Whatever was going on inside the Ten-Party Array was unseen by the outside. The dense flock of cultivators at the foot of Tai Yin watched the two rows of candles in front of the array with rapt attention.

They saw both rows have one go out here and one go out there, each extinguishing putting them on-edge. There were no more than a tiny cluster of candles getting stared at so blatantly, somehow giving off the desperate message of a blood-reeking storm.

Once the candles were blown by the wind and moved like grass, everyone would feel like enemies were everywhere.

Shui Keng vigorously rubbed her eyes, continuing to stare without moving as she whispered, “I never want to light another candle in my life.”

Inside the array, Cheng Qian and Han Yuan were not speaking to each other.

The former stood quietly for a minute, the fury within him gradually subsiding. If I was him, he thought, how would I be?

Thinking it over, with how petulant he had been when young, he surely would have done even more extreme things, and become even more twisted. It was simply that he had comparatively better luck, for such things to not cover his own head.

How many people like their eldest were there in the world, after all?

As a child, he had thought Yan Zhengming to be someone that knew how to eat, but not to fight, and conducted himself with less than the utmost of dignity. Only after he had grown up and gained sense did he understand that the other was more capable of enduring injury than others.

It was no rarity for tough people to break their wrists with no change in expression, but there were not many that could maintain their true selves beneath deep hatred.

Cheng Qian knew that he wouldn’t be able to do that, himself.

With that thought, he suddenly felt that he was in no position to admonish Han Yuan.

“Get up. Why are you crying? Do you think me calling you a jackass is an injustice to you?” He kicked Han Yuan with his toes. “There’s an issue with the Ten-Party Array. I don’t understand how the array works, and you need to do something a little useful, anyways.”

“Is there someone of Wu Changtian’s among the Nine Sages?” Han Yuan asked, sullen.

“It’s not only that.” Cheng Qian explained Zhe Shi’s message, and their conjecture, with urgent simplicity.

The other’s complexion changed, and he stood up with malice, smiling coldly. “Haha! I just knew that those teetering ‘nobles’ would get what was coming to them!”

With that, his expression flipped over, and he turned into the normal Han Yuan. “If you haven’t guessed wrong, and there’s another array outside of this one, it’s definitely being monitored,” he said, worried. “If we disturb the Ten-Party Array hastily, we’ll probably alert the enemy.”

It was clearly the same exact face, yet those few statements were as different as the sky and earth. It was practically impossible to tell that they were one person.

“…” Cheng Qian went silent for a second. “Can you not be one-man mob in my ears?”

Han Yuan’s expression was changing at flying speed, as if two people were incessantly fighting for the spot. In the end, Han Yuan might have been scared by Cheng Qian beating him up, because the heart demon won.

“Even so…” Heart-demon Han Yuan slowly said, “if you have an artifact that can restrain your life qi so that the array can’t detect you, it might take you for dead.”

Cheng Qian had no such item, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do that. Right after Han Yuan was done talking, he saw Cheng Qian lower his head to crack open the ring on his thumb — in this further short amount of time, two more white candles had been extinguished.

He counted up the candles remaining, and then his figure shook slightly, his entire body seeming to turn into a chunk of rock. Had Han Yuan not known that he was there to begin with, he would have narrowly failed to sense that there was another person around.

He was shocked. “You…”

Cheng Qian paid him no mind, simply staring at the mirror on the ring. The next instant, he witnessed one of the flames on a white candle flicker, then go out.

Han Yuan reached out and touched the back of Cheng Qian’s hand, only feeling a slight warmth on him that was much lower than a human’s body temperature. The heart demon looked intrigued. “What a good technique! How did you get it?”

“Thanks to your gracious gift, the physical body my parents gave to me died,” Cheng Qian answered unhappily. “I had to refine a stone to rely on as a new home. What now?”

Heart-demon Han Yuan’s eyes flashed, but the faintly malicious smile on his face was as steady as Mount Tai. Taking back his feeling hand, he answered unhurriedly. “Since the Array believes you to be dead, someone else will inevitably be sent over. Wu Changtian isn’t wanting to bet on who wins and who loses with me, he’s wanting to take my life here. As he’s planted one of his, how could he not have tampered with the array? If you wish to break it open, you’ll have to get what manipulates the array’s workings from his hands.”

