That sister let out a high-pitched scream on the spot and then ran out to tell everyone as fast as lightning.
Within half an hour, a long line had formed outside Qingluo's studio.
The queue wound from the door to the end of the corridor and kept growing. Disciples from the First Realm to the Third Realm, from both the Outer Sect and Inner Sect, came to see. Everyone left with flushed faces and immediately began to add details from their own dreams.
"His hands! The hands you drew aren't handsome enough! I remember his fingers were longer than that!"
"No, no, his shoulders should be a bit wider..."
"His sword wasn't at his waist; it was behind his back!"
"Behind his back? What kind of dream are you having? It was clearly at his waist!"
"My dream was clearer than yours!"
"How can you say yours was clearer than mine?!"
Qingluo went through forty-seven revisions in three days.
Each version had its supporters and its protesters, because while the general direction of everyone's dream was consistent, the minute details varied wildly.
This was natural; Gu Chengming's "strategy" for everyone in the collective desires was different, so the impressions left were naturally not the same.
By the forty-eighth version, Qingluo finally broke down.
She threw her brush aside and stood up, announcing, "Enough! Paint it yourselves!"
But the matter did not die down; instead, it birthed a more ridiculous outcome.
A spontaneous grassroots organization was quietly established within the Hehuan Sect, named the "Sword-Seeking Pavilion."
In name, it was a cultivation exchange group, but in reality, it did only one thing: collect, organize, and analyze all information related to the "dream sword cultivator" and deduce the person's true identity and origin.
The membership of the Seeking the Sword Pavilion grew rapidly, attracting over a hundred people in just a few days, ranging from new First Realm disciples to experienced Third Realm disciples. There were even rumors that some core disciples and even elders were secretly following the Seeking the Sword Pavilion's investigation.
Gu Chengming's brow twitched several times as he looked at the "Seeking the Sword Pavilion Investigation Briefing" sent by Su Qiuzhi.
Though not perfectly accurate, it was precise enough to be very uncomfortable.
—They were trying to contact channels outside the sect to ask if the Wenjian Sect had any young male disciples who were "gentle yet firm, had long fingers, and whose words were comforting" in recent years.
He took a deep breath and flipped the briefing over.
There was more on the back. Su Qiuzhi had added a line in her neat small script: "The Seeking the Sword Pavilion plans to send representatives out of the mountain in three days to visit the Wenjian Sect for an exchange of cultivation insights."
Gu Chengming folded the briefing and put it away, walking to the window. He watched the Hehuan Sect disciples gathered in groups of two or three outside, occasionally letting out bursts of mysterious laughter.
The efficiency of these people was almost stronger than the Night Guard Division.
After Su Qiuzhi left, he was still agonizing over how to handle this when a sudden flurry of footsteps came from behind.
Fu Xiaoxiao pushed the door open, clutching several pieces of paper with a very subtle expression.
"What's this?" Gu Chengming looked at the papers.
Fu Xiaoxiao didn't answer but walked to the table and slammed the papers down.
Gu Chengming looked down; it was a handwritten file titled "Summary of Dream Sword Cultivator Characteristics (Third Revised Edition)."
"The Seeking the Sword Pavilion compiled this file," she said, quite displeased. "It was delivered to my desk this morning, asking the acting sect master to review it."
"I need to review documents involving sect security, so I've temporarily seized this file."
When she reached the door, she suddenly stopped and looked back at Gu Chengming with a possessiveness she hadn't even noticed herself.
The content was extremely detailed—from height estimates to body proportions, from gait analysis to temperament keywords, from sword habits to speaking style, it filled three pages.
"Gu Chengming."
"Yes?"
"You'd better stay indoors for the next few days." With that, she left.
She walked very fast, the pages in her sleeve gripped tightly.
...
That evening.
On Elder Kurong's desk lay a petition signed by members of the Seeking the Sword Pavilion, asking to unseal the mountain gates and send representatives to the Wenjian Sect for an "academic exchange."
