The Sect Master had collapsed to the floor, and his breathing was growing increasingly rapid and labored. It was, after all, only a toothpick — yet the placement was devastatingly precise.

To die by a toothpick — for someone like him, it seemed a joke too difficult to accept.

He tried again and again to force more air into his lungs, yet still felt his breathing grow more difficult with each passing moment.

Fang Zhuhhou watched him the way one watches a mountain that is about to come down.

“You can let go now. There is nothing in this world worth holding on for.”

Fang Zhuhhou walked slowly over to a chair nearby and sat down. The fighting had been so ferocious that it seemed miraculous a single chair had survived intact in the great hall, still standing perfectly upright.

He lowered himself into it with a hand on the armrest, and appeared utterly exhausted.

By all logic, both strikes should have been equally lethal blows aimed at the heart — nearly identical choices at identical moments. But the difference, the crucial difference, was that the chopstick in Fang Zhuhhou’s chest had not been driven deep enough.

This, too, seemed somewhat unreasonable. Yet the truth was even more unreasonable than that.

After hearing Fang Zhuhhou’s words, the Sect Master’s complexion grew even more wretched.

There is a story — a myth — in which a venerable elder has his heart gouged out by a fox spirit. An immortal sage tells him: *I will seal your wound for now. All you must do is leave this place and speak to no one. After a full day and night, my celestial arts will allow your heart to be reborn.*

The elder sets out from the city. He encounters the fox spirit in the guise of a vegetable seller. The woman says her vegetables are called “heartless greens” — and yet heartless greens actually have hearts. *Do you have one?*

Upon hearing those words, the elder’s already-fragile faith collapses. He spits out a mouthful of blood and dies.

That was the Sect Master now.

Before those words, there had still been faith within him — and so he had still been fighting, unwilling to yield, struggling for one last breath against heaven and earth.

The Sect Master exhaled heavily and looked at Fang Zhuhhou. He asked his final question: “Why were you able to withstand my strike?”

Fang Zhuhhou shook his head: “In truth, I deceived you. I could not have withstood it. Your chopstick was quite sufficient to kill me.”

A thread of light appeared in the Sect Master’s eyes.

Fang Zhuhhou continued: “If I told you, you might not believe it. Even I find it somewhat miraculous. So… perhaps let’s not say it.”

The Sect Master said with great difficulty: “Give me an answer. I cannot die without knowing.”

Fang Zhuhhou was silent for a moment, then answered in a tone that was strange yet somehow entirely matter-of-fact: “Because I gave my chest a little flex.”

The Sect Master’s eyes flew wide open. His expression froze solid. His gaze carried the unmistakable meaning of: *how in all the hells can you humiliate me like this.*

He did not believe it. And yet in this last moment of his life, he found — damnably — that the explanation made complete sense.

In truth, it was exactly what had happened.

In the instant the chopstick made contact with his chest, Fang Zhuhhou had felt it — and in that same instant, he had contracted the muscles of his chest.

It was, indeed, a bewildering thing. You could grab a man by the ears and shout the explanation directly into his head, and he would look at you as though you were talking nonsense. You might beat him into submission, and he would sob and nod and agree you were right — but in his heart, he would still think you were an idiot.

Who deflects an attack with their pectoral muscles?

That was precisely what Fang Zhuhhou had done. The moment the chopstick touched his skin, his pectorals flexed, and the chopstick was redirected ever so slightly — not by a wide margin, but enough. Enough to miss the vital point.

In theory, it was the same principle as a chopstick flying toward you and flicking it aside with a finger.

In theory.

Fang Zhuhhou looked at the expression on the Sect Master’s face and let out a quiet sigh: “I said I shouldn’t have told you. You shouldn’t have asked.”

The Sect Master lost his strength and fell back onto the floor. Staring up at the ceiling, his breathing grew ever more faint.

The last thought in his life was… *flexing that thing* — that could actually deflect a killing blow?

In order to use the power of his muscles to their fullest reasonable potential, he had probably considered nine-tenths of every way a muscle could be employed. The one thing he had never considered was that the muscles of the chest could be used independently, without cooperating with any other part of the body.