“If you were well aware of all this, why did you humor him?”

Han Yuan shrugged. “I go along with what he wants, then smack him right in the face in front of the whole world. Hahaha… the Divination Bureau’s attempt at reaping benefits will end up with losses! Such a thought is really refreshing.”

This inner demon that Han Yuan had cultivated simply could not be predicted via common sense. He cared nothing for any costs that came with any benefits, and hadn’t considered the scenario of him not hitting his counterpart in the face, but instead falling into his trap. He just wanted to feel delight, and for the sake of one second of that, he would do anything.

Cheng Qian sighed, unable to talk logic with this guy. “How do you know the next one will be someone from the Bureau?”

“There was an unlucky sod at the start, and then there was you, so now a third will be transported to me,” Heart-demon Han Yuan replied without expression. “If that doesn’t happen, then Wu Changtian’s plant either got killed by someone else first, or they’re all dragging their feet… which won’t matter, of course. Were that to not be true, I’ll just kill them and wait for the next one. It’s no trouble.”

“…One of these days, I’ll kill you myself.”

Hearing so, Han Yuan was ecstatic, laughing aloud. “Dying by the ‘sword of terrible death’ would really be three lifetimes’ worth of fortune for me!”

Suddenly, his laughter cut off. Footsteps were heard to come from a side.

The array really had sent another person!

Cheng Qian gripped Shuang Ren tightly. He absolutely could not allow Han Yuan to kill right in front of him. However, when the person got a little closer, he suddenly sensed something slightly off — because they had the strong scent of blood on them, and anyone would know they were a demonic cultivator.

But how could they be?

Did the formation think that two people from the same camp would act against each other?

Cheng Qian and Han Yuan exchanged glances. The former swept the lamp above their heads back into his sleeve, then burrowed into the darkness inside a burst of shadow.

A demonic cultivator in white shortly floated over, resembling an elegant and delicate Young Master of the mortal world.

He was also one of the Nine Sages; on account of his manner of dress and bearing being inharmonious with other demonic cultivators, Cheng Qian had something of an impression of him.

The guy stood still once in. Upon seeing Han Yuan, he had not a bit of nervousness at all, seeming both unsurprised and unafraid. “Sir Dragon!” he said with a smile. “We really have been brought together by fate!”

The guy looked gentle and refined, but once he opened his mouth, he was like a really loud and broken gong, gabbering with an accent that came from some unknown chunk of cornfield. It didn’t feel like he was shouting at any sort of ‘Sir Dragon’, but at his family’s stubborn water buffalo.

Han Yuan shot him a look. “Luo Zhengyi.”

Cheng Qian: “…”

The demonic cultivator named ‘Zhengyi’, which meant righteousness, answered candidly, taking a huge step towards Han Yuan. “That I could meet one of my own in this array is basically telling me to take a break… oh, Sir Dragon, why do you look ashen? Did you just come across some kind of difficulty?”

Han Yuan slightly frowned, shutting his eyes and not making a sound.

If this Luo Zhengyi actually was the one that Wu Changtian had arranged to deal with Han Yuan, then wouldn’t the logical plan be that there would be only two demonic cultivators left after all the death, the Ten-Party Array would be broken, and then Han Yuan would be besieged when he believed himself to have won? What was with him showing up and getting in the way, purposefully informing Han Yuan that there was something fishy with the array?

In a spark’s time, Cheng Qian recalled what Han Yuan had said — if there was an array outside of the array, someone had to be monitoring this one!

So, for those behind the outer array… was this a plan to ruin Wu Changtian?

In the blink of an eye, Luo Zhengyi sped-walk over to Han Yuan’s side, as if he could fish out two jars of wine at any time to have a drink with him. A strong light abruptly slashed Cheng Qian’s eyes, making his eyelids jump, and once he could see again, one of Han Yuan’s hands held before him had turned into a dragon’s claw without any warning, its huge scales flashing with terrifying light. With extremely lethal demonic qi, he instantly tore off half of Luo Zhengyi’s body.