Kurong finished reading the petition with a blank expression.
She looked up at Su Xiaoshao standing opposite her.
"Do you know about this?"
Su Xiaoshao looked away awkwardly. "I've heard a bit."
Kurong stared at her for three breaths.
"Then what's with that 'Seeking the Sword Pavilion Special Issue: Dream Lover Art Collection' under your desk?"
Su Xiaoshao: "...!"
Kurong flipped the petition over and wrote two words on the back: "Denied." She then said with disappointment, "If you all used this much energy on cultivation, the Hehuan Sect would have been number one in the world long ago."
...
The matter came and went quickly, or at least it was suppressed on the surface after the elders combined their efforts to stamp it out.
However, aside from the storm surrounding the Hehuan Sect's uniquely designated dream lover, another matter worried Gu Chengming more.
—That was the mess Yun Ni had left behind.
It wasn't that there were any remaining factions within the Hehuan Sect causing trouble; those trusted disciples who once followed Yun Ni were now more obedient than anyone, fearing the blade of liquidation would fall on them.
Though Fu Xiaoxiao was only the "acting" sect master, with her status as the Fish-Managing Elder and the authority over the Yin Yang Fish, no one dared to openly find fault.
The real problem lay with those so-called red dust seeds. Yun Ni had said the Longevity Sect wanted a "byproduct" generated during the accumulation of collective desires, which she called red dust seeds.
It wasn't that Gu Chengming didn't believe Yun Ni; given her state before death, she had no reason to lie.
What he didn't believe was the term "byproduct" itself.
The Longevity Sect were not benevolent people. They had spent so much effort infiltrating the Hehuan Sect, providing the heart-parasite technique, and risking discovery by Daqian to cooperate with Yun Ni for three years just to collect some "byproduct"?
When had those madmen who cultivated death qi and used the lives of others as fuel ever made a losing deal?
To know the specific function of the red dust seeds, one had to understand the heart-parasite itself.
Gu Chengming had originally thought that after the system of collective desires collapsed, these things would vanish, but that was not the case.
Only the effects produced by the activated heart-parasites vanished; the foundations of the heart-parasites themselves were still rooted in the disciples' seas of consciousness, in a dormant state. They were painless and no longer magnified emotional fluctuations, and they weren't impossible to remove... it was just too troublesome.
At Fu Xiaoxiao's level, she could only remove the heart-parasites of a few dozen disciples a day at most.
Gu Chengming calculated that this workload meant it would take at least fifty days.
He suggested starting with the disciples most deeply affected by the collective desires—if the heart-parasites had any subsequent hidden dangers, they would be the first to show problems.
Fu Xiaoxiao nodded, and the two informed Elder Kurong.
Kurong's face was even grimmer than Fu Xiaoxiao's, and she immediately decided to keep the news quiet to avoid panic among the disciples. At the same time, she had Fu Xiaoxiao use her authority as the Fish-Managing Elder to gradually screen and clear them with the power of the Yin Yang Fish.
The screening work began the next morning.
Gu Chengming originally intended to accompany her the whole time, but Fu Xiaoxiao stopped him at the door of the clinic.
"You're in the way here." She put her hands on her hips and looked up at him. "The screening requires using the Red Dust Technique to enter the other person's sea of consciousness; it's a very private matter. With you, a man, standing there, the junior sisters will be uncomfortable."
Gu Chengming looked at the Second Realm girl sitting nervously on a prayer mat inside, waiting for the screening, and felt that Fu Xiaoxiao was right.
"Then I'll wait outside."
"Wait for what?" Fu Xiaoxiao's expression became subtle. "Go do your work; you don't need to wait specifically. It's not a big deal."
As she spoke, her gaze drifted to the side, seemingly trying to appear casual.
Gu Chengming smiled and didn't expose her.
"Fine, I'll go find Su Qiuzhi and see if there are any unusual movements in the sect lately."