Fang Zhuhhou watched the Sect Master fall. Watched the Sect Master’s breathing stop. Watched that man’s body grow still.

After a long silence, he said: “Perhaps it was because my chest… is somewhat larger than yours.”

This was not the sort of remark that ought to come from a figure as transcendent as he appeared to be. And yet it was precisely from such a transcendent figure that it came — and it gave Li Chi a sudden notion that perhaps he ought to work on developing that particular area.

And it was not only Li Chi.

After Fang Zhuhhou spoke those words, Master Wu lowered his head and glanced at his own chest. Master Ye lowered his head and glanced at his own chest.

Then Master Wu noticed his wife. Su Xiaoxu also instinctively looked down at her own chest — and the expression on her face, of regret and helpless resignation, seemed somehow even greater than that on the faces of the men around her.

In that moment, Su Xiaoxu seemed to see in Master Wu’s face that he felt the regret and resignation on her behalf as well.

Master Wu walked over and gave his wife a gentle pat on the shoulder.

Su Xiaoxu asked in the softest, smallest of voices: “Is there still hope?”

Master Wu was silent for a long moment before answering in an equally hushed voice: “I’ll try harder from now on.”

Su Xiaoxu: “If you can’t manage it—”

Master Wu: “I can! I absolutely can!”

Su Xiaoxu laughed. She was, at the best of times, a woman of rare, lingering beauty — and when she laughed, it was like spring wind brushing across one’s face, like flowers blooming in that same spring wind.

Fang Zhuhhou sat where he was. He too had reached his limit. Though his battle against the Sect Master had not been long in duration, the expenditure of energy and stamina would take a great deal of time to recover.

“Perhaps…”

Fang Zhuhhou rose with difficulty and walked to where the Sect Master lay. He crouched down, reached out, and gently drew the Sect Master’s eyelids closed. Speaking almost as if to himself, he murmured: “You were actually somewhat more formidable than I. It was only that you were alone.”

If the Sect Master could have heard those words, the turmoil in his heart might have been boundless.

What Fang Zhuhhou meant was… he had, in truth, gained an advantage — because when he arrived, the Sect Master had already fought against a succession of powerful opponents. Against Su Xiaoxu in particular, the Sect Master had been forced to summon every last measure of his concentration, not daring to show even the faintest trace of negligence.

A fight at sixty-forty odds was already flirting with the boundary between life and death.

If he had been even slightly careless, he could have died beneath that strike of Su Xiaoxu’s two fingers condensed into a blade.

Because of this, when the Sect Master crossed blades with Fang Zhuhhou, he was not, in fact, at his absolute peak. Fang Zhuhhou was.

But none of this held any meaning now. A person who was dead was dead. In this world, within the realm of the consummate — perhaps only Fang Zhuhhou remained.

He leaned against the wall and sat down again, looking as though he no longer had quite enough strength to remain standing.

“You will grow stronger.”

Fang Zhuhhou looked at Li Chi: “If… you spend your whole life on cultivation.”

Li Chi smiled, then made a movement with his chest: “Starting with this?”

Even through his robe, it was visible.

Fang Zhuhhou laughed too — with a look in his eyes that said quite clearly: *you’re a junior, kindly stop.*

At the same time, on the roof of a wooden building perhaps only a few dozen zhang from the Songhe Tower, the man lying flat there had eyes full of fervent elation. Even though the decisive battle inside the tower had ended, not a trace of that fervency and elation had faded from his gaze.

He had thought he would only get to witness the Sect Master’s peerless martial skill. He had never expected a far greater windfall than that.

He had witnessed the duel between the man in blue and the Sect Master — what was likely the confrontation between the two greatest martial artists in the Central Plains over the last thousand years.

The fervency in his eyes came from this: he had, dimly and tentatively, touched the edge of a truth he had spent years unable to grasp.

There was no one left in this world who could still guide his martial arts. The Sect Master had been one such person.

But the Sect Master could no longer guide him in anything. And that left him helpless and sorrowful — indeed, to prevent him from surpassing him, the Sect Master had not once made a move in front of him across fifteen years.