The white-clothed scholar was half-human, half-turned-into-a-skeleton, a mass of mangled flesh hanging unevenly off of him. Even so, could still retaliate without a care.

He drew a tiny bell out of nowhere, and a burst of quick chimes rang out. The landscape of the Ten-Party Array suddenly morphed, and a swamp that stank of blood came into being beneath Han Yuan.

That bell could manipulate the Array!

While Luo Zhengyi shook the bell, he used his other hand to hold up his half-peeled-off countenance. “Tch. My magnificent bones are exposed.”

With that, flesh grew out of the areas of bone on his face, clashing with the other parts of it.

He was one of the ones that had laid down the array!

“A Skin Painter,” Han Yuan supplied.

“Alas, Sir Wu entrusted me with this task.” It was unknown whether Luo Zhengyi or the Skin Painter was talking. “It’s just a shame that we both appear to have been pitted. I really do feel wronged… but there’s no use in explaining all that to you, since you’ll want me dead whether you believe me or not. Let’s get going, then!”

The instant he said that, Han Yuan was dragged down by the swamp under his feet. He coldly huffed, then transformed into a huge dragon, letting out a long hiss. The entire Ten-Party Array seemed to shake a couple of times.

Yet, how did this array work?

In the ways of the world outside, water trickled down to lower areas, intense fire melted gold, people were born, aged, got sick, and died, and so on. Those between the Heavens and the Earth, no matter how powerful they were, could not disregard those important rules. The array’s method was actually to reset those rules to be within a certain range, and the people that entered it would have to suffer the manipulations of the array’s master, unless they broke out of it.

Regardless of how despotic the demonic dragon was, the swamp was on him like a shadow.

Luo Zhengyi looked up and opened his mouth wide, degenerating his face once more into being half-bones, his jaw nearly going off somewhere else on its own. He watched Han Yuan’s hard-pressed state in ecstasy.

Right then, the fine sound of metal and stone suddenly came from behind him.

His head, which was nearly about to split into two, twisted towards it. “Who’s—“

Before he had time to say ‘there’, he saw not even the shadow of a ghost, yet felt frost attacking his face.

Was the Ten-Party Array haunted?

The next moment, his turned head was sliced off by a ‘haunted’ sword. A burst of black qi suddenly emitted off of his leaking neck — that was his primordial spirit.

Cheng Qian acted quickly upon spotting the opportunity, tugging the bell out of the corpse’s hand. Without inquiring after how to use it, he forcefully shook it on his own.

The Ten-Party Array promptly shifted according to his thoughts. A wide, astral wind was made, pinning the primordial spirit to the ground without room for argument. At the same time, Han Yuan suffered collateral damage, as despite his quick dodging, he nearly had a layer of his scales scraped off.

One messed-up human figure remained on the ground, a trail of blood slowly oozing out of it. In no more than a short moment, the demonic cultivator had been eradicated in both body and soul.

Han Yuan shifted to human form, licking the severe scratches on his arm. “What a ‘righteous noble’ you are, little senior, to sneak attack him from behind and kill him with no hesitation.”

Cheng Qian ignored him, raising the bell and making a gesture. “I’m going to go look for our senior. How do I use this?” he asked, indifferent.

“Submerge your spiritual consciousness into the bell, and you’ll be able to see the entire Ten-Party Array… in a place where no one’s limbs can touch you, you can hold the bell and be the master of the array, acting as you please.”

Han Yuan had fostered this heart demon’s mouth to be a bit shoddy. Coldly watching Cheng Qian fiddle with the bell like an amateur, he started speaking provocatively. “You can be no less than relaxed about him for a second… do you want to know what his heart demon in the Vermilion Bird Tower was?”

Cheng Qian’s expression was unchanged. “I already do.”

The other’s brows jumped up, the minute malice on his face changing to obvious surprise, and he silently sized him up for a minute. “You know what your own eight characters of fate are, then?”