"Mhm." Fu Xiaoxiao nodded, closed the door halfway, then poked her face out of the crack and quickly added, "Remember to come back tonight."
...
The screening work reached its third day, and Fu Xiaoxiao sought out Gu Chengming.
At the time, he was leafing through ancient texts related to the Red Dust Technique borrowed from Kurong. Fu Xiaoxiao pushed the door open, carrying a bowl of medicinal soup, her expression as serious as if she were about to announce something major.
"Gu Chengming, I have a matter to discuss with you."
"Yes?"
"Screening the heart-parasites consumes a lot of spiritual power from the Red Dust Technique. I saw forty-three sisters today, and my sea of consciousness is a bit unstable." She set the bowl on the table and sat upright. "And as you know, the fastest way to recover the spiritual power of the Red Dust Technique is—"
"Dual cultivation?" Gu Chengming finished for her.
"Right!" Fu Xiaoxiao nodded vigorously. "This is for work."
Gu Chengming looked at her; the tips of her ears were already turning red, but her eyes were full of expectation, looking as if she were saying, "Everything I said is true, you're not allowed to question it."
And so, the second dual cultivation occurred logically under this pretense.
When it was over, Fu Xiaoxiao curled into his arms, her eyes hazy, but the corners of her mouth couldn't stop curling up.
"There's more screening tomorrow," she said vaguely. "It might consume a lot again."
"Mhm."
"Then tomorrow night—"
"Alright."
Fu Xiaoxiao buried her face in his chest, not letting Gu Chengming see her flushed face.
The reason for the fourth day was "I met a junior sister today whose heart-parasite was hidden very deep, and it took a lot of effort to pull it out; my spiritual power is severely depleted."
The fifth day was "The authority calls on the Yin Yang Fish were too frequent; my sea of consciousness needs external help to stabilize."
On the sixth day, she even dug up an ancient text from somewhere and read a passage to Gu Chengming with great seriousness: "Look, it says here that if a Hehuan Sect cultivator operates spiritual power at high intensity for a long time without yin and yang harmony, it will at best lead to meridian blockage, and at worst, qi deviation."
She finished reading and looked up at him with burning eyes.
Gu Chengming glanced at the ancient text; the cover read "Miscellaneous Chats on Bedchamber Health in the Hehuan Sect," and the author was an elder famous for being a playboy two hundred years ago.
He suppressed a laugh. "Senior Sister Fu makes sense."
Fu Xiaoxiao let out a sigh of relief, tucked the book into her sleeve, and moved so fast it was as if she were afraid he would look at it again.
By the seventh day, she didn't even look for a reason.
At dusk, Gu Chengming had just returned from getting the latest intelligence on the sect's movements from Su Qiuzhi. He pushed open the door to find Fu Xiaoxiao already sitting in the room.
Two plates of snacks and a pot of hot tea sat on the table. She was sitting cross-legged on a prayer mat, and hearing the door, she said without looking up, "I screened fifty-one today."
"Hard work."
"Yes, very hard work." Silence for two breaths.
"And?" Gu Chengming leaned against the doorframe, a hint of a smile in his voice.
Fu Xiaoxiao finally looked up, a bamboo slip hiding half her face. She was silent for a while, seemingly doing her final psychological preparation, then she set the slip aside and said decisively, "There is no 'and.' I just want to."
She froze for a moment after saying it, as if she hadn't expected to be so direct, and her cheeks turned purple at a visible rate.
But she didn't take back the words, only tilting her chin slightly with a stubbornness that suggested she was resigned to her fate.
Gu Chengming looked at her and finally couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Fu Xiaoxiao became even more embarrassed by his laughter. "Stop laughing! Are we doing it or not?"
"We are."
Fu Xiaoxiao's eyes lit up.
Later, when Gu Chengming occasionally thought back to these days, he felt that Fu Xiaoxiao's search for reasons was more interesting than the dual cultivation itself.