Yet in this moment, he had seen it. He had seen two people of the Sect Master’s caliber.

He could not help but smile. The arc of his lips curved wider and wider.

Prince Ning, emperors, rivers and mountains, dynasty and state — none of that mattered to him anymore. He only cared about the magnificent thing he had just witnessed.

After a long moment, he quietly withdrew.

At some point a thought had flickered through his mind — if he went in there right now, would there truly be anyone left in that shattered, half-ruined hall who could be his match?

He could send every last person inside to hell with one blade strike each, to go and follow his master who had already departed this world.

But in the end he abandoned that intention.

When the Sect Master had set out south, he had told him: *Stay at the Sacred Blade Sect. There is no need to follow me — there is still much in the sect that needs overseeing.*

And yet he had followed anyway. If he had not come, it would have been a choice of cowardice he could never forgive himself for, a regret he could never settle, for the rest of his life.

He withdrew quietly without disturbing anyone inside — because, in truth, he was not entirely certain.

At the very least, that woman’s swordsmanship frightened him.

—

Inside the Songhe Tower, Li Chi carried a bowl of water over, took a mouthful, and spat it directly into Cao Lie’s face.

Cao Lie did not respond in the slightest. Li Chi blinked, momentarily taken aback — his never-fail method had apparently failed.

So Li Chi took a second mouthful of water and sprayed it onto Cao Lie’s face again, this time with slightly more force.

Cao Lie still did not wake. Li Chi gave up on him, carried the bowl over to Cen Xiaoxiao, and sprayed a mouthful onto his face.

Cen Xiaoxiao’s entire body gave a jolt — clearly a reflexive attempt to snap upright — but the searing pain in his ribs made it impossible to rise quickly.

Still, his eyes opened, though his gaze was somewhat glazed.

Li Chi frowned slightly: “Doesn’t this still work?”

Cen Xiaoxiao didn’t understand, and asked in confusion: “What do you mean?”

Li Chi carried the water bowl back to Cao Lie, leaned down, and stared for a good long while. In the end, he gave up on using water.

He began undoing his trousers.

As he did so, he muttered to himself: “Maybe a warmer one would work.”

Cao Lie flipped himself over instantly and rolled away several times across the floor.

He stared at Li Chi with a look of horror — like a man staring at a deviant. And really, after the moment Li Chi started undoing his trousers, was there any need to question it further?

Li Chi looked at Cao Lie: “Were you awake this whole time, lying there watching the great masters fight, deciding that was more comfortable than actually joining in?”

Cao Lie spat dismissively.

Then nodded: “It was.”

He began looking around. He was looking for the Jinzhe Blade.

On a distant wall, the Jinzhe Blade was lodged in the wood. Cao Lie struggled to his feet and went over, pulled the blade free with both hands, and wiped the flat of it back and forth with his sleeve, his movements quick and urgent.

When he confirmed that the Jinzhe Blade was undamaged, he let out a long, slow, heavy breath.

Something ten thousand times more valuable would not have made him care so much — his understanding of worth had never been that of an ordinary person.

But the Jinzhe Blade had been forged for him by Cen Jianjia.

Fortunately, Cen Jianjia was not in the Songhe Tower today. She had returned to that small courtyard of hers, set apart from the world.

Cao Lie exhaled. The tension eased from his face.

Li Chi walked over and leaned in to look: “Not broken?”

Cao Lie: “Hmm?!”

His eyes went wide.

Li Chi’s face was a picture of deep and genuine regret — the expression of a man who had narrowly missed something priceless.

One look from Li Chi and Cao Lie understood perfectly.

This fellow — he was definitely thinking: *if the Jinzhe Blade had been broken, should we throw it in a pot together with my Minghong Blade and boil them for a while to see what happens?*

Li Chi’s understanding of value had also never been that of an ordinary person.

Neither of them noticed the man who had been lying on the roof quietly slip away. But from another hidden vantage point at roughly the same distance, a figure wrapped in a hooded cloak had seen him — and a moment later, that figure too turned and left.

—