Cheng Qian didn’t answer, looking completely uninterested.

“You and Tong Ru are the same, with fates of ascending to the Heavens, cold and passionless. People like you two are most suited for cultivation; unyielding by nature, closed off in emotions, less open than others, finding the most ease in dismissing distracting thoughts. If you follow your destiny, you could accomplish great things…”

“What great thing did Tong Ru accomplish?” Cheng Qian objected. “Rotting into a pile of bones in the Valley of No Sorrow?”

“Being ‘closed off’ is just being less susceptible to disturbances from external things during cultivation practice, not being without emotions. Who made him forget himself in indulgence, and be so persistent?” Han Yuan sneered. “In regards to your so-called Great Dao — what are sects? What are masters, disciples? What are human emotions? Those wanting to achieve the Dao are still bound by those things! Him qi deviating was not an injustice; had he been able to break out of the Three Lives Mystic Site, he might have long ascended to the upper realm by now.”

The Ten-Party Array inside the bell was complex. Cheng Qian couldn’t understand what he was looking at for a second, and with Han Yuan chattering on without rest beside him, his hands immediately itched to beat this garbage guy up.

“If you don’t cultivate your own Great Dao well, won’t you follow in his disastrous steps?”

“I’m content,” Cheng Qian answered, not lifting his head.

Han Yuan smiled sharply. “You still put on airs of cultivating to whatever immortality, then? Practicing down whatever path? As I see it, you’re willing to fall from grace.”

“I don’t have anything for a heart demon to get a word in on.”

“Don’t you worry, then. If you can’t control it and lose your primordial yang, we’ll see if you get any ‘distracting thoughts’ in your head.”

“…”

These demonic cultivators were practically getting more repulsive by the day.

This was a rare time that Han Yuan had made him dumbstruck via talking, and he got even worse. “Male and female cultivators binding as companions and dual cultivating at least has the harmonious conjunction of yin and yang blending, and wouldn’t be considered and indulgence in lust. What would you and our eldest be considered, then?” All of a sudden, he narrowed his eyes. “Oh… maybe you’ve already gotten distracting thoughts, and want to have a taste of him?”

The instant the heart-demon version of Han Yuan said that, he suffered another beating, just as he had been hoping for. He didn’t retaliate, either, taking the hits as if he was delighted to do so. It made one suspect that the reason why he had just spoken so rudely was for the sake of getting beaten up.

When Cheng Qian had started hitting, he had been humiliated into anger; not only had Han Yuan’s mouth been unclean, but he had genuinely incited the memories he had of the Valley of the Heart Demon in just a few words. Immediately after he forcibly tamped down his indecent reveries, his spiritual consciousness flipped upside down inside the bell, he picked up the bruised-up Han Yuan, then roughly tore open the surrounding barrier using his bell hand at the same time. They arrived at where Yan Zhengming was in an instant.

Right when they touched down, they happened to witness him blankly sticking a demonic cultivator through to the ground. His sword qi directly entered their inner sanctum, leaving their primordial spirit with nowhere to run to. Patterns of splashing blood overflowed, landing on his chest and cheeks. Detecting abnormal movement inside the array’s workings, he abruptly turned his head, his threatening murderousness not yet drawn back.

Cheng Qian was startled, sensing his own heart’s violent drumming.

As soon as he saw Cheng Qian, Yan Zhengming blinked rapidly, the sword qi that pervaded his eyes dispersing at once. He looked at the black-and-blue Han Yuan in bewilderment. “What happened?”

Cheng Qian’s mouth was dry in the midst of his slight distraction. Tossing aside Han Yuan, who had started playing dead once he saw his most senior brother, he gave a simple explanation of events.

After listening to that all without a word, Yan Zhengming took off his thumbring, then split it open to see the mirror inside. From the moment they had entered the Ten-Party Array, likely not even a shichen had passed before the two rows of candles were almost entirely extinguished.

Cheng Qian gave him a furtive glance. On one hand, he felt antsy, but on the other, he felt that his antsiness was wholly disrespectful, and now he just felt awkward. Not knowing how to keep his own evil thoughts under control, he had to intensify his hatred towards Han Yuan.