Because every day she wracked her brain to prove it was "necessary," "reasonable," and "for the greater good," and every time he cooperated by nodding and saying "Senior Sister Fu is right," then watching her look relieved yet trying to hide it, he felt this person was truly too adorable.
Of course, he never once refused.
It wasn't because those reasons were so solid, but because pushing the door open every evening to see her already sitting in the room waiting for him was something he didn't want to refuse.
As for Fu Xiaoxiao herself—
Every day when she left Gu Chengming's place, she was dazed. She would bump into the doorframe while walking, trip on the stairs, and after returning to her room, she would roll around on her bed holding a pillow, then bury her face in the covers and let out a muffled, unidentifiable scream.
...
Screening heart-parasites was meant to be an extremely oppressive task. Every removal meant facing the darkest corners of the subject's sea of consciousness.
In the past, facing the negative emotions of dozens of people in high intensity would have left her soul exhausted.
But after this week, not only did she show no signs of fatigue, she was positively radiant.
It had to be admitted that this was all thanks to those few hours every night.
Every morning she woke up looking forward to dusk, and the negative effects of removing the heart-parasites were washed away by the anticipation of dual cultivation.
Fu Xiaoxiao sometimes felt like her current self was a stranger.
Once upon a time, she was a person of high standards in the Hehuan Sect, scoffing at those fellow disciples who always talked about "dual cultivation" and couldn't live without a man.
She had once firmly believed that the Red Dust Technique was about the heart, not desire.
But now?
She looked at the sun setting in the west, and her mind was full of Gu Chengming. She thought of him holding her, the feeling of fulfillment that almost melted her when she was filled by him; she had become greedy.
At first, she thought it was just to recover spiritual power, then she thought it was to stabilize her sea of consciousness, and now, she didn't even bother to think of a reason.
Had she completely turned into that kind of shameless, lustful woman?
Fu Xiaoxiao buried her face in her palms, a sigh of shame and annoyance leaking through her fingers.
Only seven days had passed; how had she become so unable to leave him?
That longing wasn't just physical pleasure; it was a psychological dependence. It felt as though as long as she was by his side, even if they did nothing and she only smelled that faint scent on him, her heart could be at peace.
This was truly the end for her.
As an elder of the Hehuan Sect, she usually taught disciples to "pass through ten thousand flowers without a single leaf sticking to them," yet she had fallen so completely for one man that she was lying flat at the bottom of the pit and even happily didn't want to climb out.
If the sect leader knew, they would probably laugh their head off.
But thinking of this, a bit of self-deprecating sweetness surfaced in Fu Xiaoxiao's heart.
So be it if it was embarrassing. As long as she could see Gu Chengming tonight and crawl into his arms, she would accept it even if she suffered a qi deviation.
She really, really liked him.
...
And so, as the days passed, Fu Xiaoxiao finally discovered a problem in those heart-parasites.
If Fu Xiaoxiao hadn't been careful enough, this anomaly might have been overlooked.
That day, she was clearing the heart-parasite of a Second Realm inner sect disciple. The process was the same as usual: using the Red Dust Technique to enter the sea of consciousness, locating the remains of the heart-parasite, and then using the power of the Yin Yang Fish to peel it away bit by bit. Halfway through, she frowned as she found something unusual.
At the deepest layer of the heart-parasite, deeper than any layer she had probed in previous screenings, lay a seed with death qi at its core.
That seed was so small it was almost invisible, perfectly masked by the residual aura of the heart-parasite. If she hadn't happened to touch a deep enough level during the clearing process, she would never have discovered its existence.
Fu Xiaoxiao finished clearing the heart-parasite for the disciple as planned, let the disciple leave to rest, and then stayed alone in the clinic to analyze and study the composition of that seed.
The essence of the seed was death qi. But its shell was wrapped in a layer of red dust aura from the same source as the heart-parasite. This camouflage allowed it to merge perfectly with the structure of the heart-parasite, like a pebble buried in the soil; one might bump into it while tilling, but if one didn't specifically dig for it, it would remain quietly in its original place forever.