All of sudden, Yan Zhengming appeared to have discovered something, quickly turning his back to them.

Cheng Qian came back to himself. Believing there to be some kind of problem, he cleared his throat. “What is it?”

The other took out a snow-white handkerchief from his lapels, then wiped the thin lines of blood off of his face using the ring-mirror.

“…”

Outside the Ten-Party Array, one day and one night had passed, which had ended with one black and one white candle remaining.

When the second-to-last white candle went out, Shui Keng grabbed Li Yun’s arm, her pointy nails digging into his skin.

He, too, was trembling badly on the inside, but in front of his junior sister, he didn’t dare to show as much, merely feigning assuredness as he spoke. “It’s nothing, Shui Keng. Think about it. They must have gone one-on-one as soon as they entered, which wouldn’t take long. The fastest cultivator and demon to finish most likely ran into each other. I’m guessing that Xiao Qian and our eldest will be meeting our Fourth Brother soon… maybe they already have something to manipulate the array’s workings.”

Just when he said that, there was a sudden disturbance heard from the crowd. A group of cultivators were seen to stand and look in one direction at the same time.

A team of flying horses came down from the sky. A circle of cultivators in Celestial Divination Bureau uniforms were escorting the carriage, and each of its horses donned head ornaments of pure gold. The brocade on the carriage’s body had been embroidered in a way that resembled nine dragons about to burst out of the cloth and soar up to the skies, and the thing was more than just for decor. From so far away, Li Yun could actually sense the exact same kind of aura as what came off of the True Dragon Flag.

Shui Keng looked towards the commotion. “Who’s that? Looks like they’ve got money.”

Li Yun pushed her head down with a hand. “Stay in the Stone Seed,” he whispered. A little bit after, he added on, “It’s probably the one casting the net in the Bureau that’s come. Though, nine dragons… are they from the ol’ Emperor’s family?”

During his speech, the fleet used stairs of clouds, coming up close in a wink.

You Liang creased his brow, then came forward while the crowd was whispering amongst itself, speaking to the one in the lead. “Sect-Uncle Xuan Huang, Senior Brother Wu and I had come to Tai Yin to lay down an array and obstruct the demonic dragon, Han Yuan, on the Sect Leader’s orders. You…” He paused, glancing at the nine-dragon carriage. “You’ve arrived with the Third Prince. Does the Sect Leader have any instructions?”

The middle-aged cultivator named Xuan Huang gave him a condescending look from up on his flying horse. “Your senior told me before that sword cultivation needs a wholehearted devotion to quiet practice, and that there’s too many trivialities in the sect that might delay your progress… I can see that he was right. You Liang, you will hand your seal over today. I know of a few powerful sword cultivators that travel abroad, so I may as well take you out to increase your knowledge someday. You might get a chance to gain a Master from it.”

You Liang’s expression changed.

“Make way!” Xuan Huang said. “This blood oath doesn’t matter! You all made it with a bunch of devils; are you not afraid of word of this spreading around and inviting mockery? Come, seize them all!”

While he spoke, innumerable black dots congregated in the sky, and a large flock of giant hawks flew over in an instant.

“Ah!” Shui Keng exclaimed. “Yao… no. They’re not yao cultivators.”

“What?” Li Yun asked.

She frowned. “Those hawks are just ordinary birds, not people of my yao race. Humans have likely given them pills to expedite them in yao cultivation. Since they never experienced practice before and didn’t develop intellect, a bit of training turned them into obedient beasts.”

The huge hawks, akin to a divine army that had descended from the Heavens, circled above the crowd of cultivators. One was the size of a small horse. Their leader opened its mouth and spat out a fireball, which was of similar wonder to Shui Keng’s True Fire of Samadhi.

The fireball turned into a firesea once it hit the ground, catching several demonic cultivators off guard and burning them into a sorry state. One amongst them hadn’t the time to scurry away, and as soon as the fire hit them, all of the demonic qi in their body started boiling — in no more than an instant, they were turned into a pot of stewed meat.