What made her even more uneasy was that the seed was alive.
Not alive in the sense of a spiritual being, but a deeper state, similar to the dormancy before a seed sprouts.
It was waiting for certain conditions to be met before breaking out of its shell.
Over the next two days, Fu Xiaoxiao deliberately adjusted the priority and depth of the screenings, conducting secondary deep probes of the disciples she had already screened without attracting anyone's attention.
The result made her blood run cold.
Among the eighty-seven disciples she had screened before, thirty-one had the same seeds nested deep within their heart-parasites. And these thirty-one shared a common characteristic: they were the ones most deeply affected during the collective desire incident, and their emotional fluctuations had not yet fully subsided.
In other words, the more intense a disciple's emotional fluctuations, the easier it was for the seed deep in the heart-parasite to be activated.
She told Gu Chengming everything she had discovered over the past two days and then stated her guess. "I suspect this is the 'red dust seed' Yun Ni mentioned."
Gu Chengming didn't show much surprise. Since the day of Yun Ni's death, the existence of these so-called "red dust seeds" had kept him from feeling at peace about the Hehuan Sect's current situation.
"Can they be cleared?"
"Yes, but it's much more troublesome than clearing the heart-parasite itself. The seeds are rooted deeper than the heart-parasite and have practically grown into the foundations of the disciples' seas of consciousness. The risk of forced removal is very high."
Gu Chengming re-summarized the seed's characteristics in his mind.
Death qi as the core, red dust aura as the shell. Nested deep in the heart-parasite, existing by relying on the host's sea of consciousness.
Disciples with more intense emotional fluctuations had seeds in a state closer to being "discoverable"; this point was key.
"Senior Sister," Gu Chengming said. "Is it possible that the seeds are easier to find in disciples with high emotional fluctuations not because they are more numerous or larger in those disciples, but because they are feeding?"
"The seeds use the host's emotional fluctuations as nutrients. The more intense the emotion, the more nutrients it absorbs, the larger it becomes, and the harder it is to maintain the camouflage, making it easier for you to find it."
"And in those disciples with stable emotions, the seeds are still sleeping not because they don't exist, but because they aren't big enough yet."
Fu Xiaoxiao clenched her fists; clearly, she thought so too.
Yun Ni thought she was using the Longevity Sect, that the heart-parasites were just tools to accelerate the accumulation of collective desires, and that the red dust seeds were just insignificant byproducts.
But in reality, from the moment the cooperation began, the Longevity Sect had planted seeds deep within the seas of consciousness of over a thousand disciples of the Hehuan Sect.
Those seeds fed on emotions, used heart-parasites as nests, and grew in the soil of the disciples' seas of consciousness. The disciples of the Hehuan Sect practiced the Red Dust Technique and naturally possessed more abundant and intense emotions than cultivators of other sects. Every person here was the best possible culture dish.
Yun Ni had spent three years ranching the Hehuan Sect for the Longevity Sect, and she hadn't known it even until her death.
"What a fool," Fu Xiaoxiao whispered.
Gu Chengming didn't respond.
His attention had turned to the next question—if the seeds were "eating" and growing, what was the end point of their growth? What would they become once they matured?
He didn't have the answer yet, but the answer was approaching.
...
In the main hall of the "Zhongshengxiang Hall," a branch of the Longevity Sect.
Hundreds of clay statues with different faces were enshrined in the hall, each life-like with varying expressions of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight. From afar, it looked as if the myriad states of the mortal world had been frozen within this space.
The Near Heaven Elder sat on the main seat in the hall, holding a newly received communication jade slip.
The message in the jade slip was brief: Yun Ni's plan had failed, the Yin Yang Fish had restored its balance, and Yun Ni herself was dead. The system of collective desires had collapsed, and an internal purge was underway in the Hehuan Sect.
Near Heaven did not show much surprise.
He set down the jade slip and sighed softly, his tone carrying a sincere pity. "What a shame. Benefactor Yun Ni was a person of great perseverance."
This wasn't just a polite remark.
To be able to endure for decades in an environment like the Hehuan Sect, gradually turning the sect's destiny toward the direction he wanted, and finally even daring to bet her life on it—that kind of character was rare even within the Longevity Sect.
Unfortunately, she had failed by a single move.
Near Heaven didn't dwell on the matter. Yun Ni's life or death was just a variable to him; what mattered was how the entire board needed to be adjusted now that the variable was gone.
He stood up and walked toward the depths of the hall.
There was a secret door hidden behind the largest clay statue. The statue's face was smiling, but that smile looked exceptionally eerie in the candlelight, as if it were mocking something.
Near Heaven pushed open the secret door and walked in.
Behind the door was a passage extending downward. There was no lighting on the walls, but Near Heaven's footsteps didn't hesitate, clearly having walked this path countless times.
The passage was long, extending downward for at least a hundred yards. The air became colder and heavier, and at the end of the passage was a secret room.
A pitch-black coffin was placed in the center of the room.
The coffin was crafted from some unknown black stone. The entire room seemed to be a massive womb, and that coffin was the fetus growing within it.
Near Heaven stopped three steps from the coffin and bowed slightly.
"There has been a change in the layout of the Hehuan Sect," he said calmly. "Yun Ni failed, the Yin Yang Fish has returned to its spiritual form, and the red dust seed cultivation plan needs to be adjusted."
Then, an extremely special "aura" diffused from the coffin.
It wasn't spiritual power or death qi, but something more fundamental and indefinable.
If a word had to be used to describe it, it would be—emotion.
Pure, intense emotion that didn't belong to any single person.
Sorrow, joy, anger, fear, desire, disgust, obsession, despair... all the emotions humans could experience surged at this moment, intertwining to form a suffocating flood.
A silhouette rose from the coffin, floating in mid-air.
That silhouette had no fixed face or form. Its "face" constantly switched between different emotions—now smiling, now weeping, now angry, now calm—like a mirror reflecting the myriad phenomena of the world.
Its body was also constantly changing, now tall, now short, now the silhouette of a man, now the form of a woman, now old, now young, as if the shadows of all the people in the world were superimposed upon it.
Beihuan, one of the eight "Near Heaven" venerables of the Longevity Sect.
To be precise, "Beihuan" was not a single person; it was a combination of three "parts": "Sorrow," "Joy," and "Stillness."
Over thousands of years, during the slaughters, disasters, and plagues created by the Longevity Sect in various places, the fear, despair, resentment, and attachment that countless people burst forth with at the moment of death—these residual emotions were collected, purified, and condensed by the Longevity Sect's secret methods, eventually birthing this "thing."
It had no consciousness of its own, or rather, its consciousness was the sum of all emotions.
After the three parts merged, Beihuan was a Fifth Realm cultivator in every sense, but its terror had never been in its combat power.
It could resonate with, assimilate, and devour the emotions of all cultivators.
Any cultivator who practiced laws related to "emotion" was "food" before Beihuan. And the Hehuan Sect's Red Dust Technique was rooted in emotion, using the seven emotions and six desires as the basis of cultivation, which meant—
Every disciple of the Hehuan Sect was defenseless before Beihuan.
Beihuan didn't need to defeat them. It only needed to draw near, and those cultivators of the Red Dust Technique would be swept up by the flood of emotions radiating from it, falling into an inescapable emotional resonance. At best, their minds would be lost; at worst, their dao hearts would collapse.
And the most ironic thing was—the higher the realm and the deeper the cultivation of the Red Dust Technique, the greater the impact.
In the coffin, Beihuan's "voice" rang out.
That voice didn't come from a mouth, nor was it transmitted via divine sense; it flowed directly into Near Heaven's perception in the form of "emotion."
An ordinary person receiving such information would fall into chaos, but as a Near Heaven who had spent a long time with Beihuan, he had long ago learned to interpret the meanings within these emotions.
The heart-parasites remaining in the bodies of the Hehuan Sect disciples were the seeds it had spent three years planting. Although those heart-parasites had entered dormancy after the system of collective desires collapsed, their foundations remained, tightly connected to the depths of the disciples' seas of consciousness. Each heart-parasite was a carrier for a "red dust seed," and the essence of the red dust seeds was to slowly and imperceptibly convert the cultivators' emotional fluctuations into "emotional essence" that Beihuan could absorb.
Three years of cultivation and over a thousand disciples represented a huge investment; if they were all cleared, all progress would be lost.
Although the Yin Yang Fish in its Dao Throne form was more useful to the Longevity Sect—after all, a Dao Throne that had lost its spirituality was easier to seize and modify—the Yin Yang Fish in its spiritual form also had an "advantage." It would continuously radiate yin and yang qi and red dust aura, and this red dust aura pervading the Hehuan Sect was exactly the best environment needed for the red dust seeds to grow.
As long as the Hehuan Sect was still operating normally and the disciples were still practicing the Red Dust Technique, the red dust seeds would continue to grow in their seas of consciousness, continuing to convert their emotions into nourishment for Beihuan.
When Yun Ni was there, this process was accelerated—the system of collective desires forcibly magnified the emotional fluctuations of all disciples, and the growth rate of the red dust seeds was several times that of the normal state.
Now that Yun Ni was dead and the collective desires had collapsed, the growth rate would return to normal levels, but "slow" did not mean "stopped."
As long as those heart-parasites were still there, the red dust seeds were still growing, and it was going to personally harvest these red dust seeds.
Hearing this, Near Heaven showed a rare hint of hesitation. "The Hehuan Sect has just experienced internal strife, and Daqian and other sects will certainly be watching the movements there. Isn't it too risky to go now?"
Beihuan's emotional fluctuations transmitted a complex "smile." It didn't care about the Daqian government; it only cared about the growing red dust seeds in the bodies of the Hehuan Sect disciples and the abundant, mouth-watering emotions those seeds were connected to.
Near Heaven read this meaning from Beihuan's emotions.
He didn't try to persuade it further.
Because he knew that Beihuan was never a being that could be "persuaded." Its behavior was entirely driven by instinct—perceiving emotion, approaching emotion, resonating with emotion, and devouring emotion.
Just as fire burns combustibles and water flows downward, Beihuan's thirst for emotion was a natural, irreversible tendency written into its essence.
He stopped persuading and instead spoke calmly, "In that case, to be safe, let 'Sorrow' go."
Beihuan was silent for a while.
Then that constantly shifting human silhouette slowly split.
Like a drop of ink dispersing in water and then reconsolidating, three blurry figures peeled away from that mass of emotional flood.
The one on the left had a face perpetually smiling, radiating a warm, intoxicating aura—that was "Joy."
The one on the right had no expression and no emotional fluctuation, like a pool of stagnant water or a void—that was "Stillness."
And the one in the middle had a sorrowful face, with tear tracks seemingly always on the corners of its eyes, and an aura of heart-wrenching sadness pervaded its body—that was "Sorrow."
After the three split, their aura fell from the Fifth Realm to the peak of the Fourth Realm.
Near Heaven watched it and finally nodded.
"Go. But remember, the goal is to protect the red dust seeds, not to go to war with the Hehuan Sect. If you encounter a variable you cannot handle—" He didn't finish.
Because Sorrow had already turned into a wisp of grey aura that was almost impossible to perceive and vanished from the secret room.
Near Heaven stood in place, looking at the empty coffin and the Joy and Stillness remaining in the room, and an inexplicable hint of unease surfaced in his heart.
Then he turned and walked out of the secret room, up the passage, and back into the main hall.